In 2021 53-year-old German. He went to the hospital with several symptoms, including dizziness, confusion and muscle weakness. When asked if he took any medicine, he replied that he took a homeopathic medicine. At first, this did not bother the doctors. At the end of the day, homeopathy is still an expensive way to drink sugar water. However, it turned out that when they tested the product he was taking, they were surprised to find that it was causing symptoms that could actually be much worse. And, without knowing it, the patient suffered overdose of homeopathy.
It may seem impossible. In fact, this is almost a contradiction in terms, since homeopathy is based precisely on the use extremely low doses some connections. The lower the better. This is why it is so strange that an overdose of homeopathy can occur.
The problem in this case was that the company producing the homeopathic medicine made a dilution error, causing the dose the patient took to be 600 times higher than expected. Moreover, the diluted compound turned out to be a very toxic substance. Fortunately, the man survived and told the story, but the end of the story could have been fatal.
Like cures like
In 1784, a retired doctor named Samuel Hahnemann He was working as a translator when he read something in the text that caught his attention. Tree bark Hina Traditionally it has been used as a remedy against malariaa disease that caused many deaths around the world at the time.
He left his profession, frustrated by the persistent use of ineffective methods such as bloodletting. He wanted innovation and thought this might be a good starting point. He decided to test the bark of this tree on himself and took different doses to test the effect. He was surprised to see that the symptoms he was suffering from were very similar to the symptoms of malaria itself, so an idea arose within him. What if like is cured by like?
This would mean that almost any disease could be cured if something could be found that caused similar effects. But there was a problem: usually such effects were achieved using very toxic substances.
To find a solution to this problem, he decided to try greatly dilute these substances in water, convinced that this liquid can memorize the consequences of what was dissolved in him. On the other hand, to enhance the effect, like a religious man, he added a few clicks BibleAnd voila, the remedy was ready. Homeopathy was born.
A product that is still used today
Products prepared in this way are non-toxic, since their active ingredients are diluted as much as possible. In some cases, it would take a whole puddle of the product to find a few drops of the healing substance. But water remembers everything, at least that’s what its defenders say. Now they add it to improve the taste. a little sugar and, as Mary Poppins would say, the pill will go better.
Given this, it is clear, on the one hand, that homeopathy is completely useless. It is not true that like is cured by like. But even if this were true, the doses would not be enough, because water does not remember anything, no matter how much the Bible is shaken with it. In addition, it is clear that an overdose of homeopathy is impossible. The problem comes when dilutions are done poorly.
An overdose of homeopathy almost cost a man his life
Many scientific figures have publicly committed so-called homeopathic suicides. This consists of taking a full box calming pills homeopathy. If this had been done with a real drug, it might have cost them their lives. However, the worst thing that can happen to them when using homeopathy is to suffer from hyperglycemia.
On the other hand, the protagonist of this story, set in 2021, suffered an overdose of homeopathy because the company producing his medicine made a dilution error. It was a drug based on Atropa belladonna, one of the most toxic plants in the northern hemisphere. Eating just four to eight berries can be fatal for an adult. In fact, it is so harmful that the ancient Romans poisoned the tips of their arrows with it.
There are several homeopathic remedies that use it, mainly to treat pain. Basically nothing happens. The problem arises when mistakes are made. The final concentration of this compound in the product consumed by the patient should have been 0.005 mg/ml, but an error in dilutions led to the fact that it turned out to be 3mg/ml. The patient took 30 drops, so the overdose of homeopathy was huge.
Other cases that could have been an overdose of homeopathy
This is not the first time something like this has happened. In 2014, a case was presented of a 21-month-old boy who was admitted to a Madrid hospital after accidentally swallowing a one-milliliter bottle that his pediatrician had prescribed for a toothache. He was prescribed 6 drops twice a day, but after he accidentally swallowed them, his parents decided to consult. The child was doing well, so the emergency department dosed Atropa belladonna what was contained in the bottle. Unfortunately, they were unable to do this because the explanation in the prospectus was completely unclear. Therefore, to improve his health, they decided to give the little boy detoxification therapy with active charcoal and leave him in the hospital for 24 hours to keep an eye on you.
This case report concludes that package inserts for homeopathic medicines need to be clearer. But in fact, the ideal would be for doctors to prescribe drugs based on scientific evidence, rather than drugs based on the idea that water has memory and can be activated by the Bible. No matter how much we try to disguise it as science today, it is still a treatment without any evidence.
Source: Hiper Textual
