Astrology

We still seem to want to believe in magic don't we. Alternative therapies may seem to work at times when symptoms are alleviated - but of course people only cite the occasions when the use of them coincides with an improvement. Not all the occasions when they don't make a blind bit of difference. The placebo effect is very variable and unpredictable and only works on symptoms. It does not cure diseases. Ever.
I am very unhappy that taxpayers money is still being wasted on homeopathic hospitals - but of course Prince Charles is lobbying away in the background. The green party apparently think alternatives are a good idea and should be supported by taxpayer.
If people want to waste their money on homeopathy then I suppose it can relieve the pressure on GPs dealing with minor, self-limiting illnesses. But the down side is that there is a lot of fraud in the industry - at worst, people flogging fake cancer cures.
Complementary therapies such as massage are nice to have, may make patients feel a bit better and some hospitals fund them from charitable donations etc.

Anyone around Durham, Crook Hall will be open on 14th March, with proceeds going to Lifespan.

My husband had had lots of complementary medicine since he fell off a ladder in 1996. He did reiki himself, and had chiropractic, reflexology, acupuncture, homeopathy, etc. They all worked at the time he needed them.
When he was dying of cancer, we had a charity come to our house

www.lifespanteam.org.uk/home/

They were sent by MacMillan. He had his best sleep for ages after he had had reflexology.
Some people will never be persuaded that these therapies work, but I do not care. The rest of us know that they do, and that's all that matters.

That sounds like a good friend Mishap

I never offer it Mishap - the person has to ask. That's not a hard and fast rule but how I prefer to operate. I takes too much out of me, even though that it is not supposed to drain the giver.

I have used reiki a few times - a friend offered it for free to help my depression. I am a real sceptic but took comfort from a peaceful hour, a sympathetic ear and the joy of a freely given kindly gift.

Astrology is another thing entirely - a system of personality definition and the prediction of major life events based on the positions of wandering stars thousands of years in the past. It is not even the right positions for the dates allocated to them - it has been shown that the accepted Zodiac is way out of sync.

The stars do effect our lives in one way - the atoms and molecules which form our bodies came from the food we eat and that our parents ate before we were born. Before they were in our food, they were in the soil, the rocks, the water, the air. All these things were made in the beginning out of the elements from the stars, planets and asteroids that had formed out of the dust of the big bang, and were travelling about the universe and crashing together.

They do not effect our choice of career or life partner, or the disasters and triumphs that happen to us (and to everyone else, indiscriminately)

Nor do they effect the diagnosis and treatment of our illnesses.

Just lying quietly and focussing inward would help as well. And they would feel the close body heat even without touch - our cave-dwelling ancestors probably all snuggled up together and felt all the better for it.

I do hate it, though, when practitioners of one of these supportive complementary therapies claim to cure all kinds of impossible things better than conventional medecine, and even accuse doctors of wanting to keep people ill for profit. If it keeps people away from some good treatment which has been shown to go straight to the problem and fix it, then it is failing the patient.

My Reiki practioner never touches my body , never plays music, never claims she can heal me , I do not imagine the heat I feel from her hands, I know I benefit from Reiki. My GP is also a homeopathy practioner as is the vet who treats my dogs . I doubt my dogs are aware of the placebo affect , neither were my children when babies

Hunt - That is an inspired idea about taking in a photo of oneself. I'm going to find one, frame it and put it in my "in case I have to go into hospital bag."

GillT57 My middle son who has Fibromyalgea and is in the Bi Polar spectrum sees a Homeopath on a regular basis. He gains a lot of support and comfort simply being able to talk through his emotional and physical problems. He has been prescribed remedies which he takes regularly.

I am a Reiki healer but not practicing as such. Even when I was a very small child I thought I could heal people and animals. . I always respond to illness by sending out healing it's a natural sort of sending out of healing thoughts.

When my eldest son was diagnosed with cancer I had healing from Christian healers, he was on a prayer list and I lit a lot of candles in the church. Well, his latest blood tests have come back as cancer free. My realist side puts it down to the operation and the chemo but my spiritual side is busily working alongside all the excellent medical treatment.

My grandmother in Ireland was the local midwife (unqualified) and all the women wanted her at their deliveries. She had warm hands and this is a sign that healing is being given

Never used music or talked much when doing Reiki Elegran prefer silence unless the 'patient' feeds back how they are feeling. I never touch the person either but prefer to put my hands a couple of inches away from the area being treated. People tell me they feel heat from my hands.

I don't know how it works or why it works. I used to be a real sceptic. The practioners I know, would never claim it cured diseases. What they do claim is it can ease pain and that appears to be the case. Likewise they would never suggest using Reiki instead on visiting a GP.

I have heard of some who make exaggerated claims, or claim they can heal over distances. I can't go along with those. All I would say is that, like some of the posters above have testified, it can ease pain. How it does that I have no idea, but anything that helps relax or ease pain, with no side effects can only be a welcome addition as a complementary therapy.

As far as I can see, Reiki is largely gentle touch with music and a calm atmosphere - likely to make the patient feel better and more relaxed, which will help the body's own abilities to cope with the problem. The voice of this demonstrator is quite hynotic, too It is not anything magical.

Chimps do something similar with grooming one another's fur. It improves the mood of the recipient and strengthens the social bonds (and puts the groomer into the good books of the one being groomed. In the Zoo here there is a sweet new baby chimp, the only one in the troupe. All the other females want to hold him but his mother is not letting go of him, so they try to curry favour by grooming her. There is always someone assiduously combing her fur with their fingers and it is getting quite thin. It doesn't work, but she revels in the attention.)

I agree about hospitals not seeing the patient as a person. When going into hospital always take a framed photo of yourself looking remarkably smart accompanied by your grandchildren. The excuse for the Photo is the grandchildren but it does mean that the staff see you at your best.

An old friend who said she had healing abilities put her hand on my aching back many years ago. From that day onward, I've had very little trouble with that joint. So yes, 'there are more things in heaven and earth...', but I still can't see that groups of stars, which may be thousands of light years away from one another, could possibly influence our fate or our healt.

I prefer the term 'complementary therapies' also.

done some

@Feeltebaum - you've obviously been hearing done odd things. No wands involved. Are you perhaps thinking of Harry Potter? I was taking the ** having a laugh about chakras. Tried Reiki on a friend who was skeptical 'load of rubbish' and all that, and he admitted, reluctantly, yes the pain was eased.

Absent of course dogs and horses may well get better 'spontaneously' but not usually immediately.

An aquaintance of mine when suffering terminal cancer had Reiki regularly to relax her and got enormous comfort and benefit from it.She even persuaded her H to go for it as he was very distressed over her illness.

There are many different ways of helping the body get on with its healing abilities and helping the mind rebalance itself and its moods. If you really believe that a certain method will have a good result - or even unconsciously hope that it will - then it is more likely to succeed.

Some things improve with a little time, whatever you do or don't do. A bit of TLC can do wonders, too, and administering even just water containing one molecule of active ingredient to each 100-to-the-power-of-32 molecules of water is TLC, in spite of being highly unlikely to get that those molecules in your teaspoonful.

If you wish to use homeopathic remedies that is your choice. Personally I would not use them.

@Anya - all I have heard about Reiki is that it is merely magical hand-waving, and is utterly ridiculous - oh, and patter about 'adjusting energy flows' and other sciency-sounding nonsense.

Yes nightowl no reputable homeopath would suggest stopping conventional treatments. Sadly, I did come across some people while I was studying who were very against conventional medicine, even sneering slightly at one other student who was on thyroxine, so narrow mindedness is not only in the conventional camp!I too prefer the term complementary, rather than alternative, and I think there is a place for both.

Crossed posts Gill. I think our views are similar.

I suppose we will all continue to believe what we believe based on our own experiences. I would never try to persuade anyone to accept my point of view about complementary (not alternative) therapies but I would be happy to talk to anyone about my experiences if they asked. I have equal amounts of scepticism about mainstream (allopathic) medicine and complementary medicine, but I will continue to use both. I have never been advised by a homeopath to reject conventional treatments, and I would be concerned about the practitioner if that happened.

I am not going to get involved in long arguments about homeopathy and alternative therapies, but would like to just put my own experience forward. When DS was a baby he developed colic, quite common, but also distressing. As I was feeding him myself, I did the usual things such as not eating spicy food,coffee, etc., but still every night he would be bent double and screaming. I went into our local health food shop, owned and run by a charming Indian man, he recommended chamomila drops. The evening, DS started screaming, I gave him one drop on his tongue and watched the clock as the directions said can be given every 30 mins if needed. So watching clock for 8pm......DS never had that second drop and never had colic again. Yes, it may have been a co-incidence, but it certainly wasn't placebo in a 6 month old child. This started my interest in homeopathy and I studied it and have used it on my family ever since. Stomach upsets, hayfever, mild asthma, teenage anxiety have all been controlled and I sailed through the menopause. I think there is a place for alternative therapies working alongside conventional medicine, I do not advocate return to pre-modern medicine, but anyone who has spent time in a hospice and seen the wonderful work done by reiki practitioners and reflexologists would have to be very narrow minded indeed to dismiss all alternative therapies as witch craft or nonsense. Like Falconbird I think we should remind medical staff that the patient is also a person, and when someone once challenged me about homeopathy and dismissed it as 'just a long heart to heart with a sugar pill' my reply was 'well, if it works, why not?' So often just offloading worries and concerns can help the healing process, and sadly GPs just dont have the time to do any more than tap on their laptop and scribble a prescription. We are more than the total of our symptoms.

The placebo effect is highly potent and sometimes works even though the patient knows that they are being given a placebo. No-one knows why it works but it seems to be something to do with the attention they are given.

It is difficult for a doc to prescribe a placebo, although when my OH forst joined his rural dispensing practice there were large flagons of luridly coloured "medicine" that used to be decanted into bottles - tonics and the like, which were probably more placebo than anything else.