250 Hangover Cures
It just so happens the water helps with hangovers, because the main culprit is dehydration after an evening throwing back diuretics.
Still don’t get it? Allow me to elaborate. According to the my google search result for ‘homeopathy principles’:
- The fundamental idea of homeopathy is the Similarity Principle: ‘Let like be cured by like’, as established by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. This implies that substances which cause a disorder in healthy subjects are used as medicines to treat similar disorders experienced by ill people.
- The second is Individualization: ‘Treat the patient, not the disease’. This is the most important doctrine of homeopathy, mostly because it maximizes any placebo effect and generally puts people in a better mood.
- The last is the ‘use of the minimum dose’. “It has been found” that the more the medicine is diluted, the more effective and powerful it becomes. So, the process of the dilution is called ‘potentisation’, taken to the extreme. They will sometimes claim that ‘water has memory’ or vibrations or something else ridiculous to explain this.
↓ Transcript
WYLONA
I've been researching homeopathic dilutions.
ROB
Is this a kid's chemistry set?
WYLONA
Yep, and I invented a new hangover cure!
ROB
You know homeopathy is just sugar pills?
WYLONA
Right, so I dissolved them in water to make them more powerful and they really work now!
I've been researching homeopathic dilutions.
ROB
Is this a kid's chemistry set?
WYLONA
Yep, and I invented a new hangover cure!
ROB
You know homeopathy is just sugar pills?
WYLONA
Right, so I dissolved them in water to make them more powerful and they really work now!
Just eat a bacon sandwich instead.
Is “hair of the dog” homeopathic? After all, it’s ‘Let like be cured by like.’
Don’t forget the wonders of “proving” and oh yes, the use of the striking board.
Also this: http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/09/09/homeopathic-leak-threatens-catastrophe/
I find it curious how those principles are in regular medicine too. “Like cured by like” is rather how vaccines work (same disease, just much weaker, one could say ‘diluted’). And too much medicine can be worse than too little, so ‘minimum effective dose’ is what many doctors aim for. Unless they’re trying to pad the bill, anyways. (key word: effective)
The only part that isn’t in modern medicine is ‘treat the patient’, when it really should be. How wonerful a world of modern medicine, where everyone is treated like a malfunctioning engine, and the doctor’s just here to screw in new headlights that someone else will wire together? Seriously, do doctors need more pay to treat people like human beings?
Don’t get me wrong, homeopathy still gets a ton of things wrong, mainly a total lack of consistency or record-keeping.
“homeopathy still gets a ton of things wrong”. Wouldn’t it be a shorter and simpler to remember list of what it got right? Plus you’d help to save the planet as you wouldn’t need to use any paper to write the full list on.
So vaccines are one case where “like cures like” could, I suppose, be claimed to apply (it’s sorta close, but not really). Although vaccines don’t cure diseases, they prevent them. But what else is there? It’s certainly not a general principle by any stretch of the imagination!
Minimum effective dose is certainly a principle that medicine strives for, but that doesn’t correspond to the homeopathic “less (or nothing) is more” philosophy. In medicine, unlike homeopathy, when you’re getting the minimum effective dose, you’re still getting a dose!
Finally, treating the patient… I get the impression that patients feel that they’re not being treated as individuals because doctors triage the information provided. Let’s say someone comes in with a stomach-ache and begins to tell the doctor everything they’ve eaten for the last three weeks. The doctor ignores the vast majority of that information, because all they really needed to hear about was the dodgy chicken they had two days ago. But because the doctor stopped when he had all he needed, without considering everything the patient thinks is important, they didn’t offer “individualised care”. I think the whole individual treatment trope stems largely from people who feel that a doctor should listen to and take into account their whole life story, when sometimes all you need for a diagnosis is the smoking gun.
I will agree that homeopaths do get a few things wrong, though – like whether or not their treatments are effective, for example.
So, the real homeopathetic cure for a hangover using the three principles is as follows:
1) Use the similarity principle – more alcohol.
2) Treat the patient – go down to the pub
3) Use minimum dose – just a small one, please, landlord.
Problem solved homeopathetically, hangover cured! Now, what’s the homeopathetic cure for obesity?
Fried twinkies and coke?
So Wylona’s trying to re-invent Alka Seltzer?.
And ‘water has memory’ really… that sounds like a crappy movie plot device on par with The Happening. But if that was indeed the case, think of all the unkosher things that have gone on in swimming pools (at least).
If that water I drank at breakfast has a memory, it’s going to need a shrink to forget where it ended up after going through me.
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“Ask a glass of water!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
That Mitchell and Webb Look (British comedic duo) had a really funny skit on homeopathic medicine (which is even more of a problem in britain than in America) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
A problem in Britain? I don’t think so, Prince Charles supports it. On the other hand, he’s well recognised as being barking.
CoolHardLogic, aside from doing an excellent job debunking geocentrism, did a video series debunking homoeopathy. Look him up using his name and ‘Testing Homoeopathy Part 1’.
Ah. Yes. Look CHL up on youtube. I missed that critical component.
…is geocentrism still something we have to debunk?
Apparently there are some.staggeringly stupid people out there.
For more ideas on “cures” that work, check out my blog at http://www.HangoverCures.com. I’m in the process of trying and reviewing every hangover cure I can get my hands on!
Get your elected officials to outlaw homeopathy first. Then you can talk about it all you want.