Inner Health

Ideas for Change in America – Health Care Freedom

With the change in administration we will begin to see a reorganization of the medical care system and a trend toward more research. The voice of the people must be heard using internet technology as a vehicle to disseminate information, provide a forum for all points of view and new ideas, and to help connect like-minded individuals. Please participate in any way you can to promote preventative health care and complementary-alternative care opportunities initiated research and development.

First, we must applaud those who have been in the forefront of this work and have been doing studies in homeopathy. Second, we need more professionals to step up to the plate by proposing research topics and writing grants to receive funding.

• We need to stress that, unlike traditional medicine, the homeopathic approach is unique to each individual and conventional double-blind studies will not show the efficacy of our energetic remedies, except in particular situations, such as epidemic disease when a few remedies usually cover the majority of symptoms.

Change is the word for this decade:

• We must work to change the perception of homeopathy in the health care community at large and in the eyes of the general public.

• We must counter those who tag homeopathy’s positive outcomes as due to the ‘placebo’ effect, instead of it’s just due – the homeopath’s ability to discern the matching pattern and resonate remedy to the individual’s disorder based upon fundamental homeopathic principles.

There are those in the health care and science community that set out to disprove the conclusions, methods and quality of surveys and studies that are done by qualified professional homeopaths.
[see: Commentary Exploring homeopathy by E. Ernst of Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, 25 Victoria Park Road, Exeter EX2 4NT, UK printed in Preventative Medicine www.elsevier.com/locate/ypmed available online 22 June 2007 Science Direct]

On that note, we applaud Norway’s resident homeopath, A. Steinsbekk, who has published a number of papers in online health journals. The articles discuss the results of survey tabulations to dispel the notion that homeopathy simply is placebo medicine, and data analysis that shows what types of people visit a homeopath annually. The data suggests that those who regularly visit a homeopath feel that homeopathy has been beneficial to their well-being.

• More specifically, Steinsbekk tabulated a health survey given to a cross section of adults in Central Norway [65,495 participants] in 1995-1997. Variables in the analysis were age, marital status, education, being a social welfare recipient, lifestyle (daily smoker), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-T), global health perception, self-reported health complaints and a variety of diseases.

• To summarize Steinsbekk’s conclusion: Females who thought they had lower than average global health were most likely to visit a homeopath. Persons ages between 30-39 and those 60 and older, or on welfare had a small significance factor toward visiting a homeopath. If a person had Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HAD-S], hay fever, a recent health complaint or chronic disease they were rated on the scale to possibly visit a homeopath. If one was a daily smoker or widow(er) they were less likely to visit a homeopath.

• Steinsbekk also recommends that more studies on visits to homeopaths from other populations (countries, children and adolescent) are needed.

Are there other data analysts who could tabulate trends in usage of homeopathic remedies and visitations in countries around the globe?

Steinbekks says,

USA: “There was a 500% increase in overall use of homeopathy
in USA from 0.7% of the population in 1990 to 3.4% in
1997. The proportion of the users of homeopathy who visited
a practitioner in USA was stable at about 20% from
1997 to 2002 although there was a reduction in the overall
use of homeopathy in the same period.

UK: There was an increase in the proportion who had consulted a homeopath from 1.2% in 1998 to 1.9% in 2001.

Norway: There was an increase, with 1.8% of the
*Correspondence to: Aslak Steinsbekk, Department of Public
Health and General Practice, Norwegian University of Science
and Technology (NTNU), 7489 Trondheim, Norway.

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