Day 247 of 365 - Like Cures Like
I've been intending to write a post about homeopathy for awhile. Today, I watched a documentary called Just One Drop, which inspired me.
First, some history of homeopathy is warranted. In the 18th century, a German physician named Dr. Samuel Hahnemann was becoming discouraged with the side effects of conventional treatments like blood-letting and use of toxic substances like arsenic and mercury. He began experimenting on himself and his students with very dilute forms of substances. Paradoxically, he found that the effectiveness of the remedy increased as it became more dilute, and there were no side effects. Hahnemann developed a system of dilution and succussion, a vigorous shaking to release healing potential. He called his system homeopathy and named the conventional system allopathy.
Homeopathic treatment principles include the following. Like cures like, meaning that which causes disease can also cure it in a very dilute dose, by acting as a catalyst for healing. Minimum dose, meaning that you should take the least amount of medicine needed to relieve symptoms. As a rule, once you feel better, or the obvious symptoms disappear, you reduce the frequency and then stop taking it. Law of cure, which is, that obvious problems heal first, allowing underlying problems to surface and be treated. As a rule, symptoms disappear in reverse order to their original appearance. Healing progresses from the top of the body downward. Healing progresses from more important organs to less important ones. The body seeks to externalize disease, moving it from the inside out.
An early example of its success was when Dr. Hahnemann treated an outbreak of scarlet fever with belladonna and stopped an epidemic. He developed and tested 99 remedies and documented it all in a text which was translated into 30 languages and spread around the world. Homeopathy became the medical practice of choice, even in the U.S. It was successful in treating scarlet fever, yellow fever and cholera in large populations.
An Institute of Homeopathy was established in 1844 and several training colleges opened in the U.S. The conventional doctors were losing patients to this approach. In a backlash, the American Medical Association was formed in 1847 and homeopaths were banned. Prior to that, many doctors practiced both. By the mid-1950's, homeopathy colleges were shut down. It was considered an old-fashioned, out of date form of medical care in North America. It was women who had learned it to treat their children, which was instrumental in keeping it alive.
The crux of the Just One Drop documentary was about the huge controversy which has arisen in recent years over an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council report, which claimed they had extensively reviewed all studies on homeopathy and found no benefit. This news spread quickly around the world, causing governments and regulating agencies to consider instituting policies to reduce or prevent public access to these kinds of remedies.
Scientific investigators have subsequently found that the report was biased and that arbitrary criteria were used to eliminate any small studies, effectively skewing the the recommendation. Even studies which had been previously lauded in medical journals were not not deemed credible because of the size of the study group. A comprehensive complaint has been submitted to the Australian office of the ombudsman in the hope of overturning the published report.
The modern controversy about homeopathy is that nobody knows its working mechanism in a scientific way. Critics feel it is a placebo effect even though there have been some studies showing effectiveness in controlled trials against placebo. The controversy will continue until scientists determine the mechanisms. There is research currently going on in Germany, by physicists, to answer this question. The most promising approach seems to be on testing the hypothesis that the water molecules, into which the remedy is extremely diluted, form structures which carry the information of the remedy to the patient. Any discovery of the mechanism will have huge ramifications.
What is at risk here is again, consumer choice. A health care strategy which has been used for almost 200 years around the world, and still is in many countries, is at risk of being banned in Europe and North America. That's just not right.
First, some history of homeopathy is warranted. In the 18th century, a German physician named Dr. Samuel Hahnemann was becoming discouraged with the side effects of conventional treatments like blood-letting and use of toxic substances like arsenic and mercury. He began experimenting on himself and his students with very dilute forms of substances. Paradoxically, he found that the effectiveness of the remedy increased as it became more dilute, and there were no side effects. Hahnemann developed a system of dilution and succussion, a vigorous shaking to release healing potential. He called his system homeopathy and named the conventional system allopathy.
Homeopathic treatment principles include the following. Like cures like, meaning that which causes disease can also cure it in a very dilute dose, by acting as a catalyst for healing. Minimum dose, meaning that you should take the least amount of medicine needed to relieve symptoms. As a rule, once you feel better, or the obvious symptoms disappear, you reduce the frequency and then stop taking it. Law of cure, which is, that obvious problems heal first, allowing underlying problems to surface and be treated. As a rule, symptoms disappear in reverse order to their original appearance. Healing progresses from the top of the body downward. Healing progresses from more important organs to less important ones. The body seeks to externalize disease, moving it from the inside out.
An early example of its success was when Dr. Hahnemann treated an outbreak of scarlet fever with belladonna and stopped an epidemic. He developed and tested 99 remedies and documented it all in a text which was translated into 30 languages and spread around the world. Homeopathy became the medical practice of choice, even in the U.S. It was successful in treating scarlet fever, yellow fever and cholera in large populations.
An Institute of Homeopathy was established in 1844 and several training colleges opened in the U.S. The conventional doctors were losing patients to this approach. In a backlash, the American Medical Association was formed in 1847 and homeopaths were banned. Prior to that, many doctors practiced both. By the mid-1950's, homeopathy colleges were shut down. It was considered an old-fashioned, out of date form of medical care in North America. It was women who had learned it to treat their children, which was instrumental in keeping it alive.
The crux of the Just One Drop documentary was about the huge controversy which has arisen in recent years over an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council report, which claimed they had extensively reviewed all studies on homeopathy and found no benefit. This news spread quickly around the world, causing governments and regulating agencies to consider instituting policies to reduce or prevent public access to these kinds of remedies.
Scientific investigators have subsequently found that the report was biased and that arbitrary criteria were used to eliminate any small studies, effectively skewing the the recommendation. Even studies which had been previously lauded in medical journals were not not deemed credible because of the size of the study group. A comprehensive complaint has been submitted to the Australian office of the ombudsman in the hope of overturning the published report.
The modern controversy about homeopathy is that nobody knows its working mechanism in a scientific way. Critics feel it is a placebo effect even though there have been some studies showing effectiveness in controlled trials against placebo. The controversy will continue until scientists determine the mechanisms. There is research currently going on in Germany, by physicists, to answer this question. The most promising approach seems to be on testing the hypothesis that the water molecules, into which the remedy is extremely diluted, form structures which carry the information of the remedy to the patient. Any discovery of the mechanism will have huge ramifications.
What is at risk here is again, consumer choice. A health care strategy which has been used for almost 200 years around the world, and still is in many countries, is at risk of being banned in Europe and North America. That's just not right.
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