5

Homeopathy for long Covid

Tess Talks with homeopath and researcher Dr Philippa Fibert
5

Homeopathy is all too often dismissed as having nothing more than a placebo effect for people, with critics citing a lack of evidence that homeopathy actually works. Often, the evidence in homeopathy’s favour is merely anecdotal, but Dr Philippa Fibert is changing that.

Dr Fibert is a practising homeopath and academic researcher at St Mary’s University in London. Her skillset makes her eminently equipped to design and run a study that accommodates the way homeopathy works, while also meeting a high standard of evidence-based research. And that is precisely what she is doing.

Having already conducted a service evaluation that has shown homeopathy helps people with long Covid, she’s now leading a randomised controlled trial with Homeopathy International (HINT) to evidence the outcome of the homeopathic treatment of the symptoms associated with long Covid.

Perhaps one of the main reasons for lack of evidence to support homeopathy’s effectiveness, is lack of funding. There isn’t much appetite to fund such research - perhaps because homeopathy is seen as such an outlier, or perhaps because it is such a safe and inexpensive therapy that brings zero benefit to Big Pharma’s bottom line.

If you would like to change that, please consider making a contribution to the funding of Dr Fibert’s trial. If we want good research carried out on established, safe therapies such as homeopathy, we need to show our support with more than our goodwill.

If you would like to join the long Covid cohort taking part in this trial, you can email Dr Fibert directly at philippa.fibert@stmarys.ac.uk

“Homeopathy is not nothing”

When I posted about this conversation on Thursday, a few readers shared their understandable scepticism that a substance so diluted can have any effect. Isn’t it then just water, after all? Well, Dr Fibert points out that we now have the technology that allows us to see the nanodoses found in homeopathic remedies.

I really enjoyed exploring this with Dr Fibert: we spoke about Luc Montagnier’s work on water having memory, and she referred me to the work of Professor Iris Bell in Arizona, who has investigated immunity and homeopathy’s potential for stimulating an immune response to produce a healing effect.

While we don’t fully understand the mechanism as to how homeopathy works, it is so incredibly safe, there seems little reason not to give it a try. If you’d like to find a homeopath, Dr Fibert shared the following resource for the UK:

Non-UK-based readers, if you know of similar resources for your respected countries please let me know in the comments and I will add them to this post.


Please help support our work!

If you enjoy this Substack and have the means, please consider making a donation - all proceeds go to World Council for Health. You can either:

Give a gift subscription

Donate Subscriptions

Give direct to World Council for Health

Can’t donate but would like to contribute? We are always looking for volunteers, so please do get in touch!


5 Comments
Authors
Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​