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What is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy is a holistic system that, unlike conventional medicine, stimulates the body's natural self-healing mechanism by treating the cause, not just the symptoms.

What is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy s a holistic system of medicine that is fundamentally different from conventional medicine. While conventional therapies often focus on treating symptoms — often through the repeated use of pharmaceutical drugs that can cause side effects — homeopathy aims to nurture people's own self-healing mechanisms, treating the cause, not just the symptoms.

Do not confuse it with folk remedies.

Although the term homeopathy may sound like it refers to “home remedies,” it does not include folk remedies, vitamins, supplements, or herbs. The name comes from the Greek words “homeo” (similar) and “pathos” (pain/disease), meaning “similar disease.” It refers to the basic principle of homeopathy — the Law of Similars — which states that a substance that can cause certain symptoms in a healthy person can be used in very small doses to cure those same symptoms in a sick person.

Origin of Homeopathy

Homeopathy developed in the late 18th century thanks to Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician who had become disillusioned with the aggressive and often ineffective medical treatments of his day. During his research, he discovered that diluted substances could induce healing if they were selected based on their ability to cause similar symptoms—a discovery that led him to formulate the Law of Similars.

Scientific evidence and studies

Ear inflammation (otitis) study

A study on the treatment of ear inflammation (otitis) was conducted in India, which showed that homeopathy is more effective than allopathic treatment.
(Sinha MN, et al. Randomized controlled pilot study to compare Homeopathy and Conventional therapy in Acute Otitis Media. Homeopathy 2012 Jan;101(1):5–12).

The study involved 81 children, who were randomly assigned to a homeopathic treatment group and a conventional treatment group. The study was “blinded” — neither the parents nor the researchers knew which child belonged to which group.

Conventional treatment consisted of the use of anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and fever-reducing medications for three days, after which antibiotics were administered if the child did not show at least 50% improvement.
Homeopathic treatment used LM potencies.

As Johnson writes:
“All children had their eardrums examined by an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist—at study entry, and on days 3, 7, 10, and 21—and were scored on an ENT examination scale. Parents also provided ratings of their children’s symptoms on these dates. The inclusion of an ENT specialist who visually assessed the eardrum without knowing which treatment the child was receiving provided a rigorous and objective measure of outcome, ranking the study’s quality among the highest in clinical research.”

At study entry, the two groups had almost identical scores on all twelve parameters assessed, meaning they were perfectly matched for comparison.
“Cure” was defined as a score of 0 on all assessment scales.

By day 3, the difference in results in favor of the homeopathic group was statistically highly significant, with a probability of less than 1 in 1000 that the results had occurred by chance.

  • All children in both groups were cured by day 21.
  • 4 children in the homeopathic group were cured by day 3, compared to only 1 in the conventional group
  • By day 3, the total symptom score had decreased from 14.2 to 8.2 (a 6-point reduction) in the homeopathic group, and from 14.5 to 12.5 (a 2-point reduction) in the conventional group.
  • 39 out of 40 children in the conventional group received antibiotics
  • 0 of 38 children in the homeopathic group received an antibiotic
  • By day 3, the difference in results in favor of the homeopathic group was statistically highly significant, with a probability of less than 1 in 1000 that the results had occurred by chance.

Additional studies on the efficacy of homeopathy

All of the following studies have been published in reputable scientific journals and indexed in PubMed — the NIH's database of medical literature:

  • In 1997, the journal The Lancet published a meta-analysis of 89 clinical studies, of which 44 showed that homeopathy was significantly more effective than placebo.
    link: http://goo.gl/Npx5B
  • A randomized, double-blind study at a public medical school in Brazil compared homeopathy with Prozac (Fluoxetine) for moderate to severe depression. Homeopathic treatment was as effective, and in fact slightly more effective, without statistical significance. Notably, Prozac patients reported more side effects.
    link: http://goo.gl/6LDql
  • In 2007, a German prospective study published in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that a certain homeopathic product was as effective, and even slightly more effective, than Ativan (Lorazepam) for treating nervous disorders such as insomnia, anxiety, tension, and burnout.
    link: http://goo.gl/BJwqe
  • Additional study on otitis media (ear infection) is available here:
    link: http://www.sandiegohomeopathy.com/downloads/Otitis.pdf

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