NCH Details The Extraordinary Safety Record Of Homeopathy

mpunzo on Sat, 20th Jun 2009 12:09 pm 



This week’s Zicam stories have raised a number of concerns regarding over the counter products made with mineral or herbal contents that use the term “homeopathic,” but in fact are NOT at all homeopathic in principle or by intention. Homeopathy’s most basic tenet is always to prescribe according to the “Law of Similars.” Like treats Like, in other words. The founder of homeopathy, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, was a brilliant man in all respects. He was a chemist, a toxicologist, a physician, and a translator of old texts from several languages. He was dismayed with the “medicine” of his day because of their severe and unacceptable side effect profile. He was translating a book which discussed the natural anti-malarial drug, quinine, when he came upon a quote that he thought erroneous. It said that quinine worked to cure malaria because of its bitter properties. As a true scientist he felt that was an inaccurate explanation. It stirred his scientific curiosity about this drug, a drug with many side-effects. Many people died of quinine poisoning who were being treated for Malaria. In order to understand the properties of this drug, he went about an experiment that birthed homeopathy into being. He took a high dose of quinine, enough to make him sick, but not enough to kill him (a sub-lethal dose in effect). He then had someone take meticulous notes and make precise observations regarding his symptoms after taking this dose of quinine. What he discovered then was the Law of Similars. He developed all the symptoms of malarial disease, yet he was never exposed to the infectious agent of the disease. He developed the same pattern of cyclical fevers, sweats, chills, pains, etc.. of malaria by simply taking doses of the drug commonly used to CURE malaria! This was a huge AHA moment for Dr. Hahnemann, and led him to a subsequent life-time of study of this philosophy of healing and cure. He went on to investigate hundreds of natural substances and their effects on the human body and documented these symptom profiles most extensively into what has become many text books. We call these texts Materia medica. The meticulous descriptions of actual physiological effects of hundreds of these natural medicines are precise, specific, and explicitly detailed. It is an amazing body of knowledge and substance and offrer a tremendous contribution to chemistry and biochemical studies of natural substances. He then used these descriptions to catalog symptoms and went on to treat a whole host of life-threatening infectious disesases of his day with quite miraculous successes. He was able to treat and cure things like scarlet fever, diptheria, croup, cholera, typhoid fever, pneumonia, influenza,and more. In fact, his success rate using homeopathic remedies (that’s what he called his natural medicines) was signficantly better than those of conventional medical treatment and with few to no side effects in comparison. The Spanish Flu of 1918 was treated quite successfully by homeopaths all over the world. The death rate, in fact, from homeopathic treatment was less than 2% for the deadly Spanish Flu, while the death rate using conventional supportive treatment was anywhere from 10-30% or even higher depending on the population affected. This is relevant right now given the threat of the current H1N1 Swine Flu which worries physicians, not because of its current mortality rate (very low), but because it may mutate over the next year to several years and become a very deadly form of flu similar to what ocurred during the Winter of 1918.
Back to homeopathy…..
The principle by which Dr. Hahnemann treated disease was very precise. It was and remains the Law of Similars. You give a substance in diluted doses (along the lines of the principle of vaccinations)which is known to produce the very symptoms you are trying to cure. The substance does not cure the disease; the body’s REACTION or RESPONSE TO the substance is what CURES the illness. You are merely helping the body to speed up its own built-in healing response. Sometimes the body just needs a push in the right direction and this is really how homeopathy works. The fact that they are often quite diluted is a way to simply reduce any chance of side-effects, since many of natures most healing substances are toxic in their untouched, crude form. Hahnemann devised a way to methodically dilute substances down to the point where not only were side-effects removed, the substances also became stronger with each diultion and succussion….a homeopathic process termed “potentization.” People often get this part all wrong. They don’t become knowledgeable enough about how homeopathic remedies are actually prepared and they assume that this is simply a process of serial dilution. It is not. It is the COMBINATION of dilution PLUS a vigorous shaking process called SUCCUSSION that allows this principle to hold true. If you were to simply dilute the medicines and not perform the requisite succession techniques as you are performing the dilutions, the remedies do not get stronger, they get weaker as you would expect from simply diluting down the medicines. However, this process when combined (dilution PLUS succussion), does, in fact, result in the medicines becoming more and more “potent” or stronger in their therapeutic action, as they get less and less capable of causing side-effects. This is the part that is most highly criticized and frankly misunderstood by conventional medicine. They do not understand the actual theory of homeopathic practice nor the meticulous process by which remedies are prepared, and they do not accept the tenent that medicines so highly potentized can have such a powerful therapeutic action against life-threatening diseases. Most of conventional medicine follows not the Law of Similars, but rather the law of opposition. Most medicines are “anti” in nature. Anti-inflammaotories; anti-histamines; anti-depressants; anti-anxiety; anti-perspirants; anti-biotics; anti-virals. They follow the opposing principle from that of homeopathy. They seek to suppress symptoms, the reaction of the body, to disease; whereby homeopathy stimulates the body to heal itself from disease, whether epidemic, chronic, or traumatic in nature.

Ok…back to the Zicam story. Simply inhaling diluted Zinc(actually Zicam is really not diluted much at all compared with most OTC homeopathically-prepared medicines)would not be expected by any certified or trained homeopath to be effective in treating the common cold. For one, the “common” cold is not caused by one virus. There are MANY MANY forms of viruses out there known to cause colds and flus. In actual homeopathic practice, you would need to gather the whole host of symptoms which the person has very specifically and very deliberately, and then go about administering the substance which would CAUSE that entire host of symptoms in a healthy person and give that substance homeopathically prepared (usually in “C” doses, not “X’s” as in Zicam). That’s the “classical” or correct way to practice homeopathy and to administer the substance which would cure the disease (in this case, the cold). Simply administering Zinc diluted ever so slightly (one to ten) for each and every cold or flu is not the way homeopathy was ever intended to be practiced. This is simply NOT homeopathy. That is just like taking Zinc lozengers for every sore throat or cough and expecting to cure every cold, sore throat or cough. Sometimes you get lucky since Zinc has been shown to have some mild anti-viral activity…but you should not at all expect it to work for most colds, coughs, and flus. Taking Zinc OTC as a vitamin (50mg/day) has been shown to possibly ward off some cold viruses. Administering something intranasally, however, repeatedly and over time would not be considered by most practitioners of any kind of healthcare to be a good idea. You can damage the delicate mucous membranes of the nose over time…and not just because there is Zinc in the formula, by the way. There are a whole host of other chemicals in Zicam that would be expected to produce damaging effects over time. Things that are used as preservatives or solvents in order to store and deliver the medicine via this route of administration. Chemicals with difficult to pronouce names (like benzalkonium choloride, sodium hydoxide, hydroxy cellulose, to name a few in Zicam). Any long term inhaled chemicals will over time have deleterious side-effects. The mucous membranes of the nose and respiratory tract are delicate and should not be abused with any chemical substances over time.

So, is Zicam actually homeopathic? No. It is not and never was a homeopathic product in its intent nor its philosophy. It is simply a little bit diluted, and that’s the piece that allows its manufacturers to use the term “homeopathic” on its label. No homeopathic practitioner worth their extensive training would consider it good homeopathic practice to adminster Zincum gluconicum, benzalkonium, sodium hydroxizde, glycerol, and hydroxy cellulose via the nose for the common cold. It does not follow the two basic tenents of homeopathy: The Law of Similars and the Law of Serial Potentization. It is like taking a vitamin supplement….diluting it ever so slightly, and then subsequently adding some synthetic chemicals as preservatives and solvents and snorting them hoping that the little bit of Zinc left in solution will have some mild anti-viral activity and kill the cold virus. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But to be sure, you can imagine that over time and with repeated uses, you will harm the delicate mucous membranes of your nasal and respiratory tracts. Never sounded like a good idea to me. But please at least let’s be clear that this is NOT homeopathy in any shape or form.
Molly Punzo, MD

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