kevin_standlee: (Kevin and Lisa)
kevin_standlee ([personal profile] kevin_standlee) wrote2010-05-20 04:07 pm
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About Those Pills...

As most of you know, Lisa suffers from tinnitus. It's a very odd case, in that it's only in one ear, and the associated hearing loss is atypical as well. (If you see her wearing an earphone in one ear, it's because it's pumping in noise that partially, but not completely, offsets the tone.)

We've gone through a lot of treatments, none of which have worked, and have spent a lot of money on doctors, none of which has actually helped. Which is one reason I find the ads for a particular substance (I'm not going to help their marketing further by naming it) on the radio that claims to cure tinnitus to be so annoying. No, we haven't tried it, and we're not going to do so. Lisa was the one who first noticed the ads and complained at me about the people preying on desperate people such as her. For a longer, better-developed take on the subject, I recommend this article by Dr. Marsha Johnson, who has recently been trying to treat Lisa's tinnitus.

If those substances really work, the promoters should submit them to proper clinical trials -- if it's anything other than the placebo effect, the inventor will make a lot more money than selling it snake-oil fashion over the radio. Unless it is snake oil, of course.

[identity profile] melchar.livejournal.com 2010-05-21 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
If you listen to that ad it states that it is a 'homeopathic' remedy. Homeopathy has nothing in it. It's water, colors, flavors [sometimes], and 100% placebo. And as such, it helps in about 25-30% of the cases tried because that is the same rate as doing nothing. It does -steam- me to hear that and similar ads.

But that may be bitterness on my part. I can't fool myself with placebo.