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PrintHomeopathy offers an alternative for the flu
It is early September. My husband and I accompany Sahara (5) and Aysha (6) to their beginning-of-the-year school assembly with mixed feelings: it’s nice to get a bit more time to ourselves, yet summer was so much fun that we wish it weren’t over quite so soon. During the assembly, the principal mentions swine flu, a topic that has been mentioned a lot by the media during the past few months. The principal assures parents that the school will not be closed if some of the students become infected with swine flu. I am relieved to hear that, since I am very critical of all the scare tactics that the mainstream media has resorted to regarding the supposed swine-flu “epidemic”. Also, unlike many other parents, I am not worried at all if my kids are exposed to either the regular flu or the swine flu, because I have had years of formal training in classical homeopathy, a natural healing art that has been used successfully for the treatment of all types of flus for more than 200 years.
My kids will not be getting either the swine-flu shot or the regular flu shot this year. Thanks to long-term constitutional homeopathic treatment, my kids have a strong immunity. So I don’t even have to worry about protecting them against the flu, because most people who die from the flu have compromised immune systems. But if for some reason I were worried about my kids getting the flu, I would give them the homeopathic remedy influenzinum. Influenzinum is made from flu viruses and then prepared in a homeopathic manner so as to render it safe and nontoxic. It has been used for at least the past 150 years as a natural flu preventative. In 1998, the Société Française d’Homéopathie conducted a survey of 23 homeopathic doctors and 453 patients concerning their use of influenzinum as a flu preventative over a 10-year period. Results of the survey were remarkable. In approximately 90 percent of the cases, no instances of the flu occurred when influenzinum was used.
My children are young, and their immune systems are still developing, so there is a chance that they will end up getting the flu this year. If they do, I will be treating them confidently with homeopathy, which was used effectively to treat one of the deadliest strains of flu in history, the 1918 Spanish flu. During the Spanish flu, Americans who were treated with traditional medicine had a mortality rate of 28.2 percent, while those who were treated with homeopathic medicines only had a mortality rate of 1.05 percent, according to a report by the American Homeopathic Institute in 1921.
There are many possible remedies for the flu, depending upon the particular symptoms that the infected person is experiencing. During the Spanish flu, homeopathic gelsemium was the most frequently used remedy. In general, gelsemium is thought of as the number-one remedy for the flu. Homeopathic bryonia and Eupatorium perfoliatum are also very frequently used remedies.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about homeopathy is that it is often difficult to decide between one homeopathic remedy and another. If you are not sure which remedy to use for the flu, a sure bet is Oscillococcinum. Oscillococcinum is a homeopathic remedy invented in 1925, made from the liver and heart of a Barbary duck. There have been two large double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials measuring the efficacy of Oscillococcinum for the flu. The results of the first trial were published in 1989 in Britain’s Journal of Pharmacology, and the results of the second trial were published in 1998 in the Homeopathic Journal. The studies showed that Oscillococcinum reduces the duration of the flu, speeds recovery, and reduces flu symptoms such as pain, fever, and backache.
Homeopathy is a safe medicine for the flu, with no side effects; the same cannot be said for traditional flu treatments.
Sonya McLeod is a Vancouver homeopath. The views expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Georgia Straight.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
The World Health Organization recent warned about its use for influenza:
http://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/world-health-organi...
http://www.somecanadianskeptic.com/2009/09/homeopathy-attempting-to-stri...
Also no Guillian Barre disease ( known flu vaccine side effect ).
Pharmacist Scott, the World Health Organization has NEVER warned against the use of homeopathy for the flu. A group of " scientists" funded by pharmaceutical companies sent out press releases, misleadingly giving the impression that the WHO was down on homeopathy. Their only statement is that it is not the treatment they recommend.
Steve, speaking about financial interests, what about the billions of dollars of our tax dollars being squandered on vaccines, and advertising for a vaccination that many Canadians do not support and are having nothing to do with ?
Good on you, Georgia Straight, for speaking for some of the rest of us.
And homeopathy does work in a spectacular way.
http://homeopathyresource.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/anti-homeopathy-lette...
Homeopathy has been show time and time again to be no better than a placebo -- that is, the best conclusion is that it IS a placebo. To promote the use of homeopathy for the prevention or treatment of a potentially fatal disease is very, very dangerous.
(I notice that Ms McLeod's blog is advertised at the side of this page -- if she's paying to advertise, and being allowed to write editorials, I smell a clear conflict of interest at the editorial level, here.)
Build up immunity naturally with vaccines and don't pin your hopes on soemthing that will do nothing for your immunity. I'll bet who penned this nonsense doesn't even know the difference between a virus and a bacteria!
Dangerous nonsense!!
What will be next on Straight.com- recommendations on using voodoo dolls to ward off AIDS?
Please provide citations. My understanding is that those so-called "official records" have been debunked. Think about it: 90 year-old "official records" stating that people (with a financial interest in the issue) saw tap-water prevent the flu ought to be scrutinized rather carefully, don't you think? Especially when such treatments have, in the modern era, repeatedly failed when subjected to careful study.
Unfortunately the facts tell otherwise. It was other interventions such as patient quarantine that made a difference, and even then only in a small percentage of cases. Homeopathy was NOT used as an official intervention in the 1918 flu epidemic. This legend has grown purely because Royal Copeland was the Director of the New York Department of Health at the time and he also happened to be a homeopath. However Copeland never directed that any homeopathy response be employed.
For more details, start reading here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2238732
Not recommending a treatment and warning against its use are two sides of a very slim razor - the WHO rejects the use of homeopathy to treat the flu - whether the former or latter wording, the difference is only semantic. The WHO says it is inneffective and we should not use it. End of story.
The point is that homeopathy doesn't work. For anything. It's been tested, and it has failed. There's no good reason to believe it works, any more than there's good reason to think that rubbing a rabbit foot is going to bring you luck. It's being sold to you by people who are trying to make money, yet who hide behind the idea that, for some reason, unlike actual medicine, its effectiveness can't be tested -- so, you know, "trust us." How many products are you willing to buy on those terms?
Placebos *sometimes* work for *some* things, but they don't actually, like, kill viruses (for example). Their effect is largely psychological. They don't last, and they don't cure. People opting for homeopathy over vaccination are risking their children's lives.
Making something official which isn't official seems typical of the skeptics- they link to their own blogs and web sites as authorities but really just spread bad rumors about alternative health practices.
http://homeopathyresource.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/conventional-medical-...
It seems to me there is some pretty hysterical reactions here and typical of those roused up by an odd group of people called skeptics. Sense about Science an organization directly sponsored by drug companies has spread many of these misstatements as well as medical individuals who make "serious ethical breaches" described in the link.
My husband and I are in our late 50s enjoy great health and are medication free. We do have a medical doctor as well and would not hesitate in going to an emergency room in an emergency but would still use homeopathy to help with any healing.
Both my husband and I had serious health problems as children and also come from family backgrounds with serious illnesses. Plus considering that many of our acquaintances at our age are on various medications continuously we feel very fortunate that we are so healthy and feel that is because we have pursued homeopathic treatment. Thank you homeopaths!
This isn't about any group. I'm not a member of any groups, and I'm not funded by industry. Neither are most scientists. Drop by any department in the Science faculty of any university. Pick a physicist, chemist, or biologist at random. Ask whether they think homeopathy is even remotely plausible.
The claims made by homeopathy are physically implausible, and have *never* been backed up by evidence.
The reason skeptics jump all over garbage like this is because it kills. Homeopathy performs no better than placebo (exactly as one would expect of a 'medicine' that contains no active ingredients) in clinical trials--the type of trials that have to power to detect whether medical interventions actually work. Of course, if you prefer to go by your friend's aunt's chiropractor's second-cousin twice-removed's dog-walker's florist's testimony, then it works like a charm. Then again, if you talk to that florist's kid brother he'll tell you I'm Jesus. And charms don't work at all.
Feel free to impugn the reputation of all the skeptics, maligning them as shills for the pharma industry, though. (It's as close to real evidence as homepaths get, which is to say not very.) But since we're assuming nefarious monetary motives behind the provision of health, it's only fair to say that homepaths don't practice for sole love of helping people any more than pharmacists do--they're as eager to take a cheque as anyone. India's homepathic industry is projected to hit 26,000,000,000 INR (that's 26 billion rupees, or ~541 million USD) by next year: http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/09124324/Homeopathy-braces-to-be-Rs26bn....
Perhaps all the shills for Big Ayurveda should come clean about their motives, too. The green in that aura ain't Mother Earth--it's moolah, plain and simple.
Homeopaths are not rich. The reason that we are not rich is because our clients get better. We see them a handful of times, and once they're on the right remedy and they start healing we see them only a few times a year. Some feel so well that they don't need to see a practitioner at all for years!
www.littlemountainhomeopathy.com
Medicine is THE FIRST KILLER in the USA. Wake-up people !
The reason that scientific control studies exists are precisely because anecdotes are unreliable.
Isabelle: The argument from popularity is meaningless. Just because a lot of people use it does not mean efficacy.
Why do you insist so much on studies when you have so many people that can witness the success of homeopathy in their lives?
So give me a reason why millions of people in Europe use homeopathy and treat their family with it. Health in not about fashion it's about treating illnesses, nothing to do with popularity! Have you read what I say about GP's in France? Please don't ignore facts. Once again, instead of being negative about something you haven't even tried once, give it a try. You remind me of the children saying "I don't like it" before tasting the food. Taste/test it and we can talk further. Open you mind a bit more...you will be amazed.
All the best.
http://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/the-cognitive-disso...
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090923/seasonal_fl...
"It appears to be that for people who got seasonal influenza vaccine last year, they were at greater risk of getting H1N1 disease this year," Dr. Donald Low, an infectious diseases expert at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, told CTV News.
Dana Ullman who has a masters in public health has an ebook that references over 200 clinical studies showing homeopathy is effective. Many scientists who support use and research homeopathy including last years winner of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Putting 'science' in your name is a cheap way of trying to hide your bias.
"New Science" - I hardly know where to start. Those are weasle words. Science is a logical structure which does make mistakes, but that is inherent in the process. If one cannot make mistakes then one cannotlearn and improve. The only alternative is to get it right from the start - which is extremely unlikely, and the delusion that one can can only lead to hubris fuelled folly. People who adhere to a repeatedly debunked and mechanistically ridiculous theory like the 'memory of water' fall squarely in the latter category.
Dana Ullman is but a single person. There are thousands of doctors and scientists who can't be bothered to give homeopathy the time of day, because it is such an absurd proposition in the first place and NO independent, placebo controlled, double blind experiment has ever demonstrated a level of efficacy above statistical noise.
Provide a specific example to the contrary please.
Simply using the words of science does not make science.
"Why do you insist so much on studies when you have so many people that can witness the success of homeopathy in their lives?"
Ok, I understand what you're saying. But let me offer this: Imagine there is some new treatment, treatment X, that is said to cure headaches. Let's say that in reality, treatment X doesn't work - the people promoting it are either mistaken or pulling some sort of scam. Imagine treatment X is sold to 1000 people suffering from headaches.
Now, headaches often go away on their own if you wait long enough. Imagine that out of the 1000 people who took treatment X for their headache, 50 of the headaches went away on their own within a few hours of taking the treatment, just by coincidence (we've already imagined the treatment itself does nothing). Of those 50 people, maybe 20 of them send a letter to the provider of treatment X thanking them and saying "I took your treatment, and my headache went away." It is reasonable for them to assume the treatment worked, because all they have is their own experience. None of the 950 people who still have a headache are going to write a letter saying "your treatment didn't work" and if they do, then the provider certainly isn't going to put that letter on their website.
Now a proponent of treatment X could point to those 20 letters and say "how can you doubt this treatment when there are so many people who have been helped?" A proper study of the treatment would have followed all 1000 people, and compared them to another group of 1000 who took a placebo treatment. The study would have found that about 50 headaches out of 1000 go away a few hours after treatment X, and the same is true for a placebo treatment, and it would conclude that treatment X has no real effect.
So you can point to as many success stories as you like, but unless you have real, statistically significant results from a properly controlled study, then you have no way of knowing how many failure stories you're leaving out. How many people didn't get better after using homeopathy for every person who did? You cannot answer that question by resorting to anecdotes. This is why I insist so much on studies.
www.accessnaturalhealing.com
info@accessnaturalhealing.com
Give me a break!
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2005
We may take a small dose, maybe 1/10 of a gram or so. and then we will experience symptoms -- any more questions about homeopathic remedies not working? then try for yourself, only your own experince counts.
Afraid??
I'm a firm believer in using homeopathy or naturopathy for preventative measures or for minor medical treatments but my children have had all their immunizations because I think that is necessary too. Why does everything have to be so extreme?? Isn't it like everything else in life...in moderation?
There is some very recent scientific evidence that explains how homeopathy works, you can read about it here: http://elephantsandmice.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/2008-nobel-laureate-pro...
To find out why flu vaccines and treatments are not safe and effective check out my blog: http://littlemountainhomeopathy.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/swine-flu-vacci...
My most recent blog post talks about homeopathic immunizations for the flu: http://littlemountainhomeopathy.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/a-safe-effectiv...
Overall, I've had a lot of compliments on my article in person by regular people, and most recently on my blog. There seems to be a fringe group on the net (e.g. skeptics) who are not fans of my work. Politics are at work here folks, these skeptics do not represent the views of the majority. The majority are sick of popping pills and would like to know of some alternatives.
'The majority are sick of popping pills and would like to know of some alternatives'.
Remind me what form homeopathic remedies usually come in?
And since when did those of us who accept science based medicne become a fringe group? (perhaps this is true among the Georgia Straight's readership.)
As to the assertions that you and other homeopaths make...
Yes, homeopathic remedies do work, (and if I replaced them with tic-tacs without telling you they would still work). Most people, when suffering from any garden-variety ailment with non-specific symptoms, when given any treatment from a trusted source, will feel improvement.
Such is the amazing nature of the placebo effect.
When my grandmother gets a cold or other virus, she goes to her doctor and insists on a prescription for antibiotics.
I'm hoping even you would recognize that antibiotics don't affect viruses, and the doctor has repeatedly told my grandmother this, yet, she insists that the cold doesn't go away until she takes them.
Old time doctors knew about this phenomenon and would over-prescribe antibiotics simply because they recognized how potent the placebo effect is.
Doctors don't do this anymore,(for good reason), and as a result, many people leave their office feeling unsatisfied.
The various CAM modalities have emerged to fill this gap in the market, which would be fine if they actually worked but sadly, no, they don't.
Yes, there are lots of studies that show homeopathic treatments work, unfortunately, most of them suffer from bad design, small sample size, lack of scientific peer review, and the inherent conflict of interest present when homeopaths publish a study on homeopathy in a homeopathic journal.
Homeopaths do not distinguish between good and bad quality of studies, for them, a good study is one that confirms their belief,(homeopathy works).
Homeopathic journals are well known to have a publication bias against studies with negative results, and to trumpet the positive studies without providing the context of all of the negative studies is to engage in disingenuous cherry picking.
I am also aware that there are a few good studies which seem to show a positive effect, but when you examine these within the context of all of the other studies which show null or even negative effect, you come to realize that the positive studies are probably an artifact of statistical averages.
In science, one positive preliminary study does not mean much, other researchers have to be able to duplicate your results, which in this case hasn't been done.
If homeopathy worked as well as its proponents claim, there would not be this amount of ambiguity on the literature, even IF the big pharma mens-in-black were out there trying to suppress everything
If you are going to convince us big, bad skeptics and pharma shills that an implausible, pre-scientific healing modality which defies what we know about physics, chemistry and biology actually works, than you need better evidence than what has been provided. Anecdotes don't mean shite.
As for your arnica pills as a treatment for bruises, that sounds like a good proposal for the JREF million-dollar challenge, you may become rich after all.
I will say that, my bruises often go away within 24 hours by themselves, and my wife, who, sadly, is a sucker for all things CAM, swears by arnica cream, at her insistence I have used it to treat various bruises, burns and abrasions and it has done sweet dick all.
I don't understand the need to be against homepathy - you can't assume that all medication is going to treat every person who has different body chemistry. Studies and test are all controlled, that not real life anyway - everyone's symptoms and reactions are different - I live with Lupus, that is probably one of the most frustrating diseases to live with - but I live with western medicine and homeoptahy - We're responsible for what we put in and you have to admit, in our World today, people put a lot of crap into their bodies weakening everything else in there - why do people have to express how extreme their opinion is. At the end of the day, in both practices, treatments will work and treatments will fail
The concept is flawed (no biologic plausability) and the resulting "treatments" are diluted to the point of containing no active ingredient. (And if water has a memory, then homeopathy is full of sh!t.)
And I speak with authority because I'm a nutritionist (you, too, can be a nutritionist, just call yourself one!).
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