Homeopathy is a safe[1][2][3][4], effective[5] and gentle 200 year old practice of traditional medicine that uses highly diluted naturally occurring substances to treat health conditions. In its arsenal of remedies, the most commonly used medicines come from plants, animals, and minerals. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes homeopathy “as approaching the patient holistically…, stimulating the spontaneous defence mechanism of the body, and using a minimum dose of the active agent.”[6] Unlike conventional drugs, which act via biochemical means to bring about a local effect, homeopathic “medicines are intended to stimulate the body to fight the disease.”[6A] Homeopathic medicines are more complex, causing an individualized adaptive response so the body can reverse disease.[6B] It should be noted that homeopathy is not an umbrella term to describe “natural” healing methods such as herbal medicine, aromatherapy, and Chinese medicine.[7] It is its own therapeutic system, based on a prescribed set of principles governing its practice.[8]
The WHO states that “[t]raditional and complementary medicine … is an important and often underestimated health resource with many applications, especially in the prevention and management of lifestyle-related chronic diseases, and in meeting the health needs of ageing (sic) populations.”[9] It recommends that traditional and complementary medicines, including homeopathy, be incorporated with conventional medicine to provide adequate access to health care around the world.[10] Today, homeopathy is one of the most widespread alternatives to conventional medicine in the world, along with traditional Chinese medicine, herbal medicine and osteopathy.[11] It has been integrated into the national health care systems of many countries, including India, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka[12], Switzerland, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, to name a few.[13] In India, for instance, where the government has 11,000 homeopathic hospital beds, students share the same curriculum for the first three years of medical school before dividing into homeopathic or conventional medical routes.[14]
Homeopathy’s roots can be traced to a German physician and chemist, Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843). After seeing the terrible side effects and outcomes with medicines and procedures of the day, Hahnemann sought a gentle way to cure his patients and family. He massively diluted and forcefully agitated (succussed) naturally occurring materials, some of which could be fatal or cause bad reactions if taken in raw form.[15] Then, he experimented on himself, family and friends, testing over 100 of these diluted substances, starting with Cinchona (a type of tree bark). After taking it repeatedly for many days, he developed symptoms of malaria, which disappeared when he stopped taking the concoction. He reasoned that if homeopathically prepared Cinchona could cause symptoms of malaria in a healthy person, it could cure the same symptoms in a sick one.[16] He was right. Homeopathic Cinchona cures symptoms of malaria. It contains minute amounts of quinine, a conventional medicine used to treat malaria, but without side effects. Modern conventional pharmaceuticals are often used in this same manner. For instance, Digitalis (the plant, Foxglove), used to treat heart arrythmias, causes arrythmias if taken in too high a dose. Ritalin, a stimulant, is used to treat hyperactive children. And when desensitizing allergic patients, doctors often give minute doses of the substance that causes the allergic reaction.[17]
There are over 7,000 homeopathic medicines that have been tested to date on people in controlled studies to determine the symptoms they produce and are capable of curing. The difference between these homeopathic medicines and conventional pharmaceuticals is that homeopathic doses are so diluted that toxic side effects are avoided.[18] Through a process known in science as “hormesis,” small amounts of a normally toxic substance trigger the body’s innate healing mechanisms.[19] Research shows that after dilution and succussion to the level of 24X or 12C (potencies found on health food store shelves),[20] what remains are nanoparticles of the original substance that the body recognizes as foreign and responds to in its natural effort to maintain a state of health.[21] [22] [23] When taken, the body responds in a gentle, natural, healing manner, “modulating the biology of symptoms and healing via functional changes in neural, immune, and inflammatory pathway networks and mediators…. These adaptations are all in the service of optimizing the individual’s fitness to survive…” [23A]
In practice, if your child has teary eyes and a runny nose that irritates her skin, you might give homeopathic Allium cepa (onion). Her body recognizes this as a foreign substance that causes runny nose and eyes and responds by curing these symptoms. Likewise, if you are going through chemotherapy and are severely ill, unable to eat due to the terrible taste in your mouth and rotten smell in your nose Colchicum autumnale, a plant that would make you severely nauseated if eaten in raw form, may help ease your nausea when taken in homeopathic doses.
Homeopathy is different than allopathic conventional medicine.[24] In order to find the right medicine, homeopathy is “based on individualized treatment for each patient…. [It is] only by understanding each patient’s totality of characteristics and peculiarities” that an appropriate medicine can be effective.[25] That is, ten people with cold symptoms could need 10 different medicines depending on how the illness affects them. It is the nature of the symptoms, not the diagnosis, that indicates the remedy. For instance, an illness with a sudden onset, red, hot, dry face, glassy eyes, thirstlessness, high fever suggests Belladonna as the remedy regardless of whether the illness is a cold, sore throat, earache, or measles. Allopathy, on the other hand, differs in that prescriptions are made based on the diagnosis (cold, tonsillitis, hepatitis, etc.), rather than how the disease uniquely affects the person as a whole.
As the World Health Organization suggests, there is a place for both types of medicine in any comprehensive system of health care because no single method cures everyone all the time.
Homeopathic medicines are manufactured in many countries. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates over the counter “and prescription homeopathic drugs and delineates those conditions under which homeopathic drugs may ordinarily be marketed in the U.S.”[26] As well, these drugs are manufactured according to the meticulous standards articulated in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States (HPUS), the official homeopathic compendium recognized by the FDA under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.[27] In the US, look for “HPUS” on the label to ensure the product has been manufactured properly.
References
[1] Poiteven, B. Integrating homeopathy in health system, Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 1999, 772 (2), p. 160.
[2] Stub T, Musial F, Kristoffersen AA, et al. Adverse effects of homeopathy, what do we know? A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Complement Ther Med. 2016 Jun; 26:146–63.
[3] Dantes F, Rampes H. Do homeopathic medicines provoke adverse effects? Conference proceedings: Improving the success of homeopathy. London Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital. 1999: p.70-74; and Br Homeopathic J. 2000; 89 (Suppl): S35-538.
[4] Stub T, Musial F, Kristoffersen AA, et al., supra.
[5] Marian F, Joost K, Saini K, et al. Patient satisfaction and side effects in primary care: An observational study comparing homeopathy and conventional medicine. BMC Complement Altern Med. 2008; 8: 52.
[6] Poiteven, B., supra.
[6A] World Health Organization. Legal Status of Traditional Medicine and Complementary/Alternative: A Worldwide Review, 2001, p. 3.
[6B] Bell, I. The Complexity of the Homeopathic Healing Response Part 1: The Role of the Body as a Complex Adaptive System in Simillimum-Initiated Recovery from Disease. Homeopathy 2020; 109(02): 042-050. (Homeopathic medicines are not conventional drugs. Conventional drugs act via biochemical, mechanistically targeted, specific direct local effects. In contrast, in this complexity model, the correct homeopathic medicine serves as a low-dose stimulus or individualized signal for inducing patterns of functional adaptive changes globally and locally in the body. The homeopathic signal captures and conveys a low or weak “dose” of the salient complex disease frequency information to the body, thereby setting in motion personalized…responses to reverse the disease.)
[7] National Center for Homeopathy, What is Homeopathy. Retrieved on June 10, 2022 from https://www.homeopathycenter.org/homeopathy-faqs/
[8] Hahnemann, Samuel Dr. Organon of the Medical Art, 6th Ed. Wenda Brewster O’Reilly Ed., B. Jain Publ. Ltd, India.2010.
[9] World Health Organization Global Report on Traditional and Complementary Medicine 2019. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019: p. 5.
[10] Word Health Organization, Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023; Bannerman R, Burton J, Wen C. Traditional Medicine and Health Care Coverage. World Health Organization, Geneva, 1983; WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002–2005; see generally, Poiteven, B. supra
[11] Poiteven, B., supra.
[12] Legal Status of Traditional Medicine and Complementary/Alternative: A Worldwide Review, World Health Organization, 2001, p. 3; WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy – 2014-2023, p. 38.
[13] Homeopathy Use Around the World, Homeopathy Research Institute (n.d.). Retrieved on Jan 15, 2019 from https://www.hri-research.org/resources/essentialevidence/use-of-homeopathy-across-the-world/
[14] S P Singh, Ministry of Health and Welfare’s adviser on homoeopathy, quoted in The Lancet. Raekha Prasad, Homoeopathy booming in India. The Lancet. Nov 17, 2007;. 370(9600):1679-80.
[15] Encyclopedia.com. Samuel Hahnemann. Retrieved on Mar 21, 2019 from https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/medicine/medicine-biographies/samuel-hahnemann
[16] Hering, Theresa. Excerpt from Hering, C., Guiding Symptoms of our Materia Medica. Vol. 1. Estate of Constantine Hering, Philadelphia. 1879, p. vi.
[17] Homeopathy Research Institute. The idea of ‘like cures like’ makes no sense. Retrieved on June 6, 2019.
[18] Id.
[19]Calabrese EJ. Hormesis and homeopathy: a step forward. Homeopathy 2017; 106(03): 131-32; World Health Organization. Legal Status of Traditional Medicine and Complementary/Aalternative Medicine: A Worldwide Review. Geneva. 2001: p. 3.
[20] 24X means the substance has been serially diluted at the rate of 1:10 twenty four times. Succession (forceful agitation) follows each 1:10 dilution. 12C represents serial dilution of 1:100 and succession twelve times. Beyond these dilutions/succussions no molecules of the original substance remain. Bell, Iris R and Pappas, Pamela A., Homeopathy and Psychiatry, Chapter 9 in Complementary and Alternative Treatments in Mental Health Care, Lake J and Spiegel D (eds.). American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C. 2007: p. 200.
[21] Chikramane PS, Suresh AK, Kane SG. Metal nanoparticle induced hermetic activation: a novel mechanism of homeopathic medicines. Homeopathy. 2017 Aug; 106(3): 135-144.
[22] See generally, Bell I, E. Schwartz G. Adaptive network nanomedicine: An integrated model for homeopathic medicine. 2013. Frontiers in Bioscience (Scholar Ed.).
[23] Dei, A. Hormesis and Homeopathy: Toward a New Self-Consciousness. Dose Response. 2017 Oct-Dec; 15(4). Drofenik M. Homeopathy and the Law of Similars. Prensa Med Argent. 2019; Vol 105 (5): 152.
[23A] Bell I., supra.
[24] Meriam-Webster. Dictionary, Allopathy “a system of medical practice that aims to combat disease by use of remedies (as drugs or surgery) producing effects different from or incompatible with those produced by the disease being treated.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/allopathy
[25] Bell, I and Pappas, P., supra FN 20, at p. 197.
[26] Drug Products Labeled as Homeopathic – Guidance for FDA Staff and Industry – Draft Guidance.