Let’s look at the science.
Earlier this month we told you about an attack on homeopathic medicines in California courts, one that could threaten the industry.
We also told you about a recent report published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice. That report claimed to do a systematic review of all adverse event reports (AERs) in connection with homeopathy from 1978 to 2010. On the one hand, the report concluded that homeopathy is ineffective because it has no active ingredients, that it is nothing more than a placebo because it has been diluted so much that “the likelihood of a single molecule approaches zero.” On the other hand, the report also concluded that homeopathic preparations caused many dangerous allergic reactions.
We pointed out that you can’t have it both ways—either homeopathic preparations are powerful enough to cause a physiological reaction, or they can’t do anything at all. This is all too typical of what passes for scientific review of homeopathy. Dismiss it any way you can, regardless of fact or logic. If that doesn’t work, then argue that homeopathy is dangerous because it may keep people from visiting a conventional doctor.
We promised to return to the subject of what real evidence there is behind homeopathy. That is a large subject, but here are some scientific studies from the past ten years showing that homeopathy can indeed be effective—far more effective than placebo. These studies, which range from random controlled trials (RCTs, the supposed “gold standard”) to observational studies to meta-analyses, often look at homeopathy as an adjunct to conventional medicine. Here is just a sampling:
- Acute otitis media (when the middle ear gets blocked with fluid and infected with bacteria): a 2012 RCT showed that symptomatic improvement was quicker in the homeopathy group than conventional therapy group, with a much lower antibiotic requirement
- Allergies: a 2012 observational study revealed that homeopathy substantially improved allergy symptoms and conventional medicine dosage could be substantially reduced; a 2013 study listed the effectiveness of different homeopathic treatments for allergies based on the type of allergy
- Asthma: In a study of individualized homeopathic treatment for asthma, there was evidence that it decreased the severity of asthma in children
Other studies show effectiveness of homeopathy for conditions ranging from chicken pox, diarrhea, and in a multi-center observational study, chronic sinusitis. Homeopathy could be an effective treatment for low-grade chronic inflammation, which is the root of many diseases, and as a complement to conventional anti-tubercular treatment (a finding that is especially important as patients are becoming resistant to TB drugs).
Much more research is ongoing despite the abysmal lack of funding for it. At the very least there is promising evidence supporting homeopathy.
So if it works, how does it work?
A homeopathic remedy is an extremely pure, natural substance that has been diluted many times. In large quantities these substances would cause the same symptoms the patient is trying to cure. In tiny, diluted doses, it is not only safe and free from side effects, but it will trigger the body to heal itself. For example, when you chop a red onion, it causes watery eyes and a runny nose in most people. Allium cepa is a remedy created from red onion; in very small doses, Allium cepa doesn’t create those symptoms but instead activates the body’s own mechanism for stopping watery eyes and a runny nose.
As noted in “Immunology and Homeopathy,” an article published in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, “The profound analogies between homeopathic thought and immunology are due to the fact that the whole of homeopathic theory is substantially based on the principle of regulating endogenous systems of healing, the best known of which is certainly the immune system and its neuroendocrine integrations.”
Around the end of the 19th century, scientists observed that different doses of the same substance can create wildly varying effects in humans. They observed that weak stimuli slightly increase biological responses, medium stimuli markedly raise them, strong ones suppress them, and very strong ones arrest them. This principal, called hormesis, is seen, for example, in medicinal plants: belladonna, in very small doses, has long been used as a pain reliever, muscle relaxer, and anti-inflammatory; in large doses it is extremely toxic. Foxglove (digitalis) helps cardiac arrhythmias in minute dosages, but in large doses can cause heart block and either bradycardia (decreased heart rate) or tachycardia (increased heart rate), depending on the dose and the condition of one’s heart.
The big difference between these practices and homeopathy is the amount of dilution used—and it is here that conventional medicine has such difficulty with it. In homeopathy, the substance (an herb, mineral, or animal product) is crushed and dissolved in a liquid (usually an alcohol and water solution), violently shaken with impact at least 100 times (“succussion,” usually done mechanically), then stored. This is the “mother tincture.” Homeopaths then dilute tinctures further. One part of the tincture to ten parts of the liquid is a 1X dilution (X being the Roman numeral for ten), with another round of succussion. A 2X potency takes one part of the 1X potency and adds it to nine parts of the diluting solution, thus creating a one-to-100 dilution; common potencies used in homeopathic remedies usually begin around 6X, or one part of the original mother tincture to one million parts of the diluting material. By the time you get to a 30X dilution, there is no measurable part of the original substance left.
The precise mechanism of how homeopathy works—why greater and greater dilutions should have more and more power, and why the violent shaking with impact should be so important—is still unknown. This is not really surprising given the lack of funding available to study the question, although some prominent scientists such as Luc Montagnier, the first discoverer of the AIDS virus, is pursuing it.
Despite the lack of formal research funding, homeopathy has always been an observational science, testing and refining a practice until it works better and better. The authors of “Immunology and Homeopathy” (cited above) put it this way: “The two approaches to system regulation—scientific/reductionistic and homeopathic/holistic—are not conflicting, but use different approaches: mainstream pharmacology applies a ‘structural’ analog, which is identified as the molecule binding to specific receptors or enzymes of the target system (if known). Classic homeopathy applies a ‘functional’ analogue, which is identified as the diluted compound that is able to regulate and/or to trigger homeodynamic systems. This kind of functional analogy, based on the similarity of symptoms, can be exploited even if the details of the receptors or the effector enzymes are unknown within the complex homeodynamic networks.”
Conventional medicine is, by and large, solely focused on biochemistry. but living cells and tissues also generate bioelectromagnetic fields, and it is at this level that homeopathy may be working. Every electron in every cell vibrates; so if everything vibrates, it would seem fairly logical that one vibration must affect another. One current hypothesis is that the succussion of the dilution strengthens the vibratory resonance of the substance, even when the physical component of the substance has been removed.
Other hypotheses discuss homeopathy in terms of nanotechnology—or nanopharmacology. The micro-bubbles and the nano-bubbles caused by the succussion may produce microenvironments of higher temperature and pressure. Several studies by chemists and physicists have revealed an increased release of heat from water in which homeopathic medicines are prepared, even when the repeated process of dilutions should suggest that there are no molecules remaining of the original medicinal substance.
In other words, no one knows precisely how homeopathy works. That is the rub. But there is a vast amount of anecdotal evidence that it does, including the experiences of ANH staff, such as an instant cure of trigeminal neuralgia, one of the most painful and difficult conditions to heal, instant cures of infant earaches, teenage allergies, and much more. Scientific studies, undertaken with very little funding because these are not patentable drugs, are now starting to show that it does work—and that it is far safer than FDA-approved drugs.
In the meantime, vicious attacks on homeopathy—in the US and UK and elsewhere—continue, both because it is an affront to conventional medical thought and an economic threat to the patent drug business.
It is not what you do see in a homeopathic remedy that does the work, it is what you do not see, the energy. It is not quantifiable, therefore medicine disregards it. Anything that is not visible to science it not validated. The life energy is of a higher vibration and therefore boosts the energy needed to heal that which has been lowered and needs to raise into functional again. Any method as flower essences, acupuncture, or Reiki which raises energy will produce healing effects. They are the missing element to restore life and flow in our bodies.
The drugs of traditional medicine actually stop this life flow in the body and ultimately do not produce health. My comments are based on my own experience and in my Holistic Health practice.
There is a reason that this energy stuff has been ignored. It’s because it honestly has not outperformed placebo in clinical trials. The only place where it seems to have a high success rate is when we get believers anecdotes, and due to the unreliability of anecdotal evidence, anecdotes are not considered great evidence for anything. Its not that science disregards things it cant see or else quantum physics would never do anything for us. It’s that it holds everything to a certain standard. Those who want to believe that their alternative to western medicine works better will believe it regardless of evidence to the contrary. That which is asserted without evidence can be ignored without evidence.
Thank you for your unbiased and logical report. I wonder where the data is on the many dangerous allergic reactions as well as unwanted effects of allopathic medications even for just one year.
Homeopathy is a difficult science for most to grasp mainly because it does not follow “the do this for that” mentality that we have gotten into, wanting the pill for the quick fix. Homeopathy actually stimulates your body in a certain way, based on the remedy called for, to do the healing itself.
I have seen amazing, quick, and inexpensive results using homeopathy. I’ve also seen great results that take time and actually leave the person better than they were, rather than weakened and taking more drugs for the effects that they didn’t even want.
Homeopathic meds work on me, and they work on animals, so anyone with a brain knows that they are not placebos. Anything scientists can’t explain, they don’t believe..
“The precise mechanism of how homeopathy works—why greater and greater dilutions should have more and more power, and why the violent shaking with impact should be so important—is still unknown.”
At least you have the good grace to admit this. Most homeopathic users I know liken it to magic. I tell them this is why I stay away from it regardless of results (and conventional pharmacology for the same reason and others), and stick with trusting willowbark tea and clinical herbalism. Also, since several of those RCTs and analyses took place in the Near East, I would suspect a little bit of observational bias.
My brother had severe Vitiligo, not just on his arms but on his face. He is a highly educated medic in the Netherlands (specializing in heart issues). He contacted a homeopathic physician in his hometown who gave him Octopus ink extract, and told him to stay out of the sun. Upon applying it to his skin it started to itch like mad and he called the Homeopathic physician who told him “wonderful, that means it’s working. The itching will stop tomorrow”. It did. Within 6 months no more white spots and he has had NO problems since then.
The issue here is that anything that threatense orthodox medicine or big pharma is reviled. Medical school does not teach preventive medicine nor proper nutrition.
Another issue is that less reliable nutrition manufacturers will label anything as a nutritional supplement and people take it like vitamins. Valerian, for instance is NOT a supplement but a calming/sleep aid. White Willow bark is NOT a supplement but asperin. while Echinacea fights infections and should be used as a medicine NOT as a supplement/vitamin…and so forth.
Uninformed people too lazy to check anything out on their computer will self medicate while believing they are making themselves healthier by taking vitamins. It is THIS that arms big Pharma to fight the nutrition world. I am a member of Life Extention and get all my thing from them. They also sell Homeopathic remedies, all of which are LISTED as homeopathic remedies. My experience with Homeopathic remedies going back 50 years in Europe is that the ailment in the first few hours ALWAYS gets worse (that means the body is making its very own antibodies) before it gets better. People that don’t understand that notion will claim that Homeopathic meds make them sick. I spend the past 2 years working as a Clinical Trials Manager for Quintiles. I could write a book!!!
In my opinion, the placebo effect is the best medicine imaginable – the benefits of psychosomatic healing with no risk of side effects from dangerous, toxic, chemical compounds.
Thank you so much for a balanced and unbiased article on homeopathy. It is a great service for the people who don’t know who to believe after having read something published by the “skeptics”.
It is 20 years I am using Homeopathy a lot, for cold, sore throat, influenza, mouth infection, allergies, rhumatism pain, and the best of all shingles.
I only hope that people are realizing that the conventional medicine is not working, and that homeopathy is an economic threat to the drug business.
We want the homeopathy to thrive and expand.
Could you tell me which remedy you used for shingles?
I have been using homeopathy for over 40 years and I consider it my 1st choice for anything from strep throat, ear infections, allergies, fevers, colic and the very best for teething. My children always experienced immediate relief from the teething formula and I always use arnica montana for relief from dental work. As in “It’s A Wonderful Life ” , if Potter can’t get his hands on it he tries to kill it.Take that Big Pharma!
Yes.
It’s a useless placebo, and dangerous if you believe in it.
So, does this form of treatment cure problems with no mental component at all, such as Diabetes or Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia? If it can do that, I will be a believer.
The two accusations are not mutually exclusive. Some homeopathic remedies are naturopathic products that are delivered at 1x dilution while other homeopathic remedies begin as toxic substances which would be dangerous at 1x dilution and useless placebo at 30x dilution.
For many conditions time is of the essence. Steve Jobs might be alive today if he had not wasted valuable time on ineffective “alternative treatments”. He admitted as much during his final interview. Quack Watch claims not that alternative treatments such as homeopathy kill the patient but that they stand idly by while disease kills the patient.
It is surprising that the principle of hormesis is used to defend homeopathy. There can be no hormesis when the toxin is too dilute to elicit a negative reaction. Hormesis has been demonstrated for the oxidative and inflammatory products that result from exercise. Both the damage and the adaptive response are blocked by many “natural remedies”. Hormesis has also been demonstrated for ionizing radiation and for chemical toxins that inflict repairable DNA damage. Both are uniformly demonized on this site regardless of dosage.
It is not surprising at all that homeopathy is defended by conjecture. If a living system were to behave in a specified fashion then that might explain how homeopathy might work. Similar arguments using meaningless terms (like nanopharmacology) have proved how prayer might be curative or how the universe might be less than ten thousand years old if only a few dozen of the physical sciences were wrong in specific ways.
Conventional medicine must prove that a treatment is effective via fully blinded (not merely randomized) trials with sample size sufficient to exclude a positive result being accidental. Only then does one ask whether it functions through known mechanisms. One proposes alternate mechanisms only if known mechanisms fail to explain efficacy.
To hypothecate alternative mechanisms when one has not demonstrated efficacy is to mislead one’s audience.
M wife and i have tried few homeopathic remedies and it is always the same — nothing. It’s like just like using water or the same air you breath. Not a believer in it at all.
Cost has all but ended my use of homeopathic treatments.
Just in the last two years most of the forms of treatment we were using has risen three fold in cost.
It is now impossible to get an extract of some of the products we could get just three years ago.
They have been added to all types of other ingredients making it useless.
They are so many so called (Dr’s.) now promoting and pushing supplements you cant tell what is good and what is just crap. Just a few short years ago you could NOT get a Dr. even close to any of this stuff. Its all about COST and the profit line.
I had a relative that worked in a lab a few miles from here, she told me her college ran a bunch of test on some major supplements and found most of them only contained trace amounts of the products, and some did not even do that.
Soon it will be illegal to grow any of these products here in this country just like it is in other parts of the world, only imports will be available, and you know how we trust that mess.
No materialist scientist will ever understand homeopathy, because its power comes from a nonmaterial source. They will not discover anything that explains this power as long as they look for material causes. So unless you can see the subtle energies pulsing in the spiritual (non material) world, you will be wasting your time.
I have seen a video that shows how homeopathic remedies work on animals, specifically cattle in the video. Now there is no to convince a cow that its healing is purely by placebo. I believe homeopathy works, and as usual, if it affects the profits of allopathy, even to a miniscule extent, it must be crushed!
Glad to see you do this supportive article on homeopathy. My constructive criticism is that the article needed to focus more on the electromagnetic level on which homeopathy works. While you are correct that little research money is available for homeopathic research, there is a wealth of studies completed with positive results. Some of them are clinical and some of them are laboratory. Montagnier is only 1 noble prize winner whose research is supporting homeopathy. There are 2 other such scientists. Benveniste, who was pilloried for his support of homepathic thinking, has had his work duplicated in several other locations by independent researchers. Montagnier who was revered for his HIV work, is not being lambasted for his work that supports homeopathy and he is moving to China to continue his work.
Research on water and how it works is a fascinating area of study as it shows that the water molecule while remaining H20 chemically, changes its structure in the presence of the remedies.
As for not understanding how homeopathy work, it is safe to say that much of conventional medicine is also not understood, but it is supported and promoted and sold for billions of profit.
I would disagree with your characterization of the difference betw allopathy and homeopathy. Allopathy, or conventional medicine, has only one philosophical underlying rubric: control and conquer. The drugs are designed to assault symptoms. Control or suppression is the goal, never cure! None of them is harmless and often they cause new diseases which require further medication on top of the original one. Like Monsanto producing GE plants so they can sell more and more chemicals, the drug companies are the same. They all began as chemical industry like Monsanto but wound up selling chemicals they now call drugs to the public for direct body use. As a matter of fact, the chemical industry of the late 19c-early 20c, run by Rockefeller, funded the foundering AMA to sell more chemicals. The irony of this is that Rockefeller was a very strong proponent of Homeopathy and thought the AMA would fund homeopathy along with the chemical drugs being developed. Unfortunately, Rockefeller provided the funds but age resulted in his taking a back seat. Those who took the reigns of the AMA worked to develop it into a powerful trade organization with the goal of controlling all health care in the country. As a consequence, they attacked homeopathy and homeopaths, banning any…
Just because big pharmacy can’t make a profit on homeopathic formulas does not mean they are ineffective. Different herbs and other substances work very well. It is not unheard if for big pham to use low grade or sub minimal amounts of substances to prove their hypothesis so they can skew studies. Homeopathy has a place in medicine new, just not controlled by big pharms phony studies!
We must fight this utter nonsense of taking consumer’s rights away from them in regards to homeopathy,herbs, vitamins etc. I want to be in charge of my health and wellbeing and, I don’t want the government meddling in my personal health decisions. We the people must stand up and fight this oppression in regarding alternative medicne. Keep up the fight!
Homeopathy has been around to centuries and will stand the test of time against conventional medicine because conventional medicine carries no conventional wisdom. Roots of conventional medicine are found in homeopathy; conventional medicine pulls the rug out from beneath itself as it attempts to attack its foundation. Do not get distracted and lost in the debate. It is all about conventional medicine in its current capitalistic model to create a monopoly in medicine, to control the markets. It has nothing to do with health and welfare of human beings outside economic dominance. Americans and Europeans have delegated its health and welfare for so long conventional medicine knows it needs to eradicate patient choice before it is too late.
Anyone who is critical of homeopathy obviously hasn’t tried it especially for acute problems. For instance, I once burned a finger to the point of blistering. The blister was almost the size of a dime and very painful. I took one dose of homeopathic cantharis and sat down to watch the news. After about fifteen minutes I had forgotten about pain and when I checked my hand -I couldn’t tell which finger had been burned. THE BLISTER WAS GONE and all pain.
I have used Cantharis time and time again for UTIs, which I am prone to at my age. Works every time.
Thank you for this article.
Powerful interests have worked against homeopathy from the earliest days – at that time it was primarily pharmacists and medical doctors. Now it is the pharmaceutical industry and dogmatic medical scientists who think that we’ve figured it all out so anything that doesn’t fit in this framework must be false. Physicists don’t have much of a problem with homeopathy, since they know we don’t have a clue of how the world works and that seemingly paradoxical phenomena are the norm in the universe. Unfortunately, medicine still operates from a19th century biological and chemical framework – worked well in creating the pharmaceutical industry, so milk it for all its worth.
The fact is there is a strong body of scientific data in both basic science and clinical research that demonstrates the biological properties of homeopathic remedies and how they produce clinically significant improvements in humans and animals (and plants).
I wrote a response to a discussion at the BMJ, you can get an overview of homeopathic research there:
http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e6184/rr/606486
I am surprised that the UK isn’t defending homeopathy. I had read that the royal family had used it for years.
UK has the same problem with Big Pharma as the US does I’m afraid. I’ve been consulting with a homeopath for thirty years and it has helped with numerous conditions including blood poisoning. But the bigots here are as vocal as anywhere.
I am a clinical psychologist and have practiced homeopathy for 23 years. The proof is in the pudding, and I have seen homeopathy work over and over and over again. Anyone who doubts its efficacy should read the 2011 Swiss study. It is gentle, safe, effective and cost-effective. We need to fight against those who wish to suppress it.
It sounds just like the attack on women’s rights.
If you don’t want to take advantage of it, don’t! But outlawing it is an emotional response that is deserving of a good spanking from your mum.
If I can choose my church w/o Gov’t. interference why can’t I choose my medical help with the same freedom?
Lets see some stats’ on big pharma’s failures.
I’m a ninety year old man do not have a doctor take my daily “placebos” and feel great..
On the web DRs Whitaker and Sinatra are my advisors with a good cache of “placebos”.
In the past I’ve got over painful knees,back pains and digestive problems.
Looking forward to 100th birthday if big Pharma will stay out of my personal choices.
Thanx, for letting me let off some steam.and keep up the good job.
cgh
Now a grandmother, I discovered homeopathy when my daughter was a healthy infant of only a few months. Essentially, she developed a skin rash in a few spots and scratched herself repeatedly. The traditional doctor gave her a low-dose skin ointment that repressed the symptoms, so they vanished the next day. But the following day, they came back even stronger & in far more locations. I then took her to an MD Homeopath, who fully cured her and who we continued to see for years. As an infant too young for any sort of placebo effect, yet also too young to answer the questions to determine correct cure (times of day gets worse, etc) the first couple medicines didn’t work. But the 3rd tried was magical: this rash that was all over her instantly (over a couple of hours) vanished — at approximately 3 months old.
Here I would like to add research work ‘HOW HOMEOPATHY WORKS’ Since birth of homeopathy no body is answered how homeopapathy works, there were many attacks but answer. how can we protect our science read the articles dowload FULL PAPER HERE:
http://ushahomeopathy.com/#page3
http://homeoresearch.blogspot.com/search/label/K.Research%20Paper
thanks,
dr.devendra kumar MUNTA md(hOMEO)
Modern western medicine has a substantially murky record regarding negative consequences with fatalities and debilitating results failing to be transparently reported. Homeopathy has been practiced for centuries, and would seem to be adequately vetted by the test of time to be safe and effective. My family has been substantially harmed by the missteps of “modern” medicine.
I believe that this works because I had a little Yorkie that had seizures. The regular vet was was giving her meds that made her almost comatose. So I bit the bullet ($) and went to a holistic vet. Within a year, she had almost no seizures and the ones she did occasional have were petite one. She lived two more years and died at a ripe old age of 16. Actually the cost was comparable because I wasn’t in there for all kinds of things and only saw the vet twice a year for check ups. I didn’t even need all of the vaccinations because she gave her a blood test that showed she was still protected. I am sold. And she couldn’t tell me anything so it wasn’t a placebo affect.
Its is all about the GREED of the Pharmaceutical companies and their fear of losing a few bucks on home remedies that have been around for hundreds of years in some cases and have even found some loopholes to patent some of them .
Homeopathy is an empirical science. Just like Traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy was developed before we had microscopes, germ theory, animal testing laboratories and chemical manufacturing plants which can make any variation of molecules imaginable. Homeopathy tests the results of remedies by carefully refined skills of observation. Great minds of medicine, the Yellow Emperor’s physician, famous homeopath Clarke, both had an incredible depth of experience, in understanding subtleties of people, nature and medicine. And both built entire volumes of research in their respective fields. They had talents and skills that can only be described as genius.
Homeopathy is Europe’s oldest form of medicine, and despite it’s lack of corroboration by modern medicine, Homeopathy is at it’s state of the art – it has been continually refining itself for over 200 years. It is not a fold medicine, or natural medicine. Germany and France do not share the same skepticism we have in America. Germany’s medical regulations are the most stringent in the whole world, and they hold a strick adherence to quantitative evidence. Homeopathy and modern medicine were developing concurrently, and it was Homeopathy which influenced modern medicine to test results using the scientific method. At that time modern medicine was not using a control group and an experiment group to determine the differences in research results. The scientific method is how modern medicine progressed in it’s interest of chemistry. Without this who knows at what place it would be at now.
Homeopathy is a very rigorous discipline, with world class universities around the globe which teach the art of Homeopathy. You need to study it for five years before you can say you have both feet in. I began studying Homeopathy with Ananda Zaren, Tinus Smitts, Robin Murphy, and have been influenced by many others. Now, for the past 8 years I have been very active in molecular biology, advancing my knowledge as new research comes out every day. And yet I still have entire cabinets full of homeopathic remedies for treating people, specifically for when nothing else will do. You might say Homeopathy is too old fashioned for it’s own good. This may be true, there is little being done to integrate Homeopathy into the modern understanding of biochemistry. This has been cited as mostly due to the fact that remedies in Homeopathy are so inexpensive, and readily available from common items…
Typo: I meant ‘folk remedy’, not ‘fold remedy’.
The Ignorance, Arrogance, & GREED is just rampant…….this foolish drive to erase anything and everything that is harmless and replace it with this Totalitarian Dictatorship is a Terrorism of great proportions against the Liberty of this land and it’s people. It’s obscene what is happening to us. I am just horrified.
I have benefitted enormously from Homeopathy, and so grateful for its blessings in my life.
I would suggest that anyone who wants to read about the “science” behind homeopathy read Dr. Bill Gray’s book “Homeopathy – Science or Myth?” Dr. Gray is a Stanford Medical School graduate and shows the proof of homeopathy, dispelling the myth that it is only a placebo.
Robert Abell, N.D., L.Ac.
Totally. I remeber a similar “study” produced by the National Health Institute disclaiming homeopathic medicine. WHAT A JOKE! TRY IT IF U DARE BECAUSE U WILL ACTUALLY GET RESULTS! Not some symptom prescription garbage.
As with anything, something only works if you believe in it. Because homeopathy works on the electromagnetic or spiritual plane of the body, unless you believe in God, spirit, that there’s more out there that we cannot physically see, it is highly likely that homepathy will not work for the unbeliever. Those who believe in God, in spirit, in the fact that our bodies harbor a spirit, that there are unseen forces in the universe for which we have no name but know they are there (because we believe even without having to have solid, physical proof)–they are the ones for whom alternative medicine will do the most good.
You must process the ability to believe in order for healing to take place. The body can inherently heal itself if given not only the correct, nonabusive, natural and organic ingredients but also the intrinsic belief that there is “something else out there” that helps elicit the healing.
Belief in a higher Source and that there is a spiritual or electromagnetic/energy surrounding the body are needed in order for natural remedies to work.
It would indeed be interesting to run an experiment with two different people who have the same ailment and are given the same alternative medicine treatment. One of them doubts it will work (because they ardently believe that toxic poisons/allopathic medicines are the cure–all) and one of them believes in a Higher Being and that they have a soul and that their body can heal itself.
I think I can already predict which person will be cured and healthy.
The farm animals that I have successfully treated do not have any belief in the homeopathic medicine they are given, more often than not they do not even know it is in their water and yet the results are consistently good.
Recent scientific studies show that placebos work whether you believe in them or not.
I have never tried homeopathic substances, however I read that some “placebos” contain aluminum. I think that full disclosure what is in placebos should be required.
In the First World countries, possibly this argument will go on for ever whether homeopathy works or not, whereas in Indian Subcontinent when people talk regarding homeopathy, they only discuss which homeopath is more efficient, not the effectiveness of homeopathy because they are well aware of the fact. Allopathy is infamous for its side-effect, whereas homeopathy does not produce any side effect if used considerately. I am not a licensed homeopathic practitioner, I am rather a layman, yet I have cured some cases of bronchial asthma (in adult), sterility cases (2 out of 3 became pregnant within 4 months of treatment), chronic rhinitis, cold, allergy, diarrhea, depression, irritability, otitis media, Menere’s disease, conjunctivitis, rheumatism and diseases like this. It is the least harmful and most cost effective method of therapy human race could ever have invented.