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HeadOn application

joelblanchette said:
Menthol is listed as an "active ingredient" in products with as little as 2% concentration (cold creams, mixed with camphor and eucalyptus oils). It is evidently safe, but my point is that it is listed as "inactive" here and "active" in other applications. I doubt its chemical properties vary based on the label... I was being facetious about the sulfuric acid. :D
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Actually, Head On probably has it correct here. At the concentrations they're claiming, it's not an active ingredient. In other words, at those concentrations, there are no FDA approved claims that can be made about it. (I actually have the FDA regulations regarding menthol labeling on my computer at work, as it happens, and can send you the info if you like.)

"Active" and "inactive" are not properties assigned to substances per se, regardless of use. It's not as though some substances are inherently "active" and others are inherently "inactive", in the sense we're using the terms here.

I knew you were being facetious about the sulfuric acid, but I wanted to make a point in my reply anyway.
 
Piggy said:
Thanks, jb... seems it was me misunderstanding your posts.

Head On has already been spanked for claims on their Web site, which they had to remove. They might also get into hot water over their "active ingredients" if they are below effective concentrations. On the other hand, FDA tends to spend their limited resources on products which may do harm, rather than those which do nothing, especially if used to treat relatively non-threatening conditions such as headache.
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Obviously, or they would have gotten around to banning every homeopathic product in existence. I happened to be at a pharmacy yesterday to buy pain medication (children's acetaminophen) and noticed the HeadOn box, and for the active ingredients (Potassium Bichromate and White Bryony Root, slightly different than the American packaging, I think, as I am in Canada) it lists their medicinal functions as "pain relief". I have found nothing on the Internet that supports this. Potassium Dichromate is a highly toxic carcinogen that is also highly corrosive. It has no business being in or on the human body. White Bryony Root is a powerful irritant, and can cause blistering on the skin. It has been used medicinally in the past, but is currently considered toxic. Far from being pain-killers, applying these products to your skin would be excrutiatingly painful. Fortunately, there is almost no chance of ever finding a single molecule of either of these ingredients in HeadOn. :D
 
joelblanchette said:
Potassium Dichromate is a highly toxic carcinogen that is also highly corrosive. It has no business being in or on the human body. White Bryony Root is a powerful irritant, and can cause blistering on the skin. It has been used medicinally in the past, but is currently considered toxic. Far from being pain-killers, applying these products to your skin would be excrutiatingly painful. Fortunately, there is almost no chance of ever finding a single molecule of either of these ingredients in HeadOn. :D
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That's kind of what homeopathy is about. They have their "law of similars" which means that a substance which causes a symptom in healthy people will somehow cure dieseases with those same symptoms.

It is simply a form of sympathetic magic dressed up as medicine.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
That's kind of what homeopathy is about. They have their "law of similars" which means that a substance which causes a symptom in healthy people will somehow cure dieseases with those same symptoms.

It is simply a form of sympathetic magic dressed up as medicine.
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How anybody could believe anything so patently stupid and absurd is beyond me. It amazes me that so many people would go for such a counter-intuitive notion. Most dumb woowoo notions are successful because they seem intuitive on the surface... Oh well, these are the same bunch that eat freshly-squeezed shark testicle soup, jab magnetized needles into their eyeball meridians, and rearrange their furniture to optimize the vibrating chi coming out of their ying-yangs, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the stupendous depth and breadth of their idiocy. :D
 
joelblanchette said:
How anybody could believe anything so patently stupid and absurd is beyond me. It amazes me that so many people would go for such a counter-intuitive notion. Most dumb woowoo notions are successful because they seem intuitive on the surface... Oh well, these are the same bunch that eat freshly-squeezed shark testicle soup, jab magnetized needles into their eyeball meridians, and rearrange their furniture to optimize the vibrating chi coming out of their ying-yangs, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the stupendous depth and breadth of their idiocy. :D
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Yes, it is a puzzle.

Some people are just not interested in science, statistics, logic, deduction and dissection. So they are dumb in this sense. But they can be quite clever in other respects. Some medicos use homoeopathic treatments, for example. To get through medical school you can't really be dumb through and through. I think perhaps they're the sort of who enjoy being entertained by a "magic" show but have absolutely no interest in knowing how it was done. It's the experience that matters to them, not the dissection. In a sense they prefer to believe it really is magic that made the elephant disappear.

I think there have always been people like this and there always will be. Possibly some of it is to do with how their brains are wired. Perhaps there are influences from early experiences. They possibly enjoyed faerie tales in childhood before they discovered they don't exist. Yet they still hanker for the emotional high and attach it to something else. Sometimes even life in general becomes a sort of a faerie tale. And it so much fun. Much better fun than boring science and statistics.

Of course, there are charlatans also.
 
I am not normally a violent person, but if they worked in a scene of someone shooting the person during this commercial I'd have no objections.

HeadOn, apply dire... BLAM
 
BillyJoe said:
Yes, it is a puzzle.

Some medicos use homoeopathic treatments, for example. To get through medical school you can't really be dumb through and through. I think perhaps they're the sort of who enjoy being entertained by a "magic" show but have absolutely no interest in knowing how it was done. It's the experience that matters to them, not the dissection. In a sense they prefer to believe it really is magic that made the elephant disappear.
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I am in medical school, and they stuck in a couple of lectures on alternative medicine as part of our first and second years.

I think it backfired badly, because there was no real attempt to go into anything in enough depth to really understand it, and also because the lecturer was reather archly dismissive of some subjects while startlingly (to me) accepting of others. This led to an unbelievable amount of carping on the part of my classmates, but to my surprise most of it was "I can't believe he spent twenty minutes talking about CureX--that's such crap. And then he acted like CureY doesn't even work!" What CureX and CureY were in any given conversation varied widely and didn't have much to do with what the lecturer actually said, IMHO. It was basically ideas that they'd entered school with and already 'knew' were true, and that was that.

There was even a kind of ad hoc committee forming to demand a full hour for some "real" alternative medicine practitioners to come in and speak to us (I recall aruveyda and homeopathy being touted), but fortunately that petered out before my skull exploded. (If they had, I planned to make myself very unpopular by asking some very difficult questions.)

Getting into med school requires a certain amount of scientific knowledge. it does not require that you actually learn to think scientifically. There's a difference. ;)

The curriculum spends an inordinate amount of time on what is called 'evidence-based medicine', and to their credit they try very hard to explain the whole concept of how to read and assess a paper, but there is just not a lot of what I would call 'critical thinking' being taught. Which is probably inevitable, given the demands of med school, but I think the attempt to educate on this particular subject is doomed without it.

Sorry, that was longer than I meant it to be. :o
 
I just pulled up a full MSDS Sheet and HOLY (insert favorite second word here)!

HTML: 
http://www.vwrsp.com/msds/10/EM-/EM-PX1445-5.pdf

Check that bad boy out. Not only is it a level 4 health hazard, its also a very dangerous Oxidizer and is a no-go on firefighting.

Even better, USDOT requires it to be reported on all paperwork if the quantity exceeds 10 US pounds.

Isn't this Exciting?!



(the Link does work. Its PDF.)
 
nathan said:
Oh, so it works through the nerves does it? Then why rub it on the forehead -- that's not an area I associate with dense nerve endings. Perhaps it would be better to lick it, shove it up your nose or rub it on one's privates (they're quite sensitive you know :).

I understand there's a very large number of nerves routed up the middle of one's back too.
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This is the idea. As a sufferer of severe migraine on a regular basis for many your I have learned that one way to sometimes distract yourself from the headache pain is by use of a counter irritant. I would use Tiger Balm on my forhead and around my eyes. When the pain was severe enough I have been known to actually rub it in my eyes - blinds you and is excrusiating, but sometimes that is better than a headache that makes you think about way to end yourself. The brain tends to get confused with mixed pain signals. I assumed this was the idea behind Head On. It has menthol or camphor or stuff like that in it - counter irritants. It could plausibly be effective for mild headaches.
 
joelblanchette said:
How anybody could believe anything so patently stupid and absurd is beyond me. It amazes me that so many people would go for such a counter-intuitive notion.
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It does seem to me that quite a few people who buy homeopathics are merely ignorant. A five minute explanation of the law of similars, provings, and the law of infinitesimals usually has them as outraged as any other reasonable person.

What bugs me most is that these things appear in Walgreens right beside real OTC drugs and packaged very similarly. Worst of all, they're often in line of sight of an actual, real pharmacist. To most reasonable people, this spells out "medicine".
 
If I remember correctly this spot was voted as one of the worst commericals. I suspect that's why they now have spokespeople admitting the ad is annoying but the product is "amazing"
It appears that CNN has jumped the shark.
In case nobody has yet mentioned it: Nancy Grace! ugh:eek:
 
Well, they never actually CLAIM it cures headaches. You're just supposed to appy it to your forehead just for fun!!!!:p It's like the Hoola Hoop or Slinky of the 21st century, yeah! that's the ticket!!!
 
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billydkid said:
I would use Tiger Balm on my forhead and around my eyes. <snip> I assumed this was the idea behind Head On. It has menthol or camphor or stuff like that in it - counter irritants. It could plausibly be effective for mild headaches.
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Btw, Tiger Balm has been shown to be effective for migraines v. a placebo in one Australian study. They still can't claim it on the label in the US. And I don't know of any follow-up studies as yet. But there you go.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
What bugs me most is that these things appear in Walgreens right beside real OTC drugs and packaged very similarly.
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Ten points for correctly spelling "Walgreens" (no apostrophe).

It's no coincidence, of course, that the packaging mimics established OTC products. That's the first thing you want to do when you're marketing snake oil in the "trade" market.
 
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