Depending on whom you talk you will get one view or another about homeopathy and various myths about homeopathy. Generally speaking, people are polarised on whether homoeopathy works or doesn’t. This polarisation is reflected on the net, social media and in the press. The thing that puzzles me the most is that most ardent critics of homeopathy have never tried homeopathy or reviewed the ever increasing evidence for homeopathy. Moreover they deny the experience of millions of people around the world; as people of ‘science’ I find their closed mindedness baffling. Homeopathy is the second most widely used system of medicine around the world after allopathy. Does that mean all those people, world wide are deluded? From our experience, no. So, this blog post we discuss some of the common myths surrounding homeopathy and we give you a practitioner and users perspective.
Myth: Homeopathy Is Placebo
The definition of placebo is “a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient than for any physiological effect“. In other words, the patient needs to believe the ‘medicine‘ they have been given will work for them. Our repeated experience is that Homeopathy works consistently on both babies and animals, neither of which have any pre-conception about the medicine. We personally testify that it works with babies because in addition to clients, our own children have been raised with homeopathy and it works a treat; they even self prescribe these days 🙂 As for animals, I’ve treated a number of animals, the most recent being our bunny that no amount of (very expensive) drugs from the vet could improve.
Further, there are now hundreds of published clinical studies in peer-reviewed journals that show homeopathic remedies have an effect exceeding placebo. It’s interesting to note that more and more scientists and doctors are turning to homeopathy and these ‘turncoats’ are no fools. For more information have a look at Extraordinary Medicine. FYI I trained with a doctor, 2 nurses and a number of midwives. I now work with midwives who use homeopathy exclusively with newborns. A German trained nurse recently told me that in Germany nurses who are midwives are trained in the use of homeopathy for birth and post birth period in the hospital system.
Myth: Homeopathic treatments work slowly
The pace of the treatment depends on a number of factors including the condition being treated. With acute problems such as colds, flu, pain relief, headaches etc. outcomes can be achieved quickly. Chronic conditions may take longer but again, the pace of change is dependent on a number of variables including things like the individuals immune system and whether or not there are any ‘maintaining causes’. The critical part of any treatment is the right diagnosis, treating the right thing.
Being a homeopath is a bit like being a private detective. For those of you who ever watched the TV series House, remember how the team would go to the patient’s house to get to the bottom of what’s really going on? Homeopaths do that same kind of detective work too, we just do in in the consult – which is why our consults take longer than ‘normal’. Never underestimate the capacity of ‘little things’ or ‘normal things’ in your life to make a big difference to your health, we see it all the time.
Myth: Your cannot mix homeopathic medications with modern medications
One of the things I love about homeopathy is that homeopathic remedies can be used in combination with western medication and other forms treatment. In our practice, depending on the condition and the practitioner, we collaborate with other health practitioners. In my experience collaborating can obtain fantastic outcomes for the client. Homeopathy can be used to treat side effects of conventional medicine and or boost the immune system while taking conventional medicine.
Myth: Homeopathic treatments are for humans only
As we said earlier, homeopathic remedies are used on animals for all sort of issues – we just recently treated our rabbit for mites with fantastic results. Dairy farmers, horse breeders and many other farmers routinely use homeopathy to keep their animals healthy. And it’s not just ‘hippy types’ using homeopathy. Major corporations like Fonterra espouse the benefits of homeopathy; a company of that size is about profit first. Out of interest, I trained with a vet.
Myth: Homeopathic treatments for a certain disease works for all people
Outside of epidemics homeopaths treats every person differently. Therefore, a single remedy will not be used for the same disease or medical condition. The right remedy depends on the specific symptoms of a given patient. There are compound products available that deal with acute problems such as sleep, pain, etc.
Like most folks, we knew nothing about homeopathy until a paediatrician practising both homeopathy and allopathy introduced us to it. Because we’d never heard of it we had no pre-conceived ideas or prejudices about it. Because we saw it work from day one with our babies, we the confidence in it. Ironically, it wasn’t until I had studied homeopathy that we asked ourselves “How? How is this possible? Then we saw it work on clients too, so we stopped puzzling and just accepted that it does work. We realised that most of us do not really how most things work, we just accept it such as electricity, so why should this be any different? When we learned the medical profession does not know how many of the drugs they prescribe work, we realised we are not alone 🙂
Ok that does it for now as this article is about the most common myths on homeopathy. If we have not answered your question leave a comment or drop us line and we’ll happily discuss it to the best of our ability.