By Susan Sandys  February 2 2010

Health 2000 company chairperson Bob McDonald has labelled sceptics who staged a protest on homeopathic remedies as “ignorant and stupid".

Mr McDonald, who manages Ashburton’s Health 2000 shop, said homeopathic remedies, such as arnica cream and tablets and hayfever tablets, were popular with many customers.

“People aren’t buying them if they aren’t getting results,” Mr McDonald said.

The remedies are created by heavily diluting products from the plant, animal and mineral worlds.

The products in their natural form would stimulate the exact type of reaction that in their heavily diluted form they apparently deter.

For example, the plant Arnica montana in its natural form causes haemorraging and bruising if consumed, but in its heavily diluted form is found to soothe and heal bruising.

Mr McDonald said while homeopathic remedies made up just 5 to 10% of the shop’s sales, the industry itself was a worldwide billion dollar one.

This was simply because people found they got results from the products, and sceptics were just “bigoted and close-minded” as well as “ignorant and stupid” for discounting this.

 While the products were diluted there was still minute doses of them in the remedy, and these only had an effect if taken in small amounts.

‘Overdosing’ would negate the effect.

The New Zealand Skeptics Society staged a mass overdose, designed to prove the remedies are just “over-priced water” on Saturday.

New Zealand Skeptics spokeswoman Vicki Hyde said the remedies were too dilute, and the mass overdose proved it by having no effect on participants.

“This stuff is so diluted it’s the equivalent of putting a pinch of sugar into the Atlantic Ocean, giving it a darn good stir and saying the Atlantic Ocean is thereby sweeter,” she said.

“We know the human body has a great capacity to heal itself – the homeopaths are right about that,” Ms Hyde said.

“However, it will heal itself regardless of whether you take a homeopathic solution or plain water – they’re the same thing.”

Mid Canterbury’s only registered homeopath Su Hutchinson said while remedies were diluted to an extreme point, there were still active ingredients in the cases where there was none of the original product left in a solution.

And she agreed with other homeopaths who point to recent research suggesting an electromagnetic component.

Miss Hutchinson said the value of the remedies was more than a placebo effect, and this had been proved with those which had worked well with animals.