Homeopathic Eye Drops

[Tex]

I was given a free sample of "Similasan #1" drops for dry/red eyes. Here's the ingredients:

Active Ingredients (homeopathic)
-------------------------------------------
Belladonna HPUS 6X (containing 0.000002% alkaloids calculated as hyoscyamine)
Euphrasia HPUS 6X
Mercurius sublimatus HPUS 6X

Inactive Ingredients
-------------------------------------------
Sodium chloride, purified water

So I take it that this is just overpriced saline solution. But how on earth do you make sense of those homeopathic ingredients? What exactly are they and what quantities are actually present? There are numerous online references to these terms, but I haven't found any clear explanation of precisely what they mean.

[Red Siegfried]

All I can tell you for sure is that if they are homeopathic ingredients, the odds of even one molecule being present in these eyedrops is low to none, so I wouldn't worry about any ill effects.

The dilution factor is most likely too high for any of the active ingredient to exist in the end product.

Belladona is good for keeping werewolves away. What? There aren't any werewolves around? See? It works!

[Red Siegfried]

Euphrasia is also known as eyebright and is traditionally considered to be useful for all sorts of eye ailments.

Photo:

http://botany.cs.tamu.edu/FLORA/schoepke/eup-ro-1.jpg

Same thing for mercurius, considered good stuff for the eyes. The actually efficacy, however, I don't really know. More research required.

But the point remains that if it is a homeopathic solution there is no guarantee whatsoever that any of that ingredient is in the product anyway.

[Rolfe]

There is stuff in there if the drops actually contain what they say on the bottle - 6X isn't dilute enough to have got rid of all the molecules. I note they have the actual proper concentration of the belladonna alkaloids recorded, probably by law. It's a low concentration, but the very name belladonna (beautiful lady) comes from the fact that the herb has been used for millennia (in the form of eye drops) as a beauty aid because it causes the pupils to enlarge, which looks attractive. The active ingredient is atropine, a competitive antagonist of muscarinic cholinergic receptors.

It sounds as if this stuff totally ignores the first principle of homoeopathy, which is "like cures like". The idea is that anything which produces certain symptoms in a healthy person will cure a disease which causes similar symptoms. So really, to soothe the eyes, you'd want to go for an extremely dilute preparation of something which actually irritated healthy eyes. Instead, this stuff seems to be a mixture of the sort of things you might find in eye drops anyway, but labelled "homoeopathic" so that it doesn't need to comply with the stricter side of medicines regulations.

Rolfe.

[Red Siegfried]

Originally posted by Rolfe
There is stuff in there if the drops actually contain what they say on the bottle - 6X isn't dilute enough to have got rid of all the molecules. I note they have the actual proper concentration of the belladonna alkaloids recorded, probably by law. It's a low concentration, but the very name belladonna (beautiful lady) comes from the fact that the herb has been used for millennia (in the form of eye drops) as a beauty aid because it causes the pupils to enlarge, which looks attractive.

6X could still mean that there is some "active" ingredient? At what dilution would you say the odds of one molecule being present are close enough to zero to be considered ... well, zero?

At first I was thinking, well, it depends on the size of the sample, but then my brain started working and I realized that doesn't matter. The concentration has nothing to do with the size of the sample. 6X is 6X no matter if it's 1cc or 1 kilometer cubed.

So thanks for the correction, Rolfe.

But then there's always the question of whether these ingredients do anything useful at all. Like you said, the principle of like curing like is pretty much invalid anyway, so I would guess most likely not. Then there's the matter of side effects. At this low concentration, I wouldn't think there would be any, like all homeopathic medicines.

Now I'm off to have my mood enhancing ginko biloba mush just before tree hugging time when I meet with gender group to enhance community oneness.

[Mojo]

Originally posted by Rolfe
There is stuff in there if the drops actually contain what they say on the bottle - 6X isn't dilute enough to have got rid of all the molecules. But there's probably not enough left to worry about. In fact, if this was sold as a homeopathic preparation in the UK it would have to guarantee that there wasn't enough of the "active" ingredient to have an effect.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Red Siegfried
At what dilution would you say the odds of one molecule being present are close enough to zero to be considered ... well, zero?Generally quoted as either 24X (X being 10-fold dilutions) or 12C (C being 100-fold dilutions). That's the point at which Avogadro's number is violated even if the original "mother tincture" was a very concentrated preparation.

However, someone did do a caculation showing that the point at which there is nothing practically detectable there is significantly less than that. And less still if the original "mother tincture" was itself dilute.

I think 6X is 1 ppm if the mother tincture is a pure compound.

In fact the point where there would be no molecules in a bottle does depend on the size of the final bottle. If you had sufficient material to make an enormous dilution without throwing anything away, then of course all your original molecules are still there. If you tip a 1 kg bag of sugar into the ocean, and it all mixes evenly and none is consumed, then you have one molecule in a 10 ml sample. I think this is less than 12C though.

However, when the serial diluting is done by throwing away the larger portion of each dilution step, you get to eye-popping dilutions quite quickly, and indeed the chances of having any molecules in a bottle of a practical size is essentially zero by 12C/24X. 30C is a popular homoeopathic preparation potency. I can't tell you the details, but you're talking one molecule in a container several times the size of the known universe.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Mojo
But there's probably not enough left to worry about. In fact, if this was sold as a homeopathic preparation in the UK it would have to guarantee that there wasn't enough of the "active" ingredient to have an effect. That's true, but it's not the case in the US, and there the "homoeopathic" label is used to get round the law by labelling perfectly ordinary dilutions. Such as the 2X zinc gluconate preparation ("Zicam") that was the subject of a successful law suit when a customer lost his sense of smell.

6X is pretty dilute, but then alkaloids are notorious for having effects at very low concentration. I suspect that the US law recognoses this, and that's why the real concentration of the active belladonna alkaloids appears on the label.

The EU regulations don't specify an actual potency below which it isn't homoeopathic, they just say they have to be dilute enough that safety is not an issue. So how they can possibly say that if they give any credence to the homoeopaths' claims of mysterious physiologically-active energies I really don't know. It's completely schizoid - on the one hand they seem to be endorsing the products as medicines, but on the other hand they say they don't have to be tested for safety because there's nothing in them.

Bloody bureaucrats.

Rolfe.

[EHocking]

Originally posted by Tex
I was given a free sample of "Similasan #1" drops for dry/red eyes. Here's the ingredients:

Active Ingredients (homeopathic)
-------------------------------------------
Belladonna HPUS 6X (containing 0.000002% alkaloids calculated as hyoscyamine)
Euphrasia HPUS 6X
Mercurius sublimatus HPUS 6X

Inactive Ingredients
-------------------------------------------
Sodium chloride, purified water

So I take it that this is just overpriced saline solution. But how on earth do you make sense of those homeopathic ingredients? What exactly are they and what quantities are actually present? There are numerous online references to these terms, but I haven't found any clear explanation of precisely what they mean. It would seem they are getting smarter on what they boast about, after a letter of warning from the US FDA concerning their ear drops (http://www.fda.gov/foi/warning_letters/g3998d.htm), they now merely state that "This pharmacist-recommended Active Response Formula® promptly stimulates the body's natural ability to relieve ear pain. (my emphasis).

They now have this "for entertainment purposes only" clause on all these products, and just as Sylvia is happy to take the rubes to town, these drops are US$8 for 10ml!! One of the expensive saline solutions I found online goes for US$4 for 355ml.

[Mojo]

Originally posted by Rolfe
The EU regulations don't specify an actual potency below which it isn't homoeopathic, they just say they have to be dilute enough that safety is not an issue. So how they can possibly say that if they give any credence to the homoeopaths' claims of mysterious physiologically-active energies I really don't know. It's completely schizoid - on the one hand they seem to be endorsing the products as medicines, but on the other hand they say they don't have to be tested for safety because there's nothing in them.They also are not allowed to make any therapeutic claims. Makes you wonder why people buy the stuff...

[Tex]

Cool, thanks for all the info. So this product contains some substances which may actually be good for the eyes, and these may be present in sufficient amounts to make a difference. Not that it's worth it at nearly $1/mL. And am I to understand that in homeopathic remedies there is no guarantee of the level of concentration of the "mother tincture"? If so wouldn't that render all of these amounts meaningless other than the 0.000002% alkaloids figure?

BTW, the "Indications" section states that "According to homeopathic principles, the ingredients of this medication give you relief from..." rather than "This medication gives you relief from..."

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Tex
And am I to understand that in homeopathic remedies there is no guarantee of the level of concentration of the "mother tincture"? If so wouldn't that render all of these amounts meaningless other than the 0.000002% alkaloids figure?Pretty much. And yes, if this does anything it's probably just because of the saline solution, which makes it a bit of a rip-off.Originally posted by Tex
BTW, the "Indications" section states that "According to homeopathic principles, the ingredients of this medication give you relief from..." rather than "This medication gives you relief from..." I don't entirely understand that, as I don't see where the "like cures like" part comes into it between these ingredients and the presentation of dry/red eyes.

Perhaps a homoeopath would be able to explain this. Although to be honest I think it's just a get-out disclaimer of the kind described on another thread as equivalent to "for entertainment purposes only".

Rolfe.

[Zep]

It's all eyewash, in both senses of the word.