Frequently Asked Questions

-- Elaine Lewis, DHom

1. What Is Homeopathy?

It's probably best not to ask! No answer will satisfy you, certainly there's no answer that satisfies the critics! Why? Because there's nothing in our remedies, nothing, nothing at all! We claim that they're made of "energy", "energy vibrations" but there's no way to prove it! All we can tell you is that 200 years ago, Samuel Hahnemann, MD discovered (or perhaps rediscovered what Hippocrates already knew) that "likes are cured by likes", that what causes a disease can cure a disease in small doses.

Hahnemann's doses kept getting smaller and smaller until he noticed that the more diluted and shaken they became, the more "medicinal" they became. Why was he diluting his preparations--mostly herbal and mineral preparations--so extensively? Because they were toxic! If something can cause a sickness, it's obviously toxic! He didn't want to poison anybody, so he diluted and diluted, smaller and smaller, shaking or "succussing" with each dilution. What he wound up with was nothing short of magical! This must be some sort of natural law, he posited, "Like Cures Like" and "The minimum dose".

What's modern medicine most proud of? Vaccinations! Isn't that "Like Cures Like"? It's actually homeopathy: You can't get the disease because you already have the disease! But they haven't learned to minimize the dose the way Hahnemann thought to do, and so there are all these frightful side-effects associated with vaccinations--high fevers, convulsions--that they just don't know how to mitigate. We're way ahead of them! Plus which, we've had the foresight to extend this principle beyond just disease prevention! Why can't it be used for everything? If it's a principle of cure, why limit it?

Short answer: What is homeopathy--remedies, tiny sugar granules that melt on your tongue and energize your own immune system into action to cure whatever is wrong with you. What could be safer and more knowledgable about you than your own immune system? What could be more natural?

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.

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 more appropriate as it better 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; so, when beginning a chronic case, as soon as you see that the 9C, for example, is working, order the 12C and the 15C, and when you get to the 15C, order the 18 and the 21C. www.HahnemannLabs.com and www.HomeopathyWorks.com carry all these odd potencies. I'm sure other pharmacies carry them as well.

Always have the next potency ready!

You might ask, "If you're going to wind up eventually at the 200C, why not just start the case with that?" You can, but it may feel like you've been hit by a truck before you start to feel better. But if you think the patient is absolutely incapable of ordering all the potencies he's going to need or totally unlikely to stay in touch with you, you may have to prescribe a 200C, one dose, and cross your fingers.

But what's important to remember about the repetitions is this: Eventhough your homeopath may have given you a schedule to follow (30C three times a day for three days, for example), remember that this is 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 the patient!

Most people will do just what their homeopath tells them, even if it's not working, or even if it's making them worse!

This is a major plea to our patients and clients: Use common sense!

If the remedy isn't working, or just barely working, don't just sit there and suffer, take it more often! If you have to take it 10 times a day to pull yourself out of free-fall, then that's how often you need it! 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!

Once the 30C you're taking started working, you should have, right away, ordered the 200C in anticipation that the 30C might stop working at some point. Always have the next potency ready!

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 just as bad.

Not taking the remedy often enough to get the illness under control is just as bad as overdosing when all the symptoms are gone and there's nothing left to treat. You don't want to do either; which means you should be constantly re-evaluating and adjusting your remedy!

30C three times a day might have been perfect for the first three days of your treatment but maybe now you're feeling 80% better, so, now go to once a day and see if the improvement continues to move forward.

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 yourself--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 systems to work harder the way our parents used to nag us to do our homework--and not pushing too soft either. Either one is bad. 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 get worse; you're going to have to order the remedies and potencies you need so that they're there when you need them, and you're going to need an acute prescribing book and a home remedy kit so that you can handle whatever unexpected occurrence may arise; it could be anything from a bee sting to the flu. Don't you want to be reasonably 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.HomeopathyWorks.com. And, hey, I better mention the hpathy.com shopping mall!

Sometimes, getting aggressive simply means calling your homeopath and saying, "The remedy stopped working," rather than going to your follow-up appointment and saying, "The remedy stopped working three weeks ago." What? You let your case relapse and sat there for three weeks and did nothing because you were waiting for your next appointment? This is not good! 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 if they're continuing to take the same potency at this late date they're probably over-dosing or otherwise spoiling their case!

Here's another thing, when you do get in touch with your homeopath, it will be most helpful if you say, "Hi, this is Harriet. My remedy seems to have stopped working. I've been on Arsenicum 30C, twice a day, in water with 10 succussions before each dose for two weeks because of fear of going to sleep at night and waking every night at 1 AM and I initially got better and now I'm slipping backwards, what do you think I should do now?"

Often, what I get is, "Hi, this is Harriet. The remedy doesn't work anymore. What should I do? Thanks." I'm like, "Who's Harriet? Do I know a Harriet? What remedy is she talking about?" You may only have one homeopath but we have many clients and it can often be hard to remember each individual case without some reminders. Sure we have your file. Do you know how thick some of our files are? Should we have to read every file over again from the beginning every time we hear from someone? Sometimes that may be necessary, but most of the time it's sufficient to say what remedy and potency you're on and for what complaint, what the dosing schedule has been, what has happened since the remedy and and what should you do now.

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 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, friends, if you can't accept this advice from the founder of homeopathy himself, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (The Organon of Medicine, #247), then please see someone else, because I can't manage a case any other way, and here's why: Do you know how we antidote remedies? We repeat the exact same potency! You're looking to cause an antidote if you're in the habit of taking the dry pellets over and over again. This is also how we conduct a "proving" (testing a remedy to see what it will cause), taking the same potency over and over again--not such a great idea unless you're doing it on purpose.

Here's my famous story to illustrate this point. My friend Sarah's mother was in the hospital and she had just come out of surgery. Anesthesia may be a wonderful thing but it has a way of making you sick! Luckily there's homeopathy. Sarah gave her mother Nux vomica 30C after surgery and she recovered completely from the nausea that anesthesia typically causes. But Sarah was worried. "I have to leave and I don't know when I'll be back and what if my mother relapses? I better give her another dose before I go, just to be on the safe side!" Well, guess what? The second dose of Nux vomica antidoted the first one and the nausea came roaring back, and then Sarah didn't know what to do! This is what happens when you repeat the exact same potency while the original dose is still working.

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 antidoting 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 causing a debacle. If Sarah had known that she could have just dropped a pellet of Nux vomica 30C in water and given it to her mother, it would have worked again! It's all part of case-management.

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?

"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 chosen was correct. 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 improvement on the mental/emotional plane. We ask that you just wait and watch and keep in touch.

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 comes first. This is your body's idea, not mine. It's saying, "The worst thing that can happen to a person is for the mentals and the emotionals to be "off".

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, sicker, if you will, than he was before the antibiotic. This case is going in the wrong direction." We would give a remedy based on the symptoms of the infection and the mental symptoms and expect that the first thing to resolve would be the disturbance on the mental plane and we would also expect the local infection to come back. It will most likely stay only temporarily and then go away. If it stays too long, it can be represcribed for.

If the case has no mental symptoms, if there's no irritability, worry, anxiety, depression, stupor, confusion, irritability, etc., then we're going to be looking for the physical complaint to resolve after the remedy. 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 all right!" 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, 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 and occasionally 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 faster, 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 along the way.

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 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 Repertory is a book of symptoms--or "rubrics", as we call them--"headings", like, "Asthma" or "Sleep position, abdomen"; followed by all the remedies that fall under that rubric. If you find a remedy under "Asthma" that you think matches your case, look it up in the Materia Medica, which is a book of remedies, in alphabetical order, with all the information known about those remedies.

There are many repertories and many materia medicas, but most of the repertories are based on Kent's Repertory, which is the main work. Because Kent lived a century ago, other repertories that exist are attempts at modernizing his work. There are many materia medicas. Again, as we go forward, we learn more and more about each remedy, consequently, there is an incentive to constantly be updating and adding to the materia medicas already in existence. I just bought Murphy's Repertory, 3rd edition, and I couldn't live without it, as it's in alphabetical order, which makes finding what you're looking for so much easier and I also use Murphy's Materia Medica, The Homeopathic Remedy Guide, plus Roger Morrison's materia medica, The Desktop Guide to Keynotes and Confirmatory Symptoms, I wouldn't want to be without it. Beyond that, there are many, dozens more.)

If you've attained that relaxed, calm feeling and a strange symptom comes out, you're not sick; it's the treatment; but, think about it, is this something similar to what you had in the past? Because any illness you had that was suppressed with drugs may temporarily reappear after the right remedy is given in a case. In chronic prescribing, expect the possibility of muscle aches, joint pains, rashes, 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. Don't try to treat it with allopathic drugs! You don't want to repeat the same mistakes you've made your whole life that got you into this mess, like bringing down fevers artificially with aspirin and tylenol, suppressing symptoms with drugs that result in chronic disease, you don't want to go down that road again; order yourself a home remedy kit so that these troubles can be treated safely and naturally with homeopathy.

8. When my water/remedy bottle is practically down to empty, do I refill it and add more pellets?

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".

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 will keep mold from growing in it--a little wine, a little brandy or vodka will do.

11. What is meant by "30C", "200C", etc.?

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, I would think. 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.

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