Homeopathy : yes or no? Placebo or real effect? The scientific community is divided into two: supportive and staunch opponents, those who say it works and those who say it’s just water and sugar. Before expressing any opinion it is good to know the subject .

The question is too broad and complex to be explored in a single article, but at least we begin to understand it: how does homeopathy work?

How does homeopathy work?

On slippery ground it is always best to take small steps with the necessary equipment. And we start from the definitions of the Ministry of Health :

” A homeopathic medicinal product is defined as any medicine obtained from substances called starting materials for homeopathic preparations or homeopathic strains, according to a homeopathic production process described by the European Pharmacopoeia or, in the absence of such a description, by the pharmacopoeias officially used in the Member States of the Community European; a homeopathic medicine may contain several substances. A homeopathic medicinal product has the scientific name of the homeopathic strain or strains or, failing this, the scientific name of the starting material or materials for homeopathic preparations or other name appearing in a pharmacopoeia, accompanied in parentheses by the name proper to the homeopathic tradition followed by degree of dilution “.

From the official language it can be deduced that in homeopathy there are preparations starting from a starting material , with different degrees of dilution . Good. What are the starting “materials” and what are the dilutions?

Homeopathy uses substances of mineral , vegetable and – more rarely – animal origin for its remedies .

The next steps for the preparation of a homeopathic remedy are the dilution and dynamization of the source material: the dilution eliminates the potential toxicity of the substances used, while the dynamization gives energy to the preparation, that is what constitutes the basis of action of the remedy.

Read also Symptoms, diseases and homeopathy >>

In detail:

> D ilution : in homeopathy, according to the teachings of the founder Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician, dilution commonly takes place with water according to a factor of 10, 100 or 50,000; dilutions carried out with decimal passages are called “decimals” and are indicated with “D” or “X”. The dilutions that occur with centesimal passages are called “centesimal” and are indicated with “CH”, where “C” stands for “centesimal” and “H” is the initial of Hahnemann: in subsequent epochs the fifty thousand-thousandth dilutions, indicated with the Roman numbering “LM”. The dilutions most used in homeopathy are 4, 5, 7, 9, 15, 30, 60, 100 and 200 CH; the most common LMs are 6, 18 and 30 LM.

> D inamization : consists in shaking the diluted product, carried out at least 100 times vertically, with clear, fast movements at a distance of about 20 centimeters. Most companies now use special devices for the dynamization of homeopathic products; there are producers who prefer manual preparation, supporting its greater effectiveness. Synonymous with dynamization is “power”: low powers act more on rapidly growing tissues, in particular the mucous membranes, the skin; the medium powers on the muscles for example; the high powers on the endocrine system, the peripheral nervous system; the very high powers mainly on the central nervous system.

But does homeopathy work?

Let’s make two premises:

> By law , only doctors can prescribe homeopathic remedies.

> Homeopathic medicines have the following wording on the outer packaging: “homeopathic medicine” followed by the phrase “without approved therapeutic indications” . This means that no evaluation of the efficacy of the product has been carried out by the competent authority (AIFA).

For its supporters , homeopathy works on the basis of the ” similia similibus curantur” , the like cures the like and despite the apparent contradiction, some clinical evidence demonstrates the validity of this strategy.

Homeopathic medicine uses a natural substance which, given to a healthy person, causes the same symptoms that the sick person presents at any moment.

The action of homeopathy is therefore more similar to the action of a vaccine : substances similar to the agent that produces that type of disease are administered to stimulate a reaction that reinforces the body’s defenses, promoting healing or preventing pathology.

Homeopathy puts the sick person and not the disease in the foreground , proposing to cure not so much the pathology itself as the “ground” on which the disease is acting or an imbalance of the vital energy from which the symptoms emerge.

Homeopaths dedicate a lot of time to the patient, focusing on the psychological and character aspects; in this respect, homeopathy improves the doctor-patient relationship in a radical way, taking care of the human dimension.

The homeopathic product is diluted many times ; for this reason, the efficacy of homeopathic therapy is still much debated, as it is in stark contrast to the strategy of “official” medicine which, on the other hand, presupposes the intake of an active, concentrated and undiluted ingredient.

This peculiarity makes homeopathy practically immune from side effects (to which modern pharmacology is heavily burdened), on the other hand it raises many doubts on its scientificity, given that often such high dilutions are used as to eliminate, in substance, the content of the original remedy. .

On the other hand, modern pharmacology is indispensable and very effective in emergency conditions , where it is a question of saving lives but often has little effectiveness – directly or due to an excess of side effects – in the treatment of complex diseases such as autoimmune diseases, allergic, gastrointestinal, skin diseases.

In most cases, homeopathy is not used as an alternative but as supportive medicine, in association with traditional medicines.

A homeopathic intervention would therefore be able to improve the general conditions of the patient even in the case of chronic drug intake.