How is homeopathy supposed to work?

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#2795605 14-Oct-2021 21:49

ezbee:
Hopefully Pharmacies which in this country carry a certain level of trust are never allowed to sell them.

Separate reply because it's a different topic: They do sell them. Mind you they also sell a vast range of no-provable-effect herbal remedies and supplements and whatnot... whether they should or not is an interesting question, if people are reassured by taking some sort of pills or drinking something when they're treating their condition then it may not be such a bad thing. If you've got an ailment that will fix itself anyway but you feel more comfortable if you take some herbal multi-vitamin whatever in the process then why shouldn't a chemist sell you some?

ezbee

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#2795822 15-Oct-2021 10:49

Neb,
I suppose my problem is that pharmacists filling prescriptions and giving advice on them.
Its a position of trust and authority, for good advice, even an assumption most things there are efficacious.
We see from them popping up in LOI especially those that can't afford a doctor.

Over years we have seen things creep from beauty products that are allowed to make weak to unsubstantiated claims.
To somewhat debatable vitamins and such, ok if you are deficient, but then moving to megadoses, herbs and such.

At least you can say there is a real ingredient that does do something, especially if you are deficient.

I feel that providing too much incentive to push entirely placebo effect things
that purport to be cures for real ailments risks debasing our healthcare.

If there is a problem with pharmacists making sufficient income,
then there are other reforms that can be done.
There are already a raft of pharmacy only products they have monopoly on.

There are regulations already around who can dispense prescriptions that are supposed to be a protection
to assure qualified people do this properly. So a somewhat protected profession.

Putting real medications and distilled water with different labels of various ailments on them
together in some sort of equivalence is a bridge to far for me, YMMV

Leave more dubious stuff for natural healthcare shops and homeopathic businesses.

Varkk

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#2795861 15-Oct-2021 11:58

neb:
ezbee:

Hopefully Pharmacies which in this country carry a certain level of trust are never allowed to sell them.

Separate reply because it's a different topic: They do sell them. Mind you they also sell a vast range of no-provable-effect herbal remedies and supplements and whatnot... whether they should or not is an interesting question, if people are reassured by taking some sort of pills or drinking something when they're treating their condition then it may not be such a bad thing. If you've got an ailment that will fix itself anyway but you feel more comfortable if you take some herbal multi-vitamin whatever in the process then why shouldn't a chemist sell you some?

I remember reading a pharmacist talking about those product lines a while back and he said he hated that they pretty much had to carry them for the business to be profitable. The dispensing fees they get for medications are too low to cover the cost of running a retail pharmacy so they need to carry additional product lines to remain commercially viable. The supplements and remedies etc are a fairly good profit margin and if they don't have them often people will complain and then go to a different pharmacy that does when they fill their regular prescriptions.

gzt

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#2795880 15-Oct-2021 12:47

ezbee: Neb, I suppose my problem is that pharmacists filling prescriptions and giving advice on them.

IME these products are sold and promoted by retail staff and not the qualified and licenced dispensing pharmacists.

Senecio

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#2795920 15-Oct-2021 14:00

neb:
ezbee:

Hopefully Pharmacies which in this country carry a certain level of trust are never allowed to sell them.

Separate reply because it's a different topic: They do sell them. Mind you they also sell a vast range of no-provable-effect herbal remedies and supplements and whatnot... whether they should or not is an interesting question, if people are reassured by taking some sort of pills or drinking something when they're treating their condition then it may not be such a bad thing. If you've got an ailment that will fix itself anyway but you feel more comfortable if you take some herbal multi-vitamin whatever in the process then why shouldn't a chemist sell you some?

They also sell a lot of anti-aging cream. I could never understand how stuff was even allowed to be marketed as such.

Technofreak

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#2795933 15-Oct-2021 14:42

Senecio:

They also sell a lot of anti-aging cream. I could never understand how stuff was even allowed to be marketed as such.

Well I guess if Bottle-O next door can sell anti aging syrup I guess it's OK for them to sell the cream. Both have a similar effect through different means.

One makes you think you look younger and the other helps someone else think you look younger. 👍 🤣

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#2795935 15-Oct-2021 14:50

It‘s working due to the magic of believing - like placebos. Seriously! :-)

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#2795992 15-Oct-2021 17:17

Isn't "how it's supposed to work" somewhat irrelevant given that it doesn't?

MikeB4

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#2796009 15-Oct-2021 18:13

Homeopathy is very good at one thing. It treats a certain stress trigger very well, that is the stress of what you are going to spend your hard earned money on. It has remarkable success at this.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

Varkk

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#2798654 21-Oct-2021 11:29

Slashdot earlier today linked to a Bloomberg article profiling a German doctor, who was studying medicine, switched to homeopathy prior to being fully licensed, then became a skeptic of homeopathy.

It si well worth thread on this topic https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-12/homeopathy-doesn-t-work-so-why-do-so-many-germans-believe-in-it

neb

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#2798823 21-Oct-2021 15:09

Interesting read, thanks. "Natural" remedies are really popular in central European countries, it's weird going into a chemist there because about half of the shop could be set in around 1850 (with modern packaging) and the other half is a standard chemist as you'd find in NZ. The shopping experience is odd too, if you go in with back pain and go with evidence-based medicine then you go to the anti-inflammatory section and get what you need, if you don't then you have a long conversation with a shop assistant about which variant of eye of newt and wing of bat they'd recommend for you. That may explain the popularity, you're getting a free medical consult, personal attention, and sympathy over your aches and pains every time you walk into the chemist.

The obsession with "natural" everything is really baffling when you're used to evidence-based medicine, instead of going with a heavily-researched, carefully-refined, highly pure, calculated-dose medication, you buy some (often) poisonous herbs and take just enough of them that they don't make you any sicker but that one of the things mixed in with the cocktail of toxins has a mild therapeutic effect (I'm thinking stuff like arnika and St.John's Wort here). Even then, you have no idea what level of all the stuff that's present in there you're administering to yourself, the only thing that keeps you somewhat safe is that the dosages are low enough that there's little harm done.

It was interesting reading the ex-homeopath's description of losing faith in homeopathy the more she looked into it, I had the same experience when I looked into it more. That is, it sounded like nonsense to me from the minimal knowledge I had of it, but when I read about it seriously, so acquired more knowledge of it than I had initially, it just got more and more incredible, as in "not credible". When reading the one article I referenced in my first post I kept waiting for the "arf arf, gotcha!" when the writer reveals that it's satire, but it never came. When reading the description of the process I couldn't actually believe it was for real, I thought it was someone taking the mickey. I looked really hard for signs that it was a hoax article, but they appeared to be serious.

Is there a reverse version of Poe's Law?

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#2798839 21-Oct-2021 15:46

Varkk:

I remember reading a pharmacist talking about those product lines a while back and he said he hated that they pretty much had to carry them for the business to be profitable. The dispensing fees they get for medications are too low to cover the cost of running a retail pharmacy so they need to carry additional product lines to remain commercially viable.

Slightly off topic, but Im not sure I buy that. I appreciate the margins on those things may be good but everytime I visit the pharmacy I see people filling prescriptions and not buying other stuff (while Im waiting).

In Upper Hutt (population 46,000) we have 6 pharmacies in very close proximity - all within 5km of each other and 4 of them are within 500m of each other (3 of them are UniChem "chains" - I know becuase my old Doctor would randomly send prescriptions to the wrong UniChem and I would have to ring around to find out which one they had sent it to).

If things were so close to "unviable" then I doubt we dould have so many in close proximity.

singingamy

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#2837791 24-Dec-2021 13:11

No idea, it never worked for me.

MikeB4

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#2837794 24-Dec-2021 13:15

singingamy:

No idea, it never worked for me.

Thats because you didn't catch a falling star and put it in your pocket

If you did you would never ever fade away.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

MikeAqua

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#2857224 27-Jan-2022 16:26

There is no scientific evidence for homeopathy over and above placebo effect. Often the active ingredient has been so diluted that there is mathematically less than one molecule left in the end 'solution'. It's the most expensive bottled water in the world.

I'm not saying that practitioners don't believe in what they are doing. However, some of them are snakes and they all know who to charge. When my mother was terminally ill, she resorted to seeing a homeopath. That particular practitioner told her his treatments would only work, if the people around her believed they would. What do you do with that?

Mike

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