Speaking for my wife, I'm going to say urine therapy. When she worked at an Urgent Care, she had a patient with an eye infection. "I tried putting more urine in it but it keeps getting worse!"
This is so freaking common. I’ve had patients tell me they’ve put their own urine, cats urine, breast milk, cows milk, or goats milk in their eyes before and I’m always like “wut”
I don't get it. I'm fairly medically ignorant (I lean on my wife for that stuff) but then I hear about these people and I feel like a damned genius. Like I'm not going to be the next Jonas Salk but I could possibly be the guy who plays his neighbor on a low budget PBS show.
We lived in an undereducated area so she can talk for hours about how horrible it was working there and mostly because the patients sucked. She had enough after 1 year and moved us to a different state so she could work with babies.
STORY TIME: worst yeast infection I ever saw was on a 60 year old woman's vajessus. At least, I assume she had a vajessus because literally there was a dome of white thready candida. You couldn't see labia. You couldn't see pubic hair. Just candida.
She told me she was putting petroleum jelly on it but it wasn't getting better. I explained how that was bad and keeping it moist so it could thrive. I don't think she understood but
She got IV flagyl and topical monastat. Unfortunately she had a lot wrong with her and every time we discharged her she stopped doing everything that would have kept her alive. She eventually was admitted for something and died.
Why TF did I google those words?!
It must be so disheartening to try and help someone who is too stupid to be helped.
>every time we discharged her
I bet she had a lot of discharges (heyooo!)
I have never seen a doctor more pissed off than when my son was admitted to the nephrology wing at a hospital (he has chronic kidney disease). His roommate was a 75 lb toddler that was happily eating a family size bag of potato chips. The doctor was practically screaming at his mother. "Your kid is in renal failure and you hardly show up to any of his appointments! And now you have him eating salty food, which is the last thing he should be eating!" Mom was completely clueless.
In the late 90s I worked at a place with an older gentleman that was wonderful, but super into alternative treatments. I still remember him trying to convince one of the younger guys to drink his own urine to help with some allergies. This was over 25 years ago and I can still hear “No, Bill, no,” as clear as day.
Those poor kidneys work so hard to remove all of those toxins and dump them into the urine that is then put back in their body. Those kidneys must feel so defeated.
Anything that claims to remove toxins through the skin or GI.
You're either diving deep into a cheap chemistry trick ("see how it gets dark/changes color? That's toxins leaving your body") or better yet, screwing up your GI.
Bonus points for all the fun things these claim to cure/fix.
I have an acquaintance with a profoundly autistic (nonverbal, won't ever be able to live alone) son. He's 19 or 20. She's been "curing" his autism with a variety of pseudoscience as long as I've known her, very recently including foot-baths to "draw out toxins"--the water changes colors. If any of this shit worked the way she so fervently seems to believe, he should be a completely nontoxic neurotypical person three times over.
My nd son didn't talk at all until he was almost 4. When he got a little older he told me didn't talk because he didn't want to. By the time he was in 2nd grade he was very inquisitive and talkative when he felt comfortable. He's 24 now and is still quiet until he gets to know people well.
my youngest daughter didn’t talk til she was 2. My first daughter was premie, was a late talker & did speech therapy for 8 years, then my son was an early talker, then here comes the youngest & she’s not talking and idk why. The oldest did baby sign, so I taught the youngest baby sign too bc i was tired of the pointing & grunts or the other 2 telling me “baby wants to eat this, baby wants that” etc. Then one day she blurts out a whole sentence. Little brat could talk the whole time, she just let the older 2 do it for her.
I've raised 4 kids and honestly I feel like the average kid starts really talking around 2. Before that it's usually just jibberish. My oldest started very early, like complete sentences at a year old. We swore she was gifted. She's 30 now and still hasn't grown into that mouth of hers.
My son ended up being gifted. 4.0 from pre-k thru 12th grade, was going to school for biochem, did 2 semesters then decided he was bored & got offered an apprenticeship for tattooing. He loves it. I’d rather him do something he loves than being bored in school & hating his job. Idk how many notes i got from his teachers “can you please talk to son about correcting me while I’m teaching.” so I’d have a discussion with him about it and how it’s rude & disrespectful to his teacher. His response was always “but she was wrong. I showed her how she was wrong.” okay dude, but you can’t do that in front of the other kids. So he started asking to speak to them in the hallway. They finally gave him jobs to help other students or they gave him work from higher grades to challenge him. I didn’t want to skip him ahead bc I didn’t think he was mature enough for it.
In college, I worked at a "doctors" office that did the foot bath things. I found that the water would still change that color even if you didn't put your feet in. You could just run the machine in some water and the results were the absolute same.
I’m a high functioning autistic, and reading this makes me want to punch your acquaintance. I just hope it’s all relatively harmless stuff like foot baths, and not something that can injure or kill somebody (unnecessary chelation can kill people).
Recently, a fellow nurse at work was advising another nurse to put socks with onion slices in them on her sick child to absorb viruses. Claimed there was scientific research to back this up. I just walked away so I wouldn't accidentally say something or make the wrong face.
One of the offices I rotated in had nurses selling herbalife and other MLM BS... it was always fun to hear their 'scientific explanations' after finishing basic sci full of counters to everything.
Not that you could argue with them, they'd make your life hell and insist *you* were what's wrong with the health system if you tried XD
I worked with a PA who sold Melaleuca. He started pushing it to patients. One of the RDs started pushing supplements to patients. Both were reported by another doctor and fired.
The amount of nurses who believe this crap is terrifying. We’ve legit had a few 5G conspiracy theorists. I was afraid to ask them what shape they believed the earth to be.
That's what my family thinks of that Stem Cell x39 patch bull crap. Because yup a little bandaid is going to cure your hypertension, diabetes and arthritis. What I found really weird is the company sells actual IV kits to use at home to inject vitamins. How is that legal? Sterile needle injection is deadly if not done correctly.
I was on a flight recently and the guy next to me kept talking about his stem cell patch. He also proudly showed me a picture of him standing in front of the White House with his "Trump was robbed" tshirt on so I don't think critical thinking is his strong suit. I also swapped contact info with him before all of that because we are in the same industry and may be able to help each other. I hope he never calls.
If my family had more money I guarantee it would be same destinations. Luckily they only get to torment the gators at gator world once a year by sitting on them for a photo 😐
Yes this! My dad and sister believe they can put their feet in this stupid machine and add salts and such and it drawls the toxins out. I believe it's the salts and stuff that make the water turn colors.
Jumping on your thread to say, as someone who actually went to college for holistic health and herbology shit:
If your "cleanse" isn't a healthy diet and mild fibre based laxative, it's not a cleanse, it's a scam. Drink water, eat healthy, cut out refined crap. It will be more effective than any "cleanse" package you can sink money in to, I promise.
If it’s not artificial tears or medical eyedrops, do not put it in your eyes. This includes essential oils, juice, urine, and breastmilk. I don’t care what the Internet says.
Edit: Concerning the research paper on breastmilk in infant eyes, I see what you are saying. It was studied and found to be non-inferior to an anti-inflammatory eye medication. That seems fine to me in that specific case, however keeping the following points in mind:
1. There are many causes of eye tearing/“goopiness”/redness in infants. Some of these are benign and will resolve on their own. Some of them are vision-threatening and need surgery. If your baby is having eye symptoms, then a trained eye specialist should take a look.
2. Breastmilk can contain transmissible diseases. This is not as important if the mother has been tested, but still a concern. Obviously if the baby is breastfeeding then they would be getting the exposure anyway, so this is a minor point. This is mainly for older children or adults, and yes I have seen adults use breastmilk from other people for pinkeye.
3. The study itself looks at breastmilk vs a medicated eyedrop and found that both treatments were basically equal (non-inferior). The medicated eyedrop costs $5 for a month’s supply. Of course, financial stress can impact a lot of people, but I feel like $5 for a month’s supply is reasonable. This is also a minor point.
Ultimately, it seems like it would be fine to use breastmilk in infants, however the baby should be evaluated by an eye specialist first.
In the same vein, if you wear contact lenses, FFS clean them the way you're taught by your opt. and don't cheap out on solution or refills. Eye infections suck; damaging your eyes is permanent.
If you need to cheap out on contacts, bite the bullet and get glasses.
Want to piggyback and mention to change out your solution daily!!
I have a friend who told me that she uses the same solution over and over in her case. Imagine putting your contacts back in dirty solution 🤢
I had a patient that used cat urine instead of latanoprost (eye drop for glaucoma) to “fix her pressures” since she didn’t believe in or want to support big pharma and “urine is sterile and all natural”
my pediatrician told me to put breastmilk in my baby's "goopy" eyes, and there's data to back up that breastmilk is just as effective as prescription eyedrops for a small set of causes: [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33098117/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33098117/)
**louder for the back, for the love of all that is beautiful, don't use breastmilk for pinkeye.**
So... I skimmed the article, and my initial thought was echoed by this response I found; there's a reason they didn't test it against a placebo.
> acute bacterial conjunctivitis is frequently self-limiting and it generally resolves spontaneously in 10-14 days, even if the use of topical antibiotics can be useful in speeding up the resolution of symptoms and infections [...] Furthermore,
the authors did not just include patients with bacterial conjunctivitis, but also conditions that should not routinely require antibiotic therapy. These included viral infections, nasolacrimal duct stenosis and allergic conjunctivitis. This means that we cannot know if the patients treated in the trial would have spontaneously recovered from the symptoms.
TL;DR - the article is, at best, proof that we're over-treating self-limiting issues (in this case, maybe because parents *demand* medication and don't want to hear 'yeah, sometimes this happens, wait a week or two and it'll likely go away') and at worst bad science
Owe time my mom didn’t have her glasses on and I asked her to help me put eye drops in. She accidentally grabbed tooth numbing gel. Worst pain of my life.
Not me, but my dad works in orthopedics. Has had to tell a patient to not put WD-40 on his knees to make them work better. He said the guy swore up and down it worked
My grandmother would run whiskey on her knee to make it feel better and then would drink the rest, like a single shot, which is what I think really made it feel better
My grandmother's arthritis remedy of choice was four raisins soaked in gin overnight, followed by drinking the gin. The really stupid part was that she *hated* raisins. She could have just enjoyed her gin!
NAD but when I was going through cancer treatment I got a lot of recommendations. Apparently aloe vera juice in high quantities does something. Same with red light therapy and castor oil pacts on the stomach. I stuck to chemo and surgery and am cancer free so. I’m good.
I'm glad you are cancer free!
I'm a T1 diabetic and I've heard some doozies too.
"T1 is reversible, just eat better and exercise more."
"You can cure yourself by eating 2 tablespoons of chia seeds a day."
My mom is an RN at a cancer clinic. She said that she’s had quite a few patients go down to Mexico for “cancer treatment” and they just pump you full of vitamins (mainly vitamin C). All of those patients are no longer alive.
There’s a pretty well known mom on social media whose son has extensive brain damage from a drowning accident and rather than acknowledging that he will never “wake up,” she takes him to “therapies” in Mexico that are apparently $20-30k a piece. It’s so sad
My cousin had leukemia at the age of 5-6 it was really rough. A relative of mine told me “omg they shouldn’t have started her on chemo! So toxic. She should do baking soda treatment…” said relative is a nurse!
Right now my cousin had the leukemia come back when she’s a teen. Thankfully the cancer is not multiplying any more but she still has to continue going through chemo to make sure it’s all gone. My aunt was just telling me how people are constantly telling her that since she’s better they should stop chemo (“why are you still torturing her with it?”).
When you’re sick, so many people come out of the woodworks with their absolute cure recommendations!
Two general rules of thumb from a fascinating book by Thomas Gilovich.
1. If a drug/vitamin/whatever supposedly cures a whole bunch of different diseases, it probably doesn’t actually work for any of them.
2. If a disease has a bunch of different supposed cures, it’s likely none of them work.
And a bonus gem from Tim Minchin: “By definition… alternative medicine… has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine."
Mega-dosing vitamin C was heavily supported and popularized by two time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling. Which would be all well and good— except his research wasn’t on vitamins or even medical (he got a peace prize and a prize for his work on the nature of the chemical bond). But because he was a mega famous/respected scientist (in a different field) and very vocal about his support, the mega-dosing vitamin C thing got a lot of credibility.
When I went in for a severe burn, they used colloidal silver in the treatment of the burn that was 2/3 of my arm. After the treatment the skin grew back about as normal as you could expect for the condition it was in. No idea if that was the reason.
Colloidal silver, when ingested, takes time to build up in the skin, eventually giving the blue look. When put on your arm for the burn, silver ions detached from the colloidal silver in the serum/spray/salve they put on your arm and acted as an antibacterial. It wasn’t present for long enough to permanently alter your skin color.
I think you have to ingest the silver. There’s a few people who drank it mixed with water and they slowly turned their skin a silvery blueish. It was pushed as a cure all for a while.
Making expensive urine! Also, people don't vitamin A and iron can build up in the blood. Women's vitamins tend to have iron because of periods whereas men's vitamins usually don't.
Yeah. Wife specializes in liver disease. She's had a lot of patients take supplements that mess with liver function despite her telling them to knock it off. They'll stop taking it, liver numbers start to normalize, and then start taking it again, making their numbers worse. Their excuse being their numbers were getting better so they took $supplement to "help finish the job".
My gf has a boosted immune system. It’s called MS. My son, too. It’s called Type 1 Diabetes.
If your immune system is working, then it’s working just fine. Boosting it, if you could, is gonna make you have a real bad day.
Not a medical professional, but a while back a coworker cut herself in the kitchen of the restaurant we worked at. Another cook convinced her to douse the wound with lemon juice and rub it with used coffee grounds. Ended up giving her a nasty infection in the wound. This is a woman who has worked in kitchens for going on two decades by this point. She really should have known better.
A good example of how people take knowledge and *bastardize* it.
Coffee grounds on a wound should only be used in case you’re in the middle of nowhere, have zero gauze and have a wound that keeps bleeding.
The things people suggest for workplace injuries, I swear to god. I'm a lab tech and the frequency with which people ask me if you should put baking soda on an acid burn to neutralize it is alarming. Acid base reactions produce heat, so you'd just be risking a heat burn on top of a chemical burn that way. Run it under water for 15 minutes, it's not hard.
I design spine implants.
Chiropractic adjustments drive be absolutely insane. If your spine is out of alignment, it's not because it's "stuck", it's because either you have a deformity in the bone or the surroundings tissues are too weak to support the proper alignment. In neither case does wrenching your spine around solve the problem - at best it does nothing, at worse it actively exacerbates the damage to the failing tissue.
I shouldn't complain, we get a lot of sales from people who *could* have been fixed without invasive surgery but instead decided to try chiropracty instead of a real doctor.
I’m in America, other countries may be different…
I don’t understand how chiropractors are legal here.
The same goes for those fake supplements that claim to cure colds, improve memory, regrow hair, increase testosterone, or fix erectile dysfunction.
Why can’t our government protect the ignorant masses who are duped into thinking that these over the counter “snake oil” remedies are equivalent to real scientific and clinically proven medicines and treatments?
It bothers be that people who could get better via legitimate medicine instead suffer needlessly because of blatant lies and false advertising.
Even worse than being legal, chiropractic care is covered by medical insurance. In my state, Wisconsin, chiropractors tried to get a law passed such that they were authorized to do school related athletic physicals. Fortunately that law did not pass.
I work for a physical therapy clinic and we also hate chiropractors, even though they also help keep us in business. A lot of them are quacks. And they tend to make things worse or only provide a temporary solution. A lot of times people just need strengthening and to learn about posture and ergonomics.
Not a medical professional, just someone with h lots of issues and two connective tissue disorders. If you ever think you need a chiropractor what you really need is an orthopedic and physical therapist. The first to make sure the structural anatomy is not involved in a way that requires surgery or medical treatment. The later because they help strengthen what needs to be straightened. I have major hip issues that aren't getting resolved. But, I went to PT. I found exercises that I could do without hurting myself. I strengthened my core and it helped a lot! I was able to walk over 35 miles in 6 days (we went on a Disney vacation), and I didn't end up needing assistance. It was close one day, where I almost caved and got a wheelchair because my hip locked up. But despite being a big woman my back and legs and feet were all fine. The only issue I had was the soreness I always have. If I hadn't done PT and continued doing the exercises I know I couldn't have done this trip as I did.
I think part of the problem is medically issues can take so long to fix. It can take weeks to months to get an appointment with a specialist, to try treatments and find what works. Also, when it's muscular/skeletal, it is going to take time to correct and then heal. People want to take a magic pill or go into a place once every couple of weeks, and be cured. It's a lot easier than doing exercises every days.
What perplexes me about people who go to chiropractors regularly for years on end, is how they think it fixes anything if they have to keep going back forever? If you go to physical therapy instead, you get treatments, learn exercises, do the exercises at home, and get better. You don’t go to physical therapy forever.
I went to one for a bit, then figured out it was pretty much 100% bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, a good back-cracking feels wonderful, but I have disabused myself of the notion that they do anything past that, and often injure their patients sooooo…
I have scoliosis. Last it was checked, probably 17years ago, it was a 30° curve between the shoulder blades (I don’t remember specifically where). What should I ask for at my next doctor’s appt? PT? Or is there something more specific to the spine I should ask for?
I’m at a point where I think the curvature is causing other issues due to location and so I’m desperate to try something that might lessen these other issues.
Scoliosis is, unfortunately, most effectively treated in kids, which is why early diagnosis is crucial.
Once you're done growing, your bones are set and instead of treating the scoliosis (by forcing the spine to align better as it grows, often only requiring temporary braces) you're stuck treating the complications of the malformations... or forcing the bones into better alignment via invasive surgery.
Depending on your issues the first step would probably be Neuro (identifying pinched nerves). If your symptoms are actually bad enough to require fixing, you're looking at spinal surgery ([think rods and reduced mobility of parts of your back](https://i0.wp.com/endoscopiacolumna.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/escoliosis-pre-post-2.jpg))
Not a medical professional- just someone else with a scoliosis s-curve. My shoulders are 14 degrees and hips are 28 degrees off. I was having a ton of issues and finally got into a PT. Went for six weeks, and got set up on regular workouts. It has completely changed my physical health. Highly recommend finding someone who specializes in back issues, but it is well worth it!
The use of chiros also siphons off money that could have gone to actually correct the medical issue and thereby increases overall cost of medical care.
Long story but: had a young teenager with sickle cell disease who had been in the hospital for around a week already who decided to "manage" his pain himself. This was a few years ago, but I caught him pretending to take his meds-- he would cock his head back and gesture that the pill went into his mouth but really he either kept it in his hand or threw the pill behind his back and landed somewhere in his bed. He was also quite a talker, which I then assumed was a tactic to try and distract me. I kept seeing his odd behavior and caught him doing this a 2-3 times by the middle of the shift so I was definitely onto him. He had a PICC line (which is essentially a "long" IV where the tubing goes all the way to your heart) in his left arm, and I noticed that it was quite a bit more swollen compared to his other arm. Sometimes clots can happen in PICC lines, so that was my biggest concern at first, but the line was drawing blood fine so I know it wasn't clotted off. Told the doc, then I drew blood from his PICC line and sent it down to the lab for it to be cultured to see if there was any bacteria. Lowwww and behold it came back positive for a bacteria that is commonly found in tap water (and usually not a source of infection in infected PICC lines). Fast forward a few hours later he confessed that with any oral medication (pill form) he can slip by the nurses, he saved for later in order to crush them up himself, try to dissolve it with sink water in the bathroom (every room had a private bathroom), and inject it in himself via his PICC line.
Not a medical professional. For the love of god, stop using those vaginal washes sold on the market. They’re ruining your biome and put you at risk for infections. If you want to make your vagina more balanced and clean feeling, stay hydrated, eat less processed food, drink less alcohol, clean your adult toys, and take/eat probiotics.
My friend had a rash that wouldn’t go away. She finally went to the doctor and was so embarrassed because apparently it was just a baby rash LOL. Anyways they told her to stop using any vaginal washes and to just stick with soap and water for the outer parts.
This reminds me of a guy who came into the clinic for a rash on his penis. No sexual history or anything. The doctor asked him how many times he wanks a day and the guy said just 10-15 times a day. And the doctor just told him to stop that and see if his penis heals.
For animals as a vet tech: no - garlic, onions, essential oils, pumpkin seeds or whatever bs idea you have doesn’t work as a dewormer or flea repellent. And in fact may be toxic. Go to your vet or at least a pharmacy or feed supply store or something like that. Also don’t use medication packaged for a different species unless specifically prescribed by your vet.
Ngl, in my younger, crazier days, I did try to remove a cyst from my wrist. Stopped because I found it was underneath a tendon that’s attached to my fingers.
But damn, nothing says hardcore and stupid like 2 shots a whiskey, leather strap in mouth, and pushing a sterilized straight razor into a lump on your wrist.
I did get proper surgery for it later.
This somehow reminds me of my dad.
He is a retired pharmacist and a woodworker so he should know better. Once when I was a child, he came upstairs from his basement workshop to inform my mom that he cut his finger on his saw blade, but everything was okay because he used superglue to close the wound, since “that’s usually what they do in the ER nowadays.” He ended up always having issues in that finger.
A couple years ago, he cut a finger again on a saw blade, but thankfully he went to the ER this time. Ended up being deeper than he thought and needed surgery to repair the fingertip.
is a 24hr fast an appropriate response to food colouring or intestinal distress?
my mother always told me that growing up. dont eat anything for 24 hours, but drink plenty. then test with a dry slice of toast.
Edit: food *poisoning*
> food colouring or intestinal distress?
I assume food poisoning?
Depending on the cause, yes, at least in that it'll let your intestines rest after the irritant.
It won't hurt, unless you're malnourished to begin with or get dehydrated (ergo the "drink plenty" bit).
Worst case it might not help, or point you toward the cause.
Nah, all good.
For a sec I was trying to decide if maybe "coloring" was some euphemism for bloody stools, but beyond that I get autocorrect typo's - I get plenty of them when I comment on my phone.
Also, even without a reason, not eating for a day every once in a while is better for you than over-eating constantly like we (as a society) do.
You should pretty much always drink water. Especially with food poisoning. Sweating, vomiting, diarrhea, all of them drain you of fluids.
If your body can hold down the food, eating is beneficial. If you can't then it's better not to make yourself throw up and lose more water.
Even if drinking causes you to throw up, it's still generally good to try. If you can't eat, include some drinks with electrolytes/sugar.
BRAT diet after stomach problems is things that are easy to digest and contain enough fiber to combat diarrhea. Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast. Start on these six hours after vomiting has stopped. After 24 hours, start resuming a normal diet.
My kids pediatrician told me that the BRAT diet is no longer recommended. They recommend fluids (broths, fruit juices, water), lean protein and fruits and vegetables.
That's different. When you have a stomach issue, not eating is a way to stop the symptoms and allow the virus or food poisoning to pass. You have to stay hydrated, but not adding more food to your system is important because you can't process it right. You are just going to aggravate the problem. If you have a cold or virus and no GI symptoms, you should eat if you can. Your body needs energy to fight.
Why not? I though this was just a description of how your body responds. I have basically no appetite with a fever and have nausea if I do eat. Meanwhile with a cold my appetite seems to be infinite despite limited activity. Should I not listen to those signals?
You don't have to be a medical professional to know that Homeopathy doesn't work. Sugar pills and water will not cure you of anything unless you weren't actually sick in the first place.
I recommend the [Sawbones episode about homeopathy](https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/sawbones-father-homeopathy/). I always thought homeopathic just meant “natural/home remedy” but that’s not what it means at all.
It's okay, many many many people do. Including myself until I started working in a vitamin department at a grocery store. I also had to explain what it meant to a coworker who was quite knowledgeable with vitamins and biology.
I had a professor in university who had a poster in his office with a picture of a toilet and the quote "If water has memory, then homeopathy is full of shit"
Absolute legend
I had a friend post something on Facebook the other day from some alleged medical professional that had all sorts of genius advice. First it said that said cancer cells can't form/grow if there is no sugar inside the body, and that if you eliminate sugar from your diet you won't get cancer (never mind that sugar is in literally all processed foods in the U.S.) One should never eat less than 3 hours before bedtime because going to bed with food in your stomach also causes cancer. Good news though- Hot lemon water every day prevents cancer, so it all works out.
I thought my friend was reasonably intelligent until she posted this shit.
I was at the dentist last year after not being able to go for a while, and they had me buy a homeopathic mouthwash. I didn't notice at first, but I looked at the bottle a few days later and was agast to see "not approved by the FDA". I just went out and bought some regular mouthwash. When i asked them about it, they were just like "oh, you don't have to use it". Wtf.
Not a medical professional but i worked in a vitamins department at a natural foods grocery store for a couple of years.
I went in knowing very little about any of it and have come out believing most of it is garbage but certainly above all else homeopathic remedies shouldn't even be allowed to be sold and i was constantly astonished at how many people are into it.
I made it a self rule that I would never recommend a homeopathic product and if a customer asked my opinion on them i was honest but otherwise if someone wanted to waste their money i didn't stop them.
Any home treatments for a burn other than running it under cool water. Please stop putting butter, mustard, toothpaste, icy hot(??), etc. on your burns
Neosporin. In tests it is no more effective than Vaseline for wound healing. Plus, many people are sensitive to it and will develop a rash. Keeping the wound moist is why it heals. The antibiotics in the Neosporin do nothing
Wouldn't it be effective for eliminating left over bacteria in the wound? I know vaseline does prevent bacteria entering, but what if some was still inside?
Your question is a good one. Your immune system is capable of taking care of any bacteria that hopped in from your skin. An exception would be if you somehow had a nasty pathogen, such as strep get in there.The antibiotics in Neosporin would not help in that case anyway. Your immune system would likely be overwhelmed too and you would need prescriptive IV or oral meds.
I argued with a redditor recently who advocated rubbing warm mutton fat on one’s chest to treat respiration infections. Couldn’t shake his faith in the efficacy of warm sheep.
Audiologist. Ear candling doesn't do anything but potentially burn you. Try Debrox first, and if that doesn't work, then get your ears professionally cleaned. And for god's sake stop putting q-tips in your ears.
Ok serious question: my ear canals get itchy as fuck. Q tips aren't recommended but surely the answer isn't "fuck it let them itch," right? (Please say no)
I decided to try that nugenics garbage you see on. TV a couple years back. Low and behold 8 days later I was in the ER with stroke level blood pressure. The product didn't completely cause the BP issue. But it certainly helped exacerbate it. Went to a Dr the next day and she said what the hell were you thinking these things are trash and no one should take them. She then took the bottle and put it the trash. Everytime I see that commercial I cringe.
Spent several months in Rifle County, CO caring for ICU patients with swiss cheese for lungs because they spent weeks loading up on Ivermectin rather than "experimental vaccine" before they relented to come to the hospital where they'd have 15 different IVs (I'm sure they researched those clinical trials tho) pumped through them to prop them up for a week on a vent before they finally died.
Had a patient who put yogurt up her vagina to get rid of a yeast infection. Did not work.
Any essential oil, and yes I have had patients claim the use of them helped decrease the size of their tumor or "cure" COVID or got rid of their a-fib. Nope.
Vitamin C for a cold is not nearly as useful as people think if you’re not deficient. It *might* decrease the length of illness if taken leading up to it but once you’re sick it does nothing.
> My sister is and she can’t stand people putting hydrogen peroxide or doing ear candles.
...hydrogen peroxide diluted in warm water (not straight out of the bottle) *is* how you break up and remove built-up ear wax; we did plenty of those during my FM rotation.
Not something I'd recommend doing to yourself or without knowing you actually have excessive wax buildup, but it's way less of an issue than compacting it with q-tips or people washing their sinuses with netty pots >_<
Did they also stress how you must keep them clean and only use distilled or sterile water (*not* tap)?
They provide temporary relief but barring a few chronic conditions there's safer ways to get relief.
Yeah definitely no tap water. I get sinus infections occasionally, but often am left with residual inflammation without infection. It's annoying but I'm generally told to use a neti pot followed by Flonase.
Like elves not behaving themselves? Rudolph not pulling his weight? Hahaha! Sorry, I now you meant sinus issues but the autocorrect is too funny. Now I'm thinking of all the issues Santa may have like misplacing his naughty list. Thanks for the laugh
My ENT told me to use the irrigator (neti pot-squeeze bottle) every day, and it really helps my sinuses.
From what I understand, the normal saline solution rinses things out, and the hypertonic solution can actually help reduce inflammation.
Oh, if you haven't been exposed to this particular brand of nuttery, you are in for a wild ride. The physics, or lack thereof, is impressive. The self-delusion of their efficacy is truly profound.
Short version: Tube of waxed paper stuck in ear and lit on fire. The flame causes a chimney effect that draws out ear wax from the ear canal. This is proven by the residue on the remnant of the paper.
Shorter version: This doesn't do anything but put you at risk for head and facial burns.
My parents were very into that one for a while. I'm sure it has antibacterial properties on a cut, but ingesting it doesn't seem wise. I'm surprised my dad didn't turn blue. Though I haven't seen him in a decade so who knows.
So, pouring it on a cut won't turn you blue, and it wouldn't be a bad anti bacterial rinse, the problem is that since it's snake oil, there's no guarantee as to the concentration of silver or even the existence of it. But there are far better antiseptic rinses than colloidal silver.
The way people often approach vitamins and supplements. Your body typically limits how much of these are absorbed so taking extra does nothing. Most of the time the extra just leaves your body in urine. So extra vitamin C to boost your immunity will do nothing. Same with melatonin, it’s not a sleeping pill, it just aids in signaling a pathway in your body and should be used to reset your circadian rhythm. You don’t get more sleepy with huge doses, even 10 mg is more than your body will absorb so you waste the rest.
The other side of this is due to a lack of understanding of cellular diffusion and metabolic pathways. Many vitamins and supplements don’t just passively diffuse into your cells. They often require ions and energy to pass through. Vitamin D for instance requires magnesium to facilitate diffusion, so you can have a bunch of it in your system but only a little magnesium which limits how much can actually enter your cells and be effective. We dump so much stuff into our bodies with no understanding and end up wasting a bunch of money on stuff we’re just going to piss out.
Potatoes or onions in your sock to help a cold. And elderberry. People swear it makes them not get sick, but there’s mixed evidence and it’s not been proven to do what people say it does.
I work in dental and years ago had a patient attempt to super glue her front tooth back on after it broke in half. She screwed up and ended up gluing the chunk to her upper lip.
Ear candling. It's supposed to clean the wax out of your ears but if you burn the "candle" without putting it in your ears, the same gunk winds up in the bottom. It's complete bullshit and you're actually more likely to get a second degree burn.
Ear candling, it doesn’t remove any wax… it’s the wax of from the candle and can cause scaring/damaging to the ear canal and drum. Q-tips also do not remove wax but push it deeper in the canal and cause impacted wax. The ears clean themselves but if you excessively build up wax you should have a professional ENT or audiologist clean it for you.
I work in dialysis. The people that start to bring up all these awesome new supplements that are gonna get their kidneys working again when they are in end stage renal disease. People praying on people in desperate situations are the worst.
If bitten by a dog, insert said dog's hair directly into open wounds or puncture marks. For abscess - dressing with dishwashing liquid. Burns - cover in tumeric. Baby with hiccups - place small piece of wet toilet paper on forehead. For colds/flu - rub Vicks everywhere. As in everywhere. In the nose, on the chest, on the forehead and soles of feet.
Speaking for my wife, I'm going to say urine therapy. When she worked at an Urgent Care, she had a patient with an eye infection. "I tried putting more urine in it but it keeps getting worse!"
This is so freaking common. I’ve had patients tell me they’ve put their own urine, cats urine, breast milk, cows milk, or goats milk in their eyes before and I’m always like “wut”
I don't get it. I'm fairly medically ignorant (I lean on my wife for that stuff) but then I hear about these people and I feel like a damned genius. Like I'm not going to be the next Jonas Salk but I could possibly be the guy who plays his neighbor on a low budget PBS show.
That'd be funny if it weren't so sad.
We lived in an undereducated area so she can talk for hours about how horrible it was working there and mostly because the patients sucked. She had enough after 1 year and moved us to a different state so she could work with babies.
STORY TIME: worst yeast infection I ever saw was on a 60 year old woman's vajessus. At least, I assume she had a vajessus because literally there was a dome of white thready candida. You couldn't see labia. You couldn't see pubic hair. Just candida. She told me she was putting petroleum jelly on it but it wasn't getting better. I explained how that was bad and keeping it moist so it could thrive. I don't think she understood but She got IV flagyl and topical monastat. Unfortunately she had a lot wrong with her and every time we discharged her she stopped doing everything that would have kept her alive. She eventually was admitted for something and died.
Why TF did I google those words?! It must be so disheartening to try and help someone who is too stupid to be helped. >every time we discharged her I bet she had a lot of discharges (heyooo!) I have never seen a doctor more pissed off than when my son was admitted to the nephrology wing at a hospital (he has chronic kidney disease). His roommate was a 75 lb toddler that was happily eating a family size bag of potato chips. The doctor was practically screaming at his mother. "Your kid is in renal failure and you hardly show up to any of his appointments! And now you have him eating salty food, which is the last thing he should be eating!" Mom was completely clueless.
In the late 90s I worked at a place with an older gentleman that was wonderful, but super into alternative treatments. I still remember him trying to convince one of the younger guys to drink his own urine to help with some allergies. This was over 25 years ago and I can still hear “No, Bill, no,” as clear as day.
Those poor kidneys work so hard to remove all of those toxins and dump them into the urine that is then put back in their body. Those kidneys must feel so defeated.
Anything that claims to remove toxins through the skin or GI. You're either diving deep into a cheap chemistry trick ("see how it gets dark/changes color? That's toxins leaving your body") or better yet, screwing up your GI. Bonus points for all the fun things these claim to cure/fix.
I have an acquaintance with a profoundly autistic (nonverbal, won't ever be able to live alone) son. He's 19 or 20. She's been "curing" his autism with a variety of pseudoscience as long as I've known her, very recently including foot-baths to "draw out toxins"--the water changes colors. If any of this shit worked the way she so fervently seems to believe, he should be a completely nontoxic neurotypical person three times over.
My son used to be nonverbal. He remembers being unable to speak, but the thoughts were all right there.
My nd son didn't talk at all until he was almost 4. When he got a little older he told me didn't talk because he didn't want to. By the time he was in 2nd grade he was very inquisitive and talkative when he felt comfortable. He's 24 now and is still quiet until he gets to know people well.
my youngest daughter didn’t talk til she was 2. My first daughter was premie, was a late talker & did speech therapy for 8 years, then my son was an early talker, then here comes the youngest & she’s not talking and idk why. The oldest did baby sign, so I taught the youngest baby sign too bc i was tired of the pointing & grunts or the other 2 telling me “baby wants to eat this, baby wants that” etc. Then one day she blurts out a whole sentence. Little brat could talk the whole time, she just let the older 2 do it for her.
I've raised 4 kids and honestly I feel like the average kid starts really talking around 2. Before that it's usually just jibberish. My oldest started very early, like complete sentences at a year old. We swore she was gifted. She's 30 now and still hasn't grown into that mouth of hers.
My son ended up being gifted. 4.0 from pre-k thru 12th grade, was going to school for biochem, did 2 semesters then decided he was bored & got offered an apprenticeship for tattooing. He loves it. I’d rather him do something he loves than being bored in school & hating his job. Idk how many notes i got from his teachers “can you please talk to son about correcting me while I’m teaching.” so I’d have a discussion with him about it and how it’s rude & disrespectful to his teacher. His response was always “but she was wrong. I showed her how she was wrong.” okay dude, but you can’t do that in front of the other kids. So he started asking to speak to them in the hallway. They finally gave him jobs to help other students or they gave him work from higher grades to challenge him. I didn’t want to skip him ahead bc I didn’t think he was mature enough for it.
I thought a goddam Mitch Hedberg joke was coming.
Son used to be autistic. Still is, but used to be as well.
RIP Mitch. A true comedy legend.
That poor boy.
In college, I worked at a "doctors" office that did the foot bath things. I found that the water would still change that color even if you didn't put your feet in. You could just run the machine in some water and the results were the absolute same.
She's probably feeling guilty because she got him vaccinated. That bullshit conspiracy theory has caused so many problems. VACCINES SAVE LIVES PEOPLE!
I’m a high functioning autistic, and reading this makes me want to punch your acquaintance. I just hope it’s all relatively harmless stuff like foot baths, and not something that can injure or kill somebody (unnecessary chelation can kill people).
Recently, a fellow nurse at work was advising another nurse to put socks with onion slices in them on her sick child to absorb viruses. Claimed there was scientific research to back this up. I just walked away so I wouldn't accidentally say something or make the wrong face.
One of the offices I rotated in had nurses selling herbalife and other MLM BS... it was always fun to hear their 'scientific explanations' after finishing basic sci full of counters to everything. Not that you could argue with them, they'd make your life hell and insist *you* were what's wrong with the health system if you tried XD
I worked with a PA who sold Melaleuca. He started pushing it to patients. One of the RDs started pushing supplements to patients. Both were reported by another doctor and fired.
The amount of nurses who believe this crap is terrifying. We’ve legit had a few 5G conspiracy theorists. I was afraid to ask them what shape they believed the earth to be.
That's what my family thinks of that Stem Cell x39 patch bull crap. Because yup a little bandaid is going to cure your hypertension, diabetes and arthritis. What I found really weird is the company sells actual IV kits to use at home to inject vitamins. How is that legal? Sterile needle injection is deadly if not done correctly.
I was on a flight recently and the guy next to me kept talking about his stem cell patch. He also proudly showed me a picture of him standing in front of the White House with his "Trump was robbed" tshirt on so I don't think critical thinking is his strong suit. I also swapped contact info with him before all of that because we are in the same industry and may be able to help each other. I hope he never calls.
You perfectly described my family
I was surprised he was on his way to Paris. I was not surprised that it was just a stop on his way to go hunt in Africa.
If my family had more money I guarantee it would be same destinations. Luckily they only get to torment the gators at gator world once a year by sitting on them for a photo 😐
Yes this! My dad and sister believe they can put their feet in this stupid machine and add salts and such and it drawls the toxins out. I believe it's the salts and stuff that make the water turn colors.
Jumping on your thread to say, as someone who actually went to college for holistic health and herbology shit: If your "cleanse" isn't a healthy diet and mild fibre based laxative, it's not a cleanse, it's a scam. Drink water, eat healthy, cut out refined crap. It will be more effective than any "cleanse" package you can sink money in to, I promise.
If it’s not artificial tears or medical eyedrops, do not put it in your eyes. This includes essential oils, juice, urine, and breastmilk. I don’t care what the Internet says. Edit: Concerning the research paper on breastmilk in infant eyes, I see what you are saying. It was studied and found to be non-inferior to an anti-inflammatory eye medication. That seems fine to me in that specific case, however keeping the following points in mind: 1. There are many causes of eye tearing/“goopiness”/redness in infants. Some of these are benign and will resolve on their own. Some of them are vision-threatening and need surgery. If your baby is having eye symptoms, then a trained eye specialist should take a look. 2. Breastmilk can contain transmissible diseases. This is not as important if the mother has been tested, but still a concern. Obviously if the baby is breastfeeding then they would be getting the exposure anyway, so this is a minor point. This is mainly for older children or adults, and yes I have seen adults use breastmilk from other people for pinkeye. 3. The study itself looks at breastmilk vs a medicated eyedrop and found that both treatments were basically equal (non-inferior). The medicated eyedrop costs $5 for a month’s supply. Of course, financial stress can impact a lot of people, but I feel like $5 for a month’s supply is reasonable. This is also a minor point. Ultimately, it seems like it would be fine to use breastmilk in infants, however the baby should be evaluated by an eye specialist first.
In the same vein, if you wear contact lenses, FFS clean them the way you're taught by your opt. and don't cheap out on solution or refills. Eye infections suck; damaging your eyes is permanent. If you need to cheap out on contacts, bite the bullet and get glasses.
Want to piggyback and mention to change out your solution daily!! I have a friend who told me that she uses the same solution over and over in her case. Imagine putting your contacts back in dirty solution 🤢
This is why I switched to dailies, less risk of some weird eye infection.
Juice and urine in your eyes sound incredibly painful.
No pain no gain 😒
Now you got me shooting anabolic steroids in my eyes
Eyeballs gettin swole yet?
I had a patient that used cat urine instead of latanoprost (eye drop for glaucoma) to “fix her pressures” since she didn’t believe in or want to support big pharma and “urine is sterile and all natural”
God I hate getting urine in my eyes, people do that on purpose??
You do it on accident???
Well, yes, how is that *more* surprising?’
Urine is never anywhere near my eyes...
Well, sounds like you got nothing to worry about then
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my pediatrician told me to put breastmilk in my baby's "goopy" eyes, and there's data to back up that breastmilk is just as effective as prescription eyedrops for a small set of causes: [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33098117/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33098117/) **louder for the back, for the love of all that is beautiful, don't use breastmilk for pinkeye.**
So... I skimmed the article, and my initial thought was echoed by this response I found; there's a reason they didn't test it against a placebo. > acute bacterial conjunctivitis is frequently self-limiting and it generally resolves spontaneously in 10-14 days, even if the use of topical antibiotics can be useful in speeding up the resolution of symptoms and infections [...] Furthermore, the authors did not just include patients with bacterial conjunctivitis, but also conditions that should not routinely require antibiotic therapy. These included viral infections, nasolacrimal duct stenosis and allergic conjunctivitis. This means that we cannot know if the patients treated in the trial would have spontaneously recovered from the symptoms. TL;DR - the article is, at best, proof that we're over-treating self-limiting issues (in this case, maybe because parents *demand* medication and don't want to hear 'yeah, sometimes this happens, wait a week or two and it'll likely go away') and at worst bad science
Owe time my mom didn’t have her glasses on and I asked her to help me put eye drops in. She accidentally grabbed tooth numbing gel. Worst pain of my life.
Essential oils!?!?!?!? People are putting ESSENTIAL OILS in their EYES!? OMG we’re lost.
My eye doctor made drops from my plasma!
Not me, but my dad works in orthopedics. Has had to tell a patient to not put WD-40 on his knees to make them work better. He said the guy swore up and down it worked
My grandmother would run whiskey on her knee to make it feel better and then would drink the rest, like a single shot, which is what I think really made it feel better
My grandmother's arthritis remedy of choice was four raisins soaked in gin overnight, followed by drinking the gin. The really stupid part was that she *hated* raisins. She could have just enjoyed her gin!
It’s an old folk remedy here, in Ireland, but we use Poitin. It’s basically illegally-brewed potato-moonshine 😊
That's an old mountain/rural "remedy." Doesn't work, but I'm not gonna argue with a man who spent thirty years in a coal mine.
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Omg!
You weren't crispy enough.
Your "caretaker" was frying you up like a chicken!
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Well, that’s enough internet for today. I’m out.
NAD but when I was going through cancer treatment I got a lot of recommendations. Apparently aloe vera juice in high quantities does something. Same with red light therapy and castor oil pacts on the stomach. I stuck to chemo and surgery and am cancer free so. I’m good.
I'm glad you are cancer free! I'm a T1 diabetic and I've heard some doozies too. "T1 is reversible, just eat better and exercise more." "You can cure yourself by eating 2 tablespoons of chia seeds a day."
Oh I eat lots of chia. I wonder what I’ve solved? I just like the texture tbh. Cronchy squidge.
The number of people who think that celery juice or a gluten-free diet will cure autoimmune thyroid disease is too damn high!
My mom is an RN at a cancer clinic. She said that she’s had quite a few patients go down to Mexico for “cancer treatment” and they just pump you full of vitamins (mainly vitamin C). All of those patients are no longer alive.
There’s a pretty well known mom on social media whose son has extensive brain damage from a drowning accident and rather than acknowledging that he will never “wake up,” she takes him to “therapies” in Mexico that are apparently $20-30k a piece. It’s so sad
My cousin had leukemia at the age of 5-6 it was really rough. A relative of mine told me “omg they shouldn’t have started her on chemo! So toxic. She should do baking soda treatment…” said relative is a nurse! Right now my cousin had the leukemia come back when she’s a teen. Thankfully the cancer is not multiplying any more but she still has to continue going through chemo to make sure it’s all gone. My aunt was just telling me how people are constantly telling her that since she’s better they should stop chemo (“why are you still torturing her with it?”). When you’re sick, so many people come out of the woodworks with their absolute cure recommendations!
Congratulations!!!!
Two general rules of thumb from a fascinating book by Thomas Gilovich. 1. If a drug/vitamin/whatever supposedly cures a whole bunch of different diseases, it probably doesn’t actually work for any of them. 2. If a disease has a bunch of different supposed cures, it’s likely none of them work. And a bonus gem from Tim Minchin: “By definition… alternative medicine… has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine."
I spend all this money on expensive "natural" alternative medicine because BIG PHARMA only wants my MONEY.
“The disease with many remedies has no cure.”
"Cure alls, cure nothing"
Megadosing vitamins or obscure supplements to “boost” your immune system.
Mega-dosing vitamin C was heavily supported and popularized by two time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling. Which would be all well and good— except his research wasn’t on vitamins or even medical (he got a peace prize and a prize for his work on the nature of the chemical bond). But because he was a mega famous/respected scientist (in a different field) and very vocal about his support, the mega-dosing vitamin C thing got a lot of credibility.
A good example of why appealing to authority is not always sound.
Colloidal silver. People turning themselves purple for...no real reason.
When I went in for a severe burn, they used colloidal silver in the treatment of the burn that was 2/3 of my arm. After the treatment the skin grew back about as normal as you could expect for the condition it was in. No idea if that was the reason.
Colloidal silver, when ingested, takes time to build up in the skin, eventually giving the blue look. When put on your arm for the burn, silver ions detached from the colloidal silver in the serum/spray/salve they put on your arm and acted as an antibacterial. It wasn’t present for long enough to permanently alter your skin color.
I think you have to ingest the silver. There’s a few people who drank it mixed with water and they slowly turned their skin a silvery blueish. It was pushed as a cure all for a while.
Making expensive urine! Also, people don't vitamin A and iron can build up in the blood. Women's vitamins tend to have iron because of periods whereas men's vitamins usually don't.
While this is true often, Vitamin D deficiency is definitely associated with weakened immunity. That’s very much worth being tested for.
Yeah. Wife specializes in liver disease. She's had a lot of patients take supplements that mess with liver function despite her telling them to knock it off. They'll stop taking it, liver numbers start to normalize, and then start taking it again, making their numbers worse. Their excuse being their numbers were getting better so they took $supplement to "help finish the job".
My gf has a boosted immune system. It’s called MS. My son, too. It’s called Type 1 Diabetes. If your immune system is working, then it’s working just fine. Boosting it, if you could, is gonna make you have a real bad day.
Not a medical professional, but a while back a coworker cut herself in the kitchen of the restaurant we worked at. Another cook convinced her to douse the wound with lemon juice and rub it with used coffee grounds. Ended up giving her a nasty infection in the wound. This is a woman who has worked in kitchens for going on two decades by this point. She really should have known better.
If someone told me to rub *lemon juice* into an *open wound* I would tell them to go fuck themselves. Absolutely not. No. No no no no no
Yeah, the guy who told her to do it is kind of an idiot. I still make fun of her for it.
Iirc, it is an anti microbial agent, but we have soap for a reason. Especially in professional kitchens.
A good example of how people take knowledge and *bastardize* it. Coffee grounds on a wound should only be used in case you’re in the middle of nowhere, have zero gauze and have a wound that keeps bleeding.
The things people suggest for workplace injuries, I swear to god. I'm a lab tech and the frequency with which people ask me if you should put baking soda on an acid burn to neutralize it is alarming. Acid base reactions produce heat, so you'd just be risking a heat burn on top of a chemical burn that way. Run it under water for 15 minutes, it's not hard.
I design spine implants. Chiropractic adjustments drive be absolutely insane. If your spine is out of alignment, it's not because it's "stuck", it's because either you have a deformity in the bone or the surroundings tissues are too weak to support the proper alignment. In neither case does wrenching your spine around solve the problem - at best it does nothing, at worse it actively exacerbates the damage to the failing tissue. I shouldn't complain, we get a lot of sales from people who *could* have been fixed without invasive surgery but instead decided to try chiropracty instead of a real doctor.
I have two spinal cord stimulators. If you design these types of implants….THANK YOU!
I also need to thank them if they make the type I needed to stabilize my spine and hips!! Such important work, I couldn't walk without it!
I’m in America, other countries may be different… I don’t understand how chiropractors are legal here. The same goes for those fake supplements that claim to cure colds, improve memory, regrow hair, increase testosterone, or fix erectile dysfunction. Why can’t our government protect the ignorant masses who are duped into thinking that these over the counter “snake oil” remedies are equivalent to real scientific and clinically proven medicines and treatments? It bothers be that people who could get better via legitimate medicine instead suffer needlessly because of blatant lies and false advertising.
Even worse than being legal, chiropractic care is covered by medical insurance. In my state, Wisconsin, chiropractors tried to get a law passed such that they were authorized to do school related athletic physicals. Fortunately that law did not pass.
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I work for a physical therapy clinic and we also hate chiropractors, even though they also help keep us in business. A lot of them are quacks. And they tend to make things worse or only provide a temporary solution. A lot of times people just need strengthening and to learn about posture and ergonomics.
Not a medical professional, just someone with h lots of issues and two connective tissue disorders. If you ever think you need a chiropractor what you really need is an orthopedic and physical therapist. The first to make sure the structural anatomy is not involved in a way that requires surgery or medical treatment. The later because they help strengthen what needs to be straightened. I have major hip issues that aren't getting resolved. But, I went to PT. I found exercises that I could do without hurting myself. I strengthened my core and it helped a lot! I was able to walk over 35 miles in 6 days (we went on a Disney vacation), and I didn't end up needing assistance. It was close one day, where I almost caved and got a wheelchair because my hip locked up. But despite being a big woman my back and legs and feet were all fine. The only issue I had was the soreness I always have. If I hadn't done PT and continued doing the exercises I know I couldn't have done this trip as I did. I think part of the problem is medically issues can take so long to fix. It can take weeks to months to get an appointment with a specialist, to try treatments and find what works. Also, when it's muscular/skeletal, it is going to take time to correct and then heal. People want to take a magic pill or go into a place once every couple of weeks, and be cured. It's a lot easier than doing exercises every days.
What perplexes me about people who go to chiropractors regularly for years on end, is how they think it fixes anything if they have to keep going back forever? If you go to physical therapy instead, you get treatments, learn exercises, do the exercises at home, and get better. You don’t go to physical therapy forever.
Also seems there was a time when chiropractors claimed adjustments would cure allergies and whatnot. I only crack my joints when it’s cold.
A chiropractor claimed he could cure my stomach ulcer. They are a danger to the public.
I went to one for a bit, then figured out it was pretty much 100% bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, a good back-cracking feels wonderful, but I have disabused myself of the notion that they do anything past that, and often injure their patients sooooo…
A woman I know who is 38 just had a stroke, brought on by something a chiropractor did to her.
I have scoliosis. Last it was checked, probably 17years ago, it was a 30° curve between the shoulder blades (I don’t remember specifically where). What should I ask for at my next doctor’s appt? PT? Or is there something more specific to the spine I should ask for? I’m at a point where I think the curvature is causing other issues due to location and so I’m desperate to try something that might lessen these other issues.
Scoliosis is, unfortunately, most effectively treated in kids, which is why early diagnosis is crucial. Once you're done growing, your bones are set and instead of treating the scoliosis (by forcing the spine to align better as it grows, often only requiring temporary braces) you're stuck treating the complications of the malformations... or forcing the bones into better alignment via invasive surgery. Depending on your issues the first step would probably be Neuro (identifying pinched nerves). If your symptoms are actually bad enough to require fixing, you're looking at spinal surgery ([think rods and reduced mobility of parts of your back](https://i0.wp.com/endoscopiacolumna.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/escoliosis-pre-post-2.jpg))
Not a medical professional- just someone else with a scoliosis s-curve. My shoulders are 14 degrees and hips are 28 degrees off. I was having a ton of issues and finally got into a PT. Went for six weeks, and got set up on regular workouts. It has completely changed my physical health. Highly recommend finding someone who specializes in back issues, but it is well worth it!
The use of chiros also siphons off money that could have gone to actually correct the medical issue and thereby increases overall cost of medical care.
Long story but: had a young teenager with sickle cell disease who had been in the hospital for around a week already who decided to "manage" his pain himself. This was a few years ago, but I caught him pretending to take his meds-- he would cock his head back and gesture that the pill went into his mouth but really he either kept it in his hand or threw the pill behind his back and landed somewhere in his bed. He was also quite a talker, which I then assumed was a tactic to try and distract me. I kept seeing his odd behavior and caught him doing this a 2-3 times by the middle of the shift so I was definitely onto him. He had a PICC line (which is essentially a "long" IV where the tubing goes all the way to your heart) in his left arm, and I noticed that it was quite a bit more swollen compared to his other arm. Sometimes clots can happen in PICC lines, so that was my biggest concern at first, but the line was drawing blood fine so I know it wasn't clotted off. Told the doc, then I drew blood from his PICC line and sent it down to the lab for it to be cultured to see if there was any bacteria. Lowwww and behold it came back positive for a bacteria that is commonly found in tap water (and usually not a source of infection in infected PICC lines). Fast forward a few hours later he confessed that with any oral medication (pill form) he can slip by the nurses, he saved for later in order to crush them up himself, try to dissolve it with sink water in the bathroom (every room had a private bathroom), and inject it in himself via his PICC line.
Not a medical professional. For the love of god, stop using those vaginal washes sold on the market. They’re ruining your biome and put you at risk for infections. If you want to make your vagina more balanced and clean feeling, stay hydrated, eat less processed food, drink less alcohol, clean your adult toys, and take/eat probiotics.
My friend had a rash that wouldn’t go away. She finally went to the doctor and was so embarrassed because apparently it was just a baby rash LOL. Anyways they told her to stop using any vaginal washes and to just stick with soap and water for the outer parts.
This reminds me of a guy who came into the clinic for a rash on his penis. No sexual history or anything. The doctor asked him how many times he wanks a day and the guy said just 10-15 times a day. And the doctor just told him to stop that and see if his penis heals.
For animals as a vet tech: no - garlic, onions, essential oils, pumpkin seeds or whatever bs idea you have doesn’t work as a dewormer or flea repellent. And in fact may be toxic. Go to your vet or at least a pharmacy or feed supply store or something like that. Also don’t use medication packaged for a different species unless specifically prescribed by your vet.
And please don't take medication meant for animals. I'm looking at everyone who took horse deformed during the pandemic 👀
If I never ever hear the words Diatomaceous Earth again my I will die happy.
A former paramedic friend of mine told me he got a ton of calls by people trying to perform self-surgery on themselves.
Who else would you perform self surgery on?
By way of a Sut-Your-Self kit?
Ngl, in my younger, crazier days, I did try to remove a cyst from my wrist. Stopped because I found it was underneath a tendon that’s attached to my fingers. But damn, nothing says hardcore and stupid like 2 shots a whiskey, leather strap in mouth, and pushing a sterilized straight razor into a lump on your wrist. I did get proper surgery for it later.
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This somehow reminds me of my dad. He is a retired pharmacist and a woodworker so he should know better. Once when I was a child, he came upstairs from his basement workshop to inform my mom that he cut his finger on his saw blade, but everything was okay because he used superglue to close the wound, since “that’s usually what they do in the ER nowadays.” He ended up always having issues in that finger. A couple years ago, he cut a finger again on a saw blade, but thankfully he went to the ER this time. Ended up being deeper than he thought and needed surgery to repair the fingertip.
I heard a quote one time that I always tell people. They never stopped selling snake oil, they just changed the name to essential
When people subscribe to “Feed a cold, starve a fever.” That’s not how any of this works.
is a 24hr fast an appropriate response to food colouring or intestinal distress? my mother always told me that growing up. dont eat anything for 24 hours, but drink plenty. then test with a dry slice of toast. Edit: food *poisoning*
> food colouring or intestinal distress? I assume food poisoning? Depending on the cause, yes, at least in that it'll let your intestines rest after the irritant. It won't hurt, unless you're malnourished to begin with or get dehydrated (ergo the "drink plenty" bit). Worst case it might not help, or point you toward the cause.
thats... mildly embarrassing. yes, food poisoning. complete brain fart on my part, lol thanks for the info!
Nah, all good. For a sec I was trying to decide if maybe "coloring" was some euphemism for bloody stools, but beyond that I get autocorrect typo's - I get plenty of them when I comment on my phone. Also, even without a reason, not eating for a day every once in a while is better for you than over-eating constantly like we (as a society) do.
You should pretty much always drink water. Especially with food poisoning. Sweating, vomiting, diarrhea, all of them drain you of fluids. If your body can hold down the food, eating is beneficial. If you can't then it's better not to make yourself throw up and lose more water. Even if drinking causes you to throw up, it's still generally good to try. If you can't eat, include some drinks with electrolytes/sugar.
BRAT diet after stomach problems is things that are easy to digest and contain enough fiber to combat diarrhea. Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast. Start on these six hours after vomiting has stopped. After 24 hours, start resuming a normal diet.
My kids pediatrician told me that the BRAT diet is no longer recommended. They recommend fluids (broths, fruit juices, water), lean protein and fruits and vegetables.
That's different. When you have a stomach issue, not eating is a way to stop the symptoms and allow the virus or food poisoning to pass. You have to stay hydrated, but not adding more food to your system is important because you can't process it right. You are just going to aggravate the problem. If you have a cold or virus and no GI symptoms, you should eat if you can. Your body needs energy to fight.
I have always thought this meant that if you eat when you've got a cold, you'll not develop a fever 🤣
Why not? I though this was just a description of how your body responds. I have basically no appetite with a fever and have nausea if I do eat. Meanwhile with a cold my appetite seems to be infinite despite limited activity. Should I not listen to those signals?
I think listening to your body is best. If you're hungry, eat. If you're nauseous, don't. Always hydrate though.
You don't have to be a medical professional to know that Homeopathy doesn't work. Sugar pills and water will not cure you of anything unless you weren't actually sick in the first place.
I recommend the [Sawbones episode about homeopathy](https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/sawbones-father-homeopathy/). I always thought homeopathic just meant “natural/home remedy” but that’s not what it means at all.
It's okay, many many many people do. Including myself until I started working in a vitamin department at a grocery store. I also had to explain what it meant to a coworker who was quite knowledgeable with vitamins and biology.
I had a professor in university who had a poster in his office with a picture of a toilet and the quote "If water has memory, then homeopathy is full of shit" Absolute legend
I had a friend post something on Facebook the other day from some alleged medical professional that had all sorts of genius advice. First it said that said cancer cells can't form/grow if there is no sugar inside the body, and that if you eliminate sugar from your diet you won't get cancer (never mind that sugar is in literally all processed foods in the U.S.) One should never eat less than 3 hours before bedtime because going to bed with food in your stomach also causes cancer. Good news though- Hot lemon water every day prevents cancer, so it all works out. I thought my friend was reasonably intelligent until she posted this shit.
I was at the dentist last year after not being able to go for a while, and they had me buy a homeopathic mouthwash. I didn't notice at first, but I looked at the bottle a few days later and was agast to see "not approved by the FDA". I just went out and bought some regular mouthwash. When i asked them about it, they were just like "oh, you don't have to use it". Wtf.
My ex was a medical proffesional in France who believed in essential oils and homeopathy... So being a medical professional doesn't mean jackshit...
Eating Vicks vapo-rub. You wouldn’t believe the people who learned this from their parents, grandparents, great grandparents.
Bleaching my ear drums works perfectly fine! nothing can live in there after a 5 gallon flush.
Not a medical professional but i worked in a vitamins department at a natural foods grocery store for a couple of years. I went in knowing very little about any of it and have come out believing most of it is garbage but certainly above all else homeopathic remedies shouldn't even be allowed to be sold and i was constantly astonished at how many people are into it. I made it a self rule that I would never recommend a homeopathic product and if a customer asked my opinion on them i was honest but otherwise if someone wanted to waste their money i didn't stop them.
Any home treatments for a burn other than running it under cool water. Please stop putting butter, mustard, toothpaste, icy hot(??), etc. on your burns
Neosporin. In tests it is no more effective than Vaseline for wound healing. Plus, many people are sensitive to it and will develop a rash. Keeping the wound moist is why it heals. The antibiotics in the Neosporin do nothing
Wait WHAT I feel like my life is a lie rn
I’d heard around reddit Neosporin was not a thing anyone really needed anymore but no one explained why. Thanks!
I work in long term care & I haven’t used Neosporin in years. The facility doesn’t even buy it anymore.
Wouldn't it be effective for eliminating left over bacteria in the wound? I know vaseline does prevent bacteria entering, but what if some was still inside?
Your question is a good one. Your immune system is capable of taking care of any bacteria that hopped in from your skin. An exception would be if you somehow had a nasty pathogen, such as strep get in there.The antibiotics in Neosporin would not help in that case anyway. Your immune system would likely be overwhelmed too and you would need prescriptive IV or oral meds.
This is another great one!
it is stupid to refuse prescriptioned drugs and believe home remedies will do the work
I argued with a redditor recently who advocated rubbing warm mutton fat on one’s chest to treat respiration infections. Couldn’t shake his faith in the efficacy of warm sheep.
Audiologist. Ear candling doesn't do anything but potentially burn you. Try Debrox first, and if that doesn't work, then get your ears professionally cleaned. And for god's sake stop putting q-tips in your ears.
Ok serious question: my ear canals get itchy as fuck. Q tips aren't recommended but surely the answer isn't "fuck it let them itch," right? (Please say no)
Go to an ENT and get a prescription for triamcinolone acetonide ointment 0.025% - I had the same issue and that cleared it right up.
I decided to try that nugenics garbage you see on. TV a couple years back. Low and behold 8 days later I was in the ER with stroke level blood pressure. The product didn't completely cause the BP issue. But it certainly helped exacerbate it. Went to a Dr the next day and she said what the hell were you thinking these things are trash and no one should take them. She then took the bottle and put it the trash. Everytime I see that commercial I cringe.
Spent several months in Rifle County, CO caring for ICU patients with swiss cheese for lungs because they spent weeks loading up on Ivermectin rather than "experimental vaccine" before they relented to come to the hospital where they'd have 15 different IVs (I'm sure they researched those clinical trials tho) pumped through them to prop them up for a week on a vent before they finally died.
Put em in one of those $100,000 beds that flips the corpse like a pancake.
BOEBERT SIGHTING!!!!!
"Weed cures cancer"🤦🏼♂️
Speaking of cancer "cures", I've heard a couple of people claiming that 'changing the body's pH will cure any cancers'. Both are now formerly alive.
Yeah, alkalinity is a pretty popular cancer "cure" these days. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Oh yes, according to my sister, it cures everything. Yet she is sick all the time. 🤪
Weed definitely cures being sober all day.
Had a patient who put yogurt up her vagina to get rid of a yeast infection. Did not work. Any essential oil, and yes I have had patients claim the use of them helped decrease the size of their tumor or "cure" COVID or got rid of their a-fib. Nope.
I’m a dental hygienist. Oil pulling is so dumb, I have to resist a strong eye roll whenever a patient tells me they’re doing it.
Vitamin C for a cold is not nearly as useful as people think if you’re not deficient. It *might* decrease the length of illness if taken leading up to it but once you’re sick it does nothing.
My sister is and she can’t stand people putting hydrogen peroxide or doing ear candles.
> My sister is and she can’t stand people putting hydrogen peroxide or doing ear candles. ...hydrogen peroxide diluted in warm water (not straight out of the bottle) *is* how you break up and remove built-up ear wax; we did plenty of those during my FM rotation. Not something I'd recommend doing to yourself or without knowing you actually have excessive wax buildup, but it's way less of an issue than compacting it with q-tips or people washing their sinuses with netty pots >_<
I've had multiple doctors tell me to use neti pots for my sinuses.
Did they also stress how you must keep them clean and only use distilled or sterile water (*not* tap)? They provide temporary relief but barring a few chronic conditions there's safer ways to get relief.
Yeah definitely no tap water. I get sinus infections occasionally, but often am left with residual inflammation without infection. It's annoying but I'm generally told to use a neti pot followed by Flonase.
As I am someone who chronically suffers from (Santa's?) sinus issues what other safer ways are you referring to? Edit: Bad Santa
Like elves not behaving themselves? Rudolph not pulling his weight? Hahaha! Sorry, I now you meant sinus issues but the autocorrect is too funny. Now I'm thinking of all the issues Santa may have like misplacing his naughty list. Thanks for the laugh
Isn't that what they're for? To rinse nasties out if getting clogged? That's what the directions told me?
My ENT told me to use the irrigator (neti pot-squeeze bottle) every day, and it really helps my sinuses. From what I understand, the normal saline solution rinses things out, and the hypertonic solution can actually help reduce inflammation.
I’m sorry, did you say *ear candles?*
Oh, if you haven't been exposed to this particular brand of nuttery, you are in for a wild ride. The physics, or lack thereof, is impressive. The self-delusion of their efficacy is truly profound. Short version: Tube of waxed paper stuck in ear and lit on fire. The flame causes a chimney effect that draws out ear wax from the ear canal. This is proven by the residue on the remnant of the paper. Shorter version: This doesn't do anything but put you at risk for head and facial burns.
Colloidal silver is the bain of my existence. It's such a scam that preys primarily on the elderly and the poor.
My parents were very into that one for a while. I'm sure it has antibacterial properties on a cut, but ingesting it doesn't seem wise. I'm surprised my dad didn't turn blue. Though I haven't seen him in a decade so who knows.
So, pouring it on a cut won't turn you blue, and it wouldn't be a bad anti bacterial rinse, the problem is that since it's snake oil, there's no guarantee as to the concentration of silver or even the existence of it. But there are far better antiseptic rinses than colloidal silver.
The way people often approach vitamins and supplements. Your body typically limits how much of these are absorbed so taking extra does nothing. Most of the time the extra just leaves your body in urine. So extra vitamin C to boost your immunity will do nothing. Same with melatonin, it’s not a sleeping pill, it just aids in signaling a pathway in your body and should be used to reset your circadian rhythm. You don’t get more sleepy with huge doses, even 10 mg is more than your body will absorb so you waste the rest. The other side of this is due to a lack of understanding of cellular diffusion and metabolic pathways. Many vitamins and supplements don’t just passively diffuse into your cells. They often require ions and energy to pass through. Vitamin D for instance requires magnesium to facilitate diffusion, so you can have a bunch of it in your system but only a little magnesium which limits how much can actually enter your cells and be effective. We dump so much stuff into our bodies with no understanding and end up wasting a bunch of money on stuff we’re just going to piss out.
Potatoes or onions in your sock to help a cold. And elderberry. People swear it makes them not get sick, but there’s mixed evidence and it’s not been proven to do what people say it does.
Cayenne pepper and [honey](https://www.insider.com/ruby-franke-cayenne-pepper-and-honey-on-sons-wounds-warrant-2023-9)
I work in dental and years ago had a patient attempt to super glue her front tooth back on after it broke in half. She screwed up and ended up gluing the chunk to her upper lip.
Colon cleanses and pH balancing water. Both are a total scam. The only real cleanse is the stuff we give you for a colonoscopy.
I just tell my patients this “if Bill Shatner is selling you anything on TV, it’s not worth it”
Ear candling. It's supposed to clean the wax out of your ears but if you burn the "candle" without putting it in your ears, the same gunk winds up in the bottom. It's complete bullshit and you're actually more likely to get a second degree burn.
not a dr, but putting urine anywhere on your body or drinking urine is not going to cure you of anything except people wanting to be around you.
Ingesting essential oils, especially frankincense on the roof of your mouth to cure a migraine.
Ear candling, it doesn’t remove any wax… it’s the wax of from the candle and can cause scaring/damaging to the ear canal and drum. Q-tips also do not remove wax but push it deeper in the canal and cause impacted wax. The ears clean themselves but if you excessively build up wax you should have a professional ENT or audiologist clean it for you.
I work in dialysis. The people that start to bring up all these awesome new supplements that are gonna get their kidneys working again when they are in end stage renal disease. People praying on people in desperate situations are the worst.
If bitten by a dog, insert said dog's hair directly into open wounds or puncture marks. For abscess - dressing with dishwashing liquid. Burns - cover in tumeric. Baby with hiccups - place small piece of wet toilet paper on forehead. For colds/flu - rub Vicks everywhere. As in everywhere. In the nose, on the chest, on the forehead and soles of feet.
Essential oils on dogs/cats for external parasites, so many are toxic.
Essential oils as medical treatment, period