From 0 to 100 Plus with Homeopathy in the Netherlands
Introduction
The Netherlands (Holland) where I live, is a small country in the north of Europe. There are about 16.6 million inhabitants, of which about 3 million are immigrants or children of immigrants. The regular health system is very high tech with half of the population using allopathic medication. In spite of that, number of chronic illnesses is high. Half of the 65-plus population have two or more chronic diseases. Of the juniors up to twelve years old, this number is also increasing to one out of five (20 percent). Forty percent of the people are overweight and ten percent seriously so. Almost 200 per 100 000 inhabitants die of cancer, which is among the highest numbers in Europe [01].
In the Netherlands and most other European countries, the ratio between young ones and seniors is changing in favour of the latter. After the roaring sixties and the introduction of the birth control pill, the birth rate went increasingly down. The post-war birth generation, who are now “seniors” [50 plus] soon will have their pensions, which will lead to a number of problems, among which is a shortage of working people and a shortage of pension funds. Our daily life will change drastically with increasingly more and seniors.
In the Netherlands we have a saying: “He who has youth has the future”. In a short time we will have to change that to “He who is a senior has the future.” It is obvious that this will have a huge impact on healthcare and therefore, also on the average homeopathic patient.
In this article I will discuss the following subjects in regard to seniors:
– the average patient of a Dutch homeopath [2]
– disease classification in theory [3]
– prevention [4]
– acute diseases [5]
– pseudo chronic diseases [6]
– iatrogenic diseases [7]
– chronic miasmatic diseases [8]
– some general advice for treatment [9].
- The average patient of a Dutch homeopath:
It is possible to distinguish three main groups of patients in the Netherlands:
Die hard followers of homeopathy, who were becoming an extinct race due to all the anti-homeopathy propaganda, but are growing since 2011 due to the excellent job of education and PR by the Dutch Homeopathic Organisation [the Stichting Hahnemann Homeopathy]
-Y Young parents with very young children. Most of the time the parents have had bad experiences with allopathic treatment and no longer want this kind of treatment for their children [02]
– Seniors who have had years of unsuccessful allopathic treatment. The result of those treatments is degraded health, combined with use of multiple allopathic medicines and an increasing number of side effects.
If you wonder where the rest of the youngsters are, I can only state that most of the high school youngsters do not have a clue what the word “homeopathy” means, nor what it is all about. In my opinion we were wrong to assume that homeopathy will speak for itself and gain followers by itself, which was quite naive to say the least.
- Disease classification in theory
To make a useful distinction I use Samuel Hahnemann’s [1755-1843] disease classification. This is the first scientific system to classify the different diseases by origin and disease influences. This distinction is very helpful not only in analysing the case, but also in making your plan of treatment. To understand Hahnemann’s brilliant ideas on classifying diseases, you must keep in mind that he wrote the theoretical part in “Organon of Medicine” and most of the practical part in “Chronic diseases.”
In the Organon the paragraphs 4 and 72 to 82 are on prevention and disease classification.
- Prevention
Par. 4 Organon:
“He is, likewise, a preserver of health if he knows the things that derange health and cause disease, and how to remove them from persons in health.”
We homeopaths are, or should be, “preservers of health”. This means that we should have extensive knowledge of all aspects that “derange health”. In my opinion this is less the case then is desirable. Most homeopathic education does not stress aspects other than just homeopathy. This is a shame when we consider the Organon the basis of our action. It is all the more a shame because it is impossible to be a proper homeopath, if you ignore all the things that derange health and you are not aware of all influences that cause disease.
If you are a true Hahnemannian, than you should follow the disease classification system as founded by the great master. It is not only an unprecedented theoretical system, but also complete with practical tools. You have to study both the Organon and Chronic Diseases intensively because, although Hahnemann was a genius, it is not always easy to understand what he meant.
In the Organon you will find his explanation of the theoretical part of disease classification in paragraphs 72 up to 82. For this I used the English translation of Robin Murphy from “Commentary on Organon of medicine 6th edition”, 2004.
A simple guideline to this is the following scheme for disease classification:
| Acute diseases | Chronic diseases |
| Individual [73]:
– Harmful incident – Acutes of a latent chronic miasmatic disease [see & 78-82]. |
Iatrogenic [74, 75, 76]:
caused by allopathic maltreatment. |
| Collective [73]:
epidemics, infectious diseases [acute miasmatic conditions] . |
Pseudo chronic [77]:
caused by lifestyle [avoidable noxious influences, bad habits, unhealthy housing or living].
|
|
|
Miasmatic [78, 79, 80, 81, 82]:
caused by inherited diseases of psoric, sycotic and/or syphilitic miasms. |
I will discuss this in relation to seniors.
- Pseudo chronic diseases
Par. 77 Organon:
“Those diseases are inappropriately named chronic which persons incur who:
-expose themselves continually to avoidable noxious influences; -are in the habit of indulging in injurious liquors or foods.
-are addicted to dissipation of many kinds which undermine the health,
-undergo prolonged abstinence from things that are necessary for the support of life;
-reside in unhealthy localities, especially marshy districts;
-are housed in cellars or other confined dwellings;
-are deprived of exercise or open air;
-ruin their health by overexertion of body and mind;
-live in a constant state of worry, etc.
These states of ill-health, which persons bring upon themselves, disappear spontaneously, provided no chronic miasm lurks in the body, under an improved mode of living and they cannot be called chronic diseases.”
In spite of the anti-aging cult, growing old is an inevitable process which nobody can escape. Dr. C. Moerman, a famous Dutch doctor, who invented an anti cancer diet, says in his book “Cancer Can Cure” the following:
“On a vertical line health is balancing between the upper pole, called vitality, and the lower pole, called mortality. As long as our vitality can stay in control mortality is suppressed.”
The question however is: Is health a continuing battle between vitality and mortality, because eventually, in spite of a good health, we all grow old and die. In other words: mortality will always win.
What happens when we grow old and what causes it? The intensity and strength of different functions declines gradually when we grow old. Muscles become less powerful and stiffer, bones more vulnerable and our mind less accurate. At first sight this looks like an inevitable natural disaster. But with all kinds of tricks you can slow down this process a lot. For example, by simply go for a run several times a week for about one half or one hour, walking daily for one hour, or other sports activity, the (physiological) age of your heart can be decreased by 5 to 10 years, and bones can remain at their strength and muscles can be kept in shape.
The natural necessity for body activity is there because:
– joints are only greased by movement;
– muscles only become stronger by regular exercise;
– bones only become stronger by regular loaded movement;
– brains keep functioning by using them regularly.
For a human being nothing is so destructive after retirement as sitting at the window. In short, staying active both physically and mentally is the cheapest form of preventive health care.
Let me be clear at once: THE recipe against getting older does not exist, not even in homeopathy. Although, one homeopathic principle can be considered as a main strategy: “Action results in reaction.” This principle can produce good results in prevention, because the opposite – no action gives no reaction – is exactly the result of low activity. No action [inactivity] does not help the natural regeneration process to stimulate the cells that form our muscles and bones and to speed up the building process to a healthy state. It still is a persistent misunderstanding that our body is deteriorated by physical and mental exercise. The opposite is true: being active strengthens both our physical and mental functions. It is important to distinguish primary and secondary reactions. If I run for an hour the primary result is exhaustion, but in the long term I gain strength ( physically a stronger body, mentally a stronger mind) . This proves once again that body and mind are a unity. From several studies it become clears that running is a better anti-depressant than anti-depressant medication.
A recently published study by American Dan Buettner, in which he visited several countries all over the world, gives us insight about a number of conditions for growing old but healthy and happy.[03] A great number of the people visited by Dan became at least a hundred years old. According to Buettner the following rules are essential to live long and happily:
– Keep moving: take the stairs, not the elevator; take your bike instead of your car; do garden jobs by hand, not by machine;
– Exercise with pleasure: do not go to a gym if you do not like that; try to be active the whole day by walking, cycling, sports, etc.
– Eat moderately:
– Take only one time, eat slowly, eat most of your food in the morning; – Eat less meat and more vegetables and fruit; eat meat twice a week; eat a lot of fruits, beans and nuts; drink one glass of wine a day; buy or grow your own eco-biological fruits and vegetables, because they contain more vitamins and minerals than supermarket food;
– Find a goal in your life: formulate your own goal, which really interests you, for which you get up early;
– Ban stress in your life: watch TV and internet at a minimum, it distracts you from real life;
– Religion: Spiritual and religious activity adds quality years to your life.
– Have respect for your family and friends; cCherish your friends and chose friends who share your lifestyle, while removing negative contacts.
– The study reveals that the people who live to 100 + especially have the above mentioned characteristics in common.
I would add to this the following. There is another aspect in life that gives you a lot of positive energy and quality years: domestic animals. Studies have shown that close contact with animals increases the number of oxytocin hormones. [04]
Lack of this hormone makes you increasingly distrusted. But when you caress your pet, the number of oxytocins is doubled, both in you and in your pet. Also the concentration level in children with ADHD is increased and these children become more communicative. It is also known that animals can have a positive influence on people who are ill. Do we not all have need of being caressed now and then?
Finally, I mention the increasing effect of the environment on our bodies; environmental pollution [by cars, industry, boats, aeroplanes, etc] or electro magnetic influences [by cell phones, indoor wireless equipment, etc]. We should be most concerned about these non-manageable influences, because this is a pseudo chronic component that we cannot influence anymore.
- Iatrogenic disease
Par. 74 Organon:
“Among chronic diseases we must still reckon those so commonly met with, artificially produced in allopathic treatment by the prolonged use of violent heroic medicines in large and increasing doses, by the abuse of…Whereby the vital energy is sometimes weakened to an unmerciful extent, sometimes , if it do not succumb, gradually abnormally deranged (by each substance in a peculiar manner) in such a way that, in order to maintain life against these inimical and destructive attacks, it must produce a revolution in the organism, and either deprive some part of its irritability and sensibility, or exalt these to an excessive degree, cause dilatation or contraction, relaxation or induration or even total destruction of certain parts, and develop faulty organic alterations here and there in the interior and exterior [cripple the body internally or externally], in order to preserve the organism from complete destruction of life by the ever-renewed, hostile assaults of such destructive forces.”
- Allopathic medication
As age is climbing the number of iatrogenic diseases caused by allopathic medication, does the same. At the moment, death by iatrogenic causes is the third cause of death in the USA. This is equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing with 280 passengers every day. If so, you would certainly refuse to fly again. Death by hospital mistakes is calculated at 120,000 a year, according to Dr. Leape of the Harvard University. In the USA deadly drug reactions are estimated at another 100,000 a year. Drug and medical errors kill one of five Australians. [05]
Hospitals in Holland have developed a check list for surgery. They did this not in 1960, when it was already standard for your car, but in 2010 !
Most of the seniors visiting a homeopath are doing so for the first time. In practice this implies that most of them have had a series of allopathic treatments, combined with lots of allopathic medication. It is not uncommon that ten or more allopathic drugs was given to them. Sometimes you are confronted with the so called allopathic medicine syndrome. This occurs when the patient has started with a second and eventually a third, fourth, fifth etc. medicine against the side effects of the first, second, third, fourth etc. This syndrome is also known as iatrogenic disease, and is more difficult to treat, like a knot of string which you cannot pull out again. Mostly I then ask the question whether the patient feels better after all this medication, but of course this is a rhetorical one.
Be aware that most patients come to you with the delusion that you can heal them within a month, so try to be clear about this right from the beginning. Apart from this medication syndrome, curing seniors is more difficult because -T their immune system has lowered in efficiency or a chronic disease has lowered their vitality even more. Usually the picture of the disease is very complicated. Here disease classification can be helpful. Try to indicate which symptoms are caused by iatrogenic components; which symptoms are of chronic miasmatic disease [s] and which are pseudo chronic diseases, caused by the patient’s lifestyle. It starts with unravelling the medication syndrome: which symptom is caused by the chronic disease and which by the syndrome ?
- Vaccination
Although not scientifically proved, there is evidence that vaccination suppresses acute infections and produces chronic diseases instead. [06] Recently, in the Netherlands, the RIVM [National Institute for Health and Environment] stated that the flu vaccination that is given yearly to people above 60, does not help. [07] This was not completely a surprise, because in the USA there was already evidence that the flu vaccination did not work very well for people 60 years and older.[08] Vaccination of older people usually is restricted to anti flu vaccination. Several studies have revealed that the efficacy of these vaccinations is very limited.
Above the age of 65 the average effectiveness of anti flu vaccination is 40 to 50 percent, decreasing to a mere 15 to 30 percent above age 70. It is not evident what causes this lowering effectiveness. One suggestion that a general lowering of the immune system is most likely. Despite the anti flu vaccination, the mortality between the age of 50 to 64 is ten times that of younger people. Over 65 the mortality increases by another 10 times.
- Acute diseases
Par. 73 Organon:
“As regards acute diseases, they are either of such a kind as attack human beings individually, the exciting cause being injuries or influences to which they were particularly exposed [excesses in or lack of food, severe physical impressions, chills, overheating, strains, etc. or physical irritations, mental emotions]. In reality however they are generally only a transient explosion of latent psora……. Or they are of such a kind as attack several persons at the same time, here and there [sporadically], by means of meteoric or telluric influences and injurious agents, the susceptibility for being morbidly affected by which is possessed by only a few persons at a time. Allied to these are those diseases in which many persons are attacked with very similar sufferings from the same cause [epidemically]; these diseases generally become infectious…The calamities of war, inundations and famine are not infrequently their exciting causes and producers. Sometimes they are peculiar acute miasms which recur in the same manner, which either attack persons but once in a lifetime [small pox, measles, etc.] or such as recur frequently in pretty much the same manner [the plague, yellow fever, etc.]. “
After having discussed the iatrogenic component of senior diseases it will be obvious that it is also a keyword in acute diseases.
Another problem is the hostile environment in hospitals. Most European hospitals are infected with super-bacteria (MRSA’s), which are already a threat to healthy young people, let alone to seniors who are ill. As a consequence we see many seniors die in a hospital because of a lung infection caused by these bacteria.
Another booby trap is food poisoning. Many seniors doe not keep in mind the basic rules for general and kitchen hygiene.
- Chronic miasmatic diseases
Par. 78 Organon:
“The true natural chronic diseases are those that arise from a chronic miasm, which when left to themselves, and unchecked by the employment of those remedies that are specific for them, always go on increasing and growing worse, notwithstanding the best mental and corporeal regimen, and torment the patient to the end of his life with ever aggravated sufferings………….”
Par. 79 Organon:
“Hitherto syphilis alone has been to some extent known as such a chronic miasmatic disease, which when uncured ceases only with the termination of life. Sycosis, equally ineradicable by the vital force without proper medicinal treatment was not recognized as a chronic miasmatic disease……………”
Par. 80 Organon:
“ Incalculably greater and more important than the two chronic miasms just named, however, is the chronic miasm of psora………………”
As mentioned before, chronic diseases in seniors are a major problem. Earlier I mentioned the importance of the iatrogenic background as an important cause of all diseases. Now I will highlight the aspects of miasmatic orientated diseases, diseases which are inherited.
Hahnemann divided the miasmatic diseases into psoric, syphilitic and sycotic. Psora presents the oldest and most deeply seated chronic diseases, caused by skin contact, but when infected it can disorganize even your mind. Until recently it was common sense that Columbus and his crew brought syphilis back home from their world tour on which they discovered the USA. However in 2010 archeologists in Great Britain discovered that bones from the 15th century found in Britain already showed signs of syphilis. It is my opinion that it is most probably the ancient Romans, with their sexual liberty who brought syphilis to Britain.
This gives you an indication of how old the syphilic miasm is and how deep it is seated in the DNA. The syphitic miasm is characterized by its destructive aspects. The third miasm is known as sycosis, starting with an untreated gonorrhoea. Its characteristics are diseases with an overproduction of pus, mucus, etc.
It is known that combinations of these three basic miasms are quite common. So, psoric-syphilitic, psoric-sycotic, sycotic-syphilitic and psoric-syphilitic-sycotic are four more miasms that can produce their typical diseases.
- Some general advice for treatment:
Apart from the specific advice which is discussed above I’d like to make some general remarks on treating seniors with homeopathy. What we can keep in mind is that the homeopathic treatment of chronic diseases in most cases is a long term effort . In seniors this is especially the case because we have to deal with:
– lowered vital force;
– lowered immune system;
– longer period for regaining health;
– growing numbers of chronic diseases.
This implies first of all, that you have to inform your senior patients of these facts, which leads to the conclusion that the healing process with homeopathy will take a considerable amount of time in complicated chronic diseases.
Though this looks a bit strange, keep in mind that if you don’t inform the seniors, you will certainly lose a lot of patients because they’re expecting that homeopathy will miraculously solve their problems in no time.
Copyright: Cor van der Meij, 2010
01: CBS, Central Bureau of Statistics, Holland, 2009
02: The word “allopathy” was for the first time used by Hahnemann and is the
opposite of “homeopathy”, with which Hahnemann distinguished homeopathy
from regular medicine. So “Allopathic medication” is the same as regular
medication.
03: Dan Buetnner “The secrets of a longer life”
04: Int. Congress on human-animal relation , Stockholm, 2010
05: dr. Grisanti, www.americanchiropractic.net
06: David Hamilton “Small doses for small animals”, 2000
07: Zembla, 2010
08: Vu, T., Farish, S., Jenkins, M., & Kelly, H. A meta-analysis of effectiveness of
influenza vaccine in persons aged 65 years and over, 2002
