fredag 19 augusti 2011

Just dropping by: Scholl fungal nail treatment

One poster commented on my last post and said he/she would now try a treatment sold by Scholl (www.scholl.com). I don't have too much to say about it but here is just my immediate view of it:

Firstly, the big flashy ad that claims the product will kill 99,9 % of all nail fungus is of course suspicious and in all probability a piece of sensationalist advertising exaggerating or manufacturing completely the abilities of the product.

A complete list of ingredients cannot be found which is also a warning sign. They say the product will work by lowering the PH of the nail and make it inhospitable to fungus, sounds fair enough. The exact same thing happens when you soak your toes in household vinegar and it is a fact that fungus does not thrive in too acid environments. How effective this treatment is for actually lowering the PH far enough to kill fungus is unknown. They claim it to be scientifically verified but do not link to any studies or trials.

What the PH-adjusting agent is they do not tell on the website. The permeation-enhancing "formula" is said to be urea, panthenol and glycerin. Sounds OK, anecdotal evidence from the web point to urea being useful for dissolving the nail structure, glycerine is sometimes used in ointments and similar products and panthenol is seemingly good for penetration of the skin according to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12113650 .


All in all it seems like a decent product, it can probably do some good for some people. However, by the look of it it does not seem to bring anything new really, just another mix of substances that have been on the agenda before (sans the PH-lowering main substance that is not named. If I may take a wild guess it is probably vinegar as usual).

On the flip side the formulation is a bit more interesting than for example the huge internet scam that is zetaclear which is pretty much only vinegar and water at a hefty price, and other products. Urea is interesting and panthenol is probably not bad. I will stick with complete debridement of the nail and application of conventional prescription substance (lamisil once) but if you want to give this a go you are probably not without hope. Be sure to update others with the result either here or on other websites.

onsdag 23 februari 2011

Before and after. =)








tisdag 22 februari 2011

Zetaclear scam. And other stuff. And an interesting tale...

I don't post much these days, since my fingernails were cured it does not take up much of my spare time anymore. But I do want to stay active in the hope that more people find this blog and are treated to something not easy to come by or distinguish in the internet world of nail fungus sufferers: Facts and information posted with no hidden agenda, no bias, and no bullshit. I may keep posting sporadically but it will remain useful, so I hope that those who appreciate puts it on their watchlist, or recommends it to others.

As you understand, I am not associated with any drug manufacturer and I make zero money off of this (even if I did, the number of viewers could never make me a cent) so the only 2 reasons I write is: 1. I want others to be helped with a problem with which I am more than familiar. and 2. I am annoyed with people who does not want to help but only want to make money off of people remaining unhappy, such as the people behind the zetaclear scam. If you see any ads whatsoever they are Blogger's own ads and not mine.



When you read an internet tale about somebody who had tremendous success with a nail fungus treatment you should read it, but read it with an ounce or two of healthy, sensible scepticsism (sp?). It could be completely true. It could be completely true. The statement could be truthful, but we don't know the poster. We don't know his or hers life, we have not seen their nails, before or after. If they post pics, we don't know if it is their nails.


So should we just disregard everything we read? Absolutely not. But we should make asensible decision based on what we know, and if it something that should be checked out, give google a minute and check it out.

Could there be bias? Most of us have probably sometime taken a remedy, or a drug, or knocked on wood, or done something that we really wanted to work, and made ourselves believe it did. Only in some time did we realise it didn't, and we were only fooling ourselves. If you don't know the basic principles about the placebo effect I strongly recommend you to search and find out about it. When people really, really want to be helped they tend to convince themselves that they really are being helped, and only in retrospect do they find out that they only wanted to believe, but their nails or whatever still looked the same. A nail could be 100 % infected but start to lose a bit of the yellow, and you would think it is getting better, a small change becomes a big change in your mind when it may in fact be just the normal things that go on in a nail ravaged by fungus.



Could the poster be a scammer? It only takes minutes to write a post. Could there be a manufacturer of a drug posting as a pretend nail fungus sufferer? Or a person who sells said drug pretending to be a "patient", writing a fake review? Maybe even a spambot, automatically writing a nonsensical post? We don't know. But it is good to think about the possibilities, and know that we don't know......

You are unlikely to find deliberately falsified success stories about conventional treatments manufactured by large established companies, simply because they probably would not go through the hassle. Their drugs have passed all the scientific trials, went on market, are sold in state pharmacies (where I live) and their companies make profits in millions and millions of dollars. If even a thousand people buy their drug because of a fake post it is not enough to make an impact on their overall profit. They simply will not bother. If they wanted to go on forums and blogs marketing their drugs they could do it more easily and effectively and point to all the scientific trials that showed their drug had positive results, if it hadn't, they would be unable to market it. If it hadn't, their reputation would suffer, and money would be lost in the millions.

What about smaller maufacturers that make drugs that are outside of the established medicine(which is just an elaborate way of saying "NOT proven to work at all")? They have enormous reasons to create scams, their sales could increase tenfold if marketed correctly.

These companies may often, or seldom use these methods. But it is important to know that when reading a post, and you don't know the person writing it, the poster may have had something to gain from people believing it.

If he had nothing to gain, he is unlikely to have gone through the hassle of writing a false post.

If he had something to gain, maybe he did write a false post.


The reason I pick out Zetaclear in the jungle of nonsense mumbo-jumbo nail fungus remedies is, as said before, because they make a ridiculously huge effort to put these false claims on the web. Nonyx is another one that only contains water and vinegar under fancy names, but the Zetaclear scam simply takes the price.

This post is long now and must be posted, see you later for the mentioned tale.... =)