My dad has done MSc in Analytical Chemistry he is well educated and a wise man, Me/My Family and Even some doctors cannot debunk his trust on Homeopathy
I want some clever and factual explanations which I will forward to him
Thanks in advance
In: Biology
There is actually several natural remedies and alternative medicine practices which have been proven to work. But at that point it is no longer alternative medicine as it is just normal medicine. Homeopathy on the other hand is have not been proven to work in any fair experiment. It does have some placebo effect but so does pure water if you tell the patient that it works.
As to why people beleave in homeopathy and other alternative medicine this is a big field within psychology. Repetition makes things true. A lot of people will consider alternative treatments in additional to the tranditional proven treatments as a way to ensure that at least one of the methods will heal them. This is especially true when doctors are struggling to diagnose the issue and therefore can not issue effective treatment or when the treatment does not appear to be effective. Repetition makes things true. It is much faster and eaiser to get alternative treatments then traditional treatments. And alternative medicine often invokes a stronger and faster placebo effect. The repeating concrete claims from the alternative medicine industry reinforces this as repetition makes things true. This is very similar to the techiques used to brainwash people and make them dillusional. If you look at cult leders they will often repeat their statements because repetition makes things true in the minds of their listeners.
Homeopathy is the idea that:
(1) The more you DILUTE a drug, the STRONGER it gets. So many of the most powerful remedies are so diluted there are literally ZERO MOLECULES of the original drug. Homeopathy says that the “water remembers the drug” as such.
(2) Law of similars – if you are vomiting, give a medicine that makes you vomit. Two things cannot make you vomit at the same time, so the medicine will knock out the first thing.
So, it’s crazy, no way that would work. As for your dad, based on your broken English, paternal advanced degree and homeopathy interest — I’m guessing you’re Indian? Indian homeopathy, I don’t know a lot about it other than 99% of them love homeopathy. Seems more a cultural thing than medical . Anyone who has an advanced degree over there also does a bit of homeopathy too. I also don’t know if their “homeopathy” is the same as American homeopathy (above).
Folks who believe in homeopathy – it’s a religion more than a science.
Once someone who is inclined towards religious beliefs adopts them it’s phenomenally difficult to persuade them of anything else. You’re not dealing with the brain’s logic centers, this is running full steam on emotion and fear responses. Past a point their reaction to evidence contrary to their beliefs is almost always to reject the evidence and double down on their belief
Does it work: No. Unreservedly no.
Does it make people THINK that its working: Sometimes. People take a placebo and feel better. Its like when you get home from a long car trip and finally relax. No real difference between sitting in a car seat or your couch, but your couch just FEELS better.
The real issue here: Greedy bastards. The Companies that make this crap know it doesn’t work. The stores that sell this crap know it doesn’t work. The people who market it know it doesn’t work. All of these people who profit from someone buying a bottle of this stuff are immoral, greedy, dirty, bastards and are being enriched by people who think “well maybe?” No, not maybe, they know not maybe, and they use the money they get to try and convince more and more people to forgo effective medical treatments in favor of their bullshit.
It is horrifically immoral conduct on the party of companies that sell this crap. Its burn in hell level immoral.
Reasons homeopathy doesn’t work:
It’s literally just water. A 30C dilution for example means that whatever was originally in the water has been volumetrically diluted 30 times in sequence, leading to a reduction in concentration of 10^30 times what it originally was. This means that there won’t even be a single molecule of anything but water in the final product. There are only about 10^20^24 water molecules in a cup of water for reference. How can something possibly have an effect on your body, if you aren’t even ingesting any molecules of it.
Reasons people think it works:
1. Return to the mean: People generally use homeopathy for mild ailments that will get better of their own accord. People will often take a homeopathic remedy, and find themselves getting better. They would have got better anyway, but they attribute it to the homeopathy rather than the body’s natural immune system.
2. Placebo effect: Pretty self explanatory, it’s been demonstrated in countless studies that if somebody thinks they are taking something which will have an effect, they will get an effect from it purely due to psychological reasons. Combine the placebo effect with marketing, and the fact that they spent money on it, so ‘want’ it to work, and the placebo effect can actually be very powerful.
3. Upbringing and culture: People who have been brought up to believe that something like homeopathy works are much more likely to unquestioningly believe it as it has been imprinted on their mind as a fact from a young age when they were forming their worldview. Belief in homeopathy is very common in places like India, China, and Eastern Europe.
4. Homeopathy is often grouped with other forms of traditional medicine, that although may not be proven to work to the standard that we require for modern medicine, it does often have an effect. A good example of this is herbal medicine. If someone has taken herbal medicine and have felt it have an effect previously, they may group homeopathic medicine together with this in their mind, and expect it to have an effect.
There are some “natural” remedies proven to work for different things… there’s been a lot of studies on coffee, peppermint and lavender essential oils and weed.
However, Homeopathy lives in the realm of anecdotal evidence. Typically someone will get a following to try their celery juice (as an example) by saying “it worked for me” and that’s enough.
interestingly enough when you get into homeopathic therapy someone who’s convinced people but not good at lying to them long term will end up saying something like “it’s not medicine, it won’t work immediately. It just doesn’t have the bad stuff that medicine has” but then they struggle to actually explain the bad stuff in medicine and lean on the big pharma arguement.
It’s used as a placebo so it does have positive effects on some person. For the majority though it’s a waste of money and time but people usually don’t know they don’t have medical benefits so you cannot really blame them
Here’s what homeopathy says:
* Take some Thing. Dissolve it in water so it’s 99% water, 1% Thing.
* Bang on the container. Homeopathy says that this teaches the water to be like the Thing.
* Dilute it again so that it’s now 99.9% water, 0.1% Thing.
* Bang on the container again.
* Dilute it again so that it’s 99.99% water, 0.01% Thing.
* Bang on the container again.
* Dilute is again so that it’s 99.999% water, 0.001% Thing.
* Bang on the container again.
* Repeat, repeat, repeat until you have 99.999999999% water and 0.000000001% Thing. You’ve now made a “10C” homeopathic product, and homeopathy says that this makes the Thing much stronger than it was to begin with, and all the water has learned to be just like the Thing.
Now find someone who thinks that *any part of that* makes sense, and sell them your 99.999999999% water at a super-premium price.
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