What is the difference between Allopathy, Homeopathy and Ayurvedic medicens?

Is it not necessary that doctor must know all the three branches?

How can he cure the patient with half knowledge?

why AIIMS does not take necessary action?

Pls comment.


P.J.LAKHAPATE
plakhapate@rediffmail.com

First off a Doctor only has to have the ability to FIND a repratble alternitive theoripest

It is also a good idea if they know about the drug contridictions, a pharmist definitly should

Very few alternitive theoripys have been scientically tested, the only study i can think of off the top of my head was one into aupuncher for pain managment. Chiness medicine DOES seem to have some potentual but doubble blind randomised controled trials still need to be done. My personal opinion on Homeopathy is that its a compleate crock. For instance you cant have a medicin that is compleatly harmless (because its just water) yet is 100% effective (because its NOT just water). It defies LOGIC let alone its lack of efficasy in controled trials


Some medical dictionaries define the term Allopathy or Allopathic medicine as the treatment of disease using conventional evidence-based medical therapies, as opposed to the use of alternative medical or non-conventional therapies.[1][2]

The term allopathic, an adjective, is used in medicine to distinguish one form of medical practice, medical tradition, or medical profession from another. The term was coined by the founder of homeopathic medicine, and was used through the 19th Century as a derogatory term for the practitioners of orthodox medicine.[3] The meaning and controversy surrounding the term can be traced to its original usage during a heated 19th-century debate between practitioners of homeopathy, and those they derisively referred to as "allopaths."[4]

viewed 06/02/08 at 19:06 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopathic_medicine)





Homeopathy (also homœopathy or homoeopathy; from the Greek ὅμοιος, hómoios, "similar" + πάθος, páthos, "suffering" or "disease") is a popular alternative medicine that is controversial because of its lack of scientific plausibility and confirmation. Homeopaths contend that remedies for diseases can be created by taking substances which cause symptoms similar to that disease and repeatedly diluting and shaking them hard between each dilution. According to homeopaths the 'therapeutic powers' of the substance are retained by the diluent (water, sugar, or alcohol), but that the dilution removes any toxic effects. The end product is so diluted that it is indistinguishable from pure water, sugar or alcohol by laboratory tests but is still claimed to have an effect on consumers. Standard science labels this a placebo effect.[1][2][3][4]

Homeopathy was created by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 18th century.[5] The therapeutic applications of the remedies used in homeopathy are recorded in homeopathic materia medica, and practitioners select treatments according to a patient consultation that explores both the physical and psychological state of the patient.

viewed 06/02/08 at 19:06 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy)




Ayurveda (Devanagari: आयुर्वेद) or Ayurvedic medicine is an ancient system of health care that is native to the Indian subcontinent. It is presently in daily use by millions of people in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, and it was a major influence on the development of Unani, Chinese and Tibetan Medicine[citation needed]. The word "Ayurveda" is a tatpurusha compound of the word āyus meaning "life", "life principle", or "long life" and the word veda, which refers to a system of "knowledge". Thus "Ayurveda" roughly translates as the "knowledge of life", or "knowledge of a long life". According to Charaka Samhita, "life" itself is defined as the "combination of the body, sense organs, mind and soul, the factor responsible for preventing decay and death, which sustains the body over time, and guides the processes of rebirth" [1][2] According to this perspective, Ayurveda is concerned with measures to protect "ayus", which includes healthy living along with therapeutic measures that relate to physical, mental, social and spiritual harmony. Ayurveda is also one among the few traditional systems of medicine to contain a sophisticated system of surgery (which is referred to as "salya-chikitsa").

viewed 06/02/08 at 19:06 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurvedic)

What is the difference between Allopathy, Homeopathy and Ayurvedic medicens?"Allopathy" is a term you won't encounter very often. It is a derogatory name for modern scientific medicine that was coined by the homeopathy enthusiasts.

Homeopathy is crackpottery and is largely outlawed in America. As Asguard says, it's basic premise is fraudulent. No responsible physician would take it seriously.

I had never heard of the Ayurveda. But it appears to be simply the Indian approach to developing modern medicine and as it continues to mature there is an ever-greater overlap. It still has some relics of its roots in charming crackpottery, such as the belief that foods with a specific flavor provide medical benefits. Of course this could just be the placebo effect, which has been a powerful medicine for millennia.

As Asguard says, acupuncture is the one form of traditional medicine that has won respect and deserves more study.Is it not necessary that doctor must know all the three branches?No. At least in America, it is our position that modern scientific medicine is all we need. As I said, homeopathy is a fraud, and the Ayurveda is an alternate route to the same conclusion as our science-based medical techniques.How can he cure the patient with half knowledge?More like 99.9 percent of the knowledge. There appears to be very little in the Ayurveda that Western medicine cannot accomplish by its own means.why AIIMS does not take necessary action?Sorry, that's an Indian institution. You know more about it than I do.

Fraggle Rocker im sorry you missunderstood my views. My PERSONAL opinion is that CAM (complementry alternitive theorpy) is not something i would ever look at unless it have been scentifically evaluated. HOWEVER people DO use it, infact the biggest single group in Australia would be the aborigonals who use both "moden medicen" and there own traditional medicen in conjunction. There is nothing wrong with doing this and a doctor should be able to find someone who a) is a qualifide member of the respective authorities (wether that authority is govemental or not) and b) if the treatment perscribed will interact with there own medicen. The ONLY time i think CAM should activly oposed is if the practisioner is telling the pt that they shouldnt be accepting moden med as well and should be relying on CAM EXSCLUSIVLY. This is not just my opinon but what we taught in our ethics classes:p

Oh and it wasnt just acupuncher that i was saying has shown some benifits. There is alot of chiness med that has been shown to be effective, sometimes MORE effective than moden med

take St Johns wart for instance. It is an effective treatment for mild depression (although it does tend to interact with a wide variaty of other treatments). In some cases it has been proven to be more effective than SSRI's

Hey, try to find a reputable allopath.

Homeopathy is crackpottery and is largely outlawed in America. As Asguard says, it's basic premise is fraudulent.
Are you kidding? You can walk into any pharmacy and find homeopathic "medicines" for sale right next to the actual medicine. It really pisses me off, especially since I suspect that vast majority of people who buy it simply aren't paying close enough attention and don't understand what they are buying. Someone goes into a pharmacy looking for something over-the-counter to help with his muscle aches, eye infection, stomach problems, or whatever, and they see a bottle for sale labeled "For treatment of X" sitting next to all the other medications, so they buy it. You often have to look pretty closely at the label to see that it's actually a homeopathic treatment. The whole thing only works because people assume that a pharmacy would only stock reputable medications, so they don’t see a need to closely examine the labels and determine exactly what they are buying.

Nasor if thats the case they are idiots. You should NEVER use something new without talking to a parmist, its not like the advice isnt 2 feet away. If people want to be ignorent then thats THERE decision. I have used alot of over the counter and pharmasy only medication and i haven't ONCE bought a medication I havent checked with either a pharmist or the doctor or dont have the knowlage about myself (ie i dont buy pudoefridran replacements, only the real thing because i have found them to be useless)

Nasor if thats the case they are idiots.It's always nice when the idiots do things that shorten their life expectancy. Now if we could just get them to do that before they breed. :)I don't buy pseudoephedrine replacements, only the real thing because I have found them to be useless.What's a pseudoephedrine replacement? An off-brand, or a different pill that promises to do the same thing? Antihistamines are like perfumes, they react with your body chemistry. What works for you won't necessarily work for your buddy. Chlortrimatin was the first one they developed back in the 1950s, and it doesn't work at all for me. Somebody who walks into a store looking for pseudoephedrine because it works but buys something else because it's cheaper is a real idiot. The chance is about 50/50 that it will work on him.

i cant spell the replacement (even worse than i spell pseudoephedrine). No its not a generic drug though its a true replacement. It was developed to have the same effects on the body as pseudoephedrine without the ability to be turned into speed. However when i needed it i found it to be useless. The clinical effeciasy SUCKS in comparision. The unfortant thing is if you ask for pseudoephedrine you can be mestaken for a drug chemist (especially concidering the condition you are in when you NEED pseudoephedrine :p

Back to the issue of CAM's however we all have our bias's. My sister who is training to be a physio HATES (and i mean HATES) ciropractors:p It all depends on your view point. I am being trained in evidence based med and i belive in that, however not all people do so and they may have some basis for there view points. Traditional med can work in paticular occasions, and i have respect for prationers in chiness med. In fact i used to go to a GP who also specialised in chiness med especially acupuncher (he was a chiness doctor). In some cases it is a case of not enough testing has been done because there is no commertial value in the remidies. This means that its down to the hospital's, Uni's and the TGA doing the testing off there own bat without drug company surport. This is SLOWLY being done but it takes alot longer than drug company resurch for comertial purposes. There are some aborigional remidies that have been proven to have had benifical properties, so have alot of the plants in the amozon. Not all knowlage is currently known and meta resurch is YEARS away on even common drugs. So as long as its not going to interact with conventional proven theorpies and it provides hope for those who need it I have no problem with it. Regulation and resurch is needed rather than abolision

Homeopathy is crackpottery and is largely outlawed in America. As Asguard says, it's basic premise is fraudulent. No responsible physician would take it seriously.

It's not outlawed at all. It's all over the alternative medicine scene, though it never gains much traction because it is crackpot, and is never able to show any significant effects in studies.

More often than not, if you see something labeled "homeopathy" here in the state, it's actually going to be some form of herbal remedy that's been mis-labeled.


edit: what Nasor said. sorry I somehow missed that post the first time through.

Above comments indicate that Alopathy developed in 19th century, Homeopathy developed in 18th century but Ayurveda developed long long ago.
For understanding Ayurveda one must know the Sanskrit language.
P.J.LAKHAPATE

Homeopathy is crackpottery and is largely outlawed in America. As Asguard says, it's basic premise is fraudulent. No responsible physician would take it seriously.

Beg to differ. I've had problems resolved by homeopathy that had refused to go away through medication. One example was my chronic anemia.

The problem in homeopathy is to find a good diagnostician.

Beg to differ. I've had problems resolved by homeopathy that had refused to go away through medication. One example was my chronic anemia.Many people have had problems relieved by faith healers, palm readers... going all the way back to the days of witch doctors. "Even a broken clock is correct twice every day."The problem in homeopathy is to find a good diagnostician.The undeniable value of any "discredited" alternative therapy is the placebo effect. It's still only dimly understood but every new study tallies an even greater role for it in the healing process than the preceding study.

Couple that with the (obviously correlated) fact that many somatic ailments have a strong psychological component. The ability of an honest practitioner to communicate with patients in a paradigm that establishes comfort and confidence, while shrugging off the metaphorical aspect, is not remarkable. As I have noted on other threads, a friend of mine who is a psychotherapist told me--thirty years into his career--that the best psychotherapist he ever met had no formal training and presented herself as an astrologer.

The scientific method assures us that the claims of homeopathy are so extraordinary as to be laughable--taken as biochemistry. Yet it also assures us that taken as psychology they might work.

homeopathic medicine is bogus

homeopathic medicine is bogusWe've gone well beyond that. Sam provided a personal experience as a claim on its behalf and I responded with a reasoned rebuttal.

Any claims supporting or criticizing homeopathy must now be accompanied by at least a wisp of evidence, please.

As a person who practiced all three, my opinion is:

Allopathy - Modern medicine using modern chemical engineering and biochemistry with knowledge as to how some of them work. Therefore that is the best place to start.

Homeopathy - Only mother tincture can work as they are derived from base substances just as Ayurveda. Any dilution over 3X makes them Placebo. Also some base substances are highly toxic like Arsenic.

Ayurveda - Done in trial and error over centuries. Uses the same base herbal chemicals and base chemicals like gold and silver. For example, St. John Wort works as an anti-anxiety perhaps due to its active chemical hyperforin (not hypericin) but that is not sure. The allopathy chemicals such as Xanax is much more powerful like 100 times.

In Homeopathy they use the same St. John Wort called Hypericum for anxiety and depression, mood swings etc.

In Ayurveda you have to take a lot of herbal components to do you any good. The Chinese take green tea and Ginseng everyday for years....

Bottom Line is if you have a serious physical problem, take Allopathy. If you want to maintain your well being, eat right and take herbal supplements to supplement your crappy food intake.

Allo means opposite. Allopathic medicines have effect opposite to the nature of disease.

Homeo means similar. Homeopathic medicines have effect similar to disease nature.

Ayurvreda is a medical system developed in India hundreds of centuries back and is still used by common people.

It is not necessary for a doctor to know all the three. Actually he is trained in one system of medicine, not all the three, though each system requires 5.5 years of intense education in India

Micro Doses of Homeopathic medicine shows mega results inimprovement in patients

So do placebos.

Micro Doses of Homeopathic medicine shows mega results inimprovement in patients

American research organizations (even the holistic groups) are having a difficult time producing those mega results beyond the placebo effect.

This could be a religion.....:D

Actually they are not. Disbelief with motive can also be a religion.

http://www.trusthomeopathy.org/case/res_research.html

Actually they are not. Disbelief with motive can also be a religion.

http://www.trusthomeopathy.org/case/res_research.htmlAcutally, they are. You need to look to better sources. Meta-analysis means little or nothing when the basic research is crap.

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy/
http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.632/healthissue_detail.asp

http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy/#a2
(You'll note in this appendix the ridiculously small test groups.)

More the to point, however, the basic tenets of homeopathy are utterly absurd and have no scientific foundation. These being:

1. Disease is caused by a disruption in the "life force" and subsequent invasion of disease entities termed "miasms".

2. The "law of similars" otherwise known as "like cures like". Whereby a substance that mimics disease symptoms will empower the life force to reject the disease.

3. That a dilution will retain the properties of the substance being diluted even when the dilution is so great such that none of the original substance would be ingested. This is explained as a "spirit-like" healing force which is released from the substance into the dilution or that the water contains the "memory" or "vibration" from the diluted ingredient.


Given these unfounded fundamentals of homeopathy even any positive effect that might be found could only be attributed to coincidence.


~Raithere

Allo means opposite. Allopathic medicines have effect opposite to the nature of disease.

Homeo means similar. Homeopathic medicines have effect similar to disease nature.

Ayurvreda is a medical system developed in India hundreds of centuries back and is still used by common people.

It is not necessary for a doctor to know all the three. Actually he is trained in one system of medicine, not all the three, though each system requires 5.5 years of intense education in India

If the doctor is not trained in all the three branches then patient has to do trial and error to find which branch is most suited for him.

For example for chronic disease allopathy can not give solutions where as Ayurveda can.

For physical injury , Allopathy is best.

For certain diseases Homeopathy is good.

Hence it absolutely essential to train the doctor in other branches at Master"s
Degree level.

Pls give your comments.

P.J.LAKHAPATE
plakhapate@rediffmail.com

Here is the interesting part. In Homeopathy, the higher the dilution, the higher the potency. For example, one little sugar ball of Hypericum 1M (St. Johns Wort) is supposed to have a million fold power. That is one part per million of say original one mcg of the product. That could be just one molecule of the product. And the claim that this molecule somehow picks up nuclear energy (extra energy from the nucleus of the molecule) by shaking and diluting....is well...your guess is as good as mine.

If that is not religion, what is?

If that is not religion, what is?Magic?

~Raithere

shear idiocy my friend:p

A couple of other idiocies that come from homopathics:

1) Homopathic head ache tablets say "take one for moderate head ache, for server take two". By there own theory it should be the other way around

2) Homopathic "meds" claim they have no side effects (because they are so diluted) yet they claim that the effects get stronger the more they are diluted which logically would mean they have MORE (or stronger) side effects:p

The only thing that homopathics actually got right is the placibo effect

Rocker: AYurveda is more than 1000 years old medicine system practised in India. Still more than 50 % of people in India have ayurveda as first choice of treatment. You must be surprised to know large number of concepts of allopathy especialy surgery has been developed from ayurveda.

Asguard: Placebo effect is true for both allopathy as well as homeopathy. Actually the term was coined by conventional allopathic medicine (CAM) system

raithere: life force is nothing but what is called as 'energy' in allopathy, 'chi' in Chinese medicine, and 'prana' in ayurveda.

Different terms but carrries the same meaning

Kmguru: These mega results are all there but you need to have an eyes of patient who have gone to visit a homeopath for their medical problems. Ask millions of people in the world who have been benefited from homeopathy. May be you are not lucky enough to get a chance to treat your medical problems using homeopathy, that's why you did not know the immense benefits of it.

kmguru: So you agree that mother tinctures, and dilutions upto 3X works.
Fine.
That means according to you homeopathy works but not all potencies.

You must be surprised to know large number of concepts of allopathy especialy surgery has been developed from ayurveda.This is not surprising in the least. Many aspects of modern medicinal practice originated as folk-remedies, herbal medicine, or other "alternative" practices. The difference is that proper medicine is scientific in nature. Its hypotheses are clearly defined and rigorously tested. What does not work is tossed aside, that which has proven effect is retained.

raithere: life force is nothing but what is called as 'energy' in allopathy, 'chi' in Chinese medicine, and 'prana' in ayurveda.

Different terms but carrries the same meaning I would highly contest that the term as used in allopathy is equivalent to chi or prana. It's all well and fine to give alternative terms, but it still amounts to nonsense.

Define what "life force" is. What differentiates it from energy as the term is understood in physics? What are its properties? How is it measured? How does it behave? Where does it come from, how is it transmitted, and where does it go when something dies?

Quack medicine and pseudo science often misuse the concept of energy as if it is some sort of ethereal power source, a source of life or health, or a conscious force. For a very thorough article regarding its misuse and specific reference to the terms you use look here:

http://www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=65

These mega results are all there but you need to have an eyes of patient who have gone to visit a homeopath for their medical problems. Ask millions of people in the world who have been benefited from homeopathy. May be you are not lucky enough to get a chance to treat your medical problems using homeopathy, that's why you did not know the immense benefits of it.This is known as anecdotal evidence. It is supremely suspect and highly prone to error (this is simply a statistical fact). When proper studies are performed homeopathy comes up sorely lacking.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/the-pseudoscience-behind-homeopathy.ars/1


~Raithere

plakhapate,

Your argument is a fallacy, it assume that the other 2 branch have medical value, since they don't its a non sequitur. I like saying chemist need to know alchemy, astronomers need to know astrology, and psychologist need to know telepathy!

kmguru: So you agree that mother tinctures, and dilutions upto 3X works.
Fine. That means according to you homeopathy works but not all potencies.

I worked with a state registered homeopathic doctor many many years ago while finishing my degree in Biochemistry before going to engineering and therefore have done extensive tests.

The reason mother tincture work is the same as Ayurveda. That is because of the active chemicals in them. In USA, the companies take the herbs and concentrate the active ingredients. For example:

In USA, St. Johns Wort is standardized to 0.3% Hypercin which is the active chemical for mood enhancement.

In Homeopathy, it is called Hypericum. The doctor prescribed them to females at a combination of mother tincture and 3X. We tried at 30 and 200. The results were not very positive. That is sometimes it worked, other times it did not. From hind sight - it was probably placebo.

The catch here is that for mild symptoms, herbal products does help - especially when concentrated - for specific symptoms. But severe cases they do not work - you have to go to the next level like Ativan or Xanax. Unless of course you drink a gallon of Hypericum everyday.

What the pharmaceutical companies do is look at the herbal molecule and using combinatorial chemistry find analog chemicals that has a stronger reaction in the body. Sometimes you have side effects, other times you take just a small amount to get the job done.

My statement still stands that beyond mother tincture - the very high dilutions are bull shit. Even at MT, it all depends on the amount of active chemicals present and what it does.

There is a homeopathy medicine called Anacardium. That is indicted for memory loss etc. Well that is Cashews. So eat some raw cashews everyday and you get more DHA, Omega-3 etc, improve your neural transmitters, than buying Homeopathy.

Homeopathy does use poisons to cure certain symptoms. Never take mother tincture on those. You will be dead. The poisons at a dilution works like allergy shots. So, they could be good for some allergies.

Raithere thats not actually 100% true

MOST med is based on scientific study but not all, thats why there is a huge push for more evidence based med

take CPR for instance. untill last year CPR was 15:2 which came from ONE study on animals (i belive). No randomised controled trials had been conducted until recently when a massive study was conducted (i know this because SAAS was involved in the trial) and it found that a ratio of 30:2 works better.

there is also a study currently being conducted on wether its better to shock pts who have been in VF for a long period of time without CPR imidiatly or for paramedics to start CPR to reperfuse the heart BEFORE shocking them.

Emergency med is actually the LEAST studied of all the areas because until recently it wasnt a university course so there were no PHD's, masters ect in EM

Raithere thats not actually 100% true

MOST med is based on scientific study but not all, thats why there is a huge push for more evidence based med

take CPR for instance. untill last year CPR was 15:2 which came from ONE study on animals (i belive). No randomised controled trials had been conducted until recently when a massive study was conducted (i know this because SAAS was involved in the trial) and it found that a ratio of 30:2 works better.

there is also a study currently being conducted on wether its better to shock pts who have been in VF for a long period of time without CPR imidiatly or for paramedics to start CPR to reperfuse the heart BEFORE shocking them.

Emergency med is actually the LEAST studied of all the areas because until recently it wasnt a university course so there were no PHD's, masters ect in EMI agree, thank you for the correction. I had pharmaceuticals, in particular, in mind. Many procedures are a matter of best practice, experience, and indeed skill. Still, even these procedures are open to study and revision as you describe.

~Raithere

Fallacy: Appeal to tradition (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-tradition.html)

"Flat earth theory is thousands of years old too! There for a must be right!"
"Vitalism has been around since the ancient philosophers and it spawned modern chemistry, therefor it must be right!"
or
Rocker: AYurveda is more than 1000 years old medicine system practised in India. Still more than 50 % of people in India have ayurveda as first choice of treatment. You must be surprised to know large number of concepts of allopathy especialy surgery has been developed from ayurveda.

Asguard: Placebo effect is true for both allopathy as well as homeopathy. Actually the term was coined by conventional allopathic medicine (CAM) system

Many "CAM" as you call them show results greater then placebo. Placebo effect was coined because in "CAM" they actually test to see if something works by comparing against a control (the placebo) if the medicine works as well as the placebo then it does not work, if it works better by a statistically valid amount then the medicine works.

Kmguru: These mega results are all there but you need to have an eyes of patient who have gone to visit a homeopath for their medical problems. Ask millions of people in the world who have been benefited from homeopathy. May be you are not lucky enough to get a chance to treat your medical problems using homeopathy, that's why you did not know the immense benefits of it.

Fallacy: Appeal to Popularity (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-popularity.html)

"Millions of people beleive Santa give them gifts, therefor they must be right!"
or
"Ask millions of people in the world who have been benefited from homeopathy"

My father is a major Homeopathy buff, he tried it on me, to no affect, if you believe - you'll think it helps, if you don't - it does nothing, hence placebo!

Kmguru: Ask millions of people in the world who have been benefited from homeopathy.

The same can be said for various religions.

May be you are not lucky enough to get a chance to treat your medical problems using homeopathy, that's why you did not know the immense benefits of it.

Lucky? My Indian friend's Dad died due to heart attack who was under a homeopathy doctor's supervision for 4 years. Off course, you could say, that the doctor did not know what he was doing....but his Dad was taking all the medicines that the Homeopathy Materia Medica suggests...

one could cause immense damage to ones health by following such nonsense.

I suggest, if you want to experiement, go for any non-life threathening issues...like Erectile Disfunction....I bet there is no such homeopathy cure, otherwise people will be peddling it bigtime....in Wal-Mart!

kmuguru can i just say im not against ALL CAM's. There is a push in australia for herbal remidies ect to adopt a system similar to the heart foundations red tick (in this case a green tick) to say that they have been scienticially tested for efficasy and i would NEVER suggest that aborigional traditional medicin shouldnt be used in conjunction with science based med. Some of there cures have better efficasy than westen med. Acupuncher and traditional chiness med is the same, it has been shown to have scientic efficasy.

Its the basic principles of homopathics i find to be wrong and i surport scientic testing through the TGA for ALL medicinal substances. The problem is that alot of them are concidered to be foods by the TGA which means they are regulated by the Australian and New Zeland Food organisation (sorry not sure on the last word)

Asguard: The reason a lot of people in U.S., especially the retired citizens, want to keep herbal items as food supplement is because, there is a tendency for the pharmaceutical/doctor community to ban them as very little efficacy.

One should note that herbal products like food has to be taken for a long time, perhaps all your life to provide the needed benefits. Therefore they are not drugs to cure anything, but support in the wellbeing of a person.

For example one may (or may not!) improve stomach health such that one does not have to take a lot of antacids, proton inhibitors, pepto-bismul, and a whole lot of crap - by taking herbal item "Milk Thistle" and Probiotics as in Yogurt. If you start early, that could solve your problem. However, if you are in advanced stages of stomach problems, then it is like putting out a forest fire with a bucket of water. At this point look for Pepcid or whatever your doctor tells you. Because, there are several proton pumps in the body, you have to try a few to see what works! If the Pharma has its way....they want all of you to eat crap and go to them.

I am for regulating herbal items only based on quality and not efficacy. Let the buyer decide what they want. I am also against herbal companies making big claims (it is agaist the law here). Remember, herbals are there for preventive measures and support in the healing process or maintaining hemostasis and not killing bacteria or changing your physiological process in a major way.

For example, Red Yeast Rice can help reduce your Cholesterol about ~12%. If that is not enough, you should be looking at Lipitor or similar items. But they wanted to ban Red Yeast Rice. Do you know that they now have Garlic and Turmeric in a pill form? If you do not add that to your food...then you may have to take it as a pill....

Homeopathy is a different animal not even in the same forest....

kmguru i wasnt talking about the US:p, you have a very inteligent idea of keeping all food and drugs under the same body, we dont. The TGA regulates theorpudic goods in australia (only) and the food organisation deals with foods across both australia and NZ. Take for instance the butter that claims to lower colestrol, who checked that for eficasy or was it just tested to say 'yes this is a safe product to eat"?

Glucosamine is an example of a CAM that is currently being critisised because the eficasy hasnt been shown to be there. Now why should they be able to make claims as definitly as something like st johns wart which HAS been through clinical trials and shown benifits (though with a lot of probmatic interations with other meds). Also there is a requirment for foods to have all there ingrediants labled but meds dont have this because the TGA puts out different advice on them (as to what sorts of people shouldnt take them ect). I have seen CAMs that avioid BOTH requirements because they are drugs to the ANZF body and they are foods to the TGA so who is actually making sure people dont get alergic reactions from taking them? who makes sure they dont interfear with other meds or even over the counter meds?

All that would be needed is for the ingrediants to be listed, side effects to be reported ect BY LAW and an opt in system for efficasy

I agree. Certain chemicals that have claims associated should be tested and data published. Glucosomine falls in to that category. However, it may not be necessary to do the same for amino-acids or branch chain amino-acids...like Dimethylglycine etc.

im not sugesting that milk should be tested if calcium is good for older aged women. Milk is food (as is yoghert) but yacult on the other hand claims that the bacteria is a) good for you and b) arives live in the intestines (claims which yoghert never makes) so these should be tested by the a TGA. Thats what i meant

If homeopathy is the idea that the effect of some solution in water becomes more effective the more it is diluted then at least when it is mainly water, and further diluted that is nonsense. I know something about water: Most important and not commonly known is that the formulae is xH2O where x is a spectrum of integers. I.e. because the two protons have given up their electrons to a large extent to the oxygen atom, it is negative and they are positive charge centers. Also they are both on the same side, 105 degrees in angular separation, so H2O has a permanent electric dipole. Thus it can and does form chains or "polymerize." These chains are constantly breaking and reforming - why x is a distribution, not a fixed integer. The higher the temperature the smaller the average value of x is. The chains become quite long (average x is in the double digits, I think) below 4C. So the jumble of these chains is sort of like a random jumble of increasingly longer spaghetti pieces - the void spaces occupying an increasing fraction of the volume as water cools below 4C - why, unlike not polar liquids it gets lighter before becoming a solid.

Water has no mechanism for "memory" of what substance may have been present before in solution. To the extent that homeopathy is based on the false assumption that water "remembers" it is NONSENSE. But the placebo effect can make it appear to work - same as the placebo effect of sitting on two dimes will work for those who believe that improves their arthritis. Etc.
------
Allopathic (conventional western style medicine) usually has demonstrable effects to support its use for treating certain diseases, at least FDA approved medicines; However, there are still serious problems with it. The first being that the diagnostic procedures are not always correct - so you may be treated for a disease you do not have, and generally this will to some extent damage you. Then there is the possibility that there is some delayed side effect - the deformed children (now in the 40s) of thalidomide being the extreme case but surely hundreds of lesser cases exist. (In the courts now is Votix probably production of many deaths.)

I try to stay away from all medicines and even places like clinics where sick people are found. I often state that my body (yours too) is smarter than all the doctors in the world combined. Thus do not take aspirin to reduce mild fevers, antihistamines for my allergies, etc. I have on two or three occasions (once every 30 or so years) taken anti-biotic, but only after allowing my body (immune system) to try to kill the invading organism on its own for several days. While I have great faith in my body's defense that evolution as provided, I do recognize that evolution has been perfecting the attack skills of the bacteria also. Thus sometimes it is necessary to suddenly change the environment on them to one their ancestors never saw. Unfortunately their descendents will soon have seen most of these man-made anti bacterial agents as we feed them to cows etc. prophylactic etc. and very few behave as I do - they get anti-biotics several times each year.

Avurvedic and herbal/ traditional medicines of other regions.
I do not know much about these, but am sure some have real merit. Humans are fantastically good "collective correleators" All societies evolve and compete - Darwinian survival makes the medical wisdom they develop a net benefit although it can contain some aspect that are destructive. Most of these medicines are probably with little effect other than then placebo effect. Fortunately, modern scientists are finally realizing that some of these traditions and agents, which nature developed and man adventuresome ignorant men discovered are probably better than anything yet to come from some bio-chemical or biological drug company. One I do use is Mountain Arnica - it does seem to be every effective in aiding minor injuries heal. I also drink occasionally a tea (Mata Leon) and use a natural sweetener (Now commercially available as "Stevita") both of which have been used by Indians of Brazil for thousands of years. (I consider sugar, something man's insulin system did not evolve to cope with as it is only a few hundred year old, to be a slow acting posion.)

There was an extensive study in England many years ago on the common cold. Many paid volunteers stay hours in a cold damp room each day for week or so (I forget exact details). The scientist concluded that does not cause one to catch a cold. They may be correct, but my money is on the collective unconscious correlative ability of millions of people as reflected in the very name "cold" and the general belief that these conditions do promote the catching of colds. True, many widely held beliefs are wrong. (My favorite example is not the "flat Earth" as few believe that now. I prefer the false belief that most still do hold that the "moon is orbiting the Earth" when in fact it has only a tiny wobble as it orbits the sun that makes it 13 times each year slightly less than 1 AU from the sun and 13 times slightly more than 1AU instead of an exactly elliptically orbit about the sun.)

Raithere: As Homeopathy is not evaluated on its own terms, it is judged on conventional medicine territory. That's why you are inclined towards dominat theory

Kmguru: I think you are mssing the most important element: Homeopathy is an individual specific treatment, it is a tailor made. it is not that one medicine for same set of symptoms will cure everyone. If that would have been the case then it would have been same as allopathy. So hypericum , or the maater of fact any other medicine will cure the patient if it shows the symptoms of hypericum.

By drinking gallons of hypericum or for the maater of fact any medicine, you would be pushing yourself towards its provings.

And some times the side efects of allopathic medicine is so severe that leads to the death of patient. According to FDA, thousands die every year in US due to this. World knows about the side effects of alopathy. If i start writing about it, it would be no end in sight.

Electric Fetus:

Homeopathy: Beyond flat earth

Many "CAM" as you call them show results greater then placebo. Placebo effect was coined because in "CAM" they actually test to see if something works by comparing against a control (the placebo) if the medicine works as well as the placebo then it does not work, if it works better by a statistically valid amount then the medicine works.
Electric Fetus: According to polyani, it is the normal practice of scientists to ignore evidence which appears incompatible with the accepted system of scientific knowledge, in the hope that it will eventually prove false or irrelevent.

Fallacy:

"Millions of people beleive Santa give them gifts, therefor they must be right!"
or
"Ask millions of people in the world who have been benefited from homeopathy"

My father is a major Homeopathy buff, he tried it on me, to no affect, if you believe - you'll think it helps, if you don't - it does nothing, hence placebo!
It is not a matter of belief. If it is a right medicine for the patient, it works, otherwise not. If the mdicine does not matches the patient's symptoms, then no, however hard you try.

Is your father a homeopathic physician?

Asguard: The reason a lot of people in U.S., especially the retired citizens, want to keep herbal items as food supplement is because, there is a tendency for the pharmaceutical/doctor community to ban them as very little efficacy.

One should note that herbal products like food has to be taken for a long time, perhaps all your life to provide the needed benefits. Therefore they are not drugs to cure anything, but support in the wellbeing of a person.

For example one may (or may not!) improve stomach health such that one does not have to take a lot of antacids, proton inhibitors, pepto-bismul, and a whole lot of crap - by taking herbal item "Milk Thistle" and Probiotics as in Yogurt. If you start early, that could solve your problem. However, if you are in advanced stages of stomach problems, then it is like putting out a forest fire with a bucket of water. At this point look for Pepcid or whatever your doctor tells you. Because, there are several proton pumps in the body, you have to try a few to see what works! If the Pharma has its way....they want all of you to eat crap and go to them.

I am for regulating herbal items only based on quality and not efficacy. Let the buyer decide what they want. I am also against herbal companies making big claims (it is agaist the law here). Remember, herbals are there for preventive measures and support in the healing process or maintaining hemostasis and not killing bacteria or changing your physiological process in a major way.

For example, Red Yeast Rice can help reduce your Cholesterol about ~12%. If that is not enough, you should be looking at Lipitor or similar items. But they wanted to ban Red Yeast Rice. Do you know that they now have Garlic and Turmeric in a pill form? If you do not add that to your food...then you may have to take it as a pill....

Homeopathy is a different animal not even in the same forest....
Pharmaceutical company wishes to ban not because of thier little or inefficacy but because it eat into their business.

Most patients of allopathy tend to have been over-medicated and for long term (making them dependent/addictive)) through out their lives.

Let the paptient decides what he wants: Allopathy or Homeopathy

If homeopathy is the idea that the effect of some solution in water becomes more effective the more it is diluted then at least when it is mainly water, and further diluted that is nonsense. I know something about water: Most important and not commonly known is that the formulae is xH2O where x is a spectrum of integers. I.e. because the two protons have given up their electrons to a large extent to the oxygen atom, it is negative and they are positive charge centers. Also they are both on the same side, 105 degrees in angular separation, so H2O has a permanent electric dipole. Thus it can and does form chains or "polymerize." These chains are constantly breaking and reforming - why x is a distribution, not a fixed integer. The higher the temperature the smaller the average value of x is. The chains become quite long (average x is in the double digits, I think) below 4C. So the jumble of these chains is sort of like a random jumble of increasingly longer spaghetti pieces - the void spaces occupying an increasing fraction of the volume as water cools below 4C - why, unlike not polar liquids it gets lighter before becoming a solid.

Water has no mechanism for "memory" of what substance may have been present before in solution. To the extent that homeopathy is based on the false assumption that water "remembers" it is NONSENSE. But the placebo effect can make it appear to work - same as the placebo effect of sitting on two dimes will work for those who believe that improves their arthritis. Etc.
------
Allopathic (conventional western style medicine) usually has demonstrable effects to support its use for treating certain diseases, at least FDA approved medicines; However, there are still serious problems with it. The first being that the diagnostic procedures are not always correct - so you may be treated for a disease you do not have, and generally this will to some extent damage you. Then there is the possibility that there is some delayed side effect - the deformed children (now in the 40s) of thalidomide being the extreme case but surely hundreds of lesser cases exist. (In the courts now is Votix probably production of many deaths.)

I try to stay away from all medicines and even places like clinics where sick people are found. I often state that my body (yours too) is smarter than all the doctors in the world combined. Thus do not take aspirin to reduce mild fevers, antihistamines for my allergies, etc. I have on two or three occasions (once every 30 or so years) taken anti-biotic, but only after allowing my body (immune system) to try to kill the invading organism on its own for several days. While I have great faith in my body's defense that evolution as provided, I do recognize that evolution has been perfecting the attack skills of the bacteria also. Thus sometimes it is necessary to suddenly change the environment on them to one their ancestors never saw. Unfortunately their descendents will soon have seen most of these man-made anti bacterial agents as we feed them to cows etc. prophylactic etc. and very few behave as I do - they get anti-biotics several times each year.

Avurvedic and herbal/ traditional medicines of other regions.
I do not know much about these, but am sure some have real merit. Humans are fantastically good "collective correleators" All societies evolve and compete - Darwinian survival makes the medical wisdom they develop a net benefit although it can contain some aspect that are destructive. Most of these medicines are probably with little effect other than then placebo effect. Fortunately, modern scientists are finally realizing that some of these traditions and agents, which nature developed and man adventuresome ignorant men discovered are probably better than anything yet to come from some bio-chemical or biological drug company. One I do use is Mountain Arnica - it does seem to be every effective in aiding minor injuries heal. I also drink occasionally a tea (Mata Leon) and use a natural sweetener (Now commercially available as "Stevita") both of which have been used by Indians of Brazil for thousands of years. (I consider sugar, something man's insulin system did not evolve to cope with as it is only a few hundred year old, to be a slow acting posion.)

There was an extensive study in England many years ago on the common cold. Many paid volunteers stay hours in a cold damp room each day for week or so (I forget exact details). The scientist concluded that does not cause one to catch a cold. They may be correct, but my money is on the collective unconscious correlative ability of millions of people as reflected in the very name "cold" and the general belief that these conditions do promote the catching of colds. True, many widely held beliefs are wrong. (My favorite example is not the "flat Earth" as few believe that now. I prefer the false belief that most still do hold that the "moon is orbiting the Earth" when in fact it has only a tiny wobble as it orbits the sun that makes it 13 times each year slightly less than 1 AU from the sun and 13 times slightly more than 1AU instead of an exactly elliptically orbit about the sun.)
Due to Wrong diagnosis in allopathy there are millions of deaths of patients.

According to FDA, votix caused more deaths than an entire vietnam war.

Allopathic medicines gets consumed in body within a short span. So u have to take it frequently. This makes them addictive and prone to side effects.

See yourself of antibiotics. Their overuse......do i need to say anything about it. So you need to consume what is bare minimum. This is precisely what we do in homeopathy: only that amount is administered which is sufficient, not more than that.

The same can be said for various religions.



Lucky? My Indian friend's Dad died due to heart attack who was under a homeopathy doctor's supervision for 4 years. Off course, you could say, that the doctor did not know what he was doing....but his Dad was taking all the medicines that the Homeopathy Materia Medica suggests...

one could cause immense damage to ones health by following such nonsense.

I suggest, if you want to experiement, go for any non-life threathening issues...like Erectile Disfunction....I bet there is no such homeopathy cure, otherwise people will be peddling it bigtime....in Wal-Mart!
http://www.deathbymodernmedicine.com/

Electric Fetus: According to polyani, it is the normal practice of scientists to ignore evidence which appears incompatible with the accepted system of scientific knowledge, in the hope that it will eventually prove false or irrelevent.

there are always outliers, but if the outliers have no pattern then the theory covers the facts, if not the theory will eventually need to be modified, this is how all science has come into understand the world, details like the Calvin cycle or insulin production pathway, homeopathy on the other hand has proven nothing.

Due to Wrong diagnosis in allopathy there are millions of deaths of patients.You did not tell over what period this million deaths occurred, a but more serious objection to your one sided statement is the failure to recognize than many more than that (even it is correct, which I doubt) have been saved from early death by just the used of insulin alone* - not to even mention the use of ant-biotics. It is not hard to be certain about elevated levels of blood sugar - even when measured by the diabetic themselves in their home at cost of less than 1$.

Do you favor a homeopathic approach as treatment for diabetes instead - perhaps the injection of water instead of insulin?

... This is precisely what we do in homeopathy: only that amount is administered which is sufficient, not more than that.Please tell more exactly what you mean by this. Specifically, are you one of the supporters of the idea that the more some agent is diluted with water the stronger is its effect, or do you agree that is Nonsense?

-------------
*Without some recognition of the benefits of allopathic medicine your conclusion that it is bad, or at least worse than homeopathic medicine, because it sometimes fails and even causes deaths due to erroneous diagnosis is exactly the same as the POV that if someone died as a pair of forceps were left inside the patient who had a ruptured appendix removed we never again should operate on people with ruptured appendix. Likewise your argument that because some people are wrongly diagnosed to have a ruptured appendix and then cut open needlessly (a few perhaps even dying from the analgesia) means we should never operate when someone has the symptoms of a ruptured appendix. That is nonsense and would directly cause the deaths of many more.

What is the recommend homeopathic treatment for a person with abdominal pain, which is greatly increased when the area over the appendix is depressed, and also has greatly elevated white blood cell count, etc. ?

What is the Homeopathy treatment for:

1. ED
2. Cancer
3. Arterial Plaque
4. Arthritis
5. Compressed disc
6. AIDS (India has a lot of AIDS patients)

What is the Homeopathy treatment for:

1. ED
2. Cancer
3. Arterial Plaque
4. Arthritis
5. Compressed disc
6. AIDS (India has a lot of AIDS patients)

And what is the success rate of Homeopathy at curing these disorders/disease?

I worked with a state registered homeopathic doctor many many years ago while finishing my degree in Biochemistry before going to engineering and therefore have done extensive tests.

The reason mother tincture work is the same as Ayurveda. That is because of the active chemicals in them. In USA, the companies take the herbs and concentrate the active ingredients. For example:

In USA, St. Johns Wort is standardized to 0.3% Hypercin which is the active chemical for mood enhancement.

In Homeopathy, it is called Hypericum. The doctor prescribed them to females at a combination of mother tincture and 3X. We tried at 30 and 200. The results were not very positive. That is sometimes it worked, other times it did not. From hind sight - it was probably placebo.

The catch here is that for mild symptoms, herbal products does help - especially when concentrated - for specific symptoms. But severe cases they do not work - you have to go to the next level like Ativan or Xanax. Unless of course you drink a gallon of Hypericum everyday.

What the pharmaceutical companies do is look at the herbal molecule and using combinatorial chemistry find analog chemicals that has a stronger reaction in the body. Sometimes you have side effects, other times you take just a small amount to get the job done.

My statement still stands that beyond mother tincture - the very high dilutions are bull shit. Even at MT, it all depends on the amount of active chemicals present and what it does.

There is a homeopathy medicine called Anacardium. That is indicted for memory loss etc. Well that is Cashews. So eat some raw cashews everyday and you get more DHA, Omega-3 etc, improve your neural transmitters, than buying Homeopathy.

Homeopathy does use poisons to cure certain symptoms. Never take mother tincture on those. You will be dead. The poisons at a dilution works like allergy shots. So, they could be good for some allergies.
One medicine is prepared from cashews. For other medicines, would you go eating for thier sources from which the medicine is prepared.

You must also remember that quantity of medicine administered plays an important part. Let me give you an example. Eating bananas in large quantitites cures constipitaton but eating them in small quanitity cures diarhea

there are always outliers, but if the outliers have no pattern then the theory covers the facts, if not the theory will eventually need to be modified, this is how all science has come into understand the world, details like the Calvin cycle or insulin production pathway, homeopathy on the other hand has proven nothing.
to blind everyone is blind

You did not tell over what period this million deaths occurred, a but more serious objection to your one sided statement is the failure to recognize than many more than that (even it is correct, which I doubt) have been saved from early death by just the used of insulin alone* - not to even mention the use of ant-biotics. It is not hard to be certain about elevated levels of blood sugar - even when measured by the diabetic themselves in their home at cost of less than 1$.

Do you favor a homeopathic approach as treatment for diabetes instead - perhaps the injection of water instead of insulin?

Please tell more exactly what you mean by this. Specifically, are you one of the supporters of the idea that the more some agent is diluted with water the stronger is its effect, or do you agree that is Nonsense?

-------------
*Without some recognition of the benefits of allopathic medicine your conclusion that it is bad, or at least worse than homeopathic medicine, because it sometimes fails and even causes deaths due to erroneous diagnosis is exactly the same as the POV that if someone died as a pair of forceps were left inside the patient who had a ruptured appendix removed we never again should operate on people with ruptured appendix. Likewise your argument that because some people are wrongly diagnosed to have a ruptured appendix and then cut open needlessly (a few perhaps even dying from the analgesia) means we should never operate when someone has the symptoms of a ruptured appendix. That is nonsense and would directly cause the deaths of many more.

What is the recommend homeopathic treatment for a person with abdominal pain, which is greatly increased when the area over the appendix is depressed, and also has greatly elevated white blood cell count, etc. ?
Let me tell you the medicine becomes stronger not just because it has been diluted more but because i has now ben successed more. It is the succession that adds power to the medicine.

Homeopathy provides treatment for diabeties as well as abdominal pain

What is the Homeopathy treatment for:

1. ED
2. Cancer
3. Arterial Plaque
4. Arthritis
5. Compressed disc
6. AIDS (India has a lot of AIDS patients)
Homeopathy provides solutons to all of the above cases.

You must underdtand that homeopathy is symptom based. Each patient has a different set of symptoms. So two patients suffering from the dsame disease may have a different homeopathic medicine for them.

It is not allopathy where you have the same medicine for everyone.

Homoeopathy does not believe in giving different medicines for different afflicted parts of body (head, nose, ears, throat, etc) but rather give one single constitutional remedy, which will cover the disturbance (different complaints) of the whole (same) person.

i find your name offensive, What are your qualifications to claim to be a doctor?
where was your BM&BS granted or what is your PHD in?

i find your name offensive, What are your qualifications to claim to be a doctor?
where was your BM&BS granted or what is your PHD in?
Medical Training for a minimum period of 5 1/2 years (BHMS) is absolutely necessary for becoming qualified to practice this system in India as it gives a complete understanding not only about the structure and functioning of the human body but also a thorough understanding of the homeopathic philosophy and its practical utilization while treating diseased persons. And to do M.D. further, you have to spend three more years after BHMS

I have a license to practice homeopathy given by Government of India.

so your NOT a doctor and there for shouldnt have "Dr." in your name

so your NOT a doctor and there for shouldnt have "Dr." in your name

Don't be in so hurry. Read again what i have wrote. I am a medical qualified doctor.


What are your credentials to talk about homeopathy? Have you done a 5.5 years medical degree course in homeopathy?

to blind everyone is blind

Yes that how the "blind" has been able to understand the world and usually predict it with great accuracy. Look around at the world, most technology exist and relies on science's ability to predict physical phenomena and to manipulate that phenomena in a predictable nature. We would not have been able to build computers or modern engines or send space probes to the planets if science did not accurately understand the nature of semiconductor, thermodynamics or heliocentric models of the solar system, likewise we would never have killed off small pox, protect child against polio, prevent bacteria infections, reduce the death rate from cancer, increase the average human life space without theories on immunology, germs and physiology not being accurate. If Homeopathy was so great why can't it cure these diseases? Here a test: infect your self with rabies and cure it with homeopathy!

American research organizations (even the holistic groups) are having a difficult time producing those mega results beyond the placebo effect.

This could be a religion.....:D

Probably is, by most honest/accurate definitions.

You would be surprised at what else should probably be classified as a religion but I would likely be accused of Trolling for naming/accusing them.

Homeopathy reversed my anemia, from 9.5 to 14 [Hb count] when allopathic measures failed (short of inferon injections). Either its a persistent placebo effect (going on for 15 years now) or there is some other explanation.

Homeopathy reversed my anemia, from 9.5 to 14 [Hb count] when allopathic measures failed (short of inferon injections). Either its a persistent placebo effect (going on for 15 years now) or there is some other explanation.

or you just had some form of temporary anemia, if you could pull up a study where say 500 people with anemia were tread with homeopathy and another were treated with a placebo and the providers and patients were blind to who got what, and the results showed that homeopathy cure anemia above placebo and beyond the standard error (+/-7% for 500 people) then I would believe you.

I feel I can cure my colds by ingesting a bottle of atomic pepper sauce (seriously!) but I won't believe it medically true and not just a figment of my imagination until when it is tested in a double blind statistically relevant study.

My anemia by the way can never go away but as a child it was significantly detectable as low iron levels, as an adult my iron levels are detected as normal but by hemoglobin is still deformed just the same.

Eating bananas in large quantitites cures constipitaton but eating them in small quanitity cures diarhea

You must be joking. Diarhea is not the opposite of constipation. Diarrhea is most commonly caused by viral infections, parasites or bacterial toxins. The absence of these toxins pr viruses is not constipation.

And you are qualified to be a medical doctor? Wow!

Homeopathy provides solutons to all of the above cases.

You must underdtand that homeopathy is symptom based. Each patient has a different set of symptoms. So two patients suffering from the dsame disease may have a different homeopathic medicine for them.

It is not allopathy where you have the same medicine for everyone.

Homoeopathy does not believe in giving different medicines for different afflicted parts of body (head, nose, ears, throat, etc) but rather give one single constitutional remedy, which will cover the disturbance (different complaints) of the whole (same) person.

So, you are saying the symptoms of ED or any of the virus or bacterial infections are different for different people and therefore you have 5000+ homeopathy medicines for those cases?

Which then by definition can not be tested in a double blind test? Just take it on faith?

or you just had some form of temporary anemia, if you could pull up a study where say 500 people with anemia were tread with homeopathy and another were treated with a placebo and the providers and patients were blind to who got what, and the results showed that homeopathy cure anemia above placebo and beyond the standard error (+/-7% for 500 people) then I would believe you.

I feel I can cure my colds by ingesting a bottle of atomic pepper sauce (seriously!) but I won't believe it medically true and not just a figment of my imagination until when it is tested in a double blind statistically relevant study.

My anemia by the way can never go away but as a child it was significantly detectable as low iron levels, as an adult my iron levels are detected as normal but by hemoglobin is still deformed just the same.
I always find it interesting that people supporting allopathy scream for the effect of homeopathy, but when someone presents they ignore them or say it is anecdotal evidence, so they won't listen to the patient.

You must be joking. Diarhea is not the opposite of constipation. Diarrhea is most commonly caused by viral infections, parasites or bacterial toxins. The absence of these toxins pr viruses is not constipation.

And you are qualified to be a medical doctor? Wow!
Next time (God forbids) you have diarhea or constipitation, check it ut, you will surely get a relief. And this has not come out of homeopathy book but by naturopathy/ayurveda which consideres food as medicine.

So, you are saying the symptoms of ED or any of the virus or bacterial infections are different for different people and therefore you have 5000+ homeopathy medicines for those cases?

Which then by definition can not be tested in a double blind test? Just take it on faith?
Homoeopathy can never be tested through double blind randomised trials because each prescription is individualised as every person is unique. Therefore 10 people with the same dieseae may all need a different homoeopathic medicine.

Supporters of allopathy insist on double blind trials because they knew that homeopathy would fail on that account.

Homoeopathy can never be tested through double blind randomised trials because each prescription is individualised as every person is unique. Therefore 10 people with the same dieseae may all need a different homoeopathic medicine.

Supporters of allopathy insist on double blind trials because they knew that homeopathy would fail on that account.

Well, then there is another way to test it. Collect 1000 AIDS patients in India (They have plenty) - verify that they all have AIDS and then start the treatment program. Either they work or do not. If they work, then Bill Gates will be happy to cover millions in Africa rather sending the expensive medicine. If Bill Gates starts distributing Homeopathy...then that is the proof, it works. Since the government of India, South Africa shun Homeopathy - that means it is all hot air.....

Next time (God forbids) you have diarhea or constipitation, check it ut, you will surely get a relief. And this has not come out of homeopathy book but by naturopathy/ayurveda which consideres food as medicine.

I eat Bananas one or two a day. Have not had Constipation or Diarhea in the last five years. If I eat four or one, no problem (I take Probiotics in the form of Yogurt). Never tried 12 bananas...if you eat excess of anything, you will get sick....that is common sense.

...the {Homeopathic} medicine becomes stronger not just because it has been diluted more but because it has now been successed more. It is the succession that adds power to the medicine.OK, but I don't understand "succession" - Please explain.

I want to know how succession differs from dilution, so here is a specific example to be clear (I am only guessing that "succession" has to do with the number of dilutions, not the amount of the dilution, and testing that idea with my two cases.)

Both case A & B start with 1gm of the agent. Then in:

Case A: 99gm of pure water is added to make a 1% concentration of the active agent.

but in Case B: 9gm of pure water is first added to make a 10% concentration of the active agent.

Then 1gm of this 10% concentration is added to 9gm of pure water to make a 1% concentration of the active agent.

Is the "succession" of the twice diluted case B greater? (Even though conventional chemistry can not tell any difference between these two 1% concentration of the active agent.) Is it twice stronger Homeopathic medicine?

If this is not the case, please give me an example similar to the one above so I can understand what you are talking about. Thank you.

PS: Note that the case B second step still has 9gm of the 10% concentration. So I could repeat the second step 9 times more to end up with 10 of the 10gm 1% concentration. Then divide each 10 times to have 100 separate 1gm units more powerful than the original 1 gm of agent. This could be repeated making each of these 100 into another 100 for 10,000 total etc. etc. If there is a limit on how much succession can be produced from the original 1gm of agent, can you explain how it arises?

I always find it interesting that people supporting allopathy scream for the effect of homeopathy, but when someone presents they ignore them or say it is anecdotal evidence, so they won't listen to the patient.

Sorry but anecdotal evidence is not provable: I could sell anything be it tap water or a pill of sugar, and if people feel it works then so be it, that does not mean it actually works though, to see if it actually works required a statically valid experiment, preferably blind to any bias.

In short if we are testing to see if a drug works you need to get hundreds of patients, then we will listen, with just one patient all we have to go on either experimental results from previous studies or a educated guess or we could be like you and just give them a completely unproven therapy and hope for the best, my bets are that sugar pill would be equally effective.

of course we wont lission to the pt, what is it house always says.....

"people lie" (no offence there sam)

double blind randomised controled trials DONT lie



Plain language summary
No evidence that homeopathy is effective in treating dementia.

Dementia is a distressing illness that has major implications for individuals with the disease and their carers. Homeopathy is a popular type of complementary medicine. It is however controversial because although there is some evidence that it is not just a placebo, no one understands how it could work. The researchers did not find any good quality trials and so cannot say whether it is or is not effective for treating this condition. As no information is available on how much homeopathy is used for dementia, it is difficult to say whether it is important to conduct more trials.

Viewed 18/06/08 at 9:27 (http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD003803/frame.html)




Plain language summary
This review aimed to assess the evidence for homeopathy as an intervention for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Four trials were retrieved and assessed with mixed results. Overall the results of this review found no evidence of effectiveness for homeopathy for the global symptoms, core symptoms or related outcomes of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Viewed 18/06/08 at 9:27 (http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD005648/frame.html)





Plain language summary
Not enough evidence from trials to determine whether or not homeopathy can help improve asthma.

Homeopathy is a complementary healing system based on "curing like with like". It involves greatly diluting substances (potentising) which ordinarily may or may not cause symptoms, in order to strengthen the body's own healing response to a problem. Homeopathic remedies (potencies) aim to minimise the risk of adverse effects. There are different types that may be used for asthma, such as classical homeopathy (tailored to an individual's symptoms) or isopathy (for example using a dilution of an agent that causes an allergy, such as pollen). The review of trials found that the type of homeopathy varied between the studies, that the study designs used in the trials were varied and that no strong evidence existed that usual forms of homeopathy for asthma are effective. There has been only a limited attempt to measure a 'package of care' effect (i.e., the effect of the medication as well as the consultation, which is considered a vital part of individualised homeopathic practice). Until stronger evidence exists for the use of homeopathy in the treatment of asthma, we are unable to make recommendations about homeopathic treatment.


Viewed 18/06/08 at 9:27 (http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD000353/frame.html)


And there are alot more, see for yourself
http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/cochrane_search_fs.html?mode=startsearch&products=all&unitstatus=all&opt1=OR&Query2=&zones2=article-title&opt2=AND&Query3=&zones3=author&opt3=AND&Query4=&zones4=abstract&opt4=AND&Query5=&zones5=tables&FromYear=&ToYear=&Query1=Homeopathy&zones1=%28article-title%2Cabstract%2Ckeywords%29&submit_go.x=8&submit_go.y=7

Well, then there is another way to test it. Collect 1000 AIDS patients in India (They have plenty) - verify that they all have AIDS and then start the treatment program. Either they work or do not. If they work, then Bill Gates will be happy to cover millions in Africa rather sending the expensive medicine. If Bill Gates starts distributing Homeopathy...then that is the proof, it works. Since the government of India, South Africa shun Homeopathy - that means it is all hot air.....
Homeopathy is integrated in conventional medicine system in India. Here allopaths refer cases to homeopaths, and homeopaths referes to allopaths. Both works in conjugation

OK, but I don't understand "succession" - Please explain.

I want to know how succession differs from dilution, so here is a specific example to be clear (I am only guessing that "succession" has to do with the number of dilutions, not the amount of the dilution, and testing that idea with my two cases.)

Both case A & B start with 1gm of the agent. Then in:

Case A: 99gm of pure water is added to make a 1% concentration of the active agent.

but in Case B: 9gm of pure water is first added to make a 10% concentration of the active agent.

Then 1gm of this 10% concentration is added to 9gm of pure water to make a 1% concentration of the active agent.

Is the "succession" of the twice diluted case B greater? (Even though conventional chemistry can not tell any difference between these two 1% concentration of the active agent.) Is it twice stronger Homeopathic medicine?

If this is not the case, please give me an example similar to the one above so I can understand what you are talking about. Thank you.

PS: Note that the case B second step still has 9gm of the 10% concentration. So I could repeat the second step 9 times more to end up with 10 of the 10gm 1% concentration. Then divide each 10 times to have 100 separate 1gm units more powerful than the original 1 gm of agent. This could be repeated making each of these 100 into another 100 for 10,000 total etc. etc. If there is a limit on how much succession can be produced from the original 1gm of agent, can you explain how it arises?
I am glad that you wish to understand the basics of homeopathy, not just opposing homeopathy just for the sake of it as most skeptics do.

The simple fact that homeopathic medicines are not made using dilution alone. Dilution alone would do nothing whatsoever without SUCCUSSION. Succussion or vigorous shaking is conducted between each numerical potency, i.e. between a 1c and a 2c, a 2c and a 3c, etc.

The medicine is succussed 100 times between each numerical potency in order to bring out the formative intelligence of the substance, which is imprinted on the 60% distilled water/40% alcohol medium. Alcohol acts as a preservative.

Sorry but anecdotal evidence is not provable: I could sell anything be it tap water or a pill of sugar, and if people feel it works then so be it, that does not mean it actually works though, to see if it actually works required a statically valid experiment, preferably blind to any bias.

In short if we are testing to see if a drug works you need to get hundreds of patients, then we will listen, with just one patient all we have to go on either experimental results from previous studies or a educated guess or we could be like you and just give them a completely unproven therapy and hope for the best, my bets are that sugar pill would be equally effective.
Most medical, surgical procedures and drug usage are not backed by studies - only by anecdotal evidence. According to the US Government’s Office of Technology Assessment (Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment: Assessing the efficacy and safety of medical technologies. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1978), only 10-20% of all medical procedures and off-label drug usage are backed by clinical studies.

Strong anecdotal evidence among informed professionals is actually quite reliable - at least as reliable as clinical testing.

Many clinical tests come to diametrically opposed conclusions. You could say that the problem was discovered through anecdotal evidence - and merely confirmed through a peer reviewed study.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/peerReviewUnderTheSpotlight.php

The problem isn’t with the use of anecdotal evidence. It’s with the double standard applied by the establishment (medical and regulatory) that holds hcomplementary medicine to an absurdly higher standard, allowing medical doctors to do pretty much whatever they want. If informed anecdotal evidence is allowable for 85% of all medical procedure and drug usage, why is alternative health held to an impossible 0% standard?

Millions of people worldwide testify that homeopathy cures their illnesses yet apparently that cannot be construed as ‘evidence’.

If a person were to walk out of their house to the town centre and witness someone having their bag snatched or witness a car accident, then when they relay this information to the Police or to their friends and family, it is anecdotal evidence.

If someone go on holiday, stays at a nice hotel, eats delicious food, comes back home and relates the holiday to their friends, that is anecdotal evidence.

Does that mean that the above never happened? According to the detractors of complementary or alternative medicine, yes it does!

Millions of people have been cured of their diseases or afflictions using homeopathy, herbs, healing, vitamin supplements, special diets and on and on. Yet according to orthodox medicine all of these cures are anecdotal evidence and as such do not merit any further investigation, study, or validity. As far as orthodox medicine is concerned, these cures never happened.

Yet what if someone witnessed a car accident and the Police wanted them to make a statement? Would the statement in court be dismissed as anecdotal evidence? Would the police, even if they arrived at the scene of the accident to find the person still there comforting the passengers or trying to help, say they had not been there and their evidence is non existent? I don’t think so.

So how for so long have we put up with the top dogs in the medical establishment dismissing our cures as total nonsense, figments of our imagination, placebo cures, or outright lies?

How when millions are cured around the world using homeopathic medicines, can these cures be dismissed as unworthy of attention, simply ‘anecdotal evidence’.

Orthodox medicine implies through this that all cures with alternative medicine are untrue or simply imagined. Even when all the evidence is put before them, they become angry and even aggressive, simply refusing to see or to listen.

Yet pharmaceutical drugs cure nothing. They merely SUPPRESS the symptoms driving them deeper into the body of the patient.

Hence the eczema patient whose skin symptoms have been suppressed, goes on to develop asthma. The arthritic patient whose joint pains are suppressed, eventually will go on to develop heart disease.

The doctor makes no connection whatsoever that their drugs have created these deeper illnesses but just goes on to give the patient more and more powerful drugs, making the patient sicker still. Then when they die, they say, ‘We did everything we could’. Yes and you killed the patient!

After homeopathic treatment, careful analysis is taken of the Direction of Cure of the patient’s symptoms. Constance Hering was a converted skeptic of homeopathy. As a young man in Germany in the early nineteenth century, Hering had been assigned the task of reviewing Homeopathy because his medical mentor (a fervent anti-homeopath) had been asked by a publisher to write a book exposing homeopathy as unworthy. Having been given this task, Hering conducted a detailed study but concluded the opposite from the requested results!

source: http://drptandon.blogspot.com/

Homeopathy is integrated in conventional medicine system in India. Here allopaths refer cases to homeopaths, and homeopaths referes to allopaths. Both works in conjugation

Then why so much HIV/AIDS in India killing so many people?

In 2007, following the first survey of HIV among the general population, UNAIDS and NACO agreed on a new estimate – between 2 million and 3.6 million people living with HIV. This puts India behind South Africa and Nigeria in numbers living with HIV.20

Some AIDS activists are doubtful of the suggestion that the situation is improving, though:

“It is the reverse. All the NGOs I know have recorded increases in the number of people accepting help because of HIV. I am really worried that we are just burying our head in the sand over this.” - Anjali Gopalan, the Naz Foundation, Delhi

Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, stresses:

“the statement that India has the AIDS problem under control is not true. There is a decline in prevalence in some of the Southern states… In the rest of the county, there are no arguments to demonstrate that AIDS is under control”

Treatment for people living with HIV
HAART – a form of treatment involving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), which significantly delays the progression from HIV to AIDS – has been available in richer countries since 1996. Unfortunately, as in many poorer countries, access to this treatment is severely limited in India, with only about 95,000 people (less than 15% of those in need) receiving ARVs in India by the end of 2006. 44 Some people manage to access the drugs through private health facilities, which dominate India’s healthcare sector, but the vast majority of people cannot afford to buy treatment privately.

While the coverage of treatment remains unacceptably low, improvements are being made. The government has started to expand access to ARVs in a number of areas, and the national number of ARV centres increased from 25 to around 70 in 2005 alone. 45

In 2008, India’s National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) began to roll out government funded second-line antiretroviral treatment. Second line ARV’s are needed for people who’s HIV has become resistant to the effects of their medication, necessitating a change in their antiretroviral regime.

NACO’s initial one-year goal aims to provide second-line ART for the estimated 3,000 people in India who have become resistant to first-line drugs. Although welcome news, NGO and charity workers have voiced concern over the small target number, stating that this figure only represents a tiny percentage of those in need of the drugs.

“Time is of the essence to save these lives, and NACO’s announcement, although long-awaited, is short on urgency and on the scale required.” - Chinkhola Thangsing, M.D., Asia pacific Bureau Chief for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, based in New Delhi

There are also plans to improve the provision of nevirapine to pregnant mothers with HIV, which can significantly reduce the risk that they will pass infection on to their child. It has been reported that, even where treatment to prevent mother-to-child-transmission is available, some women do not request it because of the stigma surrounding HIV. 48

The large scale of India’s epidemic, the diversity of its spread, and the country’s lack of finances and resources all present barriers to India’s programme. Ironically, India is a major provider of cheap generic copies of ARVs to countries all over the world.

“It is a sad irony that India is one of the biggest producers of the drugs that have transformed the lives of people with AIDS in wealthy countries. But for millions of Indians, access to these medicines is a distant dream” - Joanne Csete, Director of the HIV/AIDS programme at Human Rights Watch

A bias study cherry picking data does not make for a accurate evaluation of the medical community.

Million of people claim jesus cured them of their illness as well, should that be consider proof of gods power?

If I was the claim I saw a unicorn, is that proof? Also I witness testimony is a different thing from theorizing the mechanism of a phenomena, if I wanted to understand why criminals steal I would need to survey them rather the just ask a single one.

If someone go on holiday, stays at a nice hotel, eats delicious food, comes back home and relates the holiday to their friends, that is anecdotal evidence.

Yes actually it is, if the conclusion is said hotel is great, then say the friend goes to the hotel and has the opposite experience, say the initial persons experience was simply pure luck of the day visiting. This is way a survey of many is always better evidence then the singular account of one.

If homeopathic medicine were to pass statistically relevant repeated double blind trials I would be all for it! As it stand extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, a medical practices that relies on completely unknown science, science which breaks or defines new laws of physics that have yet to be seen really requires a butt load of proof to be believed.

I can tell you millions more have been cured with conventional medicine then homeopathy. When Homeopathy shows a higher success rate in say curing cancer then conventional medicine I'll believe Homeopathy works.

Conventional medicine simply relies on trial and error, experiments and theory, and is constantly evolving (say for example the conventional medicine of 19th century is nothing compared to today, which is why reasonable people could question it back then), if Homeopathy were to prove valid conventional medicine would take it up in a flash (heck the pharmaceutical industry could make a killing making diluted homeopathic medicine verse the expensive process of finding and making drugs!)

EF notice he igored my post of some choraine studies into homopathic remidies:p

EF notice he igored my post of some choraine studies into homopathic remidies:p

One might even say he has become angry and even aggressive, simply refusing to see or to listen. :p

A bias study cherry picking data does not make for a accurate evaluation of the medical community.

I can tell you millions more have been cured with conventional medicine then homeopathy. When Homeopathy shows a higher success rate in say curing cancer then conventional medicine I'll believe Homeopathy works.

Conventional medicine simply relies on trial and error, experiments and theory, and is constantly evolving (say for example the conventional medicine of 19th century is nothing compared to today, which is why reasonable people could question it back then), if Homeopathy were to prove valid conventional medicine would take it up in a flash (heck the pharmaceutical industry could make a killing making diluted homeopathic medicine verse the expensive process of finding and making drugs!)

Even if I for the time being believe that Homeopathy has no evedince to prove (though which is not factually correct), I would day absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is the science as of now which has no propoer tools to evaluate homeopathy but that would not be the case forever.

I agree with you hat millions more have been cured by allopathy. This means millions less have been cured by homeopathy. Which is a great figure.

Nothing is 100% ideal/perfect. Even homeopathy is evolving.

still ignoring my post huh?:p

every question would be answered. You are so many in opposing homeopathy. And I am alone in its support in this forum. So have little patience.

i have to answer each one of you , not just one

EF notice he igored my post of some choraine studies into homopathic remidies:p

He is a She...: :D

ops:o
my apologies:o (why is there no blush emotocon:p)

And that is why She did not use abusive or foul language even though she is frustrurated...that is a clue....women are a little nicer...:D

did you tell sam that?:p
or sandy?:p

Sandy...? Fruitcakes not withstanding....a disclaimer?

Even if I for the time being believe that Homeopathy has no evedince to prove (though which is not factually correct), I would day absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is the science as of now which has no propoer tools to evaluate homeopathy but that would not be the case forever.

I agree with you hat millions more have been cured by allopathy. This means millions less have been cured by homeopathy. Which is a great figure.

Nothing is 100% ideal/perfect. Even homeopathy is evolving.

by the logic the absence of evidence for fairies must means there are fairies, rather fairies don't exist until proven otherwise. Yes yes get back to me when Homeapathy cures cancer at a rate better then conventional medicine, still waiting on the rabies challenge.

...The simple fact that homeopathic medicines are not made using dilution alone. Dilution alone would do nothing whatsoever without SUCCUSSION. I take it then even though you did not directly answer my specific questions that without any "shaking" between the two steps of "case B" the "homeopathic power" of both A & B cases' 1% concentrations would be the same. I also take it that "Succussion" = vigorous shaking done after each time the concentration is changed by dilution. Please confirm or correct.
...The medicine is succussed 100 times between each numerical potency in order to bring out the formative intelligence of the substance, which is imprinted on the 60% distilled water/40% alcohol medium.So both alcohol and water can store some information about what the active agent was, but alcohol less well. This is the homeopathic reply to people objecting that with enough dilution there might not even be one molecule of the agent remaining in the sample is it not? I.e. the effective ness of the agent is transfered to the water. Do homeopathic supporter have any model or idea how these two different liquids both store this information? I know a little bit about water that many do not. Namely it is much more complex than just a collection of H2O molecules and can agree that vigorous shaking CAN change the distribution of the molecules forming water, but unless it is "flash frozen" while the shaking is in progress I am nearly certain it will thermally relax back ito the same distribution of polymerized molecules it had before "succussed." I have no idea how it is possible for there to be any stored information remaining more than a second at room temperature. That is why I asked if homeopathic supporter have any mechanism in mind.

Here are a few words to help you (and others) understand water better:

Water is really xH2O where x is a distribution of small integers. This is because both the hydrogens are one the same side (separated by 105 degree) of the oxygen. Their electron spends much more time near the O than near the H, which are basically just positive proton "bumps" electrostatically bound to the now negative O ion.

Two H2O can thus easily join in a chain with the O ion of one "nesseled" between the two proton "bumps" of the other. In this case, x = 2. This x= 2chain can grow and x > 10 occurs until the water is very hot. The average value of x increases with cooling as the thermal collisons with sufficient energy to break the longer chains are less frequent. I.e. at low temperatures the average x of the distribution of x is larger. I am nearly sure "vigorous shaking" of (or passing very high frequency sound waves thur) water would change the distribution of x while this "non-thermal" energy source is available to break the longer (x >10) chains into two shorter ones. I.e. shift the distibution of x to that corresponding to a higher temperature than the true temperature. Once this non-thermal energy source is terminated, then in less than a second, the distribution of x would return to be than corresponding to the true temperature.

Below 4 degrees, the chains are so long that as they are jumbled together significant voids occur. These voids occupy an increasing percent of the volume of the container. So the water stops contracting with temperature and begins to expand as the temperature decreases below 4 C. I forget the correct value for the density of 0 degree water, but it is more than that of ice but less than that 4 degree C water. - Water's densest temperature - That is why the bottom of deep lakes that freeze over in winter have 4degree water on their bottoms all 12 months of the year. Lake Cayuga is such a deep lake and Cornell University now uses this bottom water for airconditioning of its buildings in summer. Nearly a century before that began, a small power company used that 4C water too instead of cooling towers. It was economical to haul the coal from Pennsivania to mid NY state and burn it there on the shore of Lake Cayuga as the efficiency is increase when 4 degree C is available instead of the 30 degree C air to dump the waste heat into even when much of the power generated was returned to PA via transmission lines.

billy can i take your argument a step further.

Take an iron injection (the treatment for anemia).

You think that by removing the iron that the water 'iron" (whatever you want to call it), would take its place in the heamoglobian and be as effective if not more so in the transfer of O2 and CO2?

And you think this is LOGICAL?

billy can i take your argument a step further.
Take an iron injection (the treatment for anemia).
You think that by removing the iron that the water 'iron" (whatever you want to call it), would take its place in the heamoglobian and be as effective if not more so in the transfer of O2 and CO2?
And you think this is LOGICAL?I am of the opinion that homeopathic medicine has no effect other than placebo effect. I understand the nature of water resonably well and can not imagine any way that it can store information for more than a second, if not provided with some additive or external energy source. I am, however, interested to learn if there is any intelligent supporter of Homeopathic medicine who has some ideas as to how my conclusions could posssibly be wrong.

that wasnt aimed at you my friend:p

It was aimed to take a specific example (using your post as a starting ground) and asking Dr. Nancy Malik to prove how her medication (water) would be more effective than using the westen treatment (iron) for treating a known condition rather than pudling around with principles:p

Recording on water? (go to 4:30 minutes) (http://www.broadcaster.com/clip/28677)

The fact that chemicals at microgram level has an effect on human body - i.e. they do interact with the body chemical processes could be the answer to homeopathy. However, "the shaking" business is a puzzle. Does the single active molecule suddenly collects additional electrons or sheds electrons - Billy may answer that. Or, like protein folds, does the active chemical, hypercin or whatever somehow fold with water molecules to do something....???

We need electron microscope to see what happens....

The fact that chemicals at microgram level has an effect on human body - i.e. they do interact with the body chemical processes could be the answer to homeopathy. However, "the shaking" business is a puzzle. Does the single active molecule suddenly collects additional electrons or sheds electrons - Billy may answer that. Or, like protein folds, does the active chemical, hypercin or whatever somehow fold with water molecules to do something....???

We need electron microscope to see what happens....Unles some Ionizing radiation has just passed thru the water, I think free electrons would be extremely rare < 10/cc.

H2O not only forms short chains of various length but can disassociate into positive protons, +, and hydroxyl radicals, -OH. If I remember correctly the pH of pure water is 7 where pH is the negative log of the hydrogen ion (proton) concentration. I think that 7 means that in pure water the percent that is protons is 10^-7. By logic and assuming that is correctly remembered, then when you add some thing to water that also liberates protons , for example H2SO4, the there will be more free protons. If 100 times more, then the concentration would climb top 10^-5 and the pH would be 5. (I can never remember if less than 7 is an acidic or a base, but working it out from the definition is easy and hopefully correct here.)

I assume that a few of the xH2O chains do tend to have a net positive charge, a proton, weakly bound on the "head of the chain." i.e. the leading O ion has an extra proton bound to it for a total of 3, on rare occasions.

Thanks for question about possible "folding of water." It provoked the following thoughts:

I do not know if it actually happens but if x is great enough, as water is polar (for reasons explained in my prior post) I would also suppose that there could briefly be bent chains that close on themselves to form very small loops or circles. Never have heard / read of this, but it does seem possible. As they would be self-stressed by the curvature there is probably a minimum x for this to be possible and they would break with collisions more easily that the open ended chain of the same x value, I would think.

If I were to search experimentally for evidence of these “tiny water donuts,” it would be in water at about 1 degree C or less. Perhaps a careful study of the scattering or absorption of sound would show a slight inflection in the value (of absorption or scattering coefficients) as a function of sound wave length nears a wavelength that resonates with the smallest possible closed loop? Also interesting to think about is possible enhancement of the “anti-stokes” line in laser scattering from water subject to strong sound waves with wave lengths in this region. Perhaps something resembling NMR (now called MRI, as the word “nuclear” in the original name, scared people) could be used to observe these tiny donuts. Perhaps even just very careful measurement of the AC dielectric constant as a function of frequency would show their effect. The nice thing about all of these attempts is the effect, if any is observed should weaken as the temperature is increased and these tiny donuts are destroyed by collisions.

I never though about these tiny water donuts before. I wonder if anyone has looked for them? Some one good at searching, please try.

I take it then even though you did not directly answer my specific questions that without any "shaking" between the two steps of "case B" the "homeopathic power" of both A & B cases' 1% concentrations would be the same. I also take it that "Succussion" = vigorous shaking done after each time the concentration is changed by dilution. Please confirm or correct.
So both alcohol and water can store some information about what the active agent was, but alcohol less well. This is the homeopathic reply to people objecting that with enough dilution there might not even be one molecule of the agent remaining in the sample is it not? I.e. the effective ness of the agent is transfered to the water. Do homeopathic supporter have any model or idea how these two different liquids both store this information? I know a little bit about water that many do not. Namely it is much more complex than just a collection of H2O molecules and can agree that vigorous shaking CAN change the distribution of the molecules forming water, but unless it is "flash frozen" while the shaking is in progress I am nearly certain it will thermally relax back ito the same distribution of polymerized molecules it had before "succussed." I have no idea how it is possible for there to be any stored information remaining more than a second at room temperature. That is why I asked if homeopathic supporter have any mechanism in mind.

Here are a few words to help you (and others) understand water better:

Water is really xH2O where x is a distribution of small integers. This is because both the hydrogens are one the same side (separated by 105 degree) of the oxygen. Their electron spends much more time near the O than near the H, which are basically just positive proton "bumps" electrostatically bound to the now negative O ion.

Two H2O can thus easily join in a chain with the O ion of one "nesseled" between the two proton "bumps" of the other. In this case, x = 2. This x= 2chain can grow and x > 10 occurs until the water is very hot. The average value of x increases with cooling as the thermal collisons with sufficient energy to break the longer chains are less frequent. I.e. at low temperatures the average x of the distribution of x is larger. I am nearly sure "vigorous shaking" of (or passing very high frequency sound waves thur) water would change the distribution of x while this "non-thermal" energy source is available to break the longer (x >10) chains into two shorter ones. I.e. shift the distibution of x to that corresponding to a higher temperature than the true temperature. Once this non-thermal energy source is terminated, then in less than a second, the distribution of x would return to be than corresponding to the true temperature.

Below 4 degrees, the chains are so long that as they are jumbled together significant voids occur. These voids occupy an increasing percent of the volume of the container. So the water stops contracting with temperature and begins to expand as the temperature decreases below 4 C. I forget the correct value for the density of 0 degree water, but it is more than that of ice but less than that 4 degree C water. - Water's densest temperature - That is why the bottom of deep lakes that freeze over in winter have 4degree water on their bottoms all 12 months of the year. Lake Cayuga is such a deep lake and Cornell University now uses this bottom water for airconditioning of its buildings in summer. Nearly a century before that began, a small power company used that 4C water too instead of cooling towers. It was economical to haul the coal from Pennsivania to mid NY state and burn it there on the shore of Lake Cayuga as the efficiency is increase when 4 degree C is available instead of the 30 degree C air to dump the waste heat into even when much of the power generated was returned to PA via transmission lines.
your view of succussion is right.

I don't know of alchol but water has memory and stores the knowledge. How water stores it, yo