Later this week I’ll be giving a short talk about the Bach flower remedies to a group of senior doctors with connections to my old medical school in Oxford, UK. Many of them will probably never have heard of the remedies – even though Mount Vernon, the home of the Bach Foundation, is only a few miles away from Oxford city. Even fewer will have had personal experience of using them, or know how much they can help with the management of health problems whether mental or physical.
I hope and expect that there will be a friendly informal atmosphere at this meeting, and that most people in the audience will be interested in the brief case histories and flower photos I plan to present. However, some orthodox clinicians are sceptical about the value of ‘natural therapies’ in general, and a few are quite hostile towards them, so I need to be prepared to answer criticisms such as the following:
Bach flowers are no more effective than placebo: several randomised controlled trials published in medical journals have reached this conclusion. The placebo effect, in which the beliefs and expectations of both patients and their clinicians work to bring about a self-healing response, is indeed a powerful force for good and if the Bach remedies can mobilise it effectively, so much the better. There is certainly a placebo element in this therapy, as in any other.
It is, however, difficult to believe that the excellent results achieved with the remedies are due to placebo alone – over 80% of clients treated by Bach practitioners respond well, and they include babies and animals. And the occurrence of ‘healing reactions’, in which a minority of clients experience an aggravation of symptoms before they get better, seems unlikely to be a placebo (or nocebo) effect.
The published trials have several limitations, for example they have usually given the same remedies to all participants although it is a key principle of this therapy that an individualised mixture should be chosen for each case.
The challenges of evaluating natural therapies and the ‘holistic approach’ are considered in more detail in my recent book Persons not Diseases (by the way the e-version on Smashwords is on promotion at just $1.50 USD this week, 2-8 March – here’s the link).
Their supposed mode of action is not scientifically credible: talk of ‘vibrational’ and ‘energy’ medicine does not go down well in orthodox circles, where mechanical and chemical approaches hold sway. It must be admitted that the mode of action of Bach flower remedies, like that of homeopathics, is not well understood. However, it is arrogant to assume that a therapy must be ineffective because current knowledge cannot explain why it should work. The phrase ‘the exact mechanism of action is unknown’ quite often appears in the product descriptions of widely-used pharmaceutic drugs!
The remedies give ‘false hope’ of cure, and patients may use them instead of effective medical treatments: It is true to say that Dr Edward Bach envisaged a world in which most diseases could be cured if patients themselves simply learned to recognise the emotional imbalance underlying them, and used the flower remedies to restore harmony to mind and spirit. Although subsequent advances in mind-body medicine would support Bach’s ideas, current claims for the remedies are more modest. They are not a panacea and, as made clear in training courses for Bach Foundation practitioners, they are intended for ‘complementary’ rather than ‘alternative’ use. They do not treat specific medical conditions, but are selected according to the personality and emotional state of each patient, with the aim of improving quality of life. They can safely be used alongside conventional treatments.
If any other points of interest arise from the meeting, I’ll write a follow-up post next week.
Jennifer Barraclough 