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.... =)

Pics

These pics happen to be 3 weeks old but nothing has changed since. On the pointer finger there is some persistent fungus to one side but it does not seem to grow so I leave it for now. I keep treating all fingers every day, the treatment is simple and only takes seconds so it is not any more hassle than it is brushing one's teeth in the evening.



Although I would like to eradicate the last tiny parts of fungus also I am extremely pleased and relieved with now having normal nails. It became a spare-time obsession/hobby to find a procedure that worked for me and be able to have clear nails again, and now I have the same nails I had 5 years ago. Success!

Nail fungus sufferers get various degrees of infection and it shows itself in different ways. Sometimes it does, as in my case, get ugly and nails are not only discolored and thickened but very deformed and loosened from the nail bed. When they are like this and stay like this for years you may get the idea that the nail has "forgotten" how to grow normally and will forever grow abnormally. This is not the case. The nail grows in a genetically coded manner just like skin and hair, and fungus only disturbs its pattern, it does not destroy it. Remember this when you treat your nails because it helps your motivation: they can be completely normal again.

As far as treatments go: the query "nail fungus treatment" gives 623 000 hits on google as I type this. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide probably have onychomycosis, it is a condition that is not harmful (it really isn't) so it is not at the top of the medical community's agenda, but it is a cosmetical problem for very, very many people. AND the available drugs are not yet perfect, oral Lamisil only cures about 50 % of the clients, so the market for so called "alternative" remedies is enormous. Very lucrative.

Very lucrative indeed.

And where there is money there will always be crooks. I mentioned this in an earlier post:
I estimate at least 90 % of those to be either useless or flat-out cons. It is sooo easy to mix up some stuff and call it a "nail fungus remedy" and mix in some reassuring words like "all natural", "proven to work" (implying it has been scientifically tested and verified which it never has, and if it was, it was proven to be completely ineffective), "thousands of satisfied customers" (show me the evidence), "guaranteed to cure nail fungus" (if it IS guaranteed, then YOU, as manufacturer are guaranteed to make a huge fortune, so why do you mess about on an obscure website?), "contains essential oils" etc etc etc....

For example, oil of oregano is a popular ingredient in many such remedies, on the basis that it is an all-round cure for pretty much everything and have been used by everybody since forever. Still, there is not ONE scientific study that shows that it has any antifungal properties apart from that when you keep it concentrated in a test tube and you toss fungal spores in there, yeah, the spores die. On the skin or nails it has shown no efficacy at all in studies.


Know this: conventional medicine has the best chance to help you, because it has by far the best track record. Even if a conventional drug only gives you 50 %, the alternative drug will give you a much lower chance of success. Remember:

If the alternative remedy was tremendously effective, it would be an instant hit and it would be all over the world in months. If you have an astonishing product you will not NEED to advertise on obscure websites.




Moral of the story is: IF you choose to use alternative treatments, consider using them in conjunction with treatments that are actually proven to actually be effective.

My procedure

So this is what finally got me progress, after using it in a creative and not doctor-recommended way. It is late and I will only make a quick update here by pasting some of what I have written in the awesome information source that is Lee's blog at http://lee.org/blog/2009/05/14/nonyx-nail-gel-part-2/comment-page-1/#comment-291999 . Forgive me if this post seems like a cut and paste job....

For years the look of my horrible nails have made me feel bad about myself. A couple of months ago I did something radical: I took my microdrill, put a sand tip on it (for marking tools and stuff) and slowly but surely, for hours and hours, wore all my toenails down to nothing, and also my thumbnail. This nail was horrific at the time as it had rapidly gotten worse and was more or less loose all the way back to the base. With drills, knives and the motor drill with different tips I methodically wore it down till I was on bare skin. A few times it hurt and there was some minor bloodshed when I got overexcited but it is really possible if you take the time!

On the bare nail bed I have since then applied 2-3 times a day Lamisil single dose, the FOOT fungus solution that contains terbinafine and is supposed to only be used once and not to be repeated. =) My toenails I cannot judge yet (though the nail bed looks nice) but my thumb IS ALMOST COMPLETELY GROWN OUT ALL HEALTHY. After all these years!

I firmly believe the lamisil is responsible for the improvement I see. I have not used itraconazole for over a month (although I must say the itraconazole seemed to have some independent success with the other nails as I tried this out only on the thumb to start with. As my success with the thumbnail was instantaneous and obvious I went on with the other nails in the same way) but the nails keep getting better. The stuff works like a charm now that I expose the nail bed to it.

The stuff is expensive by weight, but it lasts for a long time…. I have now used less than 1,5 tubes in the last 2 months, and I applied it on 10 toenails pretty much every day and on 4 fingernails 2 times every day. The tubes are about 25 USD a piece, and 4 grams. You could make a tube last 2 months which by this price would cost you maybe 13 bucks a month, surely you can spend that?

After a while the layer can turn a shiny greyish colour, especially on small depressions in the nail, but that is no problem, it only shows that you have a nice and thick layer of the stuff working constantly.

From time to time, maybe every 2 weeks I scrape the rubbery grey stuff off and clean the nail, this only takes seconds, then I just stick with the process.

There you go. =)