Homeopathy does more than Placebo

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Lancet. 1994 Dec 10;344(8937):1601-6.

Is evidence for homoeopathy reproducible?

Reilly D1, Taylor MA, Beattie NG, Campbell JH, McSharry C, Aitchison TC, Carter R, Stevenson RD.

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Abstract

We tested, under independent conditions, the reproducibility of evidence from two previous trials that homoeopathy differs from placebo. The test model was again homoeopathic immunotherapy. 28 patients with allergic asthma, most of them sensitive to house-dust mite, were randomly allocated to receive either oral homoeopathic immunotherapy to their principal allergen or identical placebo. The test treatments were given as a complement to their unaltered conventional care. A daily visual analogue scale of overall symptom intensity was the outcome measure. A difference in visual analogue score in favour of homoeopathic immunotherapy appeared within one week of starting treatment and persisted for up to 8 weeks (p = 0.003). There were similar trends in respiratory function and bronchial reactivity tests. A meta-analysis of all three trials strengthened the evidence that homoeopathy does more than placebo (p = 0.0004). Is the reproducibility of evidence in favour of homoeopathy proof of its activity or proof of the clinical trial's capacity to produce false-positive results?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Reilly+d+AND+Taylor+ma+AND+Beattie

Homeopathy has a longer history integrated in hospitals than conventional medicine

History

How it all began...

The history of the Queen Elizabeth Health Complex can be traced back to 1894 when it used to be the Montreal Homeopathic Hospital. This institution which was reputed for its devoted nurses and efficient management was situated on McGill College Avenue until 1927. At that time the demand for more beds led to a public appeal for $500,000 which allowed the hospital to move to Marlowe Avenue, where the modern complex is currently located.

This hospital was the home of many firsts. For example, in 1942 curare was first used in clinical anaesthesia, and in 1943 the hospital pioneered the first post-operative recovery room in Canada. By 1951, the impressive medical and surgical advances accomplished by the hospital allowed it to acquire the new name of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital of Montreal, in honour of the wife of King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, who was soon to become the Queen Mother.

In December 1961, the completely renovated building was officially opened by the Premier of Quebec, Jean Lesage. It was “Canada’s largest little hospital”. The renovations had taken three years to complete and completely modernized the hospital facilities.

In June 1995, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) became one of the Montreal-area acute-care hospitals to be slated for closure in response to a directive from the provincial government to cut the costs of health care provision. In the following year, the QEH Board of Directors, the QEH Foundation and other bodies and individuals in the community joined forces and decided to take matters into their own hands by forming the Centre-West Community Health Corporation (CWCHC) which became incorporated in June 1996. This project allows for the continued delivery of acute care services as well as the supply of a full spectrum of services to care, share, prevent and cure.

The CWCHC became a new, not-for-profit health organization with no government funding whose purpose was to provide as many medical and health promotion services to its community as possible on the premises of the former QEH. The Queen Elizabeth Health Complex, under the management of the CWCHC, is therefore a reincarnation and a new legal form for a century-old community institution. Its mission is to provide efficient, readily accessible medical services, complementary and alternative therapy, as well as emotional and mental health services that will contribute to improving the health of our community in accordance with the policies and guidelines of the Government of Quebec.

At a time when we are actively searching for tangible and long-term solutions to our health care needs, the Queen Elizabeth Health Complex (QEHC) offers an innovative and efficient health care model, providing a diverse range of community health care services - all under one roof. Ensuring ready access to both medical and alternative health services, the QEHC is an attractive option to avoid the overcrowding, delays and other inconveniences so often experienced in hospitals and CLSCs.

http://www.qehc.org/history

Homeopathy on Dr. Oz's Show

Lisa Samet on Dr. Oz's Show
Monday, January 28, 2013

Lisa Samet, N.D., was interviewed by Dr. Oz about homeopathy in January, 2013.

With her help, Dr. Oz reveals how you can replace your over-the-counter medications with homeopathic solutions. Looking for an all-natural solution for your problems? Homeopathy might be right for you!

Addressing people, not disease,
in a wholistic way by encouraging the body to heal itself

Lisa Samet, N.D. focuses primarily on homeopathy in her Montreal practice

About Lisa Samet, N.D.
In her experience it is the deepest healing modality available in that it does not just soothe or palliate symptoms but can actually trigger the body to start to heal itself. This can seem quite miraculous when deep-seated or long-standing problems are actually eradicated as the body, with a push from the homeopathic remedy, starts to rebalance and regain its health. Most of the frustration with conventional medicine today is that although the drugs can take away many of the effects of a disease (pain, inflammation, etc), they don’t actually affect the disease process itself. This is evidenced by the fact that people usually take drugs for chronic illness indefinitely, and even after say, twenty years, if they would go off the medicines, they would likely be in the same place they started or worse off. Frankly, this can also be true in the ‘natural medicine’ world, where supplements and herbs can help the symptoms but never seem to address the chronic susceptibility to a problem. › Read more

Lisa Samet, Naturopathic Doctor and Homeopath
› Click here to learn more: lisasamet.com

It is not easy to master the art of homeopathy. Consulting an experienced practitioner is essential. It is more difficult to find a good homeopathic remedy than to write a prescription for prednisone or antibiotics, for example, or suggest a mixture of herbs or vitamin supplements. While some relief may be experienced from any of these therapies, deep healing will not occur in any comparable way to what is experienced with the correct homeopathic remedy.

The challenge comes in that we are addressing the individual as a whole being, not the disease. In the conventional world there is a drug protocol for the disease name that one has, but in the world of homeopathy, we find a remedy that matches the individual’s personal manifestation of the illness, not on the disease name itself. This is because we are addressing the whole person, not the disease. What this means is that two people with the same disease, for example, rheumatoid arthritis, would likely get two completely different homeopathic remedies. For even though it is the same disease name, the type of pain, the location of the pain, the factors that influence the pain, etc., will most likely be different from one person to the next and these specifics are what the homeopath uses to prescribe on, in addition to a general and thorough understanding of all aspects of the patient.

Sometimes it is challenging for the patient to accurately express what they experience. Because people are complex beings, finding the correct remedy may not always be achieved on the first attempt. The good news is, there are rarely any negative side effects with homeopathy, so it is worth being patient as the results from the correct remedy will be worth your wait.

Due to the difficulty of mastering the art of homeopathy, it is imperative to find a practitioner who is well trained as a ‘classical’ homeopath. This is someone who takes a very thorough case at the initial interview, often lasting more than two hours for an adult with a chronic illness, and then selects one remedy, not a mixture of remedies or alternating different remedies, that best matches the patient’s total symptom picture. In this way, a successful result has the highest chance of being achieved.

Lisa Samet is very experienced, as she has been studying homeopathy since 1989 and practicing since 1999. She considers herself fortunate to have been trained by some of the best in the field. She has seen terrific results in her practice even with very complex diseases.

In addition to homeopathy, Lisa Samet is passionate about helping people with optimizing their diet and learning tools to reduce stress. She will guide you on lifestyle improvements and nutrition optimization, including food sensitivity evaluation to identify hidden foods that continue to keep people sick, as well as detoxification and intermittent fasting to optimize health. Habitual patterns of negative thinking, worrying, anxiety can keep us from enjoying living. These thought patterns and fixed ways of seeing situations in our lives can keep us miserable. Emotional re-patterning work can help patients experience a profound shift, overcoming long-held stuck patterns that prevent them from living their fullest and happiest lives.

Emotional Re-patterning

Habitual patterns of negative thinking, worrying, anxiety can keep us from enjoying living. These thoughts patterns and fixed ways of seing situations in our lives can keep us miserable. Emotional re-patterning work can help you experience a profound shift. Overcome long-held stuck patterns that prevent you from living your fullest and happiest life using easy-to-learn methods. › Read more

Naturopathic Medicine

The safety record for naturopathic medicine is excellent. This makes sense given the emphasis on non-toxic, natural source medicines and gentle, non-invasive treatments. Focusing on lifestyle improvements and nutrition including food sensitivity evaluation to identify hidden foods that continue to keep you sick, as well as detoxification and intermittent fasting to optimize health. › Read more

› Click here to learn more: lisasamet.com

We hope you now have a complete overview of naturopathic medicine and homeopathy and a little bit of Lisa Samet, N.D.’s own background and interests. Choosing a naturopathic doctor to work in partnership with to improve your health is a worthwhile endeavor. If we can be of any further help, please feel free to contact us.

Contact Lisa Samet, N.D.
» Send an email to Lisa Samet, N.D.
Long distance consultations by phone
or Skype are available
Tel: 514-279-6629
Hahnemann Homeopathic Center
1173 Mont-Royal Blvd. West
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H2V 2H6
Fax: 514-279-0111

Published Articles

Published: Dr. Oz Website, February, 2013
 Homeopathy Explained

http://www.homeopathy.ca/lisasamet.shtml

Harvard Study Has Good News for Homeopathic Medicine By John Weeks March 4, 2016

Harvard Study Has Good News for Homeopathic Medicine

John Weeks

March 4, 2016

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by John Weeks, Publisher/Editor of The Integrator Blog News and Reports

The American Journal of Public Health has recently published a survey article out of Harvard that shows that homeopathic medicine, while still only used by a small fraction of the U.S. population, has jumped 15% in use. In addition, most users put homeopathy among the top 3 complementary and integrative strategies they use in their health care.

The interest of this journal in this publication is linked to possible public health benefits from the use of homeopathic medicine. The principal investigator was Michelle Dossett, MD, PhD and the team also included placebo expert Ted Kaptchuk, OMD. They hail from Harvard’s School of Public Health and from a Harvard Medical School affiliated hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess. The teams notes that prior studies of homeopathy “suggest potential public health benefits such as reductions in unnecessary antibiotic usage, reductions in costs to treat certain respiratory diseases, improvements in peri-menopausal depression, improved health outcomes in chronically ill individuals, and control of a Leptospirosis epidemic in Cuba.”

The data was gleaned from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The researchers explored the prevalence and use patterns of homeopathic medicines among U.S. adults in relation to other complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) use. Versions of this survey in 2002 and 2007 found use of homeopathic medicines at 1.7% and 1.8% of the adult population, respectively. The 15% growth in the recent half-decade corresponds to an overall use rate of 2.1% in 2012. The most common conditions for which people sought homeopathic treatment were respiratory and ear-nose-and-throat complaints as well as musculoskeletal pain syndromes. Users tended to be more educated than non-users.

Use of homeopathy in the US is lower than in many European countries. The authors note, for instance, that surveys have found rates at 8.2% in Italy and nearly 15% in Germany. A recent Italian wire-service story reported findings of a 2012 survey by a homeopathic manufacturer that found much higher use, at close to one-in-six adult Italians.

The Harvard team reported that positive views of homeopathy were much higher among those who saw a professional homeopath compared to those who simply purchased the pills from the store and self-prescribed. Those who consulted professionals were more likely to feel that homeopathy was “very important in maintaining health and well-being.” The sense of the importance of the remedies was also stronger. More of those who’d consulted a homeopathic practitioner thought that homeopathy helped their health condition “a great deal” than did the self-prescribers.

Naysayers, who believe these medicine are nothing more than placebos, will likely question the additional perceived value post practitioner visit. Is it anything more than the greater level of investment in a placebo one has if the placebo is practitioner-recommended rather than self-prescribed?

The article came to The Integrator from homeopath and author Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH (pictured). He sent notice of the Harvard publication and of the recent report on Italian use with this note: “Here's some GOOD news about homeopathy!”

Ullman adds: "This survey confirms that a certain well-educated and well-satisfied group of Americans benefit from self-prescribing homeopathic medicines as well as from going to professional homeopaths. Although these numbers are much higher in select countries in Europe, it is more than reasonable to support individual choice in health care. Just as our country is a melting pot of different cultures and races, our health and medical care likewise needs this healthy diversity."

Homeopathy has taken it on the chin the last two years. The Harvard study was published amidst a renewed flare up of bad publicity following a controversial 2015 report from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. The chair of the report, general practitioner Paul Glasziou, MD blogged on the controversial findings at the British Medical Journal. A wave of postings from anti-homeopathy writers, such as this, immediately followed.

Weighing the public health potential of homeopathic medicine requires a wading into a river of twin ambiguities. These can each be true simultaneously: 1) homeopathic treatment only has value as a placebo, and 2) expanded use of these medicines can be useful tools in the public health campaign against antibiotic overuse. This 2008 study, for instance, found that 13% of doctors use antibiotics as placebos. Mightn’t we have been better off, from a population health perspective, had they prescribed homeopathic remedies and not delivered this extra load of antibiotics onto the terrain?

French researchers spoke to this potential last year when they concluded that “management of patients by homeopathic GPs may be less expensive from a global perspective and may represent an important interest to public health.” The Harvard researchers included a similar note: “Because of potential public health benefits associated with the use of homeopathy, further research on this modality and targeted studies of users are warranted.”

Perhaps the way to move forward is to allow skeptical doctors to deliver homeopathic medicine to their patients while announcing to them that it is a placebo. Kaptchuk and others have reported that the placebos can still work. If they have more significant positive value, well, that healing can take place without the skeptic’s approval.

About the Author:

John Weeks

John Weeks is a writer, speaker, chronicler and organizer with 32 years of experience in the movement for integrative health and medicine. the long-time founder/editor of The Integrator Blog News & Reports, a primary connective terrain for the diverse stakeholders and professions in the field and was invited in May 2016 to serve as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Besides his Integrative Practitioner column, he presently writes for Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal, the Huffington Post and elsewhere.

He increasingly enjoys teaching and mentoring. He has keynoted, led plenary sessions, breakouts, and offered guest lectures for dozens of organizations ranging from the Bastyr University to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the UCLA School of Medicine to the Institute for Health and Productivity Management, the AANP and AIHM to the American Hospital Association. He has consulted with insurers, employers, professional organizations, universities and government agencies at all levels.

As an organizer, Weeks convened the Integrative Medicine Industry Leadership Summits (2000-2002), directed the National Education Dialogue to Advance Integrated Care (2004-2006), fund-raised the start-up of the Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium (2002), and co-founded the Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health, which he directed 2007-2015. In 2014, three consortia and others combined to grant him a Lifetime Achievement Living Tribute Award. Four academic institutions have granted Weeks honorary doctorates for his work. Seattle-based, he considers himself a particularly lucky soul to have worked remotely while living with his spouse Jeana Kimball, ND, MPH, and their children in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico for 6 of the last 15 years.

https://www.integrativepractitioner.com/topics/news/harvard-study-has-good-news-for-homeopathic-medicine

HRI-supported researcher presents PhD findings at international congress

HRI-supported researcher presents PhD findings at international congress

26 April 2018

https://www.hri-research.org/2018/04/hri-supported-researcher-presents-pilot-study-at-international-congress/

The Israeli Society for ADHD recently held an international congress in Tel Aviv, during which HRI-supported researcher Philippa Fibert presented the results of her PhD pilot feasibility study assessing the effectiveness of treatment by homeopaths and nutritional therapists for children with ADHD.

During her presentation Philippa discussed the importance of pragmatic trials to assess whether interventions might improve the long term negative outcomes associated with ADHD. The pilot study findings regarding the effectiveness of treatment by nutritional therapists and homeopaths specifically using the Trials Within Cohorts (TWiCs) methodology were also described.

Reflecting on her experience at the Congress, Philippa said, “When I thanked the conference organiser for the opportunity to speak, particularly given the controversial status of homeopathy, she replied ‘we are open to what works’.”

To find out more about Philippa‘s PhD and trial click here.

https://www.hri-research.org/2018/04/hri-supported-researcher-presents-pilot-study-at-international-congress/