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Homeopathy Misinformation on Wikipedia

Posted by Sanjib Sarkar on Wed, Jul 30, 2008 @ 04:32 AM

Tags: Homeopathy. Homeopathy Trials, Homeopathy Information

As many people know that on many search terms, Wikipedia comes up number 1 in Google. They are almost definitely in the top 10. So when the search term is Homeopathy, how accurate are they?

I was looking at following wikipedia page on Homeopathy. The general definitions and information on Homeopathy seem to be for the most part correct. The part where all of the information that is incorrect seems to be in the research side of Homeopathy.

The first paragraph with issues are as follows below:

" Positive results have been reported, but no single model has been sufficiently widely replicated, local models proposed are far from convincing, and the nonlocal models proposed would predict that it is impossible to nail down homeopathic effects with direct experimental testing. [129] For example, while some reports presented data that suggested homeopathic treatment of allergy was more effective than placebo,[130][131] subsequent studies have questioned the conclusions.[132][133]"

This first example has some incorrect information. Study 132 is about Belladonna 30C. The study attempts to find out if Belladonna 30C is given to a healthy person, what happens. The study shows nothing happens but this certainly has nothing to do with allergies. Study 133 is about people who suffer from Asthma from dust mite allergies. Study 130 and 131 were on different subjects. Study 130 and Study 131 were on hayfever and allergic rhinitis. In all fairness to Wikipedia, Study 133 was an attempted replication on a successful study on Asthma from dust mite allergies. However, Wikipedia fails to mention that study all together.

This maybe an oversight on Wikipedia so I looked at some information on Homeopathy to see their results. I used Wkipedia to search for oscillococcinum. The results were very surprising on the trials section.

The quote from Wikipedia.

"Various clinical trials of Oscillococcinum have been conducted; however, the statistical significance and the scientific rigor of these studies is debated, and some studies attributed the results to the placebo effect."

I looked through the Internet, I did find some studies that were debated with Oscillococcinum. Some studies did debate the quality of the trials which is valid. However, no study attributed the shortening of the flu duration to a placebo effect.

Another quote from Wikipedia.

"In one systematic review of the published clinical studies, the authors reported that the studies showed that Oscillococcinum possibly reduced the duration of the flu by about six hours, but has no effect on preventing it. They concluded the data are not strong enough to make a general recommendation to use Oscillococcinum for flu.[2] Another review of flu treatments (vaccine, medicine, homeopathy) has concluded that the popularity of Oscillococcinum in France was unsupported by the current evidence as to its efficacy"

This second review is someone looking at flu prevention treatments. Wikipedia makes it seem as if trials of Oscillococcinum never yield any other postive results in shortening the duration of the flu other than the first trial. Two other successful replications of Oscillococcinum have taken place which are listed below.

OscillococcinumR in patients with influenza-like syndromes: A placebo-controlled double-blind evaluation.

A controlled evaluation of a homoeopathic preparation in the treatment of influenza-like syndromes

Wikipedia failed to mention these trials in their summaries. There were some other Oscillococcinum trials as well that yielded positive results but these trials were not particularly well done.

Wikipedia also make dubious references with their information. Homeowatch.org is not an informational source. This is the same website as quackwatch.org with another name. I really do not have an issue with their website. They are skeptics entitled to their opinions. However, Wikipedia is using this website as a resource that does not carry all factual information but more opinions of skeptics.

If you find more homeopathy misinformation, please put them in the comments. If you think this article has misinformation, please tell us in the comments section.

Also do not forget,

Homeopathic Free Online Seminar
Hmedicine.com is holding a free online seminar with Dr. Mike Smith, a homeopathic doctor, of Carolinas Natural Health Center. The topic is Homeopathy 101. Send your questions on Homeopathy to customerservice@hmedicine.com. We will answer as many questions as possible. The information for the call is below
Date Thursday, July 31, 2008
Start Time: 02:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time
End Time: 02:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Dial-in Number: 1-309-946-5100 (Midwest)
Participant Access Code: 53145

 

 

Homeopathic Trials on Malaria

Posted by Sanjib Sarkar on Fri, Jul 25, 2008 @ 02:47 AM

Tags: homeopathic remedies, Homeopathic Treatment, Malaira

We are going to look at a series of trials with homeopathy and malaria.


Malaria is a highly pravalent diesease in tropical countries. Malaria is contracted by mosquitio bites. People with malaria often experience fever, chills, and flu-like illness. Left untreated, they may develop severe complications and die. Each year 350-500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

First Trial - Homeopathic neem preparation in Tanzania

Objective

In the first trial, a homeopathic neem preparation is being used to prevent an outbreak of malaria.

Trial

152 patients, 79 children and 73 adults, were in the trial.

Subjects reported a decrease in Malaria. More adults reported progress than children which could be due to children not taking the medication properly.

Conclusion

From this trial we conclude that the researched homeopathic neem drops are effective and can be safely used up to 6 months when a drug holiday of a week is observed after every 2-3 months of treatment.

The results from this study show that homeopathic neem reduces instances of malaria outbreaks. This effect was observed in both adults and children after 6 months of preventative treatment. More research is needed to clarify the durability of this preventative effect in the long term.

Issues wth the trial

Some problems with these trials is the malaria is extremely easy to misidentify. No doctor was there to clinically confirm that no malaria was present. A placebo effect may have biased the results towards the positive. Researcher bias may also play a factor with in this study. This “study” had no control group with which to compare the effects of homeopathic neem leaves.

Trial 2 -Malaria and Homeopathic Remedies in Ghana
An Open Study and a Double-blind Randomized Clinical Trial

Objective

The basis of this study is whether homeopathic remedies would work better than chloroquine, a drug to treat and prevent malaria.

Which homeopathic medicine should be used when individually prescribing medicines to treat malaria?

Trial
The patients that exhibit signs of Malaria such as high fever, chills, and other conditions were treated with the following homeopathic remedies and few others homeopathic medicines that are not listed.

Arse­nicum album, Cina, Eupatorium Perfoliatum, Natrum Muriaticum, Pulsatilla, Rhus toxicodendron, Nux vomica and Sulphur.

Each treatment was individualized for the patients. 92 patients were tested. 17 patients did not return for a follow up treatment. 68 out of the 75 showed improvements. 2 groups were treated, one with homeopathic remedies and a chloroquine placebo. The other group with a homeopathic placebo and chloroquine.

Conclusions

The results of the study show that the homeopathic remedies do have an effect on treatment of malaria which is significant and slighly better than chloroquine. Also, individualized homeopathic medicine seem to show a significant effect on Malaria.

Issues with the Trial

Larger trials with more test verification should be done in the future. This initial trial is very small and it can not be used as a recommendation for homeopathic treatment of Malaria until some larger trials are done.

References

Homeopathic neem on Malaria

http://www.hpathy.com/research/barlow-neem.asp

Malaria and Homeopathic Remedies in Ghana

http://www.giriweb.com/vanerp.htm

Homeopathy News Headlines and Links

Posted by Sanjib Sarkar on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 @ 06:57 PM

Tags: Homeopathy, Homeopathy News

Interesting Links in Homeopathy for the week of July 14th-19th.
 
Hmedicine.com wins Natural Health Journal Awards.
 
 
We would like to thank our blog readership and customers for this award. People recommending our homeopathic medicine store has created a buzz in the online community helping us to achieve this award.
 
Interesting Article on Treating Baby Colic
 
 
The article states the following homeopathic remedies are used to treat baby colic. These remedies are bryonia alba, colocynthis, chamomile, magnesia phosphoric, pulsatilla, and many others. It is recommended you see a homeopathic doctor to recommend the correct remedy for your baby.
 
Alternative Homeopathic Remedies to Antibiotics
 
 
To summarize the article, the homeopathic remedies commonly used and recommeded to fight infections are Aconitum Napellus, Belladonna and Pulsatilla.
 
Alternative Treatments of Dyslexia
 
 
This article discusses many different alternative medicine treatments for Dyslexia. Homeopathic treatments are also mentioned. The homeopathic medicines mentioned to treat Dyslexia are Anacardium, Aethusa, Conium, Chamomilla, Lycopodium Clavatum , Nux Vomica, Nux Moschata, Kali Bromatum, Phosphorous and Picricum Acidum among others.
 
Homeopathic Free Online Seminar
 
Hmedicine.com is holding a free online seminar with Dr. Mike Smith, a homeopathic doctor, of Carolinas Natural Health Center. The topic is Homeopathy 101. Send your questions on Homeopathy to customerservice@hmedicine.com. We will answer as many questions as possible. The information for the call is below
 
Date Thursday, July 31, 2008
Start Time: 02:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time
End Time: 02:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Dial-in Number: 1-309-946-5100 (Midwest)
Participant Access Code: 53145
 
   Any other great Homeopathy and natural health links that you have found, please put them in the comment section so everyone can check with them out.

Classical Homeopathy versus Modern Homeopathy

Posted by Sanjib Sarkar on Thu, Jul 10, 2008 @ 12:26 AM

Tags: Classical Homeopathy Trials, Classical homeopathy. Modern Homeopathy

Classical Homeopathy consists is very similar to what Hahnemann prescribed when he first discovered Homeopathy. Classical Homeopathy consists of examing the person and individually prescribing the correct homeopathic remedy for them.

Classical Homeopathy also looks at the constitiutional types of people to determine the right remedy. Classically trained homeopaths will ask a series of questions to determine the constitiutional type of the person. The homeopathic remedies will then be prescribed mostly one at a time based on the individual person. Remedies may need to be changed and potencies may need to be decrease or increased depending on how the patient is doing with the condition that they have.

Classical Homeopathy aims to treat the whole person(mental, physical and emotional) not just the symptoms of the diesease or illness. Different individuals may be prescribed different homeopathic remedies for the same condition. If an individual has a bad head cold, a classical homeopathic could prescribe him Belladonna based on his symptoms and consititutional type. Another individual who also has a bad head cold, make take Pullstilla to relieve this condition because he has a different personality type.

Modern Homeopathy is pretty much a shotgun approach. Many homeopathic remedies may be taken at one time to help cure an illness or diesease. Popular examples of modern homeopathy are combination remedies such as Calms Forte.

Calms Forte helps cure mild insomnia. It uses a combination of homeopathic remedies that different individual types may use to cure insomnia. Calms Forte has been used successfully by many people to cure insomnia. However, classically trained homeopaths discourage using combination remedies when treating serious conditons. Severe insomnia may need to be treated by prescribing one remedy at a time depending on the person's constitional type.

Homeopathy trials with classical homeopathy have been very few. The few trials with classical homeopathy have been encouraging so far.

A total of 32 trials (28 placebo-controlled, 2 comparing homeopathy and another treatment, 2 comparing both) involving a total of 1778 patients met the inclusion criteria for classical homeopathy. The methodological quality of the trials was highly variable. Some individuals were prescribed a homeopathic remedy based on their constitutional type and others were given placebos.

The authors conclusion was that the results of the available randomized trials suggest that classical homeopathy has an effect over placebo. The evidence is not convincing because of trial short comings and inconsistiencies. More research is needed on classical homeopathy.

References

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.1998.4.371?journalCode=acm

 

Homeopathic medicine Belladonna

Posted by Sanjib Sarkar on Thu, Jul 03, 2008 @ 05:12 PM

Tags: homeopathic remedies, Belladonna, homeopathic medicine

Belladonna is a very poisonous plant species. A common name for Belladonna is deadly nightshade. The plant species is distributed throughout Europe, West Asia, North America and North Africa.

 

Allopathic uses for Belladonna

Belladonna is given in small amounts for over the counter flu and cough medicines. It is also used in prescription drugs for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, acute enterocolitis and as an adjunctive therapy in the treatment of duodenal ulcers. Eye doctors also use this drug in small amounts to dilate pupils.

Homeopathic uses for Belladonna

Hanhemann proved this remedy in 1799 and used it to treat scarlett fever. Belladonna is used to treat conditions with a sudden onset. The type of conditions Belladonna treatments are similar to the symptoms if someone is poisoned with Belladonna. Belladonna poisoning results in people getting a high fever, sore throat or loss of voice, nausea, delirium, muscle spasms, flushed skin and dilated pupils. Homeopathic Belladonna is used to treat these type of conditions in a person.

Belladonna is also used to treat cold and flu symptoms, infections with inflammation, intense pounding headaches, boils, earaches, seizures, labor pain, pink eye, nose bleeds, nephritis(inflammation of the kidneys) restless sleep, teething pain, tonsillitis, acne and sunburn.

Female use Belladonna to treat breast infections, urinary bladder infections, menstrual cramps, and irritated nipples due to breast feeding.

Symptoms for these conditions are usually better with warmth and standing. Conditions usually worsen with cold air, at night, movement and lying down.

Information Referenced from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_nightshade

http://www.answers.com/topic/belladonna

Complete Guide to Homeopathy. Dr. Andrew Lockie and Dr. Nicola Geedes.

If you know of other uses for allopathic or homeopathic Belladonna, please put them in our comments section.

 

 


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