Remedy snippet of the day - Causticum by Rajan Sankaran

From The Soul of Remedies

‘The main feeling in Causticum is that the person is the one who has to take care of the group or family.  He is facing the threat from outside and in order to face this threat, he requires that the whole group should fight together.  Being the strongest member of the group, one who is the most capable of putting up a fight, he regards a threat to any one member of that group as a threat to himself. If he doesn’t forestall the threat, it will affect the whole group and he will be weakened.’

Homeopathic Arnica as effective as the usual post-operative painkiller

Visit Dr Briffa’s blog for a report on recent research on the comparable effectiveness of homeopathic Arnica D4 (4X) post-operatively after bunion removal compared to the usual painkiller (diclofenac). It was decided that giving placebo would not be ethical.  Treatment with Arnica also gave fewer side-effects, greater mobility and was less costly.

References:

Karow J-H, et al. Efficacy of Arnica Montana D4 for healing of wounds after hallux valgus surgery compared to diclofenac. J Altern Comp Med 2008;14(1):17-25

Dr Briffa: ‘Homeopathic arnica found to be an effective post-operative aid’

Downloadable research on very low dose/high dilution effects

GIRI: ‘Groupe International de Researche sur l’Infinetismal’ / International Research Group on Very Low Dose and High Dilution Effects is a group that ‘organises workshops yearly throughout the world. It convenes systematically in congresses during each of the International Encounters of Monaco. The aim of the GIRI is to bring together pharmacologists, biologists, physicians, chemists and physicists to communicate, exchange experiences and develop joint research projects; the distinctive feature of the research activities of the group is the study of ultra low dose impulses or very high dilutions, homœopathics included. Although the mechanism of action of the very diluted solutions of active principles on biological systems is an important concern of the GIRI, the major interest of the Group is directed towards the possible medicinal and therapeutic relevance of the very low doses. More than one hundred persons are GIRI members, coming from 20 different countries.’

They are publishing a book (downloadable here):

“Signals and Images”

Selected papers from the 7th and 8th GIRI Meeting, held in Montpellier, France, November 20-21, 1993, and Jerusalem, Israel, December 10-11, 1994
Edited by Madeleine Bastide, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Montpellier I, France
Kluver Academic Press

We are now able to propose a book which includes 23 full papers from more than fifty contributors corresponding to the two last GIRI meetings: the 7th (held in Montpellier, France, on 20-21 November 1993) and the 8th (held in Jerusalem, Israel, on 10-11 December 1994). The GIRI gets bigger every year and now includes more than 100 members from 22 different countries. This evolution stimulates more and more researches on this subject often considered as scientific nonsense or a scientific error. All these papers have been reviewed according to the standards of scientific publications and many of them are now published in regular scientific journals. They illustrate perfectly the evolution of the ideas and the new experimental and theoretical approaches of this uncommon research. It becomes obvious that different hypothesis can enlighten the interpretations of these different papers. Part of them can be interpretated according to the classical way of thinking; but the true interpretation of the similia law of homeopathic medicine is quite different from the mechanistic approach.

To help the reader, the papers will be organized into four chapters; each chapter will be introduced by a short analysis of the papers included.

The “Introduction” debates the question of scientific evolution and revolution in the context of modern science.

The 1st chapter “Hormesis” gathers together all the papers related to this concept: these models are often evoked to demonstrate or to explain the similia law although hormesis is always based on a relationship of identity.

The 2nd chapter “In Vitro and in Vivo Experimental Models” includes many experiments which demonstrate low dose or high dilution activity and is introduced by a summary of classical receptology.

The 3rd chapter “Therapeutics and Provings “ discusses the question of analysis of the symptoms in a systemic way of thinking and also includes pathogenetic studies (provings) as well as homeopathic therapeutic studies in humans or in animals.

The last chapter presents an “Epistemologic Approach” which become necessary in order to enlarge the possibility of interpretation of the law of similarity and the high dilution effectiveness considering that these dilutions are above the Avogadro number.

This new field of research is very exciting and introduces new scientific concepts supported by experimental results. Above all, we observe that this nascent science is totally concerned by “living” organisms and as such, it becomes necessary to define what we design as “information” brought by non-molecular high dilutions.

This book presents the brain-storming work of this research group and is one of the starting points of a scientific evolution: ” The proliferation of concurrent variants of the conventional paradigm, the fact of being willing to try anything, the expression of marked discontent, recourse to philosophy and discussion on the theoretical foundations, all signs are many symptoms of a passage from normal research to extraordinary research”. T.S.Kuhn, 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.MB

Hormesis - ‘when a little poison is good for you’

New Scientist 6/8/08 When a little poison is good for you

For those of you with a New Scientist subscription, here is more information about Hormesis.

Update 30/8/08:

Dr Mercola expands on the topic: here

Here is a snippet:

Your body is a finely tuned instrument, and even seemingly insignificant changes can sometimes create major repercussions, for better or worse. Like a spider’s web, if you pluck one strand, the entire web vibrates. Pluck too hard and it breaks the strand, collapsing the intricate design of the whole.

Hormesis – To Impel Change

Hormesis — from the ancient Greek word hormáein, meaning “to set in motion, impel, urge on” — is the term for favorable biological responses resulting from low exposures to toxins and other stressors. A toxin showing hormesis thus has the opposite effect in small doses than in large doses.

Homeopathy could be considered as an example here, where even a highly toxic (natural) substance can be used to produce dramatic healing responses in your body because it is reduced to such a degree that only the energetic essence of it remains; there’s enough to impel a healing change, but not nearly enough to tip the scales too far to cause damage.

Hormesis then, is the biological phenomena where an otherwise adverse or detrimental influence is beneficial when applied at low levels – just enough to set something into motion.

The concept of biological hormesis is as important as that of homeostasis for the survival of an organism. Your body’s ability to resist and adapt appropriately to both internal and external stresses is essential for good health, and the hallmark of aging is your body’s inability to withstand stress, which starts to degrade it.

The disease didn’t kill her, the medication did….

How many of us have heard of this?

I have been away visiting family.  My mother-in-law told us that my brother-in-law’s friend’s 47 year old wife had recently died.  She had been suffering from breast cancer for several years but she died in her sleep from a heart attack.  This was blamed on her medication which had ‘weakened her heart’. A ’side effect’ I expect.

According to Hering’s Law of Cure inappropriate medicine can suppress the vital system and weaken more internal and more vital organs.  People can live without breasts (men can be affected by breast cancer too); they can’t live without a heart.  I’ve commented on patterns and progress of disease before.

Ok, I know it’s not that simple, I didn’t know the lady concerned and how she was before she died, she might have died shortly anyway, but there was no indication of that in the story as told, her death came as a surprise.

5/8/08 - Updated to include links to information about the homeopathic approach to treating people with the symptoms of cancer:

Treating cancer with homeopathy

Dr Ramakrishnan - Cancer

New Age convert to Skepticism appeals for sensitive cross-cultural communication

Although I don’t classify homeopathy completely within New Age, and the homeopathic profession does contain conventionally trained scientists, Karla McLaren’s article about her conversion from New Age guru to Skepticism contains some pertinent criticism of Skeptic culture and communication style: ‘Bridging the two cultures’

“From a vantage point outside the New Age culture, my culture’s disavowal of emotions and the intellect may seem very strange and nearly inexplicable. Nevertheless, it is a very real cultural component that must be understood and considered if any useful communication is going to occur. If we want to successfully communicate with someone, we’ve got to understand not just their language, but the cultural context from which their language springs. From what I’ve seen in both the New Age and the skeptical cultures, this understanding is absent. I certainly didn’t understand the skeptical culture until I spent real time considering it as a culture - and I know from my reading that most people in the skeptical culture don’t understand the New Age culture at all. As a result, the yelling between our cultures just becomes louder while the real communication falls into the chasm that divides us. In all the din, people in my culture hear what they deem to be hyper-intellectual and emotionally charged attacks upon their cherished beliefs, while people in your culture hear what they deem to be wishful thinking, scientific illiteracy, and emotionally charged salvos in defense of mere delusions.

This is of course a tragedy, but after reading through the skeptical literature for the last three years, I feel that this tragedy may be avoidable. I understand your culture now, and I understand the concern, care, and interest you have for the people in my culture. I’m now able to read past text I once considered inflammatory and see the dedication behind it-not just your dedication to competent research and information-gathering, but your dedication to clear communication. I see your faith in human intelligence, your anger about swindlers and charlatans, your open-minded ability to question authority and accepted wisdom, and your willingness to fight to further a cause close to your heart. My favorite people in the New Age culture share these same qualities. I feel that people in your culture are capable of reaching out to my culture in sensitive ways that will have a chance of being heard - because it’s vital that you are heard.

It’s vital that a way be found to help people in my culture question, think about, and critically interpret the barrage of information and misinformation they receive on a daily basis. However, it’s also vital that the information be culturally sensitive. For instance, the first time I visited the skeptical health care Web site called Quackwatch, it felt as if I were walking into enemy territory. “Quack” is a very loaded word-it’s a fighting word! Though site owner Dr. Stephen Barrett has every right to call his excellent Web site anything he likes, I wonder why it couldn’t have been called, for instance, HealthWatch, HealingInfo, DocFacts, or something equally nonthreatening. Why do I have to type the word “quack” when I want a skeptical review of the choices I make in medical care? And why do I have to spend so much time translating on the skeptical sites I visit-or just skipping over words like scam, sham, quack, fraud, dupe, and fool? Why do I (the sort of person who actually needs skeptical information) have to see myself described in offensive terms and bow my head in shame before I can truly access the information available in your culture?

I have a selfish reason for asking these questions, because one of my first ideas was to make my own Web site a culturally sensitive portal to the skeptical sites - yet I cannot find a way to do so. I’ve got a Web page mock-up brewing in my files - a page that I’ve rewritten maybe fifty times or more-that tries to introduce the concept of skepticism in an open and nonthreatening way. I’d like to include links to the brilliant urban legends site (snopes.com), to Bob Carroll’s online Skeptic’s Dictionary (skepdic.com), to CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer (csicop.org), and to The Skeptic (skeptic.com). I also really wanted to include Quackwatch (quackwatch.org) and James Randi’s site (randi.org) - but I just can’t find the words. Sure, I can use my site to prepare people for the journey, but I know from experience that they would be in for quite a shock once they clicked on the links. I mean, it’s one thing to find out that much of my culture and belief system was based on gossamer and hearsay, but it’s another thing altogether to see people like myself being denigrated and pitied.

I found your culture and persevered through the (perhaps unintentionally?) insulting text and the demeaning attitudes because I had a serious need. I had a need to understand the avalanche of New Age ideas, gadgets, meditation techniques, and personalities I encountered as my career gathered momentum. I saw so much as I traveled and spoke to people in my culture, and so much of it worried me that I began to use the Internet to organize this avalanche and acquaint myself fully with information in my field. It was a harrowing journey, to say the very least. I waded into your culture for much-needed information, and ended up losing my own culture in the process. During the most difficult throes, I joked that I would have had to cheer up to be merely despairing - and that I would have had to calm down to be merely enraged. I’m still working through this.

What I see in the tragic clash between the New Age and skeptical cultures is that, for the most part, the skeptics have not yet been able to speak in a way that can be heard. Certainly, neither have people in my culture been able to perform that same feat. I see some scientific types working in the New Age culture, trying to prove that chi exists or prayer works (or whatever it is they’re doing this week). There’s an awful lot of scientific jargon all over the New Age now, and while it’s sad to see science being bent and mangled by my culture, I have to say that it shows we’re listening to you. It shows that we’re trying to get it right-to say things in a way you can hear. I know that my culture’s sloppy and disrespectful use of science is something that angers and confuses many people in the skeptical community, but can we look at it in a different light?

People in my culture have heard you and we’re trying to answer - but we don’t understand you. Our cultural training about the dangers of the intellect makes it nearly impossible for us to utilize science properly - or to identify your intellectual rigor as anything but an unhealthy overuse of the mind. I know that sounds silly, but think of the way you view our capacity to dive deeply into matters of spiritual or religious study. You don’t often treat our rigor as scholarship, per se (though it takes quite an intellect to understand and organize the often screamingly inconsistent sacred canon) - instead you tend to treat our work as an overabundance of credulity or perhaps even a stubborn refusal to listen to sense.”

As I’ve said before, there is a need for right brain - left brain integrated thinking.

Random Controlled Trials are the worst of medicine

Over at spiked-online there is a debate on the Best and Worst of Medicine.  Unsurprisingly, skeptics have nominated homeopathy as one of the worst, but the sheer volume of messages of support for homeopathy managed to get a nomination for best as well.

The debate for the worst of medicine is due on the 17th July.  A clinician sums up the current fundamentalist scientistic backlash against CAM with a damning criticism of the RCT and of those who narrowly support it:

Randomised Controlled Trials are the worst 28 May 2008

The worst thing to happen to medicine is undoubtedly the Randomised Clinical Trial (RCT) - not for the information it does and doesn’t give us but for the way it has been used by government and tunnel visioned researchers to qualify some ridiculous practices under the heading “Evidence Based Medicine”.

As clinicians we are ‘encouraged’ (read ‘forced’) to ignore our clinical skills and acumen in favor of flow chart diagnosis and prescribing. It is virtually never mentioned how much morbidity and mortality modern medicine directly causes - recent analysis in the USA places iatrogenic problems as the country’s third biggest killer!

In addition we are using medicines on complicated people, often with multiple diagnoses and on a variety of drugs - RCTs are conducted in strict (non-clinical) settings using young, relatively fit and healthy people. I am always flabbergasted at the conclusions drawn from these to ‘inform’ normal clinic practice - the information is barely ever transferable!

The best thing to happen to modern medicine is the shake-up of the rigid paradigm that is now being forced on the ‘establishment’ by hoards of patients and practitioners giving a huge range of complementary practices their attention and confidence.

The narrow-minded view taken by a radical few is that we don’t know how these modalities work, therefore they can’t work. This attitude clearly needs to be counterbalanced by the many hundreds of thousands of people who use these treatments and (RCT be damned) find that they work!

Scientific curiosity, informed by actually hearing what people are saying, is the only way forward. Retire any ‘scientist’ who is not actively demonstrating a flexible and curious approach to investigating these complementary therapies, suspending thier predjudice and bias - after all, is this not the DEFINITION of a real scientist?

Geoff Woodin, UK

Edzard Ernst, take note.

So much homeopathic research evidence should be made widely available ‘for the sake of scientific progression’

Dr Manjir Samanta-Laughton, author of ‘Punk Science’, attended the Scientific Research in Homeopathy Conference hosted by the Complementary Medical Association, held at the University of Westminster on June 18th 2008.

Here are the Complementary Medical Association’s links (some yet to be activated) to the presentations by Dr Alex Tournier, Karin Mont, Dr Rob Verkerk, Oliver Dowding, Claire Haresnape, Dr Lionel Milgrom and Stephen Gordon.

Dr Samanta-Laughtons response to the conference is on her Amazon blog:

“I got invited to the most amazing conference last week as a VIP guest courtesy of Jayney Goddard and the Complementary Medical Association. Well it threw me for a loop! I had no idea there were so many RCT trials and evidence of homeopathy. Or that there were real scientific investigations into the actual mechanisms of homeopathy as eloquently demonstrated by Dr Lionel Milgrom, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemists. As this was the inaugural conference of its kind, I have one question - where have you been all my life? Why has this information been so hard to find? For the sake of scientific progression, this sort of information should be widely available.”

As she says in ‘Punk Science’: “The paradigm of science has come to a grinding halt. Some are complaining that there are no big discoveries to find. Although technology advances at a rapid pace, these are simply improvements on previous discoveries. There have been no radical changes in the way we see the universe for decades…until now!  The time is right for a change in science; for the next big discovery. This revolution will place consciousness at the very heart of an intelligent universe.”

Homeopathy, Medicine, Science and Cognitive Dissonance

Given that more and more people globally are using homeopathy with benefit for all kinds of ill-health; its effectiveness in treating epidemics: cholera, influenza (here and here); its integration into the Indian medical system; and the World Health Organisation reporting that it is the number 2 medical system in the world (but you won’t find that report anywhere, it’s been buried), I can only conclude that the reason why conventional medics and scientists might genuinely (rather than wilfully because of love of science itself, self-interest or pharmaceutical allegiances taking priority over the health of patients) refuse to use and investigate homeopathy is because they are suffering from what is termed ‘cognitive dissonance’. www.learningandteaching.info describes it well:

“Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become “open” to them. Neighbour (1992) makes the generation of appropriate dissonance into a major feature of tutorial (and other) teaching: he shows how to drive this kind of intellectual wedge between learners’ current beliefs and “reality”.

Beyond this benign if uncomfortable aspect, however, dissonance can go “over the top”, leading to two interesting side-effects for learning: if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know — particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge — they are likely to resist the new learning. Even Carl Rogers recognised this. Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget’s terms.              and—counter-intuitively, perhaps—if learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are less likely to concede that the content of what has been learned is useless, pointless or valueless. To do so would be to admit that one has been “had”, or “conned”. Ordeal is therefore an effective — if spurious — way of conferring value on an educational (or any other) experience. “No pain, no gain”, as they say. the more difficult it is to get on a course, the more participants are likely to value it and view it favourably regardless of its real quality. ditto, the more expensive it is. the more obscure and convoluted the subject, the more profound it must be. This has of course been exploited for years to persuade us of the existence of the emperor’s clothes, particularly by French “intellectuals” and “post-structuralists”. (I recently came across the wonderful phrase “intellectual flatulence” which perfectly describes such rubbish.) It is not, however, so much the qualities of the course which are significant, as the amount of effort which participants have to put in: so the same qualification may well be valued more by the student who had to struggle for it than the student who sailed through.”

As medicine and science is very hard to get into and arduous to study, it seems to fulfill several of the above criteria.

Homeopathy works - more scientific investigation merited

The Daily Mail reports:

“Homeopathy really does work and doctors should recognise its healing effects, say researchers.

A study found that allergy sufferers who were given homeopathic treatment were ten times more likely to be cured than those given a dummy pill instead.

Doctors should be more positive about the alternative medicine, which is the only complementary therapy available on the NHS, the researchers said.

Their study attempts to settle the controversy over homeopathic treatment, which critics say is not effective because of the tiny level of active substance used in most remedies.

It works on the principle that a substance which in large doses will cause the symptoms of an illness can be used in minute doses to relieve the same symptoms.

Critics argue that the active substance is so diluted that homeopathic remedies have no more effect than placebo or dummy treatment.

The study put homeopathy to the test in 50 patients suffering from nasal allergies. They were given either a homeopathic preparation or a placebo.

Each day for four weeks patients recruited from general practices and a hospital in London measured their nasal air flow and recorded symptoms such as blocked, runny or itchy nose, sneezing or eye irritation.

Both groups reported that they got better - but on average patients who received homeopathy had a 28 per cent improvement in nasal air flow compared with 3 per cent among those in the placebo group.

The study was carried out by doctors in Glasgow, led by Dr David Reilly of the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital, one of five specialist hospitals in Britain. He said the difference in results from the two treatments was statistically significant.

Dr Reilly said this was the fourth trial carried out by his hospital, all with similar results. In addition, there were positive findings in 70 per cent of a further 180 clinical trials.

‘I hope this will encourage doctors to examine the volume of evidence supporting homeopathy - they might be quite surprised at the positive outcome in many trials,’ he said.

He added that it would take consistent scientific investigation to persuade some doctors, but attitudes were changing.

About 20 per cent of doctors in Scotland have basic homeopathic training compared with one per cent 15 years ago.

‘It isn’t just about the remedies, which can be put to the test in trials, but about a greater holistic approach in encouraging self-healing and self-recovery.’”

Dr Bob Leckridge, president of the Faculty of Homeopathy - the body for doctors, vets, nurses and other health professionals - said: ‘This latest research builds on existing evidence that homeopathy works, something that hundreds of doctors and their patients have known for 200 years.’