[Sloper]

Homeopathy is bollox, arnica may not be but I'd be interested in seeing something other than solipsistic evidence or trials of very small numbers of people.

[slackline]

Homeopathy is bollox, arnica may not be but I'd be interested in seeing something other than solipsistic evidence or trials of very small numbers of people.

Well, I'm not here to do the searching for you, but if you're not happy with the small numbers in that study, here's a review article...

E. Ernst, M. H. Pittler (1998) Efficacy of Homeopathic Arnica: A Systematic Review of Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trials 133:1187-1190

The main problem with most studies is getting enough people to participate in the first place (which is why drug companies pay participants for trying new drugs).  So you end up with lots of small studies some finding one way, others the other.  Review articles aim to do a "meta-analysis" whereby you look at the overall results, weighting the evidence from each study (although the review article above doesn't do this in a rigorously statistical manner).  This is also what the Cochrane Reviews I linked before seek to address by providing systematic and regularly updated reviews of various aspects of medical and health care (although personally I'd argue whether checking whether praying is still useful on a regular basis is a bit of a waste of time).

On a related note I was trying to find a Cochrane Review the other day that showed that having your wisdom teeth removed doesn't appear to prevent the front teeth from being impacted, and I just found it here

[Sloper]

Again that refers to homeopathic arnica, in other words 'nothing'.

I take the view that if there are no trials showing arnica works then the probability is that it doesn't.  Take vincristine, that works and comes from a plant, the periwinkle I think so this isn't a 'downer' on plant based medicine, just that I don't like spending good money on stuff when there's no real evidence it works.

[slackline]

I apologise, I had diverged from the original topic of arnica gel to more general arnica.  Here's one on gel (although again, it has suffers from small N, but seriously have you ever tried to convince patients to participate in trials, most are scared out of their wits at being ill/injured/under the scalp in the first palce, and then they're highly suspicious that they won't be getting the best treatment and therefore won't participate)...

Otto Knuesel, Michel Weber, Andy Suter (2002)  Arnica montana  gel in osteoarthritis of the knee: An open, multicenter clinical trial  Avances in Therapy 19:209-218

Perhaps these guys could help  (lots more citations too on Arnica gel, too lazy to link them all across, but maybe someone will find it useful)

I too think homeopathy is a load of   as there is no EVIDENCE to support its efficacy.

[Houdini]

Nevermind trial evidence, the question is:  does it work for you?  Use it.  Does it help?   Yes?  Bingo, lovely.  No?  Oh well, pass the ibuprofen.


There's not many places left for this thread to go.

[slackline]

Nevermind trial evidence, the question is:  does it work for you?  Use it.  Does it help?   Yes?  Bingo, lovely.  No?  Oh well, pass the ibuprofen.

I agree with this sentiment to an extent, as there is of course a ton of variation between people, but a general consensus can be reached.

I think the use of the term "alternative" medicine is disingenuous too as medicine will either work or not (subject to individual variation in responsiveness).

Whats interesting is how drug development and medicines will change over the coming years with pharmacogenomics.  In most instances drugs routinely prescribed for a given set of symptoms have little or no effect on a large portion of individuals, often with chronic adverse side-effects.  Why do some people respond and others not?  Most likely down to varying genetics, and identifying those who will respond to a given course of treatment, and more importantly those who are unlikely to, can avoid giving someone a nasty set of drugs which will have no net benefit.