10 Most Mind Numbingly Stupid Alternative Medicines

Ahh, homeopathy. Where do we start with homeopathy?

Available on the NHS in the UK and supported by the likes of Prince Charles himself, this alternative medicine certainly has a solid support network for something that is, without a shadow of a doubt, total bollocks.

The principle behind homeopathy is that a little bit of poison, diluted in enormous quantities of water, will cure you of whatever ails you. The idea of "like cures like" that sits at the very core of homeopathy basically states that a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people would cure similar symptoms in sick people (exactly, what?).

Even if this were true (which it isn't) and you could cure cancer with a tiny amount of snake venom (which you can't), the extreme dilution of the so-called active ingredients is so great that every homeopathic remedy is essentially just water. Just water.

Homeopaths claim that the more a substance is diluted, the more potent it becomes and many are diluted by as much as one part in a trillion. After many solutions were tested and found not to contain any active ingredients at all, homeopaths have begun to claim that that water also has a "memory" that can simply remember its contact with the ingredient without actually having to contain it (but it also manages to forget all the times it had poo or fish or anything else in it).

The benefits of homeopathy are generally considered to be a (here it comes) placebo effect. Aided by the process of natural healing or even the taking of conventional medicine alongside a homeopathic treatment (but attributing its benefits to the homeopathy).

On the plus side, it's nigh on impossible to overdose on a homeopathic medicine. Unless you drown in it.

Have you got any particularly favourite bits of woo and quackery that we haven't mentioned? Let us know in the comments.