[karamanolev]

I have an interesting story with non-scientific medicine. Normally, I'm a very science-oriented person—"read the paper or it didn't happen." I will even avoid reading a news article about the paper; I'll just go and read the paper itself. The way I treat my illnesses and injuries is the same. That being said, I suffer a lot from sore throats—I will get some flu, get better in 3–4 days, and then my throat will hurt for weeks. In a particularly bad bout, I tried waiting for 2 weeks with no improvement. I almost couldn't swallow. I went to the doctor and was prescribed antibiotics. That resolved it in about 24 hours, and I completed the full course. Three weeks later, the same thing happened. I waited 2 weeks to see if it would resolve on its own, and when it didn’t—antibiotics again. Of course, the problem came back only weeks later.

So I thought—I'm going to try homeopathy. What's the worst that can happen? I'm in pain anyway. I decided to try a scientific approach (not very, given N=1), so again I waited 2 weeks to see if it was going to resolve itself. It didn’t. I went to a homeopathic doctor and got a bottle with some "magic." It took 3–4 days for the symptoms to improve, but they didn’t come back for months. When they did, I jumped straight to the homeopathic medicine, and it helped in the same way it did the first time around. I haven’t used antibiotics for my throat since.

I have no explanation for this. There have been hundreds or thousands of studies on homeopathy, and my reading is that the consensus is that it's "quack medicine." Yet it clearly worked for me, and it worked better than antibiotics for that particular issue. What gives?

[ajuc]

I have asthma, a few times I got an attack when I left my drugs at different home. Usually in such situation I have to go to a nightly doctor office (it always happens in the middle of the night on weekends).

But several times this happened I've been at my home and I have some old empty inhalers with 0 doses left and like 5 years past expiry date. I'm talking the disk inhaler, with discreet capsules of the drug that get used on every application - so if there were any traces of the drug substance - it would have been very small amounts that stuck to the inhaler walls or whatever.

I still used it and it stopped the asthma attack just as well as the real thing.

Placebo is one hell of a drug.

Similarly - even just preparing to go to the doctor in the middle of the night lessens the asthma attack for me. Just before I go to the doctor waiting in the queue the symptoms are often very minor.

[hackingonempty]

> I have no explanation for this.

One possibility that RCTs are designed to eliminate is "regression to the mean." If the natural course of disease is to wax and wane and you intervene whenever the disease is waxing it can seem like your intervention is effective even when it has no specific effect.

In addition, placebos produce a small effect even when you know you are taking a placebo.

[griffzhowl]

There is a null hypothesis which isn't ruled out: it would take two weeks plus 3-4 days for your sore throat to resolve itself, but you were waiting only two weeks each time, taking your timings at face value.

Still, that doesn't explain why the symptoms return sooner after antibiotics than with homeopathy. The body is complicated and there are many variables.

Do you drink alcohol? I'm wondering whether you consciously or subconsciously adjust how much you drink more during or after an antibiotics course than the homeopathy, or whether there's some similar confounding variable. Strong alcohol of course has some anti-bacterial properties (as well as some well-known side-effects which aren't so beneficial), but I don't really know what I'm talking about, just a thought that occurred

[lolc]

With letting the infection persist there might also be an added effect of having trained the immune system. If this is a case where it takes long to build antibodies. This may result in a longer period without an infection due to the improved immunity.

[karamanolev]

I don't drink, smoke, take drugs. My main vice is drinking a ton (about a liter a day) of Coke Zero.

[arkey]

Interesting, you're describing exactly what I went through a few years ago.

In my case, however, I turned to pure ginger infusions, following the advice of a herbalist. Haven't gone through it again so far, plus it also works great for colds and flu.

[merksoftworks]

So, gingerol is anti inflammatory. Fun fact, so is allicin, which is produced by garlic. You get a lot of medicine that looks quite a bit like quack medicine - for instance people making garlic extract: https://www.allicin-c.com/?AFFID=549212

But then you end up with peer reviewed studies which indicate some anti-viral properties of garlic: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7434784/

[arkey]

> You get a lot of medicine that looks quite a bit like quack medicine

It depends what you understand by "quack medicine".

To me, in the beginning, all the stuff about drinking weird plants and doing homemade remedies did sound a bit quacky. But that was because of my absolute ignorance.

People have been using these remedies for thousands of years based on a deeper knowledge of nature than your random dude has, but we've fallen into a scam where we are made to feel that anything not made in a lab and costing a certain amount of money is nonsense.

Garlic, onion, ginger, turmeric, honey, echinacea, raspberry... those are natural wonders for basic natural medicine.

[lukan]

No one ever said homeophaty has no effect. But there is no evidence it works beyond being a placebo.. which is what I suspect happened also in your case, whether your consciouss mind believes in homeopathy or not. You gave it a chance, so some parts of your mind decided it will magically work, so it did.

Oh and unlike homeopathy, leeches have a real effect besides placebo.

[agos]

placebo is not that effective

[freilanzer]

Yes, it is. People have gotten better after having been told by someone in a labcoat that what they're taking is a placebo.

[agos]

if you referring to Kaptchuk TJ, Friedlander E, Kelley JM, et al. 2010, that study still involved some deception[1]. See also Locher C, Frey Nascimento A, Kirsch I, et al. 2017

[1]: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-effects-without-dec...

[arkey]

Placebo is by definition highly subjective, and not even in the sense of one's opinion, but rather that it works or not at a subject level.

[lukan]

Do you assume that, or did you read about it in studies?

[agos]

I read about it in studies!

see, for example:

Hohenschurz-Schmidt D, Phalip J, Chan J, et al. 2024 Placebo analgesia in physical and psychological interventions: Systematic review and meta-analysis of three-armed trials.

“The average short-term placebo effect was small,”

Strijkers RHW, Schreijenberg M, Gerger H, Koes BW, Chiarotto A. 2021 Effectiveness of placebo interventions for patients with nonspecific low back pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“probably not clinically relevant.”

[griffzhowl]

That wouldn't explain the difference in effect between the antibiotics and the homeopathy

[lukan]

Why not?

Assuming the placebo makes the mind activate the immune system in a proper way, eliminating the root cause of the inflammation, while the antibiotics only kill the bacteria while it is active, so no lasting effect. Bacterias that makes a sour throat are very common and will just come back if not kept in place by body defense mechanisms.

Key is a healthy and active immune system. The way placebos work, is apparently they support that.

[griffzhowl]

Because the antibiotics would also elicit the placebo response

[lukan]

Not necessarily, as placebo is working on the mind. And it works differently depending on the context, what the person knows, experience and expects. It is apparently quite complicated. So in this case it is even possible, that the original cause was not bacteria, but a virus, so the antibiotics only helping as placebo, while actually disturbing the body, preventing the immune system from developing immunity.

Or it was a specific bacteria, where the body finally developed immunity from and it was just coincidence that he took homeopathy before. Impossible to tell with the given information.

[griffzhowl]

Yes, that's what I mean: you need a further explanation beyond the placebo effect for why there's a different effect of the antibiotics and homeopathy, e.g. the antibiotics having their own negative effects, as you suggest, or some other confounding variable.

I'm just saying that the placebo effect, by itself, doesn't explain why homeopathy would be more effective than antibiotics

[unnamed76ri]

I’ve been on meds that wreck my immune system and so I get sick a lot. Every time I start feeling the smallest tickle of an upper respiratory virus I start doing the following: 1. Gargle with salt water 3x a day 2. Use saline nasal rinses 2x a day

I still get sick a lot, but haven’t needed antibiotics in all the years I’ve kept to this routine.

[wazoox]

For your nasal rinses I hope you're using a "rhino horn" and not an expensive solution sold in pharmacies. Since I discovered it I rinse my nose much more often and more abundantly, and it's great (and waaaay cheaper than alternatives).

[GuB-42]

My guess is placebo, done "right" homeopathy is maybe the purest form of placebo, as extreme dilution make sure that there is nothing active in there. In your case, antibiotics may have been placebo too.

For me, the most probable explanation is that your body just healed by itself and taking nothing would have had the same result. It is not uncommon for symptoms to appear, repeat a few times, and disappear completely. It happened to me countless times, like, for example a cough persisting after a cold episode, coming and going for a few weeks after I realize it is completely gone, some minor injury occasionally manifesting itself before finally disappearing completely.

Your symptoms are a bit more serious, enough for you to justify doing something, but it is probably the same idea. That your interventions worked may be a coincidence, in addition to some placebo effect which is known to be somewhat effective for pain.

[reedf1]

To me the obvious "cure" for your sore-throat in this story was doing nothing. This has surprising efficacy. Antibiotics are serious drugs. They are inordinately useful, but they also have side-effects. Antibiotics can wheel your body completely out of equilibrium - your sore throat could have been due to yeast or been some kind of fungal thing which the antibiotics inturn made worse (or caused some kind of fungal -> bacterial cycle). In this case homeopathy gave you some utility; it gave you psychological permission to do nothing while feeling like you were doing something.

[boxed]

It could be that you didn't get real homeopathic medicine. There's been quite a few cases of babies dying after being given "homeopathic" medicine. Because real homeopathic medicine is indeed quack science, literally diluting a substance to the degree of one molecule per a sphere of water the size of the entire solar system, but homeopathic producers are grossly immoral and stupid/bad and unregulated, so can contain high, in some cases deadly, doses of various substances.

TLDR:

Homeopathic medicine is, in theory, 100% safe, since it's literally nothing.

Homeopathic medicine is, in theory, 100% ineffective, since it's literally nothing.

Homeopathic medicine is, in practice, rolling the dice with unregulated producers that have been known to ship poisons.

[graemep]

I think this is the most probable explanation.

Homeopathic medicine is based on the same principles as sympathetic magic. You might as well ask someone to cast a spell.

https://pietersz.co.uk/2013/07/homeopathy-magic

There have been similar problems with dilution of herbal medicines, but of course herbs do often have medicinal properties.