Life with Chronic Conditions: Homeopathy

Recently we’ve been looking at alternative and complementary medicines. Today’s post focuses on homeopathy.

 

History of Homeopathy: Founded by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 1700s. Hahnemann believed that if a patient had an illness, it could be cured by giving a medicine which, if given to a healthy person, would produce similar symptoms of that same illness but to a slighter degree. Thus, if a patient was suffering from severe nausea, he was given a medicine which in a healthy person would provoke mild nausea. By a process he called ‘proving’, Hahnemann claimed to be able to compile a selection of appropriate remedies. This led to his famous aphorism, ‘like cures like’, which is often called the ‘principle of similars’; and he cited Jenner's use of cowpox vaccination to prevent smallpox as an example…. Hahnemann claimed that homeopathy could cure all or virtually all diseases, his followers modified these claims in the hope of becoming accepted by orthodox medical practitioners. A Brief History of Homeopathy

 

Homeopathic products come from plants, minerals or animals (such as crushed whole bees). Homeopathic products are often made as sugar pellets to be placed under the tongue; they may also be in other forms, such as ointments, gels, drops, creams, and tablets. Treatments are “individualized” or tailored to each person—it’s common for different people with the same condition to receive different treatments. Homeopathy uses a different diagnostic system for assigning treatments to individuals and recognizes clinical patterns of signs and symptoms that are different from those of conventional medicine. National Institute of Complementary and Integrative Medicine.

 

What the Research Says: Some homeopathic practitioners argue that carrying out randomized controlled trials is an appropriate activity for orthodox medicine but inappropriate for homeopathy, where effectiveness should only be judged by patient satisfaction. That noted, in 2015, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council concluded,  after a comprehensive assessment of 1,800 papers,  that there is no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective for any health condition.

 

A 2010 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy 

concluded that homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos and England’s National Health System (NHS) will no longer fund homeopathy

 

There are no FDA approved products labeled as homeopathic. While products labeled as homeopathic are generally labeled as highly diluted, some of these products have been found to contain measurable amounts of active ingredients and therefore could cause significant patient harm. Additionally, FDA has tested products that were improperly manufactured, which can cause incorrect dilutions and increase the potential for contamination. Further, some products labeled as homeopathic are marketed to treat serious diseases or conditions. See a list of products that the FDA is concerned about.

 

Why do some people swear by homeopathy? While many scientist chalk up homeopathy success stories to the “placebo effect”- believing a treatment will work-ultimately it may be more about the consultation than the pills.

 

One of the tenants of homeopathy is the practitioner spends quite a bit of time with the patient-at least an hour and can extend to two or three hours.  They will be checking for not only physical health but also mental, emotional, complaints, what makes symptoms better or worse, sleep patterns etc. Consequently, homeopaths may offer a variety of ways to deal with symptoms that have nothing to do with the pill but everything from a good consultation. In fact research supports that it’s the consultation and not the remedy that yields positive results. Homeopathy has clinical benefits in rheumatoid arthritis patients that are attributable to the consultation process but not the homeopathic remedy: a randomized controlled clinical trial. 

 

Does insurance cover homeopathy? Most insurance carriers do not cover homeopathy. A report in US News in 2020 states that only 11% of the major insurers cover it.

 

If you want to try homeopathy: Before trying anything new, discuss it with your medical provider.