Monday, January 4, 2016

Will homeopathic Natrium Muriaticum reduce stage fright? How could that work?




















On February 15, 2015 naturopathic doctor Peter Swanz discussed Homeopathic Courage for Performing in Front of a Crowd. He listed eight remedies:

“For someone that feels timid about appearing in public consider: Carbo vegetabilis, Lycopodium, or Silicea.

For an individual that begins to feel anxiety anticipating an upcoming event or encounter consider: Arsenicum, Carbo vegetabilis, Gelsemium, Lycopodium, Natrium muriaticum, Silicea, or Thuja.
 

An individual that has fear and dread about appearing in public should consider: Carbo vegetabilis, Gelsemium, Lycopodium, or Silicea.
 

For someone suffering from stage fright consider: Gelsemium, Mercurius solubilis, Natrium muriaticum, or Silicea."

I have previously blogged about three of his eight:  Gelsemium, Lycopodium and Silicea (silica). One on Gelsemium is my all-time 10th most popular post. (Another on Argentum nitricum is my 4th most popular post).

What is Natrium muriaticum (or Natrum Muriaticum). It’s just sodium chloride (the main compound in sea salt) obscured by a Latin name. You probably have a shaker in the kitchen. At the web site for the British Homeopathic Association you can even find an article titled with the cryptic abbreviation Nat Mur.

Mr. Swanz doesn’t say what homeopathic dilution to use, but another web page titled Homeopathic Remedies for Anxiety - Natural Ways to cure Anxiety Attacks by Brendon G. Burwell says to use 30C, which means 1 in ten to the 60th power. That is:

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
 
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times.

When you think about it, there is a big problem with how salt could get into the body from the usual homeopathic remedy form of solid sugar pillules. An Frequently Asked Questions page on the Boiron web site under the heading Should I take my Boiron medicine with or without food? says:

“The most efficient route of administration for oral homeopathic medicines is sublingual absorption (under the tongue).

 ....Since the absorption takes place through the mucous membrane coating on the inside of the mouth, food in the stomach has no influence.”


But in the mouth the solid will be exposed to saliva and dissolved. Are sodium and chloride ions present there? Yes, both already are in saliva. Table 1 in an article by Silvia Chiappin et al titled Saliva specimen: A new laboratory toll for diagnostic and basic investigation that appeared in Clinica Chimica Acta in 2007 (Volume 383, pages 30 to 40) lists a sodium ion content of 5 mmol/liter and a chloride content of 15 mmol/liter  for unstimulated saliva. For stimulated saliva the sodium ion content is 20 to 80 mmol/liter and the chloride content is 30 to 100 15 mmol/liter. Homeopathic remedies will have vastly lower concentrations of sodium chloride, which will be overshadowed by the saliva that dissolves them.

The salt shaker image came from Wikimedia Commons.

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