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Why some people use homeopathy

Dogdoctor

Canis Doctorius
Dogdoctor
Joined
Aug 11, 2005
Messages
14,786
My sister in-law recently showed me a headache medicine she used recently and explained how it worked so well. She is a little leery of taking medicine after her breast cancer experience. So she wanted something safe and what could be safer than a tube of crap that you rub on your forehead. It was called Headon. Anyway she was convinced it helped her till I told her she was ripped off. She went to the store and thinking the store wouldn't sell useless crap, she bought it. She used it and her headache went away and was relatively sure it helped till I dissuaded her. Normally she would never use homeopathy but never recognized it as that.
 
Sad to say, the first thing I thought of was, If their headache remedy is HeadOn, what would the same company call their homeopathic answer to erectile dysfunction? Tee hee, etc.

It is true, people tend to think that the drugstore wouldn't sell them crap. But why wouldn't it? People also tend to give more credence to stupid glurge/spam/hoax emails if they are forwarded by a nice friend or family member, although that person didn't write it and probably didn't verify it either.
So I guess there's some kind of middleman phenomenon where the right meme distribution causes people to lend too much credence to stupid things.
 
The same reason people would not buy a proven headache remedy from a guy on the streetcorner.

Which is WHY HPathy is so insidious and needs to be pointed out and stopped wherever we find it.

Read some of Rolfe's posts on this. She's brilliant.
 
So when you persuaded her did
1) her headache come back?
2) Or did the remedy not work for a later headache?
3) Or did you simply persuade her to stop using it again?
 
I am very allergic to cats.

I used to play role-playing games at a friend's house who had multiple cats.

Another member of this group was into homeopathy.

I'd often forget to take some anti-allergy medicine before I went over to this friend's house. So I'd end up all sneezy and congested. My homeopathic friend would offer me some homeopathic anti-allergy pills.

I knew full well that they were nothing but sugar pills.
But darned if I didn't stop sneezing.
 
Homeopathy Users are suckers

Dogdoctor said:
My sister in-law recently showed me a headache medicine she used recently and explained how it worked so well. She is a little leery of taking medicine after her breast cancer experience. So she wanted something safe and what could be safer than a tube of crap that you rub on your forehead. It was called Headon. Anyway she was convinced it helped her till I told her she was ripped off. She went to the store and thinking the store wouldn't sell useless crap, she bought it. She used it and her headache went away and was relatively sure it helped till I dissuaded her. Normally she would never use homeopathy but never recognized it as that.
Click to expand...

Homeopathy users are suckers, naive, blind-faith, etc.... I am sure your sister is one of those suckers.
 
Beleth said:
I am very allergic to cats.

I used to play role-playing games at a friend's house who had multiple cats.

Another member of this group was into homeopathy.

I'd often forget to take some anti-allergy medicine before I went over to this friend's house. So I'd end up all sneezy and congested. My homeopathic friend would offer me some homeopathic anti-allergy pills.

I knew full well that they were nothing but sugar pills.
But darned if I didn't stop sneezing.
Click to expand...

I have a game I like to play with people who have hiccups. I offer them £5 to hiccup just three more times. I've never lost the fiver yet.
 
tkingdoll said:
I have a game I like to play with people who have hiccups. I offer them £5 to hiccup just three more times. I've never lost the fiver yet.
Click to expand...
i'm sorry to say it doesn't always work.

I've tried it on myself, and it has worked.
Others have tried it on me, and it has worked.

I've tried it on myself, and it didn't work.
Others have tried it on me, and it didn't work.

So, don't take it for granted. sometimes it wont work.

On the other hand, i've found drinking an entire glass of water in one go can sometimes help(afaik the key is to swallow/sink at the correct time, my father can do it, just like that, i sadly can't).
 
TobiasTheCommie said:
i'm sorry to say it doesn't always work.

I've tried it on myself, and it has worked.
Others have tried it on me, and it has worked.

I've tried it on myself, and it didn't work.
Others have tried it on me, and it didn't work.

So, don't take it for granted. sometimes it wont work.

On the other hand, i've found drinking an entire glass of water in one go can sometimes help(afaik the key is to swallow/sink at the correct time, my father can do it, just like that, i sadly can't).
Click to expand...

Ah, yes, now I think about it, I don't recall ever trying this on the same person twice, and I doubt that any of the people I've used it on had heard of the method before.

But, wait, isn't the hit-and-miss result that you describe somewhat similar to the results of homeopathy? :D The more fore-knowledge you have how how it actually works or what a placebo is, the less likely it is to have an effect, perhaps?
 
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tkingdoll said:
Ah, yes, now I think about it, I don't recall ever trying this on the same person twice, and I doubt that any of the people I've used it on had heard of the method before.

But, wait, isn't the hit-and-miss result that you describe somewhat similar to the results of homeopathy? :D
Click to expand...
If you mean some kind of forced placebo.. i guess you are right :D
 
TobiasTheCommie said:
If you mean some kind of forced placebo.. i guess you are right :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, I guess you could describe it that way. A regular placebo (e.g. a sugar pill) is a psychological trick played on the subconcious. The hiccup cure is also a psychological trick, but played on the concious, i.e. it forces you to try and do the thing that you were already doing, for a reward. What is interesting is that some part of the subconcious overrules this desire to win and halts the physical process of hiccuping. It's basic reverse-psychology, so what is it about hiccups that can be overruled this way?
 
tkingdoll said:
Yeah, I guess you could describe it that way. A regular placebo (e.g. a sugar pill) is a psychological trick played on the subconcious. The hiccup cure is also a psychological trick, but played on the concious, i.e. it forces you to try and do the thing that you were already doing, for a reward. What is interesting is that some part of the subconcious overrules this desire to win and halts the physical process of hiccuping. It's basic reverse-psychology, so what is it about hiccups that can be overruled this way?
Click to expand...
It is quantum.


Note: if you get the reference, you area nerd, if you don't, that is ok as well :).
 
tkingdoll said:
I am a nerd.
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yay.

*me dances*

i'm not alone.

Well, maybe there is something to it. Knowing that you want to hickup makes you unable to hickup, just like knowing the location of an electron makes you unable to know the speed of the electron :D
 
Just this past week my father’s sister wanted him to buy her something called “Shark fin”, because she heard it was suppose to help with the degenerative cartilage in her vertebrae. He asked me if I had ever heard of such a thing (immediately the bells dinged in my head – Alternative Medicine/Homeopathy!!!). My father had never heard of Alternative Medicines, so I had to fill him in on the details. Our conversation went something like:

Father: The drug stores wouldn’t sell anything like that, would they?
Me: Sure they would.
Father: Is that legal?
Me: Well, it’s not a controlled substance, and it’s not sold as a drug or as a health product, just look in the Nutritional Supplement section. If people will buy it, they’ll sell it.

That’s where he found it. He bought it for his sister because he figured if there’s a psychological benefit to it, then maybe it was worth the twelve bucks.
 
I just bought my mother a bottle of a valerian preparation as a sleep aid. I figured it might be worth it as placebo.

I do reckon there's a difference between trying something that might possibly work, though maybe not because there's not enough in it or the activity that was believed to be there is a bit questionable (like the cough medicines), and the pure fraud of selling sugar pills and pretending they're medicine.

Rolfe.
 
love said:
So when you persuaded her did
1) her headache come back?
2) Or did the remedy not work for a later headache?
3) Or did you simply persuade her to stop using it again?
Click to expand...
headaches often go away without treatment. The treatment was bs and did not work. Headache went away anyway. It was gone. Her money was gone.
 
tkingdoll said:
I have a game I like to play with people who have hiccups. I offer them £5 to hiccup just three more times. I've never lost the fiver yet.
Click to expand...

Hiccup cures are like religion: everyone has their own and they all swear it's the only thing that works.

Mine is lemon juice. I don't know why but it always works for me and has never worked for anyone I've suggested it to.
 
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