So why aren't they lining up to treat the Ebola outbreak

Recently @rayne_2 of Insufferable Intolerance tweeted something that should make a person think "so why aren't you people doing something if you believe your so called medicine works?"

I've noticed Homeopaths without Borders aren't lining up to treat the Ebola outbreak..
— Rayne (@rayne_2) July 31, 2014

Now I did check their website, and yes they aren't there.

I even did a check on the site's search bar for both "ebola" and "Africa" just to make sure, and I came up with nothing. Infact they've never been to Africa as far as I can tell.

So why aren't these people over in West Africa along with Doctors Without Borders?

I'm aware that these people are just pushing water and sugar pills, and that it's best that they not be there and get in the way of real doctors who are there to combat this disease, but the fact that they shouldn't be there has never stopped pushers of alternative medicine before from going where they are not wanted.

I could go to their contact page and ask them why they aren't there, but I probably wouldn't get an answer.

This should make one ask themselves that if homeopathic medicine works, as practitioners claim that it does, then why aren't these people over in West Africa right now helping "treat" the people that have been infected with Ebola and suffering?

It's not like it would be hard to push homeopathic medicine on the people over there since most of them are already using alternative medicine in an attempt to treat ebola infections.

Perhaps they just don't want to risk getting infected with Ebola and dying, which is exactly what the real doctors over there are doing right now. Risking their lives to help others.

5 Things I've noticed about... vaccines

Vaccines are a medical invention that has been around for a very long time, the very first one being invented by Edward Jenner in 1796 for small pox.

There are alot of things that have been said about vaccines, and taking a look at these claims, as well as the facts about vaccines, I've come up with fives things about them.

So here are five things I've noticed about vaccines:

5. They cause extinctions.

Most people probably don't know this, or do but rarely if ever think about it is that vaccines kill things and can very easily lead to the extinction of some species. Infact vaccines have already caused the extinction of one species, small pox.

Vaccines are also very well on their way to causing the extinction of polio, and could in due time and with enough people getting vaccinated, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, and a variety of other well known diseases that can kill people, particularly young children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems.

Don't these viruses deserve to exist? I mean true these viruses have caused the deaths of millions, plus have left countless others disfigured and disabled, and other than to do all of that have no real purpose to exist, and are still debated over whether or not they are lifeforms, but regardless of all that you have to ask yourself, don't these useless and dangerous lifeforms/not lifeforms have a right to exist?

4. They prevent our children from having the childhood memories of our parents and grandparents.

My parents and grandparents didn't have the vaccines like my generation and my generation's children have, and I can't help but think of what kind of childhood memories might have been taken away because of vaccines.

Some of those memories I imagine would include attending the funeral of a classmate or family member that died from an infectious disease, or having to help another fellow classmate get around because they have trouble walking or are in a wheelchair due to polio, and even having to be rushed to the hospital because I contracted measles and my temperature got really high.

Yes, because of vaccines I have none of these childhood memories, nor does most of the people in my generation as well, but thanks to people like Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy, as well as numerous anti-vaccination websites, those childhood memories of the past generations are making a comeback.

3. They make people paranoid.

Vaccines make people paranoid, this is a fact.

The vaccines themselves don't actually make people paranoid, but just the thought of injecting a dead or weakened virus that's inside a mixture of chemicals that in high enough doses could be deadly, although are in low enough doses that they would be safe to take individually several times over and not harm a person, is enough to scare some people to not get themselves or their children vaccinated.

Now you couple this with something like the Wakefield paper, a paper was publish in the UK medical journal The Lancet and authored by then Dr. Andrew Wakefield that claimed that vaccines cause autism, a claim that has since long been discredited and debunked, and the paper itself was retracted due to fraud, as well as Wakefield being stripped of his medical license due to that fraud and gross ethics violations, and in the end you'll have a person to paranoid to do something which almost every medical doctor in the world says a person should do.

Maybe it's not really vaccines that cause people to become paranoid of them. Maybe it's bad and made-up information combined with a lack of willingness to do real research and a mistrust of pharmaceutical companies that cause people to become paranoid of vaccines?

2. They affect industries.

Vaccines do affect several industries and in big ways too!

The health care industry for one is greatly affected by vaccines. The reason for this is because when a vaccine makes someone immune from disease it greatly decreases their chance of contracting said disease which could require an extensive stay in a hospital and/or hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in medical treatments.

And lets not get started on all the iron lung and leg brace manufactures that have taken a major hit in profits due to the polio vaccine...

Then there are ofcourse the coffin manufactures who have had a sharp decline in the sale of children and infants' coffins due to the fact children and infants are not dying as often as they use to because they aren't contracting the deadly diseases that would usually kill them before they reached adulthood thanks to vaccines.

1. It's the greatest medical invention ever.

All joking and satire aside vaccines are without a doubt the greatest medical invention of all time.

Vaccines are safe, cheap, reliable, rarely have any negative side effects (and even those are not severe most of the time) but almost always has the positive side effect of making a person immune from a disease, and can wipe out some diseases, which it already has with small pox, and is well on it's way with polio and in the future may do so with other diseases like measles and mumps.

The money saved due to vaccines for just health care alone has been in the billions, and the lives saved due to vaccines may be immeasurable.

With the exception of legitimate health reasons there is no reason to not get vaccinated, nor is there any reason for a parent to not vaccinate their child.

To not do so simply irresponsible, and in some cases, criminal.

And now... Part Six of Debunking House of Numbers

Finally, after over a month of fighting illegal DMCA takedown notices, threats of having his Youtube channel being taken down, threats of lawsuits (as well as other types of threats), having his personnel information shared by a bunch of AIDS denialists, as well as some of those same AIDS denialists trying to silence him in one of the most blatant examples of censorship abuse in internet history in what was a clear attempt by the creators of the "documentary" House of Number to silence any criticism of their so called film, and to hide the truth about their blatant deceptiveness and lying, Myles Power has finally released Part 6 of his Debunking of House of Numbers series.

In this part Myles's friend James Gurney from History of Infection talks about HIV replication and the evidence of it's existence.

Please enjoy!

5 Things I've noticed about... Homeopathic Medicine

Homeopathic medicine is probably one of the oldest forms of alternative medicine there is. Infact it was invented in the late 1700's by German physician Samuel Hahnemann, and has been with ever since.

Now there are lots of claims about homeopathy and what it does, and after looking into them I've noticed several different things about homeopathic medicine.

So here are five things I've noticed about homeopathic medicine:

5. You can make it at home.

Homeopathic medicine is very easy to make. You don't even need a complex chemistry lab inorder to make it. You can make it right in your kitchen!

Got a headache and you want to make some homeopathic aspirin inorder to get rid of it? Well here's what you do:

Step 1: Get one tablet of aspirin and about ten bottles of water.

Step 2: Crush aspirin and put it into one of the bottles of water.

Step 3: Shake up bottle.

Step 4: Take one drop from said bottle and put it into the next bottle.

Step 5: Repeat steps 3 and 4 until done doing so with all bottles.

Now if you do all of this you will have homeopathic aspirin and your headache should go away in a few hours... same as any other normal headache would if you were to take nothing at all.

Actually this might not work, and this is because...

4. You're suppose to use something that can cause the problems that you currently have inorder to cure them.

Inorder for homeopathic medicine to actually work (atleast according to people who make and deal with homeopathic medicine) you don't use heavily diluted medicine that would cure whatever it is that you have. What you actually are suppose to use is something that could cause the symptoms that you're having rather than actually cure them. Think of it as a kind of like a vaccine, minus any backing from the scientific and medical communities.

So if you want to cure that headache of yours using heavily diluted aspirin isn't going to work. What you actually want to use is something that can cause a headache if you take it in it's pure form, like beer, only it has to be heavily diluted.

So using homeopathy logic the best thing to take when you have a headache is a ball park beer, because those things are watered down all to hell.

3. A lot of it is REALLY watered down.

If you think that the homeopathic aspirin that I gave instructions above on how to make sounds really diluted (probably to the point where three to four bottles in you're not going to find any aspirin molecules) that's nothing (pun intended) compared to what some homeopathic medicine makers sell.

Some homeopathic medicine that is currently on the market is so diluted that you would have to consume the equivalent of all the water on the Earth inorder to have a chance of getting one molecule of whatever the original ingredient was...

Then there is Oscillococcinum, which is so diluted that one would have to consume it equivalent of 10³²¹ times the number atoms in the known universe inorder to have a chance of consuming even one molecule of whatever ingredient it is that the that the manufacturers used.

Now I bet many of you at this point are probably wondering how exactly is homeopathic medicine suppose to work? There is actually a explanation for that...

2. It's suppose to work off of water memory.

According to homeopathic practitioners water has memory, and that water can somehow contain the memory of whatever it is that it has come in contact with, and somehow this memory transfers over to us, and thus the more you dilute something the more memory the water retains of it...

If water memory is real then how would putting something in our water that is suppose to make us sicker make us better? Infact if water memory actually is real then drinking any water should kill any one of us instantly due to water memory retaining memory of all of the pollutants and toxins that's ever gone into it.

Fortunately we are all still here, so it leads me to think that there is nothing to this water memory stuff, and that much like the rest of homeopathic medicine...

1. It all sounds like BS.

Multiple dilutions. Using something that's suppose to make you sick inorder to cure you. Water memory. It all sounds like BS, right?

Well there's a reason why it all sounds like BS. It is.

Homeopathic medicine has never been proven to work. At best you may get a placebo effect where you think it's curing you but really you're healing no faster than you would if you took nothing at all.

Homeopathic medicine is a fraud. It always has been and it always will be.

The only reason why anyone would believe that homeopathic medicine works is either they have been tricked into believing that it works, or they are so into alternative medicine that they refuse to believe that it doesn't work.

67 claims about Coconut Oil: Which ones are true, and which ones are BS?

Recently I came across this picture that were making all of these claims about coconut oil (67 claims to be exact).

Now normal when I see something like this and it has the word "Proven" in the title, I automatically assume that most or all of it is just a bunch of BS.

But I decided to give these claims the benefit of the doubt and examine all of them to see if there is any truth behind them.

1. To cook with instead of vegetable or seed oils.

This one is true. You can cook with it, but it's advised by many health organizations not to, or not to use to much due to it's high amount of saturated fat.

2. In your coffee/tea instead of creamer.

Sure. Infact non-dairy creamers are often made out of coconut oil.

3. To wash your face with instead of soap.

Yes, this is true. Also most hard soaps are made with coconut oils.

4. To brush your teeth with.

You could. There's nothing dangerous about coconut oil (except maybe increasing your chance of having a heart attack if you eat to much of it) but I would stick with good old fashion (and proven) toothpaste.

My advice is that you should ask your dentist first before using coconut oil toothpaste and see what they have to say.

5. For oil pulling.

Yes, you can use coconut oil for this, although oil pulling itself hardly does anything and only really decreases the amount of tooth decaying bacteria in your mouth. Mouthwash is far more effective to use, and takes less time. Vodka also works to, and unlike mouthwash, you can actually swallow it!

6. As a body moisturizer.

Yes, this is true.

7. As a sun-screen.

Lets go back to #1 on the list, shall we. It's used as a cooking oil. What do you think it's going to do to you?

For those who answered incorrectly, it's going to cook you!

8. As a hair conditioner.

It does reduce protein loss in hair, so yes you could use it as a hair conditioner.

9. As a supplement.

For what? That's kind of vague. Plus considering how high coconut oil is in saturated fat, I wouldn't use it as a food supplement.

10. As a massage oil.

You can use it for that.

11. To reduce scars.

It helps with dry skin, and it might help acne scars, but scars from a cut it's not going to help.

12. To treat for lice.

Yes, you can, but you have to use a lot of it to work, and you have to leave on for 12 to 18 hours, and it probably won't kill the eggs.

13. To soften cracked heels.

Yes, you can use it for this.

14. As a hair serum.

Yes, this is another thing you can use it for.

15. As a buttery spread.

Sure you can... if you don't mind increasing your risk of having a heart attack in a few years.

16. To treat fungal infections.

No, you use use anti-fungal medication to treat fungal infections. Coconut oil might help with the dry skin, but that's it.

17. As a glaze for cold desserts.

Yes you can, but again most health experts would not recommend it.

18. To season cast iron pans.

Yes, but it's better to use healthier types of oils.

19. To improve Parkinson's disease.

There are a lot of claims going around the internet about coconut oil and Parkinson's disease, and there really hasn't been a lot of research into this, but so far it's believed that the "successes" you hear about is really just a bunch of anecdotal evidence, and there is not enough information to confirm if coconut oil can help with Parkinson's. Regardless of this more research is said to be needed.

20. To condition wood cutting boards.

You could, but considering how slick the stuff is, I wouldn't.

21. To bake in place of butter.

You could, but it's actually probably better to use butter.

22. As an ingredient for making coconut butter.

Yes, because coconut butter IS coconut oil!

23. As eye make-up remover.

Since coconut oil is used in soaps, it could probably be used as an eye make-up remover. It probably depends on what type of make-up you use with how effective it will be.

24. As a natural remedy for diaper rash.

Probably not, since diaper rash is a result of moisture, and coconut oil is used to treat dry skin.

25. To add to your protein shake.

See #1.

26. To relieve itching from bug bites.

If the bug bite causes dryness of the skin it might help, but other than that it will just be a placebo.

27. To help lower blood pressure.

NO!!! It will do the opposite.

28. To lessen the damaging effects of dementia.

Much like with Parkinson's disease there are claim that coconut oil helps with dementia, but that those claims appear to be anecdotal evidence rather than real evidence, but research into these claims are still needed.

29. To heal wounds.

Nope.

30. To reduce puffiness around the eyes.

Probably not. The best way to reduce puffiness is a change in diet.

31. As a lip balm.

You can if you want to...

32. To enhance nutrient absorption.

No, it does not do this.

33. To improve osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis is a bone disease, and coconut oil does nothing for your bones. Infact considering how much saturated fat is in coconut oil it's probably better not to consume the stuff if you have osteoporosis.

34. To relieve sun-burn.

No, it won't help. The best thing to do is to either take lots of cold showers, or use lotions with aloe vera, or wait it out.

35. To improve your memory.

If it does, or you think it does, then it's probably the result of whats called the "placebo effect" and has nothing to do with the coconut oil.

36. To make lotion bars.

Yes. Infact most lotion bars are made out of a certain amount of coconut oil.

37.  To make soap.

Most hard soaps are already made out of coconut oil. It's a key ingredient in the manufacturing of hard soaps.

38. To make laundry detergent.

You could probably try it. The worst thing that could happen is that your clothes don't come out clean.

39. To get hemorrhoid relief.

I'll forgo the gross details about what hemorrhoids are and just tell you that it won't.

40. As a hair gel.

You could use it for that. I'm not sure how good it would work, but you could use it.

41. To remove stretch marks.

All studies into this have found no evidence that any oils or creams can reduce or remove stretch marks.

42. As a shaving cream.

You could, but I would go with good old fashion shaving cream.

43. To make a nourishing hair mask.

Yes, you can use it for that.

44. To make a after-shave cream.

Yeah, it can be used for that

45. To make a nourishing lotion for your skin.

Yes, again you can use it for that.

46. To make a salt scrub.

I don't see why you can't.

47. In a cough syrup.

No, coconut oil does not help coughs.

48. In a sore throat cure.

It can't cure sore throats either. It's better to just eat ice cream, and probably healthier too.

49. In a homemade natural deodorant.

You could try it if you want, but it's probably not going to work since coconut oil doesn't actually absorb sweat. Infact it might actually make it worst, or at the very least leave you smelling like stink and coconuts.

50. To promoth hair regrowth.

I'm assuming the person who wrote this actually meant to say "promote", and no it doesn't, otherwise it would be the main ingredient in Rogaine.

51. To make your own cuticle oil.

You could try it. Even if it doesn't do any good the only harm you did was waste your money.

52. To stop nose bleeds.

No, tissues or bags of ice do that.

53. To prevent nose bleeds.

No, no picking your nose all the time and not getting your nose broken does that.

54. To fuel your workouts.

Considering it's full of saturated fat it will probably do the opposite, and maybe give you a heart attack while you're working out.

55. To build more muscles.

Protein and exercise does that, not something with lots of saturated fat.

56. As a testosterone booster.

No, and any type of natural product that claims to do this is BS.

57. As first aid.

For what? Dry skin. That's pretty much all it's good for for the human body.

58. To kill off candida yeast growth.

No, a yeast growth is a fungal infection and you need anti-fungal medicine to treat that.

59. To help cure Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO).

No, you need antibiotics to treat that.

60. To decrease an insulin spike.

Probably better not to. The best thing to do is to drink juice and eat dried fruits.

61. To stimulate your thyroid.

No, it doesn't.

62. To remove chewing gum from hair.

Pretty much the only way to remove chewing gum from hair is to cut it out, but go ahead and try it if you want to.

63. To burn fat around your stomach.

Considering coconut oil is mostly saturated fat, it's probably going to add to the fat around your stomach.

64. To clean and restore leather.

Leather oil would work better, but you could always try it.

65. To season stoneware.

You can, but it's not recommended, see #1 for the reason why.

66. To make good healthy mayo.

There's lots of ways to make good healthy mayo. Using coconut oil is not one of them.

67. In a natural vapor rub.

You could try it, but at best it would probably just be placebo effect.

***

In the end I have to conclude that is just classic food woo and alternative medicine BS. While some of what is claimed will work and is actually good for you, the rest is just stuff that either won't work but is harmless, or is actually bad for your health, and in a few claims can give false hope in improving your health, especially with certain serious medical conditions.

When you see stuff like this on the internet it's best just to ignore it.

5 Things I've noticed about... Alternative Cancer Cures

Alternative cancer cures.

These so called cures have been around with us for as long as science based cancer treatments have been around with us. Infact some of them have been around even longer than that.

These so called cures, while different, also have many things in common, which I have narrowed down to five different things.

So here are five things I've noticed about alternative cancer cures:

5. There's a lot of them.

One of the biggest things that I've noticed about alternative cancer cures is that there are a lot of different types of "cures" floating around the internet and alternative medicine communities, and that there seems to be a new one that comes out every few weeks.

I've seen claims that balancing your ph levels, vitamins, organic foods, "detoxing" your body of chemicals, breathing in pure oxygen, and soursop can cure cancer, and in ways and speeds that would make conventional treatments obsolete.

The most recent claims I've seen concern cannabis oil. Along with doing all sorts of other stuff, the rumors spreading around the internet is that either cannabis oil can cure or atleast stop the growth of cancer cells.

While there are a lot of different alternative medical treatments that are claimed to cure cancer, there are a few things that they all have in common, such as the fact that...

4. Many of the claims are exaggerated and dubious.

Of all the alternative cancer cures that I have seen floating around the internet they all just sound blatantly exaggerated, and when I do some research into these claims I find out that they are often times full of half truths, or are outright false. Examples of this would be Soursop which is claimed to be 10,000 times more effective than chemo (both exaggerated and false), and vitamins are often claimed to kill cancer cells because it can kill them in a petri dish (that doesn't mean it can kill them in the human body).

Many people who promote these so called alternative cancer cures also claim that there is a "conspiracy" by "big pharma" to suppress these so called "cures" (which they have done a terrible job at) and is the reason why doctors won't even mention these alternative "cures". This is ofcourse made up nonsense and BS conspiracy theories. The real reason why doctors don't recommend alternative cancer cures is because...

3. They don't work and are dangerous.

As the old saying goes "You know what they call an alternative medicine that works? Medicine."

The fact is that these so called alternative cancer cures don't work. They have been tested in scientific laboratories, and have been shown not to work and do nothing to reduce or stop the spread of cancer cells. The only thing that has been shown when a person purely uses alternative cancer cures is that a person will die of cancer just as fast as if they had used no cancer treatments at all. This is why no legitimate medical doctor would ever recommend any alternative cancer cures.

Worst yet is that some of these cancer cures are actually harmful. Soursop for instance has neurotoxins in it that can cause a person to develop symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease, and cansema, another so called alternative cancer cure is corrosive and destroys your skin. There are also many different herbs that are floating around that are said to cure cancer, but in reality are poisonous and can kill you.

Ofcourse no one who believes that alternative cancer cures work would know this, nor would some of them really care primarily due to the "statistics" that the profiteers... I mean promoters of alternative cancer cures often times use. And speaking of those statistics...

2. The statistics alternative cancer cure promoters use are exaggerated and flawed.

Many times accompanying articles about alternative cancer cures (especially on websites that promote these "cures") and are some kind of statistics and information about how many people have been cured of cancer by taking whatever it is they are promoting. What many of these so called statistics and information may or may not tell you is how many of those people were using conventional cancer treatments during, or before, or after they took the alternative cancer cures. To most people this would create a cross contamination in the data as it could be argued that it is just as likely (much more likely actually) that the conventional cancer treatments are what cured a person of cancer and not the alternative cancer treatments.

Now when you remove all the people who admit they used conventional cancer treatments and only include those that claim to have purely used alternative cancer cures, the number of people who believe that they successfully rid themselves of cancer is shockingly small, and can be explained as either the body healing itself (it's rare, but it does happen) or the person was given a false diagnosis (which is why a second diagnosis is always needed after a first positive diagnosis is made inorder to confirm if a person has cancer), or that some of the people questioned could be outright lying and actually did have conventional cancer treatments, or have never been diagnosed with cancer, they just claimed they had it.

What these statistics do not tell you is how many people actually died while using these alternative cancer cures, either indirectly as a result of foregoing conventional cancer treatments, or directly as a result of being poisoned by some of these "cures".

Also another thing that the promoters of alternative cancer cures tend to do...

1. The promoters of alternative cancer cures love to talk about the negatives of conventional cancer treatments, but never the positives.

As a way to help promote alternative cancer cures the promoters of these so called cures love to talk about all of the bad stuff about conventional cancer cures, primarily how harsh some of it can be, and how expensive it can be, and that sometimes conventional treatments do not work. While this is true it's still fear mongering that's done inorder to scare people into foregoing conventional cancer treatments and use the alternative ones.

What's almost never mentioned is how conventional cancer treatments have consistently increased the life expectancy and survivability of people who were diagnosed with cancer for over the past 50 years, and that there are new treatments for cancer that are based off of science based research that are coming out all the time. Infact I know a person who recently was completely cured of a type of cancer that ten years would have meant a death sentence, and this is all thanks to science based medicine. His story is just one of millions of examples of how science based cancer treatments have prolonged peoples lives, or rid people of cancer!

Ofcourse you'll never hear that from a person whom promotes the non-science based "cures".

9 Reasons why people use Alternative Medicine

Why do some people continue to used alternative medicine?

Despite all the information there is about alternative medicine and how not only does it not work, but that infact it can even be harmful, people still use it and believe that it really does work.

So why is it that people still use alternative medicine? Well, I've been thinking about that, and I've come up with quite a few reasons why:

Desperation

Science based medicine is an incredible thing and can cure many diseases and fix a lot of things that can go wrong with the human body, but unfortunately it can't cure every disease, or fix everything that goes wrong with our bodies (not yet atleast). So when science based medicine can't fix or cure what ever is wrong with us (or atleast not doing so in a way that is fast enough for us) some people, even rational people, might become desperate enough to use alternative medicine.

This sort of situation especially happens when someone has a terminal disease and they are told by their doctor that there is nothing they can do to cure what ever it is that is killing them. Some people will not accept this and will seek out anything that is claimed to be able to cure them (even if all the evidence says otherwise).

They think it's cheaper

Because alternative medicine isn't manufactured by the pharmaceutical companies (who are for profit businesses) it is assumed by some people that alternative medicine must be cheaper than science based medicine because they believe that the people who are manufacturing these alternative medical products are not doing it for a profit, plus when a person is told about a product that is suppose to be cheaper and work better than the conventional product, people tend to buy the supposedly cheaper product.

Now if you seriously believe that alternative medicine is cheaper than science based medicine, and that people who make these alternative medical products are not doing so for a profit, then I know a Nigerian prince that wants to give you $15,000,000.

A friend told them it works

Probably the best form of advertising there is is word of mouth. You don't do have to pay for anything, and people tend to trust the opinion of a friend or family member over a creative ad in a newspaper or a TV commercial. Same thing holds true with alternative medicine.

Lets say you've been sick for a while and you have been taking some medicine for what ever has been ailing you, but so far it has had little to no affect. You tell a friend or a family member about your health issues and they might recommend that you take some herbs, or to go see this "doctor" that they recommend (who turns out to be an alternative medicine practitioner and not a real doctor) because they claim that it helped them, or it helped someone they know. Because you trust the person whom is recommending this "doctor" or this product, you might be more willing to see this "doctor" or try this product than you would if some stranger had told you.

Science based medicine can be harsh

Science based medicine (or modern medicine, or real medicine as some people like to call it) is a great thing. It has cured a lot of stuff, and has extended our average life expectancy by years, but it can also be pretty harsh at times as well. Because of this some people might either choose to stop using a science based medical treatment because they feel that it has become to harsh on them and that they believe that it might kill them if they continue to use, and so they decided to use alternative medicine instead because they believe it will help them without any side effects, or they might already know (or atleast believe) that the medical treatment that they've been recommend that they do could or will be harsh on them, and they decide to forgo it and use alternative medicine instead.

It goes with their beliefs

Whether is be religious, or cultural, or even personal, our beliefs in whatever form it may be shapes our thinking and what we do and what we trust, and if there is something about an alternative medicine that appeals to a person's beliefs, or if there is something about science based medicine that person considers taboo, the person might be far more willing to use alternative medicine even when it clearly doesn't work and that science based medicine clearly does work.

They believe that science based medicine is dangerous

Some people might chose to use alternative medicine rather than science based medicine not simply because they believe it is better than science based medicine, but because they believe that science based medicine is actually dangerous.

It shouldn't be to surprising that many supporters of alternative medicine also tend to be conspiracy theorists who believe that pharmaceutical companies are greedy and are only putting out products to make money without care of whether or not a product is dangerous, or intentionally putting out a product that will make us sick so that they can make more money off of us that way, or are part of some "New World Order" and are putting out dangerous products as a way to either control us or slowly kill us.

It should also not be surprising that many people who believe such conspiracy theories also believe that pharmaceutical companies are also trying to suppress information about alternative medicine, and are even going so far as to try to outlaw alternative medicine. Because of this belief it can make many people believe that alternative medicine is not only the right choice, but the only choice.

They used alternative medicine before and believed that it worked

One of the main reasons why some people use alternative medicine is because they already used it before for something else and as far as they are concerned it worked.

Now the two biggest reasons why someone might think that alternative medicine actually works after they already used it and it appeared to cure what ever was ailing them is either because they took it along with the real science based medicine and they simply assumed that the alternative medicine either helped cure them, or was what really cured them. Or they might not have used any science based medicine and that their body simply healed itself, but because that they used alternative medicine they assume that it was the alternative medicine that healed them and not their own bodies.

Because some people who have taken alternative medicine and believe that it really did work they might forgo using any science based medicine and use only alternative medicine, or atleast continue to use it along with science based medicine.

They read information about it that makes them think it works

There are a lot of websites and books out there about alternative medicine and it's alleged "benefits". Many of these books and websites contain "information" mostly in the form of positive stories about alternative medicine and how it's "helped" certain people by telling you their stories of how it's supposedly cured them while at the the same time bad mouthing science based medicine by claiming it wasn't working, or that it was killing the person, or by putting in information that makes science based medicine look harmful, or just insert a bunch of pharmaceutical industry conspiracy theories.

Sometimes these books and websites will take it a step further and have a real doctor claim that some kind of alternative medicine really works, or perhaps the book was written by a real doctor, or the website is run by a real doctor, and because something is written or run by a real doctor, it might cause some people to believe that there is something to this alternative medicine.

They got scammed into it.

Despite all that we've learned from snake oil salesmen of the 19th century, people still get scammed by con-artists and quacks who get people to buy useless products because they have been lead to believe that said product works and will cure what ever is ailing them when all it is is really junk.

Be either through an ad on the internet, or directly from the mouth of the person selling what ever they are selling, people to this day still get suckered into buying stuff that does not work. The fact that alternative medicine even exists today and that there are companies that manufacture and make billions off of this stuff is proof of that.