Homoeopathy placebo effect?? Of course not

[hariskar]

In link viewtopic.php?t=975 webslave quotes a text o Dr Shoskes on homeopathy. He talkes about placebo effect.

Obviously both don't know that Homoeopathy is a method of treatment that is also applied successfully to infants and animals. Does placebo effect work on animals and infants too?? Of course not.

So please before post, read the sources.

[dshoskes]

In link viewtopic.php?t=975 webslave quotes a text o Dr Shoskes on homeopathy. He talkes about placebo effect.

Obviously both don't know that Homoeopathy is a method of treatment that is also applied successfully to infants and animals. Does placebo effect work on animals and infants too?? Of course not.

So please before post, read the sources.

Thanks, I needed a good laugh today.

Try: http://www.rotten.com/library/medicine/homeopathy/

[hariskar]

Laugh?? Do you know what you are laughing about? Have you ever read? Do you know what it is all about?
Of course Cipro is not the only cure... I have treated and cured (as my urologist told me) my chronic prostatitis with homoeopathy (negative cultures, size decreased to normal, no symptoms anymore).
Maybe instead of laughing, you should ask someone he knows...
Maybe you should know, that homoeopathy is one of the lessons that are taught (to the students they want) in the Medicine Univercity of Alexandroupolis (Greece).

[webslave]

Homeopathy = soft "science"

J Psychosom Res. 2004 Feb;56(2):189-97.

A randomised, controlled, triple-blind trial of the efficacy of homeopathic treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome.

Weatherley-Jones E, Nicholl JP, Thomas KJ, Parry GJ, McKendrick MW, Green ST, Stanley PJ, Lynch SP.

Medical Care Research Unit, School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Regent Court, 30 Regent Street, Sheffield S1 4DA, UK.

OBJECTIVE: There is no management regime for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) that has been found to be universally beneficial and no treatment can be considered a "cure". Patients with CFS may use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Our aim was to evaluate homeopathic treatment in reducing subjective symptoms of CFS.

METHOD: Using a triple-blind design (patient and homeopath blind to group assignment and data analyst blind to group until after initial analyses to reduce the possibility of bias due to data analyst), we randomly assigned patients to homeopathic medicine or identical placebo. One hundred and three patients meeting the Oxford criteria for CFS were recruited from two specialist hospital out patient departments. Patients had monthly consultations with a professional homeopath for 6 months. Main outcome measures were scores on the subscales of the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI) and proportions of each group attaining clinically significant improvements on each subscale. Secondary outcome measures were the Fatigue Impact Scale (FIS) and the Functional Limitations Profile (FLP). Ninety-two patients completed treatment in the trial (47 homeopathic treatment, 45 placebo). Eighty-six patients returned fully or partially completed posttreatment outcome measures (41 homeopathic treatment group who completed treatment, 2 homeopathic treatment group who did not complete treatment, 38 placebo group who completed treatment, and 5 placebo group who did not complete treatment).

RESULTS: Seventeen of 103 patients withdrew from treatment or were lost to follow-up. Patients in the homeopathic medicine group showed significantly more improvement on the MFI general fatigue subscale (one of the primary outcome measures) and the FLP physical subscale but not on other subscales. Although group differences were not statistically significant on four out of the five MFI subscales (the primary outcome measures), more people in the homeopathic medicine group showed clinically significant improvement. More people in the homeopathic medicine group showed clinical improvement on all primary outcomes (relative risk=2.75, P=.09).

CONCLUSIONS: There is weak but equivocal evidence that the effects of homeopathic medicine are superior to placebo. Results also suggest that there may be nonspecific benefits from the homeopathic consultation. Further studies are needed to determine whether these differences hold in larger samples.

Publication Types:

* Clinical Trial
* Randomized Controlled Trial


PMID: 15016577 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[hariskar]

Ok webslave and dshoskes...

a)In Homeopathy is very diificult to find the correct remedy, because there are no eg prostatitis-specific remedies, but the doctor has to find the correct remedy for each person. That needs a very good doctor (yes, I write doctor, because in Geece inly doctors are allowed to be homeopathists). That means that in a failure, it doesn't mean that homeopathy is wrong, but that the doctor has not found the correct remedy.

b)Would you really expect in Medline to see a blind trial that would show that homeopathy is a good therapy??

c)I can have an opinion about both classical medice and homeopathy, because I have studied medicine, so I am a doctor, and also have studied for 2.5 years homeopathy (I didn't finish the 4 years studies) and am treated homeopatically for over 10 years (not for prostatitis all these years). Could we say the same about you? Do you have opinions about both? Should you have? I think not...

d)If you go to homeopathy doctors I will tell you and make a triple-blind trial about whatever symptom you want, you will be ashtonished by the results...

e)Don't be narrowminded. Listen to diffrent opinions and look yourself if they are worth of...

[one day...]

Hey, seemed to me like Mark actually showed a study that maybe Homeo might actually do.... something? Thats more than I expected from him. He usually won't give things of this nature a second look. He is a nice guy, he just looks into result's. I'm sure if you could show some evidence that homeo works for CP he would check into it. As well as D shoskes, me, and everyone else here..

[webslave]

Would you really expect in Medline to see a blind trial that would show that homeopathy is a good therapy??

If it worked, I would.

I'll allow that homoepathy seems to have some mild effects in some cases that remain unexplained.

I see that you have an account at otenet.gr, so I take it you are a Greek homeopathic doctor? What's your interest in this area?

[hariskar]

Would you really expect in Medline to see a blind trial that would show that homeopathy is a good therapy??

If it worked, I would.

I'll allow that homoepathy seems to have some mild effects in some cases that remain unexplained.

I see that you have an account at otenet.gr, so I take it you are a Greek homeopathic doctor? What's your interest in this area?

webslave, I disagree about the mild effects. In most cases homeopathy can have radical effects, situations like depression, chronic fatigue syndrom, pain during menses, asthma, insomnia and many many more there can be total cure. But the doctor has to be very good. As I said it is very difficult to find the corrct remedy for each person.

I am a doctor, but not homeopathic. I am specialised on Biopathology. I think this specialisation does not exists outside Greece. It is a laboratory specialisation. It consists of the laboratory part of Hematology, Biochemistry and Microbiology.

I studied homeopathy (I stopped studies before end) for 2.5 years, because I was surprised from the results on me (I didn't believe in homeopathy, when I first started visiting a doctor, because I knew only about classical medicine) and wanted to learn more about it.

[webslave]

I cannot speak about the other disorders you mention, but I am sure of one thing: in the last 10 years I have read tens of thousands of messages written by men with CP/CPPS/IC/pelvic myoneuropathy, and none has claimed a cure from using homeopathy, except the following message, which is unverifiable (hotmail address):

From: arnoldw ([email protected])
Subject: Cured from chronic prostatitis and happy: my brief account. Date: 1998/10/10

Suffered from chronic prostatitis for 3 years.
Main symptoms:
- impotence
- decreased ejaculation
- pain (sitting pain and pain radiating to left testicle, thigh), sometimes severe
- psychological effects (unability to concentrate, mild depression and anxiety)

As some of you can imagine, I have also had my moments of suicide thoughts.

Never having been ill before, I fell into the hands of conventional medicine for more than two years: - wrongly diagnosed by GP (urethritis, epididimytis), couple of times on Cipro antibiotics. Symptoms came back worse. - expensive lab tests and visit to urologist (PSA, cultures etc.); no result - uro tried to poison me with alpha-blockers; after 3 weeks I flushed them down the toilet due to side effects and no relief of symptoms

Next phase (year 3) do it yourself: - got most of the information from the internet (at less than 1% of the cost of a visit to my uro) - quit smoking; a slight improvement as will do anything that improves your health - I tried many things but the combination of self-drainage/prostatic massage and saw palmetto turned out to be really essential; it did not cure but relieved most of the symptoms significantly. - final homeopathic treatment: 2 hour interview with doctor to review all symptoms, history, previous medication etc. On the basis of this information my homeopathic doctor prescribed an individualized medication to precisely target my own body to heal itself. Third day after taking 3 pills had a sleepless night, prostate pain, anxiety etc. Next morning: cured!

It is difficult to describe the experience of getting your sex-drive back full-blown after having been in the shadow for almost 3 years. It is also difficult to describe the feeling when pain disappears in parts of your body where you have had pain for years, so you don't even notice it is there any longer, until it goes away. For a couple of months now, I consided myself completely cured. I am not going to have that checked by a lab.; my own body does that kind of checking for me and it feels very good to be able to rely on your own body again.

Some final comments:

1. Recently, a urologist in this newsgroup labeled homeopathy 'truly the great scam of the century'. Now I am a very scientific person myself, and although science has made a tremendous progress, there are many things we still cannot explain. That does not give us the right to expell them from areas where they can help to relieve human suffering. Furthermore, the underlying theory of homeopathy is not even that unscientific; it is the small dose of medication and it's exact way of working that still leaves us puzzled;

2. A personal advice to fellow sufferers (chronic, not acute prostatitis); I still recommend to visit a urologist to start with but only to get a good diagnosis and, if you want, to give it a one and only try with antibiotics. For the rest, do it yourself. You have to drain/massage to relieve the pain. I also recommend saw palmetto; it really works. And finally, get yourself a good homeopathic consult; it finally cured me. Don't rely on over the couter homeopathic medication; it is the consult that is key to the treatment.

3. For those of you who are interested, the financials

a conventional treatment U$ 3200 no result

b herbal treatment + DIY U$ 25 per month significant improvement

c homepathic consult U$ 180 homeopathic medication U$ 7 cured

He later answered a sceptic with:

Apart from homeopathy, my argument started that even on herbal medication (saw palmetto) and DIY treatment, I was already much better off to start with, after two years of suffering, as is the case for many people in this newsgroup. Saw palmetto has a proven and known way of working (a.o. via blocking 5 alpha-reductase), and so does drainage. As a natural substance, saw palmetto does not have as many side effects as e.g. it's synthesised equivalent Proscar.

Add to this the fact that medical practice itself in many cases is still more of an art than a science. You visit a urologist in A, and he will swear by anti-biotics, another will give you alpha-blockers, etc. etc. My second uro was highly sceptical and opposed to drainage, even in combination with antibiotics. Please read this newsgroup and judge for yourself.

As for cynicism against homeopathy; I agree that any scientist should be very critical to start with. But the argument against homeopathic treatment is always targeted against the infinitesimal small dose. Please remember that this is indeed a questionable fact for SOME homeopathic medication, it is certainly not true for ALL prescriptions. Classical homeopathy sometimes resorts to dilutions that are indeed beyond our current understanding of physics and I agree that we cannot accept this as a sound basis for further research. I was just given a diluted yet quantifiably present substance that in higher dosage would have been extremely toxic, yet in the dose I received must have mobilized my own body to work against my CP. This is not black magic or voodoo; it is the same way many vaccination strategies work. And by the way, my horoscope was even more favorable to me; my allergy and sinusitis also disappeared after 12 years.

This is a more typical experience:

I just wanted to post a note of my experience with homeopathy. It may just be the doctor that I have found, but after almost 2 months of seeing my homeopathic doctor. I have not felt this good in a year.

- My sexual functions are all returning. - What little pain I had is gone. - My frequency in urination problems have been gone for weeks. - No testicular discomfort. - Ejaculation pressure is getting better.

I still have a ways to go before I feel that I would be totally normal again, but the main way I can describe this is that I feel like I am "healing". It has been slow, but progressing.

I live in Atlanta and have been turned on to a Homeopathic doctor here who has found allergies and imbalances in my body that I never knew I had. Through a series of different remedies, doses, etc, I feel like my body is healing.

My decision to seek this form of help was based on the fact that the medical community in my opinion has no defined cure or knowledge of the causes for prostatitis. I do believe in my bodies ability to heal itself. I have just been wondering why it has not. I heard very promising things about my particular doctor. Believe me, the things that she does makes me real skeptical. But I decided to give her 100% attention and a chance. So far, after many of my own remedies, carrot juices, Saw Palmettos, cerniltons, anti-oxidents, 5 different Urologists, and an incredible amount of reading, research, and anxiety, she is the only one who has done me right.

I am not saying that she can cure all, but she certainly has me on the right path. I hope it stays this way.

I am not sure what other detailed information I can offer to you, but if you are curious to know more, let me know.

-Larry
[email protected]
Atlanta, GA

[webslave's note: this gentleman continued to have symptoms after posting this message, and eventually travelled to the Felicianos in Manila for unsuccessful treatment]

Even more typical:

Has anyone tried homeopathic treatment?? It worked fine for me for sometime, but my problem has come back. Maybe it will help someone else.

[hariskar]

Quote 1 is a typical example of a patient who is disappointed of classical treatmnt and had a successful homeopathi treatment. I have seen may patients like this. Even myself. I went to the homeopatist for the first time for allergic asthma. I was taking cortison with inhalers and was making de-sensitivation injections for allergy. Of course I was cortison dependent. After I went to homeopathist I am free of astma and medication.
Patient of quote 1 is lucky, because he found a good doctor, who found the correct remedy with the first try. And he was also lucky, becose he improved so quickly (from the 3rd day).

Quote 2. I don't know the rest of the story, what happened, if he was not happy with homeopathic treatment and why. BUT, what he tells, is another example of successful treatment. After that there are a number of reasons because of them, he could have relapsed. For example he may took antibiotics, or he had a very big shock, or simply he needed a higher dose of the same homeopathic remedy he took. In all cases, if he went to the homeopathic doctor, he would take the same or another remedy and he could be well again.

Quote 3. He should go to the homeopathist again too. The same reasons as above could make him relapse.

So, all three quotes show that homeopathy can help in prostatitis too. But people have to be more patient and if they relapse, they should not be disappointed of homeopathy, but go again to the homeopathist.

But even if they would not have success at all, would that mean that homeopathy is wrong? It could be the homeopathist, or the patient didn't follow correctly the advices, or he should be more patient.

[webslave]

Well, I remain very doubtful. I know that my dear parents dragged me to a homeopath several times as a child, all to no avail. I liked the little sugary pills I had to take, because I have a sweet tooth. Other than that, it simply seemed like hocus pocus to me.

[hariskar]

I can understand your doubts, if you had an expierience like this... You may have been to a bad homeopathist (and this is a big discussion). I had failures too at the beginning with my previous homeopathist that was not very good, even now sometimes... But failures can have many causes...