January 2009 Archives

Homeopathy is a scientific system of healthcare that activates the body's own healing processes in order to treat disease naturally, gently, and promptly. It is a natural pharmaceutical science that uses very small or infinitesimal doses of substances from the plant, mineral or animal kingdoms to activate the body's bio-energetic system to initiate the healing response.

Homeopathy does not treat disease, but the range of problems in which homeopathy can be effectively used is extensive and includes first aid, acute illnesses and all manner of chronic conditions.

The rising profile and discovery of homeopathy has produced somewhat of a dilemma and controversy for conventional medicine. If homeopathy is fraudulent, placebo or some sort of quackery, then millions of patients, including many heads of state and prominent members of royal families have fallen victim to the most successful medical hoax ever perpetrated.

The issue at hand is that homeopathic medicines can be diluted to such extremes that it can be shown physically, chemically, and mathematically that there is nothing in the final dose but water. Just as energy is invisible and mysterious, homeopathy allows for claims that there can be no measurable medicinal substance and therefore could be nothing more than placebo, and that homeopaths are both frauds and charlatans.

What is really happening is that the Western world is on the verge of developing and entirely new system of medicine. The remedies are non-toxic (they are tested on people not lab animals), they are easily manufactured and inexpensive compared to alternatives in conventional medicine.

During the past 200 years the growth of modern homeopathy has generated quite a stir in orthodox medicine known as allopathy (a system that treats with opposites rather than treating with like or similar substance). The allopathic approach is to establish the existence of a particular disease, clarifying its symptoms, and then testing the effectiveness of various medicines on it, by the use of opposites. Somewhat of a militaristic attitude to control, regulate or negate living systems and conditions. So in spite of homeopathy's patient acceptance and on going validating research, it has met with a great deal of opposition from mainstream science by being ridiculed, ignored and systematically suppressed; rather than being heralded as a new medical breakthrough to give better health for all. In essence, allopathic medicine embodies the law of opposites, homeopathic medicine the law of similars.

Potentization

The process known as potentization involves a sequence of progressive dilutions and a rhythmic shakings, termed succussion. In the normal case, 1 part of the source substance is added to 9 parts of water and shaken rhythmically. This is known as a 1x (decimal) dilution, or 1 part in 10. One part of this is then taken and added to another 9 parts of water, and again succussed, to give a 2x dilution, or 1 part in 100. Similarly, a 3x dilution is 1 part in 1000. These dilutions, also known as potencies, can be repeated a large number of times.

Hence, the low potencies have been diluted least, and may still contain detectable amounts of the source drug. But at 12c or 24x what is known as the Avogadro limit is reached, and at this concentration it is unlikely for even a single molecule of the original drug to be still present in one liter of the preparation. And the homeopaths maintain that, contrary to expectations, the power of the medicine increases as the potency increases. So there is very little doubt that many patients treated with high potencies receive nothing but water. And because of this fact it is this dilution of homeopathic medicines which has been the greatest obstacle to their more universal acceptance.

However, homeopathy has claim to significant results and many striking cures. The first and obvious response is to claim that the action in successful cases is purely placebo, and the medicine is useful only in the suggestible and the gullible. Not so, maintain the homeopaths, who claim cures on infants, animals, unconscious patients, those with infectious diseases, and those with deep seated chronic disorders are far from the categorization or realm of placebo. In addition, the clinical trials are impressive.

As history has shown, it would take an event of considerable magnitude to bring the medicine out into the open, and the European cholera epidemic of 1832 was just such an occasion. By the accounts of all observers, the homeopaths had a far higher recovery rate than the allopaths, and it is recounted that in Paris, the price of the homeopathic medicine for cholera increased 100-fold. In Russia (where it is said the epidemic originated), the report from the Consul General showed that of the 1,270 cases treated homeopathically, 1,162 recovered, and only 108 died, giving a mortality rate of less than 10 percent. By contrast, the mortality rate from allopathic treatment was 60 to 70 percent.

Allopathic medicine, with its emphasis on moderate drug doses, works in the inhibitory part of the scale. The result is seen in the typically inhibitory medicines produced: antihistamines, antibiotics, antacids, cough suppressants and so on, laying the basis for the so-called `suppressant' effect of drugs.

Homeopathic medicine, on the other hand, begins at the stimulatory end of the curve, and moves to the left, into the smaller and smaller dose ranges. Its emphasis is on the stimulation of the body's natural balancing mechanisms, as seen in its philosophy of the natural regeneration of the body through rebuilding of vitality, a concept also in close agreement with naturopathic thought.

How does homeopathy work?

In the development of a workable model, the research thinking has gone something like this: Given that the medicine is effective even when it can be shown that there is no likelihood of any molecules left in a particular dose (due to dilution), then the effect of the dose must lie within the water molecules themselves, since that is all that is left or detectable. Water itself can be assumed to have no effect in this case, since the dose is small, and the effect would always be the same. The answer must lie within the water molecules themselves, and the only real possibility is in the type of energy that the molecule has stored.

Energy storage within molecules in biological systems lies within the realm of biophysics rather than biochemistry. Biophysics is a new field, having become established only within the last twenty years or so. It is not yet included in medical curricula in universities to any great extent, and is only now beginning to make its mark in the biological sciences. Small wonder, therefore, that the established medical world knows little of its existence, or the promise it holds in explaining the action of the medicines of energy, such as homeopathy, acupuncture, psychic and spirit healing, and radionics.

Energy Storage In Molecules

Molecules such as water can store energy in four different ways - kinetic, spin, vibration and electronic excitation. Some storage modes can store more energy than others.

Standing midway between the cooking power of microwave (spin energy) and the destructive power of lasers (electronic energy) stands vibratory energy. Although it has an accepted place in physics as a means of storing energy, it has had a checkered career in medical science because of its association with trance mediums, psychic phenomena and extrasensory perception. Vibratory energy can be found in molecules throughout all three states of matter - solid, liquid and gas. It is responsible for phenomena such as the expansion of metals when heated, and the transfer of heat by conduction. Vibratory motion of a molecule increases when the molecule absorbs energy, and can re-radiate it at a later date, usually in the infrared part of the spectrum, where heat is also found.

It is in the storage of vibratory energy in water molecules during the succussion process that homeopathic medicine places much of its focus for a scientific explanation of its action. It is proposed that during the collision process, vibratory energy is exchanged between the source drug and the water, and that the water is left with a vibratory imprint of the drug. Further succussion makes the imprint deeper, which explains why the medicines are regarded as acting more strongly as the dilution increases. Furthermore it is not just energy which is being stored, but information, differing from one remedy to another depending on the source substance used, with every substance leaving a different vibratory signature in the water molecule. In this way homeopathic medicine is seen as carrying information into the body when it is taken in dose form, perhaps as biological instructions. So a convenient way of telling if this particular model was correct was to examine homeopathic water for structural changes.

A number of workers over the years have shown that both high and low potency homeopathic medicines show structural changes in the water they contain. It was additionally shown that in order for the structural changes to occur, two things must happen. First, there must be a source drug to begin with; that is, you can't make a homeopathic medicine from water alone. Secondly, you must succuss the remedy as it is diluted stepwise, in the rhythmic shaking manner used by the homeopaths for many years. Only when these two processes are included will structural changes show.