Reccomended Homeopath?

[missymei]

I am looking for an experienced Homeopath(at least 5 yrs) who practices/follows methods of classical homeopathy by Hahnemann and more importantly who has experience in treating Special Needs children.

I would really appreciate any reccomendations given. Thanks in advance!

[jpatokal]

If this was just for you, I'd shut up and let you waste your money, but there's an innocent kid involved so I'll pipe in. So... you do realize that homeopathy is just totally useless quackery, right? The magical potions you're paying for are just water, and no controlled study has even demonstrated any effect from homeopathy.

Claims for efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond the placebo effect are unsupported by the weight of scientific and clinical studies.[5][6][7][8] The ideas behind homeopathy are scientifically implausible and "diametrically opposed to modern pharmaceutical knowledge".[9][10][11] The lack of convincing scientific evidence supporting its efficacy,[12] and its contradiction of basic scientific principles, have caused homeopathy to be regarded as pseudoscience,[13][14][15][16] or, in the words of a 1998 medical review, as "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst".[17] ...

Homeopathic remedies are usually diluted to the point where there are no molecules from the original solution left in a dose of the final remedy.[95] Since even the longest-lived noncovalent structures in liquid water at room temperature are only stable for a few picoseconds,[99] critics have concluded that any effect that might have been present from the original substance can no longer exist.[100] Furthermore, since water will have been in contact with millions of different substances throughout its history, critics point out that any glass of water is therefore an extreme dilution of almost any conceivable substance, and so by drinking water one would, according to homeopathic principles, receive treatment for every imaginable condition.

5 ^ Ernst E (2002). "A systematic review of systematic reviews of homeopathy". Br J Clin Pharmacol 54 (6): 577–82. PMID 12492603. Retrieved on 2008-02-12.
6 ^ a b McCarney RW, Linde K, Lasserson TJ (2004). "Homeopathy for chronic asthma". Cochrane database of systematic reviews (Online) (1): CD000353. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD000353.pub2. PMID 14973954.
7 ^ a b McCarney R, Warner J, Fisher P, Van Haselen R (2003). "Homeopathy for dementia". Cochrane database of systematic reviews (Online) (1): CD003803. PMID 12535487.
Homeopathy results. National Health Service. Retrieved on 2007-07-25.
8 ^ Report 12 of the Council on Scientific Affairs (A–97). American Medical Association. Retrieved on 2007-07-25.
Linde K, Jonas WB, Melchart D, Willich S (2001). "The methodological quality of randomized controlled trials of homeopathy, herbal medicines and acupuncture". International journal of epidemiology 30 (3): 526–531. PMID 11416076.
Altunç U, Pittler MH, Ernst E (2007). "Homeopathy for childhood and adolescence ailments: systematic review of randomized clinical trials". Mayo Clin Proc. 82 (1): 69–75. PMID 17285788.
9 ^ a b c Shang A, Huwiler-Müntener K, Nartey L, et al (2005). "Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy". Lancet 366 (9487): 726–732. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67177-2. PMID 16125589.
10 ^ a b Ernst E (2005). "Is homeopathy a clinically valuable approach?". Trends Pharmacol. Sci. 26 (11): 547–8. PMID 16165225.
11 ^ Johnson T, Boon H (2007). "Where does homeopathy fit in pharmacy practice?". American journal of pharmaceutical education 71 (1): 7. PMID 17429507.
12 ^ a b Jerry Adler. "No Way to Treat the Dying" - Newsweek, Feb 4, 2008
13 ^ National Science Board (April 2002) Science and Engineering Indicators, Chapter 7, "Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Public Understanding" - "Science Fiction and Pseudoscience" (Arlington, Virginia: National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences)
14 ^ Wahlberg, A. (2007) "A quackery with a difference—New medical pluralism and the problem of 'dangerous practitioners' in the United Kingdom," Social Science & Medicine 65(11) pp. 2307-2316: PMID 18080586
15 ^ Atwood, K.C. (2003) "Neurocranial Restructuring' and Homeopathy, Neither Complementary nor Alternative," Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery 129(12) pp. 1356-1357: PMID 14676179
16 ^ Ndububa, V.I. (2007) "Medical quackery in Nigeria; why the silence?" Nigerian Journal of Medicine 16(4) pp. 312-317: PMID 18080586
17 ^ Ernst E, Pittler MH (1998). "Efficacy of homeopathic arnica: a systematic review of placebo-controlled clinical trials". Archives of surgery (Chicago, Ill. : 1960) 133 (11): 1187–90. PMID 9820349.

[missymei]

Thank you for your piping but you obviously do not have children, or even if you do, they aren't special needs. Because if you do, then you would know that as a parent, you would do everything and anything you could to heal your child. It is because of modern medicines and vaccinations that I am resorting to homeopathy. But what would you know since you do not have a child that has special needs...

You were right to start of - you should have just kept quiet. But thank you for your input anyway.

[cbavasi]

there is a vitakids on the 5th floor of paragon that has an alternative medicine practice. i've never been - but saw it last time i went in to get some snacks. www.vitakids.biz

[jpatokal]

Thank you for your piping but you obviously do not have children, or even if you do, they aren't special needs. Because if you do, then you would know that as a parent, you would do everything and anything you could to heal your child. It is because of modern medicines and vaccinations that I am resorting to homeopathy.

I understand where you're coming from, but please try something that actually has a possibility of working (eg. TCM, acupuncture, whatever), instead of homeopathy, which is guaranteed not to work.

I guess the upside is that it's unlikely to do any harm either

[sundaymorningstaple]

I guess the upside is that it's unlikely to do any harm either

By putting off treatments that may work because of wasting time with an known unproductive method, it may well do more harm.

[seasider]

What's the source of your post, JP?

For every web page that says Homeopathy is quackery, I imagine you'll find one that says it works.

I use what's considered to be alternative medicine, although have not yet tried Homeopathy. If I took any notice of the likes of quackwatch, I'd still be overweight, have dry skin, falling hair, be unable to sleep, have chronic IBS, joints so inflamed I'm virtually unable to get up one step...instead of stabilising a serious thyroid and other issues with natural medicine.

OP - sorry I don't know of one. If I can find anything out, I will post again, but I wish you luck.

[judaspriest]

This is long, so sit back and read at leisure. As someone who has believed in and tried homeopathy for three and a half years for my young one and my wife, let me share our experience.

My daughter has had skin problems since she was very young. It was eczema-like symptoms accompanied by itching, raw skin and often bleeding when it got bad.

There are good and not-so-good doctors, and we unfortunately got the latter variety at a big hospital here in the west, who prescribed copious quantities of cortizone and anti-biotics to a 1-year old baby. That was a bad experience which was what pushed us to other alternative medicines.

We were then recommended TCM - supposedly a good doctor. Tried that for many months - there was absolutely no improvement and we quit.

Homeopathy came highly recommended by some of my office mates and friends. We initially consulted one doctor who came highly recommended. "No consultation fees" too! As I wrote about in another post, you get what you pay for. After a year and a half of hope upon hope we found he was simply dumping 6-7 off the shelf homeopathic medicines on us at each bi-weekly visit, the bill would come to ~$60 each time, and there was really no improvement.

That went against the so-called basic principle of homeopathic medicine where the doctor is supposed to customise your medicines based on a deep understanding of your history.

We then went to another "highly recommended" doctor. Took the treatment for another long while. There was absolutely no improvement. Things would get better, get worse, stabilise for a short while and then fluctuate wildly again.

Their usual explanations were one of :
- "Hey, it's got better, see the medicine works"
- "No change - hey we're holding the infection in check"
- "Got worse? We need to increase the dose"

It got more interesting - we were advised to "apply some cream" every time her skin condition worsened. After that, the doctor would claim "big improvements" to the situation since it was not dry/itchy as before.

Guess what? Moisturiser is **supposed** to moisturise, duh.

I must have been blinded to not see what utter BS this was. Then I tried something - we completely stopped the "homeo" medicines for a long while, while still continuing to consult this doctor. The skin symptons followed the same pattern - get better, get worse, stay the same.

The diagnosis was always predictable, just as when were using the homeo medicines. The doctor couldn't tell we had stopped the medicines for many months.

Then I started reading up on homeopathy - I looked at the concentrations on my "30C medicines". Here is what I found:

"Robert L. Park, Ph.D., a prominent physicist who is executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth."

Now this is the sort of dilutions we're given. Here's some more information about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWE1tH93G9U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozfio_e1 ... re=related

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRel ... homeo.html

http://www.skepdic.com/homeo.html

They believe that the "essence" of the cure is present even in an ultra-dilute medicine which doesn't contain even one molecule of the original substance, due to some magical spiritual property that gets transferred through "vibration".

And get this - they claim that the more dilute the cure, the "stronger" it is. Huh? Which world is this in?

They also always claim that their treatments are at the limits of scientific experiment or detection. Did you observe this is one of the warning signs of bogus science?

http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21b02001.htm

After our three and a half year tango with homeopathy, we now firmly believe that it is utter bogus, quackery at best and dangerous at worst since it leads you to have faith in a system that is absolutely nothing more than placebo treatment - while you could have got it treated earlier.

I have wasted three and a half years not getting proper care for my child - she has gone through so much pain and trouble because of this "alternative medicine" - this ends now. It took this long before I could convince my wife this was garbage and we were endangering our child's health.

PS: I am specifically not naming the clinics/doctors here for obvious reasons. PM me if you want to talk about it.

[judaspriest]

I use what's considered to be alternative medicine, although have not yet tried Homeopathy. If I took any notice of the likes of quackwatch, I'd still be overweight, have dry skin, falling hair, be unable to sleep, have chronic IBS, joints so inflamed I'm virtually unable to get up one step...instead of stabilising a serious thyroid and other issues with natural medicine.

Natural medicine does not have to be junk science. There are many traditional remedies which work very well. For example, someone I know had a bad case of stomach ulcers and urinary irritation / pain. The doctors on his AIA insurance panel prescribed him the usual bunch of anti-biotics, it got better for a while and relapsed.

He then went to a TCM practitioner who analysed the situation and prescribed some herbs, a change of diet and lots of water. In three weeks he was far better and he's doing just fine now.

Why did that work? Well, we analysed what he was prescribed. Turns out this guy was highly acidic. The herbs prescribed were strong alkalising agents. The diet change cut out all sugary, oily, spicy and deep fried foods - again, strongly acidic substances. This simply helped him get his body back to a neutral pH.

Homeopathy is not herbal / natural medicine. Can I give you an example? One of the ingredients in "Eczederm" which I still have (used for my child) is gunpowder. Yes, fricking gunpowder. Another is graphite, i.e., pencil lead.

That's not enough? Here's another: She was prescribed Bio-complex-20. Know what's in there? I just looked it up.

Kali sulphuricum - i.e., potassium sulphate, i.e., fertilizer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_sulfate

Natrum Muriaticum. What's that? Sodium chloride - common salt in plain English.
http://www.answers.com/topic/natrum-mur ... cat=health

And:
Natrum sulphuricum - sodium sulphate, i.e., the stuff that's mainly used to make detergents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_sulfate

Still think it's "alternative medicine"?

[Thaiclan]

Well for my 2 cents worth homeopathy got me through my first pregnancy, labour, delivery and recovery perfectly fine.
Check out some of Deepak Chopras books on "mind medicine" and you will get a more thorough picture than the rants on some website forum. Many medical doctors now take a course in homeopathic healing and remedies as part of their training. I believe a mixture of both is the wisest and most common sensical way forward.
Berating the OP for choosing a method when actually they weren't asking for opinions is grossly unhelpful and a hugely egotistical display of opinion.

[judaspriest]

Well for my 2 cents worth homeopathy got me through my first pregnancy, labour, delivery and recovery perfectly fine.
Check out some of Deepak Chopras books on "mind medicine" and you will get a more thorough picture than the rants on some website forum. Many medical doctors now take a course in homeopathic healing and remedies as part of their training. I believe a mixture of both is the wisest and most common sensical way forward.
Berating the OP for choosing a method when actually they weren't asking for opinions is grossly unhelpful and a hugely egotistical display of opinion.

Sorry if you felt that way, but that was not my intent. I'm simply sharing my experience, where two people in my family (wife and child) failed to get the necessary treatment on time (actually 3-1/2 years) which led to a worsening of their respective ailments (both unrelated), which now requires stronger medication than what they'd have had to take 3-1/2 years ago.

I am not averse to supplementing western medicine with something that works, and we are doing just that even now in my family, but with something which is scientifically proven to work.

It is also advisable to study a little about alternate systems for ourselves to understand what makes it work and whether there is a scientific basis for it, and their verified success record.

To give you yet another example, my grand-aunt had arthritis for 30 years till she died. Allopathy/western medicine treated that with injections of corticosteroids, hyalgan (if I am not mistaken), and joint fluid replacement and supplementation therapy. I was there when she went through all this. One side effect was that her diabetes medication started becoming useless due to the side effects of the corticosteroids when taken orally or injected.

To avoid further regression, she switched in a phased manner to ayurveda. Before she did this, we researched the kinds of treatment available and their success rate. The treatment consisted of complete detoxification, diet changes, yoga to improve flexibility and develop muscle strength, organic supplements to improve bone mass retention, and lots and lots of massage.

Did this work? To a huge extent, yes. Why? The regular physiotherapy/massage with the relevant oils helped improve blood circulation, reduce stiffness in the joints, improve flexibility in the joints, and decrease inflammation. As for the oral medicines and supplements - I don't have the exact scientific names of the herbs and supplements used but I did study them and noted that they were extensively researched and their properties were to clean out the colon, liver and intestines of toxic by products and undigested fermenting matter. The diet change was just common sense, but when it comes from someone of authority, it tends to be taken more seriously.

Did she go off allopathic medicine completely? No. There were still supplements she had to take, and pain killers when it got real bad.

So, to come to the point, you are right in that there is much more to this than many of us understand, but we have been given the brains and the intelligence to research and study for ourselves any alternative system we're contemplating, to ensure it has a credible and scientifically verifiable track record before embracing it to the extent that you eliminate conventional medical treatment.

[thesicks13]

Well hasn't this topic ruffled some feathers. Would have thought most civilised people would respect the choices other people make on the best way to "get better". I believe they were looking for advice not a barrage of personal opinions which have no bearing on what they asked for.

I am not a huge believer in this type of therapy, but having said that my wife and daughter have gained benefit from seeing a therapist out here. Suffice it to say that ailments that were not being solved by "normal" medicines have been helped by "quackery". I also know a number of other mums of toddlers who have found alternative medicine fantastic for all sorts of problems, like teething, car sickness, stomach aches etc.

There used to be a Aussie specialist called Tina Jenkins who worked out of Camden but she has gone home. Her patients have been tkane up by a Lady called Sharita Rowbottom, who has a clinic on Orchard Road. If you PM me I will be happy to give those less opinionated her number.

My wife took my daughter to see her last week. I will let you know if the magic potion works!!!

[in8mom]

Would have thought most civilised people would respect the choices other people make on the best way to "get better". I believe they were looking for advice not a barrage of personal opinions which have no bearing on what they asked for.

YEAH THAT! I have personally found that alternative therapies (floral essences, acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathic, homeopathy, etc.) have been HIGHLY effective for my family. Not sure what special needs your child has but if you're keen on chiropractic, I can recommend one in Camden Medical Centre. He's had experience with special needs children.

We saw Tina briefly before she moved. Sharita has given us homeopathic remedies that we specifically asked for and was helpful.

Good luck!

[jpatokal]

What's the source of your post, JP?
For every web page that says Homeopathy is quackery, I imagine you'll find one that says it works.

It's not a bloody "web page". It's a list of references to clinical studies of homeopathy by the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, the National Health Service (UK), the International Journal of Epidemiology, the Mayo Clinic, the Lancet, Trends of Pharmacological Science, National Science Board, Social Science & Medicine, etc etc.

"Alternative medicine" is blithe label for a huge range of things, some of which actually work, some of which don't. There is a huge amount of evidence that eg. acupuncture and TCM can work, even though the exact mechanisms are not always clear.

However, homeopathy does not, cannot and will not work. Homeopathic remedies consist of water (H20), the same stuff you get out of a tap, and nothing more, and you're wasting your time, your money and your health if you think this is going to cure anything.

[seasider]

I asked a simple and polite "bloody" question so I could go read further, and I also put the next comment in a separate paragraph for a reason.

Arse.