Tissue Salts/Homeopathy?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

This is partly GQ but mostly I want anecdotes so I hope I’ve put it in the right place.

Can someone explain to me the difference between tissue salts (like the ones here), naturopathy, and homeopathy? It seems the same to me (the 6x dilution suggests homeopathy, right?) but I know a number of people who dismiss homeopathy as crackpot hoo-ha yet find tissue salts effective.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing? Do you believe it works or is it just the placebo effect? What about with children? The ones being hawked in the link claim to be safe for use on infants, so presumably there would be no placebo effect there, unless it is the parents’ perception of whether it’s working or not, I guess. Also, is naturopathy as out-there as homeopathy? Or are they the same thing?

Anyway, please share any thoughts, knowledge, and experience with me!

(Edited to clarify that I’m not seeking medical advice, just genuinely curious what it’s all about)

#2

I couldn’t see anything about dilution on that site, but homeopathic dilution is to ridiculous levels, 6x would hardly count. Any dietary supplement can only help (outside placebo) if you are lacking that component in your diet. No-one eating 3 balanced meals a day is lacking the things these salts are providing.

So the difference is that these guys are selling salts (Magnesium Phosphate etc), homeopaths are selling water, and naturopaths herbal extracts. All are ineffective, but in different ways.

#3

On the other hand, homeopathic remedies are harmless, since they’re only water, but salts could be dangerous depending on the dosage.

(Yes, I know that water could also be dangerous depending on the dosage.)

#4

From looking at another altie site, it appears that promoting “tissue salts” is another form of woo that has some relationship to getting essential minerals, though eating properly should prevent you from needing most supplementation (and the forms they recommend doubtfully would remedy any deficiencies or prevent the symptoms they claim result from low levels).

The children’s remedies sold on the OP’s site feature claims that are not backed by any solid science, including the products supposedly relieving anxiety, pain and fever. It’s quackery that relies on placebo effect for any positive results.

So “tissue salts” have that much in common with homeopathy and naturopathy.

Incidentally, it’s possible for homeopathic drugs to have toxic effects, if the water in them is contaminated (i.e. with heavy metals or adulterated with drugs) or the dilutions are low enough.

#5

Homeopathic remedies can also cause harm by causing people to delay proper medical treatment because they believe that the homeopathic “medicine” is just taking time to work.

#6

Wikipedia’s article is worth a read. It sounds like the “6x” dilution actually refers to 6 rounds of 1:9 dilution, taking it down to homeopathic levels of ineffectiveness.

#7

From the website: “Tissue Salts are a homoeopathically [sic] prepared micro-dose of the body’s 12 essential minerals.”

There’s more, but yeah. Homeopathy

#8

Homeopathy is truly a remarkable system of medicine. Homeopathy is a scientific, safe, quick and extremely effective method of healing.

#9

Scientific? Not.
Safe? Possibly not.
Quick? To do what?
Effective? Certainly not.

. . . unless you’re extremely dehydrated, and could benefit from a tiny, very expensive, amount of water.

#10

Do the preparers of homeopathy remedies really go through the bother of making all those endless dilutions. Surely they realize that they’re selling distilled water and there would be a strong temptation to simply put distilled water into a bottle and whatever label they want on it. After all, who could prove they had done that? They would need a thaumometer.

#11

Damn good question…Which I’m going to ask in General Questions. :smiley:

#12

Wait, but that would be unethical.
:wink:

#13

Naturopathy* includes* homeopathic “treatments”, but has a variety of other quackery in addition to homeopathy. It pushes belief in a “life force”, and avoiding modern medicine like surgery, drugs and vaccines.

It’s outright dangerous in other words.

#14

I am concerned that by banning woo spammers and reducing their concentration on the board to below detectable limits, moderators are only making them stronger. :eek:

#15

Okay, that’s going to have me giggling for a few days. “They all do nothing, but… differently.”

#16

Samuel Hahnemann, the dude who developed homeopathy, did so back before the germ theory, the microscope, the first vaccine, and a lot of other things. Medicine at the time consisted of bleeding, purging, starving, and doing things like prescribing carrots for erectile dysfunction, meat of “vigourous” animals for fatigue, and such.

Hahnemann noted that people didn’t seem to get better one way or another, and wanted to try something else. He started out by administering different substances to healthy people, noting the effect, and keeping rigorous notes.

I’m not sure at what point he got his breakthrough idea that if X substance produced Y effect in a healthy person, it should produce opposite-Y in a sick person, but it wasn’t all that stupider than bleeding and purging.

My point is, he kept experimenting and adjusting his ideas all his life. He came up with some wacky stuff, like the horsehair agitator, but that happened because he thought his remedies worked better after being carried in saddle bags, and he was working on determining how water knew how to remember what key substances it had been exposed to, and which ones to “forget.” Water memory is a stupid idea, but again, not really stupider than the idea that seeing a really ugly person while pregnant could cause a woman to give birth to a deformed baby.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that if Hahnemann came back today, and saw the state of modern medicine, and then found out some people were still insisting on practicing homeopathy as he left it in 1790 (or whatever), he’d be gobsmacked. I think if he’d been granted the ability to live for several hundred years, he would have joined the march of real science, because that’s what he was trying to do when he invented homeopathy-- the problem was that he was stumbling in the dark. But he was a guy who was constantly changing and refining his theory with every new observation he made, which is the way science is supposed to work. It’s not his fault that he didn’t have the tools to make good observations and valid assumptions.