Yesterday I explained in a short post (sorry, important things require some extension) how homeopathy works and what it is based on.
After seeing how homeopathic remedies are created and why it is impossible for them to work (the most “powerful” homeopathic remedies are water, such as tap or bottled) today we will explain how can it be that despite knowing this people say that "it works for me" because my son had a cure for otitis, or colds, or he stopped having bronchitis or you know what.
Then I explain everything, but for those who do not want to read: it works because homeopathy works like a placebo.
What is a placebo?
The placebo effect is the phenomenon that occurs when a patient receives a harmless substance (substance without effects related to the treatment of symptoms or diseases) as a treatment, improving their symptoms.
This happens because people are able to self-manage, getting better by simply taking something that we believe will cure us (obviously there are diseases that do not work ... if everything would not be cured with placebos).
No one doubts the existence of the placebo effect and it is known that if one hundred sick people who are not treated with a hundred people with the same disease who are given a placebo were compared, those in the second group improve with regarding those of the first.
As no one doubts the existence of the placebo effect, when someone wants to know if a real medication or a substance has any effect, they cannot do a study between people who take the medication and people who do not take it, because they will always achieve good results, but that You have to do a study comparing people who take the substance to study and people who take a placebo, to see if the positive effect of the medication has an effect beyond the placebo effect.
If a drug does not work significantly better than placebo is considered ineffective and inappropriate to treat the disease and then cannot go to market.
What do the scientific studies of homeopathy say?
There are many, many homeopathy studies, basically because the grace of a new way of doing medicine is that there is scientific evidence that says it works. If not, anyone can invent medicines (I could invent "armandotherapy") and say that with that you cure anything.
The problem of the studies is that there are well done and bad facts (without taking into account variables that can influence the result), as happened with the well-known study by Benveniste, published in the journal Nature in 1988 in which he observed that the water had memory and that despite being extremely diluted it affected certain cells with which it came into contact.
The prestigious magazine Nature published it saying in a corner that he had his reservations and that he would try to elucidate if the data could be produced again. Two months later, taking care of all possible variables, the results showed that water memory did not exist. What happened in the first study was that the researchers knew which samples had been treated with normal water and which with the water that should have memory. It is not that there was bad intention (I say ...), but that they were conditioned by the illusion or the desire to obtain favorable results and the cellular samples that had been in contact with the “miraculous” water behaved, in the eyes of the researchers, otherwise.
To know the rest of the studies and to be able to assess them without fear of errors in their planning or execution, it is a good idea to look for the reviews carried out by the Cochrane Collaboration, which analyzes the studies on a subject without taking into account those that are not well done.
Let's see what these reviews say about homeopathy:
- Use of homeopathy for the treatment of attention deficit syndrome: The conclusion reached by the review authors is that "currently there insufficient evidence to recommend the use of homeopathy for children diagnosed with ADHD ”.
- Use of homeopathy for the treatment of chronic asthma: The conclusion to this review is that “not enough evidence to reliably evaluate the possible role of homeopathy in asthma ”.
- Use of homeopathy for the treatment of influenza and associated symptoms: The same: "the data are not significant enough to recommend the use of oscillococcinum as a treatment or prevention of the flu and diseases with similar symptoms ”.
- Use of homeopathy to induce labor: "There is insufficient evidence to recommend the use of homeopathy as an induction method."
- Use of homeopathy to treat adverse effects of cancer treatments: For the review, eight studies were analyzed. Four of them did not give positive results, two had a very doubtful methodology and the remaining two did seem to show positive results. The conclusion of the reviewers is that "It is necessary to repeat favorable studies to confirm or discard them".
That is, there is no evidence
Exact, there is no evidence that it works and it's not even because it hasn't been studied, but that nobody to date has been able to prove that homeopathy works better than a placebo. Something totally logical, if we take into account that in a nutshell it is water and period (as much water with sugar, if they add it).
To be continue
Tomorrow we continue with this entry and focus more on the effect of homeopathy in children. Or rather, in the placebo effect in children, because homeopathy, effect, none.
