We always encourage natural insomnia treatments as a first option before resorting to pharmaceutical sleeping pills, but you still need to be aware of potential side-effects and gimmicks.
On the latter point, we recently stumbled across this excellent video from Dr Paul Willis. As part of an experiment run by The Merseyside Skeptics Society, Dr Willis overdosed on a homeopathic insomnia remedy.
Did he fall into immediate unconsciousness? Did they need to declare a medical emergency? Find out for yourself by watching the video below.
You probably shouldn’t try this at home – although The Merseyside Skeptics Society would probably argue that there’s not much danger involved should you choose to give it a go!
Source: The Merseyside Skeptics Society
As always, there's more information and advice in our insomnia support forum.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I like that they’re tied to Avogadro’s Number! Dr. Dean Edell would have laughed himself in stitches watching this–he has no good opinion about homeopathy.
What this stunt proved is that homeopathy is safe, but why prove what’s already been proven in studies (EECH, 2009; Reilly, 2005) ?
It also proves that the people behind it don’t know anything at all about homeopathy. If they did, they’d know that:
1. There is no such thing as a homeopathic “sleeping pill”. No point in claiming Calms Forte is a sleeping pill since it isn’t. It’s a sleep aid designed to induce relaxation and, thereby, sleep.
2. A patient wanting to treat insomnia homeopathically must consult with a homeopath. He or she will choose the one, single remedy most closely matching the patient’s totality of symptoms (not just one symptom) AND his constitution. This one remedy is the only remedy that will have a healing effect. Taking any other remedy except this one correct remedy chosen for the patient will have no effect whatsoever either negative or positive. Obviously, taking remedies at random will have the same result — no effect at all.
I hope children, well known imitators of adult behavior, have not been tempted to try this stunt with dangerous OTC drugs like aspirin or mother’s Rx drug.
{ 1 trackback }