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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsWebMD jumps the shark
This is their attempt to legitimize the practice of homeopathy.
https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-homeopathy#1
Before you look, the words "pseudoscience," "quackery" and "bullshit" are not in this piece.
elfin
(6,262 posts)Otherwise, they are very smart. I think of it as the Placebo Practice.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)they don't really endorse it.
And they do mention the placebo effect.
Sailor65x1
(554 posts)WebMD neither advocates nor condemns it. The article is a description of what homeopathy is. And then WebMD goes on to caution against using it for anything serious. What, exactly, is it you think WebMD has done wrong here?
TheSmarterDog
(794 posts)Using homeopathy to treat any ailment is worse than doing nothing.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)They should absolutely condemn it as being the pseudoscientific poppycock that it is. Failure to do so is tacit endorsement and wholly unacceptable.
meadowlark5
(2,795 posts)Do you not take anything unless it's made by a pharmaceutical company? Fish oil has been shown to lower cholesterol. It's a supplement. Glucosamine helps with joint and cartilage damage. Another supplement. Both of these things can also be treated by a pharmaceutical drug. But the supplements are cheaper and have less adverse effects.
I use bio identical hormones made from plants and applied topically, not synthetic pharmaceuticals. I actually get blood work that shows my hormone levels increase with usage. My allopathic OBgyn won't prescribe it, but a homeopathic doctor will.
Just like politics - there seems to be a purity test when it comes health treatments.
jmowreader
(50,529 posts)If you want to make a homeopathic preparation of sulfur - a very common homeopathic remedy - you take one gram of sulfur, put it in 100 milliliters of alcohol (sulfur won't dissolve in water) and shake it until it dissolves. You then pour out the sulfur-alcohol mix, fill the jar with 100 ml of water, and shake. Dump it out, refill with plain water, and shake. Do this until you've done it 200 times.
By the time you are done, there is no sulfur in the water - not one single atom.
That sounds like woo to me.
meadowlark5
(2,795 posts)Homeopathy is the use of non pharmaceutical supplements and tinctures to treat ailments. It's all part of alternative medicine. And most of those are not run through a corporate funded study.
Chamomille is on the list of homeopathic remedies. I wonder how many people find a calming effect from drinking chamomile tea.
meadowlark5
(2,795 posts)This is a description from nih.gov - they of course say there is no science to substantiate it. But this is included in their description. These are the things I'm talking about.
https://nccih.nih.gov/health/homeopathy
csziggy
(34,131 posts)That is what jmowreader was referring to. In the extreme dilutions preferred by many homeopathic practitioners, there is nothing left of the supposed active substance. Given that the practitioners like using dangerous substances such as arsenic or belladonna, that is a very good thing - much less chance that they will kill someone with one of their concoctions.
A homeopathic medicine is believed to be more effective when its active ingredient is diluted. This is the minimum dose approach of homeopathy. The purpose of potency is to dilute the active ingredient until it can do no harm and to invigorate the base substance with energy so that the qualities are preserved while the substance itself is diluted out.
While counter-intuitive, the potency is higher when the concentration of an active ingredient is lower. In other words, less is more.
What Do Potencies like 6X or 30C Mean?
In a homeopathic drug product, the drug strength or potency appears directly after the name of the active ingredient. Unlike conventional medicines, which typically report drug potency in milligrams, homeopathic potency is indicated by a numeral followed by an X or C. The potency of a medicine, such as 6X or 30C, tells you how many times and by what ratio the base substance has been diluted.
Example: 6X
An X indicates that the active ingredient has been diluted on a scale of 1:10. The numeral indicates how many times it was diluted and then succussed (a precise and vigorous process of shaking). So, 6X means that the active substance was diluted to a 1/10 concentration six times.
Example: 30C
A C indicates that the medicine has been diluted on a scale of 1:100. Again, the numeral tells you how many times the medicine was diluted and succussed. So, 30C means that the active ingredient was diluted to a 1/100 concentration thirty times.
http://www.arnica.com/about-arnica/homeopathy/understanding-homeopathic-drug-potency/
jmowreader
(50,529 posts)In the spirit of "go big or go home," let's look at the biggest one of all: Boiron's Oscillococcinum. It was created by Dr. Joseph Roy, who believed in the then-popular "universal germ" theory - the idea, since proven false, that one microorganism (his was called Oscillococcus) can cause a LOT of diseases. (This is different from the malicious organism Donaldtrumpus; that one can cause many different maladies but it is a macroorganism and a subject of a different lecture.)
Dr. Roy found Oscillococcus on the liver of a Long Island duckling, leading to the remedy we have today.
This is how it is made, and how it has been made since its introduction in 1925.
First, take a clean one-liter bottle. Place into it a mixture of "pancreatic juice" and glucose - the amount not specified, but I assume they use a full liver.
Secure one Muscovy duck. Behead the poor beast and disembowel him. Cut off 35 grams of his liver and 15 grams of his heart, and add them to the bottle. Let this mixture set at room temperature for a full 40 days.
Next come the Korsakovian potentiations, created by the Russian homeopath Korsakov in 1829. The classical method for preparing homeopathic dilutions is to add 1 millilitre of your starting material to 99 millilitres of water or alcohol, beat it against the table in an approved fashion - this called succussion - then extract 1 ml of that dilution, add 99 ml water and succuss again. Korsakov knew about surface tension; he theorized that one percent of the contents of a container would remain stuck to the walls after you empty the container. The Korsakovian Way is to add a 1 9 mix of material and diluent, succuss, and dump the container, trusting that 1 ml is still stuck to the sides of the jar. Oscillo is diluted 200 times. When it's done, place one drop of it on a sugar pill, box them up and sell them for one dollar per tablet.
Boiron uses one duck per year to supply the entire world's demand for Oscillo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillococcinum
https://www.homeowatch.org/history/oscillo.html
TheSmarterDog
(794 posts)meadowlark5
(2,795 posts)Because when I look up homeopathy remedies, I find far more supplements or plant botanicals compounded or in supplement form to treat conditions and diseases.
Arnica in topicals for bruises and aches, magnesium in creams to help with muscle aches or restless legs etc.
However, I would never choose homeopathy or alternative treatments like Steve Jobs did for his pancreatic cancer. But I do feel alternative treatments do have a place for some conditions.
LSFL
(1,109 posts)They are correct. Homeopathy is extreme dilution of ingredients. Visit csicop's website and search. I is enlightening.
jmowreader
(50,529 posts)Oneironaut
(5,486 posts)Homeopathic "remedies" are solutions that have been diluted. The number of times they were diluted is indicated by their X value. For 1X, the solution is diluted with water. Then, for the next X value (2X), some of that solution is taken out and diluted into more water. This is usually done over a hundred times, as homeopaths believe further dilution increases a remedy's potency.
For a 100X solution, your remedy would be less like Chamomile tea, and more like (and honestly, looking at the actual surviving particles in the end product) trying to make chamomile tea in lake Erie with one teabag.
In the final product, it is unlikely there will be even 1 microscopic particle left of the original item. Homeopaths believe that water has a "memory," which maintains the effects of the items that were originally diluted. Of course, the major problem with that belief is that we also poop in water in the toilet - does that also mean our drinking water retains a memory of everybody's poop?
This is not to be confused with home remedies or natural supplements. Homeopathy is psuedoscientific nonsense.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,603 posts)Homeopathy teaches that diseases can be treated by homeopathic preparations (called homeopathics or remedies), which are prepared using a process called homeopathic dilution, in which a given substance is repeatedly diluted in alcohol or distilled water, each time with the container being struck against some sort of elastic material. The dilutions are conducted using a centesimal scale, diluting each mixture by a factor of 100 at each stage thus, a 2C dilution is diluted twice, with the final product containing one part of the original substance per 10,000 parts of mixture. The greatest dilution at which even a single molecule of the original substance might possibly remain is 12C; Hahnemann advocated a dilution of 30C for most purposes, believing that lower doses made a mixture more, not less, potent.
For practical purposes, this means that "30X" and "30C" solutions do not actually exist, because it is not possible to create a solution in which one molecule of an original substance is dissolved in a container of water bigger than the Earth.
meadowlark5
(2,795 posts)If you do a search for homeopathic remedies, you'll find more of what people use today than diluting crap in water and alcohol down to nothing and drinking it. Alternative and homeopathic seem to be interchangeable.
Or maybe those who prescribe true homeopathy are finding it doesn't work so are letting it morph into what is considered alternative medicine so their patients see some improvement.
Major Nikon
(36,818 posts)All apples are fruit. All fruits arent apples.
Leith
(7,808 posts)It seems to work because a sympathetic person talks to the patient. Here's how I feel about it:
7wo7rees
(5,128 posts)BootinUp
(47,085 posts)In most cases.