Do you believe alternative medicines or homeopathic remedies have any effectiveness whatsoever?

Some of it works, some of it is shear quackery. Crystals and aroma therapy fall into the last category and for good reason. Some herbal remedies and simple diagnostic techniques which were formerly relegated to folk lore, have proved useful such as the presence of a lateral ear lobe crease, which can be seen from ten feet away and can determine if a patient has a dangerous cardiac condition. Today, person with an ear lobe crease is now strongly advised to get a full cardiac work-up, whereas just a decade ago doctors laughed at such quackery.

There is definitely a lot of division because there is a lot at stake—primarily the health of the patient, but there is also individual reputations and the reputation of mainstream medicine to consider as well. More and more, mostly due to the cost of standard medical care, researchers are investigating and re-visiting various methods and medicines of the past. But research is expensive, so inclusion is slow.

One of my last research projects was a Department of Defense study on the efficacy of Ujaii breathing techniques as a therapy for PTSD. Ujaii prana is an ancient yoga breathing technique. This was difficult to get past some people in the Pentagon, but the cost and failure of treatment for the Vietnam war veterans with PTSD convinced them to throw a half million into the project.

Once all this was called “alternative medicine” and it was taboo for a licensed practitioner to overtly advocate it. Today it is called “complimentary medicine” and the stuff that seems to have a positive effect on a patient—for whatever reason—and does the patient no harm, is more accepted and open for investigation.

Your question is too broad. Homeopathy is different from “alternative”, which in my lexicon encompasses herbal remedies, mineral supplementation, and techniques (chiropractic, yoga, meditation, etc) that have been proven to have a high rate of efficacy.

Placebo effect only.
Homeopathy is an outright scam, as is chiropractic, the latter of which has the bonus of being able to cripple and even kill you.

Oh, @ragingloli, your extremely limited perception of this subject is kind of sad. Medical intervention by an unqualified practice round can do more damage than chiropractic intervention by an unqualified practioner. Obviously one should find qualified practitioners for any kind of physical intervention.

Folk medicine that has been proven to work is called ‘medicine”.

Some of it is efficacious. This has been shown by controlled scientific studies. I also continue to use what has worked for me in the past. Such as echinacea, which the limited scientific studies have shown not to shorten colds, but to me it seems as though those studies were designed wrong and measured the wrong things. I have found echinacea invaluable in decreasing mucus and sneezing and, generally, lessening the severity of colds when I take it, especially at the onset.

Some of the others whose effectiveness has been backed up by scientific study include

Vitamin D3
St. John’s Wort (depression)
Red Yeast Rice (nature’s statin)

Studies are ongoing regarding turmeric (curcumin).

Work with Frankincense as a therapy for various maladies is a good example of the trials a folk medicine is put through before it can be, in all good conscience, entered into the modern pharmacopoeia.

Frankincense, in it’s rawest form, is the sap from the Boswellia family of trees, the best coming from the Boswellia sacra in the Middle East, aka the Frankincense tree. It looks like a gnarly old, 20-foot Bonsai tree. The sap is taken the same as maple syrup is harvested; by scoring the tree bark at a certain time of the year.

Studies have shown the topical antibiotic effects of Frankincense. A chewing gum made from the resin has been shown to reduce tooth decay measurably. However, there are toxic chemicals in the sap as well and when a process can be developed to remove those effectively, a Frankincense toothpaste and mouth rinse should not be far behind.

A 2008 study reported that frankincense smoke was a psychoactive drug that relieves depression and anxiety in mice. The researchers found that the chemical compound incensole acetate was responsible for the effects.

There are ongoing therapy trials concerning Frankincense and ulcerative colitis, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis, pilot studies from which there is not yet sufficient evidence of safety and efficacy. Similarly, the long-term effects and side effects of taking frankincense has not yet been scientifically investigated. Nonetheless, several preliminary studies have been published.

Earlier, a poorly conducted study suggested that the consumption of Frankincense would kill cancerous tumors in the body. The Frankincense advertisement for Young Living, Inc. read: Discover the anti-cancer effects of Frankincense today!!!—The very same Frankincense given to Jesus at Christmas!!!

Mr. Young, the owner of Young Living and a millionaire with no formal medical background or post high school education, funded the study. Mr. Young will sell you a 5ml vial (one teaspoonful) of his precious Frankincense essential oil for $14.99 on Amazon. When he was touting Frankincense as a cancer cure, he jacked the price to $99 per teaspoonful and claimed that only his Somalian Bosellia sacra could cure cancer (The very same trees that were formerly monopolized by the Catholic Church because of their medicinal value!!!).

Unsurprisingly, this “cancer” study has been declared quackery by the medical community and the FDA kindly asked Mr. Young to just stop it—through their subpoena process. But that doesn’t stop Mr. Young from paying people like Ty Bollinger to publish articles and “academic papers” all over the internet obliquely referring to his “study” and Frankincense as a cure for cancer.

I think you can see the minefield here.

This is an example of an ancient substance attributed with magical powers that has real beneficial effects, but not at all like those that were attributed to it throughout history. Testing is on-going—as the tree is slowly becoming extinct under present circumstances.

@NerdyKeith I like the variety of your many questions, but like many Internet questions, they tend to seem to come from perspectives that over-simplify the topic.

This question seems to me especially over-simple. I would say that if you find yourself thinking of all alternative medicines as one thing, and thinking they’re all bunk, that you’re clearly prejudiced, thinking sloppily, and incorrect.

Not that that’s not a common attitude. Modern culture is highly slanted towards supposedly-scientific and materialistic, knowable, logical, literal, understood, supposedly-proven ideas. That’s a reactionary swing against the previous centuries where dogma and tradition aggressively prevailed (particularly in the case of the Christians, who went as far as to excommunicate or even burn people at the stake essentially for not getting their information from them).

And certainly there are many examples of “alternative” medicine being a scam, or delusional, or wrong, or maybe a placebo… But even placebo is proven and documented to have high effectiveness even by the mainstream non-alternative scientific medical community. It is clearly proven that when people believe something is helpful, it often becomes helpful for them. There are many documented cases where the effect has been very dramatic, including rapid remission or re-occurrence of major cancerous tumors based on whether the patient believed their medicine was any good or not. So it’s unscientific and in fact a misleading overstatement to say that even scam medicines are no effectiveness. Unless you’re a diehard skeptic and incapable of thinking it’ll help.

Another thing to consider is the nature of mainstream scientific medical research. If you’ve ever read actual scientific studies, and followed the history of ideas around many medical issues, unless you are too fervently indoctrinated into extreme credence in the idea of the greatness of modern scientific medicine, you will know that the Western scientific medicine rarely has concrete answers and complete understanding of anything. Each study takes months or years, and the understanding of each idea is hugely complex and evolves over decades, and the result is doctors who have masses of information, most of which is not conclusive because the mind and body and its many possible states and issues are extremely complex and interrelated. Diagnosis and treatment are still often mainly about odds and educated guesses, and trial and error, and often even the specialists are stumped.

Well, there have been healers for thousands of years before the Western Age of Reason. Perhaps the best example is traditional Chinese medicine, which has been developed for all that time, based on experience. It doesn’t have the same type of materialistic theories and peer-reviewed academia that Western medicine does, but it is based on much more experience. And yeah, it does have effects.

I’m nearly burned out answering this, but even Western medicine knows that the nervous system is present throughout the body, is connected to the brain, and controls most of what our body does. It also has plenty of evidence (even if it hasn’t figured out how to explain much of it) that the mind can and does have all sorts of subconscious effects on the body. Minds and bodies are not just mechanical machines, and although Western medicine has done amazing things understanding how many elements of it work, and developing ways to work with it, they also don’t understand or know what to do with much of it. But only the most closed-minded materialism-blinded Western doctors would try to deny that mental attitudes can and do have great effects on pathology and well-being. They may not understand the cause & effect in detail, but they won’t deny they exist.

Well, other healing traditions have other frameworks for treating ailments, and have also done their own types of research and development based on experience, and not on academic proofs. They definitely do have effects (at least some of them), and there are definitely intelligent and professional people who have developed skills in using them.

First, it is important to understand what “alternative medicine” is. Within the alternative medicine community, “alternative” means “not pharmaceutical” (and sometimes “not surgical” as well). On this definition, things like diet and exercise—which we know work—count as alternative medicine.

Outside of the alternative medicine community, “alternative” is often used to mean “without scientific backing.” This is a “define and conquer” tactic frequently adopted by the AMA and has been used to prevent research that could prove or disprove the efficacy of various putative treatments (which is unfortunate given that disproof is more effective than mere denial).

So as not to straw man anyone, I stick to the first definition. But once we accept that definition, we should see that “alternative medicine” is a big tent. It may include many forms of quackery—of which homeopathy is definitely one—but it is unwise to then declare all forms of alternative medicine (like, say, yoga) quackery as well. In fact, it would be a hasty generalization fallacy.

So my answer is this: Homeopathy is demonstrably bullshit. Other forms of alternative medicine—like diet, exercise, or meditation—are demonstrably good for us. And the efficacy of a lot of other stuff is unknown, partially because there is a stigma attached to even studying it (regardless of whether one intends to support it or debunk it).

Well, then you have those people who are gonna pray the sickness right out of their kids. I think it amounts to the same thing. If a placebo works, there was nothing wrong with them in the first place.

@Zaku I largely asked this question to educate myself. And with a very wide variety of topics that I bring up, there is bound to be something we don’t see eye to eye on.

When I was 12 years old, a bona-fide doctor bothched a burst appendectomy on me. There was a lot of toxic residue left inside me. I was expected to die. Three of my Uncles were ordained priests, and they performed a “laying on of hands” healing ceremony for me. I survived. Who can say why.

I love this line from Tim Minchin’s piece, Storm:
Do you know what they call “alternative medicine” that’s been proved to work? Medicine

Antibiotics, nursing care and luck @YARNLADY.

And just maybe, @Dutchess_III, the strong faith that a 12 year old had in her family, especially the ordained priests, boosted her immune system to fight off the infection in a sort of supercharged placebo event.
Really, you are so close-minded sometimes.

The idea that anything that Western science hasn’t claimed to have figured out and proven, is nonsense, is unscientific nonsense. Western medicine itself very frequently changes its mind about its understanding and diagnoses, and Western doctors mostly don’t know for sure what to diagnose or offer as treatment. Many Western medicines also exist in non-Western medicine, as well. Most inputs to the body have some effect, and the thousands of years (or more) of non-Western development of healing skills has different approaches that may not be documented but still have effects.

I have a bottle of herbs from a Chinese pharmacy, for example, that definitely has an effect on clearing sinus congestion. The acupuncturists I’ve seen have been very effective at quickly finding things going on in my body and doing things that help, and the effect on my nervous system is obviously felt and pretty dramatic. Same for the cranio-sacral / something guy I also see from time to time. Feldenkrais is crazy effective – doctors tell people they have degenerative congenital nervous system conditions they can’t fix, and then they go do Feldenkrais and the symptoms reverse. Feldenkrais himself was told he wouldn’t be able to walk again, and developed the system largely to learn how.

@LostInParadise I know Fluther is big on Tim Minchin, myself included. But that line only works if we use the straw man definition I mentioned above. It’s a funny line, and I don’t begrudge comedians from blurring reality a little to get a laugh. But the real world is a little more complicated than that, as is so often the case.

One of my friends from Africa told me that in Africa, the people that live in the cities live a shorter life than the people that live in the jungle. The people that live in the jungle eat better quality food and have less Westernized medicine.

I would imagine that maybe with something like a major disease like cancer, of course Westernized medicine would be the only way to go. However, for ailments of a lesser type, I’m sure he’s accurate – the teas and things that they have probably have been working wonders for hundreds or thousands of years.

I agree with @Zaku that it’s ridiculous to believe humans have discovered every natural compound, and combination of compounds, that can assist an organism in healing itself. So, yes, I’m open to the possibility of alternative medicines. Every body is unique, so what doesn’t fork for 50 might work for 1 – it’s a matter of identifying the proper treatment for the proper body.

I’m open to homeopathic medicine simply because I don’t know enough about it to be close minded. Doesn’t a vaccination trigger a body’s remembered response to a harmful invader? Is it impossible that a plant can act as a vaccine? I don’t know. I don’t discount it.

I’m with @Dutchess_III on this one. I have always questioned religion and finally realized I didn’t believe in it because I have NO faith.

@ibstubro – Here’s a quick explanation of what homeopathy is and why it’s bullshit.

Quick is relative, @Seek, but I got the point.
Randi is such a windbag.

Okay, I don’t believe in homeopathic medicine, even if I did keep thinking of ADHD and the countering effects of Ritalin [speed] on hyper people.

I love him. And to be honest, I didn’t really look at the time. I just remembered hearing the lecture before, and didn’t remember it being that long. Mea culpa.

Randi’s lecture style just seems so dated to me, in the age of TED talks. But the info was good.

@SavoirFaire, I question your first definition of alternative medicine. The distinction between alternative medicine and ordinary medicine is the application of scientific method to substantiate claims. There are, for example, numerous cases of traditional herbal cures that were shown to be effective.

@LostInParadise You said you were going to question the first definition, but all I see is an argument by assertion with nothing to back it up. But of course, you can’t back it up because definitions are stipulative. You don’t get to tell someone else how they define themselves, so you can’t really tell the alternative medicine community that they are defining themselves incorrectly. You can prefer the AMA’s definition (ignoring, as they do, the way it gets used to prevent scientific advancement), but that doesn’t move the conversation forward in any meaningful way.

I mean, you could define “alternative medicine” as anything that comes in a purple pill if you wanted to. But again, that wouldn’t really add to the discussion. In the context of a public debate, what matters is how actual communities define their terms. The alternative medicine community defines their area of interest as I described. The AMA defines it differently. My point has been that the AMA definition is a straw man when it is imposed upon those who don’t use it that way.

Someone who is interested in alternatives to pharmaceuticals might describe themselves as being into alternative medicine. But when other people come in and try to force upon that statement an endorsement of things like homeopathy simply because they define “alternative medicine” differently, that is a straw man plain and simple. And using the straw man is particularly silly when there are other terms in common use that can avoid it (like “science-based medicine” and “unproven medicine,” which cut across the distinction between “alternative medicine” and “mainstream medicine”).

But we could go further than this and point out that there are treatments that have scientific backing that continue to be classified as alternative medicine (both by the AMA and the general public) simply because they don’t come in the form of a pill. One example that comes to mind is the use of certain kinds of mushrooms to fight inflammation. There are also studies that show St. John’s wort to be superior to placebo and equally effective as conventional antidepressants in the case of depression.

For some reason, the last link doesn’t work for me unless the address is given on its own. So just in case you have the same problem, here it is: http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-4-14.

These studies reveal that there are several advantages to studying alternative medicine rather than dismissing it out of hand. The first is that we might actually find something that works. The second is that we might be able to discover nuances that don’t exist in the folk belief. The mushroom study does both of these things. It found that some mushrooms really do have the properties claimed on their behalf, but that not all mushrooms to which the benefit has been attributed actually have those properties. But third, studies can also give us surprising information about conventional treatments. The St. John’s wort studies have led some to reevaluate the efficacy of current antidepressants.

When discussing alternative medicines, we also have to be careful about the distinction between a treatment and a theory. A treatment can work even if the theory behind it is bunk. The theories behind things like chiropractic and acupuncture, for instance, are obviously bunk. Nor is it plausible that either could treat the wide array of ailments that their progenitors and practitioners have sometimes claimed. It does not follow from this, however, that they cannot help with anything (e.g., back pain). They might not. But a bad theory does not entail that we should just give up on all future research. Mainstream medicine started with some pretty bad theories too, after all.

An added complication here, however, is that things like acupuncture were rarely recommended as remedies on their own. They were part of a larger course of treatment that included things like exercise and dietary changes. But this is all the more reason to study it scientifically, so that these elements can be evaluated both separately and in combination.

I get it. A lot of this stuff is bullshit. But it is intellectually dishonest not to approach it on its own terms. Fortunately, intellectual honesty is the best way to investigate any claim, whether our goal is to verify or debunk it. The attitude that it isn’t even worth studying, however, is both unproductive and unscientific. Yet it is the attitude promoted by the definition you prefer (since it prejudges alternatives as quackery rather than opening them up for research). Not studying these things can also be dangerous since the lack of studies doesn’t stop people from taking alternative remedies but does prevent agencies like the FDA from regulating them (since these agencies are typically barred from making decisions of any kind in the absence of evidence one way or the other).

@SavoirFaire , I don’t want to get into a semantic argument.
You said,
Within the alternative medicine community, “alternative” means “not pharmaceutical” (and sometimes “not surgical” as well). On this definition, things like diet and exercise—which we know work—count as alternative medicine

I do not see why diet and exercise would be included in alternative medicine but not ordinary medicine. Can you cite a reference where diet and exercise are included in alternative medicine and excluded from ordinary medicine?

I pointed out that many traditional herbal medicines have been studied and been found to be effective, and have moved, as Minchin indicates, from alternative medicine to medicine. Aspirin is an example given by Minchin.

@LostInParadise I never said they weren’t included in mainstream medicine. That’s your false dichotomy causing you to misread what I’ve written. Like I’ve already said, “alternative medicine” and “mainstream medicine” are not mutually exclusive when the term “alternative medicine” is used the way its proponents use it.

And I know you have already admitted that some traditional herbal medicines have been studied and found effective. But you are wrong to say that they always get swept into the category of conventional medicine (and certainly not if we avoid straw man definitions). Thus why I pointed out two examples where that transition hasn’t happened.

I don’t have to deny your examples for mine to count as counterexamples because you made a universal generalization. Universal generalizations are disproved by a single counterexample (e.g., the mushrooms or the St. John’s wort), and cannot be proven by a lone supporting example (e.g., aspirin—which, of course, wasn’t fully accepted until it been turned into a pill).

I understand the rhetorical convenience of pithy statements. The trouble is that they often don’t stand up to reality. So it does no good for someone who is trying to insist that they are part of the reality-based community to insist on them when they don’t hold up. The real world is complicated.

If some alternative medicines coincide with ordinary medicine then in what way are they alternative? There is a definition problem here.

There is no grand conspiracy against the use of St. John’s Wort or mushrooms. If they were really effective, they would get government approval. Here is an article that says St. John’s Wort has been shown to be effective in treating mild depression, hardly a ringing endorsement.

@LostInParadise “If some alternative medicines coincide with ordinary medicine then in what way are they alternative? There is a definition problem here.”

Congratulations. You’ve finally arrived at my point. The “alternative” in “alternative medicine” doesn’t mean “alternative to all mainstream medicine.” It means “alternative to a specific part of mainstream medicine (specifically, pharmaceuticals).” You’ll notice that I mentioned this in my very first post.

Nor have I suggested that there is any grand conspiracy. This seems to be another reading failure on your part (unsurprising given that you’ve always been a disingenuous interlocutor). In any case, I came across that article while doing research for my earlier post. The passage you are referring to cites WebMD, which cites a write-up, which cites (but misrepresents) the studies I already linked to above. And in any case, you fail to respond to any point I was actually making.

The article is also misleading on the lack of FDA approval. The FDA is currently prohibited by Congress from evaluating such products. The issue is not the lack of efficacy, it’s the lack of oversight. Since the FDA cannot regulate St. John’s wort, it cannot require sellers to use a standardized amount of the active ingredient in their products. Thus the products available on the market are untrustworthy. But that has nothing to do with whether St. John’s wort works or not. It has everything to do with the fact that it is legal to call a product a St. John’s wort extract even if it contains no St. John’s wort in it whatsoever.

I am having difficulty determining what point you are making. In addition to all the alternative medicines that are complete quackery, there are a few of marginal value.

St. John’s Wort can’t be regulated by the FDA because it is regarded as a food. If it were that good, there could be a private certification agency. Here is an article talking about the murky nature of the alternative medicine industry. It certainly seems like a good idea to provide some government regulation.

I love polite, intelligent cat fights!