Homeopathy increases the Vital Force to decrease susceptibility and sensitivity to disease. Carahealth does not endorse the use of homeopathic medicines as an alternative to vaccination for the prevention of serious infectious diseases.
Note on homeoprophylaxis
Carahealth recommends that members of the public seek the advice of their GP, and/or relevant Department of Health guidelines, concerning vaccination and protection against disease. Homeoprophylaxis kits may be suitable for someone who cannot have vaccines due to medical reasons. The benefits of this medicine, must understand that according to scientific theory, if it works on animals and small babies then the effects cannot be contributed to placebo.
Homeopathy is still the leading form of complementary medicine in Europe. In India, it is the sole form of medicine for over 100 million people. In many countries, homeopathy is considered to be on an equal footing with conventional medicine.
Homeopathy is the most controversial of all Complementary and Alternative Medicines. Like many types of medicine, (the mechanism of panadol is not fully understood for example), the medical jury is out as to how homeopathy works. Regardless of this fact homeopathy is one of the most globally used complementary medicines with upwards of 550 million users in at least 65 different countries. Homeopathy is integrated into the public health systems of many European, Asian, African and South American countries. In the UK, homeopathy has been supported by the British National Health Service (NHS) since it began in 1948.
Many highly respected people, cultural heroes and monarchs over the past 200 years have been strong advocates of homeopathy. This system of medicine has been the choice of the British Royal Family and most European royal families, eleven U.S. Presidents, six popes, JD Rockefeller, Charles Darwin, Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi as well as dozens of authors, corporate leaders, sports stars and musicians.
The Law of Similars?
Homeopathy as developed by doctor and chemist Samuel Hahnemann over 200 years ago. It is based on the principle the law of similars which states like cures like. This principle was first described by Hippocrates The Father of Medicine.
The law of similars states that a substance which can produce symptoms in a healthy person can be used to treat similar symptoms in a sick person. The substance does not necessarily have to be potentised (small doses) For example chamomile tea can be prescribed for irritability. This is a homeopathic prescription. With this approach, homeopathy uses extremely small, but effective doses of mostly natural substances which stimulating the bodies own self-healing homoeostatic mechanisms to aid the body in recovering from illness.
This principle can be found in the relationship between coffee and insomnia. We know that drinking coffee can over-stimulate the nervous system and cause insomnia. However, a traditional homeopathic preparation of coffee is prescribed to treat insomnia. In a similar way, homeopathic preparations of grasses or pollens may be used to relieve symptoms of hay fever.
The manufacture of homeopathic medicines
Homeopathic medicines are made by a specialised traditional process, called potentisation. This potentisation process was discovered and documented by Samuel Hahnemann as a refinement of the law of similars. Potentisation was designed to enhance the medicinal effects of a starting substance while minimising its side effects. This process, which is unique to homeopathy, involves a stepwise process of diluting and shaking active starting substances which reveals and enhances or ‘potentises’ their medicinal effects.
Homeopaths refer to the 'memory of water'. This is the standard explanation for how potentisation works: through the shaking and tapping of succussion, the essence of the remedy is imprinted onto the structure of water which 'remembers' it. Reference is also often made to quantum mechanics or to digital recordings as proposed explanations or analogies for potentisation/water memory.
The discoverer of the Aids virus and Noble laureate Luc Montagnier upset the scientific community when he came out in support of the theory behind homeopathy, the law of the minimum dose. Montagnier said in Science Magazine that he was going to China to study what he explained as the electromagnetic waves that emanate from the highly diluted DNA of various pathogens. (1) The comparison being that because homeopathic remedies are highly diluted this does not mean they do not exert an effect.
A highly respected immunologist Dr. Jacques Benveniste, conducted a study, replicated in three other university laboratories, using extremely diluted doses of antiserum against immunoglobulin E (IgE) and found that human basophil degranulation was triggered and that since dilutions were accompanied to by (as they are in homeopathic preparations) vigorous shaking in order for the effects to be observed, the transmission of the biological information could be related to the molecular organization of water. This study was so sensational a story in French science it was often referred to as the Benveniste affair. (2) In homeopathy this is known as water memory which refers to the ability of water to retain a memory of substances previously dissolved in it even after being diluted to the point where there is no physical molecules of that substance present (Ie below Avogadro’s number).
Nobel Prize laureate Brian Josephson, Ph.D. and University of Cambridge professor responded to an article on homeopathy in New Scientist, Josephson wrote:
“Regarding your comments on claims made for homeopathy (Editorial 27 September, p 3 and Letters 18 October, p 58): criticisms centred around the vanishingly small number of solute molecules present in a solution after it has been repeatedly diluted are beside the point, since advocates of homeopathic remedies attribute their effects not to molecules present in the water, but to modifications of the water's structure.
Simple-minded analysis may suggest that water, being a fluid, cannot have a structure of the kind that such a picture would demand. But cases such as that of liquid crystals, which while flowing like an ordinary fluid can maintain an ordered structure over macroscopic distances, show the limitations of such ways of thinking. There have not, to the best of my knowledge, been any refutations of homeopathy that remain valid after this particular point is taken into account. A related topic is the phenomenon, claimed by Jacques Benveniste's colleague Yolène Thomas and by others to be well established experimentally, known as ‘memory of water’. If valid, this would be of greater significance than homeopathy itself, and it attests to the limited vision of the modern scientific community that, far from hastening to test such claims, the only response has been to dismiss them out of hand.” (3)
When New Scientists editors inquired as to how he became an advocate of such unconventional ideas he responded “I went to a conference where the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste was talking for the first time about his discovery that water has a ‘memory’ of compounds that were once dissolved in it, which might explain how homeopathy works.” (4) His findings were unsurprisingly met with great hostility.
The law of the minimum doses is also known as the Arndt-Schultz law. This law was named after pharmacologist Hugo Schultz and psychiatrist Rudolf Arndt. The law of the minimum doses states weak stimuli accelerate the Vital force, medium stimuli raise the Vital Force slightly, strong ones suppress the Vital force and very strong ones halt the vital Force. Meaning small doses stimulate the immune system, medium doses inhibit immunity and large doses suppress immunity damage the Vital Force and kill the host. (5)
Vital activity is the Vital forces; Qi from a Chinese medicine perspective
The Vital force is expressed in the ability to throw a good fever. People with a strong Vital Force such as young children have the ability to produce a strong fever, that is until this natural healthy response is suppressed using western pharmaceutical medicine. People with chronic degenerative disease cannot mount a good fever, unless it is a symptom of cancer. (6)
The word nosode is derived from the Greek nosos, disease are biological preparations used in homeopathic medicine to prevent disease. The concept of nosodes as a preventative treatment was advanced by the father of homeopathy Dr Samuel Hahnemann. Similar to a vaccine, a homeopathic nosode is made by taking an inactivated disease tissue or infective agent such as a bacteria, virus, fungus or parasite and subjecting it to the homeopathic preparation process of dilution and succession Nosodes have been widely used in for hundreds of years in humans and animals.
Unlike vaccines homeopathic nosodes do not contain heavy metal, mutagenic, carcinogenic preservatives, adjuvant, ect that we are told are safe for us in small amounts. Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) also known as persistent toxic substances (PTSs) (7) are found in high concentrations in the urine and blood samples of every person in the US. (8) This is termed bioaccumulation and by definition, high concentrations are not safe. It is not easy to control our external environment but there are many sources of POPs that we can control.
The pseudoscience of science
The science of homeopathy is not supported by pharmaceutical giants. When looking at the science always look to see if the person finding the trials has any conflict of interest. Financing of drug trials by drug companies influences multiple aspects of the performance of drug trials and often leads to favourable results. Calls for efforts to be made to carry out independent drug trials are being made. (9) Results of drug trials are being purposefully being withheld. According to the EU Clinical Trials Register (EUCTR), PHE withheld 3 major vaccine trial results therefore it is not possible to determine if the vaccines are harmful. (10)The UK parliament Commons Select Committee indicate that 50% of all clinical trial results are not published thus posing a risk to public health and also a major ethical concern. (11)
Undoubtedly more are needed but I don't think the international heath and medical research coucils will be funding them. Animal studies testing the nosode of tularaemia a pathogenic species of Gram-negative coccobacillus, in dilutions below those expected to have protective effects found that after administering what would be a lethal dose of F tularensis, then evaluated for time of death and total mortality. The study found that nosodes are successful in producing increased mean times to death and stated that the partial protection offered from a nosode of tularemia in dilutions below those expected to have protective effects, although not as high as vaccinations, can induce protection from infectious agents for which vaccination is currently unavailable, they may provide an interim method of reducing morbidity and mortality from infectious agents. (12, 13)
A large-scale opportunistic cohort in 3 provinces in Cuba administered homeoprophylaxis (HP) intervention to 2.3 million people during a Leptospirosis outbreak in Cuba in 2007. The study using a nosode preparation of Leptospirosis found a large reduction of disease incidence and control of the epidemic with results suggesting the use of HP as a feasible tool for epidemic control. (14)
An animal study published in the Journal of Vector Borne Disease looking at the in vivo antimalarial activity of malaria of nosode 30 and nosode 200 against Plasmodium berghei (P. berghei) infection found that nosode 30 showed considerable antiplasmodial activity against P. berghei infection. (15) Another similar in vivo study tested the effect of two homeopathic remedies Chelidonium 30 and nosode 30 against Plasmodium berghei and found that the combination of the homeopathic remedies demonstrated considerable in vivo antimalarial activity and that it was safe. (16)
A Cochrane review of the homeopathic prophylactic flu preparation Oscillococcinum, whilst concluding that there is insufficient evidence to make robust conclusions but did not rule out the possibility that Oscillococcinum could be a clinically useful treatment particularly in light that the studies they reviewed were of low quality. Importantly they concluded there was no evidence of harm. (17)
Bear in mind a 2014 Cochrane flu vaccine review in 88,000 participants concluded influenza vaccines “probably has a small protective effect against influenza & influenza like illness”, concluding 71 people needing to be vaccinated to avoid one influenza case (1.4% effective). (18) According to Clinical Infectious Disease Journal, Rice University study predicts 2018/2019 influenza vaccine is predicted to be only 20% effective. (19) With calls being made to make vaccines compulsory we need all the evidence. Unfortunately, not only are half of all trial results not being released, anyone who is vaccine hesitant has been firmly told we do not deserve a voice, (20) we are deemed incapable of reasoning and publicly vilified. No topic should be off the debating table. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”. Gandhi
Not all homeopaths are created equally
I completed an internationally recognised transferable level 8 (EQF/AQF/NFQ/Level 6 Ofqual recognised by NARIC Ireland/UK ) honours science degree in homeopathy., equalling 24 hours per week or 96 hours per month. Some homeopathic courses are 3 year part-time courses equating to 14 contact hours per month only. A Bachelor of Health Science Homeopathy course provides graduates with specialist homeopathic medicine clinical knowledge and skills to become future leaders within the area of homeopathy practice. The course includes in-depth study in medical science and pharmacology, evidenced-based practice, homeopathic materia medica and pharmacy, homeopathic therapeutics, clinical case taking, communication and professional interaction. I completed the only degree course in Australia that is accredited with the Australian Register of Homeopaths, the professional body that regulates the discipline in Australia. I am a published author of homeopathic scientific research; determining the effect of a homeopathic medium potency of calcium on the bone density of women as measured by bone ultrasonometry: a pilot study comprising one year.
Carina Harkin, Effect of Homeopathic Calcium on Bone Density., Homeopathic Links., 2008
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