This is the worst advice I’ve ever seen on these boards, and you should be ashamed for giving it. A hot toddy before bed is ABSOLUTELY necessary! Especially when you’re sick!
I WAS going to ask the OP if he had been diagnosed with too much money, but that’s evidently been taken care of. So I’ll just mention that once, when I had a hard time getting my land legs back following a long maneuvering watch, the Doc gave me some Dimetapp tablets. These dried out the tubes in my middle ear and I was right as rain within a few hours.
So, see if an OTC decongestant helps.
Yes, plus I get $25 for every pro-pharma post on Internet forums.
There are also penalties for MDs employing non-drug strategies, like giving out lifestyle and diet advice. For instance, on the last visit to my primary care doc, he brought up exercise and diet. As a result, the insurance company wouldn’t pay his fee (they want to pay for as many drugs as possible, and he didn’t prescribe any).
By the way, if the OP can’t find a naturopath willing to give vitamin injections for sinus blockage, there are other neat-o naturopathic therapies out there, like intravenous hydrogen peroxide. You can’t get any more natural than that.
This is what I thought. Someone is losing out on a lot of profits if there is something effective like this that isn’t being widely produced and marketed.
This is true. My ENT owns a salt mine, so every time I do nasal saline irrigation, he can make a new boat payment.
Mine doesn’t screw around like that, she dilutes it at 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in water first to enhance its effects.
The OP has not been diagnosed with too much money. Anyway the medical docs already would have taken care of that. And so far the treatment from the medical docs has been every bit as effective as that of any naturopath mentioned, i.e., it hasn’t helped at all. So, to recap: THe last time I had this problem it was addressed quickly and effectively by a medical doctor who was a bit on the unorthodox side–but it worked. He is no longer in practice, unfortunately.
This time it has been addressed by a medical doctor who told me to continue all the (ineffectvie) things I had been doing (to wit: neti pot, steam, Claritin D, Flonase, OTC ear drops) supplemented by a course of antibiotics and some way more expensive ear drops. Which have had no effect. Unless I had wanted to add diarrhea to my problem, which I did not.
You guys do know that naturopaths help some people, right? Or they wouldn’t keep going back to them. And they DO keep going back to them. Ayurvedic practitioners, Chinese herbal medicine–there are plenty of those around, and they have return customers. The ENT can’t see me for six weeks. The acupuncturist ($95 and–gasp!–covered by my insurance) can see me Wednesday.
So far the only moderately helpful thing has been someone who suggested that niacin can cause a flush. This is a clue, since I think with the previous treatment, that might have happened.
For all of the advances in medical treatment in recent years, the common cold is typically 2 weeks without medical intervention, or 14 days under a doctor’s care. If you have a cold virus, antibiotics won’t help. Nor will a naturopath. If you have a bacterial infection, the proper antibiotic might help, assuming that it’s not one of those infections that has “learned” resistance to abx, largely due to overuse because everyone thinks s/he needs a prescription for every cold.)
20-30 years ago, your naturopath might have juiced you up just as your symptoms were subsiding. Your relief may have been caused by your position. But you weren’t cured by some vitamin shot You are free to try it again, of course. And I hope you find relief. But there is absolutely zero evidence in favor of naturopathy versus science-based medical treatment.
No, that’s not how it works. They go back if they think they’ve been helped, even if the naturopath didn’t actually do a damn thing for them. For example, someone who mistakenly believes that their sinus infection was cured by having vitamins injected into their butt might seek out the same treatment again, even if there was not actually a causal link between the treatment and their feeling of relief.
Wow. I hope my insurance doesn’t cover acupuncture.
Like Lord Feldon said, people go back because of their own belief of being helped. The placebo effect is pretty strong and mostly what holistic type doctors rely on. I mean, I believe that there are lots of natural remedies for common maladies but acupuncture just seems to be complete woo to me. How could sticking a tiny needle in your hand or chest (two of the main places for sinus issues) is going to suddenly relieve whatever blockage is causing the problem? I mean…even if it is just a placebo effect, I suppose it’s a cure of sorts…but in that case, I’ve got a sure fire technique for clearing up your sinuses and putting a luscious shine to your hair. And it’s only $19.95.
One of my current business associates is a Chinese woman who has a sick child now. Today she was telling me the symptoms (only a fever) and what she has tried as a treatment. When she mentioned something called moxibustion, which I had never hear of before. Apparently it’s waving smoldering herbs over the patient. She says she has never seen signs of beneficial results but has always done it just because it’s traditional. At one point she actually said “I have to try it because it’s our culture!”. She also said something like “maybe it didn’t work the last few times but it might work the next time”.
People have all sorts of non-evidence based reasons for holding on to customs and traditions.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
The last time I had this problem it was addressed quickly and effectively by a medical doctor who was a bit on the unorthodox side
[/quote]
I think you have confused “holistic” with “quackery-prone”.
You see, any good physician is “holistic”. The overwhelming majority of practitioners who advertise themselves as “holistic” are cynically using the term as a marketing tool and/or using it as a catchall phrase for “I’m into goofy alt med”.
There are people who use Rife machines and electrical “zappers”, drink colloidal silver, administer coffee enemas (and bleach enemas to their autistic children), swear by intravenous hydrogen peroxide and take every sort of supplement pill under the sun to expel their “toxins” and cure all conceivable diseases. All this stuff must work, or people wouldn’t keep doing it! (the alternative explanation, that humans have an unrivalled capacity to fool themselves must not be entertained).
I’ve heard complaints recently that it takes too long for cancer patients to get an appointment at our local university cancer center. Obviously, the solution is to go to one of those Tijuana cancer clinics. Flash some cash, and you can get in right away.
It’s too bad that more posters haven’t been into quackery enabling. 
You guys’s definition of “evidence-based” is peculiar. There is not zero evidence that that shot–and I have said, I don’t know whether it was actually vitamins, or maybe antibiotics, or cortisone–hell, I don’t know what it was. Cocaine? Anyway, there is evidence TO ME that it worked, because the doctor said “Let’s try this,” and the relief was immediate. You guys would rather believe in coincidence.
I cannot believe any of you people would have thought any different if it happened to you. Item 1–I had plugged ears. Item 2–I went to a doctor. Item 3–the doctor had a treatment. Item 4–immediately following that treatment, the condition cleared up.
Now, you seem to believe that the doctor just happened to think of this and experimented on me. I don’t believe that. I believe this was something he’d done before, and it had worked before, or it worked at least some of the time. (Evidence-based.)
You also seem to believe it was just a coincidence and the condition was ready to clear up anyway. Okay, possible. But highly unlikely.
But again, given that this sequence of events had happened to you, is that what YOU would believe? Oh, it was just a coincidence. I was going to get better anyway–is that really what you’d think? At the time, I had given it every chance to get better on its own.
The other problem I have is that, these days, it is almost impossible to see an actual physician. You see a PA, you see an NP. They check your symptoms, consult their flow chart, and prescribe accordingly. They could do this over the phone. I don’t see how this is in any way “holistic.” And a true “holistic” doctor wouldn’t do what doctors do today, which is forcing you to make separate appointments for each thing. That is to say, if you have two things wrong with you, they will only address one, and for the other one, you need another appointment. Otherwise they don’t make as much money.
[quote=“Lord_Feldon, post:29, topic:754818”]
No, that’s not how it works. They go back if they think they’ve been helped, even if the naturopath didn’t actually do a damn thing for them. For example, someone who mistakenly believes that their sinus infection was cured by having vitamins injected into their butt might seek out the same treatment again, even if there was not actually a causal link between the treatment and their feeling of relief.
How would you know if there was a causal link or not?
Double-blind studies.
Right, but anecdotal evidence isn’t really…scientific evidence. It’s just your personal experience and I don’t think anyone was refuting that whatever he did ‘worked’, just that it was much more likely to be the position he had you get in than the shot itself.
Well first off, I was under the impression the ‘one issue per appointment’ was a time management thing. The doctors would never be able to see anyone if each person is spending an hour or more going over every thing they have wrong with them. But I admit, I could be wrong. As for whether or not that makes them holistic though…I…what? How does a policy like that, which has nothing to do with the treatment you’re given for whatever malady you have, make them not holistic?
We’ve been going about this all wrong.
Obviously, “holistic” means “it worked for me!”.
Actually our definition of “evidence-based” is logical and scientific.
Scientists use double-blind studies with masses of tests.
The idea is to rule out anecdotal stories of how “something happened once to me, so it must be a proven connection”.
I’m glad you got helped, but I’d need to see it happen hundreds of times to accept the precise cause and effect.
We do believe in the Placebo effect.
But isn’t it even more unlikely that there’s a wonderful, effective, simple, cheap, cold cure that the medical community has deliberately ignored (but naturopaths do know about and use)? I mean, I know an M.D. personally; if a vitamin shot cured colds, they’d be injecting everyone within reach, not hiding the secret cure for some reason.