Wyniki wyszukiwania - BazTech

Ograniczanie wyników

1 Wiadomości Chemiczne

1 2005

Znaleziono wyników: 1

Liczba wyników na stronie

Wyniki wyszukiwania

Wyszukiwano:
w słowach kluczowych: physicochemical properties of solutions

Sortuj według:

Ogranicz wyniki do:

W poszukiwaniu fizykochemicznych podstaw homeopatii

Tyczkowski J., Tyczkowska-Sieroń E.

Wiadomości Chemiczne

2005

[Z] 59, 9-10

807--863

Homeopathy is an alternative medicine system that uses ultra-low doses of substances derived from plants, minerals, or animals for the purpose of stimulating the natural healing response of the body. There are two central tenets, on which homeopathy is based: the law of similars and potentization (dilution and shaking), Despite conventional science's unwillingness to grant homeopathy a serious platform, it is difficult to ignore a subject that has survived 200 years of scientific skepticism and is more and more popular alternative system of medicine, Two main questions, however, accompany the whole history of this complementary method: are homeopathic remedies really effective? And if it is true: what is a mechanism of the homeopathic effects? Homeopathy remedies are prepared in a very specific manner. The original substance, called mother tincture, is progressively diluted in a solvent (water, ethanol) and "potentized" by violent shaking between each dilution. It is obvious that after a definite number of dilutions the obtained solution is statistically unlikely to contain a single molecule of the original compound. Such solutions are called ultra-highly diluted (UHD) solutions. Looking for a scientific basis of homeopathy, it is very important to distinguish between remedies containing a low but real dose of the original substance, for which their efficacy is within the limits of what is today's knowledge, and remedies without molecules of the original compounds (UHD solutions), of which effects (if so) are beyond our understanding. Research on the UHD solutions can roughly be classified into three topics. The first concerns clinical investigations on efficacy of homeopathic remedies and their comparison with placebo. Although a lot of trials and meta-analysis have been performed, the general conclusion is totally ambiguous. The latest reports, however, strongly support the notion that the clinical effects of homeopathy are placebo effects. The second topic includes laboratory research on the biological effects, sometimes called preclinical research. The best-known and the most controversial at the same time results were published in 1988 by Benveniste, a once highly respected immunologist, that advocated the existence of biological effects of UHD solutions. Since then numerous experiments have been carried out on laboratory biological systems. Unfortunately, these studies, just as in the case of clinical research, are far from giving incontrovertible evidence for the UHD effects. Finally, the third research topic, which makes the main subject of this paper, is focused on physical, chemical and physicochemical investigations of the UHD solutions. In general, all these investigations are based on the water memory hypothesis and concentrate on the search for physicochemical differences between the UHD solutions and their "pure" solvents. The authors of this paper present herein all published more significant results concerning physicochemical studies carried out on the UHD solutions and undertake an attempt to answer a question, namely whether there is any evidence, on the basis of these results, that can explicitly prove the water memory effect. The results are collected in a few sections according to physicochemical phenomena. The first of these sections (Section 4.2) is devoted to UV-VIS spectroscopy, and investigations of photoabsorption, photoluminescence and thermoluminescence are discussed. Than the studies of "pure" water and the UHD solutions by IR and Raman spectroscopies are presented. The next section includes findings that are related to NMR spectroscopy. NMR has turned out to be a very useful technique to study of dynamic properties of liquid water. Although the earlier tests showed evident differences between various UHD solutions and their solvents, the recent investigations are not so optimistic giving negative replications. It indicates that the previous NMR results should be thoroughly revisited. Similarly, reanalysis of the results concerning thermo-dynamic study, described in the Section 4.5, is also desirable. These investigations were carried out only by one research team from University of Naples and it has not been replicated by another, more "conventional" way. A large proportion of the work is devoted to electrical properties of the UHD solutions and its comparison to pure water and conventional solutions. In this section (Section 4.6), measurements of the electrical conductivity and capacitance, electrical breakdowns, corona discharges, and electrochemical processes are discussed. It is shown that also in this case we can propose the explanation of the observed effects without invoking the water memory hypothesis. In the last part of the sections, in which we can familiarize with physicochemical investigations on the UHD solutions, very questionable measurements of molecular signals and their transmission by electromagnetic means are reported. This issue is closely connected with "digital biology" - a new controversial of science. Summarizing the mentioned above results of physicochemical investigations we can come to a conclusion that without any doubt in many instances the differences in properties between UHD solutions and their solvents exist. In the light of this fact the crucial problem emerges: is it possible: to explain these differences by "conventional" causes or we have to create a new idea that will transform the face of the science? In Sec. 5 we collect both hypotheses based on well-known phenomena (Sec. 5.1), for example ion extraction from the glass during shaking gas dissolving, native impurities of solvents, mechano-catalytic processes, heterogeneity of solutions, and new but disputed hypotheses (Sec. 5.2) originated from the general conception of water memory. It is shown in the paper that the latter hypotheses do not hold up to criticism provided by the modern established knowledge. It is also concluded that today there is no reason to construct groundbreaking theories and the observed phenomena can be explained by "conventional" way. It is very important to remember the following Aristotle's thought: if we want to accept any truth as the scientific knowledge, it must originate from other truths. .