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Myths & Facts about Homeopathy
Samuel Christian Frederic Hahnemann, the father of Homeopathy was born in 1755, at Meissen, Saxony in Germany. He established the fundamental principles of the science he named 'Homeopathy', from the Greek words for similar ('homeo'), and suffering ('pathos').
He is also considered the Father of Experimental Pharmacology because he was the first physician to prepare medicines in a specialized way; proving them on healthy human beings, to determine how the medicines acted to cure diseases.
Dr. Hahnemann embraced the law of cure known as "Similia Similibus Curentur", or "Like Cures Like".
Apart from the Law of Similar, Homeopathy has several other principles on which this therapeutic science is based.
The main diseases that can be treated with homeopathy are as follows:
Chronic headaches, migraines, vertigo, petit Mal, sinusitis, allergic rhinitis, bronchial and allergic asthma, gastritis, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, liver damage, hepatic fatty degeneration, inflammation of the gall bladder, duodenal ulcer, colonic irritation, spastic and ulcerative colitis, chronic conjunctivitis, otitis, juvenile acne, atopic dermatitis, neurodermatitis, triple neuralgia, intercostals neuralgia, herpes zoster, cervical syndrome, lumbago, lumber sciatica, myalgia, muscle fiber and tendon damage due to accidents, gynaecological conditions, mastitis, endometriosis, sterility, premenstrual syndrome, cystitis, urine incontinence, prostatitis, sperm abnormalities, phobias and anxiety neuroses, anaemia, ADD, etc.
*in such chronic conditions, if homeopathic treament starts in the very beginning of the problem, the possibility for a cure is almost in 90% of the cases under correct classical homeopathic treatment.
The list is very long and cannot be referred to for details since any one of the conditions named above may represent only one expression of a deeper pathology.
The types of conditions referred to below have a chance of reversal only if treatment is started during the very first stages.
Multiple sclerosis, grand Mal, acute psychotic episodes, psoriasis, collagen diseases, diabetes, endocarditis, Parkinson’s, benign myalgic encephalitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome.
Homeopathic treatments aim at working on the root cause of your problem in a natural, safe and toxin-free way. Homeopathic medicines are made of natural ingredients that include plants and minerals, manufactured and stored in a unique way. The consumption of the homeopathic medicine is also In order to preserve the benefits of the homeopathic medicine in its purest form for you; they are different.
Handle the medicine with care
While taking a homeopathic pill or tablet, handle them with care. Take the medicine directly, don’t touch to medicine. And, if the pills fall on the ground, discard them.
The best way to take homeopathic pills is to dissolve them under the tongue. Avoid eating, drinking or brushing your teeth for 15 minutes, before and after taking the homeopathic medicine. Avoid using a ‘fresh lift’ and mint flavored mouthwash or toothpaste.
For children, who may find this difficult to follow, spit or crush the pills on a dry, clean spoon and administer.
Dosage of homeopathic medicine
The usual dosage for adults and children is 3-6 pills. However, your homeopathic doctor, will tell you the exact dose you need to take, for an effective homeopathic treatment.
Preservation of homeopathic medicine
Did you know homeopathic medicines; can be preserved for very long time? However, the small containers, which are used to store the medicines, should be closed securely and stored in a cool and dark place, like a cupboard or a drawer.
What precautions should you take?
It is advisable to keep homeopathic medicines away from direct sunlight, strong odors, perfumes and ointments.
Make sure they are kept away from:
* Microwave ovens and electronic gadgets.
* Coffee powder, tea and drugs that have a high caffeine content.
* Camphor, mothballs, balms, ointments with cooling or heat effects,
* Lipsticks and perfumes Mint in toothpaste and chewing gum.
* Ethereal oils that include clove oil, eucalyptus, peppermint and menthol.
* Daily or prolonged exposure to strong-smelling substance, like paint, glue, and varnish
* Fresh garlic and onion.
A little more about your homeopathic medicine
The fundamental ingredients of homeopathic medicines are derived from over 5,000 different sources, mostly plants and minerals. Their active principles are extracted into various solutions, made more potent and dispensed by pouring them into small, highly porous and absorbent sugar pills (globules) for better taste. So while homeopathic medicines may look alike that is small sugar pills, their sources are completely different.
Myth: Homeopathy cures all diseases.
Fact: No system of medicine can cure all diseases.
Myth: Homeopathy is a placebo therapy.
Fact: Homeopathy is used successfully for more then 200 years in over 170 countries; supported by scientific studies. Homeopathy is a part of AYUSH, approved by Government of India. It is only critics way to say that homeopathy is a placebo.
Myth: Homeopathy increases the disease before curing.
Fact: Not really. Only some diseases such as eczema might worsen, that too in less than 5% of cases if medicines are not professionally prescribed. The whole idea of the increase of disease before the cure is exaggerated.
Myth: Homeopathic medicines contain steroids or cortisone!
Fact: Not at all. This myth is due to the white pills and powder given to patient. Those white pills and powder is made up of lactose and it is used as a medium/vehicle to give original liquid medicines (which are prepared from natural sources). Homeopathy medicines are totally natural and harmless and never contain steroids.
Myth: Homeopathy is very slow.
Fact: Homeopathic medicines and conventional medicines are very different from each other in term of preparation, mechanism of action and sphere of action. So it is not comparable. The time for recovery and cure of particular disease depends on the nature and pathology of disease, patient’s lifestyle, other factors affecting the disease and so. It works very quick in acute disease while in chronic and difficult diseases, it requires time accordingly.
Myth: Homeopathy is very fast!
Fact: It is not even very fast. It all depends on the nature of the disease that is under treatment.
Myth: Homeopathic medicines cannot be taken with conventional (allopathic) medicines.
Fact: Conventional medicines and homeopathic medicines can safely be taken together, with advantage, without any harm.
Myth: Investigations such as x-ray, blood tests, MRIs, etc. are not required for homeopathic treatment.
Fact: All sorts of investigations are required and useful for better and effective homeopathic treatment and to understand prognosis.
Myth: Diagnosis is not required for homeopathic treatment.
Fact: Diagnosis helps to define prognosis and also to make better prescriptions of homeopathic medicines.
Myth: Homeopathic medicines are prescribed only for the mental symptoms of the patient.
Fact: Not correct. Study of disease, diagnosis and mental attributes are studied in homeopathy. After detail case taking, mental, emotional and physical symptoms are taken into consideration for treatment.
Myth: Vitamins, iron-tonic, etc. should not be taken during homeopathic treatment.
Fact: Can be taken. Tonics and supplements are part of the homeopathic treatment!
Myth: Homeopathy is against surgery.
Fact: Not really. Surgery is a part of homeopathy. Interestingly, some of the surgical diseases (life piles, fissures, tonsillitis, etc.) can be cured without surgery.
What kind of diseases can Homeopathy cure?
Classical Homeopaths should be able to treat all acute diseases and also chronic degenerative conditions.
What are Homeopathic Remedies?
They are very diluted substances of usually natural elements from vegetable, mineral and animal kingdom. All Homeopathic Remedies are prepared in contemporary pharmaceutical industries in a special way which we call potentization.
How does a Homeopathic Remedy affect the organism?
It acts in such a way as to strengthen, to enhance the natural defenses of the organism.
Are the Homeopathic Remedies dangerous?
Because they are highly diluted they are not dangerous but still the wrong remedy can have some -though minor -side effects.
Are Homeopathic Remedies addictive?
Not at all.
Is it necessary to experience aggravated symptoms for the Remedies to be effective?
This is happening frequently but not always. The more the pathology of the case the greater the initial aggravation. Functional problems usually have minor aggravations that are not even perceptible.
How must the Homeopathic Remedies be stored?
In a dry place away from the sun and strong perfumes. Not in refrigerators.
How much do the Homeopathic Remedies cost compared to allopathic (chemical) drugs?
Much less.
How long does Homeopathic treatment last?
This is difficult to tell as immunity of patient differs from patient to patient and thus time of treatment but as a rule we can say that for every year of suffering it will take one month of treatment.
Should a patient continue Homeopathic treatment indefinitely?
No. Homeopath will decide once the effect has reached to promising level.
What happens if there is a problem during the course of the treatment?
This acute must be treated homeopathically as well if possible. Conventional drugs should be avoided as long as the patient's health is not in danger.
What is the effect of taking both Homeopathic Remedies and allopathic (chemical) medication?
This can be allowed in long term chronic condition of patients who already are taking allopathic medicines on regular basis otherwise patients should avoid taking allopathy drugs for acute and non emergency cases as taking such drugs can interfere or prolong the time of treatment.
Is it possible to combine Homeopathic treatment with other kinds of medical treatment?
Yes, with all free of drug treatments.
Is it possible for a patient to experience regression after a Homeopathic treatment?
Not because of a correct treatment. If the remedy is not correct the disease will surely progress.
This system is based mainly on the principle that the cure for a particular disease is achieved through the use of pharmaceutical substances that, when administered to a healthy person, produce the similar symptoms as those of the disease in question. For example, it is well known that Belladonna causes mydriasis , that is to say dilation of the pupil of the eye. In a case of mydriasis the homeopathic doctor will probably give Belladonna, in a highly diluted potency, in order to restore the pupil to its normal state. Another example is digitalis which, whereas it is used in conventional medicine to suppress episodes of paroxysmal ventricular tachycardia is, however, and precisely because of this action, made use of in homeopathy for the cure of bradycardia, with a weak pulse and a tendency to faint, irregular breathing, general exhaustion, anorexia, tendency to vomit, and vomiting that does not relieve sick feeling, sensitivity in the epigastrium., cold skin etc… this can be a symptomatology that fits not only with heart disease but with a chronic disturbance of the liver or an infectious hepatitis or an asthmatic crisis etc.
This principle was formulated by Hahnemann with the Latin motto ‘simila similibus curentur’. Similars are cured with similars. Hahnemann believed this to be one of the fundamental laws of cure. The idea had first been mentioned by Hippocrates, then by Paracelsus, and later by others.
And while conventional medicine believes that it must fight the disease bearing factor which it sees as the main cause for disease, homeopathy believes that it must strengthen the organism’s defence mechanism in order to be able to fight the imbalance.
In Homeopathy, proving of medicine is done on healthy human beings,
During proving, we introduce into the organism a substance sufficiently high in concentration to disturb the organism and mobilize its defense mechanism. The defense mechanism produces a spectrum of symptoms on all three levels (mental, emotional, and physical level) of the organism; this spectrum of symptoms then characterizes the peculiar and unique nature of substance.
In a similar way, we note down the symptoms of the patient, recording the peculiar way in which his organism reacted to the morbific stimulus on the dynamic plane.
Fortunately for the science of therapeutics, it happens that the symptoms pictures of remedies match quite accurately the symptom pictures of virtually all illnesses in existence, in all their variety. Today there are thousands of remedies which have been proved in this way and which cover the major part of all possible disturbances in the human being.
If the symptoms of a proving are recorded only on the physical level, the proving is still incomplete. It is for this reason that simple toxicology described in medical schools in insufficient. The symptoms have been recorded in too gross a form, without adequate individualizing information and they record almost exclusively actions on the physical level.
An important idea introduced by Hahnemann and which causes homeopathy to differ from conventional medicine is individualizing. He maintained that there are no diseases, but only patients, and therefore a treatment must aim at treating the individual rather than the disease.
Diseases are nothing but the activation and consequent manifestation of the existing predispositions in response to stress. The totality of the organism`s response under stress creates a pattern of symptomatology that is uniquely individual for that patient. According to this principle, there cannot be generalised treatment for a specefic type of disorder.
According to this idea, ten patients suffering from the same ‘disease’, for example epilepsy, will probably each require a separate pharmaceutical substance, unless the symptoms of two or three of them are identical down to the last detail, a rare but not impossible situation.
The defense mechanism is complex system inside our bodies, created to protect it from hostile effects, whether internal or external. The complex mechanism of the organism’s defence system was named ‘vital force’ by Hahnemann. This phrase expresses the idea that there is a form of ‘energy’ behind the defence mechanism, a ‘power with mind’ which directs and coordinates the organism’s reactions.
The logic behind this idea, according to homeopaths, lies in the understanding that symptoms are nothing more than the expressions of the human organism’s defense mechanism. For example, the body’s temperature increases – fever – in order to suppress the disease factor, bacteria, viruses, fungi etc., same stands for the edema, pain, chills, convulsions, anxiety, depression and in general any signs and symptoms are not the disease per se, but an expression of the unique way in which the individual1s defense system is trying to eradicate the disease.
Karl menninger in his book The Vital Balance writes,
"..... These phenomena are symptoms in the sense that they indicate that something is wrong and that help is needed.... At first this was rejected as utter nonsense; who on earth would wish to have a headache? who would want to be paralyzed? who would crae even minor discomforts and disabilities?
"....Mental illness is not an invasion but a defensive reaction."
"....Twenty years ago the late Robert Lindner put it brilliantly thus: ' It has been brought home to me ever more forcibly that the aggression, the hostility, the rejection of authority, the migratory tendencies, the impulsiveness, the destructive and blind lashing out of the psychopath- all of these are homeostatic adjustments operating to restore a dynamic equilibruim withing the personality.'
Therefore the organism needs support in its therapeutic efforts, rather than a suppression of the fever. Homeopaths believe that, by giving a remedy, which is capable of causing symptoms in a healthy individual that are identical to those present in the patient, they are in reality stimulating and providing support for the defense mechanism in its attempt to rid itself of the disease.
Homeopaths maintain that the true reason for disease is not infection by a disease element but rather the innate weakness of the defense mechanism and its inability to face up to the invasion and to neutralize it. By strengthening the defense mechanism, without killing the microbes, homeopaths believe that they can to a greater extent influence the return to health of the diseased organism.
MENNINGER K: The vital balance, The life process in mental health and illness, New york: viking press, 1975
GEORGE VITHOULKAS: New model of health and disease, berkley, 1991
GEORGE VITHOULKAS: Levels of Health, Alonissos, 2017