It's 5 live, Nick Ravenscroft with you through until 1 o'clock. Now, should homeopathy be

funded on the NHS? It's one of the most popular forms of alternative medicine but a House of Commons report

to be released tomorrow is expected to say that it shouldn't be funded on the NHS.

The report is thought to be going to say that there isn't enough evidence to show it works.

I'd love to hear from you on this one. Have you ever tried homeopathy?

Did it work? Was it a waste of time, a waste of money?

Should alternative medicines be funded by the NHS you can call me

on 0500 909 693 or you can text me on 85058 we're coming up to the 12 o'clock news, but we will take calls on this throughout the rest of the program.

To discuss this, I'm joined by Jemma Hopkins, who's a practicing homopath, and also Michael Marshall runs a campaign group against the medicines.

Jemma what is homeopathy we talk about it frequently but no one knows precisely

what it is.

Homeopathy is an alternative, some people would say, or a complementary medicine.

Quite literally, it's a little sugar pills potentized with things like natural things like plants and

flowers metals animals and it's very holistic and very natural And what is your evidence or your own experience that it actually works?

Well, the way I got to homeopathy is, um, it was the last straw really for me. I was diagnosed with brain cancer and I had had all the normal treatment of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and I was offered, did I want to place in a hospice, did I want to go stay in hospital or go home? And I just recently had met a homeopath I've never heard of

homeopathy who was helping me she was helping me with the side effects with the chemotherapy

and I thought well I don't want to stay in, I definitely don't want to go to a hospice, I'll go home.

And they said to me, there's nothing more we can do for you, there's no viable option for you it's on my medical notes and

since then I gradually was taking homeopathy and I mean I was really ill I

mean I was literally I put on four stone four weeks from the side effects of the

the drugs I was given all my hair fell out in one weekend. My, I was partially paralyzed.

I couldn't open my eyelids without lifting them up with my finger, you know, quite physically.

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