Homoeopathy

 

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Here is some information about homoeopathy in general.  Click on a bullet point for more information.

For more details about my clinic and the way consultations work, click on the treatment page.

What is Homoeopathy?

Homoeopathy is a complete and effective system of natural medicine.  It treats any illness, disease, injury, emotional or mental health imbalance in a gentle and long lasting manner.  Homoeopathy goes to the very root of any disturbance, rebalancing the individual on a mental, emotional and physical level, restoring health and ridding the body and mind of uncomfortable symptoms.

As a patient you will usually experience homoeopathic medicines as small, pleasantly sweet tasting pills or a tasteless liquid.  These can be taken several times a day to once every few months, depending on the nature of your symptoms and the strength of dose prescribed.

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How does Homoeopathy work?

Homoeopathy is based on the main principle of 'like cures like'.  This means that a remedy is selected by the way it matches a patient's particular physical symptoms, as well as mental, emotional and other symptoms such as preferences for temperature and foods.

A good example for this is the common onion.  We all know that if we spend some time cutting up a strong onion we develop 'symptoms'.  These include running and sore eyes, maybe a watery running nose.  A homoeopathic remedy made from onion will cure someone with symptoms of runny and sore eyes and a watery, runny nose.  In this case the principle of 'like cures like' can be used to cure a patient with hayfever who experiences these symptoms.  See the section on how remedies are made for more details.

Exactly how homoeopathy works is not yet known.  Homoeopaths know that each remedy matches the patient's symptoms by being selected on the basis of 'like cures like', and this tiny dose of the most-like or 'similar' remedy acts to stimulate the body's own healing system into curing itself.  Science has not yet found a way of measuring how this works, although many studies have shown that it does work even if we don't know how!  The world was flat, and the sun moved around the earth, until people developed a way of measuring and understanding that these notions were incorrect.  We just have to wait for science to catch up to show us once and for all the mechanism.  Until that time, studies demonstrating its effectiveness, and the many, many stories of successfully treated patients - whether children, adults or animals - will just have to suffice.

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Homoeopathy is individual

A homoeopathic medicine is selected for each individual according to the unique symptoms they experience.  For example, two different patients with eczema require different medicines.  If one has eczema that is dry and flaky and worse in heat the remedy needed would be different from a patient with eczema that weeps and bleeds and is worse at night.

Each patient needs only one carefully selected remedy at a time to cure their symptoms - no matter how many symptoms they want treated.  This means that a patient with eczema, migraines and hayfever will need just one remedy to treat all 3 'illnesses', which is very different to the approach of normal medicine administered by doctors.  It is sometimes hard to believe that one tiny pill can make such a powerful improvement in someone's health on so many levels at once - just see some of the case studies to find out more. 

In order to find the right remedy for a patient it is important that lots of details about symptoms are investigated, along with background information.  An inaccurately prescribed remedy is unlikely to make any difference to the patient's symptoms (which is why over the counter remedies often don't work as they are not selected accurately enough).

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How was Homoeopathy discovered?

Homoeopathy was discovered by a German doctor, Dr Samuel Hahnemann, in 1796.  It was not an entirely new idea though - Hippocrates 5000 years earlier had already stated that there are two forms of medicine - one based on opposites known as 'allopathy', and one based on similars known as 'homoeopathy'.  However, Dr Hahnemann was the first to rigorously test and trial homoeopathic medicines, and to teach others his scientific findings.

The story goes like this...

One day, in Germany in 1796, Dr Samuel Hahnemann was sitting in his study reading a paper someone else had written about the treatment of malaria.  This author had discovered that the bark from a Peruvian tree, cinchona, cured patients with malaria.  In an effort to describe how this worked the author wrote at length about the fact that the bark tasted bitter, and concluded that the bitterness of the bark was the reason that this substance could cure his patients.

Samuel Hahnemann was not satisfied with this explanation, as there was no evidence to substantiate it.

What Dr Hahnemann did next was one of the most important discoveries in modern medicine!

Samuel Hahnemann decided to taste the bark himself.  A very short while after he did so he developed all the symptoms of malaria - although he realized it was not actually malaria, but it was similar to malaria and was in fact cinchona bark poisoning.  This led him to develop the idea that a similar (like) substance can cure a similar illness.  After testing this out on patients with malaria, he put two and two together, and came up with the principle of 'like cures like'.  There was initially a downside - there were often side effects of taking such medication.  However, obviously not wanting to poison his patients he spent many years devising a way of diluting the medicinal substance and treating it in such a way that it retained its power to cure (see section below for more details on how remedies are made).  After trials of many, many patients and gathering many followers who were also doctors who helped him with more widespread tests, he was able to show through his research that homoeopathy was a safe, gentle and effective medicine.

Over the years Samuel Hahnemann and his followers made new medicines, which were all tested and researched on themselves and their patients, and discovered cures for most of the diseases and imbalances that affect society today.

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How are remedies made?

Remedies are made from a wide range of natural substances, including plant, mineral, animal and gases.  Examples of each include allium cepa (plant - red onion), natrum muriaticum (mineral - salt), sepia (animal - cuttlefish ink) and ozone (gas).  As homoeopathy was discovered in the 18th Century when the fashion was to use latin to label medicines, most remedies still go by their latin names.

The substance that is to be made into a remedy, for example red onion, is selected and a small amount of this is diluted in a mixture of alcohol and water to form a concentrated mixture.  One drop of this 'mother tincture' is taken and added to a separate mixture of pure water and alcohol, the amount varying according to the strength of the medicine required.  A particular process called 'succussion' takes place, where the mixture is vigorously shaken which has the effect of strengthening the power of the medicine (it is believed that this affects the arrangement of water molecules and how the hydrogen and oxygen atoms cluster together).  A common ratio is 1:99, i.e. one drop of tincture to 99 drops of water/alcohol mix.  This 1:99 or 100 drop mix is known as a 'centessimal' ratio - most remedies homoeopaths use and that are sold over the counter are centessimals, abbreviated to the letter 'c' i.e. 6c or 30c potency.

The next stage is repeated as often as is needed to reach the right dilution of the remedy.  One drop is taken from this first centessimal mix and added to another 99 drops of pure alcohol and water, which is also succussed or shaken.  This is the second centessimal mix and is '2c' in potency.  Repeating this measure 6 times creates a 6c remedy, or 30 times creates a 30c remedy. 

Strange as it may seem, the more diluted a remedy it is, the stronger it is!  Hence a 200c is stronger than a 6c and for this reason is not commonly sold over the counter.  This is to do with the succussion (shaking) process which is where the remedy gets its strength from.

Once the remedy is made to the correct strength it is added to pills or powder usually made from milk sugar (sac lac).  These can be varying sizes, but the same amount of the remedy is added to each - so the size of the pill makes very little difference to the effectiveness of the homoeopathic medicine.  The medicine is tasteless itself, but tablets usually taste pleasantly sweet owing to the milk sugar they are made from.  Some remedies are prepared in a liquid form, usually prescribed by homoeopaths for a particular reason.  These are also tasteless.

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