Why Homoeopathy Makes Sense
The Wisdom of the Body
The human body has its own intelligence and defence to fight against bacteria, viruses, poisons, allergies, environmental stresses, psychological stresses, and the invisible stresses that attack the system.
In many cases, the body has the capacity to heal itself. The body does not have to be told how or when to heal. For example: the body produces fever to kill bacteria and virus. Nasal discharge is produced when bacteria or virus enters into your nose which contains cells called phagocytes which “eat up” invaders. Pain is the body’s way of identifying injury or a diseased part that may need to take rest or be treated with medicines. The body creates symptoms in order to send distress signals to arouse these mechanisms to act automatically.
Treatments that suppress the symptoms and the body’s natural ay of healing make temporarily effective changes, but will be ineffective in promoting health. For example: a cold decongestant can stop the nose from running. But it also traps the virus in the mucous membranes by suppressing the sneezing mechanism that would evict the virus. Now there are not one but two problems. Ignoring the body’s wisdom too often results in using treatments that are either not effective or only temporarily effective or have more serious side effects than they have healing benefits.
Homoeopathy Treats People Not Diseases
People often ask Homoeopaths if we can treat certain diseases like colitis, prostate cancer, arthritis or many other diseases. We say yes but we treat individuals with the ailment, not just the ailment. For instance, people with MS will show some symptoms in common with people with the same disease: weakness, numbness, slurring of speech, bladder or bowel incontinence, double vision, etc.
But then they will also show symptoms unique to the individual as well. An important part of homoeopathy is individualization. For example: the first person is irritable where the other is weepy. What that means is we recognize that emotions, mental and physical make up, genetic predisposition and family susceptibly are taken into the highest consideration by a Homoeopath. There are about 2500 different medicines a Homoeopath must choose between taking those factors into account to treat a case of MS.
Using Homoeopathic Remedies Rather Than Drugs with Side Effects
From a purely pharmacological point of view, there are no such things as side effects. Drugs simply have effects and there are some we like and some we don’t which we call side effects. These symptoms are not side effects but are the direct effects of a drug working against the body’s natural healing response.
Consider the conventional medical approach to skin eruptions like eczema, psoriasis, shingles, poison ivy, and so on. They apply topical creams or ointments. Like magic, the skin problem disappears. But where did it go? If we could turn you inside out like a pair of socks we could show you exactly where it has gone. It hasn’t disappeared; it has been pushed in and usually relocated somewhere else. That’s why after some period of time, it comes back in the same spot or in several other places. Then you need to apply more cream and it is the same vicious cycle until it affects an organ.
Now how does it affect an organ?
Let’s take the tie between eczema and asthma. One of the strongest creams commonly used today are cortisone based creams. They are even used to treat diaper rash these days. Think back to your biology 101 classes. The cells of the body are covered by a membrane made mostly of fat called semi-permeable phospholipid membrane. Semi-permeable because it is designed to allow certain things in, and prevent others from getting in. Cortisone is a steroid. All steroids are made from cholesterol. Cholesterol is a fat. Therefore, it has the ability to penetrate through the fat based cell membrane, and the nuclear envelope, which protects your genetic material like DNA where your immune system is located. Like a lock and key mechanism, it turns off the immune system. So the inflammation, redness, swelling, oozing disappear but the original problem the body was trying to get rid of is stuck there inside.
Everyone knows there is a 95% correlation between people with asthma and eczema but no one ever says why. The main reason is because of suppression of the eczema with creams, which makes it travel into areas that are also covered with a membrane, as inner skin like the lungs resulting in asthma. It depends on the predisposition of the person. Sometimes, it can affect the digestion, in others it goes to the kidney, wherever the weakness is in the individual.
Since symptoms are an important defence of the body, it makes sense to use methods that support this defence rather than inhibit it. Homoeopathy is one such method. Rather than manipulating the body, Homoeopathy stimulates its natural healing mechanism and that is why Homoeopathy makes sense.
What is Homoeopathy?
Homoeopathy is a 200-year-old system of medicine, which uses micro doses of substances from the plant, mineral and animal kingdoms to stimulate the body’s natural healing capacity. It is based on laws and principles found in nature.
How Homoeopathy Works – The Law of Similars
The word Homoeopathy is derived from two Greek words, “Homoios” which means similar and “Pathos” which means disease or suffering. The primary principle of Homoeopathy is the Law of Similars. This states that a substance will help to heal symptoms similar to those it is known to cause.
Background
The law of similars was turned into a system of medicine by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. Dr. Hahnemann was physician to the German Royal Family, he had a successful practice. But he was so discouraged by the system of medicine of those times that he gave up his practice. To support is large family he began translating books into different languages as he spoke seven languages. One day he came across a book, which talked about Quinine, which was and still is the chief drug used to treat malaria. It comes from the bark of a tree and its common name is Cinchona Bark.
In the book it said that Cinchona Bark or quinine was effective against malaria because it’s bitter properties. He thought to himself many substances are bitter, but they do not cure malaria. He was so interested that he decided to see how it acted by taking it himself. So he squeezed out 4 drams of the bark juice and drank it.
Within a short time, he started to develop all the symptoms of malaria: weakness, shaking, chills, fever, followed by sweating. When he stopped taking it the symptoms then disappeared. That was not good enough for Hahnemann. Then he gave it to his family and friends with the same results. From this he concluded the law of similars, that a medicine that could produce certain symptoms in a healthy person could heal these same symptoms in sickness. That was the beginning of the historic invention of Homoeopathy.
Principle of Drug Proving
In Homoeopathy, experiments called provings are done on healthy people. This determines what symptoms a substance causes in healthy people and these are documented into Materia Medica. Materia Medica is a book which is a collection of data referencing the effects of substances used medicinally.
Homoeopathic medicines are not tested on sick people, animals or in test tubes. This is because: sometimes experimenting on sick people can make them more ill. Animals are physiologically different from us, and thirdly, medicines behave differently in the lab under artificial conditions than they do in living human beings.
The Use of Very Small Doses of Medicine
It may be surprising to learn that many if the most common Homoeopathic medicines are made from poisons such as Arsenic, poison ivy and bee venom. Manufacturers of Homoeopathic medicines use these substances in extremely small doses that are universally recognized as safe. In fact, if you gave any homoeopathic remedy to a chemical lab for analysis, they would say there is nothing in it except distilled water or alcohol which are the vehicles that carry the Homoeopathic substances. One of the reasons Homoeopathic medicines can be safely used even for babies, pregnant mothers and ill people is because such a small doses of substance is used.
Vital Force and Potentization of Medicines It is common knowledge that a large amount of any substance can kill, a moderate amount can suppress and a minute dose will stimulate.
The process of potentization is how Homoeopathic medications are prepared. In a nutshell, the original substance is systemically diluted and succussed (activated) one part substance to 99 parts alcohol or distilled water. Then 1 gram of that solution is mixed with 99 grams of alcohol or distilled water or sugar of milk again and again up to 200 times to make 200ch. This process of dilution liberates the natural energy or healing potential of the medicine. The more a substance is potentized or diluted the stronger and longer it acts and the more capable it is of acting at finer levels such as psychological phenomena such as depression. A small dose of the medicine is only going to recognize and treat the illness and it won’t start manipulating the rest of the organism.
Understanding the Healing Process
Homoeopaths require knowledge of your past and present as well as your constitution, that is your physical and psychological makeup that make you uniquely you. Therefore case taking can take up to two hours to find out who you are, including medical history, family history, like events that have affected you deeply, as well as current ailments and all relevant medical reports. Homoeopaths ask questions like how each symptom is affected by temperature, weather, time of day, motion, position, the environment, eating or drinking, sleep, urination, defecation, and emotional mental states.
Cure means the restoration of the previous good health of the patient before the illness. The symptoms that occurred most recently will be the first to go. It is like inserting a tape into the VCR and watching the ailment rewind after time. Removal of symptoms or disappearance of symptoms does not mean cure. Say a person is suffering from eczema and after application of some strong ointment; it disappears from the surface of the skin. Is it a cure? All true cures follow a well-defined natural pattern. Dr. Constantine Hering has summarized it thus: “Cure must take place from above downwards; from within outwards; from more important to less important organs and in the reverse order of the appearance of symptoms”. The previous normal health of a patient should be restored back. Then only can we say the patient is cured.
The body’s method of healing is simple. We are made with certain orifices from a reason. We are supposed to put in the three necessary good things that is: air, water and food. And we are supposed to let the waste products come out. For example: stool, urine, sweat and discharges from areas like the nose in a cold, inflamed sinuses should drain to stop the sinus headache, to relieve a middle ear infection the pus should come out, drooling should not be suppressed in a throat infection or cough, sweating should not be suppressed by antiperspirants or deodorants because the lymphatic system which is the cleaners of the body get clogged (if your plumbing gets clogged your house gets smelly), regular menstrual shedding of the endometrial lining is the body’s way of cleaning the uterus. Skin eruptions are an expression of what is happening inside and should be allowed to come out until the toxins are fully eliminated. Homoeopathic medicines work by ridding the toxins from the body through these natural functions.
That is why sometimes you hear that in Homoeopathic medicine sometimes the symptoms will get worse before they get better. That means that discharges and eruptions that have been suppressed in the past and have settled in the glands or organs or tissues may be restored and will start to eliminate. If you have sinus headaches, your nose may run, if you have asthma and you had eczema treated by creams, the eczema will come back and then will be treated by the Homoeopath. But the big payoff is your internal well-being will be restored.
Who Can Benefit from Homoeopathic Medicine
Everyone can benefit from Homoeopathic medicine whether the goal is curative, preventative or palliative care. Homoeopathy can address acute ailments such as arthritis, migraines, depression, menopausal complaints, etc. Homoeopathy won its laurels in prevention of disease at the time of epidemic outbreaks. Homoeopathy is also useful in assisting people to palliate or lessen the effects of diseases like cancer and AIDS.
Limitations and Risks of Homoeopathic Medicines
Homoeopathic medicines have limitations just like any other therapy. The greatest risk from using Homoeopathic medicines is that people delay getting professional medical help at the times when it is warranted. If you break a bone, go to your local hospital! Do not visit your Homoeopath until the bone has been properly set. Later the Homoeopath will give you a medicine to help deal with the pain and repair bones and damaged tissue.
In serious medical emergencies such as heart failure, kidney failure, twisted bowel or testicle, or ruptured appendix, go immediately to the hospital. Certain urgent pediatric conditions demand immediate treatment. In such instances it may be prudent to give a conventional drug immediately. Sometimes it is safest to combine conventional and Homoeopathic treatments. This is because Homoeopathic medicines may not act quickly enough to support the body’s vital functions which are in danger.
Homoeopathy is inappropriate when there is some obvious factor causing the problem. If for instance a person is anaemic because she is severely malnourished, a Homoeopathic remedy will be of little value.
During pregnancy certain Homoeopathic remedies should not be prescribed and Homoeopathic medicine should be given only under the advice of a Homoeopathic doctor.
If the condition has progressed to the point where it is irreversible by the body, Homoeopathic medicine cannot cure the patient, the patient is referred for surgery or other treatments. For instance the third stage of cancer or ruptured appendix.
The Wisdom of the Body
The human body has its own intelligence and defence to fight against bacteria, viruses, poisons, allergies, environmental stresses, psychological stresses, and the invisible stresses that attack the system.
In many cases, the body has the capacity to heal itself. The body does not have to be told how or when to heal. For example: the body produces fever to kill bacteria and virus. Nasal discharge is produced when bacteria or virus enters into your nose which contains cells called phagocytes which “eat up” invaders. Pain is the body’s way of identifying injury or a diseased part that may need to take rest or be treated with medicines. The body creates symptoms in order to send distress signals to arouse these mechanisms to act automatically.
Treatments that suppress the symptoms and the body’s natural ay of healing make temporarily effective changes, but will be ineffective in promoting health. For example: a cold decongestant can stop the nose from running. But it also traps the virus in the mucous membranes by suppressing the sneezing mechanism that would evict the virus. Now there are not one but two problems. Ignoring the body’s wisdom too often results in using treatments that are either not effective or only temporarily effective or have more serious side effects than they have healing benefits.
Homoeopathy Treats People Not Diseases
People often ask Homoeopaths if we can treat certain diseases like colitis, prostate cancer, arthritis or many other diseases. We say yes but we treat individuals with the ailment, not just the ailment. For instance, people with MS will show some symptoms in common with people with the same disease: weakness, numbness, slurring of speech, bladder or bowel incontinence, double vision, etc.
But then they will also show symptoms unique to the individual as well. An important part of homoeopathy is individualization. For example: the first person is irritable where the other is weepy. What that means is we recognize that emotions, mental and physical make up, genetic predisposition and family susceptibly are taken into the highest consideration by a Homoeopath. There are about 2500 different medicines a Homoeopath must choose between taking those factors into account to treat a case of MS.
Using Homoeopathic Remedies Rather Than Drugs with Side Effects
From a purely pharmacological point of view, there are no such things as side effects. Drugs simply have effects and there are some we like and some we don’t which we call side effects. These symptoms are not side effects but are the direct effects of a drug working against the body’s natural healing response.
Consider the conventional medical approach to skin eruptions like eczema, psoriasis, shingles, poison ivy, and so on. They apply topical creams or ointments. Like magic, the skin problem disappears. But where did it go? If we could turn you inside out like a pair of socks we could show you exactly where it has gone. It hasn’t disappeared; it has been pushed in and usually relocated somewhere else. That’s why after some period of time, it comes back in the same spot or in several other places. Then you need to apply more cream and it is the same vicious cycle until it affects an organ.
Now how does it affect an organ?
Let’s take the tie between eczema and asthma. One of the strongest creams commonly used today are cortisone based creams. They are even used to treat diaper rash these days. Think back to your biology 101 classes. The cells of the body are covered by a membrane made mostly of fat called semi-permeable phospholipid membrane. Semi-permeable because it is designed to allow certain things in, and prevent others from getting in. Cortisone is a steroid. All steroids are made from cholesterol. Cholesterol is a fat. Therefore, it has the ability to penetrate through the fat based cell membrane, and the nuclear envelope, which protects your genetic material like DNA where your immune system is located. Like a lock and key mechanism, it turns off the immune system. So the inflammation, redness, swelling, oozing disappear but the original problem the body was trying to get rid of is stuck there inside.
Everyone knows there is a 95% correlation between people with asthma and eczema but no one ever says why. The main reason is because of suppression of the eczema with creams, which makes it travel into areas that are also covered with a membrane, as inner skin like the lungs resulting in asthma. It depends on the predisposition of the person. Sometimes, it can affect the digestion, in others it goes to the kidney, wherever the weakness is in the individual.
Since symptoms are an important defence of the body, it makes sense to use methods that support this defence rather than inhibit it. Homoeopathy is one such method. Rather than manipulating the body, Homoeopathy stimulates its natural healing mechanism and that is why Homoeopathy makes sense.
What is Homoeopathy?
Homoeopathy is a 200-year-old system of medicine, which uses micro doses of substances from the plant, mineral and animal kingdoms to stimulate the body’s natural healing capacity. It is based on laws and principles found in nature.
How Homoeopathy Works – The Law of Similars
The word Homoeopathy is derived from two Greek words, “Homoios” which means similar and “Pathos” which means disease or suffering. The primary principle of Homoeopathy is the Law of Similars. This states that a substance will help to heal symptoms similar to those it is known to cause.
Background
The law of similars was turned into a system of medicine by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. Dr. Hahnemann was physician to the German Royal Family, he had a successful practice. But he was so discouraged by the system of medicine of those times that he gave up his practice. To support is large family he began translating books into different languages as he spoke seven languages. One day he came across a book, which talked about Quinine, which was and still is the chief drug used to treat malaria. It comes from the bark of a tree and its common name is Cinchona Bark.
In the book it said that Cinchona Bark or quinine was effective against malaria because it’s bitter properties. He thought to himself many substances are bitter, but they do not cure malaria. He was so interested that he decided to see how it acted by taking it himself. So he squeezed out 4 drams of the bark juice and drank it.
Within a short time, he started to develop all the symptoms of malaria: weakness, shaking, chills, fever, followed by sweating. When he stopped taking it the symptoms then disappeared. That was not good enough for Hahnemann. Then he gave it to his family and friends with the same results. From this he concluded the law of similars, that a medicine that could produce certain symptoms in a healthy person could heal these same symptoms in sickness. That was the beginning of the historic invention of Homoeopathy.
Principle of Drug Proving
In Homoeopathy, experiments called provings are done on healthy people. This determines what symptoms a substance causes in healthy people and these are documented into Materia Medica. Materia Medica is a book which is a collection of data referencing the effects of substances used medicinally.
Homoeopathic medicines are not tested on sick people, animals or in test tubes. This is because: sometimes experimenting on sick people can make them more ill. Animals are physiologically different from us, and thirdly, medicines behave differently in the lab under artificial conditions than they do in living human beings.
The Use of Very Small Doses of Medicine
It may be surprising to learn that many if the most common Homoeopathic medicines are made from poisons such as Arsenic, poison ivy and bee venom. Manufacturers of Homoeopathic medicines use these substances in extremely small doses that are universally recognized as safe. In fact, if you gave any homoeopathic remedy to a chemical lab for analysis, they would say there is nothing in it except distilled water or alcohol which are the vehicles that carry the Homoeopathic substances. One of the reasons Homoeopathic medicines can be safely used even for babies, pregnant mothers and ill people is because such a small doses of substance is used.
Vital Force and Potentization of Medicines It is common knowledge that a large amount of any substance can kill, a moderate amount can suppress and a minute dose will stimulate.
The process of potentization is how Homoeopathic medications are prepared. In a nutshell, the original substance is systemically diluted and succussed (activated) one part substance to 99 parts alcohol or distilled water. Then 1 gram of that solution is mixed with 99 grams of alcohol or distilled water or sugar of milk again and again up to 200 times to make 200ch. This process of dilution liberates the natural energy or healing potential of the medicine. The more a substance is potentized or diluted the stronger and longer it acts and the more capable it is of acting at finer levels such as psychological phenomena such as depression. A small dose of the medicine is only going to recognize and treat the illness and it won’t start manipulating the rest of the organism.
Understanding the Healing Process
Homoeopaths require knowledge of your past and present as well as your constitution, that is your physical and psychological makeup that make you uniquely you. Therefore case taking can take up to two hours to find out who you are, including medical history, family history, like events that have affected you deeply, as well as current ailments and all relevant medical reports. Homoeopaths ask questions like how each symptom is affected by temperature, weather, time of day, motion, position, the environment, eating or drinking, sleep, urination, defecation, and emotional mental states.
Cure means the restoration of the previous good health of the patient before the illness. The symptoms that occurred most recently will be the first to go. It is like inserting a tape into the VCR and watching the ailment rewind after time. Removal of symptoms or disappearance of symptoms does not mean cure. Say a person is suffering from eczema and after application of some strong ointment; it disappears from the surface of the skin. Is it a cure? All true cures follow a well-defined natural pattern. Dr. Constantine Hering has summarized it thus: “Cure must take place from above downwards; from within outwards; from more important to less important organs and in the reverse order of the appearance of symptoms”. The previous normal health of a patient should be restored back. Then only can we say the patient is cured.
The body’s method of healing is simple. We are made with certain orifices from a reason. We are supposed to put in the three necessary good things that is: air, water and food. And we are supposed to let the waste products come out. For example: stool, urine, sweat and discharges from areas like the nose in a cold, inflamed sinuses should drain to stop the sinus headache, to relieve a middle ear infection the pus should come out, drooling should not be suppressed in a throat infection or cough, sweating should not be suppressed by antiperspirants or deodorants because the lymphatic system which is the cleaners of the body get clogged (if your plumbing gets clogged your house gets smelly), regular menstrual shedding of the endometrial lining is the body’s way of cleaning the uterus. Skin eruptions are an expression of what is happening inside and should be allowed to come out until the toxins are fully eliminated. Homoeopathic medicines work by ridding the toxins from the body through these natural functions.
That is why sometimes you hear that in Homoeopathic medicine sometimes the symptoms will get worse before they get better. That means that discharges and eruptions that have been suppressed in the past and have settled in the glands or organs or tissues may be restored and will start to eliminate. If you have sinus headaches, your nose may run, if you have asthma and you had eczema treated by creams, the eczema will come back and then will be treated by the Homoeopath. But the big payoff is your internal well-being will be restored.
Who Can Benefit from Homoeopathic Medicine
Everyone can benefit from Homoeopathic medicine whether the goal is curative, preventative or palliative care. Homoeopathy can address acute ailments such as arthritis, migraines, depression, menopausal complaints, etc. Homoeopathy won its laurels in prevention of disease at the time of epidemic outbreaks. Homoeopathy is also useful in assisting people to palliate or lessen the effects of diseases like cancer and AIDS.
Limitations and Risks of Homoeopathic Medicines
Homoeopathic medicines have limitations just like any other therapy. The greatest risk from using Homoeopathic medicines is that people delay getting professional medical help at the times when it is warranted. If you break a bone, go to your local hospital! Do not visit your Homoeopath until the bone has been properly set. Later the Homoeopath will give you a medicine to help deal with the pain and repair bones and damaged tissue.
In serious medical emergencies such as heart failure, kidney failure, twisted bowel or testicle, or ruptured appendix, go immediately to the hospital. Certain urgent pediatric conditions demand immediate treatment. In such instances it may be prudent to give a conventional drug immediately. Sometimes it is safest to combine conventional and Homoeopathic treatments. This is because Homoeopathic medicines may not act quickly enough to support the body’s vital functions which are in danger.
Homoeopathy is inappropriate when there is some obvious factor causing the problem. If for instance a person is anaemic because she is severely malnourished, a Homoeopathic remedy will be of little value.
During pregnancy certain Homoeopathic remedies should not be prescribed and Homoeopathic medicine should be given only under the advice of a Homoeopathic doctor.
If the condition has progressed to the point where it is irreversible by the body, Homoeopathic medicine cannot cure the patient, the patient is referred for surgery or other treatments. For instance the third stage of cancer or ruptured appendix.
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