The Essence of Homeopathy

This 200-year-old modality works with nature and the body’s inherent ability to heal as it engenders, instills and encourages respect for the patient and the natural world.

Every being has a built-in ability to heal. Homeopathic remedies initiate the natural healing response by stimulating the life, or vital, force of the body. Vital force is the intelligent, self-healing, self-regulating, underlying essence that controls all physiologic functions. Chinese physicians call it chi. Japanese call it ki. Yogis of India call it prana. Chiropractors call it the innate. And Luke Skywalker knows it simply as: THE FORCE! 

Homeopathy is a form of medicine based on the principal of using a SIMILAR medicinal disease to cure a NATURAL disease.

A STEP BACK

It’s easier to understand how and why homeopathy was born if we take a trip back in time to Europe in the late 1700s. It was a time when the dominant forms of medicine included forced purging (vomiting and diarrhea), bloodletting (often huge amounts of blood drained), leeching, blistering, enemas and massive doses of poisons like mercury, silver, sulphur and arsenic. 

A prominent physician, scholar and chemist, Dr Samuel Hahnemann, was discouraged by this violence, which often created more suffering and little cure. In fact, he was so discouraged he left his thriving medical practice, vowing not to return unless there was an alternative method that promoted true healing. Imagine what his wife said when he broke this news!

NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

Using his fluency in many languages and needing to support his family of 11 children, he translated medical books in a corner of their one-room home during the quiet hours of the night. He noticed that Hippocrates, the 4th century Father of Western Medicine, and the 15th century physician Paracelsus, both referred to the principal of LIKE CURES LIKE.

Dr Hahnemann filed away the LIKE CURES LIKE concept until one fated day when he was translating a book by a well known Scottish physician, William Cullen. In the article, Cullen suggested the bark of the Cinchona tree cured malaria because it tasted bitter. With his background in chemistry, Hahnemann realized that Cullen’s reasoning was not correct because then hypothetically ALL bitter substances should cure malaria. 

He decided to ingest small doses of the bark, using himself as the proverbial guinea pig, documenting everything he experienced. This was his moment of grace. He developed sweats, chills, weakness and all the signs of malaria. So how was his getting ill with malaria-like symptoms a stroke of genius? 

WHAT SICKENS CAN CURE

It dawned on him if something can cause illness, it can also cure it. 

Paracelsus and Hippocrates were right: like does cure like. The seed of homeopathy was planted.

Hahnemann continued to test many substances (a process called PROVING) for six years before he introduced his new theories to the world. He named it HOMEOPATHY — from the Greek terms for similar and suffering. He contrasted it to the current medical model he called ALLOPATHY — from the terms for opposite and suffering. 

The concept of like cures like is easy to understand if one imagines a person (two-legged or four), suffering from seasonal allergies resembling hay fever with watery eyes and burning nasal discharge. Rather than prescribing an antihistamine to suppress the symptoms, a dose of Allium cepa, homeopathic onion, stimulates the healing response of the body by matching the symptoms. The symptoms are relieved quickly without drugs.

HOW ARE THEY MADE?

While experimenting with various substances, including readily available medicines, Hahnemann diluted them in an attempt to lower their toxic effects, and shook them between each dilution. Instead of making them less powerful, the dilution and the shaking made them more powerful. This process is now called dilution and succussion. He even took substances like toxic mercury, diluted it, shook it vigorously, diluted it, shook it — repeating this cycle many times — to find that the toxic effects had disappeared, transforming the formerly poisonous substances into powerful medicines. This process he called dynamization, whereby the dynamis or vital force of the medicine is released.

Remedies are made in various potencies based on the dilution process. The three most common are based on the Roman numerals X, C, M, corresponding to 1 in 10 parts for X potency; 1 in 100 parts for C potency; and 1 in 1,000 parts for M potency. The succussion process is what distinguishes a homeopathic remedy from a simple dilution of something, like an herbal tincture. To make a 1C potency, one drop of the tincture is added to 99 drops of alcohol, then succussed 10 times. The 2C potency is made by taking one drop of the 1C dilution, adding it to a new vial containing 99 new drops of alcohol, then succussing 10 times (see diagram below). 

It can be difficult to grasp the fact that the more dilute the substance (and therefore the more succussions), the more powerful the medicine. This is the power and mystery of homeopathic medicines that baffles allopaths and thrills homeopaths!

 THE ART OF DOSING

Although there are many ways to use homeopathic remedies, the oldest form, called classical homeopathy, uses one remedy at a time. The total of all the symptoms (physical, emotional, and mental) are woven together together to form a recognizable pattern of illness. The homeopath then chooses the remedy that seems to best fit the entire patient. Think of a jigsaw puzzle with its many pieces, seemingly unrelated and without a full picture. By the time you put it all together: voilá, it’s the Eiffel Tower! 

That Eiffel Tower is the picture of the illness including all symptoms of the body, mind and emotions. This is truly an individualized medicine.

Picking the right potency can be a challenge for those new to this art, but using potencies of 30C or lower are typically quite safe. In acute situations, they can be given as frequently as every five minutes. For more chronic conditions, it’s best to work with an experienced practitioner who has the training, patience and persistence to follow complex situations.

Giving a remedy to a pet can be as easy as giving a few pellets directly by mouth, giving a few drops of a water potency (water to which a remedy or pellets have been added) or giving some milk with pellets dissolved. Dosing homeopathic remedies is far less invasive to your pet than repeated doses of strong herbs or drugs. Remedies are typically dosed less frequently and can be as little as one drop. This insures the treatment isn’t worse than the disease! 

HOW DO THEY WORK?

I’ll say it again…Every being has a built-in ability to heal. Homeopathic remedies initiate the natural healing response by stimulating the life, or vital, force of the body. Vital force is the intelligent, self-healing, self-regulating, underlying essence that controls all physiologic functions.

Healing a cut on your hand is a good example of the natural healing response. Your body doesn’t need your mind to bring in the necessary cells and chemicals to start the healing process. The vital force does this quickly and completely, with the sole intention of keeping the body functioning optimally. Without this force we cannot live.

In homeopathic philosophy, this vital force is responsible for the expression of symptoms in illness, and is acutely sensitive to the sub-molecular homeopathic remedies. As the physicists remind us, we’re mostly energy with a few particles mixed with some wave-like probabilities. It appears that homeopathy works on the quantum energetic body first, then secondarily affects the physical body. Whether or not we can explain exactly how the remedies work, every person, every doctor, is aware of this natural healing potential. Remember the Earth was round even before we could prove it. 

So if you’ve cut yourself with a knife, remember that using homeopathic Phosphorus will stop the bleeding because it can cause bleeding in a healthy person if given in toxic material doses. What can be a toxin can then become the antidote.

HOMEOPATHY OR HERBS?

It’s common for people to confuse homeopathy and herbology, but there are very distinct differences between them.

Herbs work much like allopathic medicines as they are material substances that affect the body directly to alter symptoms. Herbs are a more gentle, balanced form of medicine than allopathic drugs, but they are still composed of chemicals that can, for example, slow down a heart rate or kill bacteria. Homeopathic remedies stimulate the energetic healing response to make the body inhospitable to bacteria instead of directly killing the bacteria. 

THE MANY FACES OF HOMEOPATHY

Many people who aren’t familiar with homeopathy might use remedies because the product has a history of helping a specific ailment. One example is Humphrey’s Teething Tablets, sold in big box stores and pharmacies: a famous go-to remedy that soothes teething pains in babies and helps preserve the sanity of their moms.

Pelleted forms of remedies come in either sucrose or lactose pellets. Lactose pellets (milk sugar) melt in your mouth easily; sucrose pellets are hard pills of various sizes. The sucrose pellets (sugar pills) are produced as neutral sugar pills, then medicated with homeopathic alcohol preparations so the medicine is on the pellets, not in them.

The lactose pills are either in single remedies or combinations of several remedies. The most basic are the cell salts. These are 3X, 6X or 12X potencies of the 12 salts present in every mammalian body. These mild remedies act more like a tonic to balance electrolyte salts.

Other popular forms of combination remedies include ointments and gels. These easy-to-use remedies are available for leg cramps, insect bites, diaper rash, burns, teething, arthritis, injuries, hemorrhoids and almost every common ailment you can imagine.

Combination pelleted formulations are available for incontinence, bed wetting, bladder irritation, poison ivy, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, acne, menopause, diarrhea, constipation, motion sickness, calming and sleep, migraines, arthritis — and the list goes on and on.

And then there are the liquids for coughs, ear aches, eye infections or irritations, allergies and colds, just to name a few.

Using homeopathy for animals and humans is exactly the same. Single remedies or combination remedies can be used with the same ease and effectiveness. For those without a homeopathic veterinarian to prescribe, the combination formulas can be quite helpful while sparing the use of strong drugs. Animal formulas are available for travel anxiety, hot spots, itching, digestive upsets, incontinence, worms, flea bites. And this list also goes on and on. 

NO PLACEBO EFFECT

This elegant medical system has perplexed and angered many a naysayer but the proof, as the old saying goes, is in the pudding. Animals are a perfect testing ground for the validity of homeopathy as they don’t appear to think themselves into healing, making the placebo effect irrelevant. If they have an ailment or an emergency, you dose a remedy, then watch the healing happen. No thinking needed. 

The most important quality of the homeopathic method is its ability to work WITH nature, not against it. Working with the body’s inherent ability to heal engenders, instills and encourages the utmost respect — not only for the patient but for the natural world as well.