The snake oil purveyors

The storm turned out to be a damp squib. So I'm stuck at work because they opened the office. Hardly anyone is here though, as most people have enough sense to just stay away when they can. Not me, though, I'll always drag myself in if I am physically able. Idiot.

The big news of the day in Sarah's world, though (apart from the fact that I've got some spotting going on on CD12 - WTF?), is that I have booked to go to Clear Passage Therapies in Gainesville for a week. I had been a bit hesitant lately because I found details on an enzyme therapy that is supposed to help break up adhesions and am going to be trying that. After all, why spend $5k on a massage treatment, when you can get the same results for $100? But I decided to go for it, as I believe that it will not only help with adhesions, but with motility of all my "innards" as well. However, I have been warned against going, because various people think it's all a crock of shit, and that they are snake oil purveyors.

It has got me thinking about the things us desperate infertiles will do to try to improve our chances. I mean, there are the RE's that push immunological factors as being very important in unexplained (or under-explained) infertility. My RE seems to think that this is all bogus. There are people that will tell you that acupuncture and Chinese medicine will cure anything. Others who think it won't work. There are people who will tell you that you must cut out caffeine and alcohol, and others who say it makes no difference.

If you speak to proponents of various treatment modalities, you come away thinking that it is all very cut and dried. Why is it that so many people in this world think it's an either/or problem and solution? Why is it that more people aren't recognizing that there must be a myriad ways to become infertile (or sub-fertile if you prefer), so that there can't be one solution for everybody? Surely if I want to try something because I think it might help, shouldn't I be free to try it without being told that it is bogus? I don't know, I just feel that in this area in particular, western medicine is sadly lacking, and that it will probably take many more years of research before they figure out how to help everyone.

Anyway, I checked out snake oil on Wikipedia to find out why it is so vilified, and find out that real snake oil has been vindicated as being a useful pain reliever for joint and arthritic pain, and that it contains some of the highest concentrations of EPA anywhere (much better than salmon and other fish). Interesting. It was just the western imitators that were doing it to scam people that put out the bogus products, and who claimed that it could miraculously heal many ailments rather than just one, that brought the term into disrepute. Hence we have come to associate snake oil with fraudulent products.

I guess that's the real key, isn't it? Finding out who is advocating for a treatment modality that they really believe in, and which has the capability to help some people, and finding out who is just scamming the public. For what it's worth, I feel that the Clear Passage people do really believe in their treatment, and I believe it could help me, so I'm going for it.