Chronic
Diseases and Homeopathy:
Homeopathy is concerned with the treatment of the whole person, as an
individual, rather than treating the disease or symptoms alone, which
is called holistic treatment. The emotional status of a person is
considered very important in treating diseases, and Homeopathy focuses
a lot on the emotional situation of the person. For these reasons
people with the same diseases may often be treated with different
remedies. It is also about finding the real cause of a health-problem
rather then just treating the symptoms, it is going beyond symptoms.
In order to find the cause of the health disturbance and treat it
effectively many things are important. The Homeopath will take
characteristics of the person into consideration when evaluating a
person’s ailments. Characteristics such as: food preferences and
aversions, influence of climate and environment, family history and
inherited tendencies, body build and size, appearance, expression,
self confidence, how a person deals with certain emotions like anger,
sadness, etc.; sleep habits, dreams, relationships and many more. All
this information allows the Homeopath to build a picture of the person
which helps to find the appropriate remedy for that specific person
rather then a remedy for a disease. So treatment is always about the
individual person and not the individual disease or ailment. Only in
the case of large epidemics a large amount of people are treated with
the same few remedies. This individual treatment is called
constitutional treatment and the same remedy can help the person with
different ailments at different stages of their lives. Constitutional
treatment with Homeopathy can help people to become symptom free and
is also preventive. It is a reliable form of effective and gentle
healing and helps to restore health in the long term.
What are Homeopathic Remedies?
Homeopathic remedies can be derived from plant, mineral, metal and
animal sources and there are about 4000 different remedies.
Homeopathic remedies contain very, very small quantities of the
substance, called POTENCIES, prepared in a special way. Usually on
part out of 100 is diluted with 99 parts of distilled water or sugar
pellets. This process can be repeated up to infinity. Every time the
dilution is done the remedy is shaken for up to a hundreds of times
which is called succusion. These high dilutions not only enhance their
healing properties, but also avoid undesirable side effects. So the
higher the dilution the more potent the remedy. Because the remedies
are so highly diluted they are completely safe in any situation and
gentle in the way they act.
A Homeopath almost never works with a crude substance or tincture but
always with dilutions. In the remedy there is usually only a very
minimal amount of the original substance left which tends to be one of
the reasons why scientists ridicule it’s power and don’t believe in
it’s powerful healing abilities. The remedy works on an energetic
level in the body and stimulates the body’s own healing energies and
reverses imbalances.
Here is a link to a pharmacy in Austria
that has very interesting information and video clips of obtaining
some of the remedy sources, such as poisonous snakes etc:
www.remedia.at/en/index.html
How old is Homeopathy?
The idea that a substance can heal symptoms in a sick person similar
to those which it causes in a healthy person was written about by
Hippocrates, Paracelsus, and even appeared in the Hindu system of
Ayurvedic medicine as far back as the tenth century B.C.. The concept
was rediscovered by the eighteenth-century German physician Samuel
Hahnemann, who found that the reason quinine cured malaria was because
it was capable of causing the symptoms of malaria in a healthy person.
He went on with numerous natural substances, expanding the
applications of this healing principle. All of the medical agents used
in Homeopathy have been proven on healthy human volunteers. Every year
new homeopathic remedies are discovered and proved. I was myself
involved in a proving of a new remedy last year, it was an extremely
interesting process and I probably learnt more about Homeopathy then
in 4 years of school. Homeopathic medicine does not use any form of
animal testing! All the new remedies are tested (which is called a
proving) on healthy human individuals on a volunteer bases).
Since over 150 years Homeopathy has been used as a safe, holistic
medicine. Today Homeopathy is well accepted as a safe and effective,
alternative form of medical treatment. Homeopathic remedies are
completely safe with no unwanted side effects and they are
non-addictive. The remedies are safe for any person, pregnant women,
newborn babies, children and elderly people. Homeopathy is also very
popular in veterinary medicine and is often used for treatments of
pets as well as bigger animals, and in organic farming.
How does it work?
Homeopathy is a healing process in which the remedies stimulate and
encourage the body's natural healing forces of recovery. The
homeopathic principle of treating like with like is based on treating
an illness with a substance that produces in a healthy person similar
symptoms to those experienced by the sick person. Conventional
medicine believes that symptoms are caused by the illness, whereas
Homeopathy sees the symptoms as the body's natural reaction in
fighting the illness, and seeks to stimulate them rather than suppress
them.
An example of suppression through chemical drugs is skin eruptions: If
a person with a skin rash or an eczema applies a steroid cream, the
eruptions will likely disappear for a while, but will likely re-appear
after the use of the cream is stopped. Often the condition becomes
worse and stronger drugs need to be used in order to keep the
eruptions suppressed. If one would treat the same symptoms with a
homeopathic remedy the eruptions would be stimulated to come out and
then the body could get ride of them and the cause of the problem and
the skin will heal from inside out rather then suppressing the
eruptions back into the body!
Another example could be an under-function of a gland, where
conventional medicine would give a hormone in order to balance the
lack of that particular hormone. What then will happen is the gland
will diminish its production even more since the hormone is given
through medication, the gland has no need to produce anymore.
Eventually the gland will diminish in size and decrease its production
more and more. If the same conditions would be approached with a
homeopathic remedy that gland becomes stimulated through a fine
irritation of the remedy action. The gland will increase it’s
function, becomes more balanced in its hormone output and eventually
the hormone levels in the body become more balanced again.
Homeopathic remedies do not saturate the bloodstream with chemical
agents, but rather work on the plane of energy, called the vital
force. Since scientists have only recently begun to find ways of
measuring this energy, many orthodox practitioners attribute claims of
homeopathic cures to the "placebo effect." Interestingly, one would
not expect placebos to work on animals or newborn infants, but
Homeopathy has affected healing in both. Homeopathy can be very
beneficial to anybody at any age with any discomfort or disease.
In acute conditions where there is a high fever for example,
improvement is rapid and can sometimes be seen within a few minutes,
esp. in small children but also in adults and animals with any kind of
condition or pain. Some of the remedies are also very beneficial in
relief of pain caused by injuries, after surgery, dental treatment,
labor, soreness of muscles, and many more; and they will help to
increase the speed of the healing process and tissue recovery. The
need to use antibiotics in conditions like ear-infections, bladder
infections, etc. can often be avoided if the person is treated with
the proper Homeopathic remedy. One of the reasons that Homeopathy had
such popularity about 100 years ago in the U.S., was because its
success in treating various epidemic diseases during the 1800’s. Death
rates in homeopathic hospitals were often one half to as little to
one-eighth of those in orthodox hospitals. |
