Homeopathy for babies: why it doesn't work

A year ago they came to the Primary Care Center where I worked as a nurse a representative of the Boiron laboratories, leader in the manufacture of homeopathic medicines, and a primary care pediatrician who explained that he had been working with homeopathy for a while, saying names Very rare with dosages impossible to memorize and telling us how thanks to homeopathy a girl with multiple bronchitis had stopped suffering from them and other cases that left us quite perplexed.

The fact that a pediatrician used homeopathy made us think that it could be a good option, although I confess that it was disconcerting to know that homeopathy has no side effects and that a baby or a child could take an entire preparation without getting intoxicated. Disconcerting because as health professionals we could not understand that something would cure without being toxic if it was taken in excess and because we wondered how it is possible for a substance to cure and have no side effects and that traditional medicine, full of chemistry, does not adopt such substance or Work based on the same healing systems.

Well, months later I wanted to know the answers to these questions and after researching a bit and looking for scientific studies that support homeopathy or show that it works beyond the placebo effect I have finally reached a conclusion that distresses me: Homeopathy does not work with children or adults and, in fact, will never work.

It makes me sad

I confess, despite the doubts I left that session relatively excited about homeopathy. Imagine a lot of medications without side effects that cure a lot of things and that also seem not to have behind the big pharmaceutical companies that so many rare things have done to obtain numerous benefits. Imagine the good that something like this can do for the health of all people.

It sounds beautiful. Fabulous. But is a lie. When I was stripping the daisy I was left with a stem chuchurrío That was neither beautiful nor smelled good. That's why I felt sorry to know the truth, that's why I felt sorry, because homeopathy has no more effect than that of a placebo and cannot be used to cure anyone, because there are other pharmaceutical multinationals that follow other interests and, worse , the people who are using it with serious pathologies are seriously playing with their health, especially if the fact of taking these remedies means stopping those indicated from allopathic medicine (“step of giving my son with bronchitis inhalers… I will give him homeopathy ”).

What is not homeopathy

Many people believe that homeopathy is an alternative medicine that is based on the healing power of plant or herb extracts. In fact, homeopathy is very much associated with herbalism, perhaps because there you can get some homeopathic remedies, making people really believe that they are taking infusions of plants or similar things.

The reality is different, because the science that studies herbs and plants to treat or prevent diseases is not homeopathy, but phytotherapy, which in many cases does have true effects and can cause side effects, because in fact many of the treatments of conventional medicine come from active ingredients found in plants.

What is homeopathy?

Once we have set aside plants and herbs, it is necessary to define then what is homeopathy.

Homeopathy was invented by Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (1775-1843), who after leaving medicine in 1794, tired because he said that medicine caused more suffering than benefit to the patient, decided to use new techniques to treat the sick.

Hahnemann explained that to cure a disease it was necessary to focus on the symptoms and said that to treat a symptom it was necessary to look for a substance that caused it and give it to the patient in tiny amounts to activate the body and promote the resolution of the symptom and consequently disease (once all symptoms have been treated).

As at less doses of a substance the side effects of it were minor, Hahnemann postulated that the smaller the amount of a substance, the faster the cure would be (less symptoms would suffer the patient).

So, recapitulating, homeopathy is based on the use of a substance, which is known as "mother tincture", diluted in water. The more diluted it is, the lower the symptoms, the greater the effect (they say).

How a mother tincture is diluted

The mother tincture can be almost any substance. It can be an herb, the same coffee (which uses homeopathic logic for those who cannot sleep), dog poop, cockroaches, cigar smoke, dandruff and hundreds of other substances that are then diluted to get the homeopathic preparation.

To make a dilution, 1 unit of the tincture is taken, for example 1 ml and diluted in 99 units of water, in this case ml. In this way a 1: 100 concentration is achieved, which is known as 1 CH (Centesimal de Hahnemann).

This concentration obtained is, according to homeopathic "laws", too weak, not very curative. Therefore you have to keep diluting to make it a better "medicine".

Then 1 ml of the 1 CH dilution is taken and mixed with 99 ml of water again, mixing it vigorously (action called succussion) to obtain a 1: 10,000 concentrate, known as 2 CH.

Homeopathic products with 30 CH concentrations can be easily found in the market. To give you an idea of ​​the amount of water that dilution implies, only say that a 30 CH solution is something like a molecule of an active substance diluted in an amount of water equivalent to a water sphere of 150 km in diameter, That is the distance between the moon and the sun.

According to this it is clear that the probability of taking a single molecule of active ingredient in a product with 30 CH concentration is zero. In fact, according to Avogadro's principle, from 12 CH any molecule is so diluted that all we find is water.

Avogadro?

Amadeo Avogadro discovered how to find out how many molecules of a given substance are in a certain amount of that substance according to their molecular weight. What we commonly know as "mol." Avogadro's number, rounded, is 6.02 × 10 ^ 23.

According to this law (already proven to satiety), any preparation with a dilution of 12 CH or greater is water, because there is no longer a single molecule of what you are supposed to be taking.

Water memory

Just in case it occurs to someone to think that taking something very diluted is not going to heal, there is what is known as water memory.

Hahnemann explained that the healing effect is not produced by the dissolved substance, but because in some way, in the process of dilution and agitation the substance transmits its healing spirit to the water. This is known as water memory, which it goes on to say that water remembers the substance with which it has been in contact And that's why it heals.

And the other substances that come into contact with water?

Let the hand that has never pissed in the sea raise your hand. Nobody? Ok, now that you raise your hand who has never swallowed some water in the sea without wanting to. Nobody?

Well, according to homeopathy, when someone drinks a drink of sea water, they must be taking human urine in very low concentrations, so it must have a very powerful effect on our body. Not to mention when you find a piece of poop from a child (or an adult with few scruples) that has not been able to withstand, or even the oil that ships pour from time to time.

Summarizing

Homeopathy cannot have any effect because Homeopathic substances are sugar water. In fact there are homeopathic remedies in pills, as if the memory of the water had been transmitted to the sugar concentrate that makes up the tablet.

Anyway, as I know there are many people who explain that "it works for me", tomorrow we will talk about the placebo effect, which is the effect that this type of product has: Homeopathy for babies: why it does not work even when "to me son works for him ”(I).

Photos | Photomontage made with photos of Boa-sorte & Careca and distillated, Caseywest on Flickt
In Babies and more | Do you trust homeopathy for your children's ailments ?, Publication on homeopathy for children