37 francs for a placebo?
There’s always a decent 24-pack of beer around 25-30 CHF at local shops. 1 beer = 200 mg Ibuprofen.
I made a remark on the old forum that when one of my kids complained of stomach ache, I used to give them a small sweet and say it was a pill to make them feel better with some soothing words.
It always worked.
People said it wasn’t the same as homeopathy - the effect was exactly the same.
A study in Southampton, UK discovered that the most important thing about homeopathy was that the fake doctor would spend more time actually talking to the patient about their symptoms than a qualified medical practitioner and it was this that actually provided the positive result.
Most ailments treated successfully with homeopathy would have gone away on their own and the results cannot really be attributed to even the placebo effect:
Common colds have a finite life, season allergies disappear when the season changes, mild pains go away with the body’s own healing mechanisms and so on.
Apart from the nonsense that is homeopathy, there are other alternative medicine/therapy which actually do work, and are used in the most successfully treated ailments - such as sore necks and backs.
These treatments include yoga/stretching, cold and warm compresses and massages and surprise, surprise, are also used in conventional therapy.
I don’t include acupuncture in this list which seems to work for some people due a strong placebo affect provided by the theatrics of the treatment.
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I think it would be OK if the state itself created these ‘medicines’ super cheap (hey it’s just water) and gave it out. It could even save money.
I wrote earlier that some Swiss products have been banned in the US as they weren’t just water but contained pathogens causing eye infections.
But yes, it does make me laugh when entering an Apotheke here and a whole wall of shelving is taken up with nonsense (pricey nonsense).
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I asked Chat GBT
That’s interesting. I’d like to see numbers of those paying vs other cantons where it is ‘forced’ to see what the difference is.
Just because there is no “church tax”, it doesn’t mean people don’t pay.
In VD with no church tax, the canton still finances CHF 60 million to churches. It is paid through general cantonal taxation.
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The churches in Neuchâtel really struggle for funding and don’t receive very much from the canton.
The majority of inhabitants of the canton are declared as ‘without religion’ and of those who do declare themselves over 60% of them don’t pay any voluntary tax to the church.
I suppose regular church goers are more likely to contribute to their church directly.
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That’s quite how it doesn’t work, this gets you just a usuriously priced sugar pill.
It takes both, the thing AND human interaction with a person of trust, e.g. a doc or similar professional. Surprisingly, a bad taste (a tablet’s unpalatable coating, a bitter syrup, etc) appears to increase the effect.
Medical trials quantify the placebo effect in various types of pain (nociceptive, and also neuropathic) to be from 30% - 42%. And the regulators know it ;-).
Now, here’s the million dollars’ question: You have pain (or a cold). At the same cost, you have the option
(a) take painkillers / antipyretics, with known side effects.
(b) take a placebo (homeopathy, vitamins, sugar pills, you name it).
what do you do?..
(well, obviously, the 3rd option is do nothing, but let’s assume that’s not an option).
That’s why the placebo effect is so strong in acupuncture. I mean, who’s going to enjoy having needles stuck in them?
I recently restarted statins as I had stopped due to side effect pain, until I realised that it was almost certainly a nocebo effect.
As for homeopathy, why not? I. t is cost effective for minor complaints. I just have a problem with the labelling. How can it be valid to list an ingredient that it then almost certainly does not contain? This is obfuscated with a dilution code that a large number of people do not realise the implications of.
The first follow-on question is, does the (welcome) placebo effect lessen for actual drugs if people are made aware? If so, informing people so they can make an educated decision may well be overall detrimental. Resorting to outright homeopathy might well be preferential, especially considering the negligible cost for them.
I know several people who understand the dilution issues but still take their homeopathic globules. It is a faith issue. The belief is required for the placebo effect to work. I get annoyed between the sometimes deliberate marketing confusion between a natural remedy that contains active ingredients and homeopathic ones that do not.
That annoys me but it annoys me when people think that natural remedies are harmless.
Someone recommended echinacea to deal with the long-term fatigue of glandular fever.
It made me black-out (I discovered later it was actually fainting) but not so nice when you do it on a bus full of people.
I wasn’t convinced it was the echinacea so I went off it for a few weeks and the fainting stopped and when I went back on it, the symptoms started again.
That’s the first and last time I took anything like that.
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Red Bull, high priced, sold in a small can & taste nasty is the most successful competitor to Coke, but then it has medicinal qualities!
Absolutely! According to my sources the abundant sugar glues your mouth shut, so certainly it helps with losing weight.
This reminds me that I should recommend it to the wife.
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