I write for work on a website called PlayPennies. I often do a commentary on things that have been in the news, and sometimes this incites quite a bit of criticism and chagrin towards me, as my views are not always what most would call mainstream.
Yesterday, for example, I wrote a review on a detox programme I was using, and have used for a number of years now – always in January, and sometimes at other times of the year too. A biochemist proceeded to lay into me about selling snake oil and so on.
As a biochemist, he had looked at the ingredients and found nothing there that would cause an increase in health, or weight loss. I responded with a shrug of my shoulders at first, which obviously didn’t sit well with him, because he had a lot to say about it – and then I didn’t respond.
The thing is this:
I grew up around people in the medical field. I also grew up with a brother who is now a chemical engineer, and a father in the military: not exactly airy-fairy hippy kind of people. I myself graduated high school with the equivalent of six A-levels, all with over 80% pass marks. I’m not exactly dumb, nor very gullible.
I also grew up with migraines, intense and debilitating, till I eventually was taken for MRI scans for tumours and so on at the age of ten. No doctors, MRI scans or anything could solve my problems. In time, the migraines faded on their own, but I still had regular headaches. One day someone dabbed oil on my forehead and the headache went away. I didn’t know what it was meant to do, I didn’t know what she’d put on, but it worked regardless. It turned out to be lavender oil, and I’ve used it for headaches ever since.
At the time, this wasn’t overly acceptable. I grew up in a very religious environment, and had been taught that herbal remedies, flower essences, and natural remedies were sacrificed to false Chinese and Indian and whatever other culture’s gods and we couldn’t use them. But it worked for me, so I kept using it.
Years later I was to suffer, for no less than three years from horrific yeast infection. I went from doctor to doctor, saw specialist after specialist and was eventually referred to a sex therapist that I had to see for about eight sessions, as the yeast infection was apparently psychological. Still, nothing helped, and it wasn’t doing intimacy in my marriage much good.
Walking home from work one afternoon, out of desperation, I popped in to a Homeopath’s office that I had walked past every day for a year. She saw me, she got my background and history, and she gave me a tablet to take, another to take in the morning and a third for the following evening.
When I woke up the next morning, the painful itch was gone. It’s been four years, and it’s never returned. That’s some pretty strong ‘thinking yourself healthy‘ for you right there. Obviously I hadn’t wanted to be healthy for the three years that I suffered. Or maybe, it actually just worked.
Since then, I too have been a sceptic: of medicine, and of the medical system. I am no fool. I know medicine has it’s place, and I am grateful that should we as a family ever need it, it is there – for example when I was in hospital for four days during my pregnancy when they rehydrated me after four months of Hyperemesis Gravidarum. I am fully aware of the life-saving purpose of medicine and of some doctors and surgeons, but I do not believe that they are the only way, nor that they have the only answers, or even know all the answers.
Sometimes in life, experience is the best teacher. Perhaps I can’t always explain why things work, nor can I always tell you the mechanics that make them work, and perhaps everything I believe is nothing but a placebo effect, but then how much more powerful and wonderful are they?
But what I can tell you is about how homeopathy affected and reduced to a mere tick my brother’s Tourrette Syndrome. I can tell you how it helped my mother’s exacerbated dermatitis and eczema. I can tell you how it healed me.
If I can self-heal, without the use of chemicals that have in truth, unknown consequences on the human body, long term, or without the use of drugs, that are often and regularly withdrawn from the market, then all the better, then I have no desire to stop.
So, dear reader, if you don’t agree with something I have to say, I’ll answer you with my views on it. If I feel that answering is a waste of my time, then I wont, because you’re never going to change my mind, and I, apparently, am never going to change yours. Debate is great, when both parties are willing to listen to the views of the other person, and respect them, and maybe even take something away from them, but I don’t have the time, energy or desire to debate with someone who won’t listen to a word I have to say, and will actively belittle my personal experiences.