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Oftentimes, people prefer natural treatments to conventional drugs or surgery, as some are anxious about various drug's side effects and others have concerns regarding the continued use of certain drugs.
Homeopathy is a medicinal system that involves treating the individual with highly diluted substances with the aim of triggering the body’s natural system of healing.
Homeopathic remedies seek to fuel the body's own healing mechanisms.
Homeopaths believe that any physical disease has a mental and emotional component. As such, a homeopathic diagnosis involves an analysis of physical symptoms (e.g., pain, fever), as well as the patient’s emotional and psychological state (e.g., anxiety, restlessness).
In addition, those who practice homeopathic medicine pay great attention to the patient' s constitution, which includes character traits such as creativity, intuitiveness, persistence, concentration and both physical and emotional stamina.
The appropriate homeopathic remedy takes all of these aspects into account. Therefore, individuality is the hallmark of homeopathic medicine, as diagnosis and remedy is uniquely personalized.
Homeopathy has been becoming more widely used worldwide for over 200 years. Homeopathy was pioneered by a German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann, who was shocked by many of the medical practices and treatments of the day, such as bloodletting and using poisons such as arsenic and mercury.
Dr. Hahnemann looked for a way to reduce the harmful side effects associated with these practices. Dr. Hahnemann found that giving smaller and smaller medicinal doses reduced toxicity, ultimately learning that the medicines appeared to be more effective the lower the dose.
Hahnemann is also considered to be a medical pioneer who worked tirelessly to improve medical science, reiterating that medicines be tested before use on patients.
Scientific evidence is mixed about the illnesses and conditions that respond well to homeopathic medicine. More controlled research is needed, as homeopathy appeared to be no better than placebo in some studies.
In other clinical studies, however, researchers believed they saw benefits from homeopathy. Preliminary research findings suggest that homeopathy may be helpful in treating childhood diarrhea, ear infection, asthma, allergies, colds and the flu, as well as symptoms of menopause (e.g., hot flashes, pain).
Some professional homeopaths specialize in treating grave illnesses (e.g., cancer, mental illness and autoimmune diseases) with homeopathic medicine. Whatever the case, be sure to communicate to your health care providers about the different therapies you are using (including homeopathic remedies), especially when it comes to life-threatening illnesses.
Sources:
Why Should Anyone Go To a Homeopathic Doctor? Web. www.emaxhealth.com. Accessed 30 Jan. 2012.
http://www.emaxhealth.com/60/633.html
Naturopathic Medicine. Web. www.emaxhealth.com. Accessed 30 Jan. 2012. http://www.naturopathic.org
What is Homeopathy? Web. www.umm.edu. Accessed 30 Jan. 2012. http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/homeopathy-000352.htm
Reviewed February 2, 2012
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited By Jessica Obert
Add a Comment51 Comments
We're talking health technology here, and clinical results are all that count. Unless research is put to practical use it's speculative too. And you're obviously not a researcher either.
February 7, 2012 - 4:27pmThe logical fallacy of appeal to authority is only a problem when someone invokes a celebrity endorsement or other figure that has no actual expertise on a subject. If you think that your armchair opinion is on par with medical clinicians from any camp you're really delusional. Maybe you can go shill Boniva with Sally Field, but then again, I'm guessing that in the public eye you're nobody.
Before you start tossing around philosophical issues take a real University course in philosophy and stop relying on pseudoskeptical websites for your "education".
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Good grief, where to start. Anyone is fallible so apeal to authority is not evidence no matter who they are.
This constant avoidance of the FACT that reliable data shows homeopathy to be no more effective than a placebo in favor of anecdotes is what homeopaths cling to. It's the "my grandmother smoked 20 cigarettes a day an is 80 years old, So smoking can't be that harmful" brand of evidence.
In fact research shows smoking is rather bad for you and Homeopathy is s scam.
February 7, 2012 - 11:52pmThis Comment
Without evidence homeopathy is no more a medical system than any archaic practice from reiki to sacrificing virgins to the harvest gods. Your attempts to dismiss the relevancy of trials is typical tactic of someone who believes something illogical.
February 7, 2012 - 5:35amThis Comment
Anon1 here. Yes my armchair is very comfortable, but my lumbar support is not the issue. Even my qualifications are not really important, only what can be shown logically or empirically.
Qualified clinicians DO rely on trial data when prescribing medicine, it's only the fringe more whacky practices (like homeopathy, reiki or rain-dancing) that don't for two reasons. They usually don't understand the significance of a RCT double-blind, and the high quality trail favors against their practice.
February 7, 2012 - 4:56amIf I were a medical doctor then I'd be called a big pharma shill. That's the advantage of having no conflict of interest.
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Pulling an illogical scam by lumping a medical system like Homeopathy with reiki, etc. is a common pseudoskeptical ploy. Since you are admittedly not a clinician your notions are poor speculation. Neither logical nor empirical and without credibility.
February 7, 2012 - 5:16amThis Comment
Different Anonymous :}
The criticisms of the Shang paper are incorrect. The major point of that paper was to select trials only on the quality of the trial. The outcome of the trial was not considered a priori. Two main criticisms arose 1) The list of trials was not published, this was corrected later and 2) By selecting which trials you include based on the outcome, you could sway the final result. The latter is ludicrous. By cherry picking your results, you can falsely prove anything.
The Linde papers are often exhibited as proof of homeopathy effectiveness. They showed the same effect as Shang, no significant difference between homeopathy treatment and placebo. That, having found no significant difference, to say in the conclusion of one of their papers that this didn't mean that homeopathy wasn't effective, was just plain wrong. It is instructive to note, when Linde was commenting on his own, he clearly says there is no difference between homeopathy and placebo. Incidentally, Linde also found the same effect as Shang, only lower quality studies show an effect for homeopathy.
February 6, 2012 - 1:53pmThis Comment
Your analysis of the two studies is far from accurate.
February 6, 2012 - 3:48pmBesides, there are well over 180 studies that show Homeopathy to work far better than placebo, notwithstanding that these types of studies were developed for pharmaceutical drugs that merely suppress a particular symptom. Anyone who understands how Homeopathy works realizes that studies of that sort have no practical application for most clinical cases as the treatment has to be individualized -- something that conventional medicine is trying to achieve but can't since the profit margins of the drug companies won't survive it. Further, since Homeopathic remedies are prescribed based on symptom similarity, not suppression, and the odds of finding patients who all "fit" the same mold are pretty slim. Homeopathy is just a completely different form of medical approach. It respects the individuality of the patient. 10 different people with "arthritis" frequently require different prescriptions.
Since drug companies fund their own studies and frequently fudge and hide negative results these types of studies are quickly heading towards obsolescence anyway. Since no one has been privvy to exactly what's in the drug company "placebos" because the formula(s) aren't revealed the entire field could well be considered to have been falsified and research papers have been published on this subject.
No meta-analysis is going to be taken as universally conclusive -- witness the Cochrane meta-analysis of flu vaccines that shows them to be virtually worthless. Have the drug companies stopped pushing them on governments and local health departments because of it?
Homeopathy works. Get over it.
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I notice you don't say anything substantive about the facts I presented on Shang and Linde so one can only conclude you disagree but cannot produce anything in favour of the criticisms.
In the references given above in support of homeopathy there are several papers, including the infamous Frass trial that have generalised treatments. The cherry picking that Shang eliminated in his meta-study extends to Frass as well. It seems ok to accept non-individualised poor quality trials that are in favour of homeopathy but to reject high quality non-individualised trials that show no difference between product and placebo. Do you see a problem with that approach?
I'd like to bet, that if the meta-analysis had been in favour of homeopathy you would not reject it. Linde's meta-analysis were accepted by homeopaths purely on the basis of one sentence in the conclusions. The moment Linde said that the analysis should be more in line with Shang, you don't hear too much about them. Although you still get copy and paste merchants who bring up the early statement but refuse to acknowledge the later one.
Even in those poor quality trials that show a positive effect for the homeopathic treatment, the clinical significance is often small.
February 6, 2012 - 4:28pmThis Comment
As already mentioned there are a variety of reasons why no one should rely on these types of studies as being conclusive of anything. Clinicians in the real world don't spend their time debating studies -- the focus is on treating patients. Armchair critics, since they are not clinicians, seem to get some queer ego kick from assuming that philosophizing about studies gives them some nebulous intellectual status.
February 7, 2012 - 4:35amAttacks on Homeopathy based on armchair philosophizing about studies always ignore the fact that mainstream medicine is operating outside of a solid evidence base and the deeper real world patients dig the more jusification they have for shopping for their health care elsewhere:
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/nov/11-the-problem-with-medicine-don.t-know-if-most-works/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=
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Or you could just concede that you were wrong as shown.
February 6, 2012 - 11:37amAnd I have no wish to defend the vile behaviour of many pharmaceutical giants.
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