Tools

Why we won't build a symptom finder

The tool everybody expects from a remedy site takes a symptom and hands back something to try. We're not building it, and it isn't a close decision. Matching a complaint to a treatment needs somebody who can examine you, who knows your history, and who can tell indigestion from a heart attack. A web page can do none of that, and the times it would get it wrong are exactly the times it would matter.

So ours works the other way round. You tell it what you're already considering, and it tells you what's worth knowing first — because that's the genuine gap. There are thousands of pages listing what to try for a cough. There are very few telling you that St John's wort can stop your contraception working, or that honey can cause botulism in a baby under one.

What it won't say

It will never tell you a remedy is safe for you. It checks a deliberately short list of well-documented interactions against what you enter, and a blank result means we found nothing in that short list — not that there's nothing to find. The tool is built so it cannot produce a clean bill of health, because a tool that can will eventually give one to the wrong person.

Every result ends in the same place: take the bottle to a pharmacist. They have your full list and a proper database, and in most places the conversation costs nothing and needs no appointment. That redirect is the most useful thing on the page.

And an honest word on the remedies themselves

Some have real evidence behind them — ginger for nausea, honey for a night-time cough, peppermint oil for irritable bowel. Plenty of others are tradition, and the tool labels them that way rather than dressing them up. That includes several this site writes about warmly.

These are the old ways, and they are worth keeping. They are not medicine, and a site that pretends otherwise can't be trusted about the parts that genuinely help.