I've always been skeptical of homeopathy, so I was not surprised to find that a 2005 study published in the Lancet found that homeopathic drugs work no better than placebos.

Supposedly in homeopathy, the principal is that less is more. As treatments, patients are prescribed tiny little pills made from various plants, minerals or and animal parts that are supposed to cure you. The idea behind it is that "like cures like". Supporters believe that a disease can be treated by a highly diluted natural medicine that causes the exact same symptoms you are trying to cure.

Personally, I think the whole area of homeopathy is based on an illogical assumption. First of all, in general, the larger quantity ingested and the greater concentration of a substance usually brings about a greater effect on a person's body than smaller or more dilute amounts. We know that to be true with things like poisons and overdoses on medicines and supplements. Children ge rushed to the hospital for overdoses of medicines and poisons.

If dilutions truly gave substances a greater effect on the body, then people exposed to minuscule amounts of supplements, toxic mushrooms, medicines and poisons would all be getting rushed to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. But in real life his doesn't happen. In reality the greater the exposure to a substance, or overdose, the worse our symptoms. People simply are not getting rushed to the hospital for powerful underdoses of diluted medicine.

There is simply no scientific evidence to support the idea that diluted medicines are more powerful than undiluted medicine. Secondly, we are bombarded with molecules of various substances everyday - in the food we eat, the hand cream we put on, the deodorant we use, shampoos we use, soap, pets we touch and cuddle, etc. Any highly diluted substance would mostly likely have any potential effect overridden by exposure to these non-homeopathic substances.

A few years ago, when my son had a very bad episode with multiple chemical sensitivities, I took him to a homeopathic clinic out of desperation as the regular doctors had no treatments for him. I spent a whole hour with the homeopath, explaining my son's illness in great detail. During that time she asked a lot of intelligent and relevant questions, so I was hopeful she could help. At the end of the session she said that my son seemed a bit jumpy so she was going to give him a medicine made from spiders. It was such a stupid thing to say that I almost started laughing. Here I spent an hours time with her, two hours on travel to get to the clinic, and $125 dollars for spider pills. My husband later said that her prescription ranked was right up there with folk remedies that called for "eye of newt". I did try out the pills as they seemed harmless at worst. But they never really helped him one bit.

In reality, it turned out that my son had a reaction to mold in our house coupled with a bad reaction to prescription antibiotics (made from mold!). What worked was changing his diet to reduce any food with mold, yeast, preservatives or toxins. We also bleached all of our window sills, gave away my moldy old book collection and bought a dehumidifier. Now that is what really worked. There is no way that a tiny little diluted pill made from dead spiders was going to have the same effect. The homeopathic doctor simply had had no idea what was really wrong with my son and the whole visit was a waste of both time and money, and ws an unpleasant sidetrack to finding the real cure for him.

I find it unfortunate that unscientific methods like homeopathy get lumped in under the same alternative health umbrella with treatments like yoga and nutrition, therapies which do work and are supported by a vast amount of scientific studies.