Diabetes Mellitus has always been an area of embarrassment for the homoeopathic physician. The topic is never discussed in public but every doctor silently advises the patient to continue his anti-diabetic pills side by side as advised by the allopathic physician.
I have been no different except that I kept track of blood sugar levels in my patients who came for treatment for other ailments, hoping for some response after prescribing constitutional medicines.
Over the years I have practised two or three different ways of arriving at the simillimum. Back in 1996-97 I used the approach then most prevalent i.e. taking physicals and mentals by directly asking the patient about himself and then repertorising. Then came Dr. Sankaran’s method of seeing disease as delusion.
After several years Sankaran came up with the sensation method. This was the first time I saw that although blood sugar levels remained unchanged, secondary effects of the DM (like various neuropathies, retinopathy, abscesses etc…) got reversed with the constitutional. One particular patient refused to start allopathy in spite of repeated requests.
Sometime in 2012-13 I had a chance to learn from Dr. Divya Chabra her current case taking method, which she calls “Leap to similimum”. I learnt in no time as I think it is simple advancement of Sankaran’s theory, where sensation level is elicited more efficiently. She had success with diabetes, and so when one of my relatives was diagnosed with diabetes, I asked for permission to experiment for a month. The baseline sugar level came to 200 fasting.
The presenting symptoms were
- Burning feet
- Nocturnal urination since 6 months
- Leucorrhoea
- Burning in eyes and in general
- Eruption on cheeks
- Dryness of skin- cracks in sole, roughness
- Ashen colour of skin
The remedy she resonated with was Glycyrrhiza glabra, also known popularly as liquorice. The remedy belongs to the family fabaceae. Since it was not available immediately, another remedy from the fabaceae family – Baptisia was given.
The response to the remedy was very good. In 15 days her fasting blood sugar remained at 120. All her symptoms also responded well. Unfortunately the response lasted only 8 months. Needless to say even the original remedy did not do the magic.
Now she was put on metformin which they started at ½ tablet twice per day, there was still poor control. That is when she restarted homoeopathy. This time I used pituitary as an intercurrent and she began to respond. Her doses were tapered to 1 ½ instead to 2. Finally I lost track of the patient.
In another instance two patients (mother and daughter) were diagnosed with DM while they were in my care for something else. The mother was an old patient of mine whose history was taken with the sensation method. She was given Selenium as a constitutional. With additional reportorial symptom analysis I came to Stannum met. The daughter, whose sugar levels were 150 fasting, responded in 7 days. The older lady had her fasting sugar at 450 and was first controlled with allopathy. As I gave her Stannum, her blood sugar levels shot up and were not coming under control for almost 3 weeks. I had to repeat insulinum several times and now her sugar levels have started coming below 100 most of the time. The next step was to taper off her allopathic doses. Her medicines have now been successfully tapered to half the dose.
Through a number of cases I am treating now, I have come to the conclusion that in cases where there is permanent damage to a vital organ, constitutional treatment alone is inadequate. Results are much better if they are complimented with sarcodes as an intercurrent.
In India, use of sarcodes is not uncommon as a specific for the disease. It is sold as an over the counter medicine. Yet it is not popular with doctors who wish to do genuine work as, if prescribed alone, it works more like allopathy. Therefore constitutional treatment is the key for a lasting cure.
Second and more importantly, is that the gland involved may be other than the pancreas, so some knowledge of endocrinology is good if we wish to prescribe a sarcode.
I have come to this after several failures before the first success. This is true not just for DM but for the entire range of endocrine disorders, whether associated with the thyroid, ovaries, pancreas or other organs. Since this is a whole topic in itself, it is better to deal with it in another paper. I would like to conclude by saying that a vast range of diseases can be dealt with which were once thought to be out of our league. We now know that homoeopathy has even more to offer the world.
Credible!
Great work.