Thursday, September 12, 2013

What Can Homeopathy Do For You?



   For this blog entry I've compiled information from different sources to help those who don't know much about homeopathy to understand more fully how it can cure illness. If you don’t want to read through this information but you’re still interested in hearing how homeopathy has helped people, scroll down to the bottom of this blog entry and go to “success stories and links”.
 
 
 
 
   Homeopathy is a very old medicine that has a lot of history. I have a brief explanation here but if you truly study the full history you will find much more information about why it is not used as a main form of medicine today, how the AMA was formed partially in retaliation of homeopathy moving from overseas to the states, and how it had more success in curing cholera and other diseases than conventional medicine did back then.
 


Brief history:

    Samuel Hahnemann was a German physician 200 years ago. He ended up leaving his practice because he felt that he was doing more harm than good with practices that they did back in the day like bloodletting, poisonous doses of mercury and arsenic, etc. So, he went on to translating medical and literary texts.
   While he was translating one of the texts by a physiologist named William Cullen, he was taken aback by this author's claim that the bitter and astringent properties of Peruvian bark, which contains quinine, was the reason it was so effective in treating malaria.
    He decided to test the physiological effects of the Peruvian bark by taking small doses himself. Eventually his body did react. He ended up developing symptoms very similar to malaria. He wondered whether the curative power of Peruvian bark resulted from its ability to create symptoms similar to those of the disease.
   He started studying the records of accidental poisonings from other common medicines from back then like mercury, arsenic, belladonna, etc. He would test these poisons on himself and other healthy people (in homeopathy this is called "proving"). In the process of doing this, he realized that these "medicines" caused symptoms similar to those of the illnesses that they were used to treat. Mercury was used to treat syphilis. The Mercury itself would cause syphilis-like ulcers in a healthy person. Arsenic and Belladonna were known to create certain types of fever and were given as medicines for fevers. So, this is where "homeopathy" was discovered.

 
Similia similibus currentur:

    This means 'let likes be cured with likes'. Hahnemann made this Latin phrase popular within the homeopathic community. This helped to describe his discovery that substances in small doses stimulate the organisms to heal that which they cause in overdose. This really was not something that was new to the world. In the fourth century B.C., Hippocrates wrote "Through the like, disease is produced, and through the application of the like, it is cured."
   Part of the similia concept has similarities in conventional medicine as well. Radiation is a cancer treatment, though it can cause cancer. Ritalin, a stimulant, is prescribed to children who are hyperactive or have ADD. Gold is used to treat arthritis even though it can cause joint pain. Even though these medical treatments suggest a homeopathic principle, none of them obey the other laws of homeopathy. (Discussed later in this entry)

 
The Body’s Healing Responses:

    After this discovery of ‘like cures like’, Hahnemann realized that the body does so much more than we think. Instead of assuming that symptoms represent illogical, improper, or unhealthy responses of the body and that they should be treated, controlled, and suppressed, Hahnemann learned that symptoms are positive responses to all of the stresses that the body can experience. Symptoms represent the body’s best effort to heal itself. Therefore, instead of suppressing symptoms, therapy should stimulate the body’s defenses to complete the healing process.
"In this context, symptoms are not the disease. Symptoms accompany disease. Symptoms are the evidence of disease. But treating symptoms is like killing the messenger for bringing bad news. In fact, treating symptoms can suppress the body’s natural responses and inhibit the healing process."
   Hahnemann recognized that although the body is great at healing itself, there are times when it is not always strong enough to complete the healing process. It often needs a catalyst to stimulate its defenses, especially in serious acute infectious diseases, chronic illnesses, etc. Hahnemann then developed a systematic method to help find the right catalyst for an individual by prescribing a substance that would imitate the body’s defenses. This would stimulate the body to heal itself.

 
Hering’s Law of Cure:

    Constantine Hering, a German homeopath contributed this law to homeopathy. Simply put, it is looking at the whole person, not just the physical ailment. A homeopath is not only satisfied to hear that the symptom the patient originally came in for has improved. A homeopathic practitioner needs to know all that has changed; mental, emotional or physical. They need to know which things have improved or gotten worse. If for instance, a skin rash has improved but the emotional health has not improved then they would conclude that something needs to be changed within the therapy.
   When the right remedy is chosen, the body generally heals from the “inside out”. For example, if someone has arthritis and is given the correct remedy, they may see their mental health and energy levels increase first while their arthritis may be aggravated temporarily as the disease is shifting. The final thing to change would be the arthritis. If however, the opposite happens such as the arthritis gets better but the mental health has not improved then the person’s state of health is thought to be deteriorating. This is a huge difference between conventional medicine and the homeopathic approach. Western medicine looks at the symptoms and treats them, if the symptoms are kept at bay, the person is thought to be in good shape. The whole person is not considered.
When matching a remedy to the person, all angles need to be considered. That’s why there is not one blanket medicine for a specific disease. This is what makes homeopathy so unique and so powerful.

 
The Laws of Homeopathic Medicine:

 -The Law of Similars

·         (already discussed above)

-The Law of Minimum Dose

·         This law states that extreme dilution will make the healing powers of a substance more powerful and at the same time it eliminates any possible side effects. When you start at the conventional dose and increase dilution, the medicine will start to become less powerful. But as the dilution keeps increasing, and below a threshold the medicine starts to become potent again. (This was a bit difficult for me to understand at first since we are so used to conventional medicine’s rule that less of something won’t work and more of something can cause an overdose). Getting used to medicines that work with energy is no small task.

-The Single Medicine

·         This law states that no more than one medicine will be given at a time. The homeopathic remedies you see in the store that are a “combination” do not follow the basic laws and principles of homeopathy. In the book “Everybody’s Guide to Homeopathic Medicines” the author says this “A homeopath does not prescribe one medicine for a person’s headache, another for her stomachache, and another for her depression. The use of a single medicine is a basic principle of classical homeopathy. As we’ve said, the homeopath assumes that, although a person may have numerous physical and psychological symptoms, he or she has only one disease, an underlying susceptibility. Using the one medicine right for that time in the person’s life, whether the condition is acute or chronic, effectively stimulates the person’s natural defense system, helps heal the current illness, and raises the general level of health.”

-The Law of Potentized Dose

·         (Discussed below) Basically this law has to do with how the remedies are made. Hahnemann found that just diluting the substances was not good enough. They were not effective unless they were shaken a specific way in between diluting.

 
How is a homeopathic remedy made?

    Please go here and read the short summary. It explains how a remedy is made starting with the plant or substance it comes from. Then it also explains potentization. This is a good explanation and I don’t know that I could explain it much better myself.

 
Extra information:

    “Hahnemann went further. Although side effects were reduced, these medicines were still active chemical substances, and large doses could be toxic. He experimented with smaller and smaller doses and found them still effective, in this way further minimizing toxic effects.

Through a stroke of genius, he discovered what we call today serial dilution.  He diluted smaller and smaller amounts of the substance with water and alcohol. Unlike normal serial dilutions he added what he called succussions at each dilution, striking the bottle firmly on a book one hundred times before the next dilution.

Provided the succussions were done, the medicine would still be active – even more so – and completely without side effects. This became known as the
Law of the Minimum Dose.

The absence of side effects is not surprising.  After dilution and succussion, chemically there are few or no molecules of the original substance remaining. This means the homeopathic remedy, at this stage of dilution, no longer has a chemical or pharmacological action. So what remains, if anything? 

It is believed that the turbulence of the succussions imparts a memory of the original substance on the water molecules between each dilution and that what is left is information that is stored in the molecular arrangement of the water molecules. As an analogy, if you analyze
a CD that you use in your computer, chemically you will find it is just plastic; but your computer is designed to read the physical information contained, in the same way we believe the body uptakes the information message contained in the homeopathic medicine. This is why homeopathy has been called physical medicine.

Because the body responds only to physical information in homeopathic medicine, if it is the wrong information, nothing happens; no harm is done; but drugs have effects through chemical action regardless. If it is the right information, the body learns how to remove the blocks that stop it from rebalancing. In homeopathy, it is the body's innate healing wisdom that cures, not the medicine, which is only a catalyst.”

 
   This may seem like a lot of information but these are actually just the basics. As you can see homeopathy requires skill and insight. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, your experience may not be the best it could be. As I’m learning, I have had some successes and some failures. I would like to leave a few success stories of my own and also that of others.

 
Success stories and links :
 
   My toddler’s food allergies were cured with the use of homeopathy. All but one of his food allergies remain which, according to his allergist, is now very mild. His allergist told me to continue whatever it is that I’m doing because he has not seen allergies go away so quickly. His soy allergy was fairly moderate and it is so nice to not have to freak out now every time someone offers him a treat while we’re out. We are going to continue to work with his digestive issues.

    My 9 year old son was getting out of the van and accidentally closed the sliding van door onto his first three fingers. He had dark bruising and swelling along with a few cuts. We weren’t home at the time but when we returned home I gave him the homeopathic remedy Arnica. I didn’t seem to see much of a change in him with the first dose so 30 minutes later I gave him another one. Within 30 minutes of the 2nd dose, his bruising, swelling and pain were gone. In fact, he was feeling so good the next day that he was using that hand to carry heavy items from the car and ended up re-injuring it.  I gave him another dose and again his swelling went down within 30 minutes.

 
   Some surgeons use Arnica on their patients prior to surgery to reduce or even prevent swelling and bruising. While homeopathy does not normally have remedies that you give as a staple for certain ailments, Arnica does seem to be a good one when bruising is involved. It is certainly not the only remedy for bruising and swelling.

 
   Homeopathy has been used to treat colic, measles, ear infections, and even animals with chronic illnesses!

 
Links:


 
 
 
 
Books used for this blog:
Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines by Stephen Cummings, MD and Dana Ullman, MPH
The Complete Homeopathic Handbook by Miranda Castro
Also used a couple of quotes by Sheri Nakken
 
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