Posted by gary (208.133.221.202) on January 05, 2000 at 19:44:42:
In Reply to: Let me humbly add that ............. posted by Jack Boyd on January 05, 2000 at 18:05:12:
Hi Jack
very good comments and absolutely true as far as I am aware,as to anecdotal reports
our only difference appears to be in opinion/philosophy of what constitutes an established prophylactic - -
and in that post for newbies I was trying to distinguish between the therapies that are well-proven in an overwhelming majority of cases (the few abortives)to accomplish, or very near accomplish, a full relief
THAT'S why I didn't give the prophylactics much credit IN THAT CONTEXT
many have been completely discredited, some worthless ones linger on in practice, and there are some promising items that are still not at a statistically meaningful level of universal effectiveness
there ARE several promising drugs, and you raised an EXCELLENT example: verapamil -
which seem to be helping many people SOMEWHAT,
but which still need a lot more work and study to claim a reliable, repeatable, majority caseload effectiveness
MY personal idea of a proven effective item is one that works overwhelmingly well, in an overwhelming majority of people, consistently and repeatedly
I ACCEPT partial results gladly, and don't discard the effort because the results aren't perfect
but I refuse to redefine partial as succesful - because that just lowers the bar each time we do it
SO
1, I guess I'm just more conservative in what I am willing to move from the "promising but unproven" to "this works" list
2, I am not a complete believer in the notion that "many different things work for many different people" BECAUSE when you poke hard enough at a lot of the claims, you find out they still have clusters and still get painful attacks in the clusters
TO ME that means what they're trying ISN'T working
DON'T GET ME WRONG -
I agree - try anything that looks promising
no question
that's how we narrow this down
and once you have a handle on the CH in your life, and have gotten past the hysterics and emotional upsets - anything that improves it even slightly is good - a net gain
I just believe that a LOT of people go through a lot of heartache and unnecessary pain by chasing overliberally applied claims of effectiveness
the upfront expectation tends to be that there will be a gee-whiz miracle pill that will just stop these buggers, because that's what's built in to our public cultural mythology
(one pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small, and the one that mother gives you.......)