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What is Homeopathy?


What is homeopathy and how does it differ from conventional medicine?
Homeopathy is a sophisticated medical science that originated in the 1790’s through the research of a remarkable genius, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann. He was conventionally trained in medicine, but was acutely aware of the limitations and dangers of this approach and gave up his traditional practice. Through meticulous research and study over the course of several years, he discerned what he called: “the Principle of Similars”, and became the first physician to create an entire system of medicine based on this principle.

Allopathic vs. Homeopathic Approaches

A brief discussion of the basis of allopathic or conventional medicine will make an understanding of this principle easier. “Allopathic” is a word derived from Greek roots, and essentially means “against the disease” or “contrary to the disease”. Conventional medicine takes action opposite to the action of the illness. For example, if an illness results in an increased acid secretion in the stomach, a conventional allopathic medical approach would be to prescribe a drug to inhibit acid secretion. If a patient suffers from depression or anxiety, a conventional allopathic approach would be to prescribe medicine to raise the patient’s level of serotonin, which is often low when these type of conditions beleaguer patients. If a patient is in pain, a drug is given to suppress the experience of pain, if that is a presenting symptom, and so on. Although the methods of symptom suppression were very crude in Hahnemann’s time, the allopathic treatment principles were the same as they are today. What was very evident to Dr. Hahnemann (and to many observant people) is that this approach never results in the resolution of the underlying illness, and it sometimes makes it worse. He was ardent in his desire to discover a method by which he could arouse the natural healing power of the body, and not to simply continue suppressing symptoms.

We have to give some thought about what healing really is and what the entity called ‘the natural healing power of the body’ is. The healing of a scratch, however minor, involves the perfect coordination of perhaps billions of individual biochemical reactions and cellular interactions between elements of the blood, lymph and tissues of the skin. This happens perfectly and expeditiously every time and will never be duplicated in a laboratory. This process cannot be attributed to any one organ system or cellular element. It is controlled and maintained by the intelligent life force within the organism which controls and maintains all the functions of the body in the same way that the electrical current maintains the function of any appliance. However the difference between an appliance and a living organism is that this vital force is always engaged in the function of healing and creating the impetus for a constant improvement in the state of health. The current simply maintains the function of an appliance but cannot repair it. Hahnemann understood that illness of any type arises when this intelligent vital force is too weak to maintain the organism against the onslaught of environmental stressors in combination with the inherent weakness within it.

Symptomatic Relief

As Hahnemann discovered, symptoms are actually an expression of the effort a sick body is making in the attempt to heal itself. In the case of a chronic illness, the effort is incomplete, and the patient suffers symptoms that wax and wane, but never completely resolve, and as time goes on, gradually worsen. If symptoms are seen as an expression of self- healing, the approach to simply suppress a symptom amounts to suppressing the vital energy of the body. This type of treatment over time will inevitably lead to decreased health, and the need for more medicines to deal with a growing number of symptoms.

This is a brief (and perhaps overly simplistic) explanation of allopathic medical principles, but gets the point across. The suppression of symptoms is the main object of conventional medicine — and it is also its main limitation, in my opinion.

Symptoms as Signals of Deeper Disturbances in the Organism

In contrast, Dr Hahnemann did not equate a single symptom with a disease that had to be treated and suppressed in its expression. He saw the disease as a fundamental disturbance of the vitality of the organism which expressed itself in a variety of different symptoms. Hahnemann’s approach was unique. He looked at the totality of the symptom picture as defining the illness. He felt that only when a physician understood all the symptoms as a whole, would it be possible for a physician to prescribe treatment. For example, a patient may complain of abdominal bloating and discomfort after meals, feeling very hungry shortly after eating, bowel irregularity, weakness and lethargy in the late afternoon, and the patient may suffer from frequent colds and sinus infections, and headaches that involve mostly the right side; in addition, the patient has an usually strong craving for sweets and feels very intimidated by authority figures; but while at home, this same patient is very bossy. In a homeopathic evaluation, all these seemingly disparate symptoms and personality traits are considered to be the expression of a single disturbance deep within the organism. In a conventional medical approach to treatment, different medications would be prescribed to deal with each of these symptoms as though they were not related to one another. Dr Hahnemann’s intention was to discover a means to arouse the natural healing response of the body which would heal the underlying disturbance, and as a consequence of this healing process, all the symptoms would spontaneously disappear.

Understanding the Total Symptom Picture

The striking difference between homeopathy and conventional treatment is the idea of the individual “total symptom” picture. This is the basis of homeopathy. A disease-oriented (conventional) approach, which is aided by our modern specialization and sub-specialization approach to medicine today, often sees the dysfunction of different organs as different diseases, requiring different medications or operations. Furthermore, in conventional medicine, all diseases are treated similarly for all people. For example, all asthmatics treated conventionally will receive essentially the same medicines, no matter how much difference there may be in their individual symptoms. An asthmatic with gastric ulcers will be treated for two different diseases, asthma and gastric ulcers. An asthmatic whose primary symptom is coughing upon physical exertion will get the same bronchodilator as one who is awakened by wheezing early in the morning. They all have a diagnosis of asthma-- and that is what defines conventional medical treatment. The symptom differences between the asthmatic who coughs on exertion, the asthmatic who wheezes in the morning and the asthmatic with gastric ulcers are at the very heart of homeopathic prescriptions. In homeopathic treatment, each of these patients would receive a different remedy. The homeopathic practitioner takes in consideration all the symptoms which make a complete individual picture when prescribing a single homeopathic remedy or combination of remedies.

The Principle of Similars Explained
What Dr. Hahnemann essentially did was to experiment with the question, that if symptom-suppressing and opposite-acting medicines resulted in this very limited and undesirable effect, what would result if he used a medicine that acted similar to the action of the disease, if given in an appropriate dose? In the course of his meticulously conducted experiments, he discovered that if the symptom picture a medicine could elicit when given to a healthy person (experimentally) very closely or exactly matched the symptoms of a patient with a natural illness, the same medicine could cure that patient. This seems to defy common sense, but this Principle of Similars is the basis for homeopathic prescribing and has been confirmed by millions of successful prescriptions over the last 200+ years. The Principle of Similars is commonly summarized by the expression “like cures like”. Therefore, the principle of homeopathy is exactly contrary to the principle of opposites, on which conventional medicine is based.

How does a homeopathic treatment work?
The primary intention of homeopathic treatment is to arouse the natural capacity for healing that is an inherent part of every living creature. The remedies do not do the actual work of healing in the same way that conventional medicines bring about their effects. Conventional medicines are typically very narrowly focused in their action and bring about specific biochemical changes that result in a lessening of the targeted symptom. The medicine usually must be taken regularly to maintain this effect; otherwise, the symptoms may recur. Homeopathic remedies are usually given infrequently, since they function only to awaken a natural capacity to cure illness. This can result in a true healing of the underlying illness, even for chronic conditions of long duration.

Because the prescriptions are completely individualized based on the total symptom picture and not a specific disease, it is stressed that homeopathy does not treat any particular disease. No homeopath can say, “I have cured migraine headaches or hypertension or any other disease.” It can only be said that homeopathy treats patients, not diseases. If the prescription is correct, the particular illness in that patient is very likely to improve along with their general level of health. However, the prescription was not based on a particular diagnosis, it was based on the total symptom picture, ie the patient.

What are homeopathic remedies and how do they work?
Homeopathic remedies are a completely unique category of medicinal substances. Many people have the erroneous idea that they are equivalent to vitamins and herbs. This is not true. Homeopathic remedies were first developed by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann as a result of his quest to find a safe, effective method to arouse the natural healing power that each exists in every living organism.

Effective homeopathic remedies follow from understanding Hahnemann’s
concept of illness


It is fundamental to understanding the nature of a homeopathic remedy to keep in mind Hahnemann’s concept of illness. He saw illness as a disturbance in the vital energy that affects the organism simultaneously in different ways. A good analogy to this process is to consider an electrical circuit box in a house which receives intermittent current from the public utility company. This would affect every appliance in the house, each according to its nature and sensitivity to the faulty current. To make adjustments in the appliances would have obvious limitations; the real problem is with the improper electric current coming into the house at the junction box, and that is what has to be corrected. This same principle is central to traditional Chinese medicine, where chi or qi (vital energy) is not flowing properly. Chinese medicine treats improperly flowing chi with acupuncture and other means to restore health. Hahnemann’s dilemma in the 1700 and early 1800s, was to find treatment protocols to foster healing at a vital level.

Diluting and thereby potentizing the remedies

A logical argument would be that a solution with no detectable substance could have no action in the body but homeopathic remedies have demonstrated an amazing capacity to provoke healing for over two centuries. Commonly used dilutions at the present are the 6th, 12th, 30th, 200th, 1000th and 10,000th, though the higher dilutions are less commonly used. Hahnemann used Latin abbreviations for the tenth and hundredth potencies. Therefore, if the dilution was 1:9, he called it an “x” potency. If it was 1:99, he called it a “c” potency. These conventions are still used today: the potencies are called 6x, 12c, 30c, 200c, and so on. A 12c or higher potency contains no molecule of the original substance whatsoever and is called an “infinitesimal dilution”. Hahnemann found that the higher potencies had the ability to elicit a much deeper healing response.

Scientifically, how does potentizing work?

A logical argument would be that a solution with no detectable substance could have no action in the body but homeopathic remedies have demonstrated an amazing capacity to provoke healing for over two centuries. However, modern physics has shed light on this seeming contradiction. Scientists have discovered recently that fluids have the ability to be imprinted with the electromagnetic nature of whatever solute is put into them. All substances have their own characteristic electromagnetic nature. As the process of sequential dilution goes on, the “mother substance” becomes rapidly extinguished in a physical sense so its physical presence is undetectable, but its energetic nature is transferred intact to the next dilution. This energy is enhanced or deepened by successive dilutions and succussions (vigorous shakings). Therefore, the 30th dilution of such a preparation has no material presence of the original mother substance, but the energy of that substance has been considerably aroused. Homeopathic remedies are energetic (or vital) in nature, and have the capacity to arouse a strong healing response when accurately prescribed according to the Law of Similars. The discovery of this simple and deeply effective method of treating sick people is a testimony to Hahnemann’s genius.

Hahnemann’s human experiments and their progeny

To investigate how these medicines could be used clinically, Hahnemann devised a method called a “proving”. This involved giving a group of healthy volunteers a potentized remedy for a definite period of time and meticulously recording any changes in the subjects’ symptoms. A thorough proving may have elicited several hundred well-verified symptoms. Today, each remedy is indicated to be used clinically when the symptom picture of a patient with a natural illness matches the symptom picture which had been elicited in a proving. To properly prescribe homeopathic remedies, a clinician has to have both: (1) a detailed knowledge of the symptom pictures of the remedies and (2) knowledge of how to recognize these symptoms in patients. As experience has grown with the use of these remedies over the last two centuries, the number of symptom patterns that they cover has continuously expanded. Well known remedies are now used to treat as many as 20,000 symptom patterns.

What are the remedies made from?

The sources of homeopathic remedies include plants, minerals, animal constituents (like poisons from insects and reptiles); and preparations made from actual diseased tissue. While these may seem very unsavory or even dangerous, the process of multiple sequential dilutions renders them completely safe and non allergenic. To be sure, many conventional medicines also have unsavory sources, such as penicillin, which is made from the excrement of a fungus.

Are homeopathic remedies legal and federally regulated?
All homeopathic remedies are legally classified as drugs in the U.S. They have to be made according to the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States (HPUS), The FDA supervises all manufacture of homeopathic remedies in the U.S. Most are available as non-prescription items, though some require a prescription.

All homeopathic pharmacies must be state licensed and run by a licensed pharmacist. As there are only a handful of these pharmacies in the country, I am extremely fortunate to have access to King of Prussia’s Tx Options Pharmacy, run by John Borneman, a third generation homeopathic pharmacist who is also Chairman of The Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia. This ensures that I can provide my patients with a wide range of potencies in every remedy, as well as individualized custom potencies when required.

 

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