What is a good site for homeopathic education?

Googling “homeopathic info” yields pretty good results.

This?

It seems like there are so many different thoughts out there for alternative medicine/treatment: herbs, homeopathy, applied kinesiology, accupuncture, holistic…how do I know which is best?

“Good homeopathic doctors” is an oxymoron.

@skadu, do you see the value in the Scientific Method? If so, then alternative medicine for the most part has no place in modern medicine. The best option for your particular condition is what your AMA accredited doctor recommends, or if researching on your own, the method that most consistently shows better than placebo results in a double blind study.

I think it’s possible to take the best of both worlds. You need so much anecdotal info and some real medical info as well. Evening Primrose helped me immensely with PMS, and I am an advocate supreme for tea tree oil. But I have prescription meds from my doctor for blood pressure. I am going to a 12 week pain management course-medical group of doctors exploring chronic pain. It will be interesting to see if they include some homeopathy.

Purchase one of each of the following, go to bed, and read.

You’ll be much better off in the morning.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/000728487X/?tag=bs0b-21

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trick-Treatment-Alternative-Medicine-Trial/dp/0552157627/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259747828&sr=1-1

if you want an excellent homeopathic treatment, go out and excercise on a hot day, then place your mouth under a tap…cures dehydration every time, and unlike “official” homeopathy, this water doesn’t bankroll a multi-million dollar industry built on selling bogus treatments and placebos to the gullbile public

If you would like something well balanced, I would recommend the website and books of Dr. Andrew Weil.

He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and he combines both traditional medicine with those aspects of alternative medicine which have shown provable results or promise.

He also specialized in Botanical research after taking an Ethno Botany class in Medical School (yes, taught at Harvard) and feels that the tremendous profit expectations of the Pharmaceutical companies has drawn focus away from many lesser known and relatively inexpensive plant alternatives.

I think he is one of the best resources out there. He terms his approach “Integrative Medicine”

His basic point of view is that standard medicine is fantastic for intervention when a disease process has reached critical proportions and natural medicine is good for prevention and aiding in a healthy lifestyle.

If I lived in Arizona, of definitely want him as my Doctor.

Anyhow, do some research on his background and philosophy for yourself and check out his website and perhaps some of his books.

www.drweil.com

@skadu, homeopathy is a fraud.

There isn’t really any legitimate question about this.

@Buttonstc, I have a feeling you are confusing “alternative medicine” in general, with homeopathy in particular. There may well be alternative medicines that work. Not homeopathy.

Just to be clear, here is how homeopathy works. Let’s say you want a sleeping pill. A homeopathic remedy would take caffeine—which is the opposite of a sleeping pill—and then dillute it, over and over again. The principle here is that you can get an effect X by diluting something that is the opposite of X, over and over again. The stronger the dilution, the stronger the effect.

This is absolute nonsense, for two reasons:

1. The principle is absolutely illogical. A small amount of X does not yield the opposite of X.

2. Even if the principle weren’t illogical, homeopathic remedies dillute the ingredients so much that there are no actual molecules of the ingredients left! When you take a homeopathic pill, it is literally just water. We know how the chemistry works.

It’s one thing to keep an open mind about alternative medicines. It’s another thing to give your hard-earned money on remedies that are proven to be frauds. Don’t be a sucker.

I would not trust the advice provided by Weil either.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2169
http://www.skepdic.com/integratmed.html

what @Qingu said.

Herbal remedies can be very effective—that’s where modern drugs originally came from (and some still do).

Any effect homeopathic remedies claim to have is 100% placebo effect, and in any sort of blind studies are equal (or worse) performing than the placebo.

As someone once said, “there is no such thing as alternative medicine, there is just medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”

And the most reliable way we have of determining which is which is to subject them to several independent double blind randomized controlled trials, publish the results in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and eventually conduct meta-analyses once sufficient studies have been conducted. Anecdotal doesn’t work, because it can’t distinguish real effects from placebo.

If an “alternative”, “natural”, “complementary”, or “integrative” medicine works, then science will be its best friend.

That’s the nice thing about science. It doesn’t care what we want to be true, it just helps us find what is true.

oh no you didn’t mention the dreaded homeopathy on Fluther did you? I guess we should post a warning. anyhow i don’t subscribe to this hating ideology and hope you find what you are looking for.

GA @Critter38!

Thanks!

Now I will tell you a secret and it will save you a lot of money. Go to

http://www.haribo.com/planet/us/info/products.php

and select the Gold-Bear 3-Lb. or Gold-Bears Snack Pack product. All the red and yellow bears will help heal people from ailments. But you need to be convinced about the red and yellow bears. If you doubt them they might not help. So try it. From my experience they are great.

Homeopathic medication is a more expensive version of red and yellow bears, but the effect is basically the same. The medical term is placebo effect. It does work. The red and yellow bears will not only save you money, they also taste better.

But if homeopathic medication works better for you, stick with it. If you are convinced that it works very likely it will.

@mattbrowne, I disagree with your last paragraph. If it’s a placebo, if they know it’s a placebo, I think they have a moral responsibility to not fund snake-oil selling that sell placebos as actual medicine.

Fraud should not be tolerated.

@Qingu – If it’s a placebo, they might not accept that it’s a placebo and still believe in the healing powers of homeopathic medication. That’s the problem with red and yellow bears. Although it doesn’t matter from a medical standpoint whether people swallow the sweet bears or the pills, the effect is different. Red and yellow bears don’t look like medicine. Homeopathy needs to maintain this pseudoscientific image for the placebo effect to work. But you are right, when we enlighten people, there’s the risk of destroying the placebo effect. I also agree that everyone has a moral responsibility to not fund snake-oil selling.

The problem is that for certain illnesses distrust in real medicine can produce the nocebo effect which is also very real. People get anxious and they do not get well. Now despite all our efforts they maintain their belief in homeopathy and might lose their anxiety. They have hope. They get (a little) better. Yes, they were charged for it and of course too much. But lingering anxiety and the loss of hope might even cost more money. There’s the dilemma.

Psychics also commit fraud. But if people visit them and the psychic gives them hope, well, same dilemma. I prefer the education approach, but some people seem immune. Actually, some psychics might do a good job because they can interpret body language and tone of voice. Mirror neurons fire away in emphatic persons. Now the diagnosis and recommendation has nothing to do what’s inside a crystal ball or what’s going on in interplanetary space, but it could still be a good one. The matter is different when psychics claim to be able to talk to their visitors loved one who passed away, but again there’s a dilemma if advice is helpful during the period of mourning. This is why psychics and astrologers and homeopaths make money. There’s a demand for this kind of stuff. Well, and it’s a free country. If people ignore your and my advice there’s not much we can do.

Well. There’s always death panels

I heard there are crazy parents in the US trying to treat their juvenile diabetic kid with homeopathy instead of insulin. The youth welfare office has to intervene and threaten to withdraw the right of custody if they didn’t see a regular doctor. This when it gets very serious and it’s a matter of life and death. Then the fraud is not just about money anymore.