Hayfever sufferers! Fantastic bargain Lloyds Pharmacy- 'Medinose' + Ioniser £19.99!!

mathsstudent

peggydoodaa wrote: »

I personally didn't buy it on it's 'clinically proven' claims, I bought it as an aid to my hayfever relief. As I said, it didn't get rid of my symptoms completely but combined with my usual medication made last summer tolerable.

But what made you think that it could aid your hayfever in the first place? Surely it was the product's claim that it would help? What was this claim based on? A flawed trial. If the product's packaging had been honest, it would have had a label saying "This product has never been reliably shown to have a significant positive effect". Would you still have bought it then? I would say not.

If you combine this treatment with your "usual medication" then how do you know which is helping your symptoms? This is the classic scientific problem of separation of variables. When testing any hypothesis, it is necesary to keep as many other factors and variables as close to constant as possible. Thus in order for you to say the product had any effect at all, you should not be using the medication at the same time. This of course does not take into account other variables, such as the amount of pollen around when you are using the product, and so it is hard to give a suitable comparison of results. This is why anecdotes are not generally accepted as scientific evidence - there is no way of knowing what changes there were in other variables. Your symptoms may have reduced when you started using the medinose, but if the amount of pollen you were exposed to also dropped, then how can we test if the medinose had any effect?

peggydoodaa wrote: »

But just because you can't scientifically prove it's working, doesn't mean it isn't. Different people respond to different methods, for some it may even just be psychological and I fully accept that this may be the case BUT if it makes me feel better what does it matter?

Just for the record, I class myself as an open-minded skeptic with many things that can't be proved!

I agree that the lack of proof does not indicate lack of effect, but what it does do is make the probability of such effects occurring much smaller. (n.b. the lack of a disproof does not constitute evidence for the efficacy of the product either.) The question of whether this product can treat hayfever is a scientific one, thus there is a way to test scientifically whether the product works. By my logic, if Medinose could show conclusive evidence that their product worked, then they would - who would not want to cure their hayfever without taking drugs? They would no doubt make a fortune, but if the producer of a product cannot provide this evidence, or even a hypothesis suggesting why their treatment should work, then that to me suggests that they themselves do not believe it does. Ten years have passed since that first paper was puplished, you would think that this would be ample time for Medinose to conduct many improved trials, but apparently they have not. (Or if they have they have kept very quiet about the results - indicating even more strongly that there is no reason to believe that the product works.)

If using the product makes you feel better, then maybe that makes it worth the money, but consider this situation:
You see an advert for a charity that says it wants to buy food for starving children. You ring the number and donate £40. You feel good. You think you have changed the world in some small way for the better.
Later, it emerges that the person who ran the charity was a con man who didn't buy a single scrap of food for children, but spent it all on himself.
Would you tell your friends about the charity, but not that it was run by a con man? They too would donate money and feel good, but the 'product' they thought they were buying did nothing but go to a con man.

The point is, that something may make you feel better, but it does not necessarily mean that it is helping you or anyone else. The medinose is perhaps a less extreme case, but I think the principle still holds - you bought the product based on claims that were (are) untested and unverified.

I would like to know what things you think cannot be proven. Maybe you mean things that have yet to be (dis)proven, rather than things which cannot be (dis)proven at all?
I too am 'open minded'. I am ready and willing to accept new ideas, new treatments, new technology, but being open minded does not mean that you accept ideas without any need for evidence. As the famous quotation goes: "If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out."

gtd2000

I've been using this device since the beggining of the week (Sunday 3rd May) after receiving one as a gift at xmas from my mother.

I'm a complete skeptic of all hay fever "cures" as I've never found anything to work satsifactorily

My first sessions with the Medinose Plus induced immediate sneezing and a runny nose, which I'm sure is not the desired intention of the device.

I'm now able to position the prongs without causing this reaction - either that or my nose is simply acclimatising to the sensation.

One of my colleagues (German) was telling me about some new medication he was using which according to the packet is labelled "Cetrizin-ratiopharm bei Allergen". He gave me a strip of the pills to test as he had good results with them.

OK that's some background info...

At the start of the week I had to go out to do a bit of work on the car which was in the garden - within 5 or 10 minutes I could feel the effects of pollen and started sneezing now and again but nothing too bad really.
Thats a pretty normal reaction for me at this time of year - I'd never consider sitting in the garden at all.

Well yesterday, I went to a BBQ at the neighbours house - approximately 25m from my place and we all sat in the garden drinking beer (& Vodka, Raki, Mirella etc :beer:) having a very pleasant evening (I'm typing from Holland by the way) and I have to say I never had a single sneeze or even the feeling that I wanted or needed to sneeze at any point which was something of a novelty to be honest.

At this point I'm just thinking the pollen levels are severly reduced at the neighbours but I'd be very happy that it was due to the Medinose device...

I'll report back after further treatments and tests in differing locations/conditions.

On a side note I did my morning treatment sitting here in the office and the cleaner walked in - his face was a peach looking at me doing my Rudolf impression. I just said - oh this is the new iPod - or more correctly "dis id de noo Ibod" and laughed.

squidworth

Not sure relevant this is, but I'm normally a very bad hayfever sufferer and as part of a getting fitter thing started long daily walks around my local country park (about 9k each afternoon) a few months back. Normally tree pollen does it for me but so far have had no hayfever signs, perhaps this is like the honey effect in acclimatising to the pollen? Either way I feel the clearest I have ever felt this time of year in a long long time!

So perhaps daily walks before the season starts is all it takes! Dont suppose anyones done a study on that? Seems a great free cure with plenty of side benefits! And if you find it boring download an audiobook to your mp3 player and drift away while walking...

peggydoodaa

mathsstudent, I love the debate but I can't understand why you seem to be on a one-man drive to knock it down (noting your other posts on other threads)?
It helps me & others too apparently, great news for us! We're happy!
It doesn't work for you, keep your £40 in your pocket and carry on with whatever works for you! You're happy!

We all carry on with what works FOR US...move on.

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Albert Einstein

harryharp

Yes, totally agree Peggy. Too much over-complication.

mathsstudent

The question I'm asking is if it actually does work for you at all! So far the evidence is that it does nothing. I'm trying to show you this, but maybe you've got the lights on too bright because you seem to be blind to reason. I'm sure Einstein would have said that the people who made this didn't know what they were doing. There's a big difference between Einstein's research in physics and special relativity and the question of whether sticking lights up your nose cures hayfever - one's very complex and the other's rather easy, I'll let you decide which is which.

Harry, what could be simpler than my question about if the product actually does anything?!

lisyloo

I've tried pretty much everything including nasal irrigation.
I found with this (and other things) that standard medication works for me.

mathsstudent

peggydoodaa wrote: »

It helps me & others too apparently, great news for us! We're happy!
It doesn't work for you, keep your £40 in your pocket and carry on with whatever works for you! You're happy!
We all carry on with what works FOR US...move on.

The Romans were happy to think that the Sun went around the Earth, but they were wrong.
The Aztecs were happy to think that if they didn't sacrifice someone then the crops would fail, but they were wrong.
We were happy thinking the banks were all OK, but we were wrong.
Charles Darwin was happy to think that life was created 'as is', but he saw the evidence and knew he had been wrong.

It doesn't matter how 'happy' you are, you can still be wrong. My question was not "How happy do you feel when you spend £40 on nose lights?" it is "Does sticking these lights up your nose have any effect whatsoever?" If you can tell me where 'happiness' is a factor in this last question, please, be my guest.

gtd2000

mathsstudent wrote: »

It doesn't matter how 'happy' you are, you can still be wrong. My question was not "How happy do you feel when you spend £40 on nose lights?" it is "Does sticking these lights up your nose have any effect whatsoever?" If you can tell me where 'happiness' is a factor in this last question, please, be my guest.

Now you can see how easy it is for religion to take grip on people

This chap was healed by God apparently via "simple prayer" :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbzGyaP3lg

No need to buy anything really now that I've watched this....

peggydoodaa

Bored now, not prepared to be preached to thanks mathsstudent!