Tips On Managing Your Case
Good evening, Elaine. I ordered Causticum 6C on the day that I saw your email. I wanted to wait a little before trying something else, but I am excited to try this one and I do not want to wait.
I wanted to say again thank you for looking at all my info and spending time looking for another remedy for me. I appreciate it!
I do have a few questions that I need to ask now that I have decided to try a new remedy soon.
1) My first question is a dumb question from someone who knows very little about homeopathy (me). If someone takes a remedy for an acute condition in a 30C potency and then tries to take the same remedy for a chronic condition and would like to begin in a lower potency (like a 6C), will this affect the effectiveness of the remedy? I have read a few times that, if you are treating a chronic condition, you should only increase the potency as you go along and never decrease it.
Hi “Mabel”. So let’s say someone took Causticum 30C for a cough, and it turned out quite by accident that Causticum was also the person’s constitutional remedy! That person would probably be showing signs that he’s feeling better in general–more energy, better appetite, better sleep, etc.
So, my teacher, Robin Murphy, has often commented on this. He’s said, “When you think you’ve accidentally found someone’s constitutional remedy through acute prescribing, drop down and start him on 6C three times a day.”
I think you would first have to wait until the 30C you gave for the acute had stopped acting. And then, I would have to wonder, if the 30C worked so well, why can’t we just repeat the 30C? I think either one of those options would be acceptable. But I wouldn’t see any value in giving a 6C if the 30C was still working! As a matter of fact, it could conceivably act as an antidote! Because one way to antidote a high or medium potency is to give the same remedy in a 6C, one dose.
2) Can I take Cuprum metallicum or Lycopodium with Causticum – once I have an idea of how I will react to the latter?
If it turns out that Causticum really is your remedy, and is doing positive things for you like giving you more energy, lifting your spirits, helping you to sleep better, etc., I can’t imagine why you would need or want to take another remedy unless you had an acute, like when you needed Arsenicum that time for food poisoning. But if you’re taking Causticum because it matches your chronic case, and it’s working, I would think any additional remedy would just confuse the case. It would be a muddle, we wouldn’t know what was working for what.
These are the first 2 remedies that I wanted to experiment with again. If I stay with Causticum for some time, I was just curious to see if at some point, I could take more than one remedy.
I would say yes if there was some reason for it. If Causticum is the correct remedy for you, I doubt that you will feel the need to experiment with other remedies. That’s something you do when nothing is working.
3) I have not read your articles a second time and I will not be able to do this before the month of December. I remember you saying that if you start a remedy at 6C, you can take it three times a day. But you decrease the number of doses as you increase the potency, right?
Generally, that’s true. I hope you know how to do the “Aggravation Zapper”. This is such an important tool to help you when you’ve taken too many doses of a remedy or too high a potency and get worse. You can find how to do the Aggravation Zapper in my FAQ article, click below:
https://elainelewis.hpathy.com/faq/
In general, the lower the potency, the more doses you need because low potencies have a short action; the higher the potency, the fewer doses you need. The important thing is, as soon as you get a positive reaction to a remedy, you now have something to go on, something to measure your progress by!
Let’s say you took Causticum and felt like you had a burst of energy. Now you know when the next dose should be–when the energy wears off! In other words, when you start losing the things you’ve gained, take another dose.
And by the way, we’re more interested in the mentals, emotionals and a “sense of well-being” than your physical issues. If your sense of well-being goes away and your mood turns sour, it’s definitely time to redose!
Sometimes we can be fooled by the physicals getting “worse” after a remedy and think we have to redose; BUT, if you have improved at a deeper level, especially mentally and emotionally, don’t consider a new physical issue a relapse! It is very typical that as the mentals improve, something changes on the physical plane for the “worse”, temporarily. Always ask, “But how am I feeling at my core?” If the answer is, “Still good!” then don’t redose!
Remember to always succuss the bottle first before dosing. Presumably you’ve made a water bottle, or, “Remedy Solution Bottle” by dropping 2 pellets into a half-filled bottle of water. Why do you have to do this? So you can succuss before each dose, so you’re not taking the EXACT same potency over and over again, which can become irritating to the body, much like the so-called “Chinese Water Torture”.
If you’re at over 50% improvement after a remedy, stop dosing; wait until you start to relapse or the case gets stuck at around 50% with no further improvements, then take another dose. Always succuss your bottle a few times first. If you reach a point where repeating the dose no longer has a very noticeable effect, plus your bottle (raise the potency) 2 or 3 times and see if the remedy kicks back in again. Instructions for plussing are in my FAQ article, see link above.
I know you always need to listen to your body to decide what to do next. However, I am just wondering if you could still comment just a little on this topic. Is it possible to give general guidelines? Surely if I got to a very high potency, taking a remedy 3 times a day would not be recommended, right?
It could be recommended if you got there gradually based on need. Someone may be on a 1M 3 times a day but they may have started at 6C! But if someone told me their homeopath started them on 1M three times a day arbitrarily as a kicking-off point, I would be horrified!
I am not sure how often to take a remedy as I increase the potency.
You increase the potency based on need–because the previous potency was no longer working or maybe only being half effective. If the higher potency kicks in again, stop dosing if you’re at 50% improvement. The remedy continues to work even though you’re not taking it. But if the improvement starts wearing off, succuss your bottle and take another dose. Again, if you’re over 50% better after the second dose, stop dosing; repeat only if you stop improving or are back-sliding. Someone said to me once, “It’s like when you’re kicking a ball up a hill, no need to kick it again unless it starts rolling back to you.”
I would start with one dose per day before moving on to a more frequent dosing schedule.
You can start with 1 dose but, if by the next day there’s only little improvement, it will mean that once a day was not enough for you; so try twice a day. If by the next day you only picked up maybe ten percent improvement, you might want to move on to 3 times a day and so on until you’re over 50 % better. We call that a “striking improvement”. That’s when you can stop dosing and wait and watch, because we don’t want you to over-dose and have an aggravation.
I guess I would not wonder this right away but, what happens once I get to a much higher potency, like 30C? What if I go much higher?
If you got there gradually based on need, you should stop thinking of it as a certain number (30C, 200C, 1M, etc.). Just think of it as where you are, the place that makes you feel normal, that you’re at the right place because you got there gradually and based on need, and if the remedy stops working, you have no choice but to repeat, or raise the potency if need be, regardless of what the number is.
OK, Elaine, thanks for answering my many questions!
Mabel
Nice article Elaine. !!