Naturopathy vs Homeopathy

After reading the list of benefits and disadvantages of homeopathy as they're given in this article, I want to clarify certain points.

1. The article states that homeopathic remedies are diluted so have minimal side effects. Dilution is one of two steps in the process of preparing a substance to be used homeopathically. This process is called potentization and consists of serial dilution AND succussion according to strict HPUS standards. The process of succussion is essential to making an effective remedy.

Homeopathic remedies do not cause minimal side effects. They cause no side effects or iatrogenic diseases.

2. The article states that homeopathics work best against "psychosomatic diseases like diabetes". Homeopathics are extremely effective in treating all illnesses and also injuries. For example, homeopathic treatment has been shown to have a 32% 5-year survival rate in brain tumor patients as compared to a 0.03% rate for conventional treatment.

I also disagree with diabetes, migraines and ulcers being classified as psychosomatic illnesses (that is, illnesses which have their origins in the emotions). It was found some years ago that ulcers are not caused by emotions. Neither are diabetes and migraine headaches.

3. The article states homeopathy is ineffective in diseases which can be treated surgically. This is certainly not true. Homeopathy cannot be effective only in those conditions for which surgery is the only intervention (such as the repair of a congenital hole in the heart or a ruptured cord in a heart valve). Homeopathy is often used very successfully to avoid surgery such as in the treatment of brain tumors.

4. There are 1/2 million trained, practicing homeopaths in the world today. Most of them are M.D.s who have turned to homeopathy in order to be of more help to their patients. Although there may be some areas in the US where homeopaths are not available, it is possible to obtain the services of highly qualified homeopaths from other areas who will work with the patient after seeing him or her in person for the initial consultation. Follow-up is done by phone. I have done this myself and found it to be as effective as regular, in-person office visits.

No patient is put at risk by seeing the vast majority of homeopaths. I have never heard of an unqualified individual taking patients and believe that very few people would do such a thing. If a person does this, it is reflection on the individual rather than on the system of medicine or lack of available training. Training is available to anyone anywhere who wants to obtain it.

1. They may not have any side effects, but they also have no REGULAR effects.

2. You claim this, but you give no source. Care to prove your assertion?

3. Again, source for your claim? In what case did homeopathic treatment successfully cure brain cancer?

4. Harmed? No, not directly. Homeopathy has no bad effects. Unfortunately, it also has no GOOD effects, and the lack of proper treatment can hurt the patient.

I have provided the references Patriot requests a number of times on other articles, but for readers with a genuine interest in what homeopathy can accomplish and who may not already have seen these references, here they are again:

1. There are 100's of studies proving homeopathy works and can result in significant and sometimes substantial benefit. These studies have been published in at least 24 int'l and nat'l peer-review journals including Thrombosis Research, Pediatrics, Phlebology, Rheumatology, British J of Clinical Pharm and Int'l J of Oncology. For some of them see:

www.nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/articles-...

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Texas U,(one of the US's most respected centers) has done two studies on homeopathy and cancer. Both showed that homeopathics can kill cancer cells without damaging surrounding cells. The second study was done on breast cancer, published in the Int'l J of Oncology and can be seen at:

www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/36/2/395

2. Patriot: Check a medical encyclopedia or dictionary for the meaning of psychosomatic.

For survival rates in brain tumor patients see:

www.thehindu.com/mp/2010/04/08/stories/201004...

For the records of a case of a cured brain tumor with CT scans, please see:

www.pbhrfindia.org/index.php/Case-Studies/Cur...

In addition to what I described in my first post, I will add that homeopathy is famous for its cures of chronic illnesses like type 2 diabetes. For just one site discussing diabetes see:

www.hpathy.com (search "Dr. Bhatia diabetes", "clinical cases" and "Ask the Doctor")

For other cured cases google "homeopathy cured cases".

Patriot: Your "arguments" are old, tired, worn out and disproved many times. Please go back to your employer and ask for a better script.

The Patriot wrote:

1. They may not have any side effects, but they also have no REGULAR effects.
2. You claim this, but you give no source. Care to prove your assertion?
3. Again, source for your claim? In what case did homeopathic treatment successfully cure brain cancer?
4. Harmed? No, not directly. Homeopathy has no bad effects. Unfortunately, it also has no GOOD effects, and the lack of proper treatment can hurt the patient.

It's often said that laughter is the best medicine.

http://hpathy.com/medical-cartoons/i-now-beli...

http://hpathy.com/medical-cartoons/quack-quac...

Have a good one!

1. The cancer article you mention has been debunked time and again.

http://scepticsbook.com/2010/02/14/a-giant-le...

The rest of your articles are likewise crap.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTo...

http://www.homeowatch.org/research/overview.h...

2. I wasn't questioning your definition of psychosomatic. I want evidence that homeopathy has cured brain cancer and diabetes, and, if it IS true, an explanation as to why it hasn't been utilized in every hospital in the world.

Your initial link is broken.

Your second link contains an unsupported, undocumented claim which appears nowhere else. This does nothing to support your claim. Without documentation, there is absolutely no reason to believe that what this site claims is true any more than I should believe that what you yourself say is true.

Bring evidence, please.

Your claims about diabetes were covered in my earlier links.

As for my arguments being "old" and "disproved many times", you have yet to present anything to even provide the slightest basis for arguing against them.
Now either present some evidence or retract your claims.

The Patriot wrote:

Your second link contains an unsupported, undocumented claim which appears nowhere else. This does nothing to support your claim. Without documentation, there is absolutely no reason to believe that what this site claims is true any more than I should believe that what you yourself say is true.
Bring evidence, please.

Did you notice the scans offered as evidence. They clearly show different layers of the same brain so they fail to tell us if the tumor has gone. I cannot see how such as oversight could be possible unless the doctors were totally incompetent or being knowingly fraudulent.

Mark wrote:

<quoted text>
Did you notice the scans offered as evidence. They clearly show different layers of the same brain so they fail to tell us if the tumor has gone.

No, I didn't notice that, but thank you for pointing it out.

The Patriot wrote:

1. They may not have any side effects, but they also have no REGULAR effects.
2. You claim this, but you give no source. Care to prove your assertion?
3. Again, source for your claim? In what case did homeopathic treatment successfully cure brain cancer?
4. Harmed? No, not directly. Homeopathy has no bad effects. Unfortunately, it also has no GOOD effects, and the lack of proper treatment can hurt the patient.

Is this the alternative treatment suggested?
"
Le Magazine March 2004

Death by Medicine

Something is wrong when regulatory agencies pretend that vitamins are dangerous, yet ignore published statistics showing that government-sanctioned medicine is the real hazard.

Until now, Life Extension could cite only isolated statistics to make its case about the dangers of conventional medicine. No one had ever analyzed and combined ALL of the published literature dealing with injuries and deaths caused by government-protected medicine. That has now changed.

A group of researchers meticulously reviewed the statistical evidence and their findings are absolutely shocking.[4] These researchers have authored a paper titled "Death by Medicine" that presents compelling evidence that today's system frequently causes more harm than good.

This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million per year. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million per year. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million per year. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million per year.

The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year, at a cost of $282 billion dollars! It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US.(By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.[5] "

This data is for USA only - probably the most advanced nation medically. What would the statistics be if you added the rest of the world?

Irrelevant even if it is true (and I highly doubt that it is). Like I have explained in the other thread, the validity of vaccinations has nothing to do with the validity of homeopathy.

The Patriot wrote:

Irrelevant even if it is true (and I highly doubt that it is). Like I have explained in the other thread, the validity of vaccinations has nothing to do with the validity of homeopathy.

Why should you doubt it? May be another doctor quoting his colleagues is better reference:

" Lucien Leape of the Harvard Medical School in his excellent article, Errors in Medicine, published in 1994 in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol 272; page 1851-1857) gives a very graphic description of all the errors that we have been committing. This has been updated recently by Barbara Starfield in her excellent article in the same journal in the year 2000 (JAMA 2000;284:483-485) which reiterates the same, adding many more glaring dangers to the list already given by Leape. To date, I have been able to trace more than seven thousand articles showing the mistakes of modern medicine in the best western journals.

Nearly 225,000 people have died in one year in the US alone due to iatrogenic diseases. Of these 140,000 has been exclusively due to adverse drug reactions. In addition, an equal number died during out patient management of Adverse Drug Reactions that cost the buyer a total of $ 79 billion in prescription bills in one year. There have been three million injuries due to medical interventions in a year with 44,000 to 98,000 deaths annually. Nosocomial infections alone caused 80,000 deaths in one year in hospitals. One hundred million people suffer from chronic debilitating illnesses partly due to medical interventions. These figures look horrible if one takes into consideration the relatively small population of USA. The sad story does not include the escalating costs of modern medicine."

Now comes the better part: doctors DECIDE if you are well or require medication: blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar levels are defined.

"One of the reasons why this sordid drama unfolds in that country is the heavy advertisement about screening the apparently healthy people for all kinds of abnormalities. However, all the audits of screening efforts have shown that screening healthy people could be one of the most dangerous activities in society. Time evolution in the human system does not follow linear laws of predictability. The screening industry is the biggest money spinner in medicine. A very recent editorial by Richard Smith in the prestigious British Medical Journal entitled "The Screening Industry" bares the true picture in all its ramifications. Screening probably is the main source of the above sickening numbers mentioned earlier. If doctors confined themselves to cure the sick rarely, comfort them mostly, but to console always, they would be doing a great service to the public. When doctors try and intervene in healthy segments of society problems start. Sir William Osler, a celebrated brain in medicine in the last century, was right when he said:if a patient is doing well: do not interfere."�

i think you are a homeopathy doctor thatswhy taking that side but you and i know what's better for a patient but people like you misguide other only for your bread and butter....huh!!

shame on you...!

this was for C Redd Manasquan, NJ....

Iqbal wrote:

<quoted text>
Now comes the better part: doctors DECIDE if you are well or require medication: blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar levels are defined.

Doctors don't DECIDE, they make informed decisions based on research & data. Before a patient is prescribed medication to control blood pressure, cholesterol & sugar levels they have one or more blood tests to determine if these levels are outside the normal range.

We know from the data that variations outside the norm can lead to various life threatening medical problems. If taking a tablet a day can halve the risk of a heart attack or stroke then it is a worthwhile risk over the slight chance of some side effect.

On the other hand taking homeopathy would result in no change to the patient thus increasing the risk of the patient dying.

Mark wrote:

<quoted text>
Doctors don't DECIDE, they make informed decisions based on research & data. Before a patient is prescribed medication to control blood pressure, cholesterol & sugar levels they have one or more blood tests to determine if these levels are outside the normal range.
We know from the data that variations outside the norm can lead to various life threatening medical problems. If taking a tablet a day can halve the risk of a heart attack or stroke then it is a worthwhile risk over the slight chance of some side effect.
On the other hand taking homeopathy would result in no change to the patient thus increasing the risk of the patient dying.

Are you sure? This is what a cardiologist has to say:

" Cholesterol is one of the three controllable risks for heart attacks. The Task Force on cholesterol screening divides human levels as desirable, borderline high and high.

Usual range of normal cholesterol has been, since my college days, between 150-250 mg per decilitre. Recently the American bosses of cholesterol research thought it fit to change this time honoured normal range by declaring three levels for humans thus:

less than 200 mg/dl..........DESIRABLE.

200-239 mg/dl..........BORDERLINE-HIGH .

More than 240 mg/dl..........HIGH.

The story behind this is intriguing. My hunch is that there are at least 50-60 million Americans in the normal range of 200-250 mg, who by the above classification are not only frightened out of their wits, but come under the net for life long anti-cholesterol drug therapy. With the present drugs being sold at such phenomenal prices the catch would not be less than 10 billion dollars per year for the drug companies. Apart from this there does not seem to be any other valid reason in the medical literature to support this new found wisdom on the part of the cholesterol pundits!

The American Medical Association and many drug companies assisted the Heart Institute’s efforts. While we believe that lowering one’s cholesterol is good there are disquieting reports that lowered cholesterol levels could be associated with cancer. While there is a possibility that it could be due to the original cancer itself, studies have shown low cholesterol levels in those who developed cancer even after 5-7 years. Japanese studies have also shown a higher rate of stroke in people with very low cholesterol levels."

May be you have to add a tablet for stroke!

Iqbal wrote:

<quoted text>
Are you sure? This is what a cardiologist has to say:

Who? Unreferenced quotes are pointless as we cannot verify the quote or the doctors qualifications.

Iqbal wrote:

Why should you doubt it?

Because, even if you have one or two qualified doctors who support homeopathy, the vast majority of the medical community does not. Under normal circumstances, I would go looking for sources to prove that what your guy said is wrong, but to be honest I don't see it having any effect.

Iqbal wrote:

<quoted text>
Are you sure? This is what a cardiologist has to say:
" Cholesterol is one of the three controllable risks for heart attacks. The Task Force on cholesterol screening divides human levels as desirable, borderline high and high.
Usual range of normal cholesterol has been, since my college days, between 150-250 mg per decilitre. Recently the American bosses of cholesterol research thought it fit to change this time honoured normal range by declaring three levels for humans thus:
less than 200 mg/dl..........DESIRABLE.
200-239 mg/dl..........BORDERLINE-HIGH .
More than 240 mg/dl..........HIGH.

Your point being...?

Even if this is true, what does it matter? A doctor chose to look at the facts and change what he thought. Hardly a killing blow against medicine.

[quote]The story behind this is intriguing. My hunch is that there are at least 50-60 million Americans in the normal range of 200-250 mg, who by the above classification are not only frightened out of their wits, but come under the net for life long anti-cholesterol drug therapy. With the present drugs being sold at such phenomenal prices the catch would not be less than 10 billion dollars per year for the drug companies. Apart from this there does not seem to be any other valid reason in the medical literature to support this new found wisdom on the part of the cholesterol pundits![/quote]

Are you a doctor?

No?

Then don't comment on the state of the medical literature.

The Patriot wrote:

<quoted text>
Your point being...?
Even if this is true, what does it matter? A doctor chose to look at the facts and change what he thought. Hardly a killing blow against medicine.
[quote]The story behind this is intriguing. My hunch is that there are at least 50-60 million Americans in the normal range of 200-250 mg, who by the above classification are not only frightened out of their wits, but come under the net for life long anti-cholesterol drug therapy. With the present drugs being sold at such phenomenal prices the catch would not be less than 10 billion dollars per year for the drug companies. Apart from this there does not seem to be any other valid reason in the medical literature to support this new found wisdom on the part of the cholesterol pundits![/quote]
Are you a doctor?
No?
Then don't comment on the state of the medical literature.

I am quoting doctors- verbatim. Why do you seem upset?

Many things are wrong with the scientific medical system. A doctor has very little information on the drug he prescribes. The manufacturer of the drug is more concerned about the investment and return. The basics of the system are wrong.

Now things have moved a step further. Even healthy people are targeted for treatment- sugar levels, BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol levels are defined and tablets are offered as life support which in the end do more harm than good- the HRT campaign!

Iqbal wrote:

<quoted text>
I am quoting doctors- verbatim. Why do you seem upset?
Many things are wrong with the scientific medical system. A doctor has very little information on the drug he prescribes. The manufacturer of the drug is more concerned about the investment and return. The basics of the system are wrong.
Now things have moved a step further. Even healthy people are targeted for treatment- sugar levels, BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol levels are defined and tablets are offered as life support which in the end do more harm than good- the HRT campaign!

Unlike homeopaths who haven't had to learn anything new since 1796, real doctors do read the medical literature & can see the results of drug trials online: http://clinicaltrials.gov/

Iqbal wrote:

<quoted text>
I am quoting doctors- verbatim. Why do you seem upset?

Upset? I'm not. I am simply explaining why I consider your position to be bollocks.

Iqbal wrote:

Many things are wrong with the scientific medical system. A doctor has very little information on the drug he prescribes.

Wrong.

Iqbal wrote:

The manufacturer of the drug is more concerned about the investment and return.

And he doesn't get the return if the drug doesn't work, now does he?

Iqbal wrote:

Now things have moved a step further. Even healthy people are targeted for treatment- sugar levels, BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol levels are defined and tablets are offered as life support which in the end do more harm than good- the HRT campaign!

Aaaand you can prove this how? So far you have nothing more than state this and expected us to accept it at face value. As I said, you are not a doctor. Don't presume to comment on the state of the medical literature, or to pass judgment on what doctors decide.