I wonder how a dose of 1.8 mg can impact my whole body, but I know it does.
Is the body so finely tuned that even a small amount can change the way things work?
1.8mg of what? That’s a homeopathic dose for some medications, and a fatal dose for others.
1.8 mg is infinitely more than a homeopathic dose.
A homeopathic dose essentially means no dose at all.
And 1.8 mg of a drug which binds to critical receptors in the brain, or the gut, or the arteries can make profound changes to the entire body. Just as a small key can open a large gate, giving access to vast areas inside.
A 50 microgram dose of LSD will send you on a nice trip. That’s about 3 orders of magnitude smaller than 1.8 milligrams.
It would be a homeopathic dose of acetylcysteine (or acetaminophen, for that matter), antibiotics, and a whole host of other drugs.
It’s a drug for type 2 diabetes.
1.8 mg of many (“most”) substances is an unimaginable number of molecules.
I don’t think you understand homeopathy.
Homeopathic doses means there are not any actual molecules of the purportedly ‘therapeutic’ substance present in the medication.
1.8 mg of APAP, mucormyst, or an antibiotic contains around 10 [sup]17[/sup] molecules. Perhaps not enough to do the job, but nowhere near homeopathic doses (i.e. no molecules.)
Sorry, but I do not think you understand homeopathy. “Homeopathic dose” does not mean a dose with no actual molecules of the relevant substance in it. It is true that many of the extreme dilutions recommended by homeopaths lead to this situation, but this (and, indeed, dilution quite generally), though a common aspect of homeopathy, is not an essential or universal feature of it. Some homeopathic nostrums do have measurable amounts of the allegedly active substance in them, perhaps even comparable to the amounts of the active substance in many real medicines.
Please note that I am in no way trying to defend homeopathy here. I think it is nonsense. But it is flat out false to say that no homeopathic nostrums have any of the alleged therapeutic substance in them, and homeopathy would still be homeopathy (and still be nonsense) if it never diluted any of its nostrums at all (although if it didn’t, in many cases the “remedy” would be actively harmful as opposed to merely ineffective).
That all may be so, but the actual scientific community understands the term “homeopathic dose” to be a dilutionary one, typically one of 30C (to use homeopathy’s pseudoscientific jargon) which means the equivalent of a 10[sup]60[/sup]-fold dilution. Which means there is no original substance there.
I’ll freely admit that homeopaths can and do define their science in such ways that some of their ‘remedies’ may contain the actual ingredient listed on them, but when actual scientists use the term ‘homeopathic dose’ they mean ‘no dose’.
Thanks for the clarification.
ETA: A nice scientific deconstruction of homeopathic dilution can be found here: A truly homeopathic defense of homeopathy | Science-Based Medicine
Homeopathic is used as a scientific colloquism these days, meaning an unexpectedly tiny amount - that sounds what nearwildheaven meant (without wanting to put words in their mouth).
For example, chemists talk about homeopathic loadings of palladium in some chemical reactions - this term appears in the literature. All it means is that some favourable substrates require absolutely tiny amounts of a metal catalyst for reaction, pointing to staggeringly efficient catalytic cycles.
To the OP - I think it’s understandable how an extremely potent agent translates to a very low therapeutic dose. What is harder to understand is how such a small amount of material does not get metabolised by generic biological processes- resulting in the systemic exposure being too low for an effect. The body is generally very good at dealing with xenobiotics via oxidation and tagging molecules for the cellular garbage can.
It must the case that any drug that is working at a tiny dose requires a higher intrinsic resistance to metabolism than something that might be taken by the gram.
The actual scientific community has no need for such a term except when they are criticizing homeopathy. It is not a scientific term. It may be true that quite a few scientists and doctors misunderstand and misuse the word the word in the way that you describe. Just because they are are scientists and doctors, that does not give them the authority to legislate as to what words coined and used mainly by other people mean. It certainly does not make it the case the case that that someone who uses the term in the sense it is actually used by those who coined it and regularly use it in the pursuit of their profession (pseudoscientifically based as may be) “does not understand what homeopathy is”. Somebody who uses the term to mean massively diluted is the one who does not understand what homeopathy is. Doctors and scientists can be and often are misinformed about things outside their field of expertise.
Well, that is a usage different both from that of homeopaths and from that of Qadgop, who said it means dilution to the extent that none of the substance is present at all (which is, of course, quite often the case with actual homeopathic nostrums). I dare say it is also based upon the same misunderstanding of homeopathy.
I do not know what nearwildheaven had in mind either, but her use was fully consistent with the original meaning, as coined and used by homeopaths (and which, I would venture to say, is almost certainly a lot more widely understood, including by people who do not actually believe in homeopathy, than than the usage you mention).
It’s Victoza (liraglutide), isn’t it? That was easy to confirm using Google. 
It operates on the “lock and key” principle mentioned earlier in this thread; the molecule attaches to appropriate receptors (or, in some cases, blocks them) and everything goes from there.
As for me mentioning homeopathy, I’m quite familiar with the whole “dilution and shaking” concept. My use of that word was in regard to subtherapeutic doses.
Or, to quote a memorable phrase from the Children’s Encyclopaedia, “a whisper in the king’s ear can accomplish more than shouting in the streets”.
Well, I’ll admit to my biases against homeopathy, based on their ‘science’ lacking any actual scientific foundation. And if in their lexicon of jargon, a ‘homeopathic dose’ can mean something besides ‘no dose at all’ it matters not to me, as a homeopathic dose of anything is at best the same as placebo, generally futile, and may prevent a person from seeking effective treatment. I think scientific study does support that definition of the term.
that’s the drug. First came from saliva of Gila Monsters. Now it’s made in the lab by manipulating DNA.
On homeopathy, I have to agree with QtM that it has come to mean essentially infinite dilution. But I was speaking to a woman a couple weeks ago who has a PhD in history of science and then got an MD and is now a resident. I asked her a question that I once raised on TSD and never got a satisfactory answer. When, and more importantly, how did Hahnemann medical college, which began life as a purely homeopathic medical school become a standard medical school? She had actually worked on this history, so her answer was authoritative.
First she said that most people (maybe she meant most scientifically educated people) identify homeopathy with infinite dilution, but it in fact is best seen as a kind of naturopathy. It includes a kind of magical thinking that the cure of a disease should resemble the caurse or appearance. Maybe (I am making this up) crabmeat should cure cancer. As time went on, the faculty actually became concerned with whether anything worked. At the time, say 1900, medical schools were unregulated were a total mess. In the next couple decades, accrediting happened. Meantime Hahnemann’s naturopaths were increasingly mixing actual medicine, such as it was (remember that until sulfa drugs came along, physicians were basically making diagnoses and prognoses and providing palliative care) with their naturopathy. And gradually, the new staff they were hiring were more interested in medicine than homeopathy. By 1930, the process was well on its way and by 1950 it was pretty much complete. The woman mentioned that when she studied it, they still required that the students attend one lecture a year on homeopathy, but she didn’t know if that was still true. And even so it was more about like cures like and infinite dilution “drugs”.
Indeed. Funny Albert Hoffman related trivia from wiki: