So we've been arguing on homeopathic medicine that doesn't appear to be homeopathic and is therefore effective so your argument about it being ineffective is ineffective and therefore it means my experience is legitimate?
Is that what's going on?
Man I thought conspiracy theories were more fun than that!
Well we’ve been arguing based on the information at hand, which according to you you were taking a homeopathic remedy.
Like a lot of words there’s the real meaning: “a diluted chemical used as a remedy” vs the marketing meaning: “an alternative medicine that maybe a dilution or maybe a natural based remedy but that doesn’t not need to be verified as safe or effective by a governmental body”.
So we are correct in that homeopathic dilutions do not work past the placebo effect, but you are likely correct in that you get an effect from the cream as it has active ingredients.
That being said let me provide you with a warning about using these types of homeopathic/natural/ alternative remedies.
Thanks to the 1994 law they are not required to provide basic information to the FDA about what’s in their products and they are allowed to self regulate their safety. The FDA can only get one pulled after an issue is found :
Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA)—the 1994 law that established the current regulatory framework for dietary supplements—the FDA generally does not conduct premarket review of dietary supplements, and manufacturers are not required to provide the agency with basic information about their products, including names or ingredients, before selling them.20 This leaves the agency with no clear view of what’s on the market at any given time. The FDA instead largely relies on postmarket surveillance methods to monitor the safety of these products (AE monitoring, inspections, internet searches), and can only restrict their use or mandate a recall if it can prove that a product or ingredient is unsafe.21, 22 However, bans or recalls can consume significant time and resources; it took the FDA 7 years of litigation, which went all the way to US Supreme Court, to ban the use of the amphetamine derivative 1,3-dimethylamylamine, and 7 years to ban ephedra, an ingredient associated with increased risk of stroke and death.23, 24Additionally, because the FDA does not have mandatory recall authority over drugs as it does over supplements, it is unclear whether the agency can mandate a recall of supplement products tainted with active pharmaceutical ingredients. These products currently fall into a regulatory gray zone.25
Meanwhile, unsafe supplements continue to reach consumers through a legal loophole that allows manufacturers or distributers to “self-affirm” the safety of dietary ingredients through the generally recognized as safe (GRAS) exemption for food products.26 This exemption allows them to circumvent the FDA’s new dietary ingredient notification (NDIN) pathway—the agency’s premarket review process for supplements that contain novel dietary ingredients.27 The FDA estimated in September 2016 that it had received over 900 premarket NDINs since the process was finalized in 1997—far below the agency’s expectation.28, 29 Unless the FDA finalizes the NDIN guidance to better capture products intended for a GRAS designation or unless Congress addresses this loophole through legislation, manufacturers will continue to pursue the less burdensome—and less rigorous—GRAS exemption.
Now being that you frequent P&N you might be able to guess which party proposed this legislation that allows a billion dollar industry to bypass basic safety checks by the FDA.
If you guessed Republicans ding ding you are a winner. Utah Senator Orin Hatch championed this one.
So please understand that using alternative remedies isn’t without risks and in most ways the risk is higher than actual medications, (although it may still be worth it to you), and you are relying on unregulated companies doing the right thing and the good governance of republicans.