I’m sure we’ve all seen the commercials about “Head On.” You rub it on your head and your headache goes away. I sort of wondered how that could possibly work but was never curious enough to take it any further.
This week’s commentary on the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) site explained it for me. It’s a homeopathic remedy so it doesn’t work outside of any placebo effect it might provide.
Randi’s comments got me to get off my butt to take a look at the Head On site. It was interesting to say the least. Since I wasn’t that familiar with homeopathy I had to go do a quick check on what the dilution measures meant. Terms like 3X and 6X are used. These are equivalent to scientific notation and represent a value of 10 raised to the power of the number. So 3X is 10 raised to the 3rd power or 1,000 and 6X is 10 raised to 6th power or 1,000,000. Some quotes, with commentary, from the Head On site.
“HeadOn® is very safe. It can be used by anyone and as often as needed. There are no dosage restrictions or health risks associated with its use.”
Well considering what you’re doing is basically rubbing WATER on your head I’d say that this is probably an accurate statement. The list of ingredients has a minimum dilution of 6X or 1 part per 1,000,000. One ingredient, Golden Seal, a native American root, has a dilution of 30X or 1 part per 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!! Like I said, it’s basically water.
“HeadOn® is one of the safest medications available on the market today.”
While I debate that it’s a medication, again it’s hard to argue with the safety of water in a bottle unless someone wants to get into the whole Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) hoax thing.
“The active ingredients in HeadOn® are diluted precisely to achieve 2 important results: the first is to eliminate any safety concerns whatsoever associated with their usage. The second is that by diluting these ingredients, their medicinal properties are released.”
Released? How does diluting something to one part per billion release its medicinal properties? More likely it releases its profit properties as people are paying medicine prices for what they can get out of their kitchen tap. Notice the constant drum beat about safety. First of all water is safe so no one can really argue with the claim and second of all I suspect that one of the major consumer targets of homeopathy are those who are suspicious of drugs in general or have had a bad experience with a side effect.
Well now I get it, so I don’t have to wonder any more when I see a HeadOn® commercial. Now I can just shake my head and laugh.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment