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| Hpathy Ezine - October, 2007 | ||||
| Before Starting Homeopathy, Read This! -- Elaine Lewis, DHom |
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| I find that no matter how much instruction I give my new clients, their lack of familiarity with homeopathy seems to doom them from the start! It's like no matter how much information I give, it never seems to be enough. What I've done here in this article is reach back and pull out all the common mistakes I've seen my clients make in the hope that you won't make them too. Let me begin with a news flash: Homeopathy does not cure every case! I've noticed that people come to alternative medicine with something of an attitude: "Prove to me that your 'science' works!" They watch you like a hawk and are ready to pounce at the first hint of a misstep.
There are many reasons why a case may be incurable with homeopathy and a lot of those reasons have to do with the client himself--withholding information, not staying in touch, presenting his case in a haphazzard way...I hope to get into some of these. But what else does success depend on? For one thing, having a "complete case". To get a complete case, we ask a lot of questions--strange questions--and you might think we don't really need to know the answers! "This doesn't seem very relevant," you might say, "I'm certainly not going to get into it!" Really? Let me explain why you should! In homeopathy, we are trying to match you to a remedy. Each remedy has a profile and the profile includes such things as physical ailments and mental aberrations. When we're trying to decide between Phosphorus and Arsenicum, let's say, we might ask, "Are you easily reassured when you're sick?" You might think, "What the heck kind of question is that!?" But Phosphorus is very easily reassured. That's part of its profile. A question like that is very important to us. People come to us and say, "I have a fever, sore throat and a cough, what's my remedy?" WE DON'T KNOW! Again, you have to be willing to answer all of our unusual questions! Everybody has a cold differently and it's what's different about your cold that we need to find out. You haven't told us: What brought your illness on? Were you out in the cold windy weather? Were you over-heated and then jumped in a cold swimming pool? Were you insulted by a superior at work? Did you have an argument with your spouse? What exactly happened? Did it come on suddenly or gradually? How has your disposition changed since getting sick? What are you thirsty and hungry for? You haven't told us the color, odor and consistency of your discharges--yes it DOES matter. You haven't told us the effect that temperature and weather are having on you. You haven't told us all the things that make your condition better or worse--no, we don't mean Motrin and Tylenol! But that's what people think we mean! "Only Tylenol makes me better." But then I say, "I notice you're bundled up in a blanket." "So?" "So, warmth makes you better!" "Oh, yeah.... I didn't think of it that way. Yeah, I can't seem to get warm enough, and I hate to even turn over in bed because it creates a draft and I can't bear even that!" "Good, now we're getting somewhere! This is the kind of information that can be used to find a homeopathic remedy!" *** This is how we need you to think and how we need you to observe your condition. We can't use garden-variety answers. Some of our remedies crave lots of covers and others throw the covers off. How do we know this? While regular medicine does testing on animals, we do it on people--volunteers. For example, when we give the remedy Sulphur to volunteers (called "provers") they get hot and throw the covers off. This is how we know. Remedies are like "people" to us. Will you be forthcoming and not secretive about your case? "Oh, I wouldn't want you to know that I sweat a lot and have bad breath; and besides, what does that have to do with irritable bowel syndrome anyway? Nothing! So why should I volunteer embarrassing information?" Nothing to do with irritable bowel syndrome? Are you kidding? With that information alone the case is solved! One of our main remedies for IBS is Mercurius, which is easily identified by its "concomitants" -- the symptoms in proximity to the chief complaint, the ones on the sidelines that a regular doctor would find irrelevant, but we solve cases with them--in this case, bad breath and excessive sweating, especially sweating that does not relieve, that's Mercurius. Now, here's another obstacle to the cure besides patients who withhold embarrassing information: your immune system! You may have botched it with excessive use of drugs, either prescription or recreational, and homeopathy relies heavily on your having a good immune system that can respond to the homeopathic remedy. Homeopathy is an immune-catalyst! The remedy is like the key that starts your car, after that it does nothing but sit there. But when people have gone through a series of immuno-suppressive treatments that fail and then come to us instead of coming to us first, such a compromised immune response can make homeopathy look pretty bad. The more our patients know about homeopathy the better our results become, ; are you willing to read and learn? Will you purchase all the remedies you'll be needing and have them there in time? It's just not as simple as standard medicine where everyone gets the same medicine--usually an antibiotic-- with the same instructions. We also need client feed-back, plus your ability to judge when it's time to redose and when it's time to stop dosing and even when it's time to antidote a previous dose, because antidoting (or "zapping", as I like to call it) can be a common, and often necessary, proceedure in homeopathic practice--in MY practice, anyway! In regular medical practice, every patient gets the same instructions. In homeopathic practice, we say: As you get better, take less often. A striking improvement precludes any further dosing. If you get worse, stop the remedy altogether. So, you see, we rely on your participation. To that end, you must read "Homeopathy: Frequently Asked Questions" and "The Aggravation Zapper". Here's the other thing you'll need: A 30C Emergency Kit, which you can order from www.a2zhomeopathy.com. and you'll need an acute prescribing book to go with it. How else will you know what remedy to take in the middle of the night when you get sick? Some of you will say, "Can't I just take Motrin or Tylenol?" Since when has Tylenol ever cured anything? These "medicines" are palliative, they don't cure; and in fact, they don't even palliate all that well, if they did, I could go back to singing and playing the guitar! (visit my "other life" at: http://www.thesilhouettes.org/elaine-lewis.htm--but wait, finish this article first!) The acute prescribing book I recommend is: Homeopathy: An A-Z Home Handbook by Alan Schmukler. I'd like to say more about immune system damage from over-use of drugs and other causes: the homeopathic remedy arouses the immune system to act and stimulates the body to heal itself. Those with auto-immune diseases may respond to the remedy inappropriately. It seems that their immune systems are on constant hyper-alert and are very reactive. This holds true not just for homeopathic treatment but for any and all therapeutic treatment as well. My sister once tried doing Reiki on a dying patient and he greatly over-reacted to it and told her, "No more!". Most people would never suspect Reiki of causing "harm", but, when the immune system is mistuned, almost anything can be experienced as harmful, even carrot juice! I'm not saying don't try homeopathy if you have an auto-immune disease, but I don't want to present it as a panacea where nothing can go wrong either! In treating auto-immune disease, the homeopath is obligated to take precautions: he needs to prescribe in low, highly diluted doses with the smallest number of succussions before each dose (succussion means pounding the bottle into your opposite palm, which you must do before each dose or you invite "provings" and aggravations). Homeopaths also have a method of antidoting aggravations, thanks to our friend Diane Fuller from Canada. So, I'm not saying don't try homeopathy if your immune system is not up to par, but just be aware that you may be traveling down a rough road; on the other hand, orthodox medicine can't cure any of these diseases; so, how much of a choice do you really have? "Provings" are a constant worry in the treatment of auto-immune disease--provings and aggravations. When these things happen, we can antidote the remedy--again, see "The Aggravation Zapper" written by Diane Fuller, DHom. We begin these auto-immune cases, as I said, with very low potencies in lots of water to make the dosing as gentle as possible. In general, the more drugs you're on and have been on in your life, the less responsive and compliant your immune system is going to be, the more trouble you're going to have with homeopathic treatment and the less we'll be able to promise results. Drugs suppress the immune system. How do I know? Because that's their job! Let me try and explain drug therapy; it's symptom-oriented. The drug doesn't care about the underlying cause. If you have a fever, the goal of drug therapy is to bring it down. The problem is this: The fever is a GIFT to you from your immune system in the same way that vomiting is a gift from your immune system when you've had too much alcohol to drink! In a fever, the heat kills the viruses and bacteria, it speeds up the production of white blood cells which come to your rescue, it binds up iron so viruses and bacteria can't feed off of it and flourish, which brings us to the conclusion that the fever is not the problem, it's what's CAUSING the fever that's the problem! A holistic practitioner will look at this and say, "Let's help your body fight off this infection. Let's get some extra vitamin C, some zinc, some raw juices, a homeopathic remedy that supports the immune system...." But standard medical practice only sees that you have a fever and amazingly percieves this natural response to infection as injurious and tries to bring it down while leaving the cause of the fever in tact. It is not natural for the body to be afebrile in the presence of viruses and bacteria; so, this appoach--forcing the body to do something fundamentally unnatural--is actually medically irresponsible. You know that doctors have now concluded that aspirin should not be given to children with fevers because of a paralytic syndrome that can ensue. Why haven't they realized it's not the aspirin but the interference with the fever that leads to this syndrome. Why doesn't aspirin cause this syndrome when taken for joint pain or headaches? The homeopath gives a remedy that "sympathizes" with the fever and Wham! As if by magic, the fever's gone. OUR REMEDIES WORK BECAUSE THEY IMMITATE NATURE! In nature, catching an acute disease that's similar to the chronic, eliminates the chronic disease. An acute case of measles will eliminate a chronic case of herpes because they are similar in their eruption. The homeopathic remedy is the "essence" of a substance that in overdose would cause a disease similar to the one you have. Similars repel. Homeopathy works by making use of this natural law. Our remedies don't send the immune system the message that it's doing the wrong thing and should stop! Drugs do that. Drugs are at war with your body and your body actually fights back, trying harder and harder to put out that fever as it knows it's supposed to do, but eventually it will give up. Is this a good sign? Is defeating your immune system a good thing to do? What is gained? The patient stops getting fevers but in their place come the mysterious, "incurable", chronic and degenerative diseases; but this really should come as no surprise: It's not nice to fool Mother Nature! The goal of any natural therapy should be that at the end of treatment, the patient is off drugs. The other problem with drugs, lest we should forget, are all the side-effects, and the side-effects become diseases in themselves. Then we have to deal with those! And trying to come off of them is no day at the beach either as they're all addictive. They complicate every case they're enlisted to cure! Keep in mind that no drug can be stopped suddenly, that's how dangerous they are! The fact is this: there is a good chance that what's wrong with you right now is due to the action or side-effects of your drugs OR the junk-food diet you're on. I point this out to help you gain a perspective on your case and how much work is involved for the homeopath. It's almost as if, in order to get well, you have to jettison everything you've come to know and believe about health and disease and start over! For instance, the things you've been taking for your health all your life--vaccinations, drugs, etc.--are most likely the primary cause of what's wrong with you; even your dental fillings could be causing you trouble if they contain mercury, as the so-called "silver fillings" do, and the fluoride treatments you get from your dentist? Just say no! (See "Fluoride Treatments Don't Reduce Cavities": http://www.mercola.com/2000/jun/10/fluoride_cavities.htm) In a society where windfall-profiteering--especially in the processed food and drug industries--seems to be the motive for everything that's for sale or promoted to the public, your mission is to do what Dr. Timothy Leary suggested 40 years ago and "Drop Out!" Popular culture has become lethal since Ronald Reagan's crusade in the 1980's to deregulate big business. Correctly prescribed prescription drugs are now the 4th leading casuse of death in America (JAMA, Apr.,1998) and convenience "food" is filled with addictive substances like sugar, MSG and other substances that actually cause the body to lose nutrients. If I may set an example: almost nothing I buy is advertised on TV or anywhere else. My laundry soap, dish liquid, shampoo, deodorant, food, etc., all come from either the health food store or the farmer's market. I have no packaged food here. And the milk I buy? Straight from the cow! Raw. No, I don't own a cow, but you can buy raw milk. See: www.RealMilk.com. Milk was no more meant to be boiled (pasturized) and homogenized than orange juice. Why are you people drinking boiled orange juice? Squeeze the orange, for God's sake! I'm always hearing about people drinking juice and thinking they're doing something good for themselves. What you're calling juice is nothing but colored water with sweeteners added; let me explain something: real juice goes bad--really fast! All food that's real starts to go bad as soon as it's cut open, that's why it can't be sold, it would all be bad by the time you got it home! There's only one way you can have juice: buy a juicer; otherwise, think about what it is that you're drinking that you call "juice". What is it? When you pick up a food item and there's a hundred ingredients on the label you can't pronounce? Don't buy it! The label on your bread should read, "Ingredients: whole wheat flour, water". The label on your bag of potato chips should read, "Sliced potatoes, oil". A good dinner? Salad and a sweet potato. A good midnight snack? Yogurt and fruit. Breakfast? Farmer's market eggs, whole wheat toast and freshly squeezed orange juice. Let me explain something to you about health. Drugs do not make you healthy, though some of them can be life-savers in limited situations; but this is not what people are using them for. People are on daily doses of drugs for sleeping, staying calm, managing stress, joint pain, nervousness, inability to focus, managing allergies, discharges, etc. Most people would be shocked to hear that a change in diet from processed to whole foods, and a change from white flour products to whole grains, would make most of these health issues disappear. Go to www.Mercola.com and sign up for Dr. Mercola's free weekly newsletter as he demonstrates how your own eating habits are contributing to your health problems. It's the height of irresponsibility for something called "the medical system" to be prescribing unnatural substances--drugs--for conditions that can often be mediated through responsible eating. Then the drugs themselves become secondary health problems and now your health and quality of life is increasingly undermined. Furthermore, homeopathy -- because it's based on a natural law (Like Cures Like) -- has an amazing historical track record of cure, especially in the most feared of illnesses--the epidemic diseases; look at it this way, modern medicine has no treatment for illnesses caused by viruses. This is an amazing failure in and of itself; so much so, that when a patient presents with a virus, most doctors will prescribe an antibiotic even knowing that it won't work because the alternative is to do nothing, to admit that "...there's nothing we can do....", relying on the average person's ignorance of the fact that antibiotics are only effective against bacteria. Viruses are not bacteria. All your colds and flus are viruses. Just to compare the two systems, last Thursday I came down with the flu. I had the muscle aches (even my teeth ached!), the chills and heat sensation up and down my back, a sore throat that had started the night before, a headache, excessive salivation.... No homeopathic remedy I tried was working. I tried Oscillococcinum, Gelsemium, Mercury, Nux vomica, Arsenicum, Pyrogen...I was getting around to considering Baptisia when I decided to try Influenzinum--it was by now the middle of the night and the sore throat was definitely keeping me from falling asleep. Within minutes, the sore throat was gone! Now, don't get me wrong, I had to repeat this remedy often, but the next morning, I was fine! The "medical system" has nothing for this condition! Doesn't it make sense to get to know homeopathy? But, again, we homeopaths need for you to help us so we can help you! I'll just list for you some of the mistakes I've seen people make in my practice that have made their otherwise curable cases, incurable: 1. "No, I didn't follow your instructions, I followed the instructions on the bottle!" If your practitioner told you to order a remedy, let the practioner know when the remedy has come in, don't start taking it right away based on the "instructions" on the bottle! Those instructions are for people who have no practitioner! Make sure you are clear on what your practitioner's instructions are. 2. "I haven't been in touch with you because the remedy stopped working." This calls for an explanation. Chances are your practioner has started you on a 6C or LM/1 and possibly even a 30C potency to be taken daily or as needed. This potency is most likely NOT going to last! Don't panic if it seems to last for a while and then you find yourself slipping backwards. At this point, you should either take the remedy more often or go up to the next potency, which you should have ordered as soon as it was clear that you had the right remedy. Hopefully your practitioner has explained this to you. Dosing in homeopathy works like, what I like to call: The Law of Orthodontia When your teeth are crooked, you see an orthodontist who puts braces on your teeth and tightens the wires slightly each visit to move them to a better position (think of it as "low potency prescribing") because if he tightened them hard, all at once, (like "high potency prescribing") the pain ("aggravation") would be so severe that you would never want to see a homeopath/orthodontist ever again! But, you must understand that your teeth are unwilling to be moved out of their comfortable spot! They may be crooked and unsightly, but they are USED to it and they try to revert back to it. At that point the orthodontist has to twist the wires a little bit harder ("raise the potency") and now a constant battle ensues, a struggle between the teeth which want to revert back, and the orthodontist who wants them to adjust to a new position. Even at the end of treatment, your orthodontist is so sure that your teeth are going to try to revert back that he fits you with a retainer so they won't have the chance to do so. In homeopathic treatment, this kind of "push-pull" will be evident to you. You'll say, "The remedy worked but then it stopped working!" No, no, it has not stopped working, it is simply time to "tighten up the wires"-- i.e., dose more often or raise the potency.
The Law of Riding a Bicycle Another metaphor for homeopathic case management is riding a bike. The idea is to get up to speed so you can coast, i.e. stop dosing unless and until you start slowing down. Sometimes you need to lean slightly to the left (take less often) and slightly to the right (take more often) to keep from falling off. What is "falling off" in homeopathic terms? Not taking the remedy often enough causing your progress to "crash", or over-dosing, causing you to "prove" the remedy, resulting in an aggravation--again, your progress "crashes". You need to avoid both underdosing and overdosing. Just like riding a bike, you need to find the balance in the middle, so that your case only moves forward. Here's how this is done. To manage a case, the remedy must be in water! Drop a dry pellet into a bottle of spring water. A case cannot be managed if you can't adjust the dose! Certainly one way of adjusting is to add more water for sensitive patients who seem to aggravate from everything! Lowering or raising the number of succussions is another way to adjust the dose. Taking just a sip instead of a swallow is another way. Rote repetition of dry pellets will ultimately result in a proving or an aggravation. All the practitioner can do here is say, "You're probably going to have an aggravation, but, there's nothing I can do, you're on your own!" You're going to lose a lot of patients that way! By the time the aggravation wears off and they feel better? Someone else will get the credit for that, and sadly, if they relapse, they won't come back to you! Case Management So, as I said, to manage a case, you're going to need a bottle of water. Put a pellet of your remedy into the bottle of water, begin with five succussions before each dose, take a dose/sip twice a day of the water assuming you're on a low potency in a chronic case, stop when you see a striking improvement or an aggravation. If the aggravation is very bothersome, zap it (see "The Aggravation Zapper" article) and you will undoubtedly observe an improvement soon after that. When the improvement starts to wane, redose; BUT, since the last dose was so overwhelming, dilute it in more water this time, don't dose directly from the bottle, pour a capful into a large disposable cup of water, stir lightly with a straw, and take a small sip, wait, make sure you don't aggravate again. The idea here is, through trial and error, to find a dosing schedule (frequency) and dosage size--amount of water-- that, without aggravating, moves the case forward, always repeating as soon as you see the beginning of a relapse, so that you're always coasting and not crashing again and again, always having to start over. Try to keep yourself from constantly bottoming out! Changing the frequency of repetition, the amount of water, the number of succussions, going to the next potency when the one you're on stops working, will keep the case moving-- coasting. Remember, a striking improvement precludes any further dosing. If you're improving dramatically and you're still dosing, you're going to crash! Remember, these remedies cause what they cure--they're double-edged swords! If there's nothing wrong with you, stop dosing! *** 3. "I haven't been in touch with you because I got worse, and then this happened and then that happened, and then the other thing happened...." You must stay in touch with your practitioner! Don't let things get complicated, and then when the practioner contacts you, present a disaster story that she can't follow! If you've let too much time go by, chances are you aren't even capable of remembering what went wrong and presenting it in a step-by-step fashion. 4. "I checked the Materia Medica and Belladonna sounded like a really good remedy for me so I took that, but I've been taking the remedy you gave me too...." You can only take one remedy at a time! Otherwise, we have no way of evaluating the results. In every experiment, there can only be one variable! If you think for some reason there's a better remedy for you, tell your practitioner. She may be able to explain why Belladonna isn't for all fevers. Very often, a patient will look up a remedy in the Materia Medica and make a list of all the common symptoms and say, "This is just like me! Belladonna has colds, I have a cold. Belladonna has fevers, I have a fever. Belladonna has sore throats, I have a sore throat!" We are more concerned that the remedy match the mental state and the peculiar symptoms in your case because such a remedy will cure, while the one which only matches common symtoms like "cough" and "sore throat" will not. 5. "I redosed because I figured I was relapsing because I got a rash." Don't redose because something superficial happens after a remedy. We expect this to happen. We expect discharges, aches, pains and skin eruptions. What we're concerned about after a remedy is something we call "The Center Of The Case". The center of the case is your sleep, your energy, your disposition, your sense of well-being and relaxation, your outlook, your restfulness and your appetite. After a remedy, we want to see an improvement here. Your actual complaint may get worse! But if it's the right remedy, you won't care! You may even put it in exactly those words! "I still have a headache, but I don't care!" "I didn't get much sleep last night, but, oddly enough, I feel rested!" Redose when you see a relapse in "the center of the case". 6. "Hi Elaine, remember me? Yeah, I know, it's been a long time; but...my remedy stopped working, what should I do now? Help!!!!" When you get in touch with your practitioner and you try to explain what went wrong, you have to recap your case! The practitioner always needs to know what you've been doing and what has led up to the current debacle you're describing. Your conversation should be in the form of a time-line: "First this happened, then that happened and then that happened." Everything has to be explained to the practitioner in chronological order. If you've been taking remedies, don't say, "I've been taking Pulsatilla." Say, "I've been taking Pulsatilla 30C in water every day, twice a day, with five succussions before each dose in the 6th cup, one small sip." What your practitioner is trying to find out is when Pulsatilla stopped working and why or if it was even appropriate once you came down with the flu or some other occurrence. Don't make it difficult for her to find this out! She needs chronology and dosing specifics. 7. "Homeopathy is making me worse!" My first thought is that you're overdosing or on too high a potency. My second thought is, you're having "return of old symptoms"! Ask yourself, "Is this an old symptom?" We fully expect that your case is going to "roll back" the way it came! You might find it litereally "unwinding"! If you have a "return of old symptoms", this should be temporary and only last a short time. You should consider it a very good sign if you see this. A client I had once with a very bad cold said, "I couldn't believe it, it literally went back the way it came with the last symptom to go being the first one that I had when the cold started three weeks ago!" 8. "I'm feeling better, but, I've still got this and I've still got that....." You will not get well all at once so just forget about that ever happening! What we expect is that the Worst Thing in the case will resolve first, and having so resolved, it will "move out" to a less threatening area and keep moving until it's gone; so, you might have a mental patient "making sense" or sounding normal for a change, but simultaneously breaking out in a bad cold, giving the impression that he's getting worse! Au contraire! He's getting better! His mental illness is now a runny nose and a sore throat! Isn't that better? Hooray! It's not unusual to observe that the patient gets better here and worse there; you have to evaluate the DIRECTION the case is going in. Is he better in a more significant area than the one that's suddenly worse? Then all is well; this is what we're looking for! After that we expect that the next "worst thing" will resolve and so on. 9. "I still have my chief complaint, homeopathy doesn't work!" I've heard this. People come with a superficial complaint, like psoriasis, and you can't get rid of it. But their constipation is gone, their anxiety is gone, their insomnia is gone! I would call this a success! We don't treat diseases. We have no remedy for this or that disease. We have remedies for the person, the whole person; in that sense, homeopathy is truly "holistic"! My teacher, Robin Murphy, always says, "Don't change a remedy that's working for the patient in General for one that appears to fit a local symptom!" If you've got a remedy that's helping a patient in general, stick with it! Now, there are exceptions. When a person has a life-threatening local symptom like asthma, you have to take the case of it. But even the asthma will have a "whole" picture that goes with it; and your remedy will have to cover the whole state, including the mental/emotional concomitant that's part of it. 10. "I didn't tell you I had the flu because that's not what you're treating me for." Announcement: Homeopathy treats everything! You've got to understand that conventional drugs are mischief-makers, toxic, rarely curative and are actually at war with your body! Have you ever asked yourself what principle of healing modern medicine, modern drug therapy, operates under? What are its laws? Its law of cure? We have no trouble answering that question: Homeopathy is based on the Law of Similars--like cures like--and, "the Minimum Dose". What's modern medicine's hypothesis? Do they have one? If they were forced to answer, they would probably say, "We suppress symptoms." Well, isn't that special? There's just one problem with that. It's your immune system they're suppressing! Is it really great to base your medicine on immune suppression? Explain that to me. It's your immune system that's creating the fever to incinerate bacteria and viruses, it's your immune system that's causing the diarrhea and vomiting! Your body is trying to save you by getting rid of something--some morbid matter, some morbific influence! It's the immune system that's creating the pain so you'll lie perfectly still. And then along comes a drug that paralyzes the bowels or stomach or lowers the fever and what happens to the morbid matter? It's unaddressed! It's left to its mischief! This kind of reasoning would suggest that when the oil light starts blinking in your car, the mechanic should just unscrew the bulb--problem solved! No one would appreciate such a mechanic, but we let people like this take care of our health! There is no point in hiring a homeopath if you're going to continually sabotage your immune system with suppressive treatment! Don't assume that your homeopath can't help with your allergy or flu or injury or any aspect of ill-health that comes along during your treatment. 11. "I can't understand why my constitutional remedy stopped working! I raised the potency and it's still not working! Oh, by the way, I have a really bad cold." Do not keep taking your consitutional remedy if you have an acute that's altered your whole picture! The constitutional remedy, more than likely, bears no relationship to the acute you're having at all! If you've been injured, you probably need Arnica, if you have a sinusitis you probably need Hydrastis or Kali bich., if you have a stomach flu you may need Nux vomica. When your symptom picture changes, you have to change with it; this is another aspect of case mangagement. Stop taking your constitutional remedy if you have a cold or an injury. Call or email your homeopath and find out what remedy you should take, or consult your acute prescribing book. When the acute resolves, and your chronic picture hasn't changed, go back to your chronic remedy. Let me be quick to add, however, that, as I mentioned before, after a good constitutional remedy, you will find yourself feeling calm and at ease while at the same time experiencing discharges, maybe aches and pains, skin eruptions and other symptoms which might make you start looking for a "cold remedy" or "pain remedy", etc. when actually this is a part of the curative process, and you'll know because your mental state will have improved or something on a deeper level will have improved. These new symptoms should go away soon on their own; plus, some of them might be symptoms of days-gone- by which is a good sign--you're not getting worse! These too should be only temporary. 12. "I've decided to hold off on starting homeopathy because I've got some other health problems and I want to try to get to the bottom of them first." To the homeopath, this makes absolutely no sense, and if by "getting to the bottom of it" you mean getting a "diagnosis" or "curing" the "other" health issues first, as though all health issues are separate entities having nothing to do with one another, not springing from the same well, so to speak, you are only wasting your time. More than likely, one homeopathic remedy will make all your health problems go away; this is why we take a Complete Case, asking about your sleep, your digestion, your appetite, your mental/emotional state, etc. because we fully expect to find the same remedy indications regardless of which part of the body we're looking at. For example, we can see Mercury in your bleeding gums, your Irritable Bowel Syndrome, your angry disposition, and your excessive perspiration. It's all one case to us, not four different cases. The more drugs you put yourself on to "treat" the various "conditions", the more you worsen your health by becoming addicted to these drugs and creating secondary diseases caused by the side-effects which then are treated with even more drugs and the inevitable downward spiral begins. But I should add that diagnosis in itself can be a good thing and I don't discourage it. Many different conditions all present with the same symptoms! Which chapter of the Homeopathic Repertory should one look in? Is your doubled-over patient having muscle spasms, kidney stone colic, an ovarian cyst? A diagnosis is essential; but, once you know, you can jump right in with Mag-phos., Berberis, or Apis, as the case may be, and effect a dramatic cure. (I hasten to add that surgery when it's needed, is needed, period!) 13. "I've been on the remedy for two days now, three times a day, and I'm no better." Don't accept this statement at face value; always ask the patient, "What about mentally/emotionally, is there any change there?" A good percentage of the time the patient will say, "Oh yes! There's been a big change emotionally, much better, spirits much higher!" See, they won't tell you this unless you ask them, they don't think it matters, but to us it means everything, it means we found the right remedy--stay with it! In homeopathy, the complaint improves on the mental/emotional plane FIRST. 14. "No, I didn't refill the bottle with more water because I already refilled it once and there can't possibly be anything left of any substance in it, so I went back to the pellets." Our clients are generally incredulous that our "medicine" consists of a bottle of "water". I always say, "When your water bottle gets low, refill it half way with water, succuss 40 times, and continue as before with 5 succussions before each dose." But I often find out later that they never refilled the bottle ("There can't possibly be anything left in it!") and went back to the "pills". People, the "water" is stronger than the pills! If you go back to the pills or pellets? You're going backwards! It's like going from Extra Strength Tylenol to regular Tylenol, it's not going to help you! I could explain how homeopathic remedies are made but it would only bore you. Suffice it to say, they're made in water, more and more water as the process goes on. Don't worry about the water! "But there's nothing in it!" That's not true. There's energy in it. The energy of the substance that was originally dissolved in it. You know that law of physics--Energy can neither be created nor destroyed? You can't dilute this energy away. When your practitioner says to you, "Take your remedy in the 2nd, 3rd or even the 12th cup," don't worry, it's still there! 15. "I have no idea what caused my complaint!" Really? Gee, that's too bad. No, really! I would encourage you to think very hard about this because if you can't pin-point the cause of your complaint, I don't care how good your homeopath is, your chances of cure will drop considerably! Homeopathic prescriptions are often based on "etiology"--a fancy way of saying the "Cause". We have a term for this in the Repertory: "Ailments From": Ailments from grief, ailments from fright, ailments from humiliation, even ailments from moonlight! Yes! I remember a case where the patient's mother suddenly realized that all her son's problems started after he moved his bed in front of the window and he slept under the moon's rays. "Luna" cured the case. It's doubtful this case would have been solved if the mother hadn't given some deep thought to the etiology. 16. "I think homeopathy is really dangerous!" You'll hear this from people who have experienced an aggravation or a proving during treatment. I always say: Homeopathy is like a car--a good driver can get you to the airport, a bad driver can take you right off the road and into a ditch--especially if the person trying to drive is YOU, with no experience and no license! But sometimes, despite having the best driver in the world, the unexplained and the unexpected lurk just around the corner, we can't make guarantees. But you as a health care consumer should remember this: Your practitioner should be willing to answer your questions, explain his remedy choice, his choice of potency, his dosing rationale, his sense of how he plans to approach your case and if you're ever not satisfied with the results, look for a better driver!
To recap... Articles that you should read: "Homeopathy: Frequently Asked Questions" "A Flurry of Questions--Presenting Your Acute Case"
Purchases: Homeopathy: An A-Z Home Handbook by Alan Schmukler (www.amazon.com) 30C Emergency Kit from www.a2zhomeopathy.com Subscribe: Dr. Mercola's free weekly newsletter: The Hpathy.com free monthly e-zine:
Best of luck! ___________________________________________________ Elaine Lewis, DHom, CHom |
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Elaine Lewis, DHom, CHom. takes online cases. Visit her website at: www.hpathy.com/office/ElaineLewis.asp |
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