My mother - on the advice of my sister (who has been into homeopathy, herbal healing, reiki / energy healing and other nonsense for a long time) has been deluded into thinking that she's infested with "parasites," particularly worms. She plans to take Wormwood extract and some junk containing walnut shells to rid herself of the parasites. She says this is different from the other woo.
I suggested that she go to a medical doctor with her concerns instead of diagnosing and treating herself. She refused, stating that this has been done since the beginning of time.
What do I do? Should I simply let her ingest possibly dangerous quack remedies, or are there good ways to gently show her the right direction?
If anyone has been in a similar situation, your input would be appreciated.
When someone is falling for something like that, it's because they are in the habit of believing whatever makes them feel good. Believing nonsense isn't a mistake, it's a way of life. Believing nonsense becomes a part of your reward system, it becomes part of what makes you feel good day to day. Like any other act which releases serotonin and dopamine in the brain, belief can become an addiction, a belief addiction. Thinking you've figured something out or discovered some forgotten knowledge feels good, and people frequently become addicted to this behavior and jump at any chance to tell themselves that they've discovered something new. This is why most people who believe nonsense believe lots of nonsense in all kinds of different subjects.
Believing nonsense is an addiction. Even if you have enough sway with someone for them to recognize that something is nonsense, it doesn't matter, they will continue to find nonsense and believe it because they're junkies. Junkies for believing they found or discovered something amazing. They don't need logic, logic won't help. They need rehab.
Colton Morris
id research it and if harmful, share that info. If not harmful, see what happens. There is a lot of bullsit, but also a lot of actual use in systems like ayerveda/tcm etc.
Open mind baby, use this as an opportunity to learn and see for yourself
Liam Hughes
Tell your mother to eat the goddamn wormwood, and next time she takes a fat shit, have her inspect her poop for worms. Give her a goddamn microscope if you have to.
When you see nothing but the usual fecal matter, tell her "I told you so", and "Stop being so god damn gullible."
Jackson Rogers
And yes, if your mother actually has worms (read:parasites, tapeworms etc.), then she will poop out a spaghetti of dead worm large enough to fill your plate.
You can't miss it.
Henry Morris
better than homeopathy at least
Tell her to eat more garlic, actually good for colon and heart health with research, and herbal enough to seem like a good exotic medicine placebo
don't really know if it kills parasites or worms, at least she's not doing some dangerously acidic or basic enema
how about people just stop eating pork, shitty meat besides the bacon cuts and the cause of like all parasite/worm problems in the first place
Josiah Price
Also, get some spirulina for her. "Liver detox" that just help reduce fatty livers and add some chlorophyll in her diet
Basically find actual things that are healthy but spin it with all the buzzwords. Spirulina is an anti oxidant, garlic is a detoxifier etc etc for colon cleansing, three tablespoons of chai seeds in a fruit smoothie has been making my poops smooth, there's your cleansing, just adding fiber
Camden Nguyen
Implying western doctors know what they are doing, and do not prescribe dangerous and deadly treatments.
Wormwood is legit for parasites...
Jonathan Evans
nutrients/meds absorption doesn't happen in the colon
as for your mother, from my experience it only ever escalates from there. It can go three ways : - she gets better and then relapse a short while later, and generally the second time the home remedies don't help so she escalates - no effect so she escalates - her symptoms worsens so she has now the idea that there is something additionally wrong with her "since that time she took that pill / did that procedure"
I'd tell you how to handle it but I have yet to figure it out.
Gabriel Phillips
Win
Samuel Bennett
we got a wooaboo here
Charles Lee
That was some interesting insight, what kind of work do you do
Brandon Stewart
My mother does not have a profound scientific understanding - it's pretty relative, she studied agriculture.
Yet she never fell for such things, and surprisingly kept a rational view of things - and often let me explain her things and fully comprehended them.
It's just that some people are dumb by birth, by genetics - deal with it, sure they could comprehend everything but it just requires much work and patience from your side, you have to go trough lots of deconstructing first - after you tear her illusions apart start constructing back healthy concepts.
Kevin Perez
Just wanted to precise. It normally doesn't happen in the colon (mostly just water at that pount), but of course there are some medication taken anally as well as certain substances (alcohol comes to mind)
Mason Parker
...
Levi Price
google pictures of people with actual worms taking shits and show her?
please dont post them here its fucking disgusting
Kayden Reed
This pretty much. Look up the backfire effect. Also why it's pointless to argue with /pol/tards on this board, just tell them to fuck off instead
Aiden Moore
I'm a chemist, of course.
Matthew Torres
Let natural selection take its course.
Jonathan Taylor
How do I know I'm not what you described?
Lucas Brown
Fucking kekaroni pizza
Xavier Cook
The difference between a normal person and a belief addict is big emotion swings when learning something new and anxiousness if something forces you to reserve judgement, like getting very defensive if someone criticizes some new thing at the moment that you are looking for validation so you can get your high. An addict will puff up any new discovery as being way more important than it actually is. If you're an addict, you should notice that you frequently massively overestimate the significance of new things that you learn, which is a side effect of the anticipated euphoria that you feel whenever you get that high - the greater the significance of the new thing you learned, the greater the high for yourself. To improve your high, you frequently seek out validation from others when you discover a new thing, and get defensive or feel anxious/uneasy when they don't (an emotional rather than rational response).
Mason Edwards
Just let her keep going. As long as its not parents showing drain-cleaner enemas into their kids or some homeopath telling a guy with cancer to stop treatment and buy silver diltute, you are free to do all the stupid shit that you yourself pleases
Matthew Johnson
I do that, but I don't believe nor put on practice such impractical ideologies.
I feel motivated when I learn something new. I feel the need to tell the new thing to someone I care, and If he/she tries to discuss it, I try to keep calm and destroy his argument. I know anybody can do what I do, but is it "wrong"/useless/painful? Is there a better way to live?
Lincoln Baker
There's a lot of crap on both sides of the aisle. MDs claim that pharma is 100% infallible, which is stupid and wrong. Homeopaths claim that all synthetic meds are bad which is stupid and wrong. Example: Aspirin is bad for your heart, we know this now, but when people started saying that they were called quacks. Willow bark helps alleviate pain at about the same level and isn't bad for you.
On the flip side: Cancer diets are widely accepted as "cures" rather than prevention in the homeopathic community, yet they scoff at surgery and other cancer treatments on the basis of being afraid of radiology and chemo which are dangerous, but they are also last ditch efforts not to die.
TL:DR This topic is as riddled with incompetence as politics because of the inability to reconcile the act of reaching across the aisle and working together.
Julian Russell
herbs are ok and can be helpful, the other shit is nonsense indeed
Elijah Howard
>MDs claim that pharma is 100% infallible To be fair this is mostly because doctors just want patients to shut up and do what they are told, because the doctor literally knows better. Your average doctor doesnt actually believe pharma is infallible
Easton Peterson
My doctor has always told me the risks associated with stuff that isn't OTC meds, or at the very least what to be aware of.
Colton Phillips
>implying you aren't just addicted to the thrill of "proving" (regardless if you have in fact proved anything wrong at all) people wrong
same reward system same addiction
Everyone's an addict. We just pick the addictions we like to follow and call it passion.
Nathaniel Sanders
I dunno, I have a few friends that are medical science phds that see a lot of corruption and corner cutting in their fields. Examples of doctors jumping straight to radiology for stage 1 cancer, prescribing the wrong drugs, cutting a corner in diagnostics and telling someone with a deadly disease that its psychosomatic, etc. There are a lot of evil doctors out there among the good ones.
I'm not saying all MDs are bad, I'm just saying that among them are the lazy and unethical as with any field. Unfortunately, being lazy and unethical with credentials can be horribly devastating by corrupting the research of your field.
Jason Hall
Aspirin is not bad for your heart; in fact chronic usage of aspirin lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attack patients on the phone with the emergency line will oftentimes be directed to take aspirin as it possesses antiplatelet activity. Aspirin is bad for your GI tract.
>Chronic usage of a blood thinner is good for you yup, sure.
Jace Stewart
Oh, shit, I had my info backward. Regardless, it has side effects which was the point.
Daniel Clark
You're literally retarded. >implying western doctors know what they are doing >implying western doctors have doubled our lifespan in the past 200 years >implying western doctors have turned lethal and extremely infectious diseases into easily treatable ones via vaccinations and antibiotics >implying eastern homeopathy and acupuncture can't cure all of lifes ills easily and inexpensively despite it being shown to be dangerous and ineffective
Go back to your cave armed with just a stick and see how far your homeopathy takes you when you get food poisoning or get an infected cut and die of an easily treatable illness.
Xavier Torres
>>implying western doctors have turned lethal and extremely infectious diseases into even more lethal extremely infectious diseases with antibiotic resistance because they kept handing out antibiotics like sugar pills
fixed that for you
enjoy MDR-TB, coming to a municipality near you
Christopher Garcia
>How do you guide a relative away from junk medicine? Either explaining to them the "classical medicine means statistical analysis" concept, but if they reject reason start asking questions about how their medicine works. The latter will work even with more feisty retards.
Jose Russell
Wouldn't it be better for your heart than having chronically high blood pressure?
Jose Robinson
Eh whatever - it's probably harmless enough. Unless she's bankrupting herself or forgoing treatment for an actual problem then it probably doesn't really matter.
Juan Gray
Drug resistant bacteria are no more infectious than antibiotic naive bacteria. Would you prefer that we never treated TB...? Resistance is the natural consequence of any antibiotic use.
Luis Lee
s'already there, champ. XDR- or TDR-TB are the ones that keep me up at night.
Cooper Foster
this has market potential.
Tyler Ross
>Aspirin is bad for your heart, we know this now, but when people started saying that they were called quacks. >Willow bark helps alleviate pain at about the same level and isn't bad for you. in addition to what people pointed out, willow bark is salicin, which is almost the same chemical as the active ingredient in aspirin
Ian Cox
I should change that behavior, right? Is there a better alternative?
Isaiah Hughes
tell her that there are lots of different parasites and that different types of parasites are treated with different medication. the proper way to know is to get a stool test done by a doctor.
Luis Davis
At face value, this is funny.
Once you consider the pun, it is even moreso.
Asher Richardson
Stupid and wrong.
Angel Rodriguez
I have the solution for OPs pic. It's a combination of my dick and semen.
Nicholas Brown
>implying, only about 20% of all antibiotics are taken by humans My parents are doctors. They are aware, that prescribing antibiotics can weaken the organism (kidney bioflora can be rebuild up to few weeks after antibiotics curation) they prescribe antibiotics very rarely. And I believe, that that's the case with most of the doctors. Biggest blame for that is on massive animal farms
Alexander Reyes
kill yourself you fucking pedo
Gabriel James
Reiki is very real tho op. The other things not so much
Juan Parker
How am I a pedo?
Benjamin Sullivan
There's no reason for her to belive that, she believe she is infested with parasites, and worms, she doesn't have to believe they are the same kind of worms, she can litteraly make anything up to explain that.
>Didn't take enough wormwood or >Not the same worms, they are destroyed in the body and leave no traces or >Yeah wormwood didn't work, I'll have to try these other things instead (repeat until death)
Likely the last case if she is suffering from formication.
Easton Morgan
Reiki is very real tho op. The other things not so much
