h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Interesting I think I'd rather be treated by people who specialise in diagnosing medical conditions rather than translating them into words of one syllable."

So your preference is for your doctor to tell you that you'd got a xyrothrotic amblastoma*, shove a prescription on the desk and throw you out of his office rather than, say, explain what is wrong with you and how it might affect your daily activities?


* Yes, I have just made this up

B

Well, you have to trust them in their diagnosis, so why not let them express it in language with which they are more comfortable?

My favourite way of getting rid of urine tract infection is to drink about two liters of water, in about two hours. Add a gram of vitamin c to the last glass.

It flushes out the contents of the bladder, so that the number of bacteria is very low. That allows the immune system to combat the remaining bugs quite allright. The vitamin c surplus goes directly to waste=urine, so the urine gets slightly acidic. Which bacteria do not like, I heard.

I'm not sure that would count as homeopathic, but it does involve a lot of water and dilution

Professionals have to speak in an appropriate language - there's no way you can help someone if they can't understand what you're saying.

Post 19 (effers): at first, I read "maybe I'm diluted"

>>Sometimes the Germans do things that make no sense. For example, pedestrians waiting to cross a street at a red light even though there is not a single moving vehicle in sight or within earshot.

Sometimes there are signs explaining why you should do that:

'Um die Kinder zu wegen.'

603:

>>Currently, there's a real problem with us not filtering out anti-depressants from urine. It's doing weird things to fish.

Like making them happy?

Seriously, though, I believe there are companies that specialise in filtering out drugs from pig urine...and I seem to recall hearing something about recovering anti-depressants from human urine. I'm not sire how they'd make it work on a commercial scale, mind.

>>> Interesting I think I'd rather be treated by people who specialise in diagnosing medical conditions rather than translating them into words of one syllable.

There's no reason one can't do both. And if you don't make the correct diagnosis then being able to explain it is fairly pointless.

Back to the labels, though...

I'd read the small print. That's bound to be the most important part. Especially the really, really, really tiny print.

>>Homeopathy makes no sense to me. But a former girlfriend....

I use to have amazingly bad migraines...had all the presciptions etc from the GP they didn't work...had acupuncture, it sort of worked by just taking the pain away, but the migraines kept returning...

with a young family to look after I had to do something...

Homeopathy makes no sense to me, but I went to a homeopathist ...

I now do not have migraines

ps I hope I've spelt migraines correctly...!! - i really wish they did spell check on here

"what does he say about the reason for it still to be used in Germany?"

Ben Goldacre doesn't say anything specific, but then why would he? The answer to the question is - there are stupid, gullible people in Germany, just the same as everywhere else.

I refer you to the Minchin Principle:

"By definition, Alternative Medicine has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call "alternative medicine" that's been proved to work? Medicine."

I'd question whether it's stupid or requires gullibility to believe that homeopathy works.

No - I certainly don't think it *does* work. There's no plausible mechanism and certainly no evidence. What we observe is that when a lot of people are given homeopathic medicine, some of them get better. Given that they're not being treated for brain tumours or broken legs, quite a lot of them do. It's not *obvious* that they're not getting better purely by chance. To investigate that you need studies, and to be able to understand them requires a modicum of knowledge of how experimental design and statistics works. There haven't been that many studies (and I don't think there's much point!) but people unused to dealing with study data aren't necessarily stupid. It's quite sensible for people to go on reputation and recommendation - 'I tried homeopathy and it worked a treat!' - we do that kind of thing regularly.

I'm totally with the homeopathy-deniers. But they'd make more progress if they didn't tell the people they want to convince that they're idiots. And if they don't want to convince them, they might as well shut up and enjoy their smugness.

>>I don't want a real overdose.

Tests have shown that even when people know they are only taking a placebo, they still get the placebo effect. So who knows what might happen.

And with it being homeopathy you'll still get the effects if you only pretend to take it. Placebos work best in non-existent doses.

I think that scientific studies have been done on some forms of homeopathic medicine. In most cases, the results were underwhelming. Nevertheless, the placebo effect still works some of the time.

I like the idea of being open-minded. In some areas I am open-minded, but in others I'm clearly not. You may wish to consider me imperfect (it's apparently true), but there isn't someone (anyone) out there who actually is perfect. So, I take my imperfect grasp of the cosmos, and work with it as best I can. When I'm wrong on something, usually there's someone else who can set me straight.
This presents a chance to learn something new, assuming that I don't reject it. In some cases, even if I do reject it the first time, eventually someone finds the right combination of arguments to make me realize that whatever it is makes sense, at least in terms of internal logic.

There is a doctor names Andrew Weil. He attempts to bridge the divide between conventional and alternative medicine.

But if you do overdose, won't it mean that these pills actually do something, which is what you want to show they don't?

Worse still: aren't you more afraid of overdosing if you don't take anything?

Good point. Maybe they don't do anything to cure diseases but they have Life as a side effect.

Here is the list of things I have tried for migraines:

accupuncture
applied kinesiology
aromatherapy
avoiding alcohol
avoiding cheese
avoiding chocolate
bach flower remedies
cranial sacral therapy
crystal healing
dietry therapy
earth energy lines
feng shui
food sensitivity testing
ibuprofen
herbalism
homoeopathy
indian head massage
massage
meditation
osteopathy
paracetemol
reflexology
sleep
yoga


Here is the list of things that work for my migraines

daily beta blockers
900mg of asprin
100mg of sumatriptan

Cue the old joke; did you hear the one about the homeopath who forgot to take his pills and died of an overdose?

I'm not sure where herbs fit into the picture. Scientific studies have shown that turmeric contains curcumin, a substance that helps prevent Alzaheimer's. It has been said that Alzheimer's is rare in India because the general population eats so much turmeric.

Ginger and cinnamon seem to have reliably established medical properties. So, maybe there are a few ways in which conventional and alternative medicines agree?