When I started this blog, I promised to discuss all major alternative modalities. This is a big task, and I am not nearly there yet. For instance, I have so far written hardly anything about ‘Schuessler Salts’, a derivative of homeopathy that is hugely popular in Germany and is slowly spreading also to other countries. According to ‘Homeopathy Plus’, Schuessler’s Tissue Salts are ‘a medicine chest for the whole family’. Specifically, his is what they say:
… Tissue Salts were first developed by the German doctor, Wilhelm Schuessler, who said ill-health was caused by an imbalance in the bodies twelve vital cell salts. Schuessler believed that these imbalances could be corrected by easily absorbed and homeopathically-prepared, micro-doses of each salt.
Schuessler’s Tissue Salts (also known as biochemic or cell salts) are potentised micro-doses of the 12 essential minerals your body needs to repair and maintain itself. They are prepared in homeopathic 6X potencies that are gentle enough to be used by the youngest to the eldest member of your family. They can even be used with pets.
Schuessler introduced his homeopathically-prepared Tissue Salts more than 100 years ago but today, they have spread to most parts of the world where families and individuals rely on them as simple home treatments for a wide range of problems.
Tissue Salts, as either individual remedies or in combination, are an ideal addition to the home medicine cabinet for simple health complaints. They are:
- Gentle
- Absorbed rapidly
- Natural
- Pleasant tasting
- Lactose free
- Convenient to carry
- Non-toxic and non-addictive
- Safe to use with prescription medicines
- Suitable for broad, general health complaints (unlike standard homeopathy that requires more precise symptom matching).
END OF QUOTE
Other websites offer much more concrete recommendations for the 12 specific remedies; for instance this one:
1. KALI PHOS (Kali Phosphoricum; Potassium Phosphate)
a. mental/emotional symptoms predominate
b. Feel as if “I’m too tired to rest.”
c. Anxiety, brain fatigue, irritability, temper-tantrums, sleeplessness, dizziness,
nervous asthma
d. easily bleeding gums
2. KALI MUR (Kali Muriaticum; Potassium Chloride)
a. white mucus, swollen glands
b. white or gray coated tongue, glandular swellings, discharge of white, thick
mucus from nose or eyes
c. indigestion from rich food
3. KALI SULPH (Kali Sulphuricum; Potassium Sulphate)
a. yellow mucus, later stages of illness, congestion and cough worse in evening
b. dandruff, yellow coated tongue, yellow crusts on eyelids
c. gas, poor digestion
4. CALC PHOS (Calcarea Phosphorica; Calcium Phosphate)
a. teething remedy
b. upset stomach, post-nasal drip, chronic cold feet, poor dentition
5. CALC SULPH (Calcarea Sulphurica; Calcium Sulphate)
a. sores that heal poorly, herpes blisters
b. pain in forehead, vertigo, pimples on the face
6. CALC FLUOR (Calcarea Fluorica; Calcium Fluoride)
a. poor tooth enamel, cracks in palms of hands, lips
b. hemorrhoids
7. NAT MUR (Natrum Muriate; Sodium Chloride)
a. dryness of body openings, clear thin mucus
b. effects of excess overheating; itching of hair at nape of neck
c. early stage of common colds with clear, running discharge
d. insect bites (applied locally)
8. NAT SULPH (Natrum Sulphuricum; Sodium Sulphate)
a. rarely needed
b. green stools and other excess bile symptoms
c. Sensitive scalp, greenish-gray or greenish-brown coating on tongue, influenza
9. NAT PHOS (Natrum Phosphoricum; Sodium Phosphate)
a. simple morning sickness; acid rising in throat
b. Headache on crown of head, eyelids glued together in morning,
c. grinding of teeth in sleep; pain and sour risings from stomach after eating
10. MAG PHOS (Magnesia Phosphorica; Magnesium Phosphate)
a. Muscle spasms, cramps and menstrual cramps, if always better with heat
b. hiccups; trembling of hands
c. teeth sensitive to cold
11. FERRUM PHOS ( Ferrum Phosphate; Ferrum Phosphate)
a. first stages of inflammation, redness, swelling, early fever
b. congestive headache, earache, sore throat
c. loss of voice from overuse
12. SILICEA (Silica)
a. white pus forming conditions, boils (“homeopathic lancet”), stony-hard glands
b. Sty in eye area, tonsillitis, brittle nails
END OF QUOTE
All these promotional websites are guilty of two remarkable omissions:
- these remedies are biologically implausible,
- there is not a jot of evidence to suggest they are more than pure placebos.
Even if the ingredients named on the bottles were effective, the salts are far too dilute (6X signifies a dilution of 1: 1000000) to have any meaningful health effects. Unsurprisingly, there is no evidence whatsoever that these remedies work. I could not find a single study on Schuessler Salts – but if anyone knows of one, I would be ready to change my view. However, I did find this quote from the ‘Government Gazette of Western Australia’ 1946:
THE following report is issued under section 210 of the Health Act, 1911-1944:- It is claimed that the above “remedy” [Dr. Schuessler’s Cell Salts, Kali Phos. 3X] is “indicated in loss of mental power, brain fog, paralysis of any part, nervous headaches, neuralgic pains, general disability and exhaustion and sleeplessness from nervous disorders.” The “remedy” has been analysed and been found to contain potassium dihydrogen phosphate and lactose. The actual quantity of potassium dihydrogen phosphate in the “adult dose” is so minute that over 9,000 tablets would be necessary to give the minimum medicinal dose of this drug. Lactose is a sugar which is of no value in the treatment of any of the above-mentioned maladies. Dr. Schuessler’s Cell Salts can therefore have no curative value. They will bring about no improvement in any of the illnesses for which they are said to be indicated. Any expenditure on the purchase of these salts will be money wasted.
188 Responses to Schuessler Salts: “Any expenditure on the purchase of these salts will be money wasted”
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After complaints by myself about advertising by the homeopathy manufacturer, Nelsons, the MHRA gave the following guidance on Schuessler/Tissue salts:
This doesn’t stop anyone selling these products, but they are not permitted to say or imply they are homeopathic in any way and – like the majority of homeopathic products available to the consumer – they are not allowed to have therapeutic claims. This is because they are not licensed as medicines and not registered under the MHRA’s HR scheme or authorised under the NR scheme: products that are not in one of these two schemes are not permitted to be called homeopathic.
If anyone spots any product (frequently in blue/orange plastic tubs, manufactured by Martin & Pleasance) that have the homeopathic ‘dilution’ of 6X on it or otherwise breaching the above guidance, you can complain to the MHRA by email at [email protected]..
This applies to the UK, but similar rules may well apply to other EU countries as well.
For full details, see Rubbing salts into the wounds of homeopathy.
This includes an ad for ‘New Era’ salts in the February 1951 issue of the homeopathy magazine, Heal Thyself and a statement by the Commissioner for Public Health in Australia saying Schuessler cell salts “will bring about no improvement in any of the illnesses for which they are said to be indicated. Any expenditure on the purchase of these salts will be money wasted.” That was in 1946.
You are so wrong.
My story would be haha’d by you but I promise you that it totally cured my neuritis in 3 days that md’s specialists etc couldn’t fix in over a month of excruciating pain.
12 different pills and 1 short book.
PERIOD!
to haha or not to haha, that is the question
You, Mr Edzard, seem to be stuck in Ha Ha
None so deaf as those that don’t want to hear.
you can tell me about the evidence and I will hear; the trouble is you have none.
When someone is simply a skeptical idiot
and has no clue about how this biochemical ‘medicine’ works then you get comments like the one above. Deficiencies are a real issue in people’s health and any ‘deficiency’ will call in the long run DISEASE in the body PERIOD!
I have experimented time and time again with clients with all sorts of issues be it inflammatory or otherwise and it WORKS! not only IT WORKS but IT WORKS sometimes in a very short amount of time. how the person above described it. And the idea that there is NO Scientific Basis behind is quite naive from your part. Dr Shussler was a very prominent Physician and did years of study on the matter. Anyway, if you have nothing good to say about Homeopathy or Biochemical Tissue Salt Therapy I suggest either you go and check the MILLIONS of cases that are TOTALLY CURED ALL OVER THE WORLD that includes iNDIA one the Leading Countries in Homeopathic Medicine who even have FULLY HOMEOPATHIC HOSPITALS INCLUDING ICU (YEP THAT’S RIGHT ICU) and all of those HOSPITALS are FULLY OPERATIONAL 24/7 SAVING PEOPLE’S LIVES. So my friend if you don’t have the time or enough knowledge under your belt to actually INVESTIGATE so that you will HAVE ALL THE SCIENTIFIC PROOF that you will need as to HOW AND WHY HOMEOPATHY IS ONE OF THE MOST EFFETICTIVE “MEDICINES” available to mankind I suggest perhaps you cease writing a lot of rubbish about stuff you obviously know nothing about.
interesting!
and now the evidence, please.
boy boom!
I agree with Jeff Austin. Schuessler Salrs worked for me. As it was christmastime I couldn’t see my naturopath. So GP prescribed prescription drugs permanently for a first time bout of Trigeminal Neuralgia that caused me excruiating pain.. Not wanting to buy or take drugs permanently, I rang my naturopath who gave me directions to place drops under my tongue, two different types of Schuessler Salts every half hour. This is not an easy task but I did it even sometimes through the night. I can’t remember how many days exactly that I did that for maybe 4 to 6 days as it was eleven years ago that this remedy worked without reoccurrence of Trigeminal Neuralgia.
Schuessler salts seem to work because of placebo effects and the natural history of the condition etc. Test them in trials that control for these factors and you disclose them for what they are: pure placebos.
A placebo doesnt take away excrruiating pain. They worked for me because i took them exactly as directed by my naturopath, something that the people in your trials cannot confirm. Scheussler Salts work and that’s the reason they have been around for 130 years and will be much longer than this site..
You mention “placebo effects” as if it were a real thing tangible thing…..
Can you explain to me how our conscious mind effects us and why science dare not explore this mind/body/spirit phenomena.
It works Edzard, however; your years of reductionist philosophy education inhibit you from seeing beyond your indoctrinated education.
Im not attacking you btw, just highlighting how narrow your advice(on this topic) because you seem to have accepted that your western medical education trumps all other medical education philosophies.
It was Paracelsus, the Austrian alchemist that discovered the Cell Salts. in 1550. He was and is still recogised as being one the the finest true physicians. A true physician trys to heal someone and not mask their symtoms.
The queen of England has a homeopath!
oh dear!
science is mostly reductionist
You know nothing about my education [it was not an indoctrination]
placebo works mainly via conscious expectation and subconscious conditioning
I very rarely give advice
I don’t believe in any medical education philosophies
I support anything for which there is sound evidence
It was not Paracelsus who discovered the Schuessler salts [which are highly diluted]
I would not like to see even my worst ememy being treated by Paracelsus
A good physician tries to hel patients the best she can, and sometimes that’s by alleviating symptoms
The Queen HAD a homeopath
YOU SEE, IN YOUR SHORT COMMENT YOU MANAGED TO FORMULATE AN AMAZING AMOUNT OF NONSENCE.
“A placebo doesnt take away excrruiating pain”
It can.
Vets use homeopathic medicine on million dollar racehorses, farm animals and pets. Explain the placebo effect and how it works on animals. ‘oh, said the horse, i ‘ll think myself better now that i’ve received this lovely homeopatic remedy, as it works through my subconciuos mind’. Stop spreding lies about things you nothing about Edzard. The vets use it, becauser it gets results, expalin that.
what a brilliant argument!
why did I not think of it?
oh, I know: because its pure BS.
” Stop spreding lies about things you nothing about Edzard.”
you are sweat – but brush up on your spelling, Joe.
Even if it’s a placebo effect, it worked. All illness is an illusion anyways. Our thoughts create our reality. If one believes their sick, their sick. If one believes it works, it works. Scientist have even discovered test results of any kind hinder on people around and their belief if it will work or not. If the vibration of it won’t work is stronger than it will work, the results were that it didn’t work. Mind over matter in all of life. Mind is reality..
@Michele
“All illness is an illusion anyways.” “If one believes their [sic] sick, their [sic] sick.” “Mind is reality..” “If the vibration of it won’t work is stronger than it will work, the results were that it didn’t work.”
Either you’re boring a large hole in your cheek with your tongue or you’re taking something the rest of us don’t know about.
you’re actually an evil old nut-job Ed—been following your pharma ‘science’ bullshit for years—all opinion and ignorance and anti-science
I love you too, Paul!
I’ve used cell salts for 5 years. I use them for everything. I also do deep medical research and have clients who contact me to research their diagnosis and prescribed medications. We are so depleted in these minerals that many are presenting with diseases that are nothing more than a serious mineral deficiency. How you came to your conclusion I will never understand. It’s seems you found one negative thing and jumped on it. This sounds more like an AstroTurf article to me.
1) these remedies are far too diluted to work for mineral deficiencies.
2) if you claim they work, please show us evidence not anecdotes.
3) I have researched alt med for > 25 years and found NO evidence to suggest that Schuessler salts have any effects.
4) the assumptions on which they are based are utterly barmy.
btw, what is ‘deep research’?
Vets use homeopathy. Ed says that is bs, a demonstrably fake claim. They do use it, on pets, farm animals and racehorses. It’s a medical fact that easily blows the Ed and co’s fake claims of ‘Placebo’, out of the water. The placebo argument is demolished but the intellectually corrupt will hold with foolish pride their untenable postion in the face of the facts. Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt.
https://edzardernst.com/2019/02/scam-for-animals-part-1-homeopathy/
https://edzardernst.com/2016/12/and-again-no-good-evidence-that-homeopathy-works-in-animals/
https://edzardernst.com/2014/10/homeopathy-works-for-animals-so-it-cant-be-a-placebo/
https://edzardernst.com/2014/01/homeopathy-does-it-really-work-in-animals/
Hi Ed, think you made a spelling mistake there on Thur 28 Mar 2019 @ 16:44 (or maybe it was a typo or a freudian slip) We all make the odd typo, don’t be too hard on yourself, I know you’re a sensitive soul, among other things 😉
I suspect that Edzard was suggesting the the homeopathy was BS, not the claim that vets use it.
There is a demand from the owners, who are the ones paying the bill, and where there is profit to be made there are people who will take advantage of that.
With regard to the placebo effect here, it is only necessary that the owners are pleased, not the animals. Having said that, many animals are remarkably sensitive to subtle cues from their owners that humans wouldn’t usually notice.
And, we might of course add that regression to the mean, the self-limiting nature of many ailments, and non-specific effects or benefits from simultaneous interventions are factors that are as much at play when bogus therapies are applied to animals (or babies) as when they are to humans.
Also, someone has to determine that the animal has improved. That person is as prone to bias of perception and reporting.
same for me,these mineral salts do work ,i have pain in my back for years and take now calcium fluoratum and the pain goes away immediatly.
if it would be placebo ,how would that be possible ,i take them now for 2 years and never have pain ,only when i forget to take them.and the reason why there has never been a study done is quiet clear,because big pharma doesn’t like competition and they have those institutions like MHRA in there pockets .they even use them to eliminate competition.they can not make people ill ,that is why they don’t want them in the public.wake up idiots.instead of giving your stupid opinion ,try them of yourself.ph my ass.
wake up idiots?
https://edzardernst.com/2012/12/ad-hominem-attacks-are-signs-of-victories-of-reason-over-unreason/
Dear Edzard Ernst,
Forgive my directness but, as matter of courtesy, even if you were right, and you may be,
it does not give you licence to call people idiots.
I have to confess that throughout my life I have approached mainstream medicine with a certain amount of skepticism. Main reason? As a young man, I asked myself why is it that, with a few rare exceptions, penicillin being one, pharmaceutical companies hardly ever come up with a cure. It almost always comes down to ‘treatment’ or ‘management’ which essentially means taking pills for the rest of your life. The most obvious answer is that, if a company were to spend millions to successfully develop a cure, they would soon go out of business. The trick is to establish a long dependency, not to cure. Keep people alive with a daily pill. Good business strategy. I’m not saying that there should be, or even could be a cure for every disease, but the paucity of real ‘cures’ in the history pharmaceuticals I find it highly suspect and totally unsurprising.
For the record, I have taken multivitamins for years, and yes it’s possible that they just make my urine expensive. But then again maybe not. My logic tells me that it is better to maintain the body strong, than to wait for things to go wrong and then become a valuable client of doctors and pharmaceutical companies. So far I am happy to report that it has worked for me. I am 74, I swim a kilometre every second day and have never been admitted to hospital in my life. I was even born in my home.
Now, you may be right about these cell salts, but the minute you call people idiots, or you mock their claims in good faith, my estimation of you as a person and as a medical doctor goes down.
I don’t call people ‘idiots’
you refer to me returning a quote made by someone; it read as follows
“… big pharma doesn’t like competition and they have those institutions like MHRA in there pockets .they even use them to eliminate competition.they can not make people ill ,that is why they don’t want them in the public.wake up idiots.instead of giving your stupid opinion ,try them of yourself.ph my ass.”
I THINK YOU GOT THE WRONG END OF THIS STICK!
If I have misread the comment, my profound apologies.
no worries.
@Casey: your opinion of Dr Ernst may have “gone down” but certainly those of us reading your comments have no good reason to conclude your opinions are worth much…irrespective of the fact you claim you avoid invectives.
I might suggest that “big Pharm” which is actually a shrouded pejorative, intended to insult and debase the untold millions of incredibly well educated and well-intentioned scientists working toward the public welfare. If you wish to cast aspersions on a group who actually DO propose they KNOW how to “cure” humanity and dogmatically suggest they have a true-understand of how things really work, then look no further than your local churches, synagogues and mosques. It’s a shame how little can be learned in 74 years…but you can take solace in the fact Trump would probably agree with you on most of your points.
@Casey
You wrote
This is a fair point, but please let’s substitute ‘antimicrobial drugs’ for ‘penicillin’, since most infectious diseases can be cured — at the moment. The rise in antimicrobial resistance may, of course, make this much less likely in future.
You also wrote:
This is not a fair point, and it’s worth taking the time to think through reasons why so many diseases are (currently) incurable, other than your cynical (and inaccurate) suggestion that pharmaceutical companies don’t want to develop cures to maintain their profitability.
First of all, medical research is far from entirely in the hands of pharmaceutical companies. There are many government sources of research funding and wealthy independent sources too (e.g. the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust). So your argument has to include the extensive research into causes of disease that have been done independently of ‘Big Pharma’ and has still not come up with cures, only management strategies.
Take a look at the list of incurable diseases I’ve linked to and notice how often such words as ‘multiple’, ‘autoimmune’ and ‘genetic’ appear in the descriptions. You really can’t compare many mammalian diseases with a car breakdown, where diagnosis reveals a faulty component that can easily and simply be replaced. While a handful of diseases fit this scenario, most diseases involve multiple components and/or components of the (very complex) immune system and/or defective genes, and these are all typically distributed through the entire body, not conveniently located in a single tissue.
It’s notable that, in the instances where a single gene defect can be shown to be the root of a disorder, ‘gene therapy’ (which now has several forms) is increasingly being used to effect real cures, indicating that, as with infectious diseases, it may soon be possible to eliminate a faulty component no matter where or in how many different tissues it resides. But if a disease is the result of faulty components (plural) the difficulties in sorting those out will still remain problematic for a long time.
It’s all too easy to blame the pharmaceutical industry for healthcare problems, and of course there’s no dispute that Big Pharma (like Big Autos, Big Food, Big Alcohol and any other industry you care to name) is sometimes guilty of lying, concealment and bribery — particularly in countries where governments don’t act to effectively regulate such practices. But the extent to which the Big Snakeoil industry (the one I care to name here) also tells blatant lies, conceals unfortunate truths and dissembles is also pretty staggering. So please don’t hold the pseudo-medicines that are the topics of posts on the EE blog as examples of the way medicine should make progress.
You tell us you have taken multi-vitamins for years and that “My logic tells me that it is better to maintain the body strong, than to wait for things to go wrong and then become a valuable client of doctors and pharmaceutical companies.” I have some sad news for your logic: all of us are suffering from a sexually transmitted, terminal condition called ‘life’ and at some stage its consequences will catch up with you, no matter what you eat, what you apply to your body and whether or not you perform superstitious rituals.
@Casey:
I’m sure that the pharmaceutical companies who make your multivitamins find you to be a valuable client.
To produce those salts ist Quote cheaper than other medicine …
I agree. I suffered from a severe case of eczema on my face, neck, arms and hands. I tried conventional treatment, I tried natural treatments and nothing worked. I then started taking tissue salts, not expecting much, however, I and others have been stunned by the results. An issue that I was told I would never be cured from. I can not recommend tissue salts highly enough. I can now face the public and finally use my hands without them splitting and cracking between my fingers and on my palms.
I am happy to provide any doubters with before and after photos.
Hi,
Can you say what dose did you take for your eczema ??
How many pills per day or week ??
Regards
Hi again….
…and also which precise pills or tonic of the Tissue Salts did you take ??
All it is a bunch of verbage. Big Pharma doesn’t want anyting to help except for big Pharma products.
My dogs are not susceptible to placebo effect. It seemed to have kept my dogs from vomiting when they get into something they shouldn’t have like the oranges that fall on my side of the yard from my neighbor’s orange tree. Stop diarrhea for the same thing. Stop allergies for one of my females…but I guess the cell salts don’t work because the media says so or doesn’t say so…?
you are wrong about dogs not displaying placebo effects.
Would you give us some scientific backing on dogs and placebo effect please. I’d be very interested.
Thanks.
see Alan’s comment + Pavlov’s conditioning
LOL!
If you think Big Pharma have anything to do with it, please present your evidence.
However, you may have heard of New Era tissue salts? Did you know they were owned by Seven Seas who are part of Merck until they sold the brand to an Italian company? I look forward to your explanation of why Merck sold New Era rather than keeping control of it themselves and pocketing the profits.
In terms of placebo effects in dogs, you may like to read this paper:
Conzemius MG, Evans RB. Caregiver placebo effect for dogs with lameness from osteoarthritis. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 2012;241:1314–9. doi:10.2460/javma.241.10.1314
It’s funny how the least knowledgable people have blogs so that it’s published all over the net meanwhile there are therapists using tissue salts on thousands of patients . It’s about what lab you also get it from there are only a few in the world and they are in Germany. How about I publish one or more since I’m a scientist that can publish anything’s shall I publish in a few journals and get back to you ?. If you knew anything about biochemistry you would know that they work instantly and on a cellular level and you would understand that the quality of the product makes a huge difference .
Bloggers rating scientific things or people should be banned. Cuz people may actually take it seriously .
They work fast and efficient as long as you know where to get the right quality and know what you are doing.
Catatrix. You claim knowledge of biochemistry. Would you be so kind as to elaborate on the biochemical mechanism which enables tissue salts to work instantly. Please mention the specific phospholipid membrane structure, active transfer gates and the like which are involved. And how the salts exert and effect on an extra- and intra-cellular level.
I have been using the Schuessler Tissue Salts for over 40 years and have found them marvellous .They are better & are; much more efficacious than many remedies given by Doctors ;and they have no side effects .
Before making unsubstantial claims ,you should try them for yourself.
.
I get where you are coming from, mouse studies trump yeast studies, human studies trump mouse studies, Anecdotal studies are interesting but will be trumped by human trials. And double binded peer reviewed studies trump everything. But in this case, as you yourself made mention, in regards to tissue salts, the science hasn’t been done. You have a hypothesis, tissue salts do nothing. There is no evidence to prove that, and lots of anecdotal evidence to contradict you. Until the science is done are you correct ??. Look personally I get what you are saying. Anecdotally, this little company, who has kept their product cheap, available and without pretense for over 100 years, and still being produced, and bought, is quite remarkable. I struggle to think of another, although I’m sure there are some. I’ve used them, with success, I’ve referred others to them with success. Let’s face it, there is no $$ available for funding research because there are other more lucrative endeavours. You must know how cut throat research funding is ?. The best we can say, is the verdict is out on this one.
When I saw that list of things that Schuessler Salts was used to treat I thought it was a parody. Then I checked out the website. That man is seriously deranged but how can one not trust a person who personally vouches for Andrew Wakefield!
Perhaps interesting to know is that in 2014, Homeopathy Plus and its director Frances Sheffield were fined some $140.000 in all for misleading claims about vaccines (both the real deal and the fake homeopathic variety).
Unfortunately, Mrs. Sheffield appears to have learned nothing, with “homeoprophylaxis” still featuring prominently on her quackery site; here too, the horrible lie is presented that homeopathy can be successfully used for treating highly infectious diseases such as ebola.
Methinks Homeopathy Plus is due some more punishment for promoting these most egregious forms of quackery.
this is brilliant (www.schuessler-cell-salts.com/healing/gullibility.htm)
SCUESSLER SALTS FOR GULLIBILITY:
You can use the following cell salts for the treatment of gullibility :
No. 3 (US #4) Iron phosphate
No. 7 (US #8) Magnesium phosphate
No. 20 Alum
Choose the right cell salt:
You can deside yourself wether you want to take all fitting cell salts together, only three salts at a time or only one salt at a time.
Use of the tablets:
3 until 6 times a day 1 – 3 tablets
High dosage: Every 1 to 10 minutes 1 tablet
Take the tablets one by one and let them dissolve in your mouth.
More informations about the use of the cell salts:
I tried all of the salts for gullibility but they haven’t worked yet. I guess I’ll have to buy more.
Using very small or diluted amounts to treat certain maladies, that would otherwise be brought on in healthy people by taking a larger dose, is the very meaning of “homeopathy”. I think it’s actually a bit ignorant and even arrogant to make the statement you made above about it’s impossibility of efficacy at such small doses. More is not always better or more effective. Health in all things requires balance, and everyone’s balancing point is different.
Also, the Government Gazette of Western Australia’s statement is also hardly worth noticing. Just because SOME people have had symptoms as a result of taking 1 of the 12 Schuessler’s tissue salts, doesn’t mean that everybody will have problems with that particular mineral, and doesn’t really say anything about the efficacy or any problems with the other 11 tissue salts. Not to mention that C.E. Cook says nothing about the dosages that he is speaking of.
I don’t think you should necessarily discount the testimonials of generations of people who have had help from taking these minerals. And the supposed reasons for “debunking”, don’t actually hold any value or relevance.
thank you for your advice. however, I fear that it would send us straight back into the dark ages of medicine.
@EphyD on Friday 14 December 2018 at 07:34
The same nonsense peddled by people with a stake in this nonsense. Ephy, the state of Western Australia (correct use of the title), however, the argument from authority fails miserably when viewed in the totality of authorities to quote. I was born in Kalgoorlie.
These salts all contain substances that are already present in the body at much higher concentrations, so I don’t see what the effect of adding nanogram quantities would be. They are also all present in tap water.
Testimonials are a very unreliable source of evidence. Most people believe that any decision they have made is the correct one, and if they are unsure they will try to justify it to themselves; testimonials are an example of this process.
Health does require balance, but not in the way that a lot of people seem to understand it. For 2,000 years doctors believed that illness was caused by an imbalance between four bodily fluids, and caused a lot of misery in their attempts to correct this. I have come across many other misguided theories of imbalances of one kind or another, which do not appear to be informed by any knowledge of physiology.
Just because an idea is appealing doesn’t mean that it is true.
they are far too highly diluted to have any effect at all
“Just because an idea is appealing doesn’t mean that it is true.” Like chemotherapy and radiation! Quackery at it’s finest!
chemo and radiotherapy are neither appealing nor are they quackery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Act_1939
Cancer Act 1939
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
Cancer Act 1939
Act of Parliament
Long title An Act to make further provision for the treatment of cancer, to authorise the Minister of Health to lend money to the National Radium Trust, to prohibit certain advertisements relating to cancer, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.
Territorial extent not Northern Ireland
Dates
Royal assent 29 March 1939
Other legislation
Amended by National Health Service Act 1946
Status: Amended
Text of statute as originally enacted
Text of the Cancer Act 1939 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk
The Cancer Act 1939 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed in 1939 to make further provision for the treatment of cancer, to authorise the Minister of Health to lend money to the National Radium Trust, to prohibit certain advertisements relating to cancer, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid. The Act does not apply in Northern Ireland.
As of December 2014, the sole remaining provision is in respect of advertising to treat or cure cancer, all other provisions having been repealed or subsumed into other legislation.
remission is ot cure…
Not sure what your point is, Brian. Can you explain?
What are you basing this on?
I have cured many cancers with chemotherapy and radiotherapy over the course of my career as an oncologist, but don’t take my word for it – there is a large body of evidence in the medical literature.
I have also had chemotherapy and radiotherapy myself.
Do you have anything sensible to bring to this discussion?
The body works as a whole not separately. You may believe otherwise as you are a “specialist”. Did you ever find out or ask what caused the cancer. No… well you didn’t cure anything, because it will come back. Modern medicine is great for emergency care. You have no clue on how to treat chronic conditions including cancers. That is why you work in the field of sick care, as a puppet of big pharma and shareholders portfolios. If cancer was cured tomorrow, oh my, no job for your whole industry. That’s why it will never happen, you already know this…..shame on your profession.
When anyone starts to believe in something, then they have shut the door to all other possibilities. There are many ways to heal and not all need to have double blind studies to prove it. Aptly named by the way, doubly blind to all else that may exist.
Please work together as we should all be on the same team. Leave the chronic care to other modalities who believe in wholistic models rather than separated non integrated care which don’t heal.
You clearly have a bee in your bonnet about something, but it doesn’t seem to me that you know very much about how modern medicine operates, or anything at all about cancer.
You keep believing that if it helps you live on. Check your current “cure “rates past the standard 5 year period used by your standards. Absolutely criminal. Also there is no cure for cancer is there? Doesn’t the FDA shut down holistic practices that claim they can “cure” cancer?
you are not making much sense, I’m afraid
That’s very convenient. This conversation is over. Have a nice life
thank you – that really made me laugh!
Sad
@EphyD:
No, it isn’t. Homeopathy involves giving the patient a remedy that is claimed to cause similar symptoms in healthy people. It is the diluted remedies that are claimed to cause the symptoms.
It’s an idea with its root in the 18th century paradigm that Hahnemann worked in, in which it was thought that a patient could only suffer from one disease at a time and externalising symptoms was a good thing, so the artificially induced symptoms would displace the original ones. Then when the remedy wore off, the symptoms it caused would disappear.
The dilutions were just Sam’s attempt to get around the inconvenient fact that giving patients remedies that would cause their symptoms in healthy people had a remarkable tendency to cause the same symptoms in sick people and make them worse.
Exactly, EphyD. Recently saw on the news that ‘modern medicine’ now thinks it might be a good idea to give children with nut allergies the tiniest bit of peanut so that their immune system can kick in. Congrats…to them. They just discovered homeopathy.
Also, they’re pursuing immunotherapy to combat cancer. Really? Ya think the immune system might have something to do with it?
Sorry, Ed. While modern medicine can provide some miraculous surgeries and nifty diagnostics, when it comes to chronic illness and disease, we’re better off using our grandma’s treatments. There are thousands of success stories using homeopathic and ‘alternative’ treatments but you’ll never know about them if you don’t look. With the pharmaceutical industry sponsoring so much of our media programming, our news certainly won’t be investigating those cures.
I am glad you like your ‘stories’ – I prefer evidence.
“Recently saw on the news that ‘modern medicine’ now thinks it might be a good idea to give children with nut allergies the tiniest bit of peanut so that their immune system can kick in. Congrats…to them. They just discovered homeopathy.”
This treatment is quite different from homeopathy. For one thing it uses much larger quantities of the allergen than are found in any homeopathic medicine (if you subscribe to the atomic theory of matter it is quite easy to see that they contain none of the active ingredient whatsoever). Also desensitisation is based on a growing understanding of how the immune system works (one of the most complicated systems in the body – probably more so than the brain), whereas homeopathic treatment is based on symptoms alone, with no understanding whatsoever of physiology, pathology or indeed immunology.
By the way, peanuts are not nuts.
“Also, they’re pursuing immunotherapy to combat cancer. Really? Ya think the immune system might have something to do with it?”
I’m not sure what you mean by that comment. It is not news that the immune system is involved in how the body deals with cancer – you have only to look at the unusual tumours that frequently occur in people immunosuppressed after transplants, or with AIDS, to realise that. Medical scientists are now unravelling the processes and complexities of the immune system in great detail and this is leading to new treatments for cancer and other things. Personally I am very grateful for this, as without immunotherapy I wouldn’t be here.
Your comment makes more sense than this entire website.
@Antonia Jenner
Whose comment?? Surely it’s not too much to ask people responding to others’ comments to indicate the name of the person they’re referring to? The indentation system on this blog is very unreliable and your response can appear a long distance from the comment you’re responding to.
I agree wholeheartedly. Someone who hasn’t studied homeopathy should not be commenting for or against.
Typical courtiers’ reply.
I found the below quote on a website and wondered if there might be any truth? Please try to keep an open mind.
I have knowledge that I can’t keep for myself. Fighting toxic copper with bioavailable copper is exactly the right method !
You should try Schuessler’s cell salts. It’s kinda homeopathic but way more powerful. Try cell salt nr.19 cuprum arsenicosum (= copper), it’s 100% bioavailable and it works very fast. If you didn’t know about the cell salts yet, then it will be like a holy grail for you. I also do hair tests and I treat myself and others with cell salts. The salts melt in your mouth and go directly into your blood, right into the cells. So you skip stomach en intestines, where classic supplements die.
I found the below quote on a website and wondered if there might be any truth?
NO!
Please try to keep an open mind.
https://edzardernst.com/2018/08/random-thoughts-on-the-issue-of-an-open-mind/
Look you’ll never be able to avail yourself of a natural cure for illnesses you may have so why dont you leave it at that and let people make up their own mind. Natural therapies have been used around the world, being used today and will be in future because they work. There is a list of ten Tissue Salts Practitioners in Brisbane that I found and thats not all of the naural therapists in Brisbane. Why do you think that people go to them, get well without presciption drugs and then maintain their health by six monthly visits to their naturopath? Do you even know how many people swear by their naturopath for drugfree health for their whole family? No, you don’t, just like you’ll never know the feeling of natural health.
thank you; you convinced me with this sharp logic.
@Janice Davies
“why dont you leave it at that and let people make up their own mind.” Why don’t we do that in all areas of life?
You want to fly with a pilot who thinks the air regulations are a merely device of “Big Aviation” to line their pockets with licensing fees: why don’t we just let people make up their own minds?
You want to invest money in a fraudulent scheme that has a lot of positive testimonials from other investors: why should regulators attempt to prevent people investing?
Caveat emptor should be sufficient advice for everyone. Nobody should be protected from practitioners of unproven medical treatments. They should be allowed to make up their minds on the basis of the equivalent of TripAdvisor or Amazon reviews or any other anecdotes you can find through Google.
You ask: “Why do you think that people go to them, get well without presciption drugs and then maintain their health by six monthly visits to their naturopath?” Because — pick any of the following or combinations thereof you like — (a) there was nothing wrong with them in the first place; (b) their disease was one from which everybody usually gets better anyway [most diseases are like that]; (c) regression to the mean; (d) placebo effects; (e) they’re deluding themselves [as most of us do at least some of the time].
This is the website Tony Powell refers to. It’s fascinating to read the comments. The whole site is a testament to people who self-diagnose a problem then pay for huge amounts of bizarre dietary supplements in an effort to cure them: a paradise of self-help gullibility.
quite depressive, really
Yes you are.
I have just followed the late Frank Odds’ link. The site is quite bizarre, and essentially tells the story of somebody who self-diagnosed himself with copper toxicity and then treated himself for it in a very unorthodox way. Among other things he decribes psyhotic episodes which he ascribes to “copper dumping”. Biochemical terms are being thrown about in a random way that makes very little sense. He seems to have quite a following of the gullable.
A good starting point for anybody wanting to know about copper metabolism would be a first-year undergraduate course in biochemistry, which would at least provide some context.
Dr. Julian
The Chemist behind the scientific claims appears to have done his own studies, many many thousands from his testimony, to be exact. Have you done any studies to prove otherwise ?
Dear Listener,
I am an oncologist, not a research biochemist. However, it is clear that neither is he, and it is also clear that he does not even understand some of the terms that he is using.
I don’t think I need to do studies myself in order to confirm what is already well-established fact. However, if there are studies that appear to contradict existing knowledge then this is potentially important new research that needs to be critically examined and repeated elsewhere to see if the results are reproducible. Therefore could you tell me where any of them have been published?
Hello again Dr. Julian
Thank you for your reply.
William Walsh Phd, yes does make strong claims. He himself is not an MD. However he has a large group of highly educated and qualified MD’s working under the umbrella of the Walsh Research Institute, administering his protocol. I believe this gives the science some degree of credibility. The fact that he claims to have treated more than thirty thousand patients is not a claim of direct touch, nor does he claim that every patient had a beneficial result.
Does he have studies ? … he claim to, yes.
“Dr. Walsh’s noted accomplishments include: (a) groundbreaking studies reporting reduced violent behavior following nutrient therapy, (b) the 1999 discovery of undermethylation and copper/zinc imbalances in autism, (c) the 2000 finding of metallothionein protein depletion in autism, (d) the 2007 published study linking copper overload and post-partum depression, (e) the identification of five biochemical subtypes of clinical depression, (f) the 2011 development of the Walsh Theory of Schizophrenia, and (g) the direction of the Beethoven Research Project that revealed that the composer suffered from severe lead poisoning.”
https://www.walshinstitute.org/william-j-walsh-phd-facn.html
MD’s and others associated with carrying out his work;
https://www.walshinstitute.org/clinical-resources.html
Thanks for your time Dr. Julian
Dear Listener,
Anybody can make claims on a web site, in a book or elsewhere.
No it doesn’t. What gives science credibility is peer-reviewed publication of well-designed and rigorousy conducted studies that can be scrutinised in detail by anybody, and repeated elsewhere in order to establish that the findings can be replicated.
Walsh’s claims are extraordinary, inasmuch as they would overthrow a huge body of established work if they were true. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So where is that evidence? Where are the peer-reviewed publications? Where are the keynote presentations at international medical meetings? How are these ground-breaking discoveries being disseminated?
So far you haven’t produced pointers to anything other than what is essentially self-publicity. I don’t see credibility here, only credulity.
Dr. Julian
Very well then, you don’t accept the science because it hasn’t been establish according to your standards.
Then I ask, what of the 75 or more worldwide MD’s that are using and supporting the protocol ? Does this make them all “quacks” ? Should they have their licenses revoked ? Are they making money with a “SCAM” remedy ? Are they damaging their patients ?
Listener,
They are not my standards, they are the accepted standards required by the scientific method.
I have no idea what other doctors might be doing in this regard, so I am not really in a position to comment here. Considering the total number of practising physicians, 75 does not represent a very high proportion. But they are your figures, not mine.
It is not possible to answer these questions without specific details. However, I would be concerned about properly trained and registered medical practitioners prescribing Schussler salts.
I expect some of them are “quacks”, i.e. not medically qualified at all and fraudulently misrepresenting themselves. In addition there are plenty of genuine doctors who do make money from treatments which have not been shown to be effective, a practice which I do not condone. The question of their licences is the remit of their licensing bodies, however; withdrawing a doctors’ licence to practice, or setting restrictions on it, is not a decision to be undertaken lightly and requires careful examination of the individual details in every case.
It is really impossible to know whether a practitioner is “damaging their patients” without knowing any details of their practice. In the UK, medical practice is subject to regular audit and a revalidation process is required every five years in order to renew the licence to practice. However, I don’t know what the systems are in other parts of the world.
Dr. Julian
The thread is about Schuessler Salts, but your reference. was to Frank Odds link, you confuse the subject.
If the only standard you accept is the scientific standard, then it’s your standard also, you play with words.
So, seventy-five MD’s is not sufficient to satisfy you. Walsh Research Institute claims to have “trained more than 700 physicians in advanced nutrient therapy since 2000.”
With an number of pharmacies and labs working with the Institute.
Your tone with regard to these “quacks” appears to soften when asked what to do about these scoundrels using unscientific means. I’ve previously read your position about what to do when unscientific quacks and scam artists practice for money.
Save it Sir, you don’t fool me.
Schuessler’s cell salts are not permitted to call themselves homeopathic in the UK:
Rubbing salts into the wounds of homeopathy
Because they are not registered, authorised or hold a Marketing Authorisation, they are not permitted to make medicinal claims.
They also are highly unlikely to meet the requirements for authorised health and nutrition claims.
They are simply expensive (and useless) food stuffs.
All these so called arguments fail to make an intelligent case and completely ignore simple high school bio chemistry. Sodium salts are responsible for maintaining the electric potential of nerve fibers and muscle tissues for example. These are the same “doctors” who poison us with sodium fluoride saying it’s good for our teeth. Last time I checked teeth and bones are made of Calcium, but I’m sure our physicians have been taught better by the big pharma sponsored “studies”.
NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!
certainly not about Schuessler salts; they contain nothing
@Most Recent
No, your dental enamel is made of calcium phosphate (© high school biochemistry). Acid in the mouth can hydrolyse calcium phosphate and weaken enamel. When there are fluoride ions around they interact to form calcium fluoroapatite — Ca5(PO4)3F — which is way stronger than calcium phosphate itself.
And sodium fluoride has zero toxic effects at the dose of 1 mg/L that’s used in fluoride-treated water. On the other hand, chlorine, which is used to disinfect water supplies, is potentially more hazardous than fluorine: it’s supplied at concentrations of only 0.2–0.5 mg/L. And neither fluorine nor chlorine is a ‘Big Pharma’ product.
Apart from all that, your comment is very profound wisdom and shows clearly the extent of attention you paid during your high school biochemistry classes.
Please Frank
Don’t again make the case for fluoride that it’s good for you. It has been proven over and over that fluoride is a health hazard. Beyond that, that fluorde has little benefit in the teeth care. If fact, too much is a detriment.
“And neither fluorine nor chlorine is a ‘Big Pharma’ product.”
Correct, fluorine (more specificaly sodium fluoride) is a by-product of alluminum production and other manufacturing.
Please RG
“It has been proven over and over that fluoride is a health hazard.” It’s the dose that makes the poison. The dental benefits of the amounts of fluoride in water supplies and toothpaste have been well demonstrated for decades.
I find myself wondering why you see every public health measure and every medical advance as a conspiracy to damage people. Does it never occur to you that the people you oppose actually might have your best interests at heart?
And at which dental school did you learn that lot, RG?
Care to provide some evidence to support your claims?
Lenny, your reply is laughable. what dental school did you go to ? .. I think you did not either. If I am not qualifed to comment then neither are you. Does a person need to be an aeronautical engineer to fly in a plane ? C’mon
Frank, while the dose is not immediatly toxic, the fluoride is retained in the body for years… if not indefinately, causing bone brittleness. If it’s not a toxic substance, why does the toothpaste tubes indicate a warning that it’s a toxic substance. ?
Look guys, I take the fluoride out of my drinking water. I obtain toothpaste and mouthwash without fluoride… and I don’t miss it for nuttin. I will yes obtain sufficiently small amounts via food and other sources of water. You guys feel free to load up on your fluoride treatments… nobody needs it.
https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases-risks/diseases//fluorosis/en
https://americanfluoridationsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Bone-fracture-2001-Li-Effect-of-Long-Term-Exposure-to-Fluoride-in-Drinking-Water-on-Risks-of-Bone-Fractures-full-text.pdf
RG
I went to dental school at the University Of Manchester.
I’m a dentist.
Your move.
OK Lenny, if you say so…my bad… and congratulations on your education.
That means that you should know all too well about the hazards of fluoride and mercury…. you don’t fool anybody.
RG: you made me laugh out loud, honestly!
I’m aware of the claims made by the cranks and the quacks, RG. The father of amalgam toxicity claims is a chap called Hal Huggins. You should read up on him and what a nice man he was and how he defrauded patients. His vile exploitative quackery resulted in his losing his licence. Here’s the summing up of the evidence against him. It runs to 71 pages. https://www.casewatch.net/board/dent/huggins/alj.pdf
Sandra Herman-Courtney of this parish sees him as a hero, obviously.
As far as the claims for fluoride are concerned, the main claims about it are that it is a neurotoxin and it is linked to dementia, particularly when administered systemically via fluoridation of water supplies.
North America is the most fluoridated nation on Earth.
It also has some of the lowest levels of dementia. https://www.dementiastatistics.org/statistics/global-prevalence/
Lenny, I didn’t make it to dental school like you, if that makes me a dumbs–t in your eyes….so be it.
Evidently Mr. Hal Huggins over promised and under delivered. One crackpot in Colorado doesn’t negate the fact that amalgam emits mercury at concerning levels. The seventy-one pages might serve you well as toilet paper, as long as your carbonated water is treating your constipation issues.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3229679/
Back to the subject of Fluoride. Lenny, you are mistaken, the incidence of Alzheimer’s and Dementia in US & Canada are high (I leave out Mexico because it’s a developing country, and they are adding Fluoride via table salt).
You are correct about the high use of Fluoride, but the Dementia and Alzheimer’s rates are not low. The website you referenced referred to total cases… NOT per capita or percent incidence rates. The total cases are are lower in the US and Canada due to lower populations than the other areas. Ireland has the highest rates in the world followed by the US, with Canada coming in number four worldwide.
So there does appear to be a correlation.
Your move
Great response, Frank!
https://edzardernst.com/2020/07/frank-odds-1945-2020/
Here is another one for you.
Modern medicine is about 100 years old. How do you explain the rise in disease across the board.
We have currently 10’s of thousands of conditions….really! Is is there just the human condition…
Brian said:
Can you give the life expectancy at birth 100 years ago and what it is today?
‘What is the life of a man, but three score and ten or fourscore if he has the strength’. That was written in the psalms 3000 years ago. 70-80 years. Why don’t you tell us more about it Alan. Same average life expectancy as today.
@Joe
You rely on psalms as a source of evidence?! Try this Wikipedia entry for something a little more informative.
I doubt if the psalmist was using the same measure of life expectancy that we use today. For a start, the criterion “if he has the strength” excludes individuals in poor health who would pull down the figure but are now counted.
“The life of a man”, if taken to mean life expectancy at all rather than anything else such the age at death of the oldest individuals that most people know personally, clearly refers to the life expectancy of an adult of unspecified age (and probably male). Alan was asking about the life expectancy of a newborn baby.
The life expectancy of a young woman would be influenced by the risks of childbirth, but a post-menopausal woman who has survived that hazard would have a better chance of reaching old age. Actually in many cultures (such as some Arab ones) a man is considered to be old at the age of 55 (according to today’s BBC news).
Generally when we talk about life expectancy without qualifying the age we mean life expectancy at birth. This takes into account deaths in childhood, which until very recently accounted for a huge proportion of individuals and in some parts of the world still does. If only half of children survive to reach their 21st birthday then by definition the life expectancy is 21.
I am very unclear about what you meant when you used the term “average life expectancy”, since again by definition life expectancy is already an average (to be specific, a median, not a mean). Are you averaging life expectancy across different populations? If so, what corrections are you making for population size, age structure etc.?
You can also give life expectancy much more precisely than using the ten-year range 70-80 years, which hides the improvements over the past few decades. In 1968 the life expectancy at birth in the UK was 71.7 years and in 2008 it was 79.6. In 2016 it was 81.0 years in the UK, 78.7 years in the USA and 84.0 in Japan (figures published by the World Bank).
Curiously if you compare these three countries there seems to be a negative correlation between life expectancy and how seriously the Bible is regarded as an accurate source of information.
LOL!
But can you answer the question I asked?
“How do you explain the rise in disease across the board.”
Better diagnosis.
Better diagnosis when you spend maybe 5-10 mins with a patient and not listen to what they are saying, so you can maximize your daily production. Corporate medicine. You are very deluded for someone who’s supposedly very intelligent.
You presume to know a lot about me and my way of working. Do you also dislike the decor of my consulting room?
My apologies, I should not presume. I should have said in my own experience, this is what I have seen.
Excellent article … Dr. Benviste’s experiments proved beyond a shadow of doubt that high dilutions have no pharmacological effect. However, this is not what homeopaths claim; as explained by Prof. Vithoulkas. Homeopaths essentially claim that homeopathic dilutions are antidoping so that, in the context of the Benvenisre experiment, cells poisoned with APIs would recover after treatment with a homeopathic dilution of Apis. To my knowledge, this claim has not been tested, even though it ought to be easy to perform; perhaps as gettering. Alternately, does homeopathic diluted salt water dissolve more salt than distilled water? To my knowledge it doesn’t, but this feature may not apply to organisms. In summary, there is no evidence either way in my opinion!
Further to my previous comment – apologies for typos – I believe homeopathic preparations and Schuessler salts should be relabelled as iApis for example. In other words, we should use the mathematical prefix ‘i’ or ‘j’ to signify ‘imaginary’ or ‘virtual.’ Now I don’t claim these preparations don’t have any utility; I just believe there is no evidence they do; and there is no theory to support how they might!
PS: Previous typo – Dr. Benveniste
“I just believe there is no evidence they do; and there is no theory to support how they might”
No, I don’t belive in witchcraft either.
Hello!? They work.i dont care if it is placebo or real. All is in the mind anyway.
bravo!
back to the dark ages then.
The guy who started this site should rather go get laid. I can sense some buildup.
how old are you?
14?
Cell salts work….evidence or no evidence. I had been giving my daughter different homeopathic single remedies for anxiety, depression and muscular spasm. Nothing worked till I tried tissue salts. And by her own admission ” for the first time it has worked”
if you were correct, the effects should show up in controlled clinical trials. but they don’t. why is that?
Trials are not 100%. You cannot control all factors, all of the time. The body is not a robot. Also who is doing these trials and do they have an agenda. Fact is some medications are on the market with very little to none efficacy and major known side effects which can lead to death. Who did the trials on these and who approved them?
I see!
this is why opinion is better than evidence?
Saniya said:
No thinking required either, apparently…
A contemporary of Schuessler recorded that Schuessler originally prescribed his compounds diluted to 3X, but later homeopaths prescribed compounds diluted up to 9X or higher, believing as they do; like cures like. (A misunderstanding in my view of what that statement actually means: as mentioned in my earlier posts.) Now if Schuessler’s prescriptions were given as supplements, why would homeopaths prescribe at greater dilution; it seems clear to me they did not appreciate fewer molecules cannot compensate for a deficiency of molecules.
But even if Schuessler did prescribe Potassium Chloride diluted to 3X. Is there any possibility a half teaspoon of Potassium Chloride could have any pharmacological effect if taken daily?
and, of course, a few drops of 3X is not even half a spoonful; more like licking the spoon after it has been emptied.
“Is there any possibility a half teaspoon of Potassium Chloride could have any pharmacological effect if taken daily?”
Yes, certainly.
A teaspoon of common salt is roughly 5g. Potassium chloride has a higher molecular weight but I don’t know about differences in density, which will depend on crystal structure. However, I think it is reasonable to assume that half a teaspoon might contain 2 – 3g of KCl. By comparison, Slow-K (commonly prescribed in hospital to treat acute potassium deficiency) contains 600mg KCl (or about 8mmol K+) per tablet. Typically somewhere between 1 and 4 tablets might be prescribed daily, with careful monitoring of potassium levels.
The kind of situation where this is used might be where there has been excessive potassium loss, for instance as a result of diarrhoea, leading to a low serum potassium level, or to raise the potassium to the upper part of the normal range in order to reduce the risk of cardiac arrhythmia immediately following an acute myocardial infarction (what most people mean by the term “heart attack”). It is sometimes used as maintenance treatment if there is chronic potassium loss, for instance as a result of taking thiazide diuretics and loop diuretics, sometimes prescribed for hypertension and in higher doses for congestive cardiac failure (cardiac failure is quite different from cardiac arrest).
It is very important to monitor potassium levels when prescribing supplements as hyperkalaemia (high serum potassium) can cause sudden cardiac arrest without any warning symptoms (though there are ECG changes first).
Potassium is excreted by the kidneys, and in a healthy person the level is tightly controlled by the body. However, if there is renal impairment it can accumulate, hence the need for a low-potassium diet in some cases of kidney disease.
Apologies for the clumsy construction of my question … I meant a half teaspoon of Potassium Chloride diluted to 3x.
I’m interested because I currently use a 3x dilution of Crataegus Oxycantra that Kansal and Chandler report as having a solvent power upon crustaceans and calcareous deposits in arteries, but my justification for using this compound is based in TCM looking diagnosis – pink tongue, skin lustre, etc.
I just hope we’re not throwing the baby out with the bath water because some homeopaths did not appreciate the difference between supplementation and solvent action (dispersion.)
Of course a 3x dilution is a 1 in 1000 dilution, which wouldn’t leave much potassium in the dose. However, for a herbal extract such as Crataegus (Hawthorn) it is possible that there are pharmacologically active substances at this sort of dose. Most drugs taken orally are prescribed in the 5 – 500mg range, but there are some that are active in microgram doses. I don’t know very much about this particular preparation, and I have no idea who Kansal and Chandler are, but it appears that Hawthorn is being investigated for cardiovascular effects such as lowering blood pressure, decreasing peripheral resistance in the circulation and treating heart failure (the suggested mechanism being a reduction in vascular tone). On that basis it may interact with other cardiovascular drugs, particularly vasodilators.
I have no idea what you mean by a solvent power upon crustaceans, and I suspect your spellchecker is responsible for that particular solecism. Though it reminds me of a song by the Goons about a patent medicine:
“Note that doctors strongly recommend it as a cure for the lergy, spots before the ankles, pimples, bruises and acute emaciation of the le-e-e-egs…”
Generally speaking, once arterial calcification has occurred then nothing is going to dissolve it, though if there is an increased risk of cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease (based on age, lipids, blood pressure, previous medical hsitory) this can still be reduced by statins.
TCM seems to place a lot of importance onto things like the appearance of the tongue and the character of the pulse (such as the presence of standing waves) that Western medicine doesn’t consider very useful in diagnosis. While the character of the pulse can tell you something about valvular disease of the heart, the appearance of the tongue more often reflects oral hygeine and eating / drinking habits (though there are a few things that can affect it such as iron deficiency, acromegaly, cranial nerve palsies, low oxygen saturation…). And of course many diseases manifest in the skin (and, for that matter, in the fingernails). One thing I have come to realise, however, is that it takes a lot of experience from examining a great many patients to be able to recognise what is diagnostically significant and what is normal variation.
By the way, I think it is oxycantha, which is Greek for something like sharp thorns. Indeed, the music teacher who taught me the organ at school occasionally used to use the thorns as a substitute for gramophone needles, as they were softer and less damaging to the shellac records (and gave a nicer tone). Slivers of bamboo can be used for the same purpose, and coming full circle I once played an organ with bamboo pipes in Manilla.
Thanks for the explanation, which I read with interest. I sometimes use my iPad, which to my mind has the most appalling data entry functionality and spell checker, although it is sometimes convenient.
While I appreciate there is little KCl in half-teaspoon of 3X, it is only available in 9X; so I’m only able to confirm for a sample size of three 9X had no effect on catarrh, as claimed by advocates of Schuessler Salts. I’d like to try 3X, but it is unavailable in the UK – presumably on this basis it is not sufficiently ‘homoeopathically potent’; which is why I now use Olbas Oil to good effect. (I’ve tried to find out how much KCl there is in Eucalyptus Oil without success.)
I only have a cursory understanding of TCM looking diagnosis: I’m told there are observable differences between between tongue coatings and the colour of the tongue body, although I’m sure you are correct when you point out the mapping is convoluted.
The reason I mentioned the claims of Dr. Kamal Kansal, a well-known Indian homeopath, is the apparent contradiction of claims of 3X solvent properties in one compound, yet supplementary in another.
Of course, the claim for solvent properties of Cratageous 3X might be easily verified using Sonography. In this context, I found the following article of interest: https://wellspringclinic.com/medical-therapies/cardiovascularproprietary-ptx-therapy/https://wellspringclinic.com/medical-therapies/cardiovascularproprietary-ptx-therapy/
Although your queries started out half-sensible, I’m afraid I’m now beginning to feel as if you are asking for an opinion on what kinds of fairies you have at the end of your garden, or whether your pronunciation of Klingon is correct as you are planning to take your next holiday in Outer Space.
You are trying to weigh up the merits of various apparently contradictory claims as though they were anything but complete fantasy. It is as though you are trying to decide whether you will get the best improvement in the performance of your car by painting it Ferrari Red or British Racing Green, and what is the optimum dilution for the paint. It may make sense to you but it really doesn’t make sense to me. This is not rational thinking at all.
I followed your link to the Wellspring Clinic and they seem to be making a lot of implausible claims and offering unproven treatment. Their descriptions of what they do is couched in pseudoscientific language which may sound convincing if you don’t know anything about the subject but is actually complete claptrap. I would imagine they would make more difference to your wallet than to your health.
I’m not the one that missed the point homeopathy does not depend on the limitations of Avogadro’s number!
For you edifice, here is a link to a video by Prof. Vithoulkas:
https://youtu.be/lzcpOa4rl78
As for your comments about calcareous deposits:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321788.php
I’ve met many people like you before – intoxicated with heir own sense of self importance; so I’ll leave you to have to last word as this is my last post!
you are not seriously citing Vithoulkas as evidence?
Your link refers to an experiment involving injecting synthetic nanofibres directly into atheroscleromatous plaques in mice, whereas you were talking about somehow dissolving the calcium (with chelating agents, perhaps?). Any systemic agent which removes calcium in this way is going to remove it primarily from bone, not arteries. In any case, if it did anything at all I would expect it to disrupt calcium metabolism in potentially quite dangerous ways.
No. But I do have some training in physiology, 30 years’ experience as a practising clinician and I don’t believe in magic.
You place a fresh soap in in your bathroom, its fragrance wafts into your nostrils. How many molecules of the perfume in the soap do you think has entered your nostrils? A proportion similar to the concentration of a homeopathic medicine.??
NO, MUCH LESS!
C30 = 1;10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Dear Professor,
I wonder if you have ever done a homoeopathic proving. I suggested that to my chemistry teacher, but I don’t think he took me up on the suggestion.
Yours sincerely,
Jo Skelding
I would be interested to know the context when you asked your chemistry teacher as this isn’t really a question that is terribly relevant to the field of chemistry. Psychology, perhaps, or medicine as a teaching exercise. Personal experience, like anecdote, is a useful way of getting a message across but it is too much subject to the vagaries of chance to be a reliable way of arriving at the truth. It is always very dangerous, for instance, for a doctor to base his management on his own experience rather than objective evidence.
I have heard the argument used by homeopaths that if you haven’t personally experienced a proving then you don’t really understand homeopathy well enough to argue against it. To me that sounds rather like saying that a doctor shouldn’t treat an aspirin overdose or a heart attack unless he has experienced these himself.
You open a bottle of homeopathic medicine. Can you smell the remedy substance?
The odour detection threshold of a substance is a measure of how much of it you need to have before you can smell it. This varies widely from one substance to another, and also between individuals (for instance 1 in 4 of us are completely unable to detect the characteristic odour of urine after eating asparagus). Some of the strongest-smelling compounds can be detected at concentrations of the order of 0.01 ppb (parts per billion) in water. Trichloroanisole, which is the main substance responsible for the smell of corked wine, can be detected in concentrations of 1 – 2 ng/l in water and about double that in white wine. I once had a bottle of champagne which was clearly off but smelt more like mouldy wood than the usual mouldy cardboard, and my stepson who was with me (a professional winemaker) identified it as containing tribromoanisole, which can ruin a wine at 0.5 ng/l; happily TBA is a lot less common than TCA (once you start looking for corked wines you can find a bottle in almost every case – that is why they use screw caps in New Zealand).
1 ng/l is one part in 1,000,000,000,000 (maybe a drop in a swimming pool?)
a drop in the ocean is about one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^25)
(a standard drop being 0.05ml)
a 30x potentiation is one part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^30)
a 30c potentiation is one part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^60)
which is about the concentration you would arrive at if you spread your drop evenly among all the particles in the observable universe (give or take a couple of orders of magnitude).
Hi,
I cannot disagree with you more on this.
I have struggled with heart palpitations, headaches, anxiety, fatigue and a lack of muscle recovery along with muscle tension (this for an otherwise healthy young male).
I spend thousands on blood testes which revealed hormone imbalance and mineral deficiency, as well as a slightly under active thyroid. I corrected all that the tests revealed,but never felt 100 percent – the anxiety, muscle tension and palpitations.
I was recommended to take Kali Phos (number 6). It has helped me hugely for all of the above (I did triple my dosage initially) and I have never felt better.
This may be specific for me, but I thank God that I found this stuff.
I have had a chronic condition for 10 years that my doctor insists I just have to get used to and prescribes antibiotics. So this means every three weeks to four weeks I need to do a round of antibiotics. After 10 years of this I am now turning to alternative treatments and Dr. Schussler salts and homeopathy. So, my view is that when conventional medicine fails, a person needs to search elsewhere for solutions.
Sadly, the best evidence shows there are no solutions to be found there.
Repeating an antibiotic regimen every three weeks is a solution ? …. bahh
LOL!
I’m laughing also
I’m reminded of the recent hoopla regarding Monsanto Round-up (glyphosate). As Monsanto an advocate for the corporation being questioned about the safety of the herbicide. He testified up and down it is safe, and claimed he would drink a quart of it to prove so…. be he never could get himself to… gulp…swallow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taKRFAv4xEE
Woops! There goes the subject again.
I am utterly perplexed that a Court of Law is able to determine that an individual case of non-Hodgin’s lymphoma was caused by anything specific, much less that it was due to glyphosate, for which the data are rather indeterminate. Using the test “on the balance of probabilities” could only give such a result if it were applied by somebody with no understanding whatsoever of how probability works.
That’s exactly the kind of Neanderthal thinking that makes cancer into such a mysterious disease. Instead of specific root cause treatment the medical profession has no clue and uses a shotgun approach and hopes it will hit something, before the patient dies. If the lesion is full of glyphosate, maybe there’s a correlation? If the glyphosate is removed and the cancer goes away, maybe there’s a correlation.
Or maybe it’s too simple for you to understand. Aah yes, I forgot no double blind studies to back it up. In the meantime, good people continue to die.
Dr. J
Probably because of this;
https://roundup.sokolovelaw.com/?src=google_webppc_462686412_%2Bglyphosate%20%2Bcancer_%7Bcontent%7D_b_g_%7Bquerystring%7D&numberToReplace&campaignId&ringPoolId&jpow=aa_462686412_bb_69126116543_cc_%2Bglyphosate%20%2Bcancer_dd_b_ee_g_ff_1t1_gg_c_hh__ii__jj_9028098_kk__ll__mm__nn_kwd-302218238635_oo_348184736087_pp_4394868559514597458_qq__rr_%7Badid%7D_ss_%7Borderitemid%7D
…. and probably because Monsanto has refused to put any cancer warning on the label…. even today.
Malkit:
I’m sorry, I don’t follow you at all.
Again I don’t follow what you are saying. There is very effective standard treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma with a high rate of long-term cure even in stage IV disease.
Lymphomas are not full of glyphosate, so there is none to remove. In any case, the question is whether the cancer was caused by prior exposure to glyphosate. You can determine whether a specific agent is a risk factor for cancer by looking at whether there are excess cancers over the background rate when that risk factor is present, but it generally takes 30 – 40 years after the exposure for the cancer to appear (lymphomas can be a little quicker).
What do you mean by that?
That is a bit of a non-sequitur. In any case I don’t think that this is likely to be affected very much by the Court’s decision in the Monsanto / Glyphosate case.
Dear Dr, the meaning of research is “ to go about seeking” . You with your hard opinions have already concluded. That means you have given up on research. Impressive how you can go from dumb to dumber in one sentence when it is convenient. One moment you know all the answers, the next you can’t understand a simple statement. You are very funny.
Your delusion of the medical profession having good results with treating cancer is sad. You need to get your head out of your ass and get some fresh air. Get back to reality, we’re losing the battle against disease. Why ? Because your profession deals with symptoms not root causes using drugs primarily
Please stop patronizing the public we have woken up to the game and will not continue tolerating your lies for much longer.
Do everyone a favour and stop PRACTICING medicine, leave it to people who have already mastered it.
Have a nice retirement.
And there, Malkit we see a textbook demonstration of hubris, ignorance, arrogance and Dunning-Krugerism. Unfortunately you have not the faintest iota of understanding of this, believing your couple of hours on Google to give you greater eminence than a consultant cancer physician (I would have said “oncologist” but you probably don’t know what that means) with forty years of practice and published research under his belt. Proper research, Malkit. You might want to post some links to some of the scientific papers you have published as a result of your “research”. We’ll be happy to wait. If you had the faintest iota of self-awareness, you’d crawl back into your hole utterly humiliated. But you won’t and, like so many, will continue on this blog to trumpet your inconsequential foolishness whilst those of us who do the real work will roll our eyes and carry on.
As I said, be honest and stop this charade. I’m actually a health professional too. Oh and by the way, I did understand all the fancy big words you used, unlike the general public.
LOL.
what type of health professional?
One that’s not under the control of big pharma and it’s puppets the
medical association. Try not to be so patronizing next time, you have no idea of my credentials or knowledge.
There are more things out there than you’ll ever know. Live in your small smug world and continue to miss the opportunities that exist outside your bubble.
Have a nice life.
Yes we do, Malkit. Minimal in both cases as you have demonstrated repeatedly.
You are such a condescending ass, I feel sorry for your patients if this is an example of your bedside manner. A great example of the amazing job our medical schools do in training our elitist doctors. What a joke. When you think you know everything, that is when you stop learning. It sounds like you stopped a long time ago. You know what you know, good luck to you.
As I said before, have a nice life.
Malkit,
Nor will we know your credentials unless you tell us. We do have an idea of your knowledge, however, from your posts. Based on those I am assuming that you are using the definition of professional meaning somebody who makes a living from an occupation (as opposed to doing it recreationally or for some other reason), rather than somebody who is registered and regulated by a recognised professional body.
Hi there Rosemary, please beware of doctors, they are confident and paid too well, this justifies their confidence to themselves and unfortunate victims. I’ve seen not less than 20 doctors in 4 years for dreadful and at times horrific symptoms, they all failed to listen, they all failed to apply the basic scientific process, but they did want to mask the symptoms with very dangerous pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately I accepted one of the drugs initially only to suffer even more trying to withdraw from one of them which took over 18 months. I have done my own research and “therapeutic trials” which is code for “I don’t know but lets give this a try”, any monkey can do this.
Get yourself a cup of tea and watch the youtube videos below.
Andrew Saul – High Dose Vitamin C Therapy for Major Diseases
https://youtu.be/W5Bgdqsorg0?list=PLXGHNFWr3muNFoShoEKMpw7nei3Wxh7S6
Applications of Vitamin C,Theoretical & Practical by Dr Thomas Levy
https://youtu.be/Bnl_euYq8yY?list=PLXGHNFWr3muNFoShoEKMpw7nei3Wxh7S6
Robert Cathcart – Mega C for Viral & other Diseases
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKD3BXL8ESA
Lecture on vitamin C by brilliant Suzanne Humphries
https://youtu.be/y0LLX0sgwAU?list=PLXGHNFWr3muNFoShoEKMpw7nei3Wxh7S6
And good reading at doctoryourself.com
Three sure signs that the commenters contribution can safely be ignored:
1. Bashing doctors.
2. Linking to a series of Youtube videos about False vitamin C myths.
3. Calling a deranged doctor “brilliant”.
I don’t understand any of this debate. I gave a certain brand ( not here to promote) of all 12 salts to my Mother who had double knee surgery. One knee was great, the other always felt like it had a tight band around it. After about 3 days know more pain and stiffness. My friend, who even owns a Pharmacy, continually was retaining water in his ankles and feet so bad that it was causing pain, after the 12 salts and 48 hrs he was able to dis spell the excess water with gigantic urination every 2 hours until his ankles and feet were back to normal. It was incredible! He gave them to a co worker who had the same problem and they worked the same but when his co worker bought an inferior brand it did not work the same…whoops there goes the placebo. As for myself I had biting inflammation in both wrists and one knee. The pain in my wrists would zap my strength when trying to pick up heavy objects at work, now all that is gone. Next I will give them to my friend who has poor circulation and has cold fingers and toes, so we will see.
In conclusion none of us could give a flying crap if its a placebo effect or not, something is continually working and for 22.00 bucks for a 1000 pills bring on the placebo because we all feel great and what the hell is wrong with that. I fully realize that once again this is all anecdotal but we are all honest caring people looking for a solution that can not be resolved by the almighty Medical Industrial complex.
Edzard…..my my. Kept reading looking for some redeeming quality of character. Came up empty. You may have a few letters next to your slave name…yet you are truly one lost soul. Best to you, really.
do you think that Schuessler salts might save my soul?
After perusing the various comments from both sides regarding the efficacy ( or not ) of tissue salts, I felt I needed to point out some things, ( not necessarily about tissue salts specifically, but natural remedies in general ).
When I first started looking into nutrition and health from a natural perspective back in the 1970’s ( for my own personal needs, as I felt I was heading seriously down the wrong path in general health ), one thing I realised was that mainstream medicine used to bang on about the Hypocratic oath, as Hypocrates was considered the father of medicine.
Yet for much of the modern era mainstream medicine has been ratbagging natural remedies, yet Hypocrates was, in effect a herbalist.
I would also track down information from the independent European clinics not getting donations from vested interests
( as some university studies do ), and although these clinics would often approach the subjects from different perspectives,
their outcomes would effectively come to much the same conclusion, therefore, I feel, giving more credibility to the overall picture, yet these results were never published, or given credibility by the mainstream.
Also, over the years, many people have effectively overdosed on natural supplements ( believing that if it’s natural, I can take more without worry, unlike conventional drugs etc. ).
The very fact that ” Too much of a good thing” can actually be a bad thing, shows that the natural product does have an effect on the body, so therefore, taken in the proper dosage, should have some positive effect at some level.
One must not forget that some of the deadliest poisons come from natural berries and others, so it has to stand to reason that the same has to be so with medicines.
Empirical evidence cannot be ignored either.
Those societies that have had a simpler existence than western society have only had for the most part, the natural remedies to rely on, and yet have achieved some remarkable outcomes.
It wasn’t until western society introduced ( in some cases forced ) many of its ideas on these groups, that things started to go pear shaped.
Don’t get me wrong, if I had a leg severed in an accident, or an extremely painful toothache or whatever, I’d be extremely glad of modern medicine’s ability to allay the suffering, but only to the point where I could go back to the natural treatments, as people often make the mistake of thinking the natural remedies actually cure the ailment, which is not entirely true.
The natural remedies tend to help the body to utilise its own healing and strength building/ cleansing facilities.
If you have a weak back, you exercise to help the body develop strength in the supporting muscles, and usually, you will effect some sort of a “cure”.
I had a back problem many years ago that would every now and then strike me with a mild form of paralysis in my legs.
Most people would go straight out looking for pills or other for their fixit, instead, I studied my anatomy books, went over the various things I had learnt in gym training, and developed my own exercise program to target the problem area, and after a few months, had cleared up the issue, and have not had a reoccurrence since.
You are using an exercise, just as you would use a herb, or whatever, to help the body build itself up to some normality.
Granted, some people do seem to get rather rapid results from natural treatments, whereas others may take quite some time, but this is really just an element of their own body’s underlying ability to heal itself, even with mainstream medicine
you have some people who have quick recovery, while others do not.
We must not forget, that mainstream medicine does, in many cases, use active elements from natural sources, in many of its treatments, however, it has been noticed, from both sides of the fence that for some reason, they still, as far as I can ascertain, not figure out why the natural product seems to be more effective, even if only marginally, there seems to be something in the natural product that they still can’t identify, that gives it an improved action over the synthetic one.
Sorry for being so long winded on this, but the issue, from both sides, is not as simple as some would have you believe, and there is much more I could go into, but I hope I covered enough area to allow both sides to look at the issue in a sensible and diplomatic manner.
Dear Mr. Reid,
There is a quite annoying red box popping up every time when you enter EE´s webpage.
Did you miss it?!
It reads: “Please remember: if you make a claim in a comment, support it with evidence.”
This might sound harsh (sorry for being so blunt), but your comment is a quite long-winded mix of unclear statements, platitudes and personal anecdotes. After reading it twice, I still have no clue what your message is… and I have to wonder why you felt the need to post it.
It might help if you would post a more concise comment (including evidence supporting your claims).
@Michael Reid
It would help the reader greatly if you first defined what you think of as “natural remedies”. It may seem very obvious to you, but the term is open to very wide interpretations, including the most recent instance right here on this blog where a salesperson for an electronic device claimed that was “natural”.
Please also check out this article and this one (among many others).
Well, Hippocrates (do note the correct spelling, by the way) was certainly the first to regard diseases as things that didn’t arise from the intervention of gods or other superstitions. But to characterize him as “a herbalist” is really not accurate. He used primitive forms of surgery (e.g. traction to help mend broken bones and cautery for treatment of haemorrhoids). One of his principal approaches to treatment was to recommend diet and exercise — what today we’d call “lifestyle medicine” — he was a vitalist who believed (like you?) that nature was the best healer.
Such as? And how far back are we going here? Most countries today have access to most of the panoply of “western medicine” (a term I dislike, by the way, considering the role people all over the planet have played in the development of modern medicine: is relativity “Jewish science”?)
This is an old bromide that often rears its head on this blog. I have often asked people who say this kind of thing where they draw the line. I’ve never had a sensible response. Do you include something like sepsis as a condition that benefits from modern approaches to medicine? If so, how about milder infections? Where does, e.g., heart valve replacement stand in your list of allaying suffering? Is a porcine valve superior to a mechanical one because it’s “natural”?
In your first sentence you admit that the back problem recurs “every now and then” so how on earth can you claim your exercises “cleared up the issue”. You provide us with zero evidence for your claim of treatment efficacy. If it takes a few months to clear you’re probably looking at natural course of the disease, regression to the mean, or some other explanation that doesn’t necessarily involve your exercises.
Not correct, I’m afraid: you haven’t ascertained very far. Think of fentanyl vs naturally occurring opiods, for example. It’s a synthetic opioid with 50–100 times the potency of any naturally occurring comparator. The important discipline of pharmacognosy involves taking naturally occurring biologicals like plants, fungi and filamentous bacteria, discovering the naturally occurring chemical compound responsible for the therapeutic activity and modifying the molecule chemically to improve its therapeutic profile (efficacy, bioavailability, pharmacokinetics, stability, formulation etc.).
A recent example was the anti-malarial drug dihydroartemisinin, with a 10-fold increase in potency over the artemisinin molecule found in sweet wormwood. For her work improving the naturally occurring molecule, Tu Youyu won a Nobel Prize in 2015. While we’re at it, the very large number of drugs that fall under the heading of “penicillins” have greatly improved properties over the original molecule produced by fungi and discovered by Alexander Fleming.
So we certainly haven’t forgotten that mainstream medicine uses active elements from natural sources. The existence of several high-impact-factor specialist journals in pharmacognosy and phytochemistry (that’s actually the title of one of them) is testament to the fact. Somewhere else on this blog Julian Money-Kyrle once provided a long list of pharmaceuticals in common use that came or still come from plants and other biological sources. Sorry: I should have made a note of the URL!
Finally, like Jashak, I wonder what exactly is the issue you want to raise. This blog has a very simple raison d’être. It exists to examine claims for the validity of efficacy and other matters related to therapy in the field of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (SCAM, or pseudo-medicine). It is frequently beset with comments about the failures of current “orthodox” medical procedures (the tu quoque fallacy), the fact that millions of people worldwide use SCAM (the argument to popularity fallacy), the fact that many self-declared “experts” have posted their videos about SCAM on YouTube (the argument from authority fallacy), confusion of association with causation and several others. Prof. Ernst rarely rejects these posts out of hand, even though they offer no room for erudite debate.
So please do tell us the point you’re trying to make, because so far it’s very opaque and not helped by your many inaccuracies.
Frank,
You bring this up a lot: ““western medicine” (a term I dislike, by the way, considering the role people all over the planet have played in the development of modern medicine: is relativity “Jewish science”?)”.
This might help you understand why your “Jewish science” thing isn’t really a good analogy (although it’s cute and clever-ish) – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1238216/ . “The development of medicine in Western nations follows the way of hypothetical deduction and the Eastern approach uses the inductive method. The Western approach clearly divides the health from the disease, yet the Eastern approach considers health as a balanced state versus disease as an unbalanced state.”
“Western” and “Eastern” approachs use different models for health and medicine. “Traditional Medicine” and “Modern Medicine” use different models, too.
You also bring this up a lot: “This is an old bromide that often rears its head on this blog. I have often asked people who say this kind of thing where they draw the line. I’ve never had a sensible response.”
Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Try asking “do you draw a line, or assess situations as they arise?” or something like that. It’s possible that many folks don’t consider a drawn line sensible, especially when dealing with something as complex as medicine. Your sepsis/milder infection would be a good example.
Dear Mr Reid,
Three cheers for exercise. I now do Pilates religiously, daily. No more back pain. It had been so bad that I managed to make first degree burns with a hot water bottle and not notice till under the shower the next morning when the water hurt the broken blister.
Yours sincerely,
Jo Skelding
If there was a blister they were second-degree burns.
First degree = reddening of the skin
Second degree = blistering
Third degree = full thickness (including nerve endings, so these aren’t painful)
Interesting stuff. Personally I know quite a few people who swear by these tissue salts. Maybe the mix of a mineral salt+lactose is what body recognizes and easily absorbes as opposed to mega doses of sythetic minerals that are impossible for body to absorb? Maybe that’s why people get results in spite of such small doses? Could it be? Don’t know..
No – much more likely due to placebo
If you want to know if bioplasma salts work, go to Amazon and look at the public reviews.
Last time I checked placebos don’t have a 99% success rate!
For anyone who thinks bioplasma salts don’t work I challenge you to go to Amazon and read the reviews.
Last time I checked the placebo effect doesn’t have a 99% success rate.
amazon reviews?
a new level of evidence … they come just below the reading of teal leaves
Please stop taking my comments down!
when someone produces evidence you guys don’t want to have that on your website so you take it down.
alternatively, you were too daft to post them; I do not remember taking down comments from you.
All comments go into a moderation queue. Looking at your timestamps, Occam’s Razor offer a much simpler explanation: our gracious host was already much too busy in Slumberland to approve your comments right away.
Not that your other comments contain anything of worth, mind you. (If Appeal to Amazon Reviewers isn’t already its own logical fallacy it really should be.) So may I suggest you cast your eyes to the red banner above, educate yourself on the differences between primary sources and some tinfoil wackaloon raging on YouTube, and come back here once you have something resembling actual evidence to offer.
Edzard,
I just happened to see your site when searching another subject. I’ve used tissues salts since my 20s, I’m now in my 80s. Friends have argued many of the points on your site. I simply say, the basic composition of the human body is this, that left to decompose in soil the flesh goes to dust as its surroundings. The bone structure does not readily do that.
The Dr Schuessler principle as I understand it is that when something is out of kilter, not balanced correctly, the body doesn’t function correctly. Like a motor car when a mechanical part breaks or doesn’t work properly, the car doesn’t work correctly.
In English we have the word “ease” which means comfort and good function. However regarding the body and its various functions, when something is wrong we have dis-ease and that means, against or opposed to comfort and correct function.
Dr schuessler believed that when there are essential mineral deficiencies within the body it cannot correct itself as it is designed to do. When every part is correctly balanced, function is good. Every element, organ, cell etc etc is designed to work together in conjuction with everything else that is part of it.
If for example I have a bloodshot eye, I take Ferr Phos. And very quickly the deficiency is replaced because there was a n element in the blood that was missing. Hay faver sufferers have used the combination salts, and symptoms have ceased and normality returned, whereas normal doctors’ medicine has often eventually been unable to do that.
The key is to treat the cause of the problems, as Schusseler does, not the symptoms as is often done in standard medical practice. Of course at times this medicine does succeed but it also doesn’t always avoid side-effects.
I do hope you are able to follow this, and I’ll be interesting to hear your comments in due course.
nothing of what you describe or what Schuessler believed is based on fact.