Poll: Homeopathy

[FEichinger]

The amount of people bashing homeopathy over it "not working" (as in: not working any better than a placebo) is interesting.

If the patient is cured through a placebo, it's still a success. A patient can hardly trick himself into believing in a placebo now, can he? Whether or not this is attributed to the ingredients or not is a whole different beast I'm not even gonna touch.

Personally, I'd rather have stuff like a flu, headache or even some circulation issues solved through a questionable but harmless trickery, as opposed to pumping chemicals in insane quantities through my body, but to each their own, I guess.

 

[Marowit]

The placebo effect is very, very powerful. Although there are some interesting studies looking at Acupuncture and enkephalin(endogenous opioids) activation.

Personally, I'd rather have stuff like a flu, headache or even some circulation issues solved through a questionable but harmless trickery, as opposed to pumping chemicals in insane quantities through my body, but to each their own, I guess.

Sure, for simple stuff go for it. I however have seen a kid whose mum decided homeopathic remedies were good enough to treat cancer - obviously it didn't work - and the kid ended up having to have his leg amputated since they missed the window where chemo/radiation would have been therapeutically useful (this is just one example of many).

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

i don't see the point of using homeopathic medicine
if want water will just get a glass or bottle of water
why go to a guy pretending to be a doctor just to get water

i accidently almost made a poem
structure is likely to be off and it needs more work with rhyming.

I'll just leave this here

that was a pretty good video

 

[FEichinger]

The placebo effect is very, very powerful. Although there are some interesting studies looking at Acupuncture and enkephalin(endogenous opioids) activation.

Personally, I'd rather have stuff like a flu, headache or even some circulation issues solved through a questionable but harmless trickery, as opposed to pumping chemicals in insane quantities through my body, but to each their own, I guess.

Sure, for simple stuff go for it. I however have seen a kid whose mum decided homeopathic remedies were good enough to treat cancer - obviously it didn't work - and the kid ended up having to have his leg amputated since they missed the window where chemo/radiation would have been therapeutically useful (this is just one example of many).

Meh. Life-threatening stuff that can actually be cured 100% by "actual medicine" is stuff I'd go for the "actual medicine" with. But as long as it is unlikely to kill me, I'd stick with homeopathy.
That said, cancer is another different beast: It cannot be cured, unless you manage to remove the infected cells. Once it spreads, any "therapy" is desperate life-extension. In that case, I'd honestly push my luck and ask my body to fix itself, rather than relying on a just-as-lethal therapy that might give me another month of pain.
But of course I agree that homeopathy is surely not a cure for all. And neither should it be, but that's up to the people to realize for themselves.

 

[Roggen Bread]

Has homeopathic medicine ever passed a double-blind trial?

Someone must have put it to the test at some point.

I will not look for the actual study, but yes, it has worked before.

In my opinion it depends. I am quite sure it has helped me before. I am not talking about healing my imaginary cancer but helping me with swellings from wasp-stings (it was a brown fluid called "ledum" this is very small dosed wasp-poison that (essentially) helps the body creating anti-bodies.
I also felt like I had a positive effect from taking homeopathic doses of arsen for sickness.
However, I won't entrust homeopathy with healing severe bacterial infections or fastening the mending of my broken bones.

Essentially:
1. Homeopathic remedies are diluted so much that there is almost zero chance of even one molecule of the active ingredient remaining.
2. This makes the remedy indistinguishable from ordinary water.
In addition, the idea that a more dilute medicine causes a greater result is contrary to both modern science and common sense. I.e. You would expect taking two headache tablets to have a greater effect than taking just one. A homeopathy believer would expect one tablet to have a greater effect than two, as it's more "dilute".

And here you are wrong.

You can distinguish a homeopathic remedy from ordinary water due to the osmolarity.
Please don't ask me how the hell this is possible, but we tried it in bio-chemistry. I was quite amazed.

To your one tablet/two tablets claim: Just no. This is not the way a homeopathy believer thinks. Homeopathy is like a vaccine, you just take a little to boost your own body.

What do we call alternate medicine that works? We call it medicine.

And THIS is wrong. Our medicine is other people's alternative medicine.
Look at the traditional chinese medicine.
I myself believe this can't work. But apparently it does.

Did you know that you in China you paid (pay? I don't know) your doctor if you stay healthy?
If you get sick, he has obviously not been doing his job. This is a system which works, since the tcm is preventive medicine.

Like I said. I don't trust it. It feels like the early beginnings of european medicine, and this wasn't that good, either.

But in my education (I am a biomedical engineer) I learned to keep an open mind. Even with close to insane ideas.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

This video pretty much explains my entire view of alternative medicine. Its quite brilliant for you science geeks out there.

Honestly the only way I can see homeopathy working is if you believe it does and it tricks the body. A sort of sad man wont get better as easily as a happy one type of thing. But thats it.

 

[Navvan]

Well logically speaking I can't say that all alternative medicines do not work. As I do not have an exhaustive list of all alternative medicine. However I have yet to see any that I believe have any merit to them.

As for homeopathy itself I do not believe it holds any merit for the same reasons I'm sure many others have posted.

1. Extreme dilution means there are no active compounds in the water
2. Water by itself can not hold the memory of what was in it unless you freeze it.
3. Even if water could hold the memory (or if you ate some homeopathic ice) your body does not respond to structural order of water molecules. Water molecules respond the their environment such that whatever memory they could contain would be immediately lost as they re-ordered themselves to a more energetically favorable state as they entered a new environment/mixture that is your stomach, circulatory system, cells, and so forth.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

And THIS is wrong. Our medicine is other people's alternative medicine.

You can argue semantics until you're blue in the face.

The point still stands that alternate medicine which is found to work better than what was used previously isn't alternative anymore, it's just medicine

 

[BlueberryMUNCH]

From my experience, no, it hasn't worked for me.
But hey, maybe some things work and others don't. I dunno.

 

[Roggen Bread]

And THIS is wrong. Our medicine is other people's alternative medicine.

You can argue semantics until you're blue in the face.

The point still stands that alternate medicine which is found to work better than what was used previously isn't alternative anymore, it's just medicine

I quess this you're right.

But the "found to work better" process is just flawed, because of the arrogance of those, who decide which works best (pharma industry, anyone?).

Captcha: traffic light.
Yep, can't discuss with these.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

And THIS is wrong. Our medicine is other people's alternative medicine.

You can argue semantics until you're blue in the face.

The point still stands that alternate medicine which is found to work better than what was used previously isn't alternative anymore, it's just medicine

I quess this you're right.

But the "found to work better" process is just flawed, because of the arrogance of those, who decide which works best (pharma industry, anyone?).

Captcha: traffic light.
Yep, can't discuss with these.

Well yeah, I don't doubt there's a level pharmaceutical interference when it comes to some medicines.

Still gotta make money am I right

 

[Mr F.]

Homeopathy is one of the worst things to grace this planet. Seriously, for me its up there with Hitler and all extreme forms of Religion.

I mean, it has directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands (Go look at South Africa's policy with regards to HIV) and it exists purely to scam morons out of their money.

Once you consider the 1 in 32,000 chance that a "Properly Diluted" mixture will have a SINGLE ATOM of the original liquid, well, I am done with this.

11 of those who voted are morons. Seriously.

 

[Naeras]

Has homeopathic medicine ever passed a double-blind trial?

Someone must have put it to the test at some point.

I will not look for the actual study, but yes, it has worked before.

Before you provide that study, I'm calling bullshit on this, because I've seen dozens of studies where there's been no observed effect in any sort of way.

In my opinion it depends. I am quite sure it has helped me before. I am not talking about healing my imaginary cancer but helping me with swellings from wasp-stings (it was a brown fluid called "ledum" this is very small dosed wasp-poison that (essentially) helps the body creating anti-bodies.

Err, that's not how it works. It takes the body several weeks to create enough antibodies to make a difference through a primary immune response, and a couple of days from a secondary immune response. I'd love to see a study backing up the claim that you can create an immune response of that magnitude within such a short amount of time.

Also, even if it would theoretically be possible to create an effective immune response within a few hours, I'm fairly certain that an antibody immune response would be fairly useless against a wasp sting. I mean, what would the antibodies target? Isn't the swelling just an inflammatory response to tissue damage from the venom?

And here you are wrong.

You can distinguish a homeopathic remedy from ordinary water due to the osmolarity.
Please don't ask me how the hell this is possible, but we tried it in bio-chemistry. I was quite amazed.

My first thought was that someone probably hasn't been cleaning their lab equipment before you used it. How many times did you test this, and how exactly did the osmolarity values differ from that of normal water?

To your one tablet/two tablets claim: Just no. This is not the way a homeopathy believer thinks. Homeopathy is like a vaccine, you just take a little to boost your own body.

And what would the mechanisms behind this be? Why would taking something that's literally just water, and maybe a single molecule of the original dilute if we're lucky, help on your health?

A vaccine has a clear mechanism behind it: letting the body store memory cells recognizing the antigen, so that it can initiate a secondary immune response the next time it encounters the pathogen. Homeopathy has nothing going for it there.

But in my education (I am a biomedical engineer) I learned to keep an open mind. Even with close to insane ideas.

I can't see why you'd "keep an open mind" to this stuff. There's to my knowledge never been any scientific evidence that homeopathy actually works, and there's no reason why it should work.


edit: lol I fucked up some of the quotes, sorry guys xD

 

[Daystar Clarion]

snip

Quoted me by accident at the end there pal

 

[Dangit2019]

It works great as a placebo, as actual medicine it's retarded.

 

[pffh]

And THIS is wrong. Our medicine is other people's alternative medicine.

You can argue semantics until you're blue in the face.

The point still stands that alternate medicine which is found to work better than what was used previously isn't alternative anymore, it's just medicine

I quess this you're right.

But the "found to work better" process is just flawed, because of the arrogance of those, who decide which works best (pharma industry, anyone?).

Captcha: traffic light.
Yep, can't discuss with these.

Well yeah, I don't doubt there's a level pharmaceutical interference when it comes to some medicines.

Still gotta make money am I right

There's not so much interference just that some things aren't researched because the active ingredient can't be patented for some reason or other because it costs around one billion dollars to get one drug on the market and that's not factoring the dozens or hundreds of failed versions or isomers or stuff before they found the one that worked. If it can be patented you can bet your ass some company will research it to be ahead of the competing companies.

Drug patents only last for 20 years and 10-15 of those will be spent on research so the actual selling of the drug happens only in the last 5-10 years and after that all the generic pharmaceutical companies will have their own versions out and the company that developed the original won't give a rats ass about it anymore (unless they can patent a new isomer of it). What we need is some sort of international institution funded by a whole bunch of countries that can and will research those things that can't be patented.

As for natural medicine and plants well there is a whole pharmaceutical thing called pharmacognosy which focuses on finding useful active ingredient from plants, animals, bacteria and stuff like that and yeah they do look at 'local medicine' and stuff like that to get an idea what might and might not work and then they test those chemicals and plants/animals/whatever isolate the active ingredient and then if it works figure out how to mass produce it.

Ya see those natural medicine people keep raving about that they get from plants often have the same active ingredients as the drugs but they also have wildly varying doses (for example it's a ***** to regulate how much of a given chemical is in a certain leaf or twig or whatever), a bunch of impurities that can affect how the stuff works or even affect your body and finally they are not in the optimal form to get to the part of the body that is best for the drug to be absorbed from and/or the absorption isn't optimal or even, as they've found in some of the stuff, the active ingredient in the leave juice you just swallowed breaks down in acidic environment.

Hi thread i'm Pffh and I'm a pharmacologist, ask me drug related stuff I guess.

 

[Winthrop]

I'm torn. Homeopathy doesn't make any sense chemically so thats right out. That said, some natural remedies do work. I'm not saying they work better or as well as conventional medicine because that isn't true, but they helped to create modern medicines. Its not just some fantasy that chemicals that have effects on the body akin to medicine are found in nature. Willow Bark has been shown to be a painkiller [http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/willow-bark-000281.htm]but that does not mean that it is more effective then painkillers at stores.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

And THIS is wrong. Our medicine is other people's alternative medicine.

You can argue semantics until you're blue in the face.

The point still stands that alternate medicine which is found to work better than what was used previously isn't alternative anymore, it's just medicine

I quess this you're right.

But the "found to work better" process is just flawed, because of the arrogance of those, who decide which works best (pharma industry, anyone?).

Captcha: traffic light.
Yep, can't discuss with these.

Well yeah, I don't doubt there's a level pharmaceutical interference when it comes to some medicines.

Still gotta make money am I right

There's not so much interference just that some things aren't researched because the active ingredient can't be patented for some reason or other because it costs around one billion dollars to get one drug on the market and that's not factoring the dozens or hundreds of failed versions or isomers or stuff before they found the one that worked. If it can be patented you can bet your ass some company will research it to be ahead of the competing companies.

Drug patents only last for 20 years and 10-15 of those will be spent on research so the actual selling of the drug happens only in the last 5-10 years and after that all the generic pharmaceutical companies will have their own versions out an the company that developed the original won't give a rats ass about it anymore (unless they can patent a new isomer of it).

As for natural medicine and plants well there is a whole pharmaceutical thing called pharmacognosy which focuses on finding useful active ingredient from plants, animals, bacteria and stuff like that and yeah they do look at 'local medicine' and stuff like that to get an idea what might and might not work and then they test those chemicals and plants/animals/whatever.

Ya see those natural medicine people keep raving about that they get from plants often have the same active ingredients as the drugs but they also have wildly varying doses (for example it's a ***** to regulate how much of a given chemical is in a certain leaf or twig or whatever), a bunch of impurities that can affect how the stuff works or even affect your body and finally they are not in the optimal for to get to the part of the body that it's best for the drug to be absorbed from and/or the absorption isn't optimal or even, as they've found in some of the stuff, the active ingredient in the leave juice you just swallowed breaks down in acidic environment.

Hi thread i'm Pffh and I'm a pharmacologist, ask me drug related stuff I guess.

I'm always glad when someone who actually knows what they're talking about weighs in on these kinds of threads

 

[Naeras]

snip

Quoted me by accident at the end there pal

Too many quotes in one. >_<

 

[Hoplon]

I'm torn. Homeopathy doesn't make any sense chemically so thats right out. That said, some natural remedies do work. I'm not saying they work better or as well as conventional medicine because that isn't true, but they helped to create modern medicines. Its not just some fantasy that chemicals that have effects on the body akin to medicine are found in nature. Willow Bark has been shown to be a painkiller [http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/willow-bark-000281.htm]but that does not mean that it is more effective then painkillers at stores.

If you want a reliable version of that, try aspirin, since the active ingredient is the same as is found in willow bark and indeed derived from.