Why is homeopathy working?

You will hardly meet a person who has never heard about homeopathy. Many people have even had a chance of getting a homeopathic treatment, whereas there are also real devotees of this approach who claim this is the best alternative to the traditional medicine.

Certainly, the traditional medicine is not perfect. The modern pharmacy is a great and highly profitable industry. Needless to say, the owners of drug companies have great chances for increasing their wealth since people will always need medicines. No matter how bad is the financial condition of an individual, purchasing a drug will always be a priority for him or her.

How is homeopathy working?

First, let’s look at whether homeopathy is really efficient. It is crucial to understand the technology of producing homeopathic remedies which is not a secret to anyone. This technology is well-known to everyone and it is described by doctors using homeopathy themselves. That is why you should not think it is just some propaganda of drug companies which are suffering from intense rivalry from the side of homeopathic practitioners.

For the production of a homeopathic drug, one needs an active substance which makes it similar to traditional medicine. There are many differences as well though.

First of all, the substance is taken after considering symptoms of the malaise, however, a practitioner is not trying to identify the illness based on these symptoms. The practitioner is just trying to find a substance which will cause similar symptoms in the body. That is so because of the two basic rules of homeopathy. The first one is that similar things are treated by similar things. The other one is that a person should be treated rather than an illness.

The active substance is taken in extremely small amounts which is another crucial rule of homeopathy. One of the most popular ratio of an active substance to the solvent which is usually water is one to a million. You can imagine that the amount of this substance in the medicine is almost indistinguishable. According to homeopaths, the homeopathic dilution which is achieved after vigorous shaking of the container with the mixture is making the substance highly potent due to the water memory which absorbs the information from the active substance. That is the mechanism of preparation of homeopathic medicines.

It is obvious, truly homeopathic drugs cannot work. Still, you can meet many people who will tell you homeopathy is actually very helpful and it has helped them a lot. Even if you do not believe your friends and acquaintances, you yourself might have a chance to get rid of some illnesses after using homeopathic medicines. So, does it mean homeopathy is really working?

Homeopathic drugs are not the same as herbal medicine

There are several factors making homeopathy work. One of them is misleading consumers with a promise of a natural remedy. If you come to a drugstore selling homeopathic medicines if such are officially allowed in your country, quite often you can find them on the shelves with natural medicines especially for herbal medicine. Even though herbal medicine is not the same as traditional medicine, it is really an efficient medical approach. After all, a great amount of active substances used in traditional drugs in their concentrated forms can be extracted from plants. Unfortunately, such mixing make people believe they are taking a homeopathic drug even when it is a substance used for herbal medicine.

The placebo effect is very powerful

Another crucial reason why homeopathic drugs seem to be working is undeniably a placebo effect which is a way stronger than many of us believe. Being confident about taking a helpful drug is making any treatment more potent. At the same time, people with a pessimistic approach can trigger the opposite effect called nocebo. This can make them not only be unresponsive to a highly efficient treatment but also to develop all sorts of side effects including the rarest ones.

The placebo effect is not fantastic. It was proved to be real a long time again. That is why it is widely used as a bases for trials of new medicines and therapies in which the results of new products and procedures are compared to the ones created by the placebo effect.

Consider the illnesses treated with homeopathy

Finally, you should be aware of the fact that the majority of homeopathic drugs are used for treating minor ailments. Even many representatives of the adapts of this approach among doctors will tell you homeopathy is not used for treating more advanced health conditions, for example cancer. You might think this is logical because each medical condition requires a certain medicine and the one used for treating cold will not be suitable for a fungous infection of the nails on your toes. If no homeopathic drugs have been created for treating cancer yet does not mean its medicines are useless for treating a cold.

Certainly, there is a strong logic in this idea. Yet, you should understand that the conditions treated by homeopathic products can be resolved on their own in many people. In fact, many individuals do not even react to these problems in the first place and just find themselves healthy in some time. What it means, the conditions for which homeopathy seems to be effective can leave you without any external help unless the immune system is not too compromised.