The Happy and Prosperous Blog

Yesterday, in Part 1 of this series, I introduced the basics of homeopathy. Today, I would like to go into some more details about homeopathic remedies.

Remedies can be made from anything but mainly they’re derived from plants, minerals or animals. Examples are jasmine, nettle, sodium chloride (salt), sulphur, oyster shell, various snake venoms. Remedies are made by dissolving the substance in an alcohol/water mixture initially. If the substance is insoluble then it is finely ground with lactose first. This is all done according to a specific, pre-defined process. Successive dilutions then take place (1:10 or 1:100) with vigorous shaking at each stage. (Insoluble material, after several dilutions and grindings with lactose, is then dissolved in an alcohol/water mix and the process continues as for soluble material.) The process carries on until the desired potency is reached A 6x potency is a 1:10 dilution carried out 6 times with vigorous shaking at each stage. A 6c potency is a 1:100 dilution carried out 6 times with vigorous shaking at each stage.

6c and 30c potencies are readily available in some chemists and health food shops but homeopathic pharmacies also prepare remedies that have been through many more dilutions. All of these are medicinally active when prescribed in the right circumstances. As you would expect, homeopathic pharmacies prepare remedies under carefully controlled conditions, following strict procedures and with rigorous quality control to ensure consistency of product.

You will appreciate from the above, I’m sure, that homeopathy is different to herbalism in that herbalism uses only plants and herbal remedies do not go through the dilution process I have described above. As I mentioned in Part 1, homeopathic remedies act as a stimulus to the healing process. They do not have a direct biochemical effect so that can work perfectly well in such dilute form. But dilution is not the only factor – the vigorous shaking at each stage of dilution is important. I have heard people say that making a homeopathic remedy is like dropping a grain of something in one end of a swimming pool and taking a teaspoon of water from the other end. Not true ! This totally ignores the kinetic energy input at each stage of the dilution process.

In the next part of this series, I will take up the issue of how homeopathic remedies work.

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