Sim-O

Part of the series: The Great Travel-Sickness Experiment

I tried my new wristbands today.

It’s was only a short journey of about 9 miles each way. I only had mild motion sickness, but I think that was due to the short journey rather than the wristbands.

They are quite tight on the wrist and even after only 10-15 minutes of wearing there was quite a mark left around my arms, the sort you get round your leg when your sock are too tight, and I wondered if the mark where the nylon bobble was, was actually going to leave a bruise. After 10 minutes or so the marks had disappeared.

When I put the bands on, they felt very tight, as I mentioned previously, and I thought it would annoy and start to itch and stuff, but they didn’t. I think they could on a long journey, though.

Getting the bands in the correct position may be a struggle and will need a bit of trial and error to get right.
You’re supposed to have the bobble three finger widths up your arm from the first wrist crease, and then in between the the tendons. The distance up from my wrist is fairly obvious, but I can only find one tendon. I don’t know if I’m a freak with just one tendon, although everything seems to work ok, it’s hidden behind other stuff or I just don’t know what I’m looking for, but I could only find one.

I think that may be the biggest stumbling block to getting the bands to work correctly, if they do indeed work, is the positioning of them. They need to be in a certain position and you’re trying to get an untrained person to get them in the right place with a basic diagram and short description.

Well, that’s my initial thoughts on them: comfy enough on short distances, not sure if they’re postioned correctly, but they didn’t work. I am not put off though, in my quest to have my head screwed by a cheap bit of woo I shall carry on and try them on a longer journey. Although when that’ll be, I don’t know yet.

Via Gimpy’s blog (this post about homeopaths launching a hate campaign again Dr Evan Harris MP), I ended up at the Homeopathy Heals site. I will admit that I don’t read homeopathic stuff much. Why bother? It’s a load of old wank. I read various skeptics, if that is the right word for these guys that believe medicine should be subjected to proper trials with replicable, provable results, because they’re a good read with various levels of shock/outrage/’wtf-ness’/humour.

I’m not sure why though, but I though I would have a look at this Homeopathy Heals site. There’s nothing here that will surprise you, but anyway here is my tuppence on homeopathy.

You cannot randomly take homeopathic medicines, as they will only work, when carefully selected, for something that needs curing.

(source)

If a medicine has an active ingredient then there will be an effect, whether you are ill or not. That effect may not be the desired one, but there will be an effect. So, just remind me again why no one can overdose on homeopathic medicine?

Of course homeopaths know that one dose of however many pills taken together in one go, is the equivalent of only one dose, because each dose is a stimulus and it is the time frame that counts.

(source)

Oh, of course. The quantity of the supposedly active ingredient doesn’t matter. One dose of homeopathy is one dose when taken as instructed until someone takes large quantities and then they’re still taking only one dose. What is a dose of homeopathy is elastic, depending on how much you are actually taking.

Presumably then, homeopaths only put a teeny-weeny amount of the active ingredient in their medicine not because only a specific amount is needed or too much will be harmful, but to keep costs down.

But if the dose of homeopathy is a stimulus, it kick starts the body into healing itself, then surely a larger quantity of the bollox-in-a-bottle will stimulate more. Once again, this resulting stimulation may have an adverse effect and make someone iller rather than better, but it would have a effect. Wouldn’t you have thought?

According to it’s practitioners homeopathy is has no side effects. It doesn’t matter how much you take you can’t overdose. It is non-addictive, works fast in acute conditions, slow in chronic ones. Safe for everyone including animals and is cheap (apparently). It has, miraculously, no downsides at all.

It all sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? And we know what they say about things that are too good to be true, don’t we.

Via Le Canard Noir
(all links to the Homeopathy Heals site are rel=”nofollow”)

As a sufferer of mentally bad hayfever as a kid, of which nothing worked to alleviate it, I used to eat local honey. It worked, half of me used to tell myself… and most other people.

The sceptic told me it was bollox. I didn’t know why, just a hunch, y’ know.

Now that last little bit belief has been shattered. I have to own up that maybe, just maybe it wasn’t the honey that did it. Maybe i just grew out of it.

I still get hay fever now and again, just not as bad or for as long. Good job I don’t need my little comforter any more.

Chiropractors. Now that’s a different box of frogs. I’ve had instant, long lasting, positive results from a chiropractor (one that to my knowledge didn’t profess to cure all manner of ills and ailments from coughs to loss of labido, malaria to cancer. There weren’t any leaflets like that anyway), so it’s a little unsettling to read all this stuff about them.

Would I go again? Probably, but I would very very careful about which one.

Jim Barker pointed out a No. 10 Petition (this one, “Maybe this petition explains why ex-pats make such bitter comments on the Daily Mail website”) and after signing it A. Bollockhead, had a look at some more.

This one came up…

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Permit Qualified Aromatherapists and Wiccan Practitioners To Treat Animals.

Why not allow Woo-ists to practice on animals, eh?

Well, in the ‘more detail’ bit the originator of the petition does indeed go in to a bit more detail, but doesn’t really give aromatherapy any more relevence to animals…

The practice of aromatherapy is recorded from Egyptian times, so we can assume that it is probably older than that. References to aromatherapy appear in the famous Ebers Papyrus, which dates from the eighteenth dynasty. The Holy Bible contains many references to the use of oils, in Israel.

All those qualified to us it should be permitted to practice it with animals also.

I don’t doubt the truthfulness of anything that the Karen Stapleton has asserted there, especially as I can’t be arsed to find out, but I don’t think that she or her co-horts in witch-doctory have taken in to account, not just robust investigation in to the effects of their sugar pills, smelly oils and water with memory, but also the ability to fool ourselves which we cannot do to animals…

[Q]uackery might just about be justifiable on humans on the account that the placebo effect might give some relief (although I would argue against taking this position). But an animal cannot experience the placebo and will gain no benefit whatsoever from homeopathy, reiki, or ear candling for that matter. The only person who will gain is the carer, thinking they are doing good for the prickly little fellow. Placebo Effects work on humans. It’s a cultural thing. Hedgehogs do not cotton on to the significance of the psycho-suggestive shamanistic healing rituals involved in homeopathy. They would just prefer to curl up into a pin cushion. Many go on about homeopathy tests on animals proving the case for homeopathy think they do not need to have randomised blind controls, since animals cannot have a placebo effect. But this dodges the fact that it is their carers and owners are reporting the animals’ health improvements – the placebo works on the carers. Blinded trials on animal medicines are still absolutely necessary. For more details on homeopathy, placebos and animals see the excellent British Veterinary Voodoo Society.

I also feel that one of the five other people to sign the petition may have missed the point a little as they’ve signed as…

people should have the choice

The Guardian…

Reiki, an alternative Japanese therapy with a growing band of followers in the west, is “unscientific” and “inappropriate” for use in Catholic institutions, according to America’s bishops.

Guidelines issued by the committee on doctrine at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops warn healthcare workers and chaplains that the therapy “lacks scientific credibility” and could expose people to “malevolent forces”.

The document also claims that for a Catholic to believe in reiki presents “insurmountable problems”.

Bwahahahahaha! An organisation that is built on the myth and legend with no scientific evidence, is scared that some of its’ members might fall for a different set myths and legends that have no scientific evidence.

Ooh, molevolent forces…

…a notion which is of course hugely credible and strongly supported by scientists, particularly those working in Malevolent Forces and Evil Spirits research departments around the world.

And, again from the New Humanist, in the interest of balance…

New Humanist was unable to find a reiki practitioner to comment on the scientific credibility of the Vatican stance on condoms and the spread of HIV…

Via D-Notice