Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Tela araneae is a homeopathic remedy made from spider's web. It is a single drug (Homeopathy), listed in Latin as Aranea (web of the spider), and also known as Spider's web. Homeopaths have reached for it mainly for nervous restlessness, twitching muscles and spasmodic coughing.
The web is soaked in alcohol to make a starting tincture. That tincture is then diluted over and over, with vigorous shaking between each step. At the common strength of 30C, essentially none of the original spider's web remains.
What you actually swallow is the carrier: water, alcohol, or a small sugar pellet. Traditional standing and proof of effect are two different things, and this remedy has some of the first and none of the second. Controlled trials have not shown homeopathic medicines to perform better than placebo (a dummy treatment).
The honest answer is that there is no accepted explanation for how it could work in the body.
Homeopathy is built on two ideas. The first is "like cures like" — a substance that causes symptoms in a well person is thought to relieve similar symptoms in a sick person. The second is that repeated dilution with shaking makes the remedy act more strongly, not less.
Neither idea matches what chemistry and pharmacology have shown. At 30C the dilution has gone so far that no molecule of spider's web is likely to be present in your dose. There is no measurable substance left to act on nerves, muscles or airways.
Some people do feel better after taking it. That is best explained by the placebo effect, by careful attention from a practitioner, and by the natural tendency of many complaints to settle on their own.
We describe this openly rather than offering a mechanism that the evidence does not support.
Tela araneae is sold in the standard homeopathic forms:
It comes as small sugar pellets or granules that dissolve under the tongue. It also comes as liquid drops in a water-and-alcohol base. Less often you may see soft tablets or a combination product where it is one of several listed ingredients.
Strengths are written as 6C, 12C, 30C or 200C. The higher the number, the more times the material was diluted, and the less of it remains.
Spider's web has a long folk history that came before homeopathy. Country healers across Europe packed cobweb onto cuts to stop bleeding, and dosed fevers with web rolled into a pill.
Homeopathy took the material up in the 1800s, during the spread of Hahnemann's system. Provings — the homeopathic practice of giving a substance to healthy volunteers and recording what they feel — placed it among remedies for trembling, restlessness and night-time coughing.
It has always been a minor remedy. The related spider remedy Aranea diadema is used far more often in homeopathic practice.
See a doctor if your symptoms last more than a week, get worse, or keep coming back.
Get medical help the same day for a fever above 39C (about 102F), a cough that brings up blood, breathlessness, chest pain, fainting, or a new tremor that spreads.
Call emergency services straight away for a severe allergic reaction: swelling of the face, lips or throat, a sudden widespread rash, or difficulty breathing.
Speak to your pharmacist before starting this if you take medicine for your heart, your blood clotting, your seizures or your blood sugar.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Tela araneae is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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