Homeopathy?

[quote]doogie wrote:
1 part per million. That’s bullshit.
[/quote]

Depending on the substance, one part per million might actually do something.

Look on any of the online homeopathy stores. A typical dillution is 30c, or one part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 .

here’s my story…

for a few years i had been severly depressed, suicidal, hated everything about myself, and wanted to die but didn’t have the courage to actually do it (much less the courage to do things that thoroughly frightened me).

my uncle, who i share more traits with than any other known relative (even birthday), is a hospitalized schizophrenic. ive spent a deal of time with his father and the similarities between the stuff my uncle did to get put in a hospital were very similar to the stuff i was beginning to infatuate myself with. so you can see where i’d be right now without adequate intervention.

luckily for me, my parents put more time and effort into keeping me from being like my uncle than most parents would. i took a couple different anti-depressants and did a lot of high-quality herbal programs. neither helped. finally my mother and i went to see a man named Dr. Richard Stephen Mann, a professor and clinical homeopathic practicioner with a few decades of experience treating patients.

he was a small, eager, old guy who foamed at the mouth when talking. i was a self-hating young man with a respect for nobody with closemindedness (ironically, ive now found that i was extremely closeminded).

Dr. Mann first told me that the “homeopathic remedies” that my mother showed him ive taken were, in fact, microdoses; and that homeopathy is an extract, not dilution. he then told me that he’s seen homeopathy do some amazing things and he’s been in love with it since he first experienced its power. next he told me that if he was going to attempt to find the remedy that would help me i had to tell him about myself, starting with my childhood.

i spent three hours telling him the intimacies of my life, from beginning of memory to current, while he asked specific questions along the way. it was rather interesting because he asked me questions about things only after i mentioned them and delved into them with more related questions like they were meaningful points.

at the end of the session he told me that he has a remedy that he thinks is the one for me, but it may not work. that he’s had patients have to take a few different ones before they found the right one. he explained that if it is the one for me i’ll feel like shit for the next two days, and then very very gradually i’ll begin feeling like a different person. he describe homeopathy as a whirlpool from within that begins teeny tiny and slowly but surely grows and grows.

i took the dose, said my goodbyes, rode home, was in a better mood than normal because when tears are shed the aftermath is a kinda nice, and Dr. Mann was indeed the wisest man i’d met (if i’d met Alan Watts before he died he’d have some competition).

well, the next two days i felt like absolute shit. i didn’t just feel down, i couldn’t do anything (had zero responsibilities at the time). the only good thing in my life was sleep and even that was bad. the shittiness tapered as the second and third day passed by. a week later i had hernia surgery. three weeks after that i got a call by Dr. Mann because i didn’t go with my mother to see him. he asked me pertinent questions and i told him that i was feeling better regularly, didn’t think about killing myself every woken hour, not even at all anymore (except for one day, i was reminded how incredibly suckass it is to hate yourself and wannna die) and was looking forward to looking for a job when the affects of my surgery subsided. he said he was surprised that i got any better due to the fact that surgery tends to halt homeopathy. a few weeks later i went back to work where i had before i went off the depressed deep end (a place i enjoyed working at at the time, btw, i just couldn’t handle breathing).

it’s been about 1.5-.6 years since i first saw Dr. Mann. ive made more progress through joy than most people make in a lifetime. even when i think things are going to get bad and i’ll became a frightened coward again, i just get better. things that i thought were once evil (eating, yes i believed eating was evil) have been gradually leaving my mind. Dr. Mann described it to me and ive experienced this myself, that homeopathy cant necessarily make you “better”, but that it can “change” you. he’s had many patients who didn’t notice any difference until a month later when he asked them if they’re still experiencing the reasons that they seeked help in the first place. oftentimes, they replied with an astounding “no”.

i haven’t noticed any change in myself because it just seems that ive always been this way, that i never was a guy who couldn’t get intimate with women, who couldn’t be in the spotlight, who couldn’t take stress in any way shape or form, who counldn’t love his parents, who couldn’t appreciate Christians and Christianity, who couldn’t wake up every morning and think that Western Washington is one of the most beautiful places on terra firma (i used to hate this place and was diagnosed with SAD, but now i enjoy walking in the rain in shorts and a tee-shirt starring up into the mouth of heaven).

each month im a better person than the month previously, despite the things i do and dont do that im sure will send me into regression. honestly, if the homeopathy cotinues to grow, i’ll be the single happiest individual to ever live.

now, for anybody who will deride true homeopathy without knowing it or experiencing it: i would pity you, but i’d prefer to laugh at your steadfast ignorance as i pass you on the road to where ever it is we’re bound.

[quote]larryb wrote:
doogie wrote:
1 part per million. That’s bullshit.

Depending on the substance, one part per million might actually do something.

Look on any of the online homeopathy stores. A typical dillution is 30c, or one part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 .[/quote]

HaHaHaHa. What does that make a 200c?

did you all know that glutamine for muscle hypertrophy looks really good on paper yet performs terribly in practice? likewise, ive discovered that homeopathy looks terribly on paper but works wonders in practice.

also, dont overestimate placebo effect. it’s real, but isn’t it curious that whenever something scientifically unexplained appears the scientific term “placebo effect” is used to explain it away?

[quote]Gothic77 wrote:
Bullshit. Prove it.
[/quote]
If it worked, that would be fairly easy to prove in repeatable, double blind, placebo-controlled studies. Numerous studies have been done and showed no effect. Studies by “true believers” such as Beneviste that showed positive results, when repeated by those same researchers under the careful scrutiny of disinterested parties, have failed.

[quote]
Why did it work on my father who thinks like you do? He didn’t even know he was TAKING it. My mom gave it to him in his glasses of water and it was working. He even said he was feeling better from his ailment. As soon as she stopped giving it to him, he was back to feeling crappy.[/quote]

You and your mom knew he was taking it. You may have had a more positive and hopeful attitude about his condition during that time, which may have changed his own outlook and perceptions, and reduced his stress levels. Or, it may not have really been a homeopathic preparation. What was the dilution?

so if the homeopathic theories are right , the more its diluted the more its potent? so we should drop a beer in a water source of a city to cure the alcholics?

[quote]wufwugy wrote:
also, dont overestimate placebo effect. [/quote]

Don’t underestimate it. The mind is a powerful thing.

Red pills work better than blue pills. Big pills work better than small pills.

[quote]wufwugy wrote:
did you all know that glutamine for muscle hypertrophy looks really good on paper yet performs terribly in practice? likewise, ive discovered that homeopathy looks terribly on paper but works wonders in practice.

also, dont overestimate placebo effect. it’s real, but isn’t it curious that whenever something scientifically unexplained appears the scientific term “placebo effect” is used to explain it away?[/quote]

Glutamine actually looks very good for muscular hypertrophy through indirect means, but I see your point.

Sounds to me like full-blown homeopathy is much more than the homeopathic pill, though. Even if it is mostly suggestion, hell, that’s all psychology is as well. Sounds like it can work well with a good practitioner, depending on the case.

-Dan

wufwugy,

I don’t know how to say this nicely, but did you ever think that maybe it works for you because you are crazy?

first of all, homeopathic medicine has been proven in double-blind scientific studies.

second, things can have a huge effect on you even if not a single molecule of them exist near you. for example, new scientific studies show that everything that touches water leaves an electromagnetic imprint on water… so even if you take that substance out -every single molecule of it- the electromagnetic imprint of that substance remains in the water… they call it “water memory”. This imprint, it has been shown, can actually mess with your health. Now I dont think homeopathy works this way, and there are actual molecules of the substance left in homeopathic medicine usually,
and i can assure you it works.

[quote]silencer wrote:

for example, new scientific studies show that everything that touches water leaves an electromagnetic imprint on water… so even if you take that substance out -every single molecule of it- the electromagnetic imprint of that substance remains in the water… they call it “water memory”. This imprint, it has been shown, can actually mess with your health. Now I dont think homeopathy works this way, and there are actual molecules of the substance left in homeopathic medicine usually,
and i can assure you it works.

[/quote]

Please post those studies, because your assurance that it works means nothing.

[quote]larryb wrote:
wufwugy wrote:
also, dont overestimate placebo effect.

Don’t underestimate it. The mind is a powerful thing.

Red pills work better than blue pills. Big pills work better than small pills.[/quote]

wow, that’s all kinds of wrong. im sure i could find some small pills that would make you feel better and make some big pills with the exact same ingredients that would kill you.

the thing about “placebo effect” as it’s thrown around in general discussions is that it’s used out of context. why is it that i didn’t get placebo effect from things that i intently, whole-heartedly believed would work, yet i have gotten effects from things that i believed were hogwash and wouldn’t do anything.

is “the mind is a powerful thing” news to anybody? i think we all know that, and it seems that people only use that expression when they have no clue how to explain the current topic.

despite having a miraculous homeopathic experience i’d love to understand the “truth” about why it’s hogwash. i would either be shown how im wrong, how my entire existence has become one giant placebo effect; or understand the flaws in reasoning from the skeptics of homeopathy (kinda like how at one time doctors bled their patients because their bad blood was killing them; they were so right, yet so deathly wrong).

[quote]doogie wrote:
wufwugy,

I don’t know how to say this nicely, but did you ever think that maybe it works for you because you are crazy?[/quote]

what a compliment! you do realize that that implies that homeopathy works better than we all believe?

something that makes a happy guy happier is good thing, but something that makes a dreadfully psychotic mess as happy as the happy guy made happier is truly an awesome thing.

did you intend a different meaning than what i interpreted?

do all those who think homeopathy is garbage also think the same thing of acupuncture?

[quote]buffalokilla wrote:
wufwugy wrote:
did you all know that glutamine for muscle hypertrophy looks really good on paper yet performs terribly in practice? likewise, ive discovered that homeopathy looks terribly on paper but works wonders in practice.

also, dont overestimate placebo effect. it’s real, but isn’t it curious that whenever something scientifically unexplained appears the scientific term “placebo effect” is used to explain it away?

Glutamine actually looks very good for muscular hypertrophy through indirect means, but I see your point.

Sounds to me like full-blown homeopathy is much more than the homeopathic pill, though. Even if it is mostly suggestion, hell, that’s all psychology is as well. Sounds like it can work well with a good practitioner, depending on the case.

-Dan
[/quote]
honestly, i’d LOVE to find that my experience is all in my mind. that would make me feel like a fucking god!

a big reason why homeopathy (and similar kinds of healing) are readily criticized is because of the lack of emphatic proof. from history we know that many things that are taken for granted now were exactly like this. even now we know of things that do interesting things and our foremost scientists have very little way to explain them.

[quote]wufwugy wrote:

did you intend a different meaning than what i interpreted?[/quote]

Definitely.

[quote]wufwugy wrote:
do all those who thing homeopathy is garbage also think the same thing of acupuncture?[/quote]

Do they take the acupuncture needles and cut them down until they are
1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th the size of normal needles?

[quote]wufwugy wrote:
larryb wrote:
wufwugy wrote:
also, dont overestimate placebo effect.

Don’t underestimate it. The mind is a powerful thing.

Red pills work better than blue pills. Big pills work better than small pills.

wow, that’s all kinds of wrong. im sure i could find some small pills that would make you feel better and make some big pills with the exact same ingredients that would kill you.
[/quote]

Naturally that refers to sugar pills. Fake injections work even better.

There are no active ingredients.

If any homeopathic medicine had any significant effect, this would be fairly easy to prove.

[quote]xfrankx wrote:
so if the homeopathic theories are right , the more its diluted the more its potent? so we should drop a beer in a water source of a city to cure the alcholics?[/quote]

one of the reasons i know that criticisms of homeopathy is not without flaw is because of rationale like this. dropping beer in the water source to cure alcoholics is an example of micro-doses. homeopathy quite the opposite thing to giving a little amount of the substance to the person so they can build up an immunity. it’s about giving a substance to a person that is experiencing symptoms nearly identical to symptoms that healthy people experience when given that same remedy.

in a nutshell, a homeopathic remedy that cures the sneezes when given to a guy with the sneezes would give people who dont have the sneezes the sneezes.

sad thing is this isn’t an exact science, but so isn’t conversation and we seem to be doing that just fine.

[quote]wufwugy wrote:
do all those who thing homeopathy is garbage also think the same thing of acupuncture?[/quote]

According to most reputable studies, acupuncture works great - but it doesn’t matter where you put the needles.