Despite the lack of any credible scientific evidence that homeopathy has any real effects on human body, thousands, if not millions people swear by it. They all claim that homeopathy helped them with all sorts of problems. While there are certainly a lot of people who are simply lying in order to promote homeopathic treatments, there are ones who are genuinely and honestly convinced that homeopathy helped them.
So, how to explain this? The answer is simple – placebo. All the positive effects of homeopathy come from placebo effects – in short, if we believe that something will help us it does help (in a way). Placebo effect also explains alleged effectiveness of other forms of alternative medicine.
For a long time scientists were dismissing placebo effect as a figment of patient’s imaginations, however, in recent time it became evident that there is something more to the placebo. Our minds have great deal of influence on our physical well being and by tricking the mind into thinking that we are getting real treatment we are indeed making ourselves better. Science has proven that placebo drugs can act as pain killers, improve asthma, treat Osteoarthritis, etc.
There are two aspects of placebo effect of greater interest when it comes to homeopathy and other forms of alternative medicine. According to Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University, effectiveness of placebo is greatly influenced by the cost of the treatment. Expensive treatments work better than cheaper ones. The other thing is that treatments which include elaborate rituals work better than simpler ones. This is all simple psychology really, if something is good it has to cost a lot of money and involve a lot of work.
Think about this – what is more logical: the fact that some centuries old shenanigans of infinitely diluting some weird substances really works, despite what all of our modern science says, or that all there is to it is just placebo effect?
Source - emedexpert.com
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