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! What I’ve done here in this article is reach back and pull out all the common mistakes I’ve seen people make in
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! What I’ve done here in this article is reach back and pull out all the common mistakes I’ve seen people make in the hopes that you won’t be one of them!
First comes the disclaimer: Homeopathy does not cure every case, any more than aspirin cures every headache or Tums cures every case of indigestion. All a homeopath can do is promise to do his or her best.
Why can homeopathy fail? There are many possibilities:
1. The remedy you need may may not have been discovered yet or may be under-utilized such that we are not aware that it does have an indication for a certain disease! It may take years for this fact to be known.
2. The patient is over-sensitive to homeopathic remedies and over-reacts to them in just the same way that people are over-sensitive to and over-react to drugs.
3. The client or patient is not aware of the differences between standard medicine and homeopathy and reports to the homeopath in the same manner he reports to the doctor, with the result being that the homeopath does not get the information that might have solved the case.
4. The patient is too embarrassed to tell the one thing that might have solved the case–like for example, that he has body odors, or unusual phobias and fears, or strange behaviors like checking over and over-checking to see if the oven is turned off or the door is locked, and so on.
5. The patient doesn’t give feedback in a timely manner.
6. The patient, trained by years of taking drugs, doesn’t recognize a positive response to a homeopathic remedy, discounts it, and doesn’t report it to the homeopath. Specifically, the patient will not recognize that the improvement homeopathy causes on the mental/emotional plane is a sign that the remedy is working, even though the physical aspect of the case may still be unchanged. He will tell the homeopath, “The remedy didn’t work” and the homeopath will believe him and change remedies when he really had the right one to begin with!
7. Patient gets discouraged when there’s no overnight cure and is pulled in the direction of other alternative therapies that show promise.
8. Patient presents with numerous diagnoses, plus drug side-effect issues, presenting a nightmare case to the homeopath, and doesn’t have the patience to wait while the whole thing is carefully unraveled.
9. Auto-immune disease can be very hard to cure in general; everything seems to make the patient with auto-immune disease worse, even carrot juice!
10. Patients are often unwilling to change their fast-food, sugar-laden diets or make the necessary life-style changes that would ensure a good outcome.
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The more our patients know about homeopathy the better our results become.
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 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 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!
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Elaine Lewis
