[Coda]

Originally Posted by Quiet Man Cometh

To actually comment on home remedies, I'm open to anything. Seriously, my mother took to me every doctor, other doctor, alternative health and healing practitioner she could think of to find out what was wrong with me as a kid. What I think is important though, is that people don't assume that these things are 100% safe or always benign. There are simple herbs I can't take because they react to my pills, and there are diets and things that can be dangerous for the wrong type of person. "Natural" also does not equal save. Some things and naturally toxic. Sometimes, "raw" is bad because the raw form is a problem. It's good to check out and investigate new things but jumping on a craze can cause a lot of trouble.

This. So much this. I don't have a problem with alternative remedies if there's actual evidence behind them instead of just a bunch of people talking about how great it is. You've got to filter out the buzzwords ("detoxify" is 100% bogus for example, there's no such thing, and anything that purports to treat multiple unrelated problems is probably fake). You've got to treat it like an actual drug that acts by a specific chemical mechanism and not a miracle cure. Treat everything not explicitly prescribed by a professional like a skeptic -- go in telling yourself that this thing you're about to try probably isn't going to do anything, because going in expecting it to work will confound your results with the placebo effect.

I mean, my wife used St. John's wort for her depression before we were able to get insurance to cover seeing an actual psychiatrist. Putting a baby aspirin on a canker sore does provide relief. A tablespoon of honey is just as effective as over-the-counter cough medication in children between 2 and 12 years old, and it's actually safer (but don't give honey to infants under one year old). So yeah, I'm not categorically against alternative remedies.