Homeopathy

     I recently saw a very famous television doctor who was recommending homeopathy for various aliments and I thought it was time to review what homeopathy is.

     Homeopathy was invented in the 18^th century by a German chemist/physician named Hahneman. He was reading a book that recommended cinchona bark as a cure for malaria. He decided to try taking the cinchona bark and he experienced palpitations, anxiety and joint pain – all of which are symptoms people get when they have malaria. Based on this one experience – no other experimentation or research – he came up with the theory that “like cures like”. He concluded that a chemical that gives people symptoms could cure a disease that causes the same symptoms. If you have vomiting, take a chemical that makes you vomit.

     Many of the most commonly used medications at Hahneman’s time were very toxic – arsenic, mercury and belladonna, for example. It was common for physicians to dilute these medicines with water to diminish their toxicity. Dilution naturally decreases both the effects and the side effects because by adding water, you had less of the drug in the mixture. To keep with his “like cures like” theory, Hahneman developed a second theory of “Potentization”. This theory says that even though the toxic effects of the chemical were lessened by adding water, the healing effects were increased if you shook the mixture in a special way. This, of course, defies basic science and all logic. Homeopathy dilutes a substance with water, then takes a small amount of that mixture and adds a large amount of water to the small sample and then repeats that process 100 or more times. After doing that, the final mixture might have one molecule of the original chemical in it, but, in reality, what you are left with is just water. The amount of actual substance in the liquid has been compared to putting a pinch of the medication into the entire Atlantic Ocean – both North and South.

     There are two factors at work in the practice of homeopathy. One is that most of the aches and ill feelings humans have on a day-to-day basis go away by themselves and don’t need any treatment. So, if you do anything or take anything for them, you’ll feel better because you would have felt better anyway. Second is the power of the placebo effect. In every study of a treatment or medicine, a percentage of people in the study are given a placebo ("sugar pill") rather than the treatment. Many of those who get the placebo improve as if they got the treatment even though there is no scientific reason for it. Every time the effectiveness of homeopathic cures has been subjected to hard scientific studies, they do as well as placebos because they are placebos.

     If someone doesn’t feel well and a massage, aroma therapy or a homeopathic medicine makes them feel better, that’s great because that is the goal of every health care provider. But when a famous television doctor who knows better sells homeopathy as an actual medical cure, that’s dishonest.