Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion Helpful Tips Homeopathic Pain Relief Mouth Spray

Hi Sue. Comparing homeopathy to herbs is apples and oranges. Homeopathy is just diluted water, plain and simple. Herbs actually do something, in that I agree, and nature and marine life are huge repositories for future discoveries.
If you had a chance to watch them, those 1st 2 videos were pretty good, didn't you think?

BTW, it's Timo and not Tim

sorry timo for the name mixup,

and yes, i do agree that herbs and homeopathy are quite different, not sure if homeopathy is just "diluted water", was thinking more about homeopathic "medicines" when i made my first statement, things like arnica (cream), but you know what, let me do a little reading before i make any more comments,

and will look at those videos a little more closely as well later.....

hi timo,

found this from NIH:

NIH Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, homeopathy

wish they had gone into more detail but they do have a bibliography attached and the details are almost certainly within those sources.

it does sound like most scientists don't believe there is any validity to homeopathy, but others say there is some evidence.

thus, sounds like they (NIH) think it is still open for debate, open to be proven or disproved. i think that was the point i was trying to make the second time around when i used herbs as an example.

thanks for making me go look into this....i remember when this branch of NIH was started, don't remember exact date, but 10-20 years ago, so the idea of alternative and complementary medicine is still a relatively new concept in the U.S. not sure about homeopathy in particular, but do know that other things like herbs, like acupuncture, etc are becoming more accepted by mainstream medicine over time.

and then also thinking outside of medicine, even some nobel prize winners' theories were scoffed at for a long time, McClintocks theories on "jumping genes" (transposons), Mitchell's chemiosmotic theory. or even Avery's determination that DNA is the genetic material. i think those stories, and others, have taught me to neither believe nor discount something til proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. now, that's not to say that i don't discount nonsensical illogical talk, i do agree that there is a lot of pseudoscience out there.

hi again,

watched those two videos....

but this video is excellent proof of concept

One issue I have with homeopathy is that they've had 200 years to do science and if it's still to be proved or not does not bode well for it as a discipline.
There's lots of quackery out there looking to empty one's wallets and in many cases they prey on people not understanding facts through the hype (like Noni juice and all the other MLM products that don't work).

Yes, that was hilarious!

oh i agree there is a lot of quackery out there and think its a shame that many people don't have a better grasp of science to be able to sort through it, and yes, then people take advantage of that.

i wouldn't be so quick to judge just because no one has figured something out for 200 years, that there is nothing to it. acupuncture has been around for thousands of years and is still not well understood by western science but we are starting to appreciate it more.

and there are all kinds of scientific surprises being discovered every day; in my field alone, ribozymes weren't discovered until early 1980's, RNAi was discovered in 1998, and riboswitches weren't discovered until the early 2000's. RNAi has been found in all eukaryotes and riboswitches are thought to be a relic of the RNA world if such a world existed. and yet, it took this long until someone was able to figure out the mysteries that were finally explained by these things. i'm sure there are similar examples in other fields, these are just the examples i'm familiar with. and the examples i gave have been right under our noses for a long time and aren't even that complicated, we just didn't know what we were looking at.

i truly have no idea about homeopathy and you may be absolutely correct. just saying, until its unequivocally denounced....
not even NIH has closed the door on it yet.

glad you liked princess bride, one of my favorite movies....
even if it wasn't really very related.

another fascinatin' discussion going on around here

as usual, I can see both sides of it, which is probably why I never get anything done!

on one hand, there is this desire for real, quantifiable, reproducible, results

and on the other hand, I can see how finding the very smallest amount of stimulation (i.e. diluted materials) could end up being the most desirable

I see that as a key concept of education, give a student the gentlest of nudges forward, challenge them to think for themselves, and when they actually use their brains to get the rest, rather than repeat what they've been told, that will give the strongest results

and I've noticed it in my own work too, sometimes when mixing music, I've been tempting to make a particularly attractive sound (such as a pan flute) louder because the ear is drawn to it. But I found that by making it LOWER in volume, that people who liked this sound, listened a little more intensely, got actively involved in the process, and as a result heard the whole composition better. So it turns out, the best level to make this sound was the very lowest level possible.

and on the third hand...

Will watch the videos later, but want to agree that I wouldn't be able to accept the theory that homeopathy works unless I could see effects like the author mentioned...the problem treated (knee pain) got better with the homeopathic remedy and got worse without it and did this repeatedly, thus showing cause and effect. Also, they would have to rule out that something else (exercises-physical therapy-another medication) wasn't causing the relief.

Since the NIH hasn't totally ruled it as effective/quackery, I won't say it's quackery, but the fact that it hasn't become more mainstream in all these year makes me lean more toward quackery. But I don't know anyone personally that has used it.

The part that I wonder about-How they could show repetitive studies if a provider could use varying dilutions (personalized treatments). Are there base substances that are 'pure' by some standard? Like the Sulfur 6X in the formula for the pain med...is that a 'standard' Sulfur?

you have three hands? i never knew

yes, i too can see both sides, that is almost always my problem, maybe why i tend to never make any decisions......