With Complements From Boots

Oh my…

😆

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Alternative Medicine and Why It Seems To Work

Very rarely have alternative treatments or medication been able to show any therapeutic value. Yet countless people swear by it and are convinced they can’t do without.

The mysterious placebo effect has everything to do with this. But what is it and how does it work? Harriet Hall explains.

Is there hope after all?

Yesterday I received some e-mails.

The first was from a lady whose mother is suffering from cancer. During her mother’s illness, this lady searched the internet for information on cancer and decided it would be a good idea to collect everything she found in one place. So she started a blog.

She says on her blog: “I wanted to have a place where all the information I was researching on the internet could be stored in one convenient location (…). In addition, I wanted to make sure that all the information was positive, so having our own blog made that easy.” 

Switzerland to insert CAM in the constitution?

On 17 May 2009 the Swiss people voted in favour of a constitutional article for complementary medicine in a national vote. 67 percent of voters supported the new constitutional article. Switzerland is the first country in Europe to set out in the constitution, authority for the state and constituent states (cantons) to take complementary medicine into consideration in the public health service.

Mistletoe Just For Kissing, Not For Curing Cancer, Says Edzard Ernst

Read what Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the universities of Exeter and Plymouth, has to tell us about mistletoe.

Most people will be surprised to learn from a case reported in this week’s British Medical Journal (BMJ) of a use for mistletoe (Viscum album) that has nothing to do with Christmas. Some patients with cancer inject themselves with extract of mistletoe in the hope of improving their condition. In continental Europe, at least 30 different mistletoe preparations are available. In Europe, most cancer patients use such extracts, at a total expense of about £30m (€45m; $59m) each year, and in Germany the insurance system pays for this treatment.

A Google search (20 November 2006) showed that 145 000 websites promote or mention mistletoe as a treatment for cancer. This much publicity may mean that many cancer patients in the UK will try mistletoe in the future or ask their doctor about it. It is therefore timely to discuss the value of mistletoe as an anticancer drug.