Homeopathy = placebo effect?
The truth about homeopathy
Everything we take and expect a certain medicinal effect from has a placebo effect.
This can be nicely observed, for example, in the intake of valerian pills: They contain valerian root extract and are taken correctly half an hour before bedtime and help us fall asleep sooner and sleep through the night.
What many people don’t know: The pills also must be taken every day, because valerian root extract shows its real effect only after about two weeks. In the pharmacy I always hear my customers telling me that they take the pills only, when they think they cannot fall sleep. And lo and behold, after taking them, it is easier to fall asleep. Why is that? Because of the placebo effect.
Knowing we have done something about our insomnia, we calm down and are ready for the sleep to come — and we fall asleep. We then attribute the effect to the valerian pills, although in this case the valerian is not responsible for it.
How do I know that the pill was responsible and not the placebo effect?
When I take a pill for a headache, I expect it to go away quickly. But headaches usually subside without me taking a pill. Sooner or later.
Suppose someone gives me a pill and claims it’s a pain killer. I take it happily, thinking that as a result my headache will finally disappear.
But what if it was not a pain killer?
Even then the headache would have disappeared at some point because headaches are self-limiting or because the expectation of the pills’ effect led to relief.
The problem is that in retrospect you never know what would have happened if you had chosen one of the other options:
Take a pain killer or placebo? Maybe just not swallow a pill at all?
Another example: I wake up, I’m tired and I take a pill for my tiredness. After a while I am no longer tired. Would I still have been tired without me taking this pill?
Some people are convinced that the only reason they have not caught a cold for a few years is because they are taking certain supplements that are supposed to strengthen their immune system. But how do we know if they would have caught a cold without taking the supplements? Is there a causality here?
To find out whether a drug works better than a placebo, studies are made, so-called double-blind studies. Neither the investigators nor the study participants know which group the participants belong to. One group receives the placebo, the other the drug with the active ingredient. The placebo effect occurs in both groups. However, in the group that receives the actual drug, the effect is expected to exceed the placebo effect.
If, for example, an antihypertensive drug is tested against a placebo, the drug must lower the blood pressure more than the placebo would. If it fails to do so, it is therefore of no use.
Of course, when two placebos are tested against each other, one placebo could work better than the other. This is called coincidence. Homeopaths, on the other hand, call it proof of the efficacy of their beloved homeopathy.
However, there is not only the placebo effect, but also the so-called nocebo effect.
If you have to take a new medication for a disease and the package insert lists gastrointestinal complaints as a side effect, the probability that these complaints will actually occur is greater than if you had not known about them. This is called the nocebo effect.
Another example:
Many people are lactose intolerant. This means that their intestines do not produce enough of the enzyme lactase to be able to break down lactose supplied by food. This leads to diarrhoea and flatulence. If you consume lactose, small amounts can usually be broken down, but larger amounts cannot.
The problem here, however, is that many tablets contain lactose as a carrier substance and patients are afraid of the “bad lactose”, so that they expect a crazy bowel even with small amounts of lactose. Which is usually exactly why they get diarrhoea. But was it caused by the lactose, within this tiny little tablet, or was the diarrhoea psychosomatic?
Homeopathy
What triggers certain symptoms in a healthy person should cure these very symptoms in a sick person, decided the German physician Samuel Hahnemann at the end of the 18th century. To do this, however, the substance had to be diluted, because many substances are poisonous or simply disgusting. An example is always the Excrementum caninum (dog poop). Yummy.
In homeopathy it is assumed that the less “active ingredient” it contains (the higher the potency), the more effective the homeopathic remedy is supposed to be. The absurdity is immediately obvious to anyone with a little sense of natural science. For this reason, the act of diluting the solution is often disguised by shaking it without any sense and calling the process potentiation.
Because then energy is shaken into the dilution. They wish.
Logical? Not at all.
What is called an active ingredient in homeopathy is of course not an active ingredient in the classical sense. They believe in the like cures like principle of healing. A substance that causes a reaction of the body in undiluted form in a healthy person should be able to cure the same reaction in a diluted form in a sick person.
Only in order to be called active substance, the substance must be active in the first place.
Various potencies
In homeopathy, a distinction is made between different potencies: The higher a substance has been potentiated, the stronger it is. At least that’s what they say. Those homeopaths.
The mother tincture is a mostly plant-based extract, the ingredients of which are often extracted from the plant by an ethanol-water mixture. It therefore contains “an active substance” which could have a medicinal effect. The mother tincture is then used to produce the various potencies:
D(or X)-potencies: Dilution 1:10
C-potencies: 1:100
Q- and LM-potencies: 1:50000
6D or 6X therefore means that the mother tincture has been diluted six times 1:10 and finally a 1:1.000.000 dilution is obtained. Leaving useless shaking aside, it makes no difference whether you dilute the whole thing six times 1:10, or whether you take 1L from the mother tincture and pour 999,999 litres of solvent on it — the dilution is the same.
I repeat:
1 part mother tincture + 999,999 parts solvent equals 6D (or 6X).
If we choose a 12C potency as a further example, thus a part of the mother tincture is diluted 12 times 1:100.
Or for illustration:
1 part mother tincture + 999,999,999,999,999,999 parts solvent.
1 fluid ounce original substance diluted with 999.999.999.999.999.999.999.999.999 fluid ounce of solvent.
The solution produced is then sprayed onto the globules, so that there is no even distribution of the “active ingredient” still present on the sugar globules.
That the 12C potency has a stronger effect because there is less of the original substance in it is immediately obvious, isn’t it? Yes, if you are not very well versed in the field of natural sciences.
From potency 12C and from potency 24D on, statistically not a single molecule of the “active substance” is to be found in the dilution. This means that all further dilutions are equal to the previous one.
And not only that: high potencies can also be exchanged with each other at will, the placebo effect remains the same.
Why do users believe so vehemently in an alleged effect of homeopathy?
Because the inventor of homeopathy Samuel Hahnemann thought it up, because they want to believe it and because they believe the placebo effect to be the effect of homeopathy.
Conclusion:
To date there is no evidence for the claim of homeopathy advocates that the potentiated substance chosen can cure the symptoms.
Nor is there any evidence that a dilution/potentiation increases the effect.
On the contrary, homeopathy has been scientifically tested over and over again and over and over again the same result has been reached:
homeopathy has no effect beyond the placebo effect.
Consequently, homeopathy is nothing other than the applied, monetarised placebo effect.
Whether the followers of homeopathy want to admit this or not.
