1. What Is Homeopathy? It’s probably best not to ask because it makes absolutely no sense! Our remedies have nothing in them but a “ghost” of their former selves. We start with a substance that’s known for causing some kind of distress, like poison ivy. We mash it up and
1. What Is Homeopathy?
It’s probably best not to ask because it makes absolutely no sense! Our remedies have nothing in them but a “ghost” of their former selves. We start with a substance that’s known for causing some kind of distress, like poison ivy. We mash it up and add wine to it, then put a drop of that into 99 drops of water, shake, dump it out and add more water. We keep doing this over and over and over again–dumping out, adding water, shaking, dumping out, adding water, shaking…. until there’s “nothing” there! Then we give it for the very thing it used to cause!
Get it? Well, that’s the best I can do!
2. When should I repeat the remedy?
This is a really important question. Probably the easiest thing in the world to do is come up with the first remedy in a case, but then what do you do? What potency do you give it in, how often do you repeat it, when should you stop taking it, what do you do if it stops working?
The potency is dictated by the intensity of the complaint. Most acutes will respond to a 30C, and even just a single dose if you act quickly as soon as you realize you’re not well. A cold that’s been around for a week or more may require a 30C three times a day for up to three days before a decided improvement is felt.
Occasionally an acute is so intense that the right remedy in a 30C does absolutely nothing and a 200C is needed. In pneumonia, for example, a 10M (10,000 C) might be needed, as with a serious car accident, and the remedy may have to be repeated frequently. So you see, the potency and frequency of repetition should be appropriate to the degree of suffering!
For a chronic problem that’s not intense and has been around for a long time, starting with a 12C once or twice a day or a 9C twice a day is appropriate as it matches the plodding nature of the complaint. Keep in mind that this is just the starting potency, as it will surely have to be raised going forward; and we do that by “plussing the bottle”.
How do I plus my bottle?
Funny you should ask! Hopefully you originally put two or three 9C or 12C pellets in a bottle of water, right? Now, dump out the bottle! Refill half way with water, succuss (pound the bottle into your opposite palm) 40 times. Dump out, refill the bottle half way, succuss 40 times. Dump out, refill half way, succuss 40 times. There! You’ve just raised your 9C to a 12C or your 12C to a 15C. It should work again now.
What about repetitions?
Eventhough your homeopath may have given you a schedule to follow (30C three times a day for three days), remember that this is just a suggestion based on the average person or the average case, but for you it may be totally inappropriate! This means that, where appropriate:
Every prescription has to be adjusted by you, the patient!
Yes, that means you, you have to take responsibility for your progress!
This is a major plea to our patients and clients: Use common sense!
If the remedy worked in the beginning but isn’t working now, or just barely working, don’t just sit there, take it more often!
If at some point, even taking it 10 times a day no longer suffices, don’t say, “Well, I guess homeopathy doesn’t work….” raise the potency! Plus your bottle!
If you take a remedy and it causes an aggravation, stop taking it! Contact your homeopath and he or she will tell you how to antidote the aggravation if it’s really bothering you and you can’t wait it out.
Under-repeating and over-repeating the remedy are both to be avoided.
Not taking the remedy often enough to get the illness under control is just as bad as overdosing, you don’t want to do either; which means you should be constantly re-evaluating and adjusting your dosing options! If you’ve gotten a lot better, take less often.
30C three times a day might have been perfect for you in the beginning, but maybe now you’re feeling 80% better, so, go to once a day and see if the improvement continues to hold steady.
If you start relapsing, go back to the three times a day and after you’ve recovered, try cutting back to twice a day this time. What we expect is that eventually you’ll be down to once a day, then once every other day, and eventually stopping the remedy altogether. But there is no rule for this, you have to navigate this path–only you know how you feel.
We are always striving for the minimum dose.
We want to be applying only the force that’s necessary to stop the complaint, not pushing too hard, not nagging our immune system to work harder the way our parents used to nag us to do our homework (did that ever work?); in fact, “as needed” is an appropriate phrase for homeopathic treatment.
The homeopathic patient has a greater responsibility than the average medical patient. We expect you to be partners with us in managing your case, to use your judgement. We can’t always be there to know how you’re feeling. You have to stay on top of the case, you’re going to have to adjust your dosing according to how you feel–don’t allow your case to relapse! Get more aggressive with the dosing if you slide backwards; and you’re going to need an acute prescribing book and a home remedy kit so that you can handle whatever unexpected emergency may arise; it could be anything from a bee sting to the flu. Don’t you want to be self-sufficient in matters of acute-care? Acute prescribing books and home remedy kits are available at many places online, but two sites I like are: www.a2zHomeopathy.com and www.homeopathic.com.
Sometimes, getting aggressive can simply mean letting your homeopath know the remedy stopped working. In homeopathy we have an expression:
The treatment is like skating on thin ice–You have to keep moving or you’ll fall through!
3. How often should I see or be in touch with my homeopath?
Most homeopaths will tell you to come back in a month or six weeks. That may be fine for most practitioners, but it doesn’t suit me. I tell my clients to email or call me whenever there’s a change in the case for better or worse, I tell them that I need to stay on top of things, that remedies need to change, potencies need to change, some cases are so challenging, they change every day! I get so worried when a client is on a remedy and I don’t hear from them again for weeks or months! I know this can’t be good news!
Here’s another thing, when you do get in touch with your homeopath, don’t say, “Hi this is Joe! My remedy stopped working, what do I do now?”
Joe, no one remembers you!
Say, “Hi, this is Joe, you put me on Lycopodium 30C once a day with five succussions before each dose for gas and bloating three weeks ago, and I was doing great but now the remedy doesn’t seem to work anymore, what should I do?”
4. I don’t see why I have to put the remedy in water!
People hate it when I tell them to put the remedy in water, mainly because homeopathic remedies taste so good, they’re so sweet, they resent being told to let one or two pellets drop into a bottle of water–a sip being a dose. All you can taste is the water! It’s like I’m spoiling all the fun! Well, excuuuuuuse meeeeeee!!!!! How else are you going to manage your case? You can’t adjust a dry dose! All you can do is take the exact same, unsuccussed, unchanged dose over and over again. Do you know what this feels like to your body? Think for a moment about your morning shower! You get in. The water is nice and hot and envigorating! But that doesn’t last very long, does it! What felt hot and steamy a minute ago now only feels warm and less envigorating. Soon it feels tepid and annoying, and eventually, aggravating! And that’s how the body responds to repeated unsuccussed doses of the remedy–it stops responding favorably!
Now, if you put the remedy in a bottle of water, you can do something which will raise the potency ever-so-slightly which will mitigate against the aggravating effect, and that’s called “succussion”, which is a fancy way of “shaking”. You pound the bottle into your opposite palm 10 times, take a sip, and you can keep the case moving without instigating a calamity.
I’ll give you this: your first dose can be dry. It’s the one that comes after that that concerns me!
What do you do if your remedy stops working and you haven’t ordered your next potency? You can “plus” your bottle!
5. How do I “plus” my remedy bottle?
Didn’t I already answer that question? Never mind, I’ll explain it again! “Plussing” raises the potency. Pour out the water bottle that has your remedy in it, leaving just a tiny bit at the bottom. Refill half way with water. Succuss (pound the bottle into your opposite palm) 40 times. Dump the bottle out again, refill half way, succuss 40 times. Repeat this dumping out and refilling and succussing once more and you now have a potency three degrees higher and it may work now. If it’s still not strong enough, there’s no limit to the number of times you can plus your bottle until it’s finally strong enough to kick back in.
6. How should I feel after the remedy?
After a remedy, we generally look for one thing–has the person relaxed? Does the person feel calm, perhaps gotten sleepy? That’s the sign to us that the remedy was chosen correctly. The physical complaint may not go away immediately, might change, alter, do any number of things, but we have confidence that this instability on the physical plane will settle down if we’ve seen the all-important improvement on the mental/emotional plane!
Why would we see improvement on the mental/emotional plane first? Because when the body heals itself, it has a priority of importance: The mental/emotional plane is seen by the organism as paramount. It’s saying, “The worst thing that can happen to a person is for the mentals to be ‘off’, we’re fixing that first!”
When you take an antibiotic for an infection and the infection goes away but you get a “crazy feeling” in your head, or you feel depressed or unlike yourself, we would say, “This person is now worse off than before! This case is going the wrong way!” When we give a remedy, we expect that the first thing to resolve will be the disturbance on the mental plane and that the physical disorder will resolve last. We often hear the patient say, “My local complaint is still there, but, I don’t care, it doesn’t bother me anymore.” In short order, the physical complaint will leave too.
If the case has no mental symptoms, if there’s no irritability, worry, anxiety, depression, stupor, confusion, etc., then we’re going to be looking for the physical complaint to resolve right away. It may initially get worse if the potency selected was too high! This has only happened to me once and in a half an hour I felt better. I had taken Rhus tox. for a toothache and I said to myself, “Oh no, I think this remedy has made me worse!” Then I said, “Wait a minute! This could be an aggravation, and if that’s so, I’m going to be fine!” and that was exactly what happened.
If you’re taking a remedy for something that just happened, for example, eating spoiled food, you should see signs of the remedy working within 15 minutes. If there’s no sign of improvement, raise the potency or try another remedy. Keep trying until something works! Heaven knows, this happens to me all the time!
If you’re taking a remedy for a chronic complaint, you may or may not get immediate relief. In fact, you may have to wait up to two weeks or possibly longer before noticing an improvement. This is especially the case if you’ve taken a high potency. Lower potencies repeated often tend to show positive results sooner, like in less than a week or a few days. This doesn’t mean you’re cured! The remedy has to be continued, relapses will probably occur and the dosing will have to be adjusted and the potency raised along the way. Expect relapses to occur if you’re not staying on top of things!
7. If I get worse after a remedy, how do I know if it’s an aggravation or I’m actually coming down with something?
If it’s your exact complaint that’s gotten worse, that would be an aggravation, and probably a sign that the right remedy was chosen but in too high a potency and you’re going to feel better soon.
If it’s something else entirely, tell your homeopath or look it up under your remedy in the Materia Medica and see if your symptom matches a symptom the remedy is known for causing. If that’s the case, you may be “proving” the remedy. In that case, the remedy can be “zapped” (see below).
(What is the “Materia Medica”? We have two main books that we use in homeopathic practice: The Repertory, and the Materia Medica. The Materia Medica lists the remedies alphabetically and contains information on what each remedy is known to cause, and therefore, cure. The Repertory is a book of symptoms and the remedies that go with them.)
If you’ve attained that relaxed, calm feeling along with your post-remedy “occurrance”, it is probably not a real acute you’re having. It’s something the remedy is doing. Just ignore it, it will go away. If it doesn’t let your homeopath know. Any illness you had that was suppressed with drugs may temporarily reappear after the right remedy is given in a case. It will either go away or a homeopathic remedy can be prescribed for it. In chronic prescribing, expect the possibility of muscle aches, joint pains, rashes, discharging, etc. after a correct remedy. That’s because the disturbance is making it’s way out of your body starting with the mental-emotional plane, leaving the vital organs, making it’s way through the bones, the muscles and finally the skin, so don’t be alarmed, and don’t run and put cortisone cream on whatever it is and suppress it back to the mental plane or the vital organs. Just leave the rashes, etc. alone, they’ll go away. If it’s too much discomfort for you, however, contact your homeopath.
On the other hand, if you break out into symptoms after a remedy that have nothing to do with your complaint and they’re not old symptoms you once had, and there’s no improvement on the mental-emotional plane, then it’s probably an actual acute or even possibly a “proving” of the wrong remedy and either way your homeopath can find a remedy for it.
8. When my water/remedy bottle is practically down to empty, do I refill it and add more pellets?
No, no, no, a thousand times no, do not add more pellets! Just add more water and succuss (pound the bottle into your opposite palm) 40 times, that’s all you have to do. Don’t add more pellets, the pellets are a lower potency now than your water bottle, you’d be going backwards!
9. How do I zap an aggravation?
See article, “The Aggravation Zapper“. Here’s the Cliff Notes version:
1. Stand at the sink
2. Turn on the cold water full blast.
3. Fill up a medium-to-large disposable cup with water.
4. Drop in a pellet of the remedy that aggravated (if the remedy was in water, make it a drop or as close to a drop as possible and drop it in the cup). The pellet doesn’t have to melt.
5. Wait a couple of seconds, then dump the cup out.
6. Refill with water.
7. Dump out again.
8. Refill with water.
9. Dump out again.
10. Keep doing this.
11. Stop at the 12th cup and take a sip.
12. Wait an hour. It should work by then. It may work right away. While you’re waiting, read the actual article.
10. How do I store my remedy bottle?
Put your bottle in a dark place, like the refrigerator. We don’t want light to get in for an extended period of time. And if you expect to be taking the water for more than two weeks, adding alcohol, like brandy, will keep mold from growing in it.
11. What does this 6C, 30C stuff mean?
These are potencies. Even the drugs you take have potencies. You have 2.5 mg. of Valium–that’s a low potency, and you have 10mg. of Valium–that’s a high potency. In homeopathy, 30C is a medium potency. 6C would be a low potency and 200 and up would be high. The pharmacies generally sell the following potencies:
6C, 9C, 12C, 30C, 200C, 1M, 10M, 50M and CM.
Thank goodness, many pharmacies now are selling a lot of in-between potencies so that we don’t have to make big jumps when we need to go higher.
There are other potency scales too: The X/D scale and the LM/Q scale. They’re not as common as the C scale; so, if you have a question about them, ask your homeopath directly.
12. What are homeopathic remedies made of? How do you make them?
They can be made out of anything at all! There are remedies all around you! They’re all throughout your kitchen! You can make a remedy out of anything! The reason you would do that is because a certain thing had made you sick, like spoiled milk, for example. You’d simply make a remedy out of it. See #1 above.
13. I tried homeopathy and it doesn’t work.
I’ve noticed that no one ever says, “I tried Mainstream Medicine and it doesn’t work!” Probably no one’s ever said that because it’s a ridiculous thing to say. No one “tries” a whole system of medicine, people try a particular thing, like aspirin for a headache, and it doesn’t always work! You and I both know that. Well, in that context, dosing with a homeopathic remedy doesn’t always work. You have to get the right remedy! The wrong remedy is not going to work. That doesn’t mean homeopathy, as a system of medicine, doesn’t work. If there’s anything that I’m absolutely sure of, it’s that homeopathy works!
14. Now that I’m on a homeopathic remedy, can I continue with my junk food life-style?
No!
15. Now that I’m on a homeopathic remedy, can I keep taking my drugs?
No! Actually, yes, you have to; because I didn’t prescribe them, and I can’t stop them. Plus, most of them are addictive and stopping them without oversight can kill you! You have to wean yourself off of these things. All I can do is wish that you had never started them in the beginning, because they’re all toxic to the liver and kidneys, they do tons of damage, but even so, stopping them is so dangerous because of “rebound” that I can’t get involved with that. You’ll have to confer with your doctor.
16. Since I’m seeing you, do I have to keep seeing a doctor?
If you’re on drugs, yes! Plus, your doctor can continue to run diagnostic tests that will let us know how we’re doing.
17. Do I keep taking my constitutional remedy during an acute?
No! Especially if you see a clear picture for another remedy and especially if you see a change on the mental/emotional plane. For example, let’s say your homeopath has you on Phosphorus 12C once a day as your constitutional remedy. Suddenly you come down with the flu: you’re thirstless, lethargic, drowsy, dizzy, sleepy with muscle aches, chills and a headache. You’ve got a clear “Gelsemium” flu. Why should you be taking phosphorus? It just doesn’t make any sense! This is the value of having a home remedy kit and an acute prescribing book so you can handle these things! When the flu is over, if your chronic condition is still there, resume the constitutional remedy as before.
18. What Are the LM Potencies?
Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathy, wrote the 6th edition of The Organon to promote his newest discovery–the LM potencies: powerful, like the high potencies, but gentle and short-acting, like the low potencies–the best of both worlds, in other words, a perfect system, according to Hahnemann. Have they caught on? No; though more and more homeopaths are using them; still their use requires very specific instructions and most homeopaths are using them improperly.
The LM’s must be given in water. It is basically as I said above, about the remedies in water: the bottle is succussed before each dose in order to raise the potency ever so slightly to keep the case moving forward.
Aggravations can be better managed with the LM’s–not eliminated, but better managed. Their action dissipates sooner, so a mistake in prescribing is less of a crisis. Because their action dissipates sooner, they have to be repeated more often, perhaps daily. This allows you to better manage your case. You can stop your remedy, deal with an acute and then go back to it. You don’t have to worry about dental appointments and other “antidoting” influences because if your remedy is antidoted, you’re going to take it again anyway, so it’s only the last dose that was antidoted. If you took a 200C two weeks prior, a potency which is usually only supposed to be taken once, you’re constantly on the look-out for antidoting factors and trying to avoid them; it’s just not practical.
If you’re on an LM potency, you definitely have to stay in touch with your homeopath because when your LM/1 bottle finishes, you’ll be needing to go up to LM/2, then LM/3…it’s very methodical and the case has to be followed closely but these potencies are supposed to move your case along faster with less waiting and uncertainty than is sometimes the case with the C potencies.
19. What are the instructions for taking an LM?
1. You’ll need a bottle that holds four ounces of water, that would be half a cup. You can buy an eight ounce (the smallest) bottle of spring water, pour half out, and you’ll have a four ounce bottle of water known as your “Remedy Solution Bottle” (RSB for short).
2. Into this bottle, drop one pellet of your LM potency. Hint: tap the remedy bottle into a plastic spoon, jiggle the spoon until all the pellets fall off but one; then slide the single pellet into the water bottle. These pellets are tiny, I must warn you.
3. A teaspoon of the water now goes into a disposable cup containing four ounces of water. Stir and take a teaspoon from the cup as a dose. Throw the rest of the cup away. Put the water bottle in the refrigerator to keep it out of the light.
4. The next day, succuss (pound the bottle into your opposite palm) 5 times. Pour a teaspoon from the bottle into a disposable cup containing four ounces of water, stir with a plastic spoon, take a teaspoonful as a dose, put the bottle back into the refrigerator, and repeat this step tomorrow.
5. When you’re finished with the LM/1 water bottle, begin LM/2 the same way. Buy a new water bottle, new cup and new spoon for the new potency.
20. How Do I Know When To Stop Taking a Remedy?
1. You may experience a “proving” when there’s nothing more for a remedy to work on. A person taking Nat-mur., which is homeopathic salt, may find himself craving salt; a person taking Mercurius (Mercury) may start sweating or salivating. This is a sign for you to stop the remedy. Always report an aggravation or proving to your homeopath. He or she will look in the Materia Medica to see if, in fact, you’re proving it. If you are, usually just stopping it is sufficient to fix the problem. The way to stop proving an LM potency is to take one dose of the next potency. I learned this from Diane Fuller, DHom and I’ve tried it and it works! (Also, you can stop taking a remedy when you get well! But be prepared to start it again if you start to relapse.)
2. Return of “old symptoms”: An old rash comes back that you suppressed with cortisone cream, an old discharge comes back that you suppressed with antibiotics, and so on. If these phenomena coincide with an increase in energy or a positive inner feeling, stop the remedy as it has worked. The return of old symptoms should resolve quickly.
3. The Signs of Health. When you see the signs of health, stop the remedy (or take less often). The signs of health are:
- clarity of mind
- calmness
- improvement in energy
- able to adapt to change more easily
- feeling of well-being
- waking refreshed in the morning
- improvement in sleep
- improvement in appetite
4. Always be prepared to start the remedy again at the first sign of a relapse. If the remedy stops working, take more often. When that fails, raise the potency.
5. Stop the remedy if you’re getting worse. There are times when an aggravation is a sign that the right remedy has been given but in too high a potency and that an improvement is sure to follow. Even so, don’t keep taking the remedy under the circumstances, stop and wait.
6. If you’ve taken on a new remedy picture, stop the remedy: If you’ve developed a craving for food you’re not usually interested in, if your disposition has changed, if your body temperature has changed, if your thirst has changed, if your energy has changed…all this is an indication that you’re in a new remedy state. See question 17 also–”Do I Keep Taking My Constitutional Remedy During an Acute?”
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Here’s hoping the above information will help you to keep your case moving toward a successful conclusion!
Elaine Lewis
