Transcript Basics of Homeopathy

Homeopathy:
Medicine For The People
Miranda Castro FSHom, CCH
What is Homeopathy?
 Homeopathy is an effective, elegant
system of energy medicine that
harnesses the innate healing power
that resides within each and every
one of us … that acts as a catalyst
for a person’s own healing.
Homeopathy’s Basic Principles
 Homeopathy is based on several
fundamental principles:
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Treating ‘like with like.’
The minimum (infinitesimal) dose.
The single remedy.
The whole person.
Susceptibility.
The vital force.
How Old is Homeopathy?
 Homeopathy was developed
200 years ago by Samuel
Hahnemann, a German
doctor, who became
disillusioned with the
treatments of his time
(purgings & leaches etc.)
Homeopathy Around the World
 Homeopathy spread rapidly
throughout europe and the rest of
the world in the 19th and 20th
centuries as people sought effective,
non-toxic ways to deal with their
health care needs.
India (2007)
 India: Mainstream Medicine
 307 Homeopathic Hospitals
 165 Homeopathic Medical Schools
• 10,000 students each year for 4-6 year full time
homeopathic medical training programs
 Over 300,000 Practitioners
Europe
 UK: Incorporated into the National
Health Service in 1947
 5 Homeopathic Hospitals
 Treatment available on demand
 Over 3000 professional homeopaths
 Approximately 40% of French &
English doctors refer patients to
homeopathic specialists.
Elsewhere
 Popular in Germany, Ireland, The
Netherlands, Austria.
 Spreading rapidly throughout the
rest of Europe in the past 10 years.
 Accepted in New Zealand, Australia,
and many South American countries
South America
 Highly respected in many South
American countries. The following
have many thousands of
homeopathic practitioners:
 Mexico
 Argentina
 Brazil
United States
 At the beginning of the 20th century
(1900) homeopathy was more
popular that anywhere else in the
world:
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15-20% of all doctors were homeopaths
20 homeopathic medical schools
100 homeopathic hospitals
1000 homeopathic pharmacies
What Happened?
 Homeopathy faltered and fell due
to:
 A concerted effort by the American
Medical Association and the
pharmaceutical companies.
 In-fighting between the classical
homeopaths and the ‘routinists’ or
combination prescribers.
Coherent Philosophy
 Homeopathy has a coherent set of
principals governing every aspect of
practice.
 These are the most important,
defining principles of homeopathy:
Like Cures Like
A substance that causes a particular
set of symptoms in a healthy person
(that makes a healthy person sick)
can cure a person with a similar set
of symptoms.
AKA the Law of Similars.
The Minimum Dose
 A substance that is diluted and shaken
vigorously (succussed), becomes stronger
curatively the more it is repeatedly diluted –
but only if it is also succussed.
 Substances that have been diluted without
the vigorous shaking have no curative value,
and are inactive medicinally.
Single Remedy
 Remedies are tested one at a time,
and therefore should be
administered singly. This is maybe
the most difficult aspect of
homeopathic treatment – the
selection of a single remedy.
Incredibly Energetic
 Homeopathic remedies or
medicines are diluted by a
method that releases their
energy: potentization.
 They are diluted beyond
Avogadro’s number.
 Simple dilution does not
work.
The Whole Person
 Homeopathic principles take the
whole person into account
(dismissing nothing).
 Homeopaths do not treat single symptoms
or parts of single symptoms.
 They take the bigger picture into account.
 The best remedy is the one that matches
the whole symptom picture of an
individual person.
The Vital Force
 Homeopaths describe the energetic
component that ‘enlivens’ us, that
literally gives us life - as the vital
force.
 AKA Chi (Chinese Medicine)
 AKA Prana (Indian Medicine)
Summary
Like cures like (law of similars)
Minimum dose (potentized
remedy)
Single Remedy
Whole Person
Susceptibility
Vital Force
Tested on Humans
 Homeopathic remedies are tested
on healthy humans to determine
their ‘symptom complex’.
 They are then ‘verified’ on sick
humans presenting with a similar
symptom complex.
Healing Effects are Not Placebo
 You do not need to believe in
homeopathy for it to work.
 Homeopathy works on animals
and babies, and people who are
sleeping or
unconscious.
Resourcefulness
 Remedies are made from the
widest possible range of sources,
from anything and everything
including:
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Plants
Metals, minerals, chemicals
Animals
‘Imponderables’
Remedies
 Over 3500 substances have been
tested and are available as
homeopathic remedies.
 Most homeopaths use 100 – 500
remedies on a regular basis.
 Home prescribers use 10 – 50
remedies.
Ecologically Sound
 A single vial of a potentized remedy
can medicate hundreds of thousands
of pills.
 The planets precious resources are
preserved.
 There’s no waste: the
active ingredients last
indefinitely.
Affordable
 Single remedies cost
around $6
 Home prescribing kits
cost around $90 for a
50 remedy kit (less than
$2 a tube).
Non Toxic
 Therefore there are no side effects.
 The integrity of the organism is not
damaged in the process of cure.
 There are no perceived ‘bad’ agents
(viruses or bacteria etc.) to destroy.
Non-Species Specific
 Homeopathy is easily applied to all
living beings.
 It is increasingly popular among
veterinarians and farmers
 Some farmers have shown it to
work even on plants.
Treats All types of Complaints
 Emergencies/First Aid
 Acute (self-limiting) Complaints
 Chronic (recurring) Complaints
 Mental and Emotional & Physical
Empowering
 Acute and First Aid treatment can
be learned fairly easily and used
safely by most people at home for a
wide variety of everyday injuries
and complaints.
 The more you know, the more you
can do.
Types of Homeopathy
 Acute prescribing can successfully
be learnt by home prescribers and
health care practitioners
 Constitutional treatment is
complex and should be practiced
only by trained homeopathic
professionals.
Who Can Benefit?
 Anyone but particularly the very
young, babies, infants and children.
 Any complaint especially those the
medical profession gives up on or
has few answers for:
 CFS, PMS, migraines, menopause, stressrelated complaints, behavioral problems,
autism, hyperactivity, autism etc. etc.
What Does it Cost?
 $150-$500 for an initial visit
depending on the length of time and
the experience of the practitioner.
 $50-$120 for follow up visits.
 Time between visits: 4-6 weeks or
as needed depending on the
practitioner.
The Homeopathic Interview
 The first consultation includes a
tremendous number of questions
that range across the whole of a
person’s life:
 emotional, physical, general, family, work,
history, inherited – everything.
The Client’s Response
 After an initial consultation the
most common comment is “I have a
sense of me as a whole – it’s a
wonderful feeling. I made
connections I have never made
before.”
Complementary Medicine
 Homeopathy works beautifully
alongside all other therapies
including conventional medicine.
 Because homeopathy and
acupuncture are so similar it is
usually best to choose one or the
other at a time.
Where is it Limited
 Where something is broken.
 Where something is broken beyond
repair.
 Where information is lost in time.
 Where the stressors are severe and
on-going.
A Blessed Sense of Well Being
 Homeopaths measure health as
more than an absence of symptoms
 Increased flexibility and freedom on all
levels.
 Increased sense of wellness, of well-being.
 Increased ability to withstand stress.
 Increased resilience to acute and chronic
illness.
Myths & Misapprehensions
“Many homeopaths, believing that the
explanation of how homeopathy works is
secondary to its success with literally
millions of patients, have traditionally
refused to reveal the names of the
medicines they give. This and the lack of
information they have provided about
their practice has led to an aura of
secrecy in which myths abound.”
‘Homeopathy is a form of herbalism’
 Herbalism is concerned with the known sphere of
action of a plant based on its chemical constituents
as well as its known healing qualities.
 Homeopathic principles of practice are different.
 Homeopathic remedies are diluted and succussed,
herbal remedies are used in a material dose (as
tinctures and teas etc.)
 Homeopathic remedies are not solely plants, but
are made from poisons, metals, & disease products.
 Homeopaths prescribe one remedy at a time rather
than the mixtures of plant tinctures of the herbalist.
 Homeopathy is a mere 200 years old instead of two
or three thousand years of herbal medicine.
‘Homeopathy is safe’
 Because homeopathy can cure – dramatically in
some cases – it can also cause harm.
 If you take too many homeopathic pills over a
(usually long) period of time it is possible to ‘prove’
it, i.e. to suffer from the symptoms that the remedy
is supposed to cure.Your symptoms may improve
initially, but then worsen if you continue to take
them. Worse still, if the remedy was not the correct
one for you, you may experience symptoms you
never had before.
 This is a common danger of home prescribing: it is
important to be on your guard against this over-use
of homeopathic medicines.
‘Homeopathy is form of vaccination’
 Homeopathy and vaccination have similar concepts and very
different practices.Vaccines stimulate the immune system
directly to produce specific antibodies as if that person has
contracted a particular disease. They must be tested on
animals and then on humans to verify their safety, and even
then children and adults can suffer side effects.Vaccinations
bypass the body’s natural defense system, thereby stressing
it in a way that is not fully understood.
 Homeopathic remedies affect the energy patterns of a
person and stimulate the body to heal itself. They are
administered orally in a highly diluted dose as opposed to
being introduced directly into the bloodstream,
‘Homeopathic remedies are placebos’
 Or … ‘You need to believe in it for it to work.’ This is
ridiculous to anyone who has experienced a homeopathic
cure for, a head injury or a middle-ear infection.
 Because homeopathic remedies do not always work they
are believed by some to be ineffective, but antibiotics do not
always work and that doesn’t stop people from taking
repeat doses of them.
 Because routine prescriptions such as Rhus toxicodendron for
rheumatism and Chamomilla for teething babies are freely
available, people are wrongly persuaded into thinking that
they need not consult a homeopath (or an adequate first-aid
book). If the remedies do not work it is assumed that
homeopathy does not work; if they do work it is attributed
to a placebo effect – some double bind!
‘Homeopathy is unscientific’
 Homeopathic medicines are prepared in a pharmacy or a
laboratory and their preparation involves techniques subject
to precise and clearly stated controls (it does not involve
mysterious and secret processes which put it into the realm
of white magic or alchemy).
 Harris Coulter ( Homeopathic Science and Modern Medicine,
The Physics of healing with Microdoses), discusses this issue at
great length and also describes many of the trials that have
been conducted over the past fifty years or so using plants,
animals and humans as controls to prove the effectiveness
of homeopathic medicines.
Homeopathy & Research
 Because the premise of homeopathic medicine is so
‘questionable’ in the eyes of the scientific
communities, homeopathic research trials are
often regarded in a suspicious light. There are
plenty of trials and those concerning animals (for
e.g. dairy herds with mastitis) are particularly
interesting.
 Dana Ullman is the best place to go to find out
more about homeopathy and research studies:
http://www.homeopathic.com/articles/by_category.jsp?id=11
Finally ….
 Homeopaths have traditionally justified their practice by
their results, without feeling a need to explain how their
methods work.
 Homeopathic patients mostly haven’t cared much either,
have been happy to take any healing they could get often as
a last resort i.e. when conventional medicine has completely
failed them.
Finally ….
 Homeopathic doctrine hasn’t changed since it was
formulated over 200 years ago. The rules and principles of
practice constitute a unified hypothesis whose validity is
tested out empirically – and confirmed clinically, every single
day in tens of thousands of homeopathic consulting rooms.
The whole world over.
Resources
 The Complete Homeopathy
Handbook, by Miranda Castro
 Homeopathy Simply Explained
http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/
 National Center for Homeopathy
www.nationalcenterforhomeopathy.com