So my mom has Graves Disease. She’s seeing an endocrinologist soon, but she’s also, at the recommendation of one of our crunchier friends, seeing a naturopath/“heilpraktikerin” (it’s worth noting that “heilpraktikerin” does not translate to doctor; rather it translates quite explicitly to “healer” or “non-medical practitioner”). This is not covered by insurance, and neither are the homeopathic medications recommended by this “healer”; additionally, it’s something like a two hour drive each way to visit her. My mother is not exactly rich and this is a fairly extreme expense for what I am fully aware is total fucking quackery! Apparently this woman is an expert in “blood oxygenation” and ozone therapy, which is sort of like being an expert in bloodletting and leeches. Ugh. Just ugh.
I tried to make it clear to my mother that homeopathy should serve one purpose - a sniff test (that is, if your practitioner recommends homeopathy for literally anything, you should consider them a complete failure as a medical professional, and find a different one), and I brought up the bloodletting comparison… No dice. She’s gonna keep trying it, and keep seeing a real doctor as well. But what can I do to convince her that this healer is bad news? At best, what she’s getting is worthless advice and wasting her money; at worst, she’s getting dangerous advice and wasting her money. What can I do?
You can give her information, you can ask her to tell her endocronologist about the alternative treatments she’s been getting, but it’s still going to be your mum’s decision as to whether she listens and takes your advice.
So make your concerns known, print out articles and ask her to read them, etc etc. But understand that she’s an adult and will make her own decisions.
Does your mum have any less ‘crunchy’ friends that she might listen to, so that you’re not the only voice of dissent?
It may be a self-correcting problem, as it was for my mother. When she was seeking treatment for her rheumatoid arthritis, she went to someone like this. Her pain got a million times worse. She learned her lesson.
Maybe? None of our mutual friends, to be sure, but maybe some of the people at the music school she works at. I could ask them to talk about it, maybe. I’ve been doing my best to point out just how much of a “stop-right-there” red flag
See, that’s just it - she’s also seeing real doctors, and getting real medicine. I fear what’s going to happen is that she gets better, and thanks the naturopath rather than, you know, the shit that actually worked.
The assumption that believing in something automatically makes it effective is dangerous nonsense.
What if the quality medical care normalizes the patient’s thyroid function, but she instead credits homeopathic woo and decides it isn’t necessary to take her medication? It is also far from beneficial to waste money on garbage if you need that money for other purposes. It is also a poor assumption that woo cannot cause active harm - in some instances, it does.
In my experience, trying to get people to abandon antiscientific views and woo medicine through logic is impossible, because they weren’t arrived at through logic in the first place. Much like conspiracy theories, they have a built-in insulation: Of course THEY want you to believe that homeopathy doesn’t work/Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman/the Twin Towers weren’t an inside job.*
Remember when you were a teenager and your mom hated that shirt you loved so much, and every time she bitched at you about it, you’d roll your eyes and grit your teeth and mentally remind yourself to wear that shirt at every possible opportunity because ohmigosh, she is being so unreasonable, 'cause it’s your shirt and your choice and wtf, Mom?!
Yeah…this is payback. The dynamic is still there, and every time you make a big deal about this, it’s likely to further cement her decision in her mind, not erode it.
You’ve made your case. Further harping on it is going to mean that not only does she have to admit to herself that she’s made a mistake, it’s going to mean that she’s going to have to admit to you that *you *were right. That’s two things she’s got to admit, now, and admitting that someone else is right is even harder than admitting you were wrong.
Remember that if this is actual homeopathy we’re talking about, it won’t hurt her. It may help her through placebo effect, but it won’t hurt her. If we’re talking about oxygenated water, likewise. If we’re talking about herbals, then that’s another matter, and you want to be sure that her doctor knows what the herbalist is giving her, and you also want to make sure that the herbalist knows what the doctor is giving her. But beyond that, this is not your problem to solve, unless your mom is mentally incompetent.
In the US, even if she were mentally incompetent and you got a judge to grant you power of attorney over her healthcare, the real irony is that by the letter of the law, you would STILL have to take her to the naturopath. PoAH is not a license to make mom submit to only the kind of treatment you want her to have - it’s the legal authority to communicate and authorize those treatments that *she *wants to have, but can’t communicate. Jackmanni, she’s taking her medicine. That’s a straw man argument at this point.
Well if you do find the cure for woo please let me know, I have been trying to cure my own mother for years.
The problem with going against it is that my mother now won’t listen to me or my father at all anymore. And worse, she thinks that things we say are automatically bad. I think on some level she knows it’s craziness, she used to be very scientific and disdainful of all woo, but she just really really wants it.
Anyway, if you want to try, I always think this way of looking at it is particularly poignant::
Homeopathic medicine that works is called medicine. IOW if it actually worked the medical establishment would test it, say “whoa, this stuff is gooood”, put it in a pill and prescribe it to patients.
If she responds that there is a cover up or conspiracy by Big Pharma, mention a friend who is a doctor. Almost everyone knows someone who is a doctor. Are they evil? Did they become a doctor to get rich by preventing people from getting better? Did they let their own auntie suffer and die from cancer for shits and giggles?! Do you realise how offensive it is to even imply that there is a conspiracy of thousands of people who laugh while people die of cancer?
This will not help. But it’s all I’ve got. Good luck to you, it’s quite sad to see intelligent people you love go all woo.
Talk to her about what she gets from visiting the naturopath. Listen carefully to her answer - this worth a lot of money and time to her. Is there a way she can get that cheaper/more easily elsewhere?
Oh please don’t bring this crap in here. The placebo effect exists, is interesting, and is not medicine. And furthermore, you wouldn’t pay out the nose or drive two hours to get it.
My mom’s not dumb. I guess I’m just gonna lay off at this point… If I haven’t made an impression by now, I probably won’t. It’s just… ugh. Really disappointing. I feel like I’m running a personal crusade against “medicine that just don’t fuckin’ work”, and here’s my very own mother visiting a fucking naturopath. :mad:
Show her news stories about the two 12 year old girls who attempted to stab another girl to get in Slenderman’s good graces. Explain that she is operating at about the same level. Tough-love?
She brought up how the woman was very nice, and spent a whole hour counseling her and listening to her symptoms and lifestyle, so I figure that mattered. And that’s not something most real doctors will do, because for many conditions you don’t need the patient’s whole life story to make a diagnosis or proscribe medication. So I dunno what to say to that.
To paraphrase Black Adder, you have three options:
Option 1: Kill your mother!
Option 2: Kill the naturopath!
Option 3: Failing those, make sure that no one ever finds out what she’s been doing. Kill everyone else in the world!
Except that a shirt can’t, you know, kill her. (See below.)
Unless, as pointed out earlier in the thread, if she gets better and decides that it was the homeopathy that did it, and goes to them exclusively from then on.
I apologize if I came off as if I were implying that your mom is dumb. That was actually the opposite of the point I wanted to make; i.e., otherwise intelligent, reasonable, well-educated people (like, presumably, your mom) can fall into woo because it’s easy to want to believe, and once you go down that track, it has its own hooks that make it hard to unbelieve.
Still a strawman. Most people who use complementary therapies also take their meds. Far more than alt med only folks, although the later category makes more noise on the Internet.
In my experience, many people go to naturopaths not because of the medicine, but because it’s a different type of interaction with the care provider. It’s more relational and less transactional. (After all, the woo-practitioners need to know all about your diet, life, horoscope, etc, etc.)
If that is what your mother is really looking for, perhaps one solution is to look for a medical practice that spends a little more personal one-on-one time with the patient. It might be harder to find and might be more expensive, but clearly she’s willing to spend time and money to get what she’s looking for.
There you go - THAT’s what your mom wants, and what the naturopath is giving her the MD’s are not. She wants someone to listen to her, to her symptoms and concerns, and not simply treat her as a collection of problems to be solved.
You mom wants counseling.
Now, a psychologist, social worker, support group, or very good friend might also be able to do this for her. She wants personalized attention - pity she didn’t get it by a day at a spa or getting a mani-pedi. I don’t know how you’d convince her to move to one of the other choices but you might want to think on that.
Has she fully disclosed the treatments she is getting through the naturopath to the MDs? If not, why not?
Or possibly an “alternative” practitioner who isn’t into heavy woo, and is willing to work with the MDs to make sure nothing is contraindicated. Maybe that level of interaction plus some massage, meditation, etc. would be genuinely helpful in her treatment. Stress reduction is important.
Broomstick’s post snuck in while I was typing this…yep, maybe just plain ol’ counseling would do the trick.
