I think that the "Placebo Effect" isn't discussed/considered nearly enough (if at all) by patients when it comes to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), homeopathy, acupuncture, etc. I myself believe those who "benefit" from such things are almost certainly experiencing a placebo effect.
Placebo effects only work for a short while and not usually a permanent thing, the symptoms come back with that. Its actually too been shown in a study that ME/CFS patients dont experience as much placebo effects as the general population (we often carry the expectation that something wont work so may in fact be giving things less of a chance to see when something is a little).
Otherwise studies and clinical trials would have by now been able to prove such things work, and they have not.
Many herbs have been studied and have been shown to help some things (of cause not in ME/CFS studies thou when nothing at all whether pharma or otherwise doesnt seem to show much impact). Herbs and alternative meds unfortunately havent got the big drug companies trying to study them so less research goes on in these areas, this doesnt mean the dont work (and big drug companies are often biased too in their research, they may test their meds multiple times but only then publish the positve studies).
Homoepathy is very very hard to study as it doesnt work like normal medicine at all as in you have this one symptom and hence you try to use this for it, it works nothing like that. The best practioners in this take a very individual approach and every person who sees them is treated very individually.. two people showing the same symptoms may be treated very differently based on their habits and personalities.
Unfortunately in studies they researchers often arent good homoepathic practioners in this field and not working in this very individual kind of manner. The researchers may store the homoepathic meds wrong (they arent meant to be put close to strong scents, care needs to be taken with them) or do other things which can cause poor study results. In my country Homoepathic medicine is a 4 year full time course to get gov accrediated in it.
I went to a top homoepathic practioner (he had clients flying from other side of world to see him as he had such a good repretation). He actually with one homopathic treatment dose fixed a problem I had with constantly peeing. I was waking up 6-7 times during night to pee and peeing heaps during day. I'd had that problem for quite a while and he fixed it same day as I took this. Its hard to say that was in the mind as it was waking me up multiple times during the nights before this.
When this issue started to come back many months later, I took another dose and had it go away again and havent had the issue back again.
Unfortuantely homeopathic meds never helped anything else of my ME though we tried.
I had a pet rabbit who was had accident who's leg went hard, swivelled and black, it looked completely dead as he'd got twine tangled around it which cut off his circulation and it took me days to realise why he wasnt moving from a section of his cage. Vet would of chopped his leg off, that homopath actually treated him and this leg I was sure was dead actually came back to life.
ANother time the rabbit ripped a huge hole in himself on a piece of wire and his whole body if you put pressure on his body even on his other side, it made it ouze pus, lots of it from the hole, it was a dwaft rabbit and the hole in his side was bigger then a penny and you could see his insides through like membrane. Once again homeopathic med from that homopath fixed my rabbit, no stitches or anything, his whole infected body healed along with the hole within 5-7 days. If I had taken this rabbit to the vet, I think there would of been a chance he would of been put down.
Animals do not understand placebo affects.
and there was my daughter who after having surgery 17-19 times over 2-3 years and doctors giving up on the issue fixing and saying she'd continue to need surgery every 6-8 weeks (she had growths which kept blocking her airways with wouldnt stop happening so her life kept being at risk). I took her out of desperation to an accupuncturist, he fixed her ONE treatment. No more surgery!!
Another time daughter started declining very badly after one of her surgery, she went limp, went into high fever which they were struggling to bring down (the meds werent working, they were about to try putting her into a cool bath), she was almost unconscious
I actually picked her out of the hospital bed and removed her from the hospital (snuck her out as I knew they was no way they would of allowed me to take her out of hospital in her bad state) and drove her straight to a good naturopath (herbalist) I knew 10mins away who gave her a very strong herbal extract. (this shows my trust in natural therapies as its really aided my family so much on so many occassions when things start to fail at hospital that is where I head) She was up and running around in 30-45mins, completely recovered.
(Hospital was in shock Id taken daughter from there, I called them and got my daughter to speak to them so they could tell she was back to normal consciousness etc and not going in and out).
Another time when she wasnt doing well I brought some natural therapists into the hospital and she had such an amazing recovery that the hospital nurses and drs wanted to know what I did. More and more of them showed up at her hospital room asking us how we'd done it and how she was so good (on that occassion it was what is called a reiki bake for 30mins, I had several reiki channels sending her healing along with hands on healing given to her in the room).
Reiki does nothing at all for my ME/CFS though Ive had miracle healings with it with other things including a time when I cut my finger to the bone which both my father and I saw.
Few minutes of reiki while holding that finger very tight to try to stop the bleeding as we were getting ready to leave for the hospital for me to have stitches done. The cut disappeared. My father and me just were staring at my finger wondering how on earth that happened, not even a mark or scar was left.
I had something wrong with a knee and was limping on and off for over a year. I got recommended a tissue salt. That fixed my knee. A year or so later the problem started return, taking tissue salts fixed it again.
So amazing results can be achieved through natural therapies if you have a good therapist who really knows what they are doing (usually 4 years full time study at a recognised naturopathy/herbal med school for minimum training). I personally will not go to any naturopath or alternative healer unless Ive had good recommendations fo them, its like drs, there are good ones and bad ones and the occassional exceptional ones.
I thought 6-7 out of the 8 chiropractors I saw were crap, I dont like to keep going back without feeling a benefit. I ended up finding one which fixed my constant ME/CFS dizziness in just one treatment. So now I just get dizzy on occassions eg when standing instead of constantly. (I'd just remembered that a chiro fixed that, my neck had felt fine but it turned out it was my neck causing me constant dizziness and making ME/CFS symptom worst).
So unfortunate that ME/CFS is so very hard to fix. I tried A LOT of natural therapies, I even tried weekly reflexology for over a year, that didnt help my ME/CFS at all or seem to improve anything else (though all the sore points in my feet went).
