Does Homeopathic HCG Really Work for Weight Loss?
HCG BASICS
Most of the public information on HCG is merely duplicated from a few superficial sources. Almost nothing original or new is available on the most important basic facts about this hormone. It is nearly impossible for the non-scientist to find out anything about the real science behind it. This is even truer for homeopathic HCG. Unfortunately, medical professionals who have no scientific background are writing about it, and too many non-medical people are thoughtlessly repeating what the doctors are saying.
The first thing to know about HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) is that this hormone is a very complicated protein molecule. This just means that no synthetic versions are available. Nevertheless, two kinds of HCG products that are on the market right now do not contain the complete native hormone. One of these is homeopathic HCG and the other is genetically engineered HCG. This article addresses the first of these. Genetically engineered HCG is the subject of a separate article.
WHAT IS HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINE?
You must first understand what homeopathy is before you can evaluate what I have to say about homeopathic HCG. This approach to medicine has two fundamental differences from naturopathic or allopathic medicine. Standard thinking in these latter two treatment modalities are what I call dose-dependent - in other words, the medicinal activity of a substance depends on its dosage. For example, when you take a higher dose of aspirin, you will increase its affect on your body. What you take a sufficient dose of it, aspirin will counteract the symptoms that you want to suppress.
In contrast, homeopathic medicine adheres to something called the Law of Similars, or like cures like. This means that a symptom is curable by a substance that causes that symptom. Since aspirin does not cause fever, it is not homeopathic.
Homeopathic medicines also become more powerful when they are diluted. By diluting a solution that contains a homeopathic substance (i.e., decreasing its concentration), the strength of the medicine becomes greater. Successive 10-fold or 100-fold dilutions make the medicine stronger and stronger. Indeed, the most powerful homeopathic drugs are so dilute that there is almost no statistical chance for any of the starter substance to remain in solution.
By the way, homeopathic medicine is very effective, and plenty of scientific research backs this up. Nobody knows, however, how a solution of homeopathic water that contains none of the original substance still works. Although the principles of homeopathy do not fit into normal scientific explanations, the experimental results of this modality support its effectiveness.
Homeopathic HCG fits neither of the basic principles of homeopathic medicine. HCG does not cause people to get fat, so it does not satisfy the Law of Similars. Serial dilutions of hormones in general lead to loss of effectiveness. This raises the question about how effective can homeopathic HCG be? This is where we have to look at results.
ABSENCE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON HOMEOPATHIC HCG
My favorite source of information on medical research is the PubMed database at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which offers titles and abstracts from thousands of scientific journals. As of July 2009, a search for articles involving human chorionic gonadotropin found 519 research articles on this topic. A co-search of this term with homeopathy or homeopathic yielded no articles at all.
This does not mean that no research has been done or is being done on homeopathic HCG. It just means that there are no studies that have been published for public examination. This is in spite of the fact that a handful of scientific journals are dedicated to homeopathic medicine. No homeopathic researcher has published a study on HCG.
VALUE OF TESTIMONIALS
The only accessible evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathic HCG is through the hundreds or thousands of testimonials by people who have used it, by physicians who have prescribed it, or by marketing sites that tout it as the best thing since sliced bread. These are impossible to evaluate scientifically.
The definitive information that you must have on homeopathic HCG is whether it directs your body to burn fat. That is what HCG does, and that is the foundation for the discovery by Dr. A.T.W. Simeons more than 60 years ago. If you begin a program of 500 calories per day, supplementing with homeopathic HCG, you will certainly lose weight. The critical measure, however, is whether your percent body fat drops.
THE ONLY EVIDENCE THAT YOU MUST HAVE
Testimonials do not suffice as scientific evidence for anything. The only way for you to know whether homeopathic HCG works for you is for you to use it while keeping track of your percent body fat. When you lose weight without losing body fat, then all you are doing is starving yourself on 500 calories per day. Everyone will lose weight this way. When you lose weight AND body fat percentage, then you know that the homeopathic preparation is working to make your body burn fat.
The bottom line is that there is no solid scientific evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathic HCG. Keep in mind that absence of evidence does not mean that it doesnt work. It is simply an absence of evidence. Your option is to wait for a study to be completed, which may not happen for years, or experiment with it yourself to find out whether it works for you. However, the pitfalls of experimenting on yourself outweigh the certainty of using a well-established weight loss program using non-homeopathic HCG. That is my recommendation, at least until I see some solid scientific evidence in support of homeopathic HCG.
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Dr. Dennis Clark is a retired university research scientist with more than 30 years of experience in natural products medicine. Before you embark on any HCG program, you must arm yourself with Dr. Clarks objective scientific analysis of the HCG weight loss phenomenon. This program is not new, and it is not revolutionary. Get his latest report, "Myths and Truths About HCG Weight Loss," at
BestHCGWeightLoss.com