Yea I read this too, its strange that what you think would be a logical person would go so far down the alternate route, why not do both?

Because the alternate medicine folks will tell you western medicine works against their treatments, or is poisoning you, or some other crap that makes people think the alternative medicine won't work if they do both.

Why am I not surprised golfnutt is trying to defend the scammer here.

yeah this. Read that post again imo.

As long as the money isn't too much and your parents know on some level that it's a scam i think you're fine. Like so far we're at eating healthier and taking a vitamin D supplement.

For many of these 60+ older people they are just lonely.

Ignored by their kids, they generally have 0 friends or social groups. These two hours might be something they really enjoy, even if the benefits are negligible.

so $85 or w/e for 2 hours of "therapy" for a 60+ y/o person ?? thats a steal.

it only becomes bad if it starts ballooning past the cost of having a therapist or some equivalent. or the advice they give becomes harmful in any significant way. if those two criteria are not met, this probably does more good then harm.

think of it as $85 for a "friend" for 2 hours, someone that cares about them and wants to make $ from it.

Ironic, isn’t it considering I run a fairly large Western-style medical practice?

Do you know the Hippocratic Oath is do no harm.

That is the baseline I use to judge things.

I think 13 out of last 14 cancer drugs FDA approved don’t do anything at all. A placebo handed by a doctor works though.

Is chiropractic medicine a scam?

I don't think they know it's a scam on any level. They're not certain it works but my mum at least is convinced that this woman has her best interests at heart and views her training/certificate in homeopathy as a sign of credibility.

My parents keep themselves quite active socialising with friends, and doing other activities (my mum likes to play bridge and my dad takes some classes).

Nonetheless, my mother paying the money because she enjoys this woman's company rings true. If my mum wanted to pay £85 a week for a massage/manicure/whatever I'd be all in favour, even if she was doing it for companionship. The specific nature of paying for absolute bull**** irks me. Plus a homeopath, by her nature a quack/conwoman, is likely to invent reasons why my mum needs more appointments, or needs a fancy new pill. She's deceiving my mum out of her money. The masseuse/client relationship is much more likely to be based on honesty.

Edit: just read your addendum. My parents don't fit the description of you mother's clients. And it sounds like your mother isn't pushing quack science, or presenting herself as an expert in something she isn't?

Given that your mum has at least met this woman she's in a better position to judge this than you. You've instantly attached nefarious intent to a woman you've never met just because you have different beliefs.

Add to that the fact that you more or less called your mum an idiot to her face, coupled with her seeing benefits (real or perceived), and this likely won't end well for you.

I'm sure some of the absolute bull**** you've spent money on has irked your mum as well.

I agree with everything in your post after the first paragraph, but persistent caustic tone aside I have acknowledge the homeopath may believe she's doing good. Not sure my mum is better placed to make a judgement either. I've never met the homeopath. My mum doesn't know homeopathy is bollocks and best case scenario the homeopath is a well intentioned placebo hawker. I'm open minded whether or not it's a deliberate scam, my mum is convinced this woman is an angel. We are both going off limited information sets.

Just noticed the poster is in the UK? Sadly it appears there is no legal recourse against homeopathy scammers in the UK?

First impressions are very valuable in judging someone's character so you mum has considerably more information than you do. Not to mention years more experience judging character.

I can't wait till your mum starts going to church.

The homeopathist who comes in around 4m 50s here strikes me as genuine in his beliefs.

The uncut interview is here:



I am not calling the police come on.

You can't just tell people they're wrong and expect them to believe you, especially when you're their child and they've witnessed all the stupid **** you've done throughout your life.

Helping people change is a long term process; if you haven't went with them to other specialists that aren't quacks or brought them to other professionals you've searched for independently (even if they can't help, I'm not sure what her condition is) then you can't expect her to listen to you and just sit there doing nothing. You need to be pro-active and show her you're constantly thinking of her condition rather than just criticize her method (even if her method is terrible).

Like the bread comment, you can't just tell them it's bad when older folk especially have grown up eating carb heavy diets their whole lives and younger people are only recently realizing protein and veggies is the easy way to not be fat without much other nutritional knowledge and crucifying carbs. I'm asian and a big bowl of rice everyday to keep you healthy was ingrained in my parents' minds, but eventually if you talk about nutrition enough, are yourself healthy and fit, then they'll begin to believe you -- but just talking is not enough.

Little things like if you go out to eat ask the server to sub your carb side with veggies and not making big deal of it but letting it be shown it's a healthy lifestyle choice goes a long way. All information in the world is easily accessible to everyone now but we all have crappy habits and do stupid things that could easily be changed but the challenge now is just getting people you care about to actually do it by presenting the information in a way they'll accept.

I hate those alternative religious nuts, always saying prayers for the naive and unsuspecting!

You might also want to consider coming at it from another angle... old people don't change easily, might be easier to just embrace the insanity. If they insist on homeopathy, maybe find a different homeopath who'll provide the service for a lower price and (probably more importantly) make sure to have some leverage to cripple their credibility in case they try and squeeze your mother for huge sums if/when she gets desperate.

She told my mum to stop eating gluten"

Yeah my dad has a "nutritionalist" he's seeing over a heart problem and she somehow magicly diagnosed the almighty poisoner "gluten" as the culprit. Honestly don't see too much harm in avoiding gluten that much.

In his case he should probably be eating heart healthy foods and avoiding red meat maybe instead of gluten, so the advice is potentially harmful if gluten has no real positive or negative affects on him.

You have very teenagery attitude towards this situation. I have no idea how old you are, but from all that talk, I would assume 20 sth. Try to develop more understanding for emotional life of your mom. For her it is not bull****. And that counts.

Obviously

I like 1 out of 100 cs3 posts.

This is one of those times. Good one. On many levels.

Until last spring their national health service covered homeopathy. Plus the future king is a big proponent of various alternate medicine scams, for example, Prince Charles lobbied the Prime Minister in support of 'alternative medicines'. Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pr...egrated_Health

Our ****ing Health Secretary believes in homeopathy lol.

Well it kind of seems like they do. Here's what i mean: my cousin (i guess, he was my dad's cousin) had appendicitis and my great uncle took him to the chiropractor for whatever spine manipulation scammy stuff they do because they went to the chiropractor for the magics no matter what was wrong. Cousin died.

Well, we know that she makes a living peddling pseudoscientific scams sooooo.

This never gets old

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.