At the risk of reopening a can of worms (since my last article on homeopathy was so controversial), I couldn’t resist passing this study along.
A clinical trial performed in France with 101 subjects, all women over 50 with more than 5 hot flashes daily, demonstrated that a combination homeopathic remedy was effective in treating menopausal symptoms (specifically measured by hot flashes in this case). Additionally, the remedy had no side effects, making it a good alternative to hormone replacement therapies, especially in those patients who cannot take them or do not respond well to them.
This study uses a combination homeopathic rather than a remedy chosen for the individual, which (though apparently still effective), in my experience is less effective than remedies chosen specifically to fit a given patient’s symptoms.
(But of course choosing a remedy specific to each subject in a study doesn’t lend itself particularly well to the traditional “double blind placebo controlled trials” that are the gold standard of medical research.)
While there are a number of treatments within the naturopathic paradigm for menopausal symptoms, I have also found clinically that hormonal symptoms in general, menopausal or otherwise, respond quite well to homeopathic treatment.
And for you skeptics out there, here are a few other studies that demonstrate the efficacy of homeopathic treatment for a variety of different conditions.
- Homeopathy for childhood diarrhea: combined results and metaanalysis from three randomized, controlled clinical trials.
- How healthy are chronically ill patients after eight years of homeopathic treatment?–Results from a long term observational study.
- Homeopathic treatment of patients with migraine: a prospective observational study with a 2-year follow-up period.
- Homeopathic treatment of patients with chronic low back pain: A prospective observational study with 2 years’ follow-up.
- Homeopathic treatment of patients with psoriasis–a prospective observational study with 2 years follow-up.
- Homeopathic medical practice: long-term results of a cohort study with 3981 patients.
…I could go on. But, as always, the proof is in the pudding, and it works. I’d love to see homeopathy introduced as part of our standard of care in this country!