Homeopathy vs. non-homeopathy dilution calculations

Factual Questions
1

This thread is not how or if homeopathy works. We know it doesn’t. If you don’t agree, start your own damn thread. Furthermore, read this entire thread before replying or you might be assuming too much; if it’s tl;dr to you, forget it.

This thread is to clear up some confusion in my mind, perhaps in others, on definitions and dilution terminology.

We also know that some homeopathic preparations (>12C) are so dilute that they contain only one molecule or less of the supposed active ingredient.

But I often see lower dilutions, and wonder why they are called homeopathic. Conversely, I see conventional medicines with similar dilutions (that is, highly diluted), but they are NOT labeled homeopathic. What makes this distinction?

Let’s define our dilution terms and make sure I am correct. A homeopathic dilution can be expressed as X or C. X means that each dilution step takes one part of the mother or previous solution and adds it to 9 parts of the dilutant. Similarly, C means one part mother or previous solution plus 99 parts of dilutant. These are called either 1X or 1C, respectively.

Each subsequent dilution adds one to the X or C number. For example, 2X is made from one part of a 1X solution plus 9 parts of inactive dilutant; 2C is 1 part of a 1C solution plus 99 parts of something else.

Now let’s express these same dilution ratios in percentage.

1X = 10%
2X = 1%
3X = .1%
4X = .01%
5X = .001%
…and so forth.

1C = 1%
2C = .01%
3C = .0001%
4C = .0000001%
…and so forth.

Am I right so far? Let’s continue.

I have in front of me Botanic Choice Homeopathic Sleeping Pills, 300 mg, 90 tablets. On the ingredients label, it says:

Oatstraw, 3X HPUS
Chamomile, 3X HPUS
Hops, 3X HPUS
Passion Flower, 3X HPUS
Green Coffee, 3C HPUS
Ignatius Bean, 3C HPUS

It also says, “Inactive ingredients, Dextrose, Magnesium Stearate, Silica.”

(HPUS refers to the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeai of the Unites States, the homeopath’s version of a drug registry.)

If we translate the X and C numbers to percentages, this would be:

Oatstraw, .1%
Chamomile, .1%
Hops, .1%
Passion Flower, .1%
Green Coffee, .0001%
Ignatius Bean, .0001%

These percentages look low to the layman, but let me describe some non-homeopathic medicines in my bathroom:

Equate Nose Drops, 1% HCl

…which, in homeopathic terms, makes it 2X or 1C.

Equate Eye Allergy Relief, Phenlramine Maleate, .315%, Naphazoline Hydrochloride 0.02675%

…which, in homeopathic terms, makes it (do homeopathic preps have fractional dilutions?)

Phenlramine Maleate, 3 times 3X, or between 2X and 3X
Naphazonline Hydrochloride, 2.6 times 1C or 2.6 times 4X

Now we come, finally, to my question. These dilutions of conventional medicines aren’t much different from some homeopathic ones, so it isn’t the dilution that makes the distinction. What does make the distinction? The label that declares the contents to be homeopathic?

I scanned the homeopathic drug selection at a local pharmacy once, and none of the preps I randomly picked up had such high dilutions (>12C) that I could firmly declare they “had no active ingredients.” Could they be considered non-homeopathic?

Here’s a homeopathic preparation, as an example, Oral Ivy. It supposedly prevents poison ivy from causing rash or itching.

3X! Pretty much like my Eye Drops. If the eye drops have enough active ingredient to work, why wouldn’t Oral Ivy? (It doesn’t, I’m sure; this is a rhetorical question.)

Your turn!

2

As I understood it, the principle of homeopathy is to take substances that cause symptoms similar to the disease symptoms. i.e., if you’re running a fever, you take something that makes you hotter, not cooler.

Since this is insanely dangerous, they introduced dilution simply as a way of allowing the patient to survive the process.

You’ve got a headache? Well, I’ll just pound you on the head with a hammer. Ah…gently, though, gently.

Dilution isn’t intrinsic to the homeopathic concept: homeopathy itself – “same pain” – causing or increasing the symptoms that anyone else would think to try to relieve – is the real core concept. Dilution is just a necessary refinement.

3

You are correct, but that’s not my question.

4

In case my question isn’t clear, let me put it this way. If extreme dilution is what separates homeopathic preparations from non-, and we have two solutions in my examples with about the same dilution ratios, can I call my Nose Drops homeopathic? Can I call Oral Ivy non-homeopathic? If not, why not?

My guess it that you can call anything you want homeopathic, and never have to prove they work, but to call something medicine, you have to prove it does work. Still, why don’t nose drop manufacturers market their product both ways?

5

Many legitimate, laboratory-tested, study-based medicines are administered in very low dosages. This is especially true of OTC medications that need to be used in controlled amounts.

That neither makes them homeopathic nor validates homeopathy’s practice of mega-dilution of unproven or essentially useless substances.

ETA: To put it more clearly, it’s not the dilution or the practice of dilution that defines homeopathy. It’s what you dilute, and why, and what you expect that micro-dosage to do, that does.

6

Because they’re not charlatans? Not all merchants are looking to scam the public.

7

Maybe I’m unclear on your quesiton too. You are asking if dilution is not what distinguishes homeopathy from other treatments, then what does? As Trinopus says, it’s that the ingredients would be considered as exacerbating the symptoms rather than relieving them. Oral Ivy is supposed to help with rash by treating it with…poison ivy(!). Your eye drops presumably treat the allergy with something that soothes the eye.

That, and there’s a lot of marketing mumbo-jumbo that defines homeopathy. At my local grocery store, the “homeopathy” section means natural treatments (whatever those are).

8

It doesn’t seem to bother drug manufacturers, or at least pharmacies. I once asked our local pharmacy why they carried such a large stock of homeopathic solutions and the owner said, “They’re legal, they sell like hotcakes, and they make me a lot of money.”

Besides, it seems to me that if a nose spray manufacturer took the basic product, which has solid scientific evidence behind it, and relabeled it as homeopathic, the worst thing that could happen is it might actually work. Now THAT would be confusing.

9

At the risk of stating the obvious, non-homeopathic, or “real”, medicine determines dosage by doing controlled clinical trials to find a concentration that is both safe and effective. It is true that seemingly very small quantities of a chemical can be very effective.

I think the “dilution to extinction” silliness is only part of the danger of homeopathy, though you are correct that it is a commonly cited one. Another very real danger is that many “natural” substances can have genuine effects. They are chemicals, after all. But because they’re natural, there’s a lot more variation in what you’re getting and how much and in what combination, and there are no controlled experiments to determine what is safe and effective. That’s kind of why we invented modern medicine in the first place, really. So even if there are homeopathic remedies that aren’t diluted to extinction, they can be dangerous for other reasons.

10

I am losing track of the number of things you’re conflating and implying, here. Because the pharmacy sells/does not sell homeopathic/null remedies at cost/for a profit… what? They’re valid? Invalid? A variety of bottled water?

No, the worst thing would be that the product would lose all credibility with those of us who don’t fear and distrust modern medicine; I think we outnumber those who think bare traces of odd herbs and weeds are superior treatment.

11

In high doses, Oral Ivy would cause a rash or an adverse reaction (I suppose). In low doses, little or nothing. In extremely low doses, absolutely nothing, except if you subscribe to the Law Of Similars, then it becomes more potent.

To a homeopath, Poison Ivy is the perfect prevention treatment for Poison Ivy. Just dilute it enough so it gets safer, then keep diluting it so it gets more powerful.

12

If I were a nasty, unscrupulous and devious manufacturer who wanted to maximize his profit, I would market the nose spray two ways. One, with modern science behind it, in the medicine section of the pharmacy, and two, with no need for science behind it, in the homeopathic section using a slightly different label. How could I go wrong?

13

You are likely far behind the curve, although most manufacturers will go so far as to have two separate companies - and most do.

You are still confusing the basic idea: those of us who want proven ingredients won’t buy a homeopathic product, and most homeopathers won’t buy a product containing a genuine medical compound, no matter how diluted. They fear and distrust those long pseudo-latinate compound names and prefer a vanishingly small trace of something comforting-sounding like “St. John’s Wort” or “chamomile” or such. So unless you’re going to sell utterly inert water or vaseline base and lie about what’s in it, there’s no market for a crossover product line.

14

So what defines “homeopathic”? If it’s not extreme dilution, then is it what the manufacturer wants to call it?

15

Aren’t you answering your own questions?

The Equate 1% HCl doesn’t claim to be more potent than eyedrops that are 10% HCl – the 1% solution is implicitly claiming to be safer. Let’s look at something else, say, cortisone: usually WalMart sells a 0.5% cortisone cream, and a 1% cortisone cream labeled “MAXIMUM STRENGTH!!!”

In contrast, it’s the “homeopathic” cortisone cream of 0.0001% that would be labeled “MAXIMUM STRENGTH!!!”

ETA: Since I think you answered your own question, I’m thinking I may not have understood your question correctly.

16

It’s homeopathic if it follows the principles and practices, some of them legally codified, of homeopathic medicine. Extreme dilution of “causative” substances is pretty much the gist of what defines homeopathy - but the emphasis is on the notion of “causative substance” and not on dilution.

Just because legitimate medicine also dilutes active substances to control the dosage - e.g., embedding a few micrograms of active substance in an inert base of some kind, so that we can measure it out by pill or spoonful instead of immeasurable pinch - does not make it the same as homeopathy.

You might do a little wiki-walking on the topic instead of trying to force answers based on this one technical similarity.

17

Your premise is false, as Trinopus explained, so your question can’t be meaningfully answered as posed. Extreme dilution is not what separates homeopathic preparations from non-homeopathic ones. It is incidental. What separates them is the fact that the substance in the homeopathic preparation would (if not well diluted) tend, by design, to exacerbate the disease symptoms (or at least cause other similar ones), whereas the substances in non-homeopathic medicines (the word homeopaths use is “allopathic”) tend to ameliorate the symptoms.*

Sometimes the real medicine is only needed, and/or only safe, if administered fairly well diluted (though never with the truly extreme dilutions often, but not always, used in homeopathy). Sometimes the homeopathic “drugs” do not need to be diluted to a truly extreme degree to make them harmless, but just moderately, so, in some cases, you may see real medicines and homeopathic ‘medicines’ that have been diluted to a comparable, relatively moderate degree. This fact has no particular significance. It is essentially just a coincidence that says nothing either way about whether either homeopathy or real medicine has any rational or empirical basis.

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*At least in the long term: but real medicine is not really the same as the symptom focused homeopath’s notion of allopathy. Real medicine is not so much about alleviating symptoms as removing the underlying cause of the disease. Sometimes even real medicine may make the symptoms worse before it makes you better.

18

So the sucussion, etc. is required (in principle) to label something homeopathic? Seems we are piling trust upon trust here. How do I know that the correct leather tablet was used, slapped the correct number of times, to prepare this solution?

OK, that’s silly. No consumer seriously expects Boiron to slap that unfortunate duck on the leather pad 10 times while chanting “Hahnemann, Hanhemann,” and they don’t care.

Which brings us back to the OP – homeopathic is more than just extreme dilutions, but it does not require extreme dilutions, either.

19

No, but they do still go through an extremely convoluted process of repeated shaking when all they really have to do is ship pure water or sugar pills.

And really, to a first approximation, no consumer has any idea what homeopathy is or why it’s nonsense. They just see “natural remedy” and assume there’s something to it. They have no more ability to evaluate the merits of homeopathic substances than they do evidence-based medicine.

20

Some woo-peddlers make products labeled “homeopathic” because they genuinely buy into the principles of homeopathy. These will generally be the highly-diluted stuff that you think of as “homeopathy”.

Some woo-peddlers make products labeled “homeopathic” because homeopathic “remedies” have special regulatory status in the US, due to some idiotic Congressmen a century ago. These will generally meet whatever standards are required by law (to the extent there are any) to be considered homeopathic.

And some woo-peddlers make products labeled “homeopathic” because they know that some woo-buyers like that particular flavor of woo. These will be as homeopathic as they need to be to get appropriate-sounding technobabble. They will also generally contain ingredients popularly thought to cure conditions rather than to cause them, because that way, you can snare multiple kinds of woo-buyers at once.