Homeopathy

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Anyone here support, advocate, or otherwise believe in the medical modality known as "Homeopathy"? Specifically referred to here is the practice of diluting substances that cause the symptom one is looking for relief for to miniscule concentrations (1:100^30, for example, or 30C, a typical dilution for many medicines) and selling this as medicine to do anything from treating headaches and colds to treating ebola to acting as functional vaccines.

It also doesn't work, according to a major meta-meta-review (that is, a metareview of metareviews, an attempt to get a good overview over the entire field). In fact, it pretty much can't work. It has no viable mechanism. That 1:100^30 figure earlier? That was not a joke. They take one drop of active substance, dissolve it in a vial with 100 drops of water, shake, then repeat the process 30 times, which leads to insane dilution. What is a joke is the implication that anything diluted that much could possibly serve as medicine. Indeed, the odds of even getting one molecule of the active ingredient is virtually zero. And yet, there are still many people who hold up homeopathic dilution as a viable form of medicine.

Anyone with a differing viewpoint, or a possible explanation for how homeopathy works?

 

[Sucumbio]

https://www.homeopathic.com/Article...eat_Introductory_Article_for_Advocates_O.html

The difficulty is that taking the "similars" approach or to mimic immunization is not a fool proof way of creating a natural response to just any sickness. Treatment of say, a broken bone cannot be the same as for the Flu. And yet that is what homeopathic medicine seeks to do. Train the body to stay healthy by introducing small amounts of toxins and random crap to build resistance. So... If you eat strychnine through this method you should survive strychnine poisoning.

I think immunization is literally the only field that has any medical worth in terms of similars-training the body. Allergens too except for all the ones that work in build up, so Morphine, Poison Ivy/anything that can cause anaphylaxis. So... Anything. Yeah. Bs science is bs.

 

[HvEVIL]

Two words: Placebo Effect.

 

[BWG_Zeta]

I've dived into the matter and found that it's a ridiculous way to medicate and there is no proof to suggest it is better than normal consumption without dilution. Anyway I don't really care much about if because it doesn't effect me and I'll never be doing it. And I'm certainly not going to alienate those that are doing it. I couldn't care either way.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Sounds like quakery to me. Taking something that ails people, diluting it, and then putting it into their bodies in an effort to build an immunity ever so slowly? Sounds like it'd work on paper, but at such extreme levels of dilution, I don't believe it'd do anything.

I know it's possible for people to build a resistance to an allergen (I'm not longer allergic to my cat for instance, though it only pertains to my cat), and there was one guy on TV (I forgot what program it was) who has built up a resistance (though not a complete immunity) to certain snake venoms after having been bit countless times, but those are different subjects, I would think.