lmao, what part of that was foreign?

I think (s)he is discussing a previous comment of h(er/i)s but can't comprehend the reply system.

Many traditional herbal medicines do work. However, "homeopathic remedies" are just water messed about with on the basis of something made up on the spot by an 18th century German nutter. There is no less superstition in homeopathy than healing crystals and neither "work" any better than placebo.

No, they do not work. You are spending money on WATER. Here, let me explain it to you in simple words. A homeopathic remedy is more expensive the more diluted it is. The most expensive ones have a good chance of being nothing but water. There may be one or two MOLECULES of whatever was added to the water. ONE or TWO. Go learn some science.

a chocolate teapot!!!! where have I been all these years????

Homeopathic remedies stimulate the body's natural defense mechanisms. They don't actually heal a person by themselves. It only takes a small amount. Its true that they are too expensive, but that's not to say that they don't work. They also have healnig effects when used on small children and animals, which are not usually affected by the placebo effect.

45* - if you have ever cuddled a kid with a grazed knee you should be in little doubt that the placebo effect works in children. A homeopathic remedy more "active" (i.e. dilute) than about C12 more likely than not contains not a single molecule of the original substance. By the time you get to C30 (which I believe is typical) there will not even be one molecule of water that was present when there was one molecule of the original substance left. Homeopathy is fantasy. *Edit - 41 or 45? - not sure about the numbering... gisellless, anyway..

I uses to work at vitamin shoppe and it was so hard to sell the homeopathics because how do you explain "the more expensive it is the more diluted it is" ....*facepalm*

Scientific arguments aside, theres nothing wrong with homeopathic remedies or healing crystals. Even the placebo affect is beneficial(assuming thats all she really gets from it), plus the crystals look really nice and make tasteful decorative pieces. Now if she just went out and spent 500$ on "crystals" that are really just prettied up glass, then FYL indeed.

So, when people point out that homeopathy physically cannot work the way it's claimed to, you just retroactively change the claims? Nice. Good old goalpost-moving. At any rate, since you're making an appeal to evidence, let me ask one thing. I won't even ask for a source for these studies you're citing. You don't even have to find me the original references or tell me what journal published the findings or what group handled the peer review. Just tell me what the control group was in these trials. Because something tells me this went like so: Experimenter: "Do you feel better?" Little kid: "Yep." Experimenter: "Success!" Other experimenter: "But how do we know it isn't a placebo effect?" Experimenter: "Because little kids aren't subject to placebo effects!" Other experimenter: "But how do we know they aren't subject to placebo effects?" Experimenter: "Through experiments!" Other experimenter: "And who were the control groups in THOSE experiments?" Experimenter: "There were none! Little kids aren't subject to placebo effects!" Other experimenter: "I quit."

Homeopathic remedies do work and not just because of the placebo affect. a lot of them are just harking back to age old ingreadients in medicine like zinc so that the side effects are lessened.

It's scientific proven homeopathic remedies do NOT work. SCIENTIFIC PROVEN. It's very difficult to talk about science in a strange language, so I will leave it to the experts on here. But it certainly does not work, besides of the Placebo-effect, ofcourse.

I'm alive because of a homeopathic treatment. After getting an infection at 10 days old and my mother trying several weeks of harsh antibiotics, she tried homeopathy and I was cured within a few days. Suck on that, conventional medicine!

101 - No, you're wrong. How ******* hard is it to understand that an extremely diluted "solution" would be practically drinking filtered water? It's superstitious nonsense at best, and can cause harm through non-treatment of the symptoms at worst.

you're a moron, my mom is a homeopathic doctor and she has fixed countless problems that Ive had with her remedies. and countless severe problems that my friends have had. when you know what you're doing and you give the person the right remedy it absolutely works, but if you know nothing about it and take random pills then yea no shit it won't do anything

Thank you, 111 Where do these people come from? And where do they get these ideas? haha They probably went to those schools that teach religion and call it science.. I'm extremely frightened for our futures....

Actual homeopathy is solf in small, white, circular pills. You dilute it yourself with your own water. If they sell it already diluted they're selling you a certain dose of homeopathy.

It's nonsense. Look up the homeopathic mass suicide to see just how effect homeopathy is. If you dilute something, it gets weaker, not stronger. Try it yourself with coffee or tea or Kool-Aid. The more water you add, the weaker it gets. This is a very simple premise. If homeopathy worked, the drug companies would be all over it. Just think how much their profit margins would increase if they didn't have to use actual drugs for most of the manufacturing process.

105, no I'm wrong? I merely mentioned the events that occurred and stated that homeopathic medicine worked where conventional medicine failed for me. I do not make any claims beyond that I know of, unlike your words, "docscientist".

More accurately, homeopathic "medicine" SEEMED to work. There's no evidence to indicate that this wasn't merely a delayed result of real medical treatments. It's also anecdotal.

133 - Think about the process of homeopathy, then think about how that could possibly work other than being anything beyond magical thinking. There is absolutely no reason why anyone should or ever will consider homeopathy as a serious scientific question to be investigated. Being on antibiotics for weeks, then taking a homeopathic remedy proves nothing about it working. It may appear to work, but it wasn't because of the "remedy."

138 you're an idiot. Explain to me how "magical thinking" has solved my problems when I don't touch a single antibiotic or conventional drugstore medicine, yeah that broken arm must have just healed itself 5x faster than with "serious scientific medicine" just because of my magical thoughts and to you who said that drug companies would be all over homeopathy if it worked, you also need to open your eyes. if homeopathy worked no one would need the conventional drugs and antibiotic crap, cuz all that does is fix a problem and eventually cause another through the endless stream of side effects. that's how the business stays alive, and the reason why the drug industry is so huge. homeopathic medicine doesnt have side effects. I'm just 19 and I've been around homeopathy for almost my whole life, I wish more people had that benefit so they wouldn't be so close-minded

Agreed. Ignorance of the worst sort.

You're right, homeopathy doesn't have any side effects. That's because it doesn't have any effect at all.

Your explanation sounds like the description of a vaccine. Unfortunately most vaccines don't need to be diluted in the way you described, and most vaccines are tested, proven to work, and then administered by a doctor. On second thought, they're nothing alike.

I had a bad stomach infection once. I happened to get out of bed with my right foot first one day. A few days later I was cured. This is 100% as logically substantiated as your claim. Do you think it's true? EDIT: Comment placement makes it more unclear than I'd expected just who I'm replying to! Ack!

Okay, I decided to register just because I'm tired of seeing all the comments misrepresenting homeopathy. Generally, these can be broken down into two categories. First are people who don't really know what homeopathy is. They've never looked into it in depth, and think of it as some natural/herbal medicine. They might have even tried it, and noticed an improvement in their symptoms. Second are those who have a deep misapprehension of how it works, generally because they don't understand basic science, particularly the scientific method. Statements like 'I tried a homeopathic remedy, and it worked for me' do not constitute evidence. They are just anecdotes, just stories. What really galls me is when people use evidence-based medicine (Daralea, I'm looking at you with your 'several weeks of harsh antibiotics'), and couple it with some woo (homeopathy, prayer, faith-healing, etc), then give credit to the woo. Not only is it ignorant in the extreme, but it is a slap in the face to the doctors and researchers who actually contribute to making people better. For those who don't know how homeopathy works, it is based on two principles. The first is 'like cures like'. In other words, if someone has a fever, the appropriate treatment is something that causes a fever. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? But wait, it gets better. The second principle of homeopathy is that diluting a remedy makes it stronger. A dilution labelled '1C' is a 1:100 ratio, ie 1 part of the original mixed with 99 parts pure (as pure as possible, anyways) water. A 2C dilution is made by taking a 1C preparation, and diluting it again by a factor of 100, so it is a 1:10000 ratio. Can you see where I'm going with this? A 13C dilution is a 1:100000000000000000000000000 ratio. At this point, you are unlikely to have a single molecule of the active ingredient. It is like diluting a third of a drop of the original into ALL THE WATER ON THE PLANET. It's kind of mind-blowing, right? Now remember that many dilutions are even higher, like 15C or even 30C. Also remember that there are two dilution scales for homeopathy; the X (also called D) scale dilutes by a factor of ten each step, rather than 100. This means a 13C dilution is the same as a 26X/26D one. Now, to understand why such dilutions will likely have no active ingredient, I'm going to give an analogy. You know those ball pits they have at places like Chuck E. Cheese's? Each of those balls represents a molecule. Now, imagine the pit has 9900 blue balls (representing water), and 100 red balls (representing some active ingredient). This would be a 1C dilution. Now, we dilute it by a factor of 100 again. We do this by removing 99% of the total balls (probability dictates this should be 9801 blue balls, and 99 red balls), then adding back in 9900 blue balls. We're left with 9999 blue balls, and a single red ball. Now, at the next dilution, we cannot divide the red ball; we can't just leave one-hundredth of the red ball in the ball pit. We either remove it or we don't. If we remove it, then the pit is 10000 blue balls, and if we leave it, we have 9999 blue and a single red, as before. Here's the catch, though: at each dilution, we have a 99% chance (90% chance if we were doing dilutions by a factor of ten instead) of removing it. Now, with an actual homeopathic remedy, the 'critical point' where you're unlikely to have any active ingredient left is a much higher dilution; this is because there are a hell of a lot more molecules in your test tube than there are balls in the ball pit. However, the principle is the same: when you're left with only one (or a few) active ingredient molecules, and subsequently dilute, the chances that any of them are left is vanishingly small. Homeopaths then take this 'remedy' and put it in a bottle, or in pill form, or what have you, and charge a fortune for it. Now, Daralea, what makes more sense: a) your immune system finally fought off an infection with the help of weeks of 'harsh antibiotics', or b) you were magically cured by pure water/sugar pills/etc? For what it's worth, I have an anecdote too. My friend and I were discussing homeopathy one time, and he said that when he was young, his mom would give him those 'remedies' when he was sick. It didn't work for him. If anecdotes count, then mine refutes yours. Back on topic: I think you partially deserved it for marrying a nut- surely you saw the signs before putting a ring on her finger..? If you have any kids, be sure to take them to real doctors when they get sick. If you let your wife run the show, at least in her current mindset, they might be denied effective treatment until it's too late. I'd also recommend educating her, but try to do it in as non-confrontational a way as possible for the best results.

Sorry, but what does that mean?

The original post is sometimes changed and made more clear, so when you have already made a comment on the awkwardness of the statement it usually gets a bunch of 'thumbs down' for your stupidity.