Ex Homeopath Reveals the Truth About Homeopathy: Interview with Arif Hussain Theruvath

Abhijit: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Rationable conversations. Yes, I have changed the name, and we were on a little bit of a break, but we are back with Arif Hussein Theruvath. Am I pronouncing it right, or is it more Theruvath?

Arif: Yeah, Theruvath. That's the typical Malayali accent.

Abhijit: I figured as much.

So today we are going to be talking about homoeopathy, and Dr. Theruvath actually has, or should I call you Arif?

Arif: Yeah, but it'll be called Arif.

Abhijit: Arif. He has found his way out of homoeopathy, so we want to figure out his story, how he got in, and how he got out.

I'm very sure. And we find out exactly what homoeopathy is in the process. Arif, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. I've been, actually, I've actually wanted to have you on for a long time, but things have been a little chaotic as they usually are. I Rationable, but I interviewed Dr Abby Phillips a little over, I think it was a year and a half ago. Where he blew all our minds about Ayurveda. And the kind of harm that it can do if it's not regulated and if it's not taken as it should be. Okay. But you have tied up with him in some aspects, right?

Arif: So what about you guys? I work with him. Yeah. He's running a wonderful research facility at a hospital here in Kerala, Raigiri Hospital. So I work with his team as a clinical research associate. So, we are focusing on the damages done by all these herbal remedies and home remedies and all such proprietary Ayurvedic medicines and many things like that.

And looking for this damage done to the liver and other organs and many that sort of work – basically, it's a kind of work. We look at the claims of health misinformation, debunking and all such things that come into play. Yeah.

Abhijit: Wow. So, that is very good work, and it's very important work.

And I wanted to, so the big thing is that you used to be a homoeopathic doctor. Yeah. If you can call it a doctor. So tell us what happened. How did you get into that in the first place?

Arif: Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity, because you know that it's not much talked about in our country whether there's any problem with any of these degrees that are being promoted by the Ministry of AYUSH.

Yes. So homoeopathy is part of that AYUSH; that H stands for homoeopathy, and the A for algorithm, and multiple things like that, such as yoga, Unani and all such things, come in between.

Abhijit: And there is a silent N for naturopathy in there.

Arif: Yeah. Naturopathy. Yeah. It's yoga and naturopathy. It's together.

So that's a, yeah. So, when it comes to homoeopathy, we were asking whether that was even a jab at me, whether it could be called a doctor. Yeah, of course. That gold can be called a doctor because that's how it is getting promoted in our eyes, country, because for a student who is just coming out of the schools after the plus two, looking for the NEET examinations, a group of options – a choice – is given to him Gle Glass the course, elevated to B, C, requests and any courses. There are multiple courses, and within this NEET examination it is even considered for these AYUSH degrees as well. So, we cannot call out the part of the students that is something fake or something unscientific just because for them it is something that is being provided by the governments or the policy makers in our country.

So it's not upon their part to make it clear whether this is something scientific or unscientific. We cannot blame them for that because it's for their livelihood. They are going for a course and later on getting up with some jobs and survival. That's the main point of doing all these courses.

But after getting enrolled in any of these courses, then only you will come across the problems faced by all these. So that's the exact story that even I was facing after joining the first BHMS; then only I started getting to know there was something wrong with this course. Something – there is some problem with this homoeopathy.

And none of the teachers or the other people associated with our college were able to tell me exactly what exactly is the problem. So that was a very difficult situation. So to be called a doctor or not, from the point of view of these students, they can be called because it's part of the education system and that's how it is being promoted.

But as a science promoter or as a person who looks at healthcare in a way that it should be evidence-based and it should be scientific and all such sorts of things, then it comes the problem. Whether it is a genuine medical profession or whether it is scientifically backed. And if a person practises it, whether he can be called a doctor, then we could say that no, you cannot be called a doctor.

But still for me, people still call me doctor, so I cannot stop them because for them, I, they have seen me as a doctor for all these years, so they still call me. So it's very difficult to delineate between whether it is a true practice or something else.

Abhijit: Like Dr Shantanu Abhyankar was one of the very first people I interviewed because, to be honest, he's one of the first Indian sceptics that I actually, okay. Learnt about it because we met in Las Vegas at CSICon, where he was present presenting one of the Sunday papers about the Society for Removing Blind Faith and Blind Superstition, which he is a part of.

I'm probably getting the whole thing a little wrong. But anyway, Dr Shantanu Abhyankar has done a lot of work in promoting mainstream medicine and his story as well. He was telling me that a lot of homoeopathy and Ayurveda, et cetera, are actually positioned like a back door into the medical profession because you still get to learn certain standards of care.

You still get to learn certain medical practices, but the actual medicine part of it that you are taught is, of course, fallacious. But at least that gets you in the door of the mainstream medical profession where you'll be able to work in a hospital. Maybe as an assistant doctor, maybe as a more junior staff.

But he said, That's just what I was going for. At that point in time, I didn't have high enough scores to get into a, like, a proper big medical school. And those cost a lot of money as well, which is another big problem in this country. But he said, Yeah, this is the way everybody gets into the medical profession if they don't have the other resources or the marks to get into a college.

So I was like, That totally blew my mind. I had no idea that was the case. But was this also the case with you that you were trying to get into the mainstream medicine, ne, but you trying to get into it from a different angle or

Arif: There's a huge difference from what this Dr Shantanu and I have faced because coming from a state like Kerala, the situation is entirely different. We don't have such a back entry option in Kerala. You cannot practice any of that modern medicine; even a single drug could be prescribed by a homoeopath in Kerala. So if you take a hundred homoeopaths here in Kerala, a hundred of them will be practising homoeopathy alone. That's the situation here. So here it is, a pure alternative science, alternative medicine. Here it is just like that. It's not a backdoor entry, or it's something similar to what he has told; the situation is different. And even you can see that there's an authorised course for these BHMS graduates in Maharashtra, and the course name is Certificate in Modern Pharmacology.

Ah, so after, yeah, so after you get trained in that course, you can even work in modern medicine hospitals. That's not possible in our state. So, for me, being from this Kerala State, that was not the option or that was not the situation that was faced. At that time, our problem, or my problem, was entirely about science, entirely about the theory and so on, and not about the professional problems faced by being a homoeopath earning less or that was not the issue.

It was all about the worth that was put forward by being a homoeopath. And as you said, we are portrayed as doctors here, real doctors, okay? But we are not given the proper ammunition, the weapons. So you are led to treat wild fevers or some dangerous diseases, like even cancer. But you are not supposed to give even a paracetamol.

So we feel unarmed at times being genuine homoeopathic doctors that we even ask ourselves. What is the use in learning all this? Because if you know how to diagnose, you know how to spot a problem, and you know what should be given in a in a disease condition, but you are not supposed to give.

So what is the use of learning that? So you are sent to a war field without any ammunition. You are just standing there barehanded. So that's the situation that that we were facing. And it is not working. The arms that you were carrying were the arms from the prehistoric time. It was not working anymore because they are firing at us. The virus is firing with AK 47 and you are standing with a bow and arrow. 200-year-old these kind of weapons and

Abhijit: Even bows and arrows were quite effective in that time. Yeah. But

Arif: It's less effective when the enemy is firing with an AK-47. Then it comes;

Abhijit: you're standing with a cup of water, basically.

Arif: Yeah. It's just a cup of water. So that was the situation. We felt powerless. We felt ammunition less. Okay. So that was a very difficult time to cope with these conditions. But for those doctors who are not able to understand the diagnosis or who are not able to make a proper prognosis of a disease condition, they are safe.

They can give any water preparation because for them, that in Malayalam we used to say that if you know the weak points of a person you won't be able to beat that person. Just like that. Okay. Because yeah, anywhere you try to beat them, you'll find a weak p weak spot. Okay. It's a very vulnerable point for that [00:11:00] body, so you won't beat there.

So that's you. If karate, you won't beat a person because for them you'll be seeing the vulnerable spots everywhere. But if you don't know that, you can beat anywhere, you can beat on the ears, you can beat on the stomach, you can beat on even on your balls. So that's how it's Then the problem is knowing things.

If you come to know about this, you won't be able to stand inside. That's it. Yeah.

Abhijit: So how did you, so when you got in and I mean, did you have any prior scientific training in any form to be able to discern fact of fiction or trying to see that there was a problem somewhere? Or what is the process that you went through?

Arif: I don't think that, that question is a right question because would you ask the same question to N I S R scientist who is placing this lemon under the, that rocket because is trained in science. Okay. Yeah. Who in this [00:12:00] country who has completed his elementary school is not trained in science?

Every single child who has gone to a school is trained in science. So my point is, it's not about the training in science, it is about the scientific temper that we carry with us or we nurture. So you can study science up to PhD or post-doc, any levels. But if you don't have that scientific temper in you, you'll be carrying the lemon and uh this green ch illy with you to place under the rocket that is about to start and fly and reach this Mars. So it's all about scientific temper so I was taught the science subjects just like every other children in this country or in this world. I was taught those science subjects like biology, all these physics and chemistry and all of the subjects.

But apart from that this kind of this logic, depending upon the logic, the reason, and scientific temper that was also quite important. I don't know whether I [00:13:00] was trained in scientific temper but maybe during my school time and all, I used to participate in multiple science events and science fairs and all such things.

So, As a extracurricular activity, I was part of science as well. It means a little bit above the school syllabus. Ah, maybe that could be the reason why I was able to grasp the main aspects of science and scientific temper without knowing that it was scientific temper maybe that's it.

But later on, after with the help of all this internet and all such talks, even I have watched Dr. Shantanu even before leaving homeopathy uh, no, I watched Shantanu after leaving Home only, but there were many other people like Edzard Ernst from you Germany. I was following most of his blog posts over there.

And that was possible only because of internet. So I would say that what helped me to realize all these things and to come out of this is internet. The information that was available to me through this internet. I think that was the single reason. Yeah.

Abhijit: Wonderful. That's it's not something that I had, especially in my younger childhood.

Because I, I was born in 1980 and things have, at that point of time I had no idea. So I had, and I did like science. But for most of my childhood, I was fed homeopathic medicines as a, as the product of a, not just an Indian child, but as a, a child from a partially Bengali family.

So, the Bengalis especially are extremely attached to homoeopathy in a very hard way. So, walk us through the process of, what were the things that you learned and how you figured out things along the way, and what was that moment when it snapped and you're like, okay, I can't do this anymore.

Arif: Great. Yeah, that's a very important question because, when this, I told about the choice that was laid before me. Yeah. After completing this [00:15:00] examination, this entrance examination before it was named as neat, it was just entrance exam. So at that time, Options were laid before me and bbbs, bds, then bms, bh m s and all such degrees.

So for me it was just course degrees. Okay, why? Because I was familiar with all these things. So I would use this word familiarity. That is the main thing which makes us believe to many of these unwanted and outdated and unscientific practices in our world. So this familiarity is the key aspect that I would say.

So who made it familiar to me? It was my parents because when I was ill during my childhood, my mother will come with a glass of water adding a few drops of nuxvomica or belladonna. These are the homeopathic remedies, and she will add to that and she'll be giving to us. So I'll just take it, I'll get rid of my fever or maybe my tummy pain.[00:16:00]

So I think that, okay, this is working. This is a medicine. I'm not, yeah, I'm not thinking about whether it is working or not, but my problem is over, it is gone. So for me, that is something a conclusive outcome that it is working. Okay. And even when I'm not bothered about whether it is working or not, or whether it is scientific or unscientific, even mother used to pray for me, even our elders will pray for us.

Okay. Your problem will be gone. I have prayed to the God, so, okay. We are familiar to such things. So once we come out of the co school and we see all these degrees, we don't feel a strangeness in any of this because we have seen this from our early childhood itself. All these were there with us.

So the familiarity is the key factor, which led me into this course. Which made me select this course. But once I reached the college, this familiarity was replaced or it was it was pushed away [00:17:00] by a key aspect called scientific temper because we started learn, we started realizing that it's not just familiarity that you should look for, you should look for evidence, you should look for scientific backing, scientific reason, and then only that aspect that you are carrying forward should be used as a medicine, especially when it comes to medicine.

There should be evidence. So you talk about evidence medicine at point of time, and when it comes to homeopathy, you talk about experience or what you say, the anecdotes, the testimonials. So I was able to contract ha get a contrast between evidence-based medicine and testimonials based medicine.

So, most of the time in a homeopathic setting or in a alternative medicine setting, where you can see that evidence means in simple term terms for this alternative system practitioners, it is just before, after picture. You'll take a picture before treatment, you'll take a picture after the treatment. That's it. That is [00:18:00] the evidence that they know talked about them. Nothing other than that. But we know as part of evidence based medicine, that there is a quality of evidence pyramid we always say about that. Yeah. So in that, this before or after picture, the case reports, the case series, all these comes as the low quality evidence or it is the, at the bottom of the pyramid.

But you have to go forward. You have to go up. And when you reach at randomized controlled trial, it is getting some kind of added value to that. The quality is increasing. And even about that, you do this meta-analysis, just systematic reviews and all. So that's how you look for evidence. It's not just the before after picture that is leading the healthcare.

If that was the case, even you will have to agree that prayers work wonders. So that's not what we see today. Exactly,

Abhijit: because but there, that doesn't I mean, there have been people who have tried to prove that homeopathy works in what some way, shape, or form, which is a lot of what a lot of people have tried to, add that to their Yeah.

Ammunition. When when talking about the lack of evidence against homeopathy there was this I'm forgetting the gentleman. He has a French name. He

Arif: Benveniste sorry, Benveniste

Abhijit: yes, Benveniste yeah. So, he, so his team as he, they did that water memory. Yeah. The water memory.

They put I think it was some immune cells with some pathogen and then removed it and put the water in there. And so seemed that the immune cells were still reacting to the same pathogen. Yeah. And they published in nature, was it? I think it

Arif: was in nature that they published. Yeah, it was in nature.

I think I remember. So, yeah. Yeah.

Abhijit: So, and then James Randy was brought on board by nature, so James Randy, for anyone who doesn't know he was a magician and he made it his life's work to debunk, or rather, not debunk, but test claims made by people and just reexamine those claims in a more controlled setting.

So for example, he's done this for water divining where he's actually constructed an entire experiment where he's had pipes under the underground. This was done in Australia and televised. He had pipes underground. Some of those pipes had water some of them didn't and he got the country's best water diviners, at least the ones who responded to their advertisement and checked how capable they were.

And they were just capable 50% of the time. So just an example of what James Andy was, has been doing. So they got him on board and he redid all the tests and he found that it wasn't as double blinded as people, ex people thought. Yeah. So that one was thrown out the window and then there is There's a Japanese gentleman who also did these experiments, so to speak, on how water reacts to how you speak to it. And so he took different samples of water.

Arif: What was his name again? Japanese. That I don't remember. Yeah, I'll

Abhijit: just look it up. This is also, this is something that people have definitely cited.

Arif: Yeah. Most of the time, homeopathy and homeopathy related studies come from Europe. So look, Benveniste all such people, and even we have from India, like the uh, Chakramanaya that IIT Mumbai, IIT Bombay,

yeah. So they even after failing with this water memory they come up with they were introducing this nanotechnology. So they were claiming start. With this homeopathy is full of nanoparticles, so it's the nano nanoparticles that is working. So for that, they had multiple studies to showcase for that.

But even that was debunked by a Belgium team, again, from another European country. So it was debunked, thoroughly debunked by this Belgium team. They couldn't reproduce the results [00:22:00] that was that was put forward by this Mumbai team. So that's how it was dealt with staunch criticism and thorough reproduction of these these experiments in a controlled setting.

They were miserably failing. So that was. Yeah,

Abhijit: I like this guy. Ma saru Emoto. He's the okay gentleman who did these tests where he basically, he took these little samples of water, and for some of them he shouted them and swore at them all day, which must have been very cathartic. And for the others he spoke to them very gently and softly.

I wonder what his family had to say about those experiments. But anyway but he but he genuinely tried to, express some sort of emotion to these different batches of water. And then he found, so to speak, that the ones when they were frozen, the ones that he was angry at, formed ugly ice crystals and the ones he was loving to formed beautiful ice [00:23:00] crystals. And therefore he published his findings, which were never replicated after that. And they, a lot of people have found that his water samples weren't all distilled water. We do not know if they had any impurities in it.

We do not know if they were any isolated. We don't know if there was a control sample as far as I remember where he didn't say anything at all and he just let them be. And we don't know at how quickly or slowly those ice crystals were formed I mean, how quickly or slowly he cooled them so that these ice crystals could form.

So since we don't know any of these things, and ice crystals form in many different ways, which is why are all different, but people still believe that this was a valid experiment where water, not only has memory, it has a consciousness. Yeah. Emotional. Yeah. Don't drink it.

Arif: Yeah. Even this is exactly something like our fingerprints, like it is so unique.

You it said that it, you cannot recreate a a single crystal ice crystal formed out of this water, falling water. Yeah. Because every crystal is unique. That's what is believed. Or what is. Yeah. Yeah.

Abhijit: And ideas of uh, ugliness and beautiful and beauty are so subjective.

Arif: Yeah, it is. It is.

It is totally dependent upon the ambient temperature and all such conditions. Exactly. Yeah. So with even a minute change in that falling space that in that atmosphere, the crystal will be different. So that's how it is getting different and different in it is unique in such a manner and Exactly citing that as a reason to showcase homeopathy and how it is functioning or it is working that itself shows how desperate these homeopaths are to show that it is a real science. So they go to any extent to showcase this. And even we have some other things like digital biology, [00:25:00] that was something related to this Ben veniste this discovery of water memory.

Abhijit: So he wanted to come out with the, with some sort of a product.

Arif: Yeah, that's right. This is called digital biology, they called it. So they was thinking that these medicines could be, if they are having, these medicines are having memory, they were thinking that then we can write something onto that water, just like writing a CD or in a, on a pen drive. So, and the most funniest part is that even just by seeing that this could be done just with a statement that was made by Benveniste, homeopaths started making products, and we had this digital medicines in homeopathy, MP3 medicine.

So, I don't know whether Yeah. MP3 medicines. So, I don't know whether you are aware of that. So if you get a condition, for example, whether it be a cancer of your of your testicles or of your, why not? So in that case, homeopaths will [00:26:00] come up with a medicine. Okay? For example, Arsenicum Album, you know that, the most famous medicine is Covid 19.

Yeah. So you must realize that homeopaths or these homophobic medicines, Do have consciousness like the medicine after coming inside your body, they, the medicine will come to know that. Okay. I am inside a body now. My duty is not to boost the immunity. My body, my duty is to cure the cancer of the testicles.

So I have to march towards the testicles. That's how the, you just imagined the lot of work Arsenicum Albu m, or any homeopathic medicine have to do. So instead of this ingestion of medicine, what is done by this digital biologist is that they will record the name Arsenic Album 30 C, just like recording that ohm that during that yoga classes, you might have seen that. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so they will just record that Arsenicum album 30 c like that. They will just record it [00:27:00] and even they will mention the symptomatology of that Arsenicum album into that MP3 file. And that will be switched on over the iPad or over your MP3 player or even your home theater will do.

And then the person will smaller the better. Yeah, smaller and yeah. And people prescribe this, homeopathic doctors prescribe it, not in India mostly, but it's mostly done in the West by these people there, high tech. So they just prescribe MP3 formats of medicines and that will be plugged into their ears and they will, they are given the hope that this will cure their cancer or their any other problem.

And just imagine how the people are believing all these kind of BS. Yeah. So this is something crucial. And when it, when this comes into a discussion point of view among the homes they will group into two. And some people will say that this is unscientific.

[00:28:00] There is no proof for that. But other people will say that this is scientific. That's how the hair transmission works in, in, in India. You do you know that hair transmission? I know hair transplanting. Okay. This is something called hair transmission, like even here, just like digital biology, it's something similar to that, but in a different manner.

Here we use the technology called wifi. Yeah. Okay. So, the person with this testicle cancer, he'll be coming to us. So the doctor, after thoroughly analyzing all his conditions, reading all these reports after finding the remedy before letting go of the patient, he will pluck a few hair strands from his head.

And he will place that hair strand in a test tube in a bottle named, okay, this person. And he takes the medicine and he will put the hair strand in that medicine. So it is said that this medicine, which is in which this hair strand is dipped in, that will be [00:29:00] transformed to the patient.

Wherever he's sitting, even in the moon or in the Mars, that medicine and the power of medicine, the curity power will be reaching that person. That's, that is how this hair transmission works. And you know that there are hundreds and hundreds of testimonials and case reports citing the effectiveness of this treatment, this happening.

Yes.

Abhijit: Lemme see if I can guess this. Do any of them claim that the way this works is quantum physics?

Arif: Of course. They claim because that's, yeah, that's a common fallacy all these people carry that is when they are short of answers or short of explanations to what they're doing.

They come up with this quantum physics fallacy that, okay, you won't understand this because this is quantum physics.

Abhijit: Anything that you add quantum physics to suddenly becomes legit. It's really,

Arif: yeah. We have that fallacy itself, and I think that's most used by this homeopaths and all other pseudoscience pedallers like Oh, absolutely.

Quantum science, physics. Yeah.

Abhijit: So was there, so like I'd asked before was there a moment when you realized what you were learning was not valid, that you needed to get out?

Arif: Yeah that's what I was telling, because after seeing all these things, okay,

Abhijit: was there a definitive moment or this happened gradually over a period of time?

Arif: There was a moment in fact. Yeah. That moment, it was triggered by an event. In the history of homeopathy that was the Lancet paper, the end of homeopathy report that came in 2005. Oh. So at that time I was in my second year of BHMS and we were all discussing this paper as some work of the drug mafia, this big pharma.

So they were trying to trying to kill homeopathy. So that's how we always say that. That's the biggest conspiracy. But homeopathy was something, a very big [00:31:00] threat to this modern medicine. So they wanted to destroy the industry of homeopathy. So that's why they came up with this paper called The End of Homeopathy.

That's how we were taught. But, and for for that day, we had a a meeting with all the students in our college and we invited certain people from all over our state who were known, well known practitioners, and they were all presenting testimonials case reports and all such things.

And they were keep on telling us, this is evidence based. What more evidence do you want? This is evidence show. See this like this. So they were coming up with pictures, they were coming with their own case that record sheets from their clinics, and that's how they were presenting it. So at that time, we were all just newcomers into this course, and we were just thinking, okay, this might be the way to prove that something is legit.

But, after seeing how this evidence-based medicine work, then came that moment that you were asking there, there is something wrong in this. [00:32:00] That is, this is not the way to present evidence. This is something exactly done by all these faith healers. So what is the difference between a faith healer and a homeopathy doctor if both of them are bringing up testimonials?

So that is not the right way. There is something else. And from that moment onwards, the journey started like this is evidence-based medicine is not this, it is something else. And there are multiple ways to arrive with proper scientific information. And that was the way by which we I was let afterwards and then came another moment where because as this is a profession. We all do this for living, and I had to come out of this. And that was not easy because even if you try to come out of this, your patients won't. They won't let you go out. Even I get calls even now for appointments by finding my number online. Oh yeah. So that's the, if

Abhijit: you ever wanted to fall back on something.

Arif: Yeah. So opportunity, they always pull us back. I think my patients were one of the reasons why I had to linger onto homeopathy for at least three, four years more because I wanted to it was not easy for me because, just imagine I was giving them something as a medicine saying that it is true.

And from the next day onwards, if I say to them that this is not true they can sue me. So they can anything can happen to my professional life. So I was truly worried about that. So I wanted to end this somehow, but I was not getting a clear cut plan how to end this. So what I did was I just left my place and I went to Bangalore and stayed there for almost a year.

So whenever the patients call, I would say that, okay, I'm not here. I'm in a course. I actually, I was in a, doing a course for that purpose only. I went there, I got some exposure to the science and scientific method from iac Bangalore there. So I had a professor there who was helping me with all these things.

So I got a very good exposure from that place. And for that, I left this place for one year. And I used that time for getting detached from the patients. Like I used to get these calls. I would say that, no, I'm not here. I'm not practicing. I joined a course, I won't be here. And it took almost one, two years to completely stop that.

So that's how it ended.

Abhijit: Wow. And so how, what was your next step after that? What did you consider you do after that as a career?

Arif: Yeah, that was very much difficult for me because, during the time that I completed my course, BHMS was not accepted as a basic degree course for many other d other higher education courses.

Like I was looking for some master in public health and I applied for courses in India. And that was not considered as a basic degree for that course that time, but now it is seen as something accepted. So that's a good change now. So, I didn't want to do some other random course and go with that.

So [00:35:00] I, I was specifically looking for some courses like public health or something like related to research field and all. So that was not possible. So, and there are multiple other reasons in between like personal issues as well. So I couldn't go for an another education, so I decided to go with some business and I started a small business here.

I started with that, but the Covid time, it was affected heavily and I had to close it down. And now after that, I happened to be with in communication with Dr. Abby And I came into his facility and now I started my work the, as a clinical researcher. And now I'm doing some courses over that because as part of the clinical that occupation skill upgradation, so I'm doing some of the courses. Medical ethics. Clinical research ethics and all. So that's a, another big field. It's the clinical research is a, is an ocean. You have immense opportunity there. So if any of these homeopathic doctors who [00:36:00] are willing to come out of this, the best field would be clinical research itself, because there are multiple companies keeping this training and they even have good opportunities there.

So that's a bonus step here.

Abhijit: Oh, wonderful. So if you have any homeopaths listening to this or watching this, you definitely, you, you should get in touch with Arif because you Yeah. You have a way out if you want that. But I just wanted to there are a couple of other things that I want to address.

If you by any chance, if you're running out of time or anything, just let me know.

Arif: Yeah, sure. Continue. We can go for around 15 minutes. Alright, perfect.

Abhijit: So, for everyone here who isn't sure exactly what Homeopathy is, could you give us an idea of how it came into being, how it's processed, what are the fundamentals of homeopathy and how it is claimed to work?

Arif: Okay. This, I don't think this question is not addressed anywhere because this is a well-addressed problem, addressed issue. But the one key aspect that I have seen missing in all those explanations is that a historical relevance of homeopathy. We have to understand that because we are not criticizing homeopathy because it's not working.

That's not just the reason. Homeopathy was gaining popularity or it was discovered at a time when there was no proper medicinal treatments available. That's once one point. The second point is that the kind of treatments available were called as allopathy, as named by homeopathy. The founder that is Hahnemann so he coined this term allopathy. So why did he call that allopathy? Because the treatments available during the time of discovery home that is in 1800s is bloodletting, biting you with leaches, bleeding, vomiting, making you vomit, then inducing diarrhea all such cruel practices. With the hope that will bring some goodness.

And that was linked to the outdated ideas of four, four humors of Hippocrates, where your disease is linked to these four humorous blood, bile, and all such things. And we have certain similar things in Ayurveda as well, like the Vata, Pitta, Kapha and all. This was something, a prehistorical understanding of healthcare.

So during the time of homeopathy in 1800s, the belief was that diseases were caused by the the problems in your vital force. So Vital force is a prehistorical idea of this disease origin where people attribute the causes of diseases to some bad air or some something dynamic or immaterial we call it.

So Hahnemann believed that. And that was not discovered Hahnemann. It was the common understanding of diseases origin in during his time. So [00:39:00] the cause of disease is immaterial. It is from from somewhere around, there is no concept of germs, bacteria, virus. So you must imagine homeopathy was introduced at a time where we even didn't have a light bulb as we use it today.

So that was the time when Hahnemann was writing all these books, sitting under the candle lights and that's the a situation of his time. So from there, you can imagine how the medicine should be designed to treat something that is immaterial. So handyman believed that the medicine also should be immaterial.

The medicine power also should be immaterial, and he called it medicinal power. So in. In this century today, when we say force or when we say power, all these are terms associated with physics and we have equations related to that. But when we say power or when you say this [00:40:00] energy or all these terms related to any of these alternative system, it is not these terms as we use in physics or in other scientific field.

It is just a kind of divinity that is being, getting attached to that something immaterial, something like you can call the power of Superman or the power of Spider-man, just like that. It's a power, that ability. That's it. So handyman believed that the medicinal property or the crude drug substance, it has the medicinal property.

But to fight the immaterial thing, you need to separate the medicinal power from the material substance. Okay, interesting. This, I did not know I didn't this. Yeah. So for that, he started using this, rubbing the shaking and all such diluting and all such methods. So that was related to dynamics, what we call it.

That is the term that was existing dynamics, what we call it. So [00:41:00] with all these shaking, violent shaking, and this jamming this bottle onto the table and all such things by the ultimate outcome is that the drug energy or the drug power, that spirit, you can you can, if you closely listen to the homeopathic bot bottle, you'll get to listen to a sound kite like that.

That's a sound of a spirit.

Abhijit: That's, they claim that homeopathic medicines make a sound. I'm genuinely asking. I'm like, do they actually believe that?

Arif: No. That's the kind of visualization that you can get.

Abhijit: I'm just, I just wanted to clarify because anyways, homeopathy is so far removed from reality that it, I just make sure if you were joking of you.

Arif: Yeah. If you listen to the material drug, you won't hear anything. But if you shake it well, and you'll listen to that, you will hear like that sound. Okay. So that's the sound of the spirit because that is getting separated and now what happens is that you give this medicine, this spirit is traveling. Okay.

This [00:42:00] that sparky light that you can imagine with all those graphics visualization, anybody who's watched Twilight.

Abhijit: Yeah, Twilight.

Arif: So this spirit travels into the body and it corrects the the problems caused inside the body. And it corrects the vital force and it places that vital force in place.

And that's how you get out of this disease. This is how homeopathy is in simple terms. This is homeopathy wow. But today,

Abhijit: so the whole like cures like, is basically is that if you take the toxins out of the material substance, they turn into the spiritual medicine that will cure the same symptoms.

Arif: Yeah. That's it.

So that is, and this dynamism and this treatment methodology related to that was common to multiple other treatment methodologies. So Hanman borrowed this idea into homeopathy, and he clubbed it with this similia similibus that is like cures like. So he was getting this [00:43:00] idea of like cures like from another textbook from Cullin's Materia Medica, where he was translating parts of that book and he was translating a ascendance there where it was stating that the property of the cinchona bark extract in curing malaria like fevers is because of its bitterness or it's astringent property. That's what it is written there. So Hahnemann was just thinking about it, and we must agree that Hahnemann was so inquisitive. He was so much he was a true scientist of his times. Forget about the historical limitations of those times, but he was a true incu truly inquisitive, and he wanted to test it out. So what he did was he took the cinchona bark extract and he took it in himself and he could experience some of the symptoms.

And for unfortunately that was cinchona poisoning. We call it cinchonism. Uhhuh. But Hahnemann thought or misinterpreted that, or he made a wrong [00:44:00] observation that it is because of these symptoms that he got in after getting poisoned with cinchona bark, that these symptoms if occurring in a person as part of a disease, it is curing it.

I got, I think you got it. Yeah. Yeah. I get that.

Abhijit: I so this is basically what the precursor to what is it? The malaria disease, right?

Arif: The malaria, yeah, malaria. Yeah. Intermittent fevers. Intermittent fevers. Hydro Chloroquine. Yeah, hydro. It's now known as hydro chloroquine. Cq. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's cinchona, quinone alkaloid s are being separated from that. And hydrochloroquinone and all such drug subs, drugs are used today for treating multiple diseases. And it's a precursor for that. But our point is that Hahnemann came to this conclusion based on this wrong observation about his cinchonism or the cinchona poisoning that he experienced.

And now he clubbed this experience with this dynamism theory where it was already existing that is the miasma [00:45:00] theory and the immaterial forces acting in a same plane. So after giving this crude substance to treat these diseases caused by these errors in dynamic derangements or these vital force, he thought that there were some of these poisoning episodes happening or repeatedly occurring.

So he wanted to limit those these poisoning events or aggravations, medicinal aggravation, he called. So he wanted to dilute it again. So at the time when home was discovered, it was not diluted. During the early years of homeopathic medicines that was prescribed by homeopathic that inventor of homeopathy or discoverer of homeopathy that was not diluted.

So the idea of diluting came later. Oh, is that so? Yeah. So the earlier part of homeopathy is completely based on mother tinctures or the mother substance. The crude substance. Yikes. That is So then, yeah. So then comes you're actually getting arsenic. [00:46:00] Yeah. So then comes the question, why dilute it? It's a good question.

Yeah. So that we have the answer written in the literature of homeopathy itself. That is we need to dilute it to limit the medicinal aggravation.

Abhijit: Okay. So your body's reaction to the actual poison that you're giving

Arif: it. Yeah. So you are actually minimi minimizing the dose. So that was the first reason.

For minimizing the, or making this dilution. And the second reason is to separate this medicine and energy from the crude substance. So, Hahnemann saw a change in those patients by giving all these medicines and he attributed to the medicinal energy present in this crude substance. And in crude substance, the medicine energy is too strong that the patient can even get some aggravation.

So he wanted to dilute it. So [00:47:00] why he made all these observations is because the idea of biochemistry and chemistry as a whole was so limited during those times. So he was not having an idea of how this dose functions. Okay. So, but in instead of giving a proper answer, he just made a explanation out of this.

And that's how he came up with his dynamicism principle. And he wanted to explain why he wanted to dilute and attributed it to this dynamism. That is to fight this dynamic energy derangement, you need to empower or you need to separate this medicinal energy from the original drug. So that's how he came up with this idea of dilution.

And from then on Hahnemann he left using all these mother substances and he always advocated for these dilution. And there is one another aspect there, Hahnemann never ever asked to dilute above [00:48:00] 30 c. Oh, okay. So the high dilution that we talk about that like the 200 C or one thousand C, 10,000 C or those all high dilution came after Hahnemann by some other people like Dr. Kent. So Kent was another person. Kent James, Taylor Kent. He was an American and yeah, he was a Christian priest by profession. But he came into homeopathy and since there, there was some elements of spirituality and all these kind of dynamic material things in homeopathy, being a Christian priest, he could relate this more with the theological part.

So what he did was that he he extrapolated all these theoretical part present in homeopathy to these theological aspects. So he gave the idea of high dilution. He gave the idea of other some other miasms even mother of all miasms he turned it as the Sora. In home we have three miasms, [00:49:00] psora, sycosis and syphilis.

So for ho, for Hahnemann, it was just a sequel of some of the skin diseases that he called as psora, sequel to gonorrhea that sexually transmitted disease, he call it as the sycosis and some other diseases like syphilis. And the sequel to that, that was called a syphilis. This was the idea of Hahnemann.

But for Kent, it was like the original sin that was the reason for psora whoa hats. Oh, wow. So, yeah. So, so he attributed or he extrapolated that idea from Hahnemann to Adam and Eve. So that's how it went. And now homeopathy and the practice of homeopathy, the profession is totally hopeless, that people have attributed multiple other things.

Like you, you can see the digital biology, the modern forms of this spirituality and many other nonsense being a part of this, even [00:50:00] Reiki practice. Yeah. And mesmerism, even Hahnemann at the end of writing this book, he even talks about mesmerism. That is animal magnetism. Oh, animal magnetism.

Yeah. So, why, because that, that was an one another point of my transition where I had to relook onto all these literature work because I was thinking if homeopathy was working and if home is really effective, then why would Hahnemann write about animal magnetism, mesmerism, and all these things in in his book.

So even being the founder of home himself, he was not able to completely make use of this this homeopathy. So there should be something wrong, really wrong with this. So that means it is just like a chance that cures happen. So those things, the skeptical skeptics are saying about homeopathy must be true. That's what I understood at the end, and that led me into inquiring more [00:51:00] about this homeopathy and what is wrong with homeopathy and what the skeptics have to say. And I read multiple papers by this Edzard Ernst and many other people, and one of the main papers that was mentioned by Edzard Ernst s is by is the replication of the cinchona bark experiment.

So multiple people tried to re reproduce this cinchona bark experiment, and they were not able to do that. So from that itself clearly says, or clearly proves that homeopathic observation made by home Hahnemann that was wrong. It was just a poisoning attempt made by him. And even in our homeopathic OPDs, even in our college, we used to prescribe, cinchona, this China, we call it China or cinchona mother tincture and we used to think why, if Hahnemann got all these symptoms after taking cinchona why even after we give all these cinchona mother to the patients, why they're not coming with the same kind of symptoms. So these are the, some of the questions, pressing questions that came to me [00:52:00] and helped me move out here.

Abhijit: Wow. And you came off so first of all, A 20 C. What exactly does 20 C mean?

Arif: 30 C. 30 30 C. Yeah. Which is yeah, that is the scale of dilution we call it. That is the c centesimal scale. So we have mostly three scales of dilution. One is the decimal scale. So decimal scale means you take the mother substance or the mother solution and you take one part of the solution and you add nine parts of the vehicle, maybe alcohol or a mixture of alcohol and water or simple water.

And you add that and you shake it. So that is one x. So the decimal potency or the decimal scale is denoted by the letter X. Okay. So that is one X, and now you take one part of this one x and you add another nine part of this vehicle that is alcohol or water, and you mix it, you get the two x.

Okay. So instead of this nine part, you, if you are adding 99 parts of the vehicle, [00:53:00] it is the centesimal scale or one by hundreds we call. Okay, so one C, one C. So instead of one next, if you add 99 parts of the vehicle, it becomes one C. So you take one part of one C, you add 99 parts of the vehicle, it becomes two C.

So likewise it is serially diluted and you reach 20 C. That is, you take one part from the 19 C and add 99 parts of the vehicle and you shake it well, it becomes 20 C or 30 C like that.

Abhijit: So, and I think Richard Dawkins was was one who said that to find one molecule in the final solution of what is it, 20 or 30 C Like arsenicum album?

Yeah.

Arif: The whole universe filled with water.

Abhijit: No, the entire, a globe of water the size of the entire solar system. Yeah. Find one molecule and that's true's good of finding one molecule. Molecule in there.

Arif: Yeah. People when we say this, the [00:54:00] people will misunderstand that because they will think that, okay, this medicine is made by taking that much water and adding the medicine to that.

That's not how it is done. Yeah. It's seriously diluted. So the dilution factor is increasing step by step. Exactly. So it is ma it is a part of mathematical calculation that we see that if you take one C, it is 10 raise to two, it is one hundredth. Okay. You, if you take 200 C two C, it is 10 raise to four.

Okay. So like that. If you add two zeros or a hundred in every step, if you take 30 C, it'll be. The magnitude, you can imagine how many zeros will be there. Yeah. So that is a mathematical calculation that is being done there. I see. So, yeah. So, in that case we have to mention about this Avogadro's limit as well.

Because at one point the actual crude substance that will cease to exist after a point of time. And that [00:55:00] point is called as Avogadro's Limit, that is at least one molecule of that substance that can be seen. And that is the 6.0 2 into ten raised to 23. That's the number we usually say. So the Avogadro's limit for homeopathic medicines is for the 10 c, the decimal scale, it is around 23 C.

Okay. Okay. And for cent decimal scale, it is around 12 C. So after 12 C, it is, the chance is zero, that you will find that at least one molecule is present in it. Oh, wow. After 12 c. And there's a, yeah, and there's a third scale foot, sorry,

Abhijit: 6.02 into 10 to the power of 23. Yeah. Is avogadro's limit? Yeah.

Arif: Yeah. That's it. Okay. So that's the dilution factor where after diluting up to that limit, only you will find at least one molecule. So after 12 C, you take 13 C, the chances are zero. Alright. That's how it is. Then we'll get an understanding [00:56:00] why we mentioned about this Avogadro's limit or Avogadro's number.

Abhijit: So what is the other scale that you're gonna mention?

Arif: Yeah the last scale is the 50 millesimal scale. So that means the first one is one by 10, the second is one by a hundred. The third one is one by 500. Wow. Okay. I don't think that means an elaborate Yeah,

Abhijit: that's true. But you had recently appeared on a news on a news in, on an interview on TV with Dr.

Phillips. Okay. Talking about people who are giving mother tinctures instead of these dilution. Yeah. And because this is not really regulated, what has happened there? What exactly, how did you find that out?

Arif: Yeah, I told you, man, I mentioned you earlier that the initial days of homeopathy is full of mother tinctures.

Even from starting from this the cinchona bark experiment with Mother tinctures

Abhijit: yeah. Yeah. But now in India, yeah.

Arif: So, so it is true [00:57:00] that if you give mother tinctures to some of the disease conditions, there will be some sort of actions because that is containing some physiological physiologically capable molecules in it.

So that will obviously get some effect. I'm not saying the right effect or the true effect. I'm telling you the some effect. But that doesn't mean that it should be given or it should be scientific because when we say that it is scientific or when it, when we say that it is part of science, we have to look into many other things like the risks versus the benefit.

Of course, then only we desired upon a medicine, we have multiple drugs in modern medicine, which is having pretty much good benefits. But the risks that is even more higher. And that's the only reason why we are not giving, and the best example for that is the arsenic trioxide, which is given us the last resort medicine for this leukemia conditions.

Because we modern medicine know very well that it is effective in treating that as a chemotherapy drug. But [00:58:00] if you give it, it is gonna damage your kidneys, multiple other organ failures will happen. So when a situation comes where you have to live or to die, then only we use those medicines as a salvage therapy, we call it.

And now you imagine coming to homeopathy, you take this arsenic trioxide, and you label it homeopathic medicine, then you are able to give that medicine deliberately without even having an iotta of consideration of our concern about these adverse events. For example, we have arsenic, ars bromide, another drug, which is being prescribed in the form of mother tincture form for di treating diabetes.

Just imagine giving Ars bromide for treating diabetes.

Abhijit: So is that an arsenic bromide kinda, is that form?

Arif: Yeah. Arsenic. Bromide, yeah. Okay. So it is a drug mentioned in the homeopathic Materia Medica. You can give it in the form of low potencies, mother tinctures. [00:59:00] People used to prescribe it here.

Even I have seen some of my professors prescribing it in our college O P D. So at that time itself, we used to think what is this? This is a poisonous substance, arsenic, bromite, halogen poisoning. We know that how it is going to affect you. So even with that, these people are least concerned about the side effects and they just prescribe it just because it was mentioned in in these homeopathic textbooks or the medicines were labeled homeopathic medicine.

There's no side effects. So the reassurance of lack of adverse effects, or the lack of si side effects is not by scientific evidence. It is by the labels that is being promoted in homeopathy. So that's why we were concerned about that. And we did some of the experiments. We tested some of the drugs here and we could find even heavy metals, multiple organic and inorganic poisonous substances as chemical components in those medicines, then [01:00:00] solvents and even modern medicine drugs as part of these homeopathic or Ayurvedic drugs.

So that was the reality that we were talking about. Yeah.

Abhijit: Because it's not regulated at all by any, that can pretty much do whatever you want.

Arif: That's it. That's the pittable situation in our country. If anything is coming under AYUSH you can bypass all these scientific testings that is, as

Abhijit: we saw with Corona kit.

Yeah. Before you leave, I have one last question for this time. So, alcohol now is also considered equal to water?

No. As in in the condition that the mother tincture that Oh, okay. The solution which the substance is dissolved in is either the, yeah.

Arif: The vehicle, we call it.

Abhijit: So the vehicle, by that logic, if water has memory, so does alcohol.

I'm just looking at it from that perspective. Okay. I know I'm stretching it a bit, but but what I wanted to know is the value that the [01:01:00] spirit of this medicine, which is claimed to go into the vehicle

How does that then transfer over to the sugar pills? Or the powder that you, that we get in those little pouches, which are both delicious by the

way.

But how is

that, how is that claimed to work?

Arif: Who doesn't like sweet? We all do, and especially if it's dripped in alcohol. Even the spirits too.

Abhijit: Oh, I love that.

Arif: But the spirits love alcohol more than sweets. Yeah.

Abhijit: Who doesn't that from last night? But no what are these guys? How do they justify that they're putting why don't they just give you little, like a pile of water and ch that

Arif: instead of, this is what I said, this is all, do you know anything about quantum physics?

Then I can explain it to you because it's all quantum.

Abhijit: Wow. So we have to get in quantum physics.

So, I would, I definitely want to have you back [01:02:00] because Okay. I have a lot more that I want to unpack.

Arif: Yeah. We can, because even I I will tell you that you can take each and every aspect of homeopathy and you can elaborate for more than two, three hours. We I have done it on my channel, but it is in Malayalam . I have talked about this vital force single, it is around two hours. So to understand that it'll, it need that much elaboration because that's something that was a part of that history of that those times.

Without understanding that it is very difficult to understand why homeopathy is fully occupied with this vitalism principle and how it is affected by that. Okay. So just there are many other things like that. Mother tinctures just another one. This dilution. Another one. Similar. That is another one.

You can elaborate it each and every one. Yeah. Alright.

Abhijit: So we'll call this a trailer. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's perfect. And we will, I will have you back as soon as humanly possible so, so that we can really get into the weeds and have a full discussion.

We can concentrate on one thing at a time, maybe. Definitely. And you can give us as much information as possible. I will turn it into a series. Yeah. Of like the mother lord, the mother tinture of homeopathic knowledge.

Arif: Okay. That's from the modern perspective. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. Awesome. We'll put it in the books.

Abhijit: But thank you so much, Arif, for joining me. I've been I've been wanting to tackle homeopathy for a long time. Okay. And I'd seen you on YouTube a couple of times, then I saw you with Dr. Phillips and I was like, you are really, you are in the weeds. You are actually fighting the good fight out in the field and doing the clinical research that is so sorely needed right now.

So, thank you. From the science community and I'm definitely having you back. This was a great conversation. We have just, We've, as I like to call it, touch the snowflake on the top of the iceberg.

Arif: A unique snowflake. Oh, absolutely.

Abhijit: Thank you so much for your time, guys. Thank you [01:04:00] for joining us.

There is going to be a lot more coming from Arif's side. We are gonna have him on a few more times to really get into the depths of what homeopathy has been, what it is, where it's wrong, where it might even be right at times, and why people feel that they get cured by it. I, there's a lot to unpack. So subscribe if you haven't already, and we will be back with even more very soon.

And if you like this and if you want to show this to some family members, which I'm sure you have who are into homeopathy, send them this video and until next time, stay Rationable.