The system of Homeopathy was first brought out in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann. Homeopathy is a Greek word where “homeo” means similar and “pathy” means suffering. This medicine does no harm to the human body. He has brought out a script that says one should avoid coffee, tea, alcohol, spicy food, sweet food, meat, cheese, onion when taking the course of homeopathy. Even clothes made from sheep wool, sitting inside a warm room, etc needs to be avoided. But most of these are not talked nowadays because of their practical implementation in our busy world.
Medicine has changed completely over the past 150 years. Never in our human history have we lived this long with medical technological advancement and scientific evaluation to prove which medicines work and which doesn’t.
Let’s understand how homeopathic medicines are made.
Like cures like: This is a notion that tells the disease can be cured by a substance that produces similar symptoms in healthy people.
Law of minimum dose: The lower the dose of medication, greater is the effect it has on the body. These medicines are so diluted that no molecules of the original substance remain in the final one.
Homeopathic products come from plants (onion, arnica, poison ivy, belladonna), minerals (white arsenic) or animals (crushed whole bees). Homeopathic products are often made as sugar pellets or in forms such as ointments, gels, drops, cream or tablets. Homeopathic doctors weaken these ingredients by adding water or alcohol. They then shake the mixture as part of potentization. This process is repeated multiples times so as to dilute the mixture more. They believe this step transfers the healing essence. In fact, many of these doesn’t even contain any of the original substance.
Homeopathic medicine is said to be safe and doesn’t have any side effects. One reason is as mentioned because it’s so diluted, the original substance is almost absent. The other reason is because the medicines doesn’t have any chemicals but focuses on strengthening our body’s immune system. Thus, these medicines don’t have any negative effects, so it can be taken by anyone of any age group from children to pregnant women to old people. These are said to cure acute (short term) and chronic (long term) diseases and even sometimes allergies. The medicine is sweet based, so taking this will be easy (especially for children) compared to allopathic medicine. Homeopathy medicines are less expensive compared to other because for different diseases they don’t make different medicine. Most of the diseases are combined together and given common homeopathic medicine. This makes it easier for manufacturing as well as patients to take medicines too.
FUN FACT: Globally, the homeopathic market is expected to reach 17 billion dollars by 2024.
By studying all these, we have beyond a doubt that homeopathy does not have any effect other than placebo effect. A placebo is anything that seems to be a "real" medical treatment- but isn't. It could be a pill, a shot, or some other type of "fake" treatment. What all placebos have in common is that they do not contain an active substance meant to affect health. It is triggered by the person's belief in the benefit from the treatment and their expectation of feeling better, rather than the characteristics of the placebo. This is a very real effect and is not imaginary. If people believe that it can make them feel better, their trust alone has the desired effect. The placebo effect can be transferred. Children and animals rely on parents for their day-to-day activities and are in tune with their emotions. If the parent has a lot of trust in relieving the symptoms of their child, this alone can help relax the child and relieve symptoms. This can also be seen in animals who rely on the support of a keeper or caretaker and get in sync with their emotion.
But the most important thing in homeopathy is Time. Assume you took a pill for fever and after 3 days says the fever left. You would think the fever was cured because of the homeopathic medicine but in fact, as time passed on, the body’s immune system naturally fought off the symptoms.
The first consultation with a homeopathic doctor (homeopath) can take hours and is personal. Talking about mental, physical, emotional and spiritual conditions. Sometimes even complete family history is understood like who in the family were affected by this, what are their background, etc. This can be a huge difference to a patient who goes from doctor to doctor. But here he gets the undivided attention, empathy and connects emotionally. This can actually take a lot of stress away from the patient during this long conversation even though this conversation was not the point of the therapy.
Some even criticize homeopathy as bad since it distrusts among the proven medicine (allopathy). This can actually create a problem when it comes to vaccination. Vaccination is required (mandatory) to everyone and homeopathy, well you know. This discourages people to seek the help they need when their lives or their loved one’s lives are in danger. In emergency cases like heart attacks, accidents homeopathic medicines are not useful.
Modern medicine is efficient and proven (both theoretically and experimentally). This saves a million lives each year. But this is strictly an organized structure, as time budget limits the time a doctor can attend to a patient. All consultations are time efficient, diagnostics made quickly and treatments are made fast. This can sometimes have a negative effect leaving a patient feeling alone, invisible and left behind. This is what modern medicine needs to learn from homeopathy where human needs is the first need to be taken care of.
“Faith can move mountains, but sugar water cannot cure cancer”
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