How does homeopathy work?

Question

One of my friends does Kanesiology (wrong spelling) and gives out homoeopathic remedies to compliment. My mother just asked me how it actually works to which my friend explained like cures like as well as the dilution methods but my mother was asking how the actual medication worked and how it acted on the body and I realised I didn't have an answer and neither did my embarrassed friend. can anyone shed some light as web searches on it's "mechanical" function bear little fruit. All I've found really is it's history and stories of success. We know it works (although the skeptics nearly had me untill I actually fell ill and needed it) but it would be nice to know what in the pills does what to our bodies.

thank you

Answer 1

Well, I don't know if this is the answer you are looking for, but homeopathy works on the concept of "the hair of the dog that bit you", pretty much anyway.  You introduce incredibly diluted allergens or whatever the case may be into your body which is supposed to then build antibodies to the offending molecule. It's kind of like the concept of immunization, but on a different scale.  

Answer 2

I can share my own experience and understanding. Throughout my life I've  tried a lot of natural treatments, because I'd been on so many antibiotics and I didn't feel good and took longer and longer to get better. Actually, I think I even got sick more often. There was a lot of stress in my family growing up, parents tense, grandmother in a nursing home then dying. So my experience with only conventional meds (what my mom knew) was only the beginning. I started exploring natural things as replacements, beginning but herbs, but including kinesiology (which didn't work for me, in fact it backfired, but that doesn't mean it doesn't help others), various massage methods, meditation and yoga, nutrition, other things too. I added homeopathic remedies into the mix, that I learned about when helping my animals naturally heal. Then I learned that that's just the tip of the iceberg with homeopathy. (I learned this by accident.) Homeopathy is a whole separate field like acupuncture, that heals serious illnesses.

I'm so happy to hear about your friend's dog!!!

This is how I understand homeopathy. I've thought about it a long time.

(I've also been reading the various posts, so like certain metaphors.)

"Like cures like" was meaningless to me. Now I understand that we get a symptom, in the body or mind or spirit even, and in conventional medicine (even psychiatry) we try to make the symptom go away. Sometimes, for the purpose of saving a life, this is beneficial. With most common problems, it is detrimental and harms in the bigger picture.

The homeopathic remedies are proven (a light, safe form of "testing") on humans. People take pellets of substances in immeasurable concentration - yet scientifically diluted - that can cause certain symptoms. These symptoms (objective and subjective) are recorded by a homeopath. Based on this information, when a person with similar symptoms sees a homeopath, the homeopath matches the person's symptoms to one of the thousands of remedies from which they have to choose. Beyond that, there are thousands of potencies (the remedy dilution factor). When they stop taking the pellets, the symptoms go away. That's the like cures like. It was mentioned by a man named Paracelsus long ago, and also talked about by Hippocrates (the father of medicine, you know, the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take?).

A man (doctor) named Samuel Hahnemann was the first to take Hippocrates' idea of like cures like and develop it into usable form. So, he tried to make a symptom stronger, instead of make it go away. He experimented with diluting the "remedy" (which was like an herb at first) and found that the more it was diluted, the fewer side effects there were, and the faster people healed. This led to "potentizing," which is the subject of controversy because remedies are "energetic," having been so diluted (based on Hahnemann's observations).

A homeopath I see said to think of health as a river that flows. I remember as a kid going to the mountains, and the river was strong and vital in the center, yet at some edges there were stagnant pools where pollywogs grew. We had a swimming hole because a tree had fallen across the water and beavers built homes. She said imagine a little boat flowing down the river. It gets stuck on a rock. The river flows around it, but the boat stays where it is. The boat represents a symptom.

Giving a remedy that can "cure what it can cause" (provings) temporarily increases the strength of the river, which releases the boat (symptom) and the river is once again flowing. I added the stagnant pools and pollywogs to the metaphor. The stagnant pools are other symptoms we ignore that might later be a problem.

I came from conventional meds (lots of them), then cured more naturally with a combination of alternative things, including homeopathy. I thought it was another alternative thing to use and together they would help me the most. I now rely just on homeopathy because I deeply understand it. That's why your friend's dog is cured of something otherwise considered incurable.

Homeopathic principles are difficult (I think) to grasp. So, the pills are an energetic stimulus to our own vital energy (river flow). Where it seems like a vaccination is because we inject the disease into the body that we want to build immunity to. But that's invasive, and skips past all of a person's defense mechanisms, and adds much more than the disease. A homeopath treats a person (or pet) to strengthen what they call the constitution, which is all of our health - body, mind, emotions, all organ systems, all energetic (chakra) systems, the Full Monty! ;-) Then, a strong, healthy organism naturally resists illness, bacteria, etc. and rebalances itself. A lot of people use homeopathy without seeing a homeopath (self-help), which helps a lot but only goes so far. That's another thing I discovered.

I hope this helps. It's becoming a favorite subject of mine, and I understand a lot more, though the more I learn, I think the more there is to learn. Neither you nor your friend need to be embarrassed for that reason. The nice thing is that homeopathy works even without fully understanding it.

Answer 3

The active ingredients are ..... nothing, zippo, zilch, nada.  It cannot work directly and there is no evidence that it does.  The solutions are so diluted, you would be lucky to get a single molecule of the supposed homeopathic chemical.

What works is the expectation of the person taking it - the placebo effect.  If you think it's going to work, it does.  Of course it doesn't really but since all experience is in the mind, including the experience of illness, then the mind can go a long way towards reducing the experience of illness.

Answer 4

OK Now that I have read the comments, I am completely confused.  

Answer 5

If your friend is not a qualified Homeopath she shouldn't be giving out Homeopathic remedies!

Answer 6

Just to clarify an above answer, regarding the scientific usage of the word "energy".  Scientifically, energy means "the ability to do work".  So anytime you hear the word in relation to something like this, try to replace the word "energy" with "the ability to do work".  If it doesn't make sense, whoever is saying it generally doesn't know what they're talking about.

"Electricity" is the effect of ions and fits very well into atomic theory, and exact predictions can be made from it, and therefore it is extremely testable and could potentially be falsified.  That's the difference between science and pseudoscience.  Scientific sounding words taken out of context and made vague sounding to keep them from being testable is always a warning signal.

Answer 7

Very good question! Thanks for asking it!

OK. So homeopathy works because the active part of it is the same energy as that of the disease (like cures like - this is very true), but it has been distorted by succussion. Succussion is when you shake the bottle and hit it against the palm of your hand between each dilution. Incidentally, it is very easy and sometimes very beneficial to make your own homeopathic remedies! And everybody should learn this as more and more remedies are being removed from the market as they work too well.

This succussion makes the energy of the substance unrecognizable to the body which therefore makes all efforts to reject it - and at the same time it rejects all identical energy, which includes the energy of your disease as well. Therefore you get at the same time rid of whatever caused your disease.

In homeopathy you take the substance that would normally give you the same symptoms as you are having now. This is "likes cure likes". I give you an example.

When you can't sleep, you should take homeopathic Coffee (coffea cruda), because coffee prevents you from sleeping. Your body will reject the energy of the homeopathic coffee (which is distorted and unrecognizable) and in so doing it rejects whatever "acted like coffee" and prevented you from sleeping in the first place. The result is that you now can sleep.

The dilutions in homeopathy have to do with whether the cause is physical (low dilutions) mental (higher dilutions) or emotional (very high dilutions) so we can give you exactly what you need according to the cause of your problem.

The fact that you get worse before getting better is the phase when the body starts fighting the unrecognizable energy and brings up all the similar symptoms. Very good sign in all homeopathy treatment! It means that the remedy was spot on!

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Just for fun:

Well, what a bunch of answers you got above! And nothing "to the point", even from the homeopath himself! (Do they know what they are doing some of them, or did they sleep in school?).

Homeopathy does not work like immunization (vaccination). It is not a placebo. It does not work by stimulating the production of antibodies and it has nothing to do with allergens or anti-allergens (although it does work to cure allergies).

People who talk about the absence of "active substances" (as active molecules) in homeopathy are on the wrong track. The only active substance in homeopathy is energy - and don't let anyone tell you that they don't believe in invisible energy because then, they probably don't believe in nor would ever dream to use the invisible energy which is called "electricity". He he!

Homeopaths do not like kinesiologists who use homeopathy. It seems to them so unfair that with biofeedback directly from the body we can find exactly what you need in a few seconds, while it takes them half an hour of questions to get the correct answer (or not - as it is purely based on their knowledge and experience or lack of it). But that's their problem. Kinesiology can through muscle testing find out exactly what YOU need in a few seconds and this method is much more reliable that the deduction work the homeopath does based on his/her knowledge.

I hope I made it clearer to you. Don't hesitate to ask more if you need more explanations.

All the best!

Lisa J.

Answer 8

I can see that by the answers you have!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a bunch of ignorants to homopthy answering your question so ,the actual answer is like cures like!!

Answer 9

The pills are sugar pills that have little or no effect on your body, but a great 'placebo' effect on your brain, and it DOES work for some people.

Although this link is a long one, please watch it all the way through, I can promise you that you will never think of homeopathy in the same way again.

Not mentioned in this clip, is that after they have diluted into oblivion, they take one drop of that WATER and shake it up in a tub of sugar pills, that's a fact.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BWE1tH93G9...

By the way, it's worth £30,000,000 a year, the biggest 'medical' con in history.

EDIT 1: I'm sorry you still do not believe me, you obviously haven't taken the trouble to watch my link, you say you 'know' that it works because it cured your frien's dog from cancer, also a couple of cats I believe. So because the animal cannot 'understand' the placebo effect, it 'must' work.

Humans sometimes recover from cancer quite naturally, it is the nature of the disease.

So I'm afraid your wrong again, firstly there has NEVER been a recognised trial on the effects of homeopathy on animals, secondly what you have 'swallowed' is the placebo effect by proxy.

Please have the decency watch the youtube, also the new link, if you do not, you should never ask questions on this forum, the answers to which you are not prepared to accept the possibility that they could be true.

Read especially the letter from the vet, he explains this view very well, it's a matter of some vets taking even more money from gullible pet owners, what a wonderfull scam this homeopathy is.

http://www.skeptics.org.uk/article.php?d...

EDIT 2: I'm really enjoying this question with the diversity of answers, OK Lisa J. it's your turn, firstly did you watch and read my links? I'm very open minded, and 'Energy' does make more sense than the dilutions involved, but if the sugar pills are just that, with no 'active' ingredients, where does this energy come from and why is it costing the gullible public £30k a year.

Secondly, IF you can cure people with your alternative medicines, it would be the easiest thing in the world for James Randi to set up a double blind trial to test your claims, he's only been challenged once as I said, just think of the good you could do with $1,000,000, you don't have to keep a penny yourself, you could set up  your own alternative medicine clinic, I look forward to your excuse.

EDIT 3: 7 thumbs down so far, what a lot of gullible people are out there, Prince Charles would be proud of you, do you also believe talking to plants makes them grow faster?

EDIT 4: Anyone including Samurai, should not be confused on the subject of homeopathy if they take the trouble to watch and read the links I've posted.

EDIT 5: 11 Thumbs down now, great, I hope you realise you are shooting yourselves in the foot by refusing to accept coomon sense, I wonder what the record is for thumbs downs for one answer? Why not give 'Horizon' a thumbs down, they obviously don't know what they are talking about.

Answer 10

It doesn't work. An elaborate fraud believed the the gullible and desperate.

Answer 11

According to studies done under laboratory conditions, there is no reason why it should work, but it appears to do so.

So the answer is either belief or something we don't know yet.

Answer 12

It's important to understand that homeopathy is unrelated to kinesiology, or any other alternative or conventional healing modality. While some practitioners who advertise homeopathy combine other tools, such as Reiki, muscle testing, hair testing, radionics, herbs, acupuncture, acupressure, chelation therapy, etc., nothing else is classical homeopathy, and nothing else is required.

Homeopathy as a profession is most similar to the fields of acupuncture and chiropractic, in that it is a comprehensive, standalone healing modality. Further, while your friend may be handing out homeopathic remedies, the person receiving the remedy is not necessarily being treated with homeopathy. Homeopathy is the philosophy for giving a remedy, not the remedy itself.

Your efforts to compare it to vaccines are not uncommon; however, the comparison is inaccurate, as vaccines bypass all the defense mechanisms of the body. After a lengthy consultation and considerable research, a homeopath recommends a remedy that will gently yet certainly stimulate your own self-healing mechanism. A homeopath understands that each symptom (mental/emotional or physical) is the body's best efforts to cure a deeper imbalance, not the problem itself.

Following are two articles (with links) that provide a good introduction. The first is "What is Homeopathy" by the largest consumer education organization in North America. The second is an article by a homeopath who works with wildlife. She wrote a good article using a car key as metaphor.

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http://www.NationalCenterforHomeopathy.o...

Homeopathy is a system of medicine that is based on the Law of Similars. The truth of this law has been verified experimentally and clinically for the last 200 years.

Let's look at an example: If your child accidentally ingests certain poisons, you may be advised to administer Syrup of Ipecac to induce vomiting. Ipecac is derived from the root of a South American plant called Ipecacuanha. The name, in the native language, means "the plant by the road which makes you throw up." Eating the plant causes vomiting.

When a group of healthy volunteers took this substance to determine the effects of this drug, they found that the drug induced other symptoms as well. The mouth retained much saliva. The tongue was very clean. There was a cough so severe that it led to gagging and vomiting. There was incessant nausea. While it is expected that vomiting would usually relieve the nausea, this was not the case.

Such an experiment, using healthy volunteers, is called a proving, and it is the homeopath's source of information about the action of a drug.

Of what use could this plant be? If a person were suffering from a gagging cough after a cold, or a woman were experiencing morning sickness with incessant nausea that is not relieved by vomiting, then Ipecacuanha, administered in a minute dose, especially prepared by a homeopathic pharmacy in accordance with FDA approved guidelines, can allay the "similar" suffering.

Samuel Hahnemann described this principle by using a Latin phrase: Similia Similibus Curentur, which translates: "Let likes cure likes." It is a principle that has been known for centuries. Hahnemann developed the principle into a system of medicine called homeopathy, and it has been used successfully for the last 200 years.

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"The Car Key Analogy - a Simple Way to Remember  New Concepts"

Shirley J. Casey, WildAgain Wildlife Rehabilitation

http://www.ewildagain.org/Homeopathy/hom...

* If the key fits…

In the almost 10 years of teaching our homeopathy for wildlife seminar, I’ve noticed how much new people struggle with some fundamental differences between an energetic modality such as homeopathy versus pharmaceuticals. Here’s an analogy that we often use to help people better understand some basic homeopathic concepts.

The homeopathic principle of the simillimum means finding the remedy that matches the patient’s whole being as well as the current condition.  A homeopathic remedy is a message to the vital force to apply more energy toward healing. This is done via an energetic message, and not by giving a chemical medicine. An energetic message might be compared to turning the key in the car ignition. The correct key starts the car.

* Finding the right key

First, we want to find the student’s car in the parking lot. The student describes the car in detail – color, make, license plate, bumper stickers, car contents (considering the whole being and case-taking). We then need to pick the correct key for the student’s car. (the single remedy and repertorizing) We examine several key rings. We select those keys that match the car manufacturer, eliminating house keys and keys for other types of cars (more repertorizing and reading materia medica).

Just as when a remedy that doesn’t match the case does not achieve the desired response, if the key placed in the ignition is not the correct key, it won’t fit.  If the incorrect key is turned in the ignition, the car won’t start because the key wasn’t a match. So should we force the key into the ignition and turn it strongly a couple more times (giving a high potency and repeating it when there has been no change)? Of course not.

* Don’t keep turning that key

When the correct key is turned in the ignition, the engine starts (finding the correct remedy and potency). It’s the car that is doing the work: operating. The key just started the engine and was the stimulus.

At this point in the seminar, I walk across the room – pretending to drive – and say that the car is now moving down the highway at 65 mph. Asking if we should turn the key in the ignition when the car is going 65 mph results in a resounding “NO!” from the audience. The car is running just fine, so turning the ignition when the car is moving at high speeds is not appropriate or desirable! (minimum dose)  When the car turns off the highway and stalls at a stop sign, should the key again be turned in the ignition? Yes (still a match, but we need to repeat). The car starts again.

* Changing the tire

The back left tire starts ‘thumping’ and the driver pulls off the road. It’s a flat tire. Should the driver turn the key in the ignition (repeat the remedy)? No! The symptoms have changed, so the driver changes the flat tire (changes remedy). Later, the brakes make noises. Should the driver turn the key in the ignition or change the tire? Of course not (different symptoms)! Simply fix the brakes (changes remedy).

This analogy can be continued and easily expanded in many ways: ignoring car warning lights like low oil (ignoring early symptoms) and putting in bad gasoline (poor nutrition). The list goes on.

A person using homeopathic remedies can even attach an old car key to the top of a remedy box with notes such as ‘find the right key,’ or ‘don’t burn out the ignition’ to keep the analogy fresh in their mind. Simplistic? Certainly. But if an analogy helps people more easily and quickly grasp and remember some basic concepts, further study of homeopathic principles and the Organon seem less daunting.

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I encourage reading more from both these links; that way, you can find the precise language to respond to your mom's questions, maybe even train as a homeopath yourself.

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ADD: It's unfortunate that a spirit of competition, rather than cooperation, exists in YA not only from the conventional arena, but other "alternative" practitioners, as well. While stated as fact, a number of generalized statements and assumptions in others' postings merely reflect personal opinions.

One assumption is that homeopaths dislike practitioners who combine healing arts (citing Lisa J's example of kinesiology). I've not yet met a homeopath with this attitude. Our respect for other healing modalities rests in the quiet confidence of our own. Some classical homeopaths also utilize other healing arts in their practice, depending upon their unique interests and gifts.

In my case, I am also professionally trained as a spiritual director and SoulCollage facilitator. While these fields complement the healing experienced by my homeopathic clients, they are separate and unnecessary - and, if relied upon, dilute the efficacy of long-term homeopathic case management.  

Homeopathy is the philosophy for giving the remedy, not the homeopathic remedy itself. The nuances of classical homeopathy far exceed kinesiology (with which I also have personal experience, and with whom a friend and colleague is professionally experienced).

Responding to various assumptions:

* I believe that patients benefit from a variety of practitioners and healing modalities, including conventional medicine. Life is brief under the best of conditions, and people have a whole host of healing options and choices from which to choose. Free will is a gift, and choices neither wrong or right, just different. I merely speak from my own substantial life and focused vocational experience.

* My experience as a classical homeopath (comprehensively tested and certified by the Council for Homeopathic Certification, http://www.homeopathicdirectory.com) exceeds 25 years, both with people and pets.

* I am a woman, not a man.

A NOTE TO RICHIE B: I do apologize to you, richie b in, this instance, by not providing a more personalized response. In the interest of the time I had available, I wanted to provide you with resources that would factually address your question, beyond mere personal opinion, as well as provide credible information for subsequent questions that inevitably arise for people at the introductory threshold of homeopathy.

I've taught introductory self-help homeopathy to the public since 1992,

Answer 13

I also came to have an understanding of homeopathy through using that with two cats with cancer.  The placebo effect is just not valid with animals which to me proves that it does work very well.

"Modern" science has spent over two hundreds years in the firm belief that everything can be proved rationally by quantifying molecules and in medicine determing the physiological effect of things as basic as aspirin.  I don't think we will have an explanation of how homeopathy works on that basis in the next 200 years and for most practitioners and people using the remedies it really is not necessary - nor has it ever been.