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Will homeopathy make you a fitter, faster, healthier cyclist?
Fri, Jul 21, 2017 22:07
Do homeopathic remedies have a place in your cycling armoury?
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John wrote about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day’s work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
He worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John also wrote for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site’s main audience. He joined road.cc in 2013.
John died from cancer in 2025, changing his name to John Abbott Valentine in the months before his death.
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chrisonabike 6 minutes ago
@jaymack tomato sauce?
wtjs 15 minutes ago
@Paul J The friend is his cousin... No he isn't. Not much else is said about the 'friend' which leads me to suspect proceedings against the friend along 'aiding and abetting' lines. From the little we know, there certainly should be.
mitsky 19 minutes ago
@Daveyraveygravey Would be interesting to find out which insurer is covering a driver with 100 points (or even the ones with 12+). And how long it takes to fill in the renewal form with details of each conviction? Not to mention who could afford a theoretically astronomical policy.... In theory it should be cheaper for them to hire a chauffeur.
kil0ran 24 minutes ago
@chrisonabike it's not just motoring offences. One of our local "celebrities" has a string of convictions for violence/robbery/poaching/driving offences from age 13. He's late '30s now and has only just reached Crown Court level for what the CPS claims is a deliberate vehicular attack on a cyclist. Fortunately the cyclist survived but has been left with life-altering injuries. There's a complete failure by magistrates to deal with persistent offending like this not least because of safety fears due to links to organized crime gangs and the travelling community.
kil0ran 37 minutes ago
@Sniffer the police seem pretty keen on seizing and crushing illegal ebikes and scooters so I'm sure they'd be happy to do it to motor vehicles. Yeah, who am I kidding?
eburtthebike 42 minutes ago
St Chris of Boardman is obviously correct, but facts don't change the minds of bigots. It is a feature of some political view points that they identify an enemy, in this case cyclists, which is responsible for all their ills. Stuck in traffic? Cyclists. Can't park? Cyclists. Late for work? Cyclists. Can't do 70mph? Cyclists. Got caught using your phone? Cyclists. Logic and rationality have no effect on these people: they know the truth, and no amount of facts will persuade them. But thanks for trying Chris.
Briain 46 minutes ago
@kil0ran One of his many convictions is for driving while disqualified. As long as this guy is out of prison he's a danger to the general public. There needs to mandatory jail sentences of multiple years for people who offend while on probation/ license for other offences. It's not even about punishment for the offender it's just to protect the public from these guys who can't/ wont modify there behavior to fit into society
Daveyraveygravey 52 minutes ago
One of the most shocking cases to read about. The individual responsible is clearly a psycho and will never follow any of the rules. The last few paragraphs about sentencing should be a wake up call for society; "he was also disqualified from driving for life, a relative rarity in the UK, where just TWO motorists of the 202 convicted of causing death by dangerous driving were handed lifetime driving bans between June 2023 and June 2024." There are 4000 drivers in the UK with more than 12 points on their licence who haven't been banned. I believe two of these are over one hundred points.
chrisonabike 1 hour ago
@Rendel Harris agree, although I note a similar usage in the case of "nonsense" is apparently accepted "(a bunch of nonsense") as well as the unqualified "it's nonsense". (FWIW I've heard "a piece of nonsense" also - so servings appear flexible).
wtjs 1 hour ago
Excellent work by Councillor Kerr!
19 thoughts on “Will homeopathy make you a fitter, faster, healthier cyclist?”
It might … the placebo
It might … the placebo effect does work on some people some of the time … the precise treatment doesn’t matter … its belief that produces the required effect. Just don’t count on it working as success cannot be predicted or guaranteed. For a stronger effect you could always try a hay fever remedy.
Yes. As pointed out above, if
Yes. As pointed out above, if the complaint is psychosomatic in origin homeopathy has as much chance of working as anything else. A positive attitude and belief that something can and will be cured / improved also correlates well with improvement. So, homeopathy may have a place, but so might your horoscope
But if you believe in
But if you believe in homeopathy and you use it to enhance performance, then even though there is no medication as such to detect in a test, surely you are still morally guilty of a doping offence?
Mungecrundle wrote:
The same thing could be said about eating a banana, or an ‘energy’ bar…
caaad10 wrote:
The same thing could be said about eating a banana, or an ‘energy’ bar…— Mungecrundle
I don’t recall any person detected as a drug cheat claiming they took a bunch of pills because they were hungry.
Mungecrundle wrote:
Presumably then you will receive a homeopathic ban? Banned from one in 10^20 events.
Mungecrundle wrote:
This is along the lines of a question my daughter asked today
“If a dog farts in the woods and there’s no-one there, does it still smell?”
madcarew wrote:
This is along the lines of a question my daughter asked today
“If a dog farts in the woods and there’s no-one there, does it still smell?”— Mungecrundle
I prefer Steven Wright’s:
“If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?”
Homeopathy
Q. What do you call alternative medicine that works?
A. Medicine
Short, sharp and to the point
Short, sharp and to the point. Well put.
How are they going to test
How are they going to test for homeopathic doping? I bet they’d get loads of false positives.
Regarding the placebo affect, there must be a cheaper way of taking placebos than the high priced homeopathic “products” (water).
hawkinspeter wrote:
No, if it’s too cheap it won’t work as well … we have a tendency to believe something is better the more it costs.
nbrus wrote:
Sounds like titanium bits for bikes.
Even though homeopathy is
Even though homeopathy is pure quackery and completely useless, if a rider uses it in an attempt to improve performance, they can be banned.
6.3. Athletes’ health care providers should act in accordance with the latest recognised medical knowledge and, when available, evidence-based medicine.
DavidC wrote:
Does this also apply to swimmers? If a swimmer deliberately ingests some sea-water then they’re essentially taking every single homeopathic remedy at once including the banned substances.
I drink Homeopathic Lager
I drink Homeopathic Lager when riding my bike.
Leviathan wrote:
Really? I just don’t like the taste of Aussie lager, but if you like it…
Merely dressing up in skin
Merely dressing up in skin tight lycra, often explicitly trying to look like other grown fit men who dress in skin tight lycra, then following them around all day getting sweaty whilst looking at their arses does NOT in ANY WAY imply that cycllists are homeos….
The theory of homeopathy says
The theory of homeopathy says that the more a substance is diluted, the more effective it becomes. How come it doesn’t work for alcohol then ?