Homeopathic Medicine is Nanopharmacology

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Homeopathic Medicine is Nanopharmacology

Dana Ullman invites us to think of homeopathy as medicine at ultra-small doses,

or nanopharmacology, which avoids the often debilitating side effects of

conventional pharmacology.

 

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Nanotechnology

Western science has been marching towards the discovery of increasingly smaller

particles of matter for the past centuries, from molecules and atoms to

sub-atomic particles and quarks.

 

Likewise, the evolution of technology has witnessed the miniaturisation of

devices along with their increased capabilities. " Nanotechnology " has become the

popular term to refer to the study and manufacture of devices of molecular

dimensions, of the range of nanometers or one-billionth of a meter.

 

Dr. Neal Lane, former director of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) said,

" If I were asked for an area of science and engineering that will most likely

produce the breakthrough of tomorrow, I would point to nanoscale science and

engineering. "

 

A 1999 report from NSF Technology Council predicted that nanotechnology’s impact

on the health, wealth, and security of the world’s population is expected to be

" at least as significant as the combined influences of antibiotics, the

integrated circuit, and human-made polymers " .

 

So far, research and development in nanotechnology in medicine have been limited

to devices that monitor or replace biochemical processes in the body. But as

yet, conventional scientists and physicians have not considered using

nanopharmacological doses of medicinal agents.

 

Our conventional medical paradigm has tended to assume that increasingly large

doses of pharmacological agents will create increasingly significant biological

effects, even when it is well recognized that large doses of pharmacological

agents do not necessarily lead to better or improved health.

 

In fact, increasing doses of most drugs generally lead to increased side

effects. Most drugs have primarily been developed to replace, suppress,

minimize, or interfere with specific biochemical function, while the discovery

of pharmaceutical medicines to augment a person’s own immune and defence system

has been an elusive and usually ignored goal.

 

Ironically, the few pharmacological agents that have been used in conventional

medicine today that do something to augment a person’s immune system are

immunization and allergy treatments, both of which are based on an ancient (and

modern) pharmacological principle of " similars. " (Although there are obvious

similarities between these conventional medical treatments and homeopathic

medicines, there are also significant differences, including: the homeopathic

medicines are considerably smaller in dose and are individualized to the

person’s total syndrome of symptoms, not simply to a localized or defined

disease.) This concept of similars, that is, of using a medicinal agent in small

doses based on what it causes in larger, toxic doses, represents the underlying

principle of homeopathic medicine.

 

Largely as a result of the AIDS epidemic, it has made sense to seek to discover

drugs that strengthen a person’s immune and defence system rather than seek to

minimize the various individual symptoms that a person experiences. However,

most physicians and scientists lack a conceptual framework for pharmacological

agents that have this effect. And sadly, most are also ignorant and disdainful

of homeopathy, which they commonly but incorrectly assume, uses such small doses

that the medicines cannot have any biochemical let alone clinical effect.

Nanopharmacology and Homeopathy

While this skepticism of the efficacy of small doses of medicine is

understandable from a strictly rational perspective, it ignores the large body

of evidence from basic science, controlled clinical studies, epidemiological

data, clinical outcomes trials, and historical review of the field.

 

Before discussing this evidence, it is useful to understand that homeopaths are

the first to recognize that their medicines will not have any biological effect

or clinical result unless the complex of symptoms that the sick person

experiences are similar to the complex of symptoms that the medicine has been

found to cause when given in toxic doses. It is not as though small doses of

simply any medicine will elicit therapeutic results; such small doses can and

will only initiate a healing response when a person is hypersensitive to a

specific medicine.

 

Basic principles of physics teach us that hypersensitivity exists when there is

resonance. Homeopathy is itself based on resonance (commonly referred to as the

" principle of similars " ). Even the word " homeopathy " is derived from two Greek

words, " homoios " which means similar, and " pathos " which means suffering or

disease.

 

Typically, homeopaths engage patients in a detailed interview to elicit the

various physical, emotional, and mental symptoms that the sick person is

experiencing. Homeopaths seek to find a medicinal agent that has the capacity to

cause in healthy people the similar symptoms that the sick patient is

experiencing. Rather than treating localized symptoms or a specific disease,

homeopaths treat syndrome complexes, of which the symptoms and the disease are a

part. Once a conventional medical diagnosis is determined, the homeopath then

seeks to find the symptoms that are unique to the patient, and then, a

homeopathic medicine is individualized to each patient’s symptom complex.

Homeopathic Medicine: A Nanopharmacology

Homeopathic medicine presents a significantly different pharmacological approach

to treating sick people. Instead of using strong and powerful doses of medicinal

agents that have a broad-spectrum effect on a wide variety of people with a

similar disease, homeopaths use extremely small doses of medicinal substances

that are highly individualized to a person’s physical and psychological syndrome

of disease, not simply an assumed localized pathology.

 

Homeopathic medicines are so small in dose that it is appropriate to refer to

them as a part of a newly defined field of nanopharmacology. To understand the

nature and the degree of homeopathy’s nanopharmacology, it is important to know

the following characteristics of how homeopathic medicines are made.

 

Most homeopathic medicines are made by diluting a medicinal substance in a

double-distilled water. It should be noted that physicists who study the

properties of water commonly acknowledge that water has many mysterious

properties. Because homeopaths use a double-distilled water, it is highly

purified, enabling the medicinal substance to solely infiltrate the water. The

medicinal solution is usually preserved in an 87% water/alcohol solution.

Each substance is diluted, most commonly, 1 part of the original medicinal

agent to 9 or 99 parts double-distilled water. The mixture is then vigorously

stirred or shaken. The solution is then diluted again 1:9 or 1:99 and vigorously

stirred. This process of diluting and stirring is repeated 3, 6, 12, 30, 200,

1,000, or even 1,000,000 times.

It is inaccurate to say that homeopathic medicines are just extremely

diluted; they are extremely " potentized. " Potentization refers to the specific

process of sequential dilution with vigorous stirring. The theory is that each

consecutive dilution in conjunction with the process of shaking/stirring

infiltrates the new double-distilled water and imprints upon it the fractal form

of the original substance used (fractal refers to the specific consecutively

smaller pattern or form within a larger pattern).

 

Some highly respected basic scientific research has begun to verify the claims

that homeopaths have made for 200 years, and that various extremely low

concentrations of biological agents can exhibit powerful biochemical effects.

Beta-endorphins are known to modulate natural killer cell activity in dilutions

of 10-18. Interleukin-1, an important agent in our immune system, has been found

to increase T-cell clone proliferation at 10-19. And pheromones, which are

externally emitted hormones that various animals and insects are known to

create, will result in hypersensitive reaction when as little as a single

molecule is received (scientists have no way at present to assess the effects of

less than a molecule).

 

It is commonly observed that organisms experience a biphasic response to various

chemicals, that is, extremely small doses of a substance exhibit different and

sometimes opposite effects than what they cause in high concentrations. For

instance, it is widely recognized that normal medical doses of atropine block

the parasympathetic nerves, causing mucous membranes to dry up, while

exceedingly small doses of atropine causes increased secretions to mucous

membranes.

 

In fact, many medical and scientific dictionaries refer to " hormesis " or " the

Arndt-Schulz law " (listed under " law " ) as the observations that weak

concentrations of biological agents stimulate physiological activity, medium

concentrations of agents depress physiological activity, and large

concentrations halt physiological activity.

 

There is also a significant body of research on hormesis (hundreds of studies)

conducted by conventional scientists, none of whom even mention homeopathy. The

journal, Health Physics devoted an entire issue to this subject in May, 1987.

 

Despite this body of research on hormesis, none of it was devoted to

investigating the ultra-molecular doses used in some homeopathic medicines. What

is interesting to note is that researchers find that the hormetic effects of

small doses only seems to influence biological systems when there is repeated

dosages of the noxious (or medicinal) agent, while homeopathic clinicians find

that the even smaller homeopathic doses have longer lasting effects, and do not

require repetition of dosages.

The Clinical Evidence

Homeopathy first became popular in Europe and the United States primarily

because of the astounding successes it had in treating people during various

infectious disease epidemics in the 19th century. The death rates in the

homeopathic hospitals from cholera, scarlet fever, typhoid, yellow fever,

pneumonia, and others was typically one-half to even one-eighth that in

conventional medical hospitals.

 

Similarly results were also observed in mental institutions and prisons under

the care of homeopathic physicians as compared to those under the care of

conventional doctors.

 

A group of researchers at the University of Glasgow and Glasgow Homeopathic

Hospital conducted four studies on people suffering from various respiratory

allergies (hay fever, asthma, and perennial allergic rhinitis). In total, they

treated 253 patients and found a 28% improvement in visual analogue scores in

those given a homeopathic medicine, as compared with a 3% improvement in

patients given a placebo. (The result was significant at P = 0.0007.).

 

In the hay fever study, homeopathic doses of various flowers that are known to

create pollen that initiates hay fever symptoms were used, and in the other

studies, the researchers conducted conventional allergy testing to assess what

substance each person was most allergic to. The researchers then prescribed the

30C (100-30) of this allergic substance (House dust mite 30C was the most

commonly prescribed homeopathic medicine).

 

The researchers called this type of prescribing " homeopathic immunotherapy, " and

they conclude from their research that either homeopathic medicines work or

controlled clinical trials do not.

 

Technically, this research may be more precisely called " isopathy " because the

medicines used were not the " similar " but the " same " ( " iso " ) substance that was

known to cause the specific symptoms of illness. However, the medicines were

made in the typical homeopathic pharmacological process, and legally recognized

homeopathic medicines were used in these trials.

 

In addition to this body of clinical evidence, an independent group of

physicians and scientists evaluated clinical research prior to October, 1995.

They reviewed 186 studies, 89 of which met their pre-defined criteria for their

meta-analysis. They found that on average patients given a homeopathic medicine

were 2.45 times more likely to have experienced a clinically beneficial effect.

When reviewing only the highest quality studies and when adjusting for

publication bias, the researchers found that subjects given a homeopathic

medicine were still 1.86 times more likely to experience improved health as

compared with those given a placebo. The researchers have also noted that it is

extremely common in conventional medical research for more rigorous trials to

yield less positive results than less rigorous trials.

 

The most important question that good scientists pose about clinical research

(whether it deals with homeopathy or not) is: have there been replications of

clinical studies by independent researchers?

 

Three separate bodies of researchers have conducted clinical trials in the use

of a homeopathic medicine (Oscillococcinum 200C) in the treatment of

influenza-like syndromes. Each of these trials involved relatively large numbers

of subjects (487, 300, and 372), and all were multi-centered placebo-controlled

and double-blinded (two of the three trials were also randomized). Each of these

trials showed statistically significant results.

 

One other body of research in the use of Galphimia glauca in the treatment of

hay fever was replicated successfully seven times, but this research was

conducted by the same group of researchers, and thus far, not by any other

researchers.

 

It would be inaccurate and biased to report only on studies that have shown

positive results with homeopathic medicines. There are numerous clinical trials

that have shown patients given a homeopathic medicine didn’t experience

beneficial results. The meta-analysis described earlier verifies this, but it

also suggests that the weight of evidence still suggests that homeopathy is more

than just a placebo effect.

How does homeopathy work?

How homeopathic medicines work is presently a mystery. And yet, nature is

replete with striking examples of the powerful effects of extremely small doses

of active agents.

 

It is commonly known that certain species of moths can smell pheromones of its

own species up to two miles away. Likewise, sharks are known to sense blood in

the water at large distances.

 

I stress again that nanopharmacological doses will not have any effect unless

the person is hypersensitive to the specific medicinal substance.

Hypersensitivity is created when there is some type of resonance between the

medicine and the person. Because the system of homeopathy bases its selection of

the medicine on its ability to cause in overdose the similar symptoms that the

sick person is experiencing, homeopathy’s " law of similars, " as it is called, is

simply a practical method of finding the substance to which a person is

hypersensitive.

 

The homeopathic principle of similars makes further sense when one considers

that physiologists and pathologists now recognize that disease is not simply the

result of breakdown or surrender of the body but that symptoms are instead

representative of the body’s efforts to fight infection or adapt to stress.

Fever, inflammation, pain, discharge, and even high blood pressure are but a

small number of the common symptoms that the organism creates in order to defend

and to try to heal itself.

 

Over 200 years of experience by homeopathic physicians have found that a

homeopathic medicine acts longer and deeper when it is more potentized. Although

no one knows precisely why this happens, it is conjectured that highly

potentized nanopharmacological doses can more deeply penetrate cells and the

blood-brain barrier than less potentized medicines. Although there is no

consensus on why these ultramolecular doses work more deeply, there is consensus

from users of these natural medicines that they do.

 

One cannot help but sense the potential treasure-trove of knowledge that further

research in homeopathy and nanopharmacology will bring in this new millennium.

 

Dana Ullman, M.P.H. has written seven books, the latest, Homeopathic Family

Medicine, reviews and describes the various clinical trials using homeopathic

medicines to treat common acute and chronic ailments (see www.homeopathic.com).

He advises or teaches in alternative medicine institutes at Harvard, Columbia,

and University of Arizona schools of medicine, and has developed the curriculum

in homeopathy for the University of Arizona’s Program in Integrative Medicine.

 

If you wish to see the complete document with references, please consider

becoming a member or friend of ISIS. Full details here

 

 

 

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