The Excuse - "It has been used by hundreds/thousands of years"

1. 71

   thisisoliposted 13 years ago

   I am getting sick and tired of having conversations about alternative medicines, where the oposing aprty says that a certain remedy (homeopathy/insert bogus healing method here) has been used for centuries of mellenia, as if it was some kind of argument for it's use.
   
   There are exceptions, herbology for instance, many plants have fantastic properties.  However a sugar pill, or holding a hand over somebody, purely a pshycological effect I am afraid.
   
   Thousands of years old? Hundreds of Years old? even just over 200 years old (homeopathy) all before Germ theory.  Yepo, Germ theory pretty much shat all over homeopthy as a cure for germ related illnesses.  And yet people, even the NHS, spend billions on bogus cures Every year, Homeopathy itself is a 5 billion POUND industry. Which unlike the majority of medical industries, is nearly all profit.
   
   Homeopathy is NOT a vaccination, seriously, theres nothing to vaccinate with, and if you give someone an item that gives the same symptoms, when they already have the problem, well, I have some bad news for you, its to late for vaccination.
   
   Argh.
   
   I guess I am just ranting after finding out just how much my mum spent on homeopathic remedies this year, an otherwise sensible woman gone mad.

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2. 71

   aguasilverposted 13 years ago

   But is she still fit and healthy?

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3. 68

   C.A. Johnsonposted 13 years ago

   I have no tolerance for drugs with a synthetic chemical base, they make my physically ill and some of them have put me in near coma states. I have used home remedies for years and have been better for them. The ones I use have been taught to me by my grandmother and handed down through the family for generations.
   
   While I am not saying that all natural remedies work for everyone, they do work for people like me. I have never been subjected to childhood illnesses such as measles of chicken pox. I have no allergies to speak of nor am I likely to come down with a terminal illness. These things along with my lack of tolerance for synthetic drugs are the result of a particular DNA strand that was discovered shortly after having my second child.
   
   If your mother is benefiting form the homeopathic remedies or even the psychological effects of them, let her have them for awhile. When it comes time that she needs heavier drugs she will likely have a better reaction to them and need less of them to achieve the desired result. As long as she is okay and not making her condition worse with the homeopathic remedies she is also not building up an immunity to stronger drugs.

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4. 71

   thisisoliposted 13 years ago

   She is not any better off with these drugs, she is actually ( I think) a hypochondriac when it comes to illnesses, claiming that she is ill when anyone in the household became ill, even if she had no symptoms.
   
   The DNA strand thing interests me though, are you the next step in human evolution?
   
   My family is naturally healthy, with no history of terminal illnesses, but mild dementia is a possibility in my last few years.
   
   If your DNA gives a natural resistance to ailments however, how do you know it was teh traditional remedies?
   
   There are plenty of home rememdies which are effective, most modern day medicines are based on active compounds from the old wives tales.  Many day to day items have positive effects on the human body. 
   
   Unfortuantely this does not discount many of the crack pot solutions that some people feel drawn to.
   
   I really wish that I could talk some sense in to my motehr, but she is convinced by these pills.  What worries me is that as she falls deeper under the sway of propoganda, she suffers more and more because of it.
   
   Take for instance when my family came to america for my wedding, both her and my brother suffered from alergies.  Rather than take allergy medicine, they started using this cream, which you dabbed under your nose. 
   
   Apparently this does work, unfortunately it makes things worse for around 2 weeks as this creme in essense puts  aload of pollen under your nose until you are acclimatised.  Needless to say, their trip was only for two weeks, and they spent the entire trip with streaming eyes, while at teh same time claiming it was better.
   
   This kind of blind faith is religious more than anything, and it worries me.
   
   What does worry me is that someday soon, her, or my brother (Who has moderate learning difficulties and follows her every word) may need medical treatment, and I feel that eithe rone of them might deny it, putting their lives at risk.

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   1. 68

      C.A. Johnsonposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      It's actually an old DNA strand. It's called a Delta 28. From what my doctor's have told me, it is active in a complete and half strands and is genetically handed down. If one parent has it you get a half strand, both parents get a full strand. I have a full one. There are other "bonuses?" that come with it depending on your point of view. I am protected from diseases like HIV, cancer, Alzheimers and so forth but It also leaves me unable to drink alcoholic beverages, smoke, participate in recreational drugs, and keeps me from going into labor. Not bad things in my opinion.
      
      As for home remedies, they revolve around simple things like cramps, headaches, upset stomachs, back pain, morning sickness, ear and tooth aches, your garden variety of low level problems. These problems have solutions that involve honey, peppermint, rosemary, burnt toast, bananas, bell peppers, cayenne, arnica, sarsaparilla, vinegar, and other common items.
      
      Before they discovered the DNA strand I was given morphine while having my second child. They started testing me before I came out of recovery. I was in recovery for three days.
      
      Homeopathic remedies, if your family chooses that path, need to be used in conjunction with a nutritionist for more serious illnesses. A nutritionist will also tell you if your illness is beyond the help of natural remedies and advise you to seek a medical doctor.Natural remedies were never designed to prolong life, they were medicines discovered to ease minor illnesses and provide comfort.
      
      I do believe that true homeopathic remedies bring no harm, even to a hypochondriac. these are combinations of wholly organic ingredients that work with the human body to alleviate a symptom. The vitamins, minerals, and biotics found in everyday fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices cause no more harm mixed for relief and comfort than they do when cooking with them.

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5. 60

   Lisa HWposted 13 years ago

   This subject is one I've thought a lot about (as a lot of other people have).  I started to answer here but decided I'll turn my long answer into a Hub.
   
   This statement you made makes me kind of wonder:
   
   "My family is naturally healthy, with no history of terminal illnesses, but mild dementia is a possibility in my last few years."
   
   Not having any known predisposition to medical conditions doesn't always mean much.  Also, there are all kinds of fairly minor medical issues that can make a person feel sick in one way or another without there being any serious illness. 
   
   So often, people who frequently don't feel well are thought to be hypochondriacs when, really, they just don't feel well for a number of reasons. 
   
   On second thought, I'm going to skip the Hub and - long or not - just post what I wrote (for whatever it's worth, in terms of discussion).   

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6. 60

   Lisa HWposted 13 years ago

   I think people need to be careful about blinding following either an all-natural or all-medical-science approach.  There are flaws in both.  I'm not suggesting this is the case in your situation with your mother, but I do know that grown sons and daughters need to be careful about being too judgmental about what their mothers do; because sometimes life, age, experience, and a number of other factors combine to make someone who's the age of a mother of grown kids make choices their grown kids don't understand.  (Just an unsolicited piece of input, based on what I've learned and seen as the mother of a grown kids; but also as a grown kid who once thought I knew better than my mother, only to get to be where she once was and then understand why she thoughts some of the ways she did.)
   
   On the one hand, I'm someone who will say, "Oh, I'd go to a doctor first and not bother with any alternative medicine."  On the other hand, I'm someone who a tremendous awareness of, and faith in, the body's ability to heal (sometimes, not always) if given the chance without having that natural healing process thrown off by medications or other medical intervention.  Then again, even though I'd say I'm the "go the medical route" for the bigger things, I'm also someone who has a really, really, high bar for what I'd consider, "bigger".
   
   This sounds so stupid and simple, but one time a bunch of my relatives all seemed to share some kind of flu-thing.  Somewhere along the way, my brother brought me a store-bought spicy Asian soup and said, "Try this."  I did, and whatever was left over "chest-congestion-wise" (and that I didn't even know was still in there) started to clear out almost immediately.
   
   My kids have allergies, and my sons both have a tendency to asthma (one worse than the other), and I've told both of them how I found that soup far more effective than any medication I tried when I was a kid.  (Since I've been an adult the only medication I ever take is something like aspirin or Ibuprofen (after a recent, bad, leg injury that I decided not to see a doctor over).  I don't even resort to those alternative things that people buy.  I'm a tea-and-honey, fresh-air, lots of hand-washing, kind of person; and those kinds of remedies really do work well for most of the stuff I get (which is the usual stuff that everyone gets from time to time).
   
   I once went to a doctor to see about getting a scar removed, and he said, "What a lot of doctors won't tell you is they can take something like that scar off, but because you form keloid it might form again after surgery.  People go for back surgery, and nobody tells them there's a good chance they'll still live with pain afterward."  I've seen my parents-in-law and my mother thrown off (and maybe have a heart attack caused) with some of the medications they were on (all the usual medications that so many elderly people are put on - blood pressure, diuretics, heart medication, arthritis medication, etc.)  Maybe there's not much choice if someone's blood pressure needs to be lowered, but my thinking is that maybe there are more natural ways to lower it and that sometimes, at least in some cases, doctors just kind of automatically prescribe medication when, maybe, trying another approach would be better.
   
   With that leg thing I did, I've had both legs fractured (one twice) and a pretty bad fractured hand/fingers.  They may do things differently now, but when I had that, what did they do?  Identify what was fractured/broken, set it (when needed), and immobilize it.  After something was immobilized for weeks there was a whole thing about getting it working again and getting the muscles back from atrophy.
   
   Last Winter when I did the horrible leg thing, I didn't really plan not to go to a doctor.  At first I was just in too much pain to deal with it.  With each day it seemed slightly better, so then I started to figure it seemed to be healing itself.  I knew what to watch for, and if I saw any signs of anything like nerve involvement of blood clots I would have gone.  The pain, inability to put weight on it, and inability to move it pretty much amounted to a "forced, invisible, cast" because it was just natural for me not to move it.  Without going into all the details of the slow but gradual improvement of it, I'm glad I didn't go.  The only thing I sort of wish I'd gone for would be to have been given an exact description of what was broken and/or dislocated and/or torn.  I'm getting closer and closer to good-as-new.  I've weaned myself off the too-frequent Ibuprofen (at least two day, sometimes three - which isn't all that horrible), and glad I never had the whole leg immobilized (as I have in the past) and left with all the pain and poor functioning that result after something is immobilized.
   
   On the other hand, I've known so many people (people in my family, friends, etc.) for whom the best, conventional, medicare care has made the difference between life and death or between something not getting better and clearing up completely.  I have a lot of faith in conventional medicine - just not blind faith.  I have a lot of faith in the body's natural ability to heal - just not deluded faith.  As for all those homeopathic remedies out there, waiting to be bought - some may work.  Some may not.  As with the pharmaceutical industry (out to turn everything into a disease, including being a woman "over a certain age", being shy, or being any number of other things that are perfectly normal), there's an industry out there to sell alternative remedies and books too.
   
   I think the moral to all this is "people have to be careful and have to use their best judgment".  I don't think blind dedication to their side, or blanket condemnation, should happen on either side.
   
   I had people who pretty much seemed to think I was crazy for not "going" for the leg.  I know my body.  I know what breaks and fractures feel like.  I know that dislocations can go back into place (and that if they don't you know it).  I've had a head injury, babies, miscarriages, sinusitis, Swimmer's ear, and sick kids; as well as a whole bunch of "standard things", and I suspect I've recovered from a couple of cases of (most likely) viral Pneumonia with time and the rest that is inevitable when someone is too sick to do much of anything.  I went through all kinds of stuff with my elderly inlaws and mothers and was the one to recognize that my father was having a heart attack (that would eventually kill him).   Being someone who wants to be well informed about health matters, I'm well read and well informed.  My kids haven't had the experiences I have, so I know they don't understand why I don't rush off to a doctor "the minute I break a leg, or something"    I know what it's like to get something that's so scary I'll go running to a doctor's office, but when you know yourself and have enough experience/knowledge, there's that high bar before things get that scary.
   
   My kids are smart people, but they haven't been through something I was, when my mother's doctor diagnosed her with
   Angina and treated her for months (as I suspected gallbladder problems), only to have the doctor finally figure it out when she turned yellow and was nearly killed by the stone.
   
   They haven't been in the hospital and seen things going on that they thought were questionable.  They haven't lost a friend to a hospital infection, or an aunt on the operating table before the surgery even began.  They haven't had a doctor tell them their child didn't have a turn in his eye and it was, instead, "the kind of nose he has".  They haven't had a doctor not notice that their baby was breech until the baby was actually born.  They don't know what it's like to have a clear sense that there was something "off" about a pregnancy or the position of the baby, believe it was likely the baby would arrive early - but be laughed at by a paternal, male, doctor who thought the expectant mother was just being silly and imagining things.
   
   Other than having a reasoned conversation with your mother, I don't think you should be borrowing problems that haven't yet occurred.  Chances are your mother knows herself, too; and if she's like me (only different in her faith in those remedies) she may have her set of things in her head that she knows she'd seek medical help for.  Maybe she's just like so many other people who have some relatively minor problem they'd rather try to deal with without doctors (which, if you think about it, isn't all that unreasonable an approach).  I don't know her.  Maybe she's a hypochondriac.  Often, though, people who are old enough to have grown kids do have a lot of "issues" bothering them, do want to feel better, and do know that those "issues" might be better off left untreated if the only option is getting involved with a whole, big, medical thing.
   
   I'm mostly just playing Devil's Advocate here, but also kind of wanting to share how easy it is for people not to understand why someone else thinks one way, or to presume things about other people that may not necessarily be accurate. 
   
   I don't know your mother, but I'm guessing there's at least the chance both of you have your valid points; and both of you may have more blind faith in one thing or another than anyone should really have.  Chances are (unless your mother is REALLY "off the wall" with this), if something happened to her or your brother that made either of them worried enough to go to a doctor; that doctor would be the one who could address your mother's doubts.

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