HOMEOPATHY FOR PMR?

I have also found that Bowen therapy is an important part of my PMR treatment. Through experimentation I get the best relief if I go every 3 weeks. If I wait 4 weeks the aches/stiffness become more chronic. The effects of my last Bowen session lasted almost a week - it was so nice to have less aches!  Usually I'm relieved of aches for a few days and then they creep back in to my "normal".  My sessions are about 45 minutes. 

Or you could ask on the forum if you say approximately where you are.

It is amazing how much difference a small amount of anything will make! It could be that the combination of the thyroxine, even a very small amount, and the pred is covering the PMR pain already.

But don't rush to reduce from the 5mg - how long have you been at 5mg? One really good specilaist likes to keep patients there for several months which lets the body catch up. Patience is the name of the game now!

Hello Eileen, I'm not holding out any hope that I shall be pain free tomorrow! I didn"t actually take my thyroxine this morning as it was my day for taking Alendronic Acid and both have to be taken on an empty stomach and at least 30 minutes before any other medication and breakfast so not quite sure what's going on!

I've been reducing to 5mg by the slow method and will start my first full week at that dosage on Saturday. I had planned to stay at 5mg for about 2/3 weeks before starting to reduce to 4mg My GP is happy with this

Since you are having problems anyway - I really would counsel not reducing any further for at least a couple of months, however you are doing it. Get this sorted out first - because if it is the pred dose causing the return of symptoms then the last thing you need to to go any lower. Do one thing at a time. 

I'm trying to remember how some others cope with it all. Maybe start another thread and ask? There are several who take the lot.

Personally I'd drop the AA for a few weeks, that won't make any difference - I don't take it at all and my bone density has been fine. But that is another story altogether.

Sometimes I feel when I hear things like this: the conditions of the research were wrong.  We know, it's a fact, that the placebo effect works, sometimes even more effectively than an accepted medication and with no side effects.  We also know that homeopathy can be effective with animals.  Perhaps the animals are really responding to the thoughts of the caregivers?

I first became aware that there were more ways to look at the world and more to belief systems than I'd hitherto known when in first year at uni I read a particular book by Bertrand Russell and knew instinctively and certainly that he was writing from a place of profound ignorance.  How dare I, seventeen years old, disagree with one of the most noted philosophers of that time?  But I did and I do.  And homeopathy may work, through the mysterious placebo effect, for many things, particularly with children and animals, but probably not implacable pain.  Personally I don't think the little bottles we can buy off the shelf could touch PMR.

Thanks - I've just placed a hold on the book from my library!

I think the work Buffy is referring to may be a systematic review that looked at a whole load of papers - not a single piece of research:

"A leading scientist has declared homeopathy a "therapeutic dead-end" after a systematic review concluded the controversial treatment was no more effective than placebo drugs.

Professor Paul Glasziou, a leading academic in evidence based medicine at Bond University, was the chair of a working party by the National Health and Medical Research Council which was tasked with reviewing the evidence of 176 trials of homeopathy to establish if the treatment is valid.

A total of 57 systematic reviews, containing the 176 individual studies, focused on 68 different health conditions - and found there to be no evidence homeopathy was more effective than placebo on any."

It was released about a year ago. Yes, there is the placebo effect - and the other argument is "regression to the mean": the patient would have improved spontaneously/because of time anyway.

You actually see a lot of it when someone takes a painkiller and claims they already feel better after 10 minutes although there is no way the pain killer can have reached the blood yet.

What I find puzzling about the way homeopathic remedies are sold is - first of all the remedies are apparently prepared very very carefully so that the ghostlike imprint of the original substance is preserved in the water.  Then the thing is bottled and shipped and subjected to movement, temperature fluctuations, passage of time.  And is still supposed to be effective?  

You can tell I'm not convinced that the physical substance of the remedy has any effectiveness.  But as a "carrier" so to say, of a way of igniting the individual's own healing, aka placebo, response, it could be really effective, and should not be dismissed completely.

Oh I don't dismiss it completely! I used it when I had metalwork removed from my leg. That is usually regarded as more traumatic than having it put in in the first place. I used homeopathic arnica and had no bruising and very little pain. Post op as the epidural wore off they gave me morphine as it was a bit sore - that was such an awful experience I declined any more and managed perfectly well. The nurses and physios were amazed - I was up and walking next morning and it healed like a dream. May have been coincidence - but arnica cream is fantastic for bruising.

Tht's interesting.  And I'm not surprised your recovery was quicker than the medics expected.  My aunt had a bowel resection some years ago and was given the ability to control her own morphine dosage.  Being who she is and knowing that morphine depresses breathing, etc., she pretty much toughed it out and thereby speeded up her recovery, also to the amazement of the medics!  One of my friends used homeopathic remedies for her children when they were sick, you know, the usual fevers and such that children always seem to be catching.  Didn't do them any harm!  My kids generally had to settle for chicken soup and orange juice.

I use "Rescue Remedy" as an effective alternative to prescription tranquilizers when flying. (I  got so tired of having to concentrate on keeping the plane up in the air!)  I think it's Bach Flowers or something like that, not strictly homeopathic.

I had a friend in Scotland who swore by Bach Rescue Remedy. And when my children were small and got chicken pox I gave them Rhus Tox (Germans are very big on homeopathy) and they never complained of itching at all. Not even when their grandmother asked them if it itched - I wasn't amused as I'd told them it wouldn't itch on the grounds if they didn't know it was expected...

Flying doesn't bother me - I just find it mindnumbingly boring usually! Though flying back from Malta the other day there was the most amazing view of central Italy and the Appenines - shorthaul and lowish flight paths have some positives!

I got an ointment from a person who was making natural products when my daughter (aged 15) had chicken pox and she told me it worked much better than any of the things we'd got from the pharmacy.  

I do love the views from the air.  It's the taking off and landing (and the inevitable turbulence when over the North Atlantic) which are so stressful.  I recall great circles in the fields (irrigation?) when flying over the Prairies, a view of an immense glacier in  Greenland, looking down at a live volcano in the Pacific, islands in the Mediterranean which were very lovely, but in a way looked like giant bird droppings, but best of all was being in a holding pattern over London and being able to get fantastic pictures of London Eye, and other tourist atractions. 

And I loved my week in NZ so much that after 24 hours return flight if someone had handed me a ticket upon landing and told me to get back on the plane and go back I would have!