Classical Homeopathy

Homeopathic Alternatives for Children with ADHD By: Dana Ullman

2011-05-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

In 2004, American physicians wrote over 28 million prescriptions for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) drugs, and by 2008 alone, this number increased substantially to over 39 million. Despite these scary-high numbers of powerful psychiatric drugs prescribed for our children, The Washington Post reported on a large, multi-center, federally funded study that "confirmed there were zero long-term differences between children who were continuously medicated and those who were never medicated" (Vedantam, 2009).

Hyperactivity and its related syndromes (attention deficit disorder, or ADD; and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD) have become America's number-one childhood psychiatric ailment. One of the common drugs to treat children with ADD and ADHD has been Ritalin, and its used has become so common that some people are calling it "vitamin R."

It is initially surprising and confusing to learn that Ritalin is an amphetamine-like drug. One would think that this type of drug would make hyperactive children even more hyperactive. However, when Ritalin is prescribed to children who are already hyperactive, it tends to slow them down. Ironically, the use of a drug that causes symptoms similar to those of the patient is actually the basic principle of homeopathic medicine (treating "likes with like").

Ritalin and a select number of conventional drugs (including digitalis, nitroglycerin, colchicine, allergy shots and vaccination) are all known to cause the various symptoms that they are known to treat. Despite this fact, none of these drugs is considered a true "homeopathic medicine" because homeopaths use much smaller and safer doses of their medicines; additionally, a homeopathic medicine is individualized to the patient and the unique syndrome of whatever disease the sick person experiences.

Although Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs given to children with ADD or ADHD may provide short-term benefits, research to date has found that these drugs do not provide long-term benefits. However, even scarier is the fact that even Newsweek noted, "There are no definitive long-studies to reassure parents that this stimulant isn't causing some hidden havoc to their child." And many people today believe these drugs do create havoc.

The most common side effects of ADD/ADHD medication are restlessness, anxiety, tremors, headaches, allergic reactions, dizziness, abdominal discomfort, heart arrhythmia, increased blood pressure and psychosis (including hallucination). Children who take these drugs are also known to experience a reduced appetite, and in part as a result of this, some children experience a dramatic reduction in height. When a drug can have such deleterious systematic effects as reducing a child's height, one has to acknowledge that such drugs can create other significantly serious impacts on the lives of the children who take them.

Clearly, it makes sense for parents and doctors to explore and even exhaust safer methods of treating ADD and ADHD before resorting to conventional drugs. Homeopathic medicines provide one viable alternative, and several double-blind studies published in medical journals have confirmed good results and much safer treatment. That said, it should be acknowledged that at present, there has been only a handful of studies testing homeopathic medicines, and not every study showed efficacy of treatment. However, because some studies have shown benefits of homeopathic care, and because these medicines are so safe, it is reasonable to consider homeopathic treatment before resorting to more risky therapeutic measures.

More research is certainly warranted. In the meantime, readers will benefit from knowing that there are different ways that homeopathic medicine is practiced, and although one style of prescribing these natural medicines may be shown to be effective in one or more studies, these results do not necessarily mean that all methods of using homeopathic medicines are similarly effective. Likewise, when a study shows no obvious benefits from one strategy to using these medicines, this does not necessarily disprove the entire system of homeopathy.

In other words, just because one antibiotic is not effective in treating an infection does not mean that another antibiotic won't be effective.

The challenge that homeopathy presents is that, like acupuncture, it is largely dependent upon the clinician and his or her knowledge of their system of healing, and his or her ability to find the individually chosen treatment for patients and their idiosyncratic ailment. Despite the complexity of providing individualized homeopathic treatment, children will more likely benefit in the long run when their parents explore safer therapeutic measures.

A Study Comparing Homeopathic Treatment and Ritalin

Numerous studies testing Ritalin have found it to be effective in the short term. The question then becomes: how does homeopathic treatment compare with it?

A study in Switzerland evaluated 115 children (92 boys, 23 girls) with an average age of 8.3 years at diagnosis of ADD/ADHD (Frei and Thurneysen, 2001). The children were first treated with an individually chosen homeopathic medicine. Children who did not improve sufficiently on homeopathy were changed to Ritalin and evaluated after 3 months. After an average treatment time of 3.5 months, 75 percent of the children responded favorably to homeopathy, attaining an improvement rating of 73 percent. Twenty-two percent of the children were treated with Ritalin and attained an improvement rating of 65 percent.

The children were evaluated according to the Conners Global Index (CGI), which is the most respected scale that measures the degree of hyperactivity and attention deficit symptoms. The children who responded to the homeopathic medicine experienced a 55-percent amelioration of the CGI, while the children who responded to Ritalin experienced a 48-percent amelioration of the CGI. Three children didn't respond to homeopathy or Ritalin, and one child left the study before completion. The researchers concluded that homeopathic treatment was comparable in its benefits to Ritalin -- and homeopathic medicines simply do not have the side effects that Ritalin has.

Because this study was not placebo-controlled, one does not know if the good results are from the homeopathic medicine or from the homeopathic interview (or a combination of them both). In any case, this study showed that 75 percent of the children with ADD/ADHD benefited from the "package of care" provided by homeopaths, a better result than the "package of care" provided by conventional pediatricians. Although skeptics of homeopathy insist that homeopathic medicines are placebos, these skeptics unwittingly suggest the metaphysical thesis that each homeopath is magically endowed with special healing powers, especially since most people who seek homeopathic treatment experience chronic problems for which long-term conventional medical treatment has not provided adequate resolution.

A Major Study Published in the European Journal of Pediatrics

Although the previous study was not double-blind or placebo-controlled, this next study was both -- and even more. It included a sophisticated research design that included a "crossover" effect -- that is, half of the patients begin with a placebo treatment, while the other half begin with a homeopathic treatment, and then, after 6 weeks, the groups each receive the other treatment. This sophisticated design therefore seeks to compare each child under homeopathic treatment with that same child under a placebo.

The famed European Journal of Pediatrics published an article that included two studies: a clinical observation study followed by a randomized, double-blind trial. These studies concluded that homeopathy has positive effects in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Frei, Everts, von Ammon, et al., 2005). A total of 83 children aged 6 to 16 years, with ADHD diagnosed using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV criteria, were recruited.

Prior to the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study, the children were treated with individually prescribed homeopathic medications. The 62 patients, who achieved an improvement of at least 50 percent in the Conners' Global Index (CGI), participated in the trial. The responders were split into two groups and received either homeopathy for six weeks followed by placebo for six weeks (arm A), or vice-versa (arm B).

At the beginning of the trial and after each crossover period, parents reported the CGI and patients underwent neuropsychological testing. The CGI rating was evaluated again at the end of each crossover period and twice in long-term follow-up. At entry to the crossover trial, cognitive performance, such as visual global perception, impulsivity and divided attention, had improved significantly under open label treatment (p<0.0001). During the crossover trial, CGI parent-ratings were significantly lower (this means the child was "better") under homeopathic treatment (average 1.67 points) than under placebo (p=0.0479). Ultimately, the CGI and parent ratings showed a 37-percent and 63-percent improvement over the long-term observation period of 14 weeks (p<0.0001). The teachers also found an improvement in the homeopathic treated group vs. placebo in the CGI by 28 percent and in the teachers' rating scale by 37 percent.

An interesting feature of this study was that the homeopaths only met with each child once and carried out follow-up visits only with the child's parents. This strategy was to minimize the child's contact with the homeopath in order to minimize possible psychological support from the clinician.

A Double-Blind Study Using a New Unconventional Style of Homeopathy

It should be freely acknowledged that not all studies verify the efficacy of homeopathic medicines. Because the results of homeopathy are best evaluated when these medicines are individually selected to each patient, some clinicians are simply better and more accurate prescribers of these medicines.

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted with 43 children between 6 and 12 years of age who met the DSM-IV criteria for ADHD (Jacobs, Williams, Girard, et al., 2005). The 43 subjects were randomized to receive a homeopathic consultation and either an individualized homeopathic remedy or a placebo. Patients were seen by homeopathic physicians every six weeks for 18 weeks. In this pilot study, a new, unconventional style of homeopathy was practiced by the physicians, called the "Bombay method" (also known as the "Sensation method").

There were no statistically significant differences between homeopathic remedy and placebo groups on the primary or secondary outcome variables, including the Conner Global Index scale and various other scales. However, there were statistically and clinically significant improvements in both groups on many of the outcome measures.

This pilot study provided no evidence to support a therapeutic effect of individually selected homeopathic remedies in children with ADHD. The researchers concluded that a therapeutic effect of the overall homeopathic package of care (the homeopathic encounter and homeopathic medicine) was beneficial and warranted further evaluation.

A Double-Blind Study Comparing Homeopathy and Placebo

John Lamont, Ph.D., a psychologist in Southern California, conducted a trial of 43 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Lamont, 1997). He randomly assigned half of the children to receive a placebo and the other half to homeopathic treatment. The researcher, the parents and the children did not know which child was given the homeopathic medicine or the placebo.

The evaluations of improvement were based on parent or caretaker ratings of ADHD behaviors. A simple 5-point scale was used: Much worse (-2); a little worse (-1); no change (0); a little better (+1); much better (+2). Parents or caretakers were contacted by telephone 10 days after the remedy or placebo was taken and again after two months.

To avoid any potential influence from the homeopath, he had no further contact with children except during the initial testing and case-taking interview. Even the medicine was not given directly to the patient by the homeopath but was sent via the mail.

All children in the experiment came from foster homes or from parents under the supervision of social workers. The average age was 10, and there was a mixture of races: 47 percent Hispanic, 35 percent Black and 18 percent Caucasian.

The children were only accepted into the trial if they fit the specific criteria for ADHD, as determined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV). Children who were on medication for ADHD could be accepted for the study but only if they had been on this medication for at least six weeks. The latter condition was determined because Dr. Lamont didn't consider it wise to admit children new to medication in the trial, as it then could not be ascertained whether improvement was the result of their conventional or homeopathic medicine.

Half the children were given an individualized homeopathic medicine, and half were given a placebo that resembled a homeopathic medicine for 10 days. After this, the half that was given a placebo received an individualized homeopathic medicine. Neither the children nor their parents were told that they might be given a placebo, because the researcher did not want to influence the parent or the child with the knowledge that the second round of medicines would be the "real" ones.

Only the 200C potency of an individualized homeopathic medicine was used, based on the homeopath's small pilot study of 15 patients in which a trend was observed that the 200C was more effective than 30C.

The mean improvement scores after 10 days were .35 for the placebo group and 1.00 for the homeopathically treated group (p=.05). The greatest improvements were noticed by the third day, while a smaller number showed improvement after 10 days.

Children who were initially given a placebo were given a homeopathic prescription after 10 days and then compared with their earlier score. The mean improvement scores were .35 for the placebo group and 1.13 after a homeopathic medicine was given (p=.02).

When parents reported that improvement from the treatment was not obvious, the homeopath prescribed a second or a third remedy. When comparing the results after these remedies, improvement from the homeopathic group was 1.63 and from the placebo group was .35 (p=.01).

Besides the improvement 10 days after the homeopathic medicine, follow-up interviews observed that the majority of children treated homeopathically experienced sustained and increased improvement in their condition. In total, after two months, 57 percent of children experienced continued improvement; 24 percent showed improvement for several days or weeks following homeopathic treatment, but relapsed by the two-month interview; and 19 percent said that they only observed improvement while taking homeopathic treatment (one could guess that this improvement was primarily from the placebo effect).

A second homeopathic remedy was given to 18 of 43 subjects, and seven required a third remedy. Phone calls were made 10 days after each remedy, and if it seemed that the remedy was not working, a different medicine would be prescribed.

Only three children were dropped from the trial, and this was the result of changes in dosage of anti-ADHD prescription after homeopathic treatment.

In summary, this study showed that the effects of the homeopathic medicine were relatively rapid (usually within three days) and a two-month follow-up found that 57 percent of the children experienced sustained and increased improvement.

The Cochrane Collaboration Review

The Cochrane Collaboration is an internationally respected group of researchers who evaluate research. In their review of homeopathic treatment of children with ADD/ADHD, they concluded, "There is currently little evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy for the treatment of ADHD" (Coulter and Dean, 2007). It is important to note that they stated that there was "little evidence," not "no evidence," that homeopathic medicines have been shown to be effective in the treatment of children with ADD/ADHD.

Further, it should be noted that the Cochrane Collaboration maintains a very high standard for their definition of "efficacy," and they commonly note that there is "little" or "no" evidence for various commonly used conventional medical treatments, despite the billions and billions of dollars spent on them by individuals, insurance companies and governments.

The additional challenge to homeopathy and to homeopathic research is that various studies testing this system of medicine are often substantially different from each other, making it more difficult to evaluate them together. Because of this, the Cochrane researchers recommended "more targeted research to test different treatment protocols."

Because virtually no money is granted to homeopathic research by governments, and because the "homeopathic industry" is so small in comparison to Big Pharma, there is considerably less research conducted with homeopathic medicines.

Still, the Cochrane Collaboration's review of homeopathic research on children with ADD/ADHD rightly acknowledged the high-quality research in some of the above studies (Frei, et al., 2005; Jacobs, et al., 2006), and they acknowledged that various studies in homeopathy utilize different styles of homeopathic treatment.

Ultimately, both physicians and parents need to be reminded of Hippocrates' most famous dictum: "First, do not harm." Although Hippocrates directed this wisdom to physicians, it is certainly good advice for parents, too.

The Link Between Pesticides and ADHD

An article on this subject would be remiss if it also did not mention and reference some extremely new and important research that has suggested a strong connection between pesticide exposure in children and ADD/ADHD (Bouchard, Bellinger, Wright, et al., 2010). Published in the famed journal Pediatrics, this group of Harvard researchers and others showed that organophosphate exposure, at levels common among U.S. children, may contribute to ADHD prevalence.

More specifically, using cross-sectional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2000-2004) that were available for 1139 children who were representative of the general U.S. population, the researchers found 190 children who met the criteria for ADHD.

Six concentrations of urinary dialkyl phosphate (DAP) were measured to determine body burden. The researchers uncovered the fact that one or more metabolites were detected in roughly 94 percent of the children tested. A common chemical called dimethyl alkylphosphate (DMAP) was present in 64 percent of the children studied. The children with the highest concentrations, especially of DMAP, were twice as likely to have ADHD as those with undetectable levels.

Ultimately, a 10-fold increase in urinary concentrations of organophosphate metabolites was associated with a 55- to 72-percent increase in the odds of ADHD, which means that children with a higher concentration of these chemicals were 55- to 72-percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.

Organophosphate pesticides have been linked to neurodevelopmental issues in the past, including memory problems, concentration difficulties and hyperactivity. Researchers have conducted similar studies on children regularly exposed to pesticides, like those living on or near commercial farms. This study was a first of its kind in that it did not isolate its research on children with a known exposure.

This new research did not investigate anything to do with homeopathy. However, previous research in animals and humans who were exposed to environmental poisons has shown benefits from homeopathic medicines (Ullman, 2011).

Dr. Feder comments on radiation fallout

2011-03-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Community,
As Japan struggles with the after-shocks from last week's devastating earthquake and Tsunami, scientists are beginning to assess the damage to several Japanese nuclear reactors.

Questions are being raised regarding the radiation fallout and the effect it could have around the world, including people living in the Western United States. In our medical office in Los Angeles, we are being inundated with phone calls from local families asking for health recommendations regarding this crisis. Currently there is information about radioactive iodine damaging the thyroid gland, and the use of potassium iodide as a protection.
After discussion with colleagues about various approaches, I have decided to take a proactive approach – just in case! As we wait for more information, I am collecting information from different sources. (see below) According to Iodine expert and author Dr. David Brownstein,” Iodine is necessary to prevent radioactive iodine from damaging the thyroid gland Please keep in mind it is not just the thyroid gland that is at risk with exposure to radioactive iodine. The breasts, ovaries, uterus, prostate, skin, and other organs all bind and require iodine for optimal functioning. In fact, every cell in our body requires iodine for optimal functioning.. Around 13mg/day prevents approximately 96% of radioactive iodine from binding to the thyroid gland.”

Until we receive more updates, my recommendation is to consider the following information.
-Keep Potassium Iodide (KI) on hand. KI comes in several forms
-Kali iodatum 6X (homeopathic Potassium iodide/KI). Take 3 tablets once daily for children, adults, and pets.
-Standard Potassium Iodide (KI see CDC article below )
-Nonradioactive, inorganic iodine (i.e. i-Throid, available at our office. There are other brands in the healthfood store). 1 capsule daily. For ages 12 and up.
-Radium bromatum, homeopathic remedy 3 pellets, once a week
-Rescue Remedy - Bach Flower Remedy for calming during stressful times. 1 to 2 drops in a beverage, sip as needed for children and adults.
-Consume foods high in iodine (seafood, animal foods, seaweed, kelp, egg and dairy)
-Store water, food, and all the usual emergency supplies.

In my household, we will begin with the homeopathic KI (once daily). Our office is carrying both the homeopathic and nonradioactive, inorganic iodine. Homeopathic KI has no side effects and can be taken by everyone. However, in general, potassium iodide (KI) recommended by the CDC as well as the i-Throid is not recommended for the following people:
-allergies to iodine
-skin disorders (such as dermatitis herpetiformis or urticaria vasculitis)
-People with thyroid disease such as multinodular goiter, Graves’ disease, or autoimmune Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Though may be treated with KI, under the supervision of a doctor.

Sources:
https://www.drbrownstein.com/homePage.php
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp

May our aid, thoughts and prayers extend to the affected people in Japan.
Be healthy,

Dr. Lauren

The Flow of Compassion By: Charlene Briggs

2011-01-13T08:19:00.000-08:00

Every word, every choice, every gesture and every thought and belief one holds in one's heart affects the energy of the whole. In compassion the nation extends its heart to the victims of the Arizona shootings and through compassion may it grow in awareness that we are all responsible for creating a more evolved reality.

Compassion...

… for our self and all the times we did not defend ourselves against a perpetrator because we were too young or alone or dis-empowered to know what to do to protect the self.

… for the perpetrator who vented their anger and pain on us because they never got help when they needed it.

…for a culture that ignores the forces and physical boundaries that govern it’s existence.

…for the gift of spiritual evolution that waits at our door asking only that we transcend the indignities of human existence and embrace the potential of our incarnation through…

….Compassion.

In nature, every spontaneous action within a system increases the stability of that system. Water in a reservoir behind a dam is maintained in disequilibrium, in a state of high potential, unmanifested energy. All dams have very limited lifespans which are a function of the pressure they contain. Eventually, a threshold point is reached and the water either overflows or breaks the dam. Our reactions demonstrate our threshold points and draw attention to the need to find a way to release the pressure, open the valves and restore the spontaneous flow of life force through us.

The molecules of water that have only known living behind a dam must be reminded of their eternal existence as the same waters that flowed over the alps, scoured the earth in glaciers and rained on a thirsty planet for 4 billion years. Their experience of life behind a dam, waiting for life to flow, does not and cannot define them. They are water molecules, universally unique structures responsible for existence of life on the planet.

We are not constrained by the dams that appear to hold us against our right to a spontaneous existence. The dams are the traumas that hold us back from living and speaking our truth. They are illusions that must be cleared out to pave the path for a spontaneous life. The potential energy of the water behind the dam knows it’s power to manifest and this power must be used wisely. How the dam waters are released is important. People can get hurt or heal from the power.

If you find yourself living behind a dam, or many dams, rest assured that there is hope of living in equilibrium. Flower essences are a form of energy medicine that safely release the waters behind the dam and remove the dam from our system. They spread a resonance of balance and calm throughout our anatomy restoring our ability to understand, manifest and express our truth. They give us the courage to move through our fears and confront others in a loving way that demonstrates self-respect, take action in alignment with our souls, heal old wounds and restore vitality to our life.

Flower essences help you make peace in your heart with everyone who ever hurt you. Flower essences help you find ways to make peace within you for all you have done to hurt others. They are the stepping-stones that enable you to act with compassion. The first step is releasing the pressure on the dam and the next step is to remove it so your river can run freely.

Practicing compassion is easier said than done. But it is worth the effort and in the process, perhaps another person who is hurting will be relieved of their pain by seeing a glimmer of hope in your eyes. Perhaps allowing your river to flow naturally will free you to share compassion with another before their dam bursts. Weaning ourselves from judgment, searching for wisdom, we find many ways to manifest compassion toward others and ourselves.

Wean Yourself

2011-01-13T08:09:00.000-08:00

Wean Yourself

Little by little, wean yourself,
This is the gist of what I have to say.

From an embryo,
Whose nourishment comes in the blood,
Move to an infant drinking milk,
To a child on solid food,
To a searcher after wisdom,
To a hunter of more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say,
“The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
And orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in the sunlight
The beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.”

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
In the dark with eyes closed.

Listen to the answer.

There is no “ other world.”
I only know what I’ve experienced.
You must be hallucinating.
Rumi

Before You Vaccinate: by Lauren Feder, M.D.

2011-01-10T08:26:00.000-08:00

Before you Vaccinate Ask Eight Questions *

*
Is my child sick right now?
*
Has my child had a bad reaction to a vaccination before?
*
Does my child have a personal or family history of: vaccine reactions,convulsions or neurological disorders,severe allergies,immune system disorders
*
Do I know if my child is at high risk of reacting?
*
Do I have full information on the vaccine's side effects?
*
Do I know how to identify a vaccine reaction?
*
Do I know how to report a vaccine reaction? (VAERS)
*
Do I know the vaccine manufacturer's name and lot number?
*
Do I know I have a choice?

for more information visit the National Vaccine Information Center website at

www.909shot.com

Taking Responsibility for Your Animal's Health: by Christine Chambreau, D.V.M.

2011-01-10T08:24:00.000-08:00

I just found a wonderful holistic doctor for my pets. How is that many animal lovers don't realize this is an option?

Finally, as you have realized, you are responsible for your animal's health, not just your practitioner. If you feel the practitioner you are using is palliating or suppressing, not curing, talk to them of your concerns and suggest a referral or simply choose another one yourself.

With a cure, the symptoms slowly go away, and the animal feels better in every way. Palliation will see a quick resolution of symptoms, but they keep coming back and need to be retreated frequently and there is no overall improvement. Suppression causes the symptoms to quickly go away and more severe symptoms appear along with the animal feeling no better or even worse. Read, talk to other people, talk with your animal health care providers, and take courses. Pay attention to what works and what does not work.

Keeping a journal is important so you can look back and see what has gotten better and are problems getting less frequent and less severe, which is your goal. This journal will help you patiently wait for problems resolve because you can see the pattern of the whole being changing for the better. Patience is definitely an unsung virtue on the road to health. Even if the modality you choose turns out not to be curative, your animal will be healthier for using this approach.

You may have a wonderful veterinary acupuncturist who thinks you should vaccinate and feed canned food. You certainly can use her for acupuncture, but follow your heart and feed raw meat. Stand firm with what you feel is working. You need to be flexible enough to realize you (or your practitioner) have made a mistake and it is time for a change. Again - you are responsible for deciding what needs to be tried next for your animal - maybe conventional drugs, maybe homeopathy, maybe intuitive healing.

Christina Chambreau, DVM, is an internationally known homeopathic veterinarian. She graduated from the University of Georgia Veterinary College in 1980, began using homeopathy in her veterinary practice in 1983, and has used primarily homeopathy since 1988. A dynamic teacher, Dr. Chambreau is a founder of the Academy of Veterinary Homeopathy and is on the faculty of the National Center for Homeopathy Summer School. She also teaches her own 1 and 2 day courses, and lectures at conventions, schools, clubs and to anyone who is concerned about improving the health of animals. She has written and is quoted in many magazines and appears on many radio shows. She is married to Dr. Mort Orman, author of the 14-Day Stress Cure and How to Have a Stress Free Wedding. They have a 14-year-old daughter Tracie and live near Baltimore, Maryland.

FALL: A Time of Balance and Reflection

2011-01-10T08:20:00.000-08:00

FALL: A Time of Balance and Reflection
by Ann Bailey, acupuncturist

FALL: A Time of Balance and Reflection

Fall approaches slowly, like fog, filling in the spaces left by summer.The fall season is a great in-between-time, helping you make the transition from the heightened activity of summer to the deep quiet of winter. Because nature is able to accomplish this transition, it can assist you in making the transition as well.

You can mark this passage by tuning into what nature is doing: plants pull in, taking their life energy, their sap, back into their trunks and down into their roots.Birds start their migration to warmer climates.Autumn winds help the trees loosen and let go of their leaves. Temperatures cool and sunlight is no longer as bright. The days begin to grow shorter and the nights longer.

Fall serves to remind you that it is time to slow down from the intensity of summer. All in nature is winding down and preparing for the quiet, resting time that will come in the winter. This is the time for you to begin to pull inward too. It is the best time of year to reflect on your spring and summer, to take time to contemplate your past year. your own "harvest" and to appreciate your growth and examine your challenges.

You can ponder any unfinished business or relationships and bring those to more clarity and to completion. You can let go of what no longer serves you and take in what is of value to you. The fall season reinforces the intention to break old patterns of seeing, feeling and thinking. It can assist you in taking a different view of old issues. When consciously used, fall facilitates releasing the past and frees you to move forward in your life. This is the work of the fall season.

Here are some ways for you to connect with the fall season:
Begin to slow down. Go to bed earlier and arise earlier. Stop multi-tasking and do only one thing at a time. Notice how you feel when you concentrate your energy in this way. Go through your closets and give away those clothes you no longer wear or need.

Pay particular attention to your breath right now. It helps you to be present, in the moment. Start by noticing your breath: breathe in slowly, pause, and then let it go. Do this at least three times, then sit and relax for ten minutes and just notice how you are breathing: the rhythm, the timing, how your chest feels, what thoughts go through your head.

Enjoy the fall
Take a walk and notice the dry, crisp air. In California, feel the Santa Ana winds that bring the warmer air from inland out to the coast. Pay attention to the plants that are withdrawing and pulling their juices and sap back and down into their roots. See the squirrels and other animals scurrying for food to store away for colder weather. Notice that ducks, geese, heron, whales are making their migration to warmer climates.
All these signals show that the nature is preparing for a different, unique season in the year.

About Ann
Ann Bailey is a Registered Nurse and Five Element acupuncture practitioner. She is passionate about supporting people who are committed to achieving and maintaining their mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health. She is the founder of SourcePoint Acupuncture, her practice that combines eastern and western medicine to assist people in achieving optimal health.

You can learn more about Ann and Five Element acupuncture at her website: www.annbaileyacupuncture.com

1033 Gayley Avenue Suite 117
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Phone 310.462.3663 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 310.462.3663 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
ann@annbaileyacupuncture.com

Homeopathy: A Time-Tested Treatment for the Flu

2011-01-07T13:53:00.000-08:00

News Source: Huffington Post
Sentiment: Very Positive
News Date: January 5, 2011
Author Last Name: Malerba, DO
Author First Name: Larry

If you are looking for a safe and reliable treatment for the flu then perhaps homeopathy is for you. My own clinical experience of 20 years has repeatedly confirmed the safety and effectiveness of homeopathic treatment for the flu. Not to be confused with the term "holistic," which means any approach to health that takes into account the whole person, "homeopathic" refers to a specific holistic medical therapy that involves matching the symptom profile of the sick person with the symptom profile of a corresponding homeopathic medicine.

If you catch the flu and would like to try homeopathic treatment it is best to consult a well-qualified homeopathic medical professional. It should be noted that homeopathic medicines are FDA approved and regulated, and all of the ones discussed here are classified as over-the-counter. Homeopathic medicines are exceedingly safe and are available for purchase in many natural food stores, pharmacies and even some grocery stores.

Medical historians tend to overlook the full history of the 1918 influenza epidemic. Records indicate that death rates for those receiving homeopathic treatment were significantly lower than those using the conventional therapy of the time (mostly aspirin). One report noted that there was a 1.05 percent mortality rate in 26,795 cases of influenza treated by homeopathic physicians compared to an average death rate of 30 percent for cases treated by regular doctors of the time (1).

A well-chosen homeopathic prescription serves to reinforce the self-healing capacity of the body by boosting the immune system. There is some contemporary research that points to the effectiveness of homeopathic treatment for the flu but more research needs to be done (2). Although we continue to face new strains of the flu with each passing season, the symptoms that they generate are limited to some relatively predictable patterns that have been identified and documented by homeopathic practitioners over the generations. So fear not, because the same homeopathic medicines that worked during the 1918 flu epidemic can be used to treat contemporary versions of the flu.

In terms of flu prevention, there is some evidence that vitamin D may be of value (3). Avoiding overexposure to certain weather extremes can also help maintain optimal resistance to viral illnesses. The value of homeopathic treatment in preventing the flu is a subject of debate among homeopathic practitioners. One such medicine used prophylactically is called Influenzinum, although there is no research to back this up. However, once you catch the flu, a properly prescribed homeopathic medicine may reduce the severity of flu symptoms, prevent complications and help speed recovery.

If we were to draw up a laundry list of common flu symptoms it would read something like this: fever, chills, sweats, aches, fatigue, headache, cough, sore throat, diarrhea and so on. Since homeopathy is concerned primarily with the unique way in which each individual manifests his or her symptoms, the trick for the prescriber is to determine what symptoms are most prominent, or characteristic, in any given case of the flu. A careful study of the symptom pattern of the sick individual allows the prescriber to choose a corresponding homeopathic medicine that closely matches that pattern.

Two individuals may, for example, similarly complain of fever, chills and muscle aches. However, when we investigate further, we find that the first person emphasizes how cold he is. He is dressed in a sweatshirt, sweatpants, a hat and is under several blankets. By contrast, the second person complains about how achy she is, so much so, that she doesn't want to get up from the couch because it hurts too much to move. Therefore, it is important to carefully observe and listen to the way in which the sick individual experiences and describes his or her own symptoms. It's all in the emphasis.

Here are the indications for some of the most commonly prescribed homeopathic flu medicines:

Bryonia: This, in my experience, is one of the most frequently indicated flu medicines. The emphasis is on the fact that motion exacerbates the symptoms, and the person prefers, therefore, to remain quiet and still. There is often headache, dry cough and body aches, all of which become aggravated by moving around. The person can be irritable, and doesn't mind if he/she is left alone. The person is usually chilly, and may have chills or a fever spike around 9 p.m. There tends to be thirst for cold drinks, which the person gulps down at long intervals.

Gelsemium: The emphasis here is on drowsiness, sleepiness and fatigue. The person often sleeps all night, additional hours during the day, and is still exhausted. The person also experiences chills, complains of being cold and feels achy. There is a notable decrease in the normal level of thirst. It is as if the person is just too tired to bother to drink. This medicine may be easily confused with Bryonia, which lies in bed all day because motion aggravates the symptoms. Gelsemium lies there all day out of sheer fatigue.

Arsenicum: The most telling clue here is the onset of illness in the middle of the night, especially between 1 and 2 a.m. The person may wake with chills, diarrhea or vomiting at this time. Likewise, the symptoms may flare up again at the same time the next night. The person is often anxious, may fear that he/she is seriously ill, and prefers not to be left alone. He/she is usually quite chilly, and desires frequent small sips of liquid. Unlike the first two medicines, this one is anxious and restless and is, therefore, not likely to lie still.

Eupatorium: The "keynote" or telltale symptom here is bone pain. Most flu sufferers complain of muscle aches, but this medicine is best suited for individuals who literally complain of pain in their bones -- aching in the bones as if they are broken. This flu often begins in the morning with chills first, followed by fever. In spite of feeling cold, there is a desire for cold drinks.

Nux vomica: The person who needs this medicine is very chilly and usually has some type of digestive complaint like nausea or intestinal cramping pains. The person may be so cold that just moving the hand to a cool spot on the bed may send chills through the body. Unlike Arsenicum, which is also quite chilly, this person is usually unafraid.

Rhus tox: This flu may come on after exposure to cold, damp wet weather. Stiffness and pain causes the person to be restless, tossing and turning in bed. This person frequently changes position in order to be physically comfortable.

Aconite: The main clue here is the sudden onset of symptoms, usually high fever, especially after exposure to very cold, dry windy weather. The person is often anxious, and feels worse in a warm room and worse at night.

Baptisia: This flu is accompanied by a type of delirium. The person may become confused, and the headache may be stupefying. Reality becomes distorted and the person may experience odd sensations or say strange things. The person is sore all over and complains that the bed is too hard or uncomfortable.

Phosphorus: This type of flu can quickly go to the chest. There is a strong desire for large quantities of cold drinks, and the person prefers to have the company of another person.

Mercurius: The helpful clue here is that the person is alternating hot and cold, like the mercury in a thermometer. There can also be sore throat, bad breath, bad taste in the mouth and perspiration. This person tends to smell sick.

Belladonna: The main clue here is a bright red face with sudden onset of high fever often around 3 p.m., as if all the blood has rushed to the head. The person may complain of a pounding or pulsating type of headache.

Never well since the flu: For some individuals, the effects of a bout with the flu can last for a very long time. Some may complain, for example, of fatigue and other chronic symptoms. Constitutional homeopathic treatment can be effective in restoring one's vitality, however, this is a complex issue that should be handled by a homeopathic professional.

There are a variety of good quality first-aid homeopathic reference books available that can help one become familiar with the symptom profiles of the medicines. I usually prescribe the indicated medicine in a 30C or 30X strength (as in Bryonia 30C), although lower potencies (6X, 12X, etc) can also be used. Three to four doses dissolved in the mouth, spread out over the course of a 24-hour period, for adults and children alike, should be sufficient to elicit a positive response. Medicine kits that contain commonly indicated homeopathic medicines are also available for purchase from homeopathic pharmacies.

If the prescription is incorrect there will likely be no effect. If the correct medicine is taken, improvement may be noted within hours. Initial positive signs may be obvious or more subtle -- the person might sit up from the bed, ask for a drink or some food, or wish to engage in some activity. Once symptoms subside and steady improvement is noted, there is usually no further need to repeat doses of the medicine. If no progress has been made after 24 hours, another medicine can be tried in the same manner.

Please remember that it is always ideal to consult a homeopathic professional when using homeopathy. If this is not possible, and if symptoms persist or continue to get worse, please seek the care of a medical professional as soon as possible. Common sense should always prevail.

References:
(1) W.A. Dewey, M.D., University of Michigan, Homeopathy in Influenza - A Chorus of Fifty in Harmony, Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, May 1921

(2) Vickers A, Smith C. Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like syndromes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2006, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD001957. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001957.pub4

(3) Bill Gottlieb, The Easiest Way to Prevent Colds and Flu, Huffington Post

Recommended Homeopathic First-Aid Books:

The Complete Homeopathic Resource for Common Illnesses, Dennis Chernin, MD, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 2006

Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines, Stephen Cummings, MD and Dana Ullman, MPH, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004

The Family Guide to Homeopathy: Symptoms and Natural Solutions, Dr. Andrew Lockie, Fireside, New York, 1993

Biography:

Larry Malerba, D.O., DHt is the author of "Green Medicine: Challenging the Assumptions of Conventional Health Care," published by North Atlantic Books and distributed by Random House. He has been a practitioner, educator and leader in the field of holistic medicine for more than 20 years.

Dr Malerba interview on Todays Authors - view here

Pacifica Radio: Dr Malerba discusses "Green Medicine" on Global Medicine Review

GREEN MEDICINE on Facebook

Is Homeopathy a Healing Idea Whose Time Has Come — Again?

2010-10-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

Article from Ode Magazine

Valerie Ohanian was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota in the late 1970s when severe fatigue descended out of nowhere. Suddenly, she couldn’t stay up for more than 15 minutes at a time without feeling exhausted. Ohanian consulted several doctors, one of whom suggested she might just be depressed and referred her to a psychologist. The psychologist told her she definitely had health problems.

Nothing Ohanian’s doctors prescribed alleviated her fatigue and painfully swollen glands. She suffered through the mysterious illness for two years, unable to work. “I didn’t know if I’d ever get over it,” she says. “I was really willing to try something different at that point.”

A chiropractor who gave her acupuncture provided some relief, but Ohanian always relapsed in a few days. “The chiropractor told me, ‘I think the only thing that will help you is homeopathy.’ I remembered reading about it and I contacted the only person in Minnesota at that time who was practising,” Ohanian says. “After taking mercurius vivus, the remedy this fellow gave me, I didn’t feel anything for a few days. Then one day I realized I had been up doing things for three hours and I was able to stay up all day. Within a month, I had my energy back.”

She was so moved by her experience that she became a homeopath herself at a time when few were practising in the United States. Twenty-five years later, Ohanian runs a thriving practice in Minneapolis, treating many people like herself for whom conventional medicine has failed to relieve chronic illness, as well as those seeking a deeper sense of well-being.

Ohanian’s story is set against the backdrop of a renaissance in homeopathy, a 200-year-old therapeutic system that aims to stimulate the body to heal itself. Homeopathy is based on the premise of “like cures like” or the law of similars, which posits that a substance that causes symptoms in large doses can cure the same symptoms in small doses. Homeopaths use infinitesimally diluted doses of substances derived from plants, animals and minerals to trigger the body’s natural defense mechanisms. To treat a cold accompanied by a runny nose and watery eyes, for example, a homeopath might prescribe a preparation of allium cepa: in other words, onion.

Advocates emphasize homeopathy’s gentleness—side effects are extremely rare—and holistic methods. Unlike conventional medicine, homeopathy focuses on treating the individual rather than the disease. A homeopath takes a meticulous history of each patient’s physical symptoms, emotional and mental states and overall constitution, seeking the unique aspects that will lead to the precise remedy to promote healing.

This individualized approach is drawing a growing number of people fed up with an expensive, impersonal health-care system that relies on chemical drugs which sometimes end up doing more harm than good. While conventional medicine clearly saves countless lives, particularly in acute illness and emergencies, homeopathy is increasingly a choice among people with chronic health problems, the second most common reason for trips to the doctor’s office in the U.S.

Homeopathy is routinely prescribed for everything from asthma, ear infections and upper respiratory infections, to high blood pressure, sprains and strains and depression. Today it is the most widely used form of alternative medicine in the world, according to the World Health Organization. Approximately 500 million people worldwide receive homeopathic treatment. Homeopathy is most common in India, where there are an estimated 300,000 homeopaths and more than 300 homeopathic hospitals. It also is popular in Europe, South Africa and Brazil. In France, approximately 40 percent of the public has used homeopathic remedies. In the Netherlands, almost half of Dutch physicians consider homeopathic remedies effective, and in Britain, visits to homeopaths are growing by nearly 40 percent a year. In the United States, the number of people using homeopathy increased by an estimated 500 percent during the 1990s.

But last August, the British medical journal The Lancet proclaimed “The End of Homeopathy” in its lead editorial (issue 366), based on a new analysis of earlier studies comparing homeopathy and conventional medicine to the use of placebos. The analysis, conducted by Aijing Shang, Matthias Egger and their colleagues at the University of Berne in Switzerland, on eight placebo-controlled trials with homeopathy and six with conventional medicine, reported that homeopathy appears to work no better than a placebo. In other words, any positive effects from homeopathy are all in people’s heads. Lancet editors concluded, “Now doctors need to be bold and honest with their patients about homeopathy’s lack of benefit, and with themselves for the failings of modern medicine to address patients’ needs for personalized care.”

A number of researchers, however, contend that the editorial is slanted, inaccurate and ignores the real issues. Among them is Dr. Wayne Jonas, who published a meta-analysis incorporating a number of studies, an approach similar to Shang’s in The Lancet in 1997. After analyzing 89 studies, Jonas and his colleagues reported that homeopathy was almost 2 1/2 times more effective than a placebo. Jonas calls the recent editorial “irresponsible” and “a misuse of statistics.” He says statistics are dangerously easy to misconstrue, and in the case of homeopathy, techniques like meta-analysis can fail to accurately capture what’s happening in people’s bodies and lives, which is the real issue that needs investigating.

“I do not agree with the editorial that we should abandon homeopathy,” says Jonas, director of the Samueli Institute of Information Biology in Alexandria, Virginia, and a former director of both the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine and the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Collaborating Center for Traditional Medicine. “We will never know whether its primary effect is due to a better application of the art of medicine, or if there’s a special effect from the remedies, unless we do research in these areas. Since the public is using homeopathy at a growing rate, then it’s really our obligation as scientists to try to find that out.”
Is homeopathy a 200-year-old hoax, or a powerful paradigm for healing? The pursuit of the truth offers an intriguing glimpse into the tangled—some would say dysfunctional—relationship between the politics of medicine and the advancement of healing. Fasten your seatbelts.

A German physician named Samuel Hahnemann created homeopathy in the late 1700s. Back then, one of the worst places a sick person could wind up was a hospital, where bloodletting and purging were among the cures du jour. Disillusioned after seeing too many patients die from such barbaric practises, the young Dr. Hahnemann decided to switch careers for awhile and translate medical and scientific texts. He was translating William Cullen’s Materia Medica from English to German in 1790 when he encountered Cullen’s idea that Peruvian bark, which we now know contains quinine, cured malaria because it was bitter. The notion made no sense to Hahnemann, but he was intrigued enough that he started experimenting on himself.

After taking several doses of the bark, Hahnemann developed most of the symptoms of malaria. He concluded that the bark was effective because it triggered symptoms similar to those of the disease it treated, and called this effect “the law of similars.” When he gave Peruvian bark to malaria patients to confirm his ideas, they improved.

Hahnemann eventually tested more than 200 medicines of the day—diluting them to reduce toxicity—on himself, his family and a growing group of followers. He meticulously recorded his subjects’ physical, mental and emotional reactions to each substance, establishing the now-standard homeopathic process of “provings” to develop remedies.

As Hahnemann continued this research he also developed his most controversial idea: The more a substance is diluted, the more powerful its healing properties. Homeopathic remedies then, as now, are so diluted they may not contain a single molecule of the original substance. Hahnemann called this process of dilution and shaking “potentization,” which he believed extracted the “spirit-like” nature of each substance that could activate a patient’s “vital force” against disease.

In 1810, Hahnemann laid out his theories and philosophy in his treatise Organon of the Rational Art of Healing. His methods had gained many followers, including European royalty, by the time he coined the term “homeopathy” (for homoios or “similar” and pathos or “suffering”) in 1826.

Homeopathy spread throughout Europe and the U.S. over the next few decades, gaining credibility during epidemics of infectious disease. Patients treated by homeopaths were reported to have had much lower mortality rates than those treated by conventional physicians during cholera epidemics in Europe and the U.S. in the 1830s and ’40s. For example, during a cholera epidemic in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1849, only three percent of patients who received homeopathic care died, compared with up to 60 percent of patients who received the conventional medical treatment of the time.

But a backlash was brewing on both sides of the Atlantic. Homeopaths were creating serious competition for conventional physicians. Two years after homeopaths organized the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1844, the American Medical Association (AMA) was formed—in part to discredit homeopathy. In 1855, the AMA incorporated a code of ethics that included expulsion of physicians who even consulted with homeopaths or other “non-regular” practitioners. Similar events were unfolding in Europe; orthodox physicians in France also banned consultations with homeopaths. Homeopathy was outlawed in Austria.

In spite of these setbacks, homeopathy continued to flourish, drawing such admirers as Mark Twain, who wrote in Harper’s magazine in 1890, “The introduction of homeopathy forced the old-school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business.” By the turn of the century, more than 100 homeopathic hospitals operated in the U.S., along with 22 homeopathic medical schools and more than 1,000 homeopathic pharmacies. Interestingly, many students and practitioners were women, and the homeopathic Boston Female Medical College, founded as a school for midwives in 1848, was the first women’s medical college in the world.

The early 20th century, however, brought several blows to homeopathy. The Carnegie Foundation issued the Flexner Report in 1910, which, in collaboration with the AMA, sought to standardize medical education. The report rated all medical schools in the U.S and gave nearly all homeopathic colleges—as well as most medical colleges for blacks and women—low scores. Soon, some of these schools started closing, and far fewer graduates of homeopathic colleges were allowed to take medical licensing exams. Soon after, the Rockefeller Foundation boosted conventional medical schools with gifts in the tens of millions.

Conventional medicine became the overwhelmingly dominant paradigm. By 1922, only two homeopathic colleges remained in the U.S. With the exception of India and a few scattered corners of the world, homeopathy went deep underground.

By the time Valerie Ohanian decided to study homeopathy, she couldn’t find a training program in the U.S. She read what she could and eventually found people to teach her. “I had to put things together bit by bit,” she says.

In Europe, however, homeopathy was making a comeback. The person most responsible for that revival is George Vithoulkas, a Greek homeopath who started practising and teaching in the 1960s. Vithoulkas refined Hahnemann’s ideas and brought them into the new frontier of energy medicine. He says homeopathy helps a patient heal by affecting his or her electromagnetic field.

In his seminal book The Science of Homeopathy, Vithoulkas offers a brief but eloquent description of the goal of any healing system. “A human being’s main and final objective is continuous and unconditional happiness,” he wrote. “Any therapeutic system should lead a person toward this goal.” Vithoulkas defined the difference between conventional medicine and homeopathy this way: “Homeopathy does not merely remove disease from the organism; it strengthens and harmonizes the very source of life and creativity in the individual.”

Vithoulkas’ teachings and writings inspired a new generation of homeopaths, including Ohanian, who studied with him in the 1980s. For his groundbreaking work, he received the Right Livelihood Award, or “alternative Nobel Prize” in 1996. In addition to being a powerful teacher, Vithoulkas is also a fearless critic of conventional medicine’s reliance on increasingly harsh and powerful drugs.

Homeopaths believe conventional drugs often suppress symptoms rather than cure illness. Vithoulkas says this suppression actually drives illness deeper into the patient, eventually expressing itself as mental illness and diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system. He also contends that the medical establishment’s overemphasis on increasingly stronger drugs may be making us sicker.

“The immune systems of the Western population, through strong chemical drugs and repeated vaccinations, have broken down,” Vithoulkas told the Swedish Parliament in his acceptance speech for the Right Livelihood Award. He linked the rising rates of diseases such as asthma and cancer with “wrong intervention.” Vithoulkas told the gathering, “If conventional medicine were really curing chronic diseases, today we would have a population in the West that was healthy, mentally, emotionally and physically.”

Although such sweeping statements need to be taken with a grain of salt, they raise provocative questions. Chronic disease is the world’s leading killer, causing approximately 17 million premature deaths worldwide every year, according to WHO. While lifestyle factors like poor diet, smoking and lack of exercise can lead to chronic disease, along with environmental and genetic factors, conventional medicine typically fails to cure people once they’ve gotten sick. Prescription drugs, in fact, sometimes do more harm than good: A 1998 study by researchers at the University of Toronto found that prescription drugs were the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.

Among the many researchers unconvinced of homeopathy’s “end” is Dr. George Lewith, director of the Complementary Medicine Research Unit at the University of Southampton in England. “People are coming to homeopaths and some are getting better,” Lewith says. “Our patients are telling us that something is going on with complementary medicine and we have to listen and understand that. This is a patient-led revolution, which gets up doctors’ noses a lot.”

Lewith, who has been studying complementary and alternative medicine for years, first prescribed homeopathy to a patient with rheumatoid arthritis 25 years ago. Within two weeks, the woman’s inflammation and arthritis disappeared. “From then on, I thought, ‘This is something very useful,’” Lewith says. “I know you shouldn’t be impressed by such things, but that’s what I found.”

Lewith suspects the consultation process between the patient and the homeopath is a strong influence. He is now investigating this question in a study of rheumatoid arthritis patients in which one group receives a homeopathic remedy and a consultation and the other receives only a remedy. He’s comparing these groups with two others, one receiving a placebo with a consultation and the other receiving only a placebo. “As I’ve gone on over the last 10 years thinking about how we could research homeopathy, it’s increasingly becoming clearer to me that the process of homeopathy and the process of the consultation are probably inseparable,” he says. “I think there’s something quite therapeutic in that process which is different from the almost mechanical consultations that you get in conventional medicine.”

While many like Lewith work on human studies, others are investigating homeopathy’s effects on animals, which offer further insight into the placebo question. Animals don’t make things up; they either get better or they don’t. In an intriguing set of new studies completed last summer, Liesbeth Ellinger, a homeopathic veterinarian in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, investigated homeopathy’s effect in newborn dairy calves. Diarrhea is a common problem in dairy calves, a condition some Dutch farmers regularly treat with homeopathic remedies. Among Ellinger’s findings: On one farm, not a single calf who received a homeopathic remedy developed diarrhea, while every calf given a placebo did. She says the most difficult part of the research, done with the Louis Bolk Instituut, was persuading farmers to give a placebo instead of homeopathy “because they know homeopathy works.”

In spite of typically limited funding for research, homeopaths around the world are continuing their own investigations and publishing results in homeopathic and alternative medicine journals. They are reporting homeopathy to be particularly promising in treating illnesses and conditions including ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder), arthritis, viral illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, eczema, inflammatory bowel disease, premenstrual syndrome, and post-traumatic stress, according to the American Institute of Homeopathy. In seminar rooms around the world, homeopaths tell story after story of extraordinary, improbable cures.

Among the believers is Dr. Andrew Weil, director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona and author of Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being. “I’ve witnessed homeopathy working in my own life and I’ve seen a great deal of clinical success with it,” he says. “I’d love to know how it works. I think there is some way in which homeopathic remedies convey information to the body and that some day it will be seen as some form of energy medicine, which is up and coming. As that develops, we may have studies that uncover the mechanisms by which homeopathy works.”

Homeopathy defies explanation by conventional science, a valid point that skeptics make over and over again. How can a remedy that might not contain a single molecule of the original substance have any effect at all? If an explanation is ever found, it may be discovered on the frontiers of quantum physics through studies that might yield great material for a sequel to What the Bleep Do We Know?!—the recent movie exploring those sorts of questions.

Wayne Jonas points out that science also has yet to explain the mechanism of action of many conventional drugs. How aspirin works, of all things, has undergone four or five different explanations over the last 100 years. “There are many things we deliver in conventional medicine that we have no idea why they work, or even if they work, but we still allow them and we still continue to research them,” he says.

So much of medicine, like many things that influence our lives, hinges on the “politically dominant standard” of the time, says Dr. Iris Bell, director of research for the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. Bell criticized the editorial in The Lancet, saying tools such as the meta-analysis are “inappropriate to the nature of the intervention that they’re evaluating.” Unlike conventional drugs, which are expected to produce basically the same effect in every person, homeopathic remedies are prescribed for each individual. In other words, three people with the same physical symptoms could easily be given different remedies based upon their unique physical, emotional and mental make-up. In short, evaluating homeopathy is likely impossible using standard methods, and extremely difficult even when using other techniques.

Bell says all medicines—complementary or conventional—should be evaluated for their broader effects on patients’ lives, as well as for safety and cost. One tool to help with such assessments is the well-designed observational study, which measures the effects of an intervention on a patient’s overall well-being, energy level and other “real-life” changes. "If homeopathy and other forms of complementary and alternative medicine were the politically dominant standard, researchers would have every right to evaluate every drug on safety, cost, and whether or not one drug can help improve a broad range of symptoms in the person as a whole—with minimal side-effects—not just an isolated symptom,” she says.

As the debate over homeopathy continues, people are streaming in to see Valerie Ohanian and into the offices of other homeopaths around the world. “I’ve seen our client base go from people at the end who have tried everything else, to people who want to get a constitutional remedy to fine-tune their health,” Ohanian says.

Ohanian is now treating the grandchildren of some of her earliest clients, which she finds particularly gratifying. She talks about a client who had angrily stopped treatment when he was a teenager. Now an adult, he returned recently with his young son. “He told me, ‘I resisted you because my mom made me come. But the peace and light and energy in me went away after I stopped seeing you,’” Ohanian says.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the medicine of the future needs to focus on strengthening our own healing abilities. After all, that’s our best defense. “We know that the most powerful weapon we have against illness and suffering is our own inherent healing capacities,” Jonas says. “We wouldn’t be around if we weren’t constantly repairing ourselves and becoming more whole.”
The people seeking better health through alternative forms of medicine like homeopathy just want to feel better. They’re not waiting for a paradigm shift in medicine—they’re leading it.

Some History of the Treatment of Epidemics with Homeopathy

2010-10-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

By Julian Winston

From its earliest days, homeopathy has been able to treat epidemic diseases with a substantial rate of success, when compared to conventional treatments. It was these successes that placed the practice of homeopathy so firmly in the consciousness of people world-wide.

There is a story told about Joseph Pulte, one of the earliest homeopaths in Cincinnati. When he began his practice, many people were so angered by a homeopath being in town that they pelted the house with eggs. He was becoming discouraged enough to think of leaving. His wife said, "Joseph, do you believe in the truth of homeopathy?" He replied in the affirmative. "Then," she said, "you will stay in Cincinnati."

Shortly after, when the Cholera epidemic swept through, Pulte was able to boast of not having lost a single patient-- and he was accepted into the community. In the Epidemic of 1849, people crowded to his door and stood in the street because the waiting room was full.

In 1900, Thomas Lindsley Bradford, MD, wrote a book called "The Logic of Figures" in which he collected the statistics he could find that would compare the conventional therapeutics with homeopathic ones. Many of the figures cited below are derived from Bradford's work.

One of the earliest tests of the homeopathic system was in the treatment of Typhus Fever (spread by lice) in an 1813 epidemic which followed the devastation of Napoleon's army marching through Germany to attack Russia, followed by their retreat. When the epidemic came through Leipzig as the army pulled back from the east, Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, was able to treat 180 cases of Typhus-- losing but two. This, at a time when the conventional treatments were having a mortality rate of over 30%.

In 1830 as the cholera epidemic was reported coming from the east, Hahnemann was able to identify the stages of the illness, and predict what remedies would be needed for which stages.

When Cholera finally struck Europe in 1831 the mortality rate (under conventional treatment) was between 40% (Imperial Council of Russia) to 80% (Osler's Practice of Medicine). Out of five people who contracted Cholera, two to four of them died under regular treatment. Dr. Quin, in London, reported the mortality in the ten homeopathic hospitals in 1831-32 as 9%; Dr. Roth, physician to the king of Bavaria, reported that under homeopathic care the mortality was 7%; Admiral Mordoinow of the Imperial Russian Council reported 10% mortality under homeopathy; and Dr. Wild, Allopathic editor of Dublin Quarterly Journal, reported in Austria, the Allopathic mortality was 66% and the homeopathic mortality was 33% "and on account of this extraordinary result, the law interdicting the practice of Homeopathy in Austria was repealed".

Homeopathy continued to be effective in the treatment of Epidemic Cholera. In 1854 a Cholera Epidemic struck London. This was a historically important epidemic in that it was the first time the medical community was able to trace the outbreak to a source (a public water pump), and when the pump was closed, the epidemic soon ceased. The House of Commons asked for a report about the various methods of treating the epidemic. When the report was issued, the homeopathic figures were not included. The House of Lords asked for an explanation, and it was admitted that if the homeopathic figures were to be included in the report, it would "skew the results". The suppressed report revealed that under allopathic care the mortality was 59.2% while under homeopathic care the mortality was only 9%.

It is hard today to comprehend what kind of scourge such an epidemic was. As was seen in the later Flu Epidemic of 1918, one could be healthy in the morning and be dead by evening-- it moved that rapidly. Many books were written about the Homeopathic treatment of Cholera during these times, among them: Cholera and its Homeopathic treatment, F. Humphreys (1849); Homeopathic Treatment of Cholera, B.F. Joslin (1854); Homeopathic Domestic Treatment of Cholera, Biegler (1858); Epidemic Cholera, B. F. Joslin (1885); Asiatic Cholera, Jabez Dake (1886).

The success of homeopathic treatment continued with the later cholera epidemics. In the Hamburg epidemic of 1892, allopathic mortality was 42%, homeopathic mortality was 15.5% During the 1850s, there were several epidemics of Yellow Fever in the southern states. This disease was eventually found to be transmitted by mosquito. Osler says that the allopathic mortality from Yellow Fever is between 15-85%. Holcome, a homeopath, reported in 1853 a mortality of 6.43% in Natchez, and Dr. Davis, another homeopath in Natchez, reported 5.73%. In 1878 the mortality in New Orleans was 50% under allopathic care, and 5.6% (in 1,945 cases in the same epidemic) with homeopathic care.

The two best books on this topic were: Yellow Fever and its Homeopathic Treatment, Holcome, (1856) and The Efficacy of Crotalus Horridus in Yellow Fever, C. Neidhard, (1860).

Another epidemic disease which was treatable with homeopathy was Diphtheria. Since the advent of widespread vaccination, it is a disease not often seen in our modern world. Diphtheria appeared periodically, and rarely had the same presentation. It was, therefore, very important for the practitioner to individualize the treatment in each specific case or generalized epidemic. A remedy which had been effective in treating it one year might not be the same remedy needed the next year.

In the records of three years of Diphtheria in Broome County, NY from 1862 to 1864, there was a report of an 83.6% mortality rate among the allopaths and a 16.4% mortality rate among the Homeopaths. (Bradford)

Perhaps the most recent use of homeopathy in a major epidemic was during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. The Journal of the American Institute for Homeopathy, May, 1921, had a long article about the use of homeopathy in the flu epidemic. Dr. T A McCann, from Dayton, Ohio, reported that 24,000 cases of flu treated allopathically had a mortality
rate of 28.2% while 26,000 cases of flu treated homeopathically had a mortality rate of 1.05%. This last figure was supported by Dean W.A. Pearson of Philadelphia (Hahnemann College) who collected 26,795 cases of flu treated with homeopathy with the above result.

The most common remedy used was Gelsemium, with occasional cases needing Bryonia and Eupatorium reported. Dr. Herbert A. Roberts from Derby, CT, said that 30 physicians in Connecticut responded to his request for data. They reported 6,602 cases with 55 deaths, which is less than 1%. Dr. Roberts was working as a physician on a troop ship during WWI. He had 81 cases of flu on the way over to Europe. He reported, "All recovered and were landed. Every man received homeopathic treatment. One ship lost 31 on the way."

Closer to our present time, there were the Polio epidemics in the mid-1950s. Dr. Alonzo Shadman, a homeopath in the Boston area, emphasized that until *actual paralysis* was observed, it was hard to distinguish the prodromal symptoms of Polio from those of the common cold-- and he treated many "summer colds" during the time. Were they incipient polio? No one can tell.

Dr. Francisco Eizayaga or Argentina, tells of a polio epidemic in Buenos Aires in 1957, where the symptoms of the epidemic resembled those of the remedy Lathyrus sativa. The homeopathic doctors and pharmacies prescribed Lathyrus 30c as a prophylactic, and "thousands of doses" were distributed. "Nobody registered a case of contagion." Eizayaga points out that in other epidemics of polio, Gelsemium was the indicated remedy-- emphasizing, again, the need for individualization.

Homeopathy has been very effective in treating many of the epidemics during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Why the successes are not better known is a subject for conjecture. It could be that, like the physician quoted below, most would rather not see the ineffectiveness of the conventional therapeutics nor accept the efficacy of homeopathy. From "Homeopathy In Influenza-A Chorus Of Fifty In Harmony" by W. A. Dewey, MD (Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, May 1921):

One physician in a Pittsburgh hospital asked a nurse if she knew anything better than what he was doing, because he was losing many cases. "Yes, Doctor, stop aspirin and go down to a homeopathic pharmacy, and get homeopathic remedies". The Doctor replied: "But that is homeopathy." "I know it, but the homeopathic doctors for whom I have nursed have not lost a single case."--W. F. Edmundson, MD, Pittsburgh.

How Does Homeopathy Work?

2010-10-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

By Paul Callinan MSc, ND, DHom, PhD
Recently homoeopathic medicine has risen to new heights of controversy in the world of medical science. Nature, a prestigious journal in the field of Bioscience, has taken the unprecedented step of issuing a warning to readers to suspend judgment on one of its printed research papers. The author and principal experimenter, Professor Jacques Benveniste of the French Medical Research Council, has been subjected to scorn, ridicule, and critical investigation of his experimental procedures because the results he printed supported homoeopathic medicine. Paul Callinan, one of Australia's few homoeopathic researchers, looks at the past and present of this contentious medicine.

The rising profile of homoeopathy has produced something of a dilemma in the world of medicine: does it work or doesn't it? The decision bites deep: if homoeopathic medicine is nothing but fraud, quackery, and placebo, as many of its opponents would maintain, then a large number of competently trained homoeopaths and doctors, together with countless thousands of dedicated lay practitioners have been led up the medical garden path. Their millions of patients, including many heads of state and prominent members of several of Europe's royal families, have fallen victim to the most successful medical hoax ever perpetrated. On the other hand, if homoeopathic medicine is effective, then for the first time in more than a hundred years the Western world is on the verge of developing an entirely new system of medicine. The medicines are non-toxic and easily manufactured; they are also very cheap.

During the 170 years of its existence, homoeopathy has been the centre of continual and often bitter medical controversy. It has been particularly opposed by orthodox medicine, otherwise known as allopathy. But recently, both research and patient support has grown at a rapid pace. Yet rather than being hailed as a possible new medical breakthrough to give better health for all, it has been ridiculed, ignored and systematically suppressed.

Clearly, something is wrong. The problem is that homoeopathic medicines can be diluted to such extremes that it can be shown physically, chemically, and mathematically that there is nothing in the final dose but water. Obviously then, the objection goes, any medicinal effect is nothing but placebo, and the homoeopaths are both frauds and charlatans.

Yet the origins of homoeopathic medicine are both honorable and orthodox. It was developed in Germany by the research of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1834), who as well as being an experienced orthodox physician was also a competent chemist, a good mineralogist and botanist, and an able translator of eight different languages. His research stemmed from dissatisfaction with the standard medical practices of his time: routine bleedings, heroic purgings with cathartics, and administration of large doses of crude drugs. While translating Cullen's Materia Medica into German, he was struck by a hitherto unexplored medical observation, first mentioned by Hippocrates. Cullen had proposed that the notable success of cinchona (an extract of quinine bark) in the treatment of swamp fever was due to its value as a stomach tonic. Hahnemann disagreed, and in his research on the question decided to take a course of the cinchona extract himself. To his surprise, he developed a set of symptoms remarkably similar to those of the swamp fever it was used to treat. All the symptoms disappeared when he stopped taking it. Further administration to himself and his family always produced the same symptoms, varying only in degree.

This was a strange phenomenon, uncited in the medical literature of the day. A remedy which was effective in a particular disease would produce a similar set of symptoms in a healthy person, when given in sufficient doses. In searching for precedents for this effect, he established that the first mention made of it was in the writings of Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), regarded by the orthodoxy as the father of modern medicine. Hippocrates had said that likes can be cured by likes: that vomiting may be stopped by being made to vomit, and any illness caused by one means can be treated successfully by a similar means.

The Law of Similars

From this Hahnemann produced the first axiom of homoeopathy: Similia Similibus Curentur - Let Likes be Cured by Likes, otherwise known as the Law of Similars - and so began his life's work. By 1821 he had produced two major works: The Organon of Rational Medicine, embodying the principles of the homoeopathic approach to medicine, and his Materia Medica Pura, covering the effects of sixty four medicines.

This approach to medicine represents a dramatic move away from the established method. The allopathic approach was of establishing the existence of a particular disease, clarifying its symptoms, and then testing the effectiveness of various medicines on it, by the use of opposites. An illness accompanied by fever and diarrhea, for example, would call for the combined use of medicines which would be anti-febrile and others which would normally constipate, and so in a crude way, a total balance would be found by using a number of appropriate medicines together. The homoeopaths tried the opposite approach: first test a substance for medicinal use, they said, by giving it to healthy volunteers, and carefully noting the symptoms it produces. This is known as a proving. Once the symptom picture has been fully developed over a number of human trials, then it can be assessed for usefulness against diseases with a similar set of symptoms. A substance which produces a bizarre set of symptoms such as bright red orifices and blue-green discharges, for example, will have little use in homoeopathic clinical practice because symptoms of this type are rarely met. However a substance which produces a runny nose, watery red eyes and repeated sneezing would be of great value in the treatment of hay fever. The common onion produces just those symptoms (as countless cooks can guarantee), and by use of the above trial system the onion has now achieved an established place in homoeopathic therapeutics. In essence, allopathic medicine embodies the law of opposites, homoeopathic medicine the law of similars.

Potentisation

At first the homoeopathic approach to medicine seems contradictory. Surely experience would tell us that exposing hay fever sufferers to large doses of onion would just add insult to injury, and make them worse rather than better. The homoeopaths would agree, but with two provisos.

First the symptoms must match closely before onion will have a therapeutic effect; this is embodied in their Law of the Single Remedy, which states that the most effective result will come from the most similar remedy given in single doses. Then after the initial aggravation of symptoms dies down, the hay fever will be noticeably better.

Second, if the initial doses of onion are sufficiently diluted, there will be very little aggravation at all before improvement sets in. In fact, the homoeopaths see dilution to infinitesimal degrees as a necessary part of the preparation of their medicines. It is embodied in the other important axiom for treatment; the Law of the Minimum Dose. This states that the most effective dose for a disorder is the minimum amount necessary to produce a response. Give one dose only of the diluted substance, the homoeopaths say, and then wait for a favorable reaction. Having produced the desired improvement, give a second dose only when improvement stops.

It is this dilution of homoeopathic medicines which has been the greatest obstacle to their more universal acceptance. The process is known as potentisation, and involves a sequence of progressive dilution and a rhythmic shaking, termed succussion. In the normal case, 1 part of the source substance is added to 9 parts of water and shaken rhythmically. This is known as a 1x (decimal) dilution, or 1 part in 10. One part of this is then taken and added to another 9 parts of water, and again succussed, to give a 2x dilution, or 1 part in 100. Similarly, a 3x dilution is 1 part in 1000. These dilutions, also known as potencies, can be repeated an large number of times.

Dilutions are also made on a centesimal scale, or 1 part in 100, yielding 1c, 2c, and so on. It needs only a little mental arithmetic to appreciate that a dilution procedure of this type (either decimal or centesimal) rapidly disperses the original substance. Figure 1 gives a summary of the potencies, and their corresponding dilutions.

Summary of the homoeopathic potencies
showing concentrations of the source drug.

The Avogadro Limit

In practice, a convenient classification of the dilutions is usually used:

Low potencies: 1x to 30x, or 1c to 15c.

Medium potencies: 30c to 200c.

High potencies: Above 200c.

Hence the low potencies have been diluted least, and may still contain significant amounts of the source drug. But at 12c or 24x what is known as the Avogadro limit is reached, and at this concentration it is unlikely for even a single molecule of the original drug to be still present in one liter of the preparation. Yet the Avogadro limit occurs in the low potency range, and the homoeopaths maintain that, contrary to expectations, the power of the medicine increases as the potency increases. So there is very little doubt that many patients treated with high potencies receive nothing but water.

The Homoeopathic Dilutions

While the toxicity of such medicines is obviously very low, their efficacy has been seriously questioned, as dilutions above 12c can be dismissed on pharmacological grounds as completely inert. Yet potencies in the medium to high dilution range are the normal working area of homoeopathy, and many striking cures have been claimed. The first and obvious response is to claim that the action in successful cases is purely placebo, and the medicine is useful only in the suggestible and the gullible. Not so, maintain the homoeopaths, who claim cures on infants, animals, unconscious patients, those with infectious diseases, and those with deep seated chronic disorders. In addition, the clinical trials are impressive. So the medical plot thickens.

Clinical Trials

The early homoeopaths were all trained allopaths, and once having been convinced of the effectiveness of homoeopathic medicines, felt no need to prove anything to anybody. After all, they had the training to use whatever medicine they considered appropriate for their patients. It was also expedient to make as little noise as possible about their use of a medicine which was already regarded as suspect within their own ranks. In any case, most of their research time was spent on provings, in order to expand the number of known and useful medicines, and very little on clinical trials.

As a result, it took an event of considerable magnitude to bring the medicine out into the open, and the European cholera epidemic of 1832, two years before Hahnemann's death, was just such an occasion. By the accounts of all observers, the homoeopaths had a far higher recovery rate than the allopaths, and it is recounted that in Paris, the price of the homoeopathic medicine for cholera increased 100-fold. In Russia (where it is said the epidemic originated), the report from the Consul General showed that of the 1,270 cases treated homeopathically, 1,162 recovered, and only 108 died, giving a mortality rate of less than 10 percent. By contrast, the mortality rate from allopathic treatment was 60 to 70 percent.

Following the homoeopathic success in the epidemic, medical interest in homoeopathy increased at a rapid rate, and by the time of the next European cholera epidemic in 1854, the London Homoeopathic Hospital was already established. Its facilities were turned over entirely to the treatment of cholera victims, and the results were impressive. The homoeopathic death rate was 16.4 percent, compared to the allopathic death rate of 51.8 percent. Similar successful figures were reluctantly reported by a number of other countries. Detailed returns for Britain had to be made by all hospitals and practitioners as to treatment and results in cholera, and the totals submitted by the British Medical Council in their Blue Book of Statistics. However, the figures from the Homoeopathic Hospital were deliberately omitted, and were only produced after considerable protest. The official reason for the omission was that inclusion of the homoeopathic figures "would give an unjustifiable sanction to an empirical practice, alike opposed to the maintenance of truth and the progress of science."

This prejudiced and bigoted reaction to the success of homoeopathic medicine is typical of the problem which has plagued the advance of science for many centuries. Orthodox medicine, in particular, is well known for its poor track record in meeting innovative change and research breakthroughs with the proper degree of scientific detachment and quiet encouragement. Even within their own ranks, some of the greatest of innovators, such as Lister, Jenner, and Harvey, suffered ridicule and professional ostracism over discoveries which later became mainstays of medical practice. In reaction to homoeopathic successes, the modern orthodox call has been for more clinical trials. Give us controlled trials, many allopaths have said, and if successful, we will accept the medicine.

Since that time, a number of clinical trials have been run, but many of them with poor controls. Some of the better run trials are summarized here briefly. Those looking for a more complete list could do no better than the excellent review of Scofield.

Mustard Gas

The best controlled of the early clinical trials was conducted jointly in London and Glasgow during the second world war, to find a method of prevention and treatment of mustard gas burns. Mustard gas in the 30c potency, given as a preventative, reduced the incidence of deep and medium burns significantly. The remedies Rhus tox and Kali bich also gave statistically significant results in treatment.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

More recent trials were conducted in 1978 at the Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital, now emerging as a stronghold of homoeopathic research. Gibson and co-workers conducted a double-blind comparison of a range of homoeopathic remedies (matched against the individual symptom pictures), and compared the responses to those of salicylates and placebo in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. They showed that the patients who received homoeopathic remedies responded statistically better than those who received salicylates; moreover 42 percent of the homoeopathic group were able to discontinue all other treatment during the year.

Objections to the method of trial led to a more rigidly designed trial in 1980, where patients were given either a homoeopathic medicine or placebo, but were allowed to continue with their orthodox anti-inflammatory drugs. The homoeopathic group showed significant improvement as judged by a number of tests, as compared to the patients who received placebo. It was noted that homoeopathy was a safer and no less effective alternative to present day second line drugs in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

Hay Fever - The Crack Widens

One of the most recent clinical trials, and certainly the most tightly controlled to date, was conducted in 1986 at the Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital by Dr David Taylor Reilly, an allopath by training. The claim that homoeopathic medicines are placebo was tested in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. The effects of a homoeopathic preparation of mixed grass pollens (30c potency, no molecules of the original pollen remaining) was compared with those of placebo in a total of 144 patients with active hay fever. The homeopathically treated patients showed a statistically significant reduction in symptoms as assessed by both patient and physician. No evidence emerged to support the idea that placebo action explains the clinical response to homoeopathic remedies.

The publishing of this latter paper in the Lancet, arguably the most prestigious medical journal in the world, indicated the depth of penetration of homoeopathic medicine into the allopathic world. The controversy it produced indicated the degree of crystallization of the collective allopathic brain. Here at last was proof positive in the much upheld double-blind trial, yet the collective reaction was less than positive. Although some of the more far-sighted of the correspondents suggested the possibility that a new chemistry and a new physics had been born, the reliance on pharmacology in the allopathic way of thinking showed its dominance. Reactions to drugs are caused by molecules of drug substance interacting with various body components, the thinking goes, and if there are no drug molecules in a medicine then there is no reaction aside from placebo effects. The experiment was simply testing one placebo against another. The fact that statistical significance was obtained for one of the `placebos' was apparently deemed of no consequence, and indicates that the issue may not be a scientific issue at all, but more an economic and emotional one.

Pharmacological Support

Logically, one of the first areas to investigate for support (or the lack of it) in homoeopathy is the area of pharmacology, or drug action. And contrary to expectations, some surprising support is appearing.

Ask a pharmacologist about the biological effect of very low concentrations of common substances on living organisms and the answer will be that there is typically very little or zero response. Ask for some theoretical backup, and in short order you will find yourself confronted by one of the pharmacological tools of trade, the Dose - Response Curve. In brief, the curve illustrates one of the rules of thumb in drug use: that an increased dose of a drug will give an increased effect, while a lowered dose of a drug will give a reduced effect, and a very low dose will give no effect at all.

A glance at the curve in Figure 3 will show that the pharmacologically recommended dose of a drug lies in the area of the ED50, the dose which produces 50% of the total or maximal effect. The homoeopathic area of interest, on the other hand, lies at the very start of the curve, in the area of the so-called threshold dose.

The area of the threshold dose is usually avoided in standard pharmacological drug testing, for two reasons. The first is that the threshold dose lies some distance from the area of the ED50, so investigating this area for drug reaction is basically a waste of time. But the other reason is far more interesting. The threshold dose is an area where paradoxical and contradictory results are obtained, not easily explained in conventional terms. Again, the easy answer is to simply avoid it in experimentation. But the bottom line is that for many years the pharmacologists have known of the strange results obtained in the threshold dose area, but have simply chosen to ignore them. In doing so, they had unwittingly withdrawn orthodox support for an entirely different field of medicine.
It is interesting that one of the very earliest laws of pharmacology, known as the Arndt - Schulz Law, had already expressed the homoeopathic effect. Formulated by Arndt in 1888, and restated by Hueppe a few years later, the law set the groundwork for what should have been a side-by-side development of allopathic and homoeopathic medicine in the following century. It states: For every substance, small doses stimulate, moderate doses inhibit, large doses kill.

Allopathic medicine, with its emphasis on moderate drug doses, works in the inhibitory part of the scale. The result is seen in the typically inhibitory medicines produced: antihistamines, antibiotics, antacids, cough suppressants and so on, laying the basis for the so-called `suppressant' effect of drugs.

Homoeopathic medicine, on the other hand, begins at the stimulatory end of the curve, and moves to the left, into the smaller and smaller dose range. Its emphasis is on the stimulation of the body's natural balancing mechanisms, as seen in its philosophy of the natural regeneration of the body through rebuilding of vitality, a concept also in close agreement with naturopathic thought.

The pioneering work of Boyd bound the worlds of homoeopathy and Arndt-Schulz together in the early 1940s with a series of tightly controlled experiments, and set the stage for work much later on as to how homoeopathic medicine may work. Boyd worked with the enzyme malt diastase, which was already known to be inhibited by crude doses of the salt mercuric chloride, and measured its speed in the hydrolysis of starch. He also used a number of homeopathically prepared dilutions of mercuric chloride, including a batch at 61x, where there was no likelihood of any of the original salt remaining - it was pure water. He also worked with distilled water as a control. He showed that crude doses of mercuric chloride inhibited diastase activity, as was already well known, and that distilled water had no effect. But he also showed, with statistically significant results, that mercuric chloride 61x accelerated diastase activity.

Now this experiment had a number of ramifications, besides supporting the Arndt-Schulz Law. If there was no mercuric chloride in the 61x potency, the it should have reacted the same as distilled water. If, on the other hand, there was a contamination of mercuric chloride somehow in the test doses, then the activity of the enzyme should have decreased. Instead it did neither, but increased, from the laboratory point of view, homoeopathic medicines not only had been showed to work according to the Arndt-Schulz Law, but had been shown to affect enzyme action.

Hormesis: The New Breakthrough

Look up the Arndt-Schulz Law in a modern textbook of pharmacology, and you will be lucky if you find it mentioned, let alone discussed. It died out of the textbooks as the allopathic interest moved further into the inhibitory part of the Arndt-Schulz curve, and as the pharmacological Dose - Response curve avoided the area of the threshold dose. It appeared that, for all its promising origins, theoretical support for homoeopathy had died a natural death.

Recently, however, further support for homoeopathic medicine has come from a most unlikely direction: the field of toxicology, or the action of poisons. Beginning in 1960, data began to accumulate that poisonous substances were having two effects on living organisms(5). At high doses they inhibited metabolism and ultimately caused death, as was well known. But at low doses they exerted a stimulating effect, a response totally unexpected and not explainable by current medical science. Recently the trickle turned to a torrent, as toxicologists turned to examine the new phenomenon of hormesis, the name given to the stimulatory effect of low levels of usually poisonous substances. The Arndt-Schulz Law had not died: it had simply resurfaced with a new name.

The research results are incomplete, but the trend is inescapable. Evidence from experiments, both human and animal, shows hormesis as an effect occurring in all biological domains tested, with growing research support. It demonstrates that all substances (including pesticides and carcinogens) which show an inhibitory effect at high concentrations, have a stimulatory effect at low concentrations.

Typical Concentration-Response Curves Developed in Hormesis Research

The alpha curve is the most expected pattern, and is assumed to describe the actions of drugs in humans as the concentration moves from low concentrations to progressively more inhibitory ones. This curve is a tentative one, and is assigned to those drugs which have not yet been fully tested for a stimulatory response.

The beta curve was the most frequently observed pattern, and accounted for the human reactions to the bulk of the drugs tested. It shows a typical curve as predicted by the Arndt-Schulz Law, but (understandably) was not tested in toxic and lethal dose ranges.

The two other curves the gamma and delta forms, were recorded where data was available for biological response at lower dose ranges. However data points for these ranges are generally less available, so the validity of these curves is unknown until further data is available.

Homoeopathic research has consistently produced results showing the basic curve structure of hormesis and the Arndt-Schulz Law. But the research goes further: as the drug substance is progressively diluted, the biological reaction alternates between stimulation and inhibition, as given by the hormesis gamma and delta curves. This periodic behavior is called rhythmicity by the homoeopaths, and represents one of the several great unexplained phenomena in homoeopathic action. But one factor is established: as the dilutions become extreme and the concentration of the source drug approaches zero, the biological reaction will also fade out unless the diluted solution is succussed in accord with traditional homoeopathic practice.

A typical rhythmicity curve of the homoeopathic remedy Prunus Spinosa

The implications of hormesis are enormous and deserve a story of their own, but a few points here may give future directions.

: Pesticides which are toxic to pests at high concentrations can cause a proliferation of their growth at lower concentrations, such as can occur in rainwater run-off and collecting river systems. The ecological value of their use will tumble.

: Any substance which causes cancer will likewise be shown to be anti-cancer in its action at a lower dose range.

: The present tactic of various health departments in this country of giving a herb in high doses to experimental animals (and then banning it in all dose ranges when tumors form) will become counterproductive. Any herb which causes cancer in high doses will be shown to protective against the same cancer in low dose ranges, suitable for human intake.

How Does Homoeopathy Work?

Central to the issue of medical acceptance of homoeopathy is the clarification of its mechanism of action. In particular, is there a model which adequately explains its clinical effectiveness and the successes of the trials?

In the development of a workable model, the research thinking has gone something like this: Given that the medicine is effective even when it can be shown that there is no likelihood of any molecules left in a particular dose (due to dilution), then the effect of the dose must lie with the water molecules themselves, since that is all that is left. Water itself can be assumed to have no effect in this case, since the dose is small, and the effect would always be the same. The answer must lie within the water molecules, and the only real possibility is in the type of energy that the molecule has stored.

Energy storage within molecules in biological systems lies within the realm of biophysics rather than biochemistry. Biophysics is a new field, having become established only within the last twenty years or so. It is not yet included in medical curricula in universities to any great extent, and is only now beginning to make its mark in the biological sciences. Small wonder, therefore, that the established medical world knows little of its existence, or the promise it holds in explaining the action of the medicines of energy, such as homoeopathy, acupuncture, psychic and spirit healing, and radionics.

Energy Storage

Molecules such as water can store energy in four different ways - kinetic, spin, vibration and electronic excitation. Some storage modes can store more energy than others, and we will start at the lowest, least energetic mode, which is kinetic energy, or energy of motion. A molecule stores kinetic energy by virtue of its speed. It is this storage in gases and liquids which causes pressure (such as air pressure) by the continual collision of the molecules with surfaces like our skin, and also causes the bulk of chemical reactions to occur. At room temperature, the energy which these molecules contain is low, compared with other states. It is unsuited to homoeopathic medicine since the energy is constantly altered by collision, and so any energy stored is degraded.

Energy Storage In Molecules

Spin and Microwave Cooking

Spin energy is found in gases and liquids, but not in solids, where the stronger attractions between molecules prevents rotation. It is also not found in water until about 420C, a factor of considerable importance to living organisms, composed as they are of up to 90 percent water, with humans being about 40 percent. Heating up water to about 42 degrees causes sufficient disruption of the molecular attraction between molecules to allow spin to occur, and that's precisely the temperature at which humans start to die. Life processes in general seem to keep a safe distance from the temperature band of 42 to 45 degrees.

Spin energy in molecules corresponds to microwave radiation, which is one reason why this radiation is lethal. It is also an indication of the potential power of energy storage in this mode - strong enough to cook food. But it is unsuited to homoeopathic medicine, since at room temperature, the spin storage state in water has not become active.

Electronic Excitation

At the top end of the scale is electronic excitation, which is the stuff powering lasers, of great strength and intensity. Excite the electrons circling the component molecules up into higher orbits and energy is stored. Drop them down together, and a pulse of light is given out. It may be of sufficient strength and power to burn a hole through a razor blade, cut tissue in surgery, or stop an army tank - it depends on what molecules are used, and how strongly the electrons are excited. It is not suitable for homoeopathic medicine, because the excited electrons are unstable, and will decay in a matter of fractions of a second.

Vibratory Storage

Standing midway between the cooking power of microwave and the destructive power of lasers stands vibratory energy. Although it has an accepted place in physics as a means of storing energy, it has had a chequered career in medical science because of its association with trance mediums, psychic phenomena and extrasensory perception. Vibratory energy can be found in molecules throughout all three states of matter - solid, liquid and gas. It is responsible for phenomena such as the expansion of metals when heated, and the transfer of heat by conduction. Vibratory motion of a molecule increases when the molecule absorbs energy, and can re-radiate it at a later date, usually in the infrared part of the spectrum, where heat is also found.

It is in the storage of vibratory energy in water molecules during the succussion process that homoeopathic medicine places many of its hopes for a scientific explanation of its action. It is proposed that during the collision process, vibratory energy is exchanged between the source drug and the water, and that the water is left with a vibratory imprint of the drug. Further succussion makes the imprint deeper, which explains why the medicines are regarded as acting more strongly as the dilution increases. Furthermore it is not just energy which is being stored, it is proposed, but information, differing from one remedy to another depending on the source substance used, with every substance leaving a different vibratory signature in the water molecule. In this way homoeopathic medicine is seen as carrying information into the body when it is taken in dose form, perhaps as biological instructions.

If water molecules were dissociated from each other at room temperature, any vibratory energy stored would quickly degrade. But at 250C, about 70% of water molecules are incorporated into a stable hexagonal lattice structure, capable of storing a considerable amount of vibratory energy before it breaks up. But storage of vibratory energy causes structural changes, because any molecule which absorb energy will always change its shape. So a convenient way of telling if this particular model was correct was to examine homoeopathic water for structural changes.

A number of workers over the years have shown that both high and low potency homoeopathic medicines show structural changes in the water they contain. It was additionally shown that in order for the structural changes to occur, two things must happen. First, there must be a source drug to begin with; that is, you can't make a homoeopathic medicine from water alone. Secondly, you must succuss the remedy as it is diluted stepwise, in the rhythmic shaking manner used by the homoeopaths for many years. Only when these two processes are included will structural changes show.

Certainly one of the most visually impressive experiments to test the possibility of structural changes was carried out recently, involving ice crystals. Ice crystal structures are very good mirrors of the energy status of their component water molecules. It is why, for instance, you will never find two identical snowflake patterns, for each is formed under slightly different conditions. In the experiment, different potencies of the homoeopathic remedy Pulsatilla were frozen at -100C, and photographed under polarized light to show any changes in the ice crystal structure. The results are strikingly beautiful, and the changes in crystal size as the potencies increase indicate increased energy storage in vibratory modes.

Ice Crystal Photos Here

Benveniste - Champion or Charlatan?

In one of the stranger episodes in the recorded history of scientific publishing, the prestigious British research journal Nature recently published experimental results which the editors say they consider utterly impossible. The typically indigestible title of the paper is "Human Basophil Degranulation Triggered by Very Dilute Antiserum Against IgE, and the conclusions it proposes have been similarly indigestible to the medical community. The main players in the experiment were a special type of white blood cell known as a basophil and an antibody, IgE. When basophils are normally exposed to this antibody, their chemistry and internal structure change, in a way that is easily checked by staining techniques. But what Benveniste and his colleagues found was that the changes occurred even when the antibody was used up to the 120x potency, a dilution at which it is virtually impossible for even one molecule of the antibody to remain. The results also showed the familiar rhythmic changes in basophil reactions as the potencies increased, a factor still unexplained, even by homoeopaths. The deputy editor of Nature remarked that two centuries of observation and rational thinking about biology will have to be abandoned if the results stand, because they cannot be explained by existing physical laws.

The 13 member international research team headed by Professor Benveniste conducted their experiments after being challenged by two eminent French homoeopaths to disprove homoeopathy once and for all, by conducting a sensitive, tightly controlled experiment in an accredited research centre. The centre chosen was at the University of South Paris, where Professor Benveniste is a Research Director. "That was how it all started", he said. "They challenged us to prove them wrong, and we couldn't."

The furor surrounding this experiment has produced some unique reactions within the scientific community, and highlights an important question: how should the scientific establishment deal with anomalous findings which challenge the very roots of established thought? Nature journal had its own answer: it sent a fraud squad comprising one of its editors, a professional magician, and an investigator of scientific frauds from the USA to Benveniste's laboratories. Over a period of a week they criticized shortcomings in experimental design, studied the laboratory records, and interrogated the researchers. Finally, they failed to replicate the results in a double-blind trial, and declared the experiments "a delusion." Benveniste, not unexpectedly, considered the investigation a witch hunt and an outrage. "I welcome any explanation for our findings" he said, "but not this kind of crap."

The homoeopaths of the world, together with interested onlookers, can be assured that the matter will not rest there. Further interesting reading on the bizarre reactions to homoeopathic experiments on the part of the scientific and medical establishments will surface. Benveniste will undoubtedly be back, with a more tightly controlled experiment which will probably decide, once and for all, the future of homoeopathy.

References:

1. Bradford's Logic of Figures (1900): From Tyler: Homoeopathic Drug Pictures: Health Science (1978)

2. Tyler: Homoeopathic Drug Pictures: Health Science (1978)

3. Scofield: Homoeopathy and its Potential Role in Agriculture: A critical review. Biol Ag Hort: 2; 1-50 (1984)

4. Reilly et al: Is Homoeopathy a Placebo Response? Lancet: 881-886; Oct 18 (1986)

5. Townsend and Luckey: Hormoligosis in Pharmacology. JAMA 44; May 7 (1960)

6. Stebbings: Hormesis - The Stimulation of Growth by Low Levels of Inhibitors. Sci Tot Environ: 22: 213-234 (1982)

7. Bond et al: Microdosimetric Concepts Applied to Hormesis. Health Physics: 52 (5); 659-661 (1987)

8. Furst et al: Hormetic Effects in Pharmacology. Ibid. 527-530.

9. Sagan: What is Hormesis and Why Haven't We Heard of It Before? Ibid. 521-525.

10. Calabrese et al: The Occurrence of Chemically Induced Hormesis. Ibid. 531-541.

11. Brisbin et al: Sigmoid Growth and the Assessment of Hormesis. Ibid. 553-559.

12. Boyd: The Action of Microdoses of Mercuric Chloride on Malt Diastase. Brit Hom J; 31; 1-28 (1941) and 32; 106-111 (1942)

13. Coulter: Homoeopathic Science and Human Medicine. North Atlantic (1980)

14. Devenas, Benveniste et al: Human Basophil Degranulation Triggered by Very Dilute Antiserum Against IgE. Nature 33; P816 30 June (1988)
Theory of High Dilutions And Experimental Aspects by Rolland Conte, Henri Berliocchi, Yves Lasne and Gabriel Vernot. Translated and Co-edited By DYNSOL Ltd. Copyright Polytechnica 1996
A Summary By Paul Callinan M.Sc. N.D. D.Hom.

1. Introduction
Hahnemann and Homoeopathy
The French Team
2. The Contonian Model
The Mathematical Framework
The Physical Model
White holes
The Remanent Wave
Nuclear reactions
Hyperprotons
Potencies exhibit phase changes
Effects not due to contaminants
The Axioms of the Contonian model
3. Impact of Environmental Factors On The Remanent Wave
Temperature
Light
The amount of energy introduced by the succussion process
Moon phases
Gravitational forces
Other external influences such as ultrasound
4. The Nuclear Mechanism
5. Mechanism of the Effect On The Organism
6. The Future

1. Introduction

Hahnemann and Homoeopathy

Since its inception in 1796 by the German physician and experimental pharmacologist Samuel Hahnemann, homoeopathy has survived but is still a medical fringe discipline.

Hahnemann published his Organon in 1810, one year before Avogadro presented his hypothesis that there are 6.02 x 1023 molecules of a substance in 1 gram molecular weight. The solutions used in homoeopathy are both diluted and succussed, and in this case means that a substance has been diluted through a serial process in such a way that the dilution of the original drug may approach Avogadro's number and even exceed it. Since a one molar solution stepwise diluted to the 12c potency is unlikely to contain even one molecule of solute, and a basic tenet of homoeopathy is that solutions which have no active drug molecules can still have effects on the human organism, homoeopathy has met with substantial opposition from pharmacology.

Even 200 years after Hahnemann's discoveries, homoeopathy still lacks a theoretical foundation. Experimental studies on the nature of homoeopathic solutions have reported many changes: there are reported alterations in the infrared spectrum, nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation times, surface tension, dielectric constant, and a handful of other parameters. Biological studies have shown marked changes in enzyme speed, cardiac rate, muscle contraction and plant growth, to name but a few. Clinical trials are showing consistently better results as experimental design is improved. But experiments have been plagued by lack of reproducibility, and data could not be consistently interpreted. A number of models had been proposed to explain homoeopathic action, the most popular being the water memory model, but all models have been fairly speculative.

The French Team

Enter Rolland Conte and team from the field of economics. After many years of research in economics and macroeconomic forecasting, the French researchers Conte, Berliocchi, and Andras introduced in their book Nouvelle Economie Theorique a new mathematical theory known as Ether theory, and a new statistical tool known as Contonian statistics.

At the beginning of 1993 the team of Conte, Berliocchi, Lasne and Vernot applied these same mathematical techniques to the field of homoeopathy. They formulated a mathematical representation of high dilution effects using quantum field theory. In their book, Theory Of High Dilutions, they provide the results of their measurements and the rationale for its interpretation. The theory is innovative, high-tech, and breaks much new ground. The model they present may also explain, after so long, how homoeopathic medicine works.

Rolland Conte is a PhD in applied physics, with extensive experience in economics and macroeconomic forecasting, and the inspirational force behind Contonian statistics. Henri Berliocchi is a mathematician with a brilliant history, who provided the ether theory and the physico-mathematical model. Yves Lasne is a doctor of medicine, doctor of science, who provided the detection technology and research methodology, based on measurement of nuclear magnetic resonance and beta radiation. Gabriel Vernot is an engineer and computer scientist working in aerospace applications, and who provided the dedicated AAPDI software.

As early as 1985 Lasne had repeated earlier work showing evidence of changes in the infrared spectrum of homoeopathic solutions, and had demonstrated significant variation of T2 relaxation times in nuclear magnetic resonance studies over a range of centesimal dilutions. Lasne also reported evidence of radiation coming from the test samples. Contonian statistical analysis of NMR results and á-radiation began on a range of raw high dilution data. The analysis is run on dedicated Ecosem software called AAPDI, which stands for Analyse Activite Pharmacologique Dilutions Infinitesimales.

Analysis of infrared and NMR data produced a number, known as a Contonian frequency, even from data which at first glance was not reproducible or consistent with other experimentation. The Contonian frequency for a remedy is reproducible, given stable external variables. Every remedy has a unique Contonian frequency, offering a likely measuring tool by which quality control and formulation efficiency can be evaluated. In the history of homoeopathic manufacture, we have never had such a measuring tool; and as they say in science, if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist.

In essence, the French team have proposed a model for homoeopathic action based on classical quantum theory, a new mathematical theory, and a statistical tool for linking theory and experimental data. They have produced experimental verification of their model based on NMR work, and on beta-radiation measurements. The use of Contonian statistics has led to quantifiable results.

2. The Contonian Model

Mathematical and physical frameworks are presented which use classical quantum theory and quantum field theory. They require a strong background in physics and higher mathematics to appreciate their insights. The researchers report that their physico-mathematical model proposed is in accord with experimental results, and answers questions raised by considerations of high dilution and water memory.

The Mathematical Framework

The mathematical framework provides a theory for interpreting high dilution phenomena using quantum mathematics. It involves set theory and probabilistic modeling, and uses mathematical operators such as lagrangians in a way that would make your head swim. It involves:

. The use of real numbers as defined within the set theory known as the Zermelo-Frenkel theory.

. In handling classical quantum theory, another axiom, known as the choice axiom, is used in addition to the Zermelo-Frenkel theory.

. An additional axiom, known as Solovay's axiom, is used.

. A model of real numbers, known as Levy's model, is used jointly with Solovay's axiom and consideration of the Brownian motion of water molecules to establish the water memory model.

. A general mechanism for interpreting data, known as semiotic mechanics, has been introduced. This mechanism had been previously validated by Berliocchi, one of the authors, within his theory of ethers.

The Physical Model

Within the physical model, a number of events have been proposed and measured.

White holes

The disappearance of drug molecules during dilution leads to a dislocation in the solvent known as a singularity. This singularity has been termed a white hole. It can be thought of a small but highly energized area of space.

The remanent wave

The appearance of a singularity induces a wave which has been termed a remanent wave. It can be thought of as a set of ripples in a pond when a stone is dropped in. A remanent wave is always created when a particle disappears and leaves a white hole, and the number of remanent waves is proportional to the number of particles lost. When one continues the release at the same place and in a regularly spaced way, the waves produced are in phase and the amplitude increases. When no further stones are released, the ripples disappear within a certain time, and the wave energy is slowly released in the water as heat. This can be measured using standard equipment such as infrared absorption spectrophotometers.

Nuclear transformations

The appearance of a white hole and a remanent wave induces nuclear reactions in the high dilution medium. The creation of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen in water, results in the subsequent decay of a tritium neutron into an electron, a proton and a particle known as an anti-graviton which has no mass and no charge. Beta radiation can be detected. There are changes in NMR and in the infrared. Beta radiation is associated with electrons, while infrared is commonly known as heat. The energy of a remanent wave of a diluted-succussed solutions is around 1 KeV. For a high dilution of HNO3, measurement of the beta energy spectrum gives a frequency of 2.4 x 1017 Hz. This is a very high frequency, the wavelength range lying in a band from 1.25 and 10 nanometres. By comparison, the period of vibration of the helicoil nucleic acid chain of DNA is equal to 3.4 nanometres. This means that the DNA can act as a transmitter-receiver antenna. In essence, nuclear transformations in the test tube at room temperature are being proposed, although the efficiency is low. This was reported many years ago by Kerveran, another Frenchman, who wrote on biological transmutation within living organisms.

Hyperprotons

Above the Avogadro limit, no more white holes are produced, but there is a continued stimulation from succussion termed hyperproton expansion. Hyperprotons are seen as the missing link between chemistry and biochemistry. They are considered as particles that phase in and out of space-time. This is the basis of the relativistic and quantum theory of fields, the current theory in physics covering matter-energy interactions. The theory of hyperprotons uses the so-called second quantisation theory of Dirac for a free material particle in space-time: Dirac in 1933 proposed the emergence of a real electron from a sea of virtual electrons, sometimes called the second quantisation. Hyperproton expansion produces irradiation effects on surrounding matter, and reorganises the solvent structure. Such a field has been measured, and is calculated by renormalisation through the integral of Feynman. Hydrogen and oxygen lagrangians on data measured at 300 Mhz in NMR studies indicate a re-organization of the water structure. This provides evidence for the existence of a new quantum state, whose nature has not been fully elucidated.

Potencies exhibit phase changes

NMR studies show that the impregnation of lactose granules with succussed preparations produces an effective transfer but induces a phase displacement in the primary signal, the extent of phase displacement depending on the nature of the source drug and the potency. The general form of the phase displacement is a sinusoid. For sulphur dilutions around 300c, the displacement is 1800 out of phase. By contrast, histamine shows a very small phase displacement. Solutions which exhibit a 1800 phase displacement have an opposite effect on test systems (pea root length, frog leg metamorphosis) compared with solutions 00 out of phase. Hence stimulation of a test system at one dilution can be altered to inhibition at another dilution.

Effects not due to contaminants

An experimental approach was developed which demonstrated that the effects obtained were not due to the presence of contaminants in the diluent. The use of the contonian frequency indicates that the specific activity of high dilutions are reproducible within experimental error as long as external variables are controlled.

The Axioms Of The Contonian Model

As a result of these findings, two axioms have been formulated:

Axiom 1

The dilution-succussion process induces an effect which can be directly measured by physical and biological experiments.

Axiom 2

An informational message will be produced only if at least one substance exists in the diluent at the start of the process.

3. Impact of Environmental Factors On The Remanent Wave

Contonian frequency calculations indicate that the specific activity of high dilutions is reproducible at any time provided that external variables are controlled, such as:

. Temperature.

. Light.

. The amount of energy introduced by the succussion process.

. Moon phases.

. Gravitational forces.

. Other external influences such as ultrasound.

Some of these findings come as no surprise, as they appear to validate some issues known to the profession by experience.

. The sensitivity of homoeopathic medicines to light and temperature is well accepted amongst the homoeopathic profession.

. More surprising is the sensitivity to factors such as the phases of the moon and changes in geomagnetic flux. However it has been said by many homoeopaths that some remedies are better given at particular phases of the moon.

. It has also been suggested that homoeopathic medicines do not travel well because it involves moving though the magnetic field of the earth.

. It is also worth mentioning that the sensitivity of manufacture of high dilutions to changes in geomagnetic flux and gravitational flux was predicted in the physical model by the appearance of an anti-graviton during beta emission.

The need for a consistent medicine to be manufactured in a machine where the succussion speed and stroke length are optimized and consistent has led to the patented development of a succussion device.

4. The Nuclear Transformation Mechanism

As previously proposed, white hole creation leads to an irradiation of diluted-succussed solutions due to a neutron type field induced by the remanent wave. This irradiation will create, on the one hand hydrogen isotopes deuterium (1 proton and 1 neutron) and tritium (1 proton and 2 neutrons), or on the other hand oxygen O17. The efficiency of this nuclear reaction is known to be low. With regard to tritium, the neutron splits and releases 1 proton and 1 á- electron and an anti-graviton.

Autoradiography techniques have shown á-radiation emitted from granules impregnated with a preparation of potassium iodide, with no radiation being detected from controls. For dilutions up to 12c, beta radiation is expected to predominate, seeing that the level of succussion is low.

In dilutions higher than Avogadro, no more white holes are created. Neutron disintegration releases energy into a medium which already has a high proton content. The protons are then transformed into hyperprotons, which are considered as virtual particles that can phase in and out of space-time. They may also appear within the space-time singularities as nuclear protons. These hyperprotons will stabilize one part of the diluent structure (a local effect) that will then be able to influence the non structured part of the diluent.

5. Mechanism of the Effect On The Organism

A quantum model called Theory of Universal Wave Function has been proposed, to describe the effect of high dilutions on living organisms. They have proposed that intoxication of an organism by a toxic solution such as CCl4 induces a deviation from a state of health as indicated by a vector, and a phase displacement. Treatment of the organism with a high dilution of the correctly chosen remedy with a counteracting phase displacement restores the organism to its original vector and a healthy state.

To illustrate this proposal, the effect of dilutions of thyroxin upon the metamorphosis of tadpoles of the grass frog were studied. When added to the aqueous medium, diluted and succussed thyroxin can inhibit or accelerate larval development of the forelegs, depending on the dilution. On the basis of phase displacements, it is suggested that when the thyroxin preparation is in phase with the larval organism, the thyroxin acts as a booster for the transformation from the two legged to the four legged stage. When the thyroxin preparation is not in phase with the larval development, it inhibits metamorphosis. It was also noted that different effects were produced in the organism, depending on whether the solutions were succussed or not.

The specificity of diluted-succussed solutions is remarkable, even if an enzyme system specific of a given diluted-succussed solution has not been found. Interaction between two remanent waves induces a generalized and fast action on the organism. When such an interaction does not occur, the solution simply has no impact on the organism. The specificity of the diluted-succussed solution takes place within phase space.

Substantial interest has been centered on the enzyme peroxidase, which is seen as decoding structures introduced by the dilution-succussion process and inducing a proton flow within the organism. This has substantial promise in the understanding of meridian flow structure within the organism, as well as shedding light on the findings of Boyd, nearly half a century ago, who showed that homoeopathic potencies altered the speed of the enzyme diastase.

The processes of elimination and heart beat within the human body are proposed to fulfill all the requirements of white hole emergence. Remanent waves are seen as pervading the whole organism in a normal state of health. Food denial or fasting for a short period is considered to improve the observation of the remanent wave. As a result, a person may be considered as having a remanent wave profile, a situation offering great promise in therapeutics.

6. The Future

Dr Conte and team are currently preparing a second book for publication. We can only plead for a glossary of terms in the next book, and wait for the benefits it offers for the future of homoeopathy and human medicine.

Paul Callinan M.Sc. N.D. D.Hom. is an Australian homoeopath, biophysicist and researcher who specializes in providing scientific support for natural medicines. He has proposed models for the mechanism of homoeopathic medicine in the research literature and at international seminars. He has written several books on homoeopathy, and is a contributing editor of Australian Wellbeing magazine. He works as a lecturer in homoeopathic medicine, and conducts a clinical practice in Bangalow, northern NSW.

Some Homeopathic Remedies

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There are more than 2,000 homeopathic remedies, mainly from plant and mineral sources, and a few from animal products, such as snake venom. There are also some made from diseased tissue, known as 'nosodes'. Here are just a few examples of commonly used remedies with a brief explanation of each.

Arnica

A flower remedy and perhaps the best known of homeopathic remedies. The number one first-aid remedy, it helps prevent bruising and deal with shock or fright. Excellent for accident victims and to help with recovery after surgery or childbirth.

Belladonna (Deadly Nightshade)

Often used as a fever remedy, particularly when there is very high temperature, redness and burning sensations. Symptoms can be violent and intense, and there may be delirium and hallucinations.

Calcarea Carbonica (Calcium from an Oyster Shell)

This remedy can be indicated for patients who are extremely sensitive to cold. There may be a dampness or clamminess, particularly on hands and feet. The body may be floppy and exhausted.

Gelsemium (Yellow Jasmine)

A good remedy for fright from anticipation, e.g. stage fright. It is also used when there is general prostration, with the limbs feeling too heavy to lift, so it is often indicated in slow developing colds and flus.

Ignatia (St. Ignatius’ Bean)

A major remedy for grief and shock - even hysteria. It is often used for a patient who has suffered bereavement, the ending of a relationship, financial loss or a miscarriage. The Ignatia patient tends to be introspective, brooding and melancholy, but their moods can be changeable.

Lachesis (Bushmaster Snake Venom)

Renowned as a remedy for jealousy and vengefulness. Physical symptoms include constriction of the throat, and a feeling of suffocation. The patient often cannot bear to have things around their neck, and may have a fear of snakes.

Natrum Muriaticum (Common Salt)

This remedy is associated very closely with suppressed anger and grief. The patient tends to be closed and unhappy, and actually feels worse for any attempts at consolation. On the physical level, there is a tendency to be chilly, with cold hands and cold feet.

Pulsatilla (Pasque Flower)

This is traditionally seen as a female remedy but can just as easily be appropriate for a male patient. On the emotional level, there is shyness and insecurity and a fear of being deserted. Physically, there may be abdominal pain and flatulence. Thirstlessness is a key symptom.

Sulphur

The leading homeopathic skin remedy, often indicated in cases of eczema and other skin eruptions where there is redness, itching and burning. Sulphur is powerful at reversing the effects of suppressive medication.

Clinical Studies - an Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research

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An Overview of Positive Homeopathy
Research and Surveys
The European Network of Homeopathic Researchers
March 2005
This document has been produced by the European Network for Homeopathy Researchers (ENHR).
The ENHR was established in 2004 with support from the European Council for Classical
Homeopathy (ECCH). ECCH currently assists the ENHR in its secretarial work. The ENHR consists
of 35 individuals from 10 different countries involved in or with a special interest in homeopathy
research. The ENHR is open to membership for any individual involved or interested in homeopathy
research.
Purpose of the European Network of Homeopathy Researchers (ENHR):
• The primary aim of the ENHR is to contribute to improving homeopathy research for the
benefit of patients.
• A long-term objective of the ENHR is to contribute to carrying out international EU funded
research projects within the area of homeopathy research.
• The ENHR consists of researchers, research advisors and representatives of the homeopathy
profession as well as consumer/patient groups with an interest in the area of homeopathy
research.
• Members of the ENHR inform each other about homeopathy research that is in the planning
stages or being carried out, as well as published research articles.
Introduction
This document contains a sample of brief summaries of positive homeopathy research, together with
the full references. Additional information may be found in the document entitled 'Facts about
homeopathy and other CAM therapies’ (an ECCH document), and on the enclosed list of website
addresses. Readers are recommended to read the full research articles in order to acquire a more
profound knowledge base of research that has been undertaken.
Contents Page
Use of homeopathy and other CAM therapies 2
User surveys showing patient satisfaction with homeopathic treatment 2
Meta-analyses 3
Key trials and surveys 5
Diarrhoea in children 5
Respiratory tract complaints 5
Musculo-skeletal problems 7
Hayfever, asthma and perennial rhinitis 8
Female complaints 8
Other notable trials 9
Cost benefit 9
Basic research 10
Treatment of animals 10
Research website addresses 11
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 2 of 12
USE OF HOMEOPATHY AND OTHER CAM THERAPIES
Homeopathy is being practised in 40 out of 42 European countries.
The Legal Situation with Regard to the Practice of Homeopathy in Europe, revised report, June 2002,
European Council for Classical Homeopathy. Legal Status of Traditional Medicine and
Complementary/Alternative Medicine: A Worldwide Review, World Health Organization, 2001.
Homeopathy is the most frequently used CAM therapy in 5 out of 14 surveyed countries in Europe
and among the three most frequently used in 11 out of 14 surveyed countries.
Norges offentlige utredninger, NOU 1998:21 Alternativ medisin. (Official report published by the
Norwegian Department of Health. Available at:
http://odin.dep.no/hd/norsk/publ/utredninger/NOU/030005-020019/index-ved005-b-n-a.html)
Ot.prp. nr. 27 (2002-2003). Om lov om alternativ behandling av sykdom mv.
Public interest for and acceptance of alternative treatment increases in most European countries.
Percentage of the population using alternative treatment varies from 18 to 71 % depending on country.
Ot.prp. nr. 27 (2002-2003). Om lov om alternativ behandling av sykdom mv.
Homeopathy is officially recognised and included in the national health system in a number of
countries within and outside of Europe.
Legal Status of Traditional Medicine and Complementary/Alternative Medicine: A Worldwide Review,
World Health Organization, 2001.
Between 1/4 and 1/5 of all EU citizens use homeopathic medicines (EU Commission statement).
Resolution on the Commission report to the European Parliament and the Council on the application
of Directives 92/73/EEC and 92/74/EEC on homeopathic medicinal products (COM(97)0362 - C4-
0484/97)
Information to be included
Menniti-Ippolito, F., Forcella, E., Bologna, E., Gargiulo, L., Traversa, G., & Raschetti, R. 2002, "Use
of unconventional medicine in children in Italy", Eur.J.Pediatr., vol. 161, no. 12, p. 690.
USER SURVEYS SHOWING PATIENT SATISFACTION WITH HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT
Seven out of ten patients visiting Norwegian homeopaths reported a meaningful improvement in their
main complaint 6 months after the initial consultation.
Steinsbekk, A. Patients' assessments of the effectiveness of homeopathic care in Norway: A prospective
observational multicentre outcome study. Homeopathy, Volume 94, Issue 1, January 2005, Pages 10-
16.
One year after their first visit to a homeopathic clinic, 609 patients were asked to rate their general
health compared with a year ago. 73.5 % reported a marked or moderate improvement in their health
status.
F. Attena et al. Homeopathy in Primary Care: self reported change in health status. Complementary
therapies in Medicine Vol 8 No 1. March 2000.
A study of 829 patients treated with homeopathic medicines, where conventional treatment had been
unsatisfactory or contraindicated. 61 % had a substantial improvement with homeopathy.
Sevar, R. Audit of outcome in 829 consecutive patients treated with homeopathic medicine. British
Homeopathic Journal Vol 89 No.4. Oct 2000.
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 3 of 12
USER SURVEYS SHOWING PATIENT SATISFACTION WITH HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT
A survey of more than 900 patients treated homeopathically showed substantial improvement in
quality of life over the first 6 months after treatment and this effect remained more or less stable over
the following years.
Güthlin C, Lange O and Walach H. Measuring the effects of acupuncture and homoeopathy in general
practice: An uncontrolled prospective documentation approach. BMC Public Health 2004, 4:6.
British prospective survey of homeopathic treatment of 223 patients, 1996. 90% improvement or
more: 32%. 60% improvement or more: 65% 50% improvement or more: 72%.
Report on NHS practice-based homoeopathy project. Analysis of effectiveness and cost of
homoeopathic treatment within a GP practice at St. Margaret's Surgery, Bradford on Avon, Wilts.
Elizabeth A Christie, Andrew T Ward ISBN 1 901262 006
British prospective survey of homeopathic treatment of 160 patients, 1994.
Very positive effect: 73%. Some effect: 27%. No effect: 0%.
Report on a Homoeopathy Project in an NHS Practice. Covering 18 month period from February
1993 to August 1994. Elizabeth A Christie, Andrew T Ward,. Reprinted February 1997.
British prospective survey of homeopathic treatment of 37 patients suffering from psychological
complaints, 1998. Very satisfied: 81%. Satisfied: 16%. Not satisfied at all: 3%.
Homoeopathy within the NHS. Evaluation of homoeopathic treatment of common mental health
problems. 1995 - 1997. Alistair Dempster,. Rydings Hall Surgery, Brighouse, West Yorkshire. ISBN
No 1901262014.
Retrospective survey of homeopathic treatment, Danmarks Farmaceutiske Højskole, 1995.
73% of patients stated they improved after homeopathic treatment.
Andersen HE, Eldov P. Klassisk hom?opati - og dens brugere. Institut for Samfundsfarmaci,
Danmarks Farmaceutiske H?jskole. 1995. Andersen, Helle Egebjerg. En unders?gelse af Klassisk
Homøpati. Teorier, praksis og brugererfaringer. 1999. ISBN 87-987279-0-7
The effect of homeopathy, acupuncture and osteopathy. Result: 89% of patients stated they
experienced positive effect from the treatment. Particularly clear effect on reduction of pain, increased
vitality, ability to function socially and with regards to limitations at work and in daily activities
influenced by physical problems. Homeopathy was particularly effective for patients suffering from
arthritis, hayfever, atopic asthma and skin complaints.
Richardson J. Quasi-randomised control trial to assess the outcome of acupuncture, osteopathy and
homoeopathy using the short form 36 item health survey. Health Services Research and Evaluation
Unit, The Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust. December 1996.
META-ANALYSES
A meta-analysis is a means of combining results from more than one trial to look for overall trends.
(NB! In general complicated research terminology such as OR, CI, and words such as significant or
randomized should only be used in communications with people who will understand such
terminology. Otherwise stick to what can be understood by all, e.g. A survey of all the high quality
research that has been carried out clearly shows that homeopathy is effective.)
Information to be included
Jonas, W. B., Kaptchuk, T. J., & Linde, K. 2003b, "A critical overview of homeopathy",
Ann.Intern.Med., vol. 138, no. 5, pp. 393-399.
Cucherat, M., Haugh, M. C., Gooch, M., & Boissel, J. P. 2000, "Evidence of clinical efficacy of
homeopathy. A meta-analysis of clinical trials. HMRAG. Homeopathic Medicines Research Advisory
Group", Eur.J.Clin.Pharmacol., vol.. 56, no. 1, pp. 27-33.
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 4 of 12
META-ANALYSES SHOWING THAT HOMEOPATHY WORKS
A systematic review of results from 93 substantive RCTs was carried out by Robert Mathie (2003). It
concludes that of the 35 different medical conditions covered by these trials the weight of evidence
favours a positive treatment effect in 8: childhood diarrhoea, fibrositosis, hayfever, influenza, pain
(miscellaneous), side-effects of chemotherapy or radiotherapy, sprains and upper-respiratory tract
infections.
Mathie, R. The research evidence base for homeopathy: a fresh assessment of the literature.
Homeopathy 92: 84-91. 2003.
Meta-analysis of 89 trials of homeopathic medicine versus placebo. Result: significantly in favour of
homeopathy (OR 2,45 (95% CI 2,05-2,93)). This meta-analysis included 186 placebo-controlled
studies of homeopathy published until mid-1996, of which data for analysis could be extracted from
89. The overall odds ratio was 2.45 (95% confidence intervals 2.05-2.93) in favour of homeopathy,
which means that the chances that homeopathy would benefit the patient were 2.45 times greater than
placebo. When considering just those trials of high quality published in MEDLINE listed journals, and
with predefined primary outcome measures, the pooled odds ratio was 1.97 and significant. Even after
correction for publication bias the results remained significant. The main conclusion was that the
results "were not compatible with the hypothesis that the effects of homeopathy are completely due to
placebo". If the result of new trials were to show no difference between homeopathy and placebo, we
would have to add 923 trials with no effect with 118 patients in each in order to balance the two.
Linde K, Clausius N, Ramirez G, et al. Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? A
meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials. Lancet 1997;350:834-43.
HMRG report with overview of clinical research in homeopathy, identified 184 controlled clinical
trials. They selected the highest quality randomized control trials, which included a total of 2617
patients for a meta-analysis. This meta-analysis resulted in a p-value of 0.000036 (which means that
results are highly significant) indicating that homeopathy is more effective than placebo. The
researchers concluded that the "hypothesis that homeopathy has no effect can be rejected with
certainty". Homeopathic Medicine Research Group. Report to the European Commission directorate
general XII: science, research and development. Vol 1 (short version). Brussels: European
Commission, 1996:16-7.
Of the 105 trials with interpretable results, 81 trials indicated positive results. Most studies showed
results in favour of homeopathy even among those randomized controlled trials that received highquality
ratings for randomization, blinding, sample size, and other methodological criteria. They came
to the following conclusion: "The amount of positive evidence even among the best studies came as a
surprise to us. Based on this evidence we would readily accept that homeopathy can be efficacious, if
only the mechanism of action were more plausible. The evidence presented in this review would
probably be sufficient for establishing homeopathy as a regular treatment for certain indications".
Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, Ter Riet G. Clinical trials of homoeopathy. British Medical Journal.
1991b;302:316-23.
Meta-analysis of 105 articles on laboratory research. Result: positive effect 50% more frequently than
negative effect among trials of highest methodological quality. (1994)
Linde K. Jonas WB, Melchart D, Worku F, Wagner H, Eital F. Critical Review and Meta-Analysis of
Serial Agitated Dilutions in Experimental Toxicology. Human and Experimental Toxicology.
1994;13:481-492.
A meta-analysis of three trials on homeopathic immunotherapy. Result: significant effect in favour of
homeopathic treatment.
Reilly D, Taylor MA, Beattie NGM, Campbell JH, McSharry C, Aitchison TC, Carter R, Stevenson
RD. Is evidence for homoeopathy reproducible? Lancet. 1994;344:1601-1606.
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 5 of 12
KEY TRIALS AND SURVEYS
Diarrhoea in children
Treatment of acute childhood diarrhoea in Nicaragua
This trial involved 81 children aged from 6 months to 5 years in a randomised, double-blind trial of
intravenous fluids plus placebo versus intravenous fluids plus homeopathic remedy individualised to
the patient. The treatment group had a statistically significant decrease in duration of diarrhoea.
Jacobs J. Treatment of acute childhood diarrhea with homeopathic medicine: a randomized clinical
trial in Nicaragua. Pediatrics 1994; 93: 719-725.
Treatment of acute childhood diarrhoea, repeated in Nepal
In a replication of a trial carried out in Nicaragua in 1994, 116 Nepalese children aged 6 months to 5
years suffering from diarrhoea were given an individualised homoeopathic medicine or placebo.
Treatment by homoeopathy showed a significant improvement in the condition in comparison to
placebo.
Jacobs J., Jimenez M., Malthouse S., Chapman E., Crothers D., Masuk M., Jonas W.B., Acute
Childhood Diarrhoea- A Replication., Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 6, 2000,
131-139.
A meta-analysis of childhood diarrhoea trials
This meta analysis of 242 children showed a highly significant result in the duration of childhood
diarrhoea (P=0.008). It should be noted that the World Health Organisation consider childhood
diarrhoea to be the number one public health problem today because of the millions of children who
die every year from dehydration from diarrhoea.
J. Jacobs, WB Jonas, M Jimenez-Perez, D Crothers, Homeopathy for Childhood Diarrhea: Combined
Results and Meta-analysis from Three Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trials
http://homeopathic.com/articles/research/diarrhea_t.php
Respiratory tract complaints
Homeopathy versus conventional treatment in respiratory tract complaints
In an outcome study, 30 practitioners in four countries enrolled 500 consecutive patients with at least
one of three complaints: upper respiratory tract complaints including allergies; lower respiratory tract
complaints including allergies; or ear complaints. Of 456 patients, 281 received homeopathy and 175
conventional treatment. The primary outcomes criterion was response to treatment, defined as cured or
major improvement after 14 days of treatment. Results showed a response rate of 82.6% in the
homeopathy group compared to 67.3% in the group receiving conventional medicine. The authors
concluded that homeopathy appeared to be at least as effective as conventional treatment of patients
with the three conditions studied.
Riley D, Fischer M, Singh B, Haidvogl M, Heger M. Homeopathy and conventional medicine: an
outcomes study comparing effectiveness in a primary care setting. J Altern Complement Med 2001; 7:
149–159.
Homeopathy versus conventional treatment in otitis media
Prospective observational study, comparison of homeopathy versus conventional treatment in acute
otitis media. Conclusion: homeopathy should be first line treatment in acute otitis media. Results
showed median duration of pain of 2 days in the homeopathy-group and 3 days in the conventional
medicine group. 70.7 % of the children receiving homeopathic treatment did not have another ear
infection the next year and 29.3 % had a maximum of three ear infections within one year. 56.5 % in
the conventional medicin group did not have another ear infection the next year and 43.5 % had a
maximum of six ear infections the next year. Results showed that in the group receiving homeopathic
treatment only 5 out of 103 children needed antibiotics.
Friese K-H, Kruse S, Ludtke R, Moeller H "Homeopathic treatment of otitis media in children:
comparisons with conventional therapy". Int J Clin Pharmacol Ther. 1997; 35: 296-301.
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 6 of 12
Acute otitis media in children
A study involving children suffering from acute otitis media suggests that a positive treatment effect
from homeopathy when compared with placebo in acute otitis media cannot be excluded. There were
fewer treatment failures in the group receiving homeopathy after 5 days, 2 weeks, and 6 weeks, with
differences of 11.4, 18.4, and 19.9%, respectively, but these differences were not statistically
significant. Diary scores showed a significant decrease in symptoms at 24 and 64 h after treatment in
favour of homeopathy (P<0.05).
Jacobs J, Springer DA, Crothers D. Homeopathic treatment of acute otitis media in children: a
preliminary randomized placebo-controlled trial. Pediatr Infect Dis J 2001; 20: 177–183.
Acute otitis media in children
In a trial of 230 children who were given homeopathic treatment to treat acute otitis media, pain relief
was achieved in 39% of the patients after 6 h and another 33% after 12 h. The resolution rates were 2.4
times faster than in placebo controls. No complications were observed and compared to conventional
treatment the homeopathic approach was 14% cheaper.
Frei H, Thurneysen A. Homeopathy in acute otitis media in children: treatment effect or spontaneous
resolution? Br Homeopath J 2001; 90: 180–182.
Glue ear in children
In a pilot study in children suffering from glue ear treated with homeopathy 75% had normal
tympanogram, compared to 31% in the group treated with conventional medicine. A higher proportion
of children receiving homeopathic treatment had a hearing loss less than 20 dB at follow-up, though
the difference was not statistically significant. The authors concluded that further research comparing
homeopathy to standard care is warranted; 270 patients would be needed for a definitive trial.
Harrison H, Fixsen A, Vickers A. A randomized comparison of homoeopathic, standard care for the
treatment of glue ear in children. Compl Therap Med 1999; 7: 132–135.
Acute sinusitis
In an uncontrolled clinical trial of 119 patients suffering from clinical signs of acute sinusitis were
treated using homeopathic medicines. Typical sinusitis symptoms, such as headache, pressure pain at
nerve exit points, and irritating cough, were reduced after a mean of 4.1 days of treatment. Ninety-nine
received only a homeopathic test medication, 20 patients were able to discontinue concomitant
medication at the first visit, and only one patient needed antibiotics. Average duration of treatment
was 2 weeks. At the end of treatment 81.5 % described themselves as symptom free or significantly
improved. No adverse medication effects were reported.
Adler M. Efficacy, safety of a fixed-combination homeopathic therapy for sinusitis. Adv Ther 1999;
16: 103–111.
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 7 of 12
KEY TRIALS AND SURVEYS
Musculo-skeletal problems
Rheumatoid arthritis
Forty-six patients with rheumatoid arthritis received an individualised remedy or placebo in a 3-month
randomised trial. Both groups were allowed to continue standard anti-inflammatory drugs. After 3
months, the double-blind code was broken and remedies were given to members of the placebo group
in a single crossover study. Articular index, limbering up time, grip strength and pain all showed
statistically significant differences.
Gibson RG, Gibson SLM, MacNeill AD, Buchanan WW Homeopathic therapy in rheumatoid arthritis:
evaluation by double-blind clinical therapeutic trial. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 1980;
9: 453-459.
Osteoarthritis
In this trial, 65 sufferers of Osteoarthritis (OA) were split into 2 groups, and through a double blinding
process were given either a homoeopathic medicine or Acetaminophen, a commonly prescribed drug
for pain relief in OA. Researchers found that homoeopathy provided a level of pain relief that was
superior to Acetaminophen, and produced no adverse reactions.
Shealy C.N., Thomlinson P.R., Cox R.H., and Bormeyer V. Osteoarthritis Pain: A Comparison of
Homoeopathy and Acetaminophen. American Journal of Pain Management, 8, 3, July 1998, 89-91.
Fibromyalgia
A double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial of individualised homeopathic treatment (LM
potency) versus placebo concluded that individualised homeopathy is significantly better than placebo
in lessening tender point pain and improving the quality of life and overall health of persons with
fibromyalgia.
Bell IR, Lewis II DA, Brooks AJ, Schwartz GE, Lewis SE, Walsh BT, Baldwin CM. Improved clinical
status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo
http://rheumatology.oupjournals.org/cgi/reprint/keh111.
Fibrositis
In a randomised placebo-controlled trial of patients with fibrositis, only those patients in whom Rhus
toxicodendron was ‘unequivocally indicated’ were admitted to the study. After 1 month’s treatment,
there were highly significant improvements in objective and subjective parameters.
Fisher P. An experimental double-blind clinical trial in homoeopathy. British Homoeopathic Journal
1986; 75: 142-147.
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 8 of 12
KEY TRIALS AND SURVEYS
Hayfever, asthma and perennial rhinitis
Reilly and colleagues have conducted a series of trials in patients with hayfever, asthma and perennial
rhinitis. Patients were given skin tests and remedies were chosen on the basis of reactivity. This design
allows individualisation whilst avoiding the issues of case-taking and the effect that this has on the
process. The results demonstrate a significant difference between the placebo and homeopathic groups
which is reproducible. (NB! Strictly speaking these are trials of isopathy.)
Anon. Reilly’s challenge (editorial). Lancet 1994; 344: 1585.
Reilly DT, Taylor MA. Potent placebo of potency? A proposed study model with initial findings using
homoeopathically prepared pollens in hay fever as a model. British Homoeopathic Journal 1985 ; 74:
65-75.
Reilly DT, Taylor MA, Campbell J, Beattie N, McSharry C, Aitchison T, Carter R, Stevenson R. Is
evidence for homoeopathy reproducible? Lancet 1994; 334: 1601-1606.
Reilly DT, Taylor MA, McSharry C, Aitchison T. Is homoeopathy a placebo response? Controlled trial
of homoeopathic potency, with pollen in hay fever as a model. Lancet 1986; ii: 881-886.
Taylor MA, Reilly D, Llewellyn-Jones RH, McSharry C, Aitchison T, Lancaster T, Vickers A.
Randomised controlled trial of homeopathy versus placebo in perennial allergic rhinitis with overview
of four trial series British Medical Journal 2000; 321: 471-476.
Female complaints
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
36 women suffering from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), and fitting the mental picture of the
homoeopathic remedy Pulsatilla, were given Pulsatilla 6C, 4 hourly throughout the day for 2 weeks
after the end of menstruation, and this was repeated for 4 consecutive cycles. At the end of the trial 30
of the 36 women had no symptoms of PCOS and they had normal ovulating follicles and 4 of the 36
women became asymptomatic.
Sanchez-Resendiz J., Guzman-Gomez F., Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Boletin Mexicano de
Homeopatica, 30, 1997, 11-15.
Pre menstrual syndrome (PMS)
In a randomized controlled double-blind clinical trial (1992-94) 19 women suffering from PMS were
treated individually with homeopathy. 90 % of the patients who had received homeopathic treatment
experienced more than 30 % improvement. Only 37.5 % of patients who received placebo experienced a
similar improvement. Sick-days before menses were reduced from 0.75 to 0 in the homeopathy-group,
and was unchanged in the control group. Use of conventional drugs was also reduced in the homeopathygroup.
Yakir M, Kreitler S, Brzezinski A, Vithoulkas G, Oberbaum M, Bentwich Z.
Effects of homeopathic treatment in women with premenstrual syndrome: a pilot study. Br Homeopath J.
2001 Jul ;90(3): 148-53.
Homeopathy and oestrogen withdrawal
40 out of 45 women with breast cancer withdrawing from oestrogen and then treated homeopathically,
experienced significant improvement in their primary symptoms, anxiety and depression, as well as
improvement in quality of life. Primary symptoms changed from 7.8 to 5.4, and from 7.2 to 4.1
(p<0.001). The homeopathic approach appears to be clinically useful in the management of oestrogen
withdrawal symptoms in women with breast cancer.
Thompson EA, Reilly D. The homeopathic approach to the treatment of symptoms of oestrogen
withdrawal in breast cancer patients. A prospective observational study.
Homeopathy. 2003 Jul;92(3):131-4.
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 9 of 12
Homeopathy in menopausal complaints
In a prospective study 82 % of 102 patients reported improvement of menopause symptoms after
homeopathic treatment. Main symptoms noted were hot flushes and sweats, tiredness, anxiety,
sleeping difficulties, mood swings and headaches. Women referred to homeopathy were those who
either could not take hormone replacement treatment (HRT), for whom HRT was unsuccessful, who
did not want or who had to come off HRT. Mean length of homeopathic treatment was 5 months.
Relton, C. NHS Homeopathy Menopause Service. Outcome Study. In press.
Other notable trials
ME
A randomised double-blind trial involving 62 patients with ME, reported in some detail, found that
33% of patients in the group receiving homeopathic remedies showed definite improvement compared
with none in the placebo group.
Awdry R. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 1996; February, March, April.
Dengue haemorrhagic fever
Dengueinum 30 was administered to at least 39,200 people in the Delhi area during an epidemic of
Dengue haemorrhagic fever. Follow-up of 23,520 people 10 days later showed only 5 people (0.125%)
had developed mild symptoms, with the rest showing no signs or symptoms of the disease. (During
epidemics of dengue, atttack rates among susceptibles are often 40-50 %, but may reach 80-90 %,
World Health Organisation)
Central Council of Research in Homoeopathy. CCRH News 1996-1997.
Cost benefit
In a survey of 223 patients in an NHS General Practice, the number of consultations with general
practitioners was reduced by 70 % in a 1 year period. Expenses for medication were reduced by 50 %
when homeopathic treatment was made available.
Christie EA, Ward AT. Report on NHS practice-based homoeopathy project. Analysis of effectiveness
and cost of homoeopathic treatment within ad GP practice at St. Margaret’s Surgery, Bradford on
Avon, Wilts. September 1996. The Society of Homeopaths. ISBH 1 901262 006.
In a study of 351 adults suffering from allergies, 35.3% received homeopathic treatment, the
researchers concluded that alternative medicine is used widely for allergies by the general population
and is associated with considerable costs. This has freedom of choice and cost-benefit implications for
the healthcare system and health policy. The study also showed that alternative medicine users were
better educated than non-users, and assessed the results of alternative medicine as very good (28.6%)
or rather good (53.8%).
Schafer T, Riehle A, Wichmann HE, RingJ. Alternative medicine in allergies—prevalence, patterns of
use, and costs. Allergy 2002; 57: 694–700.
A study of the cost and effectiveness of homeopathy suggested that doctors practising homeopathy
issue fewer prescriptions and at a lower cost than their colleagues. The main costs for homeopathic
treatment are for consultations with each individual patient. Costs for the actual medications used are
relatively low, particularly when compared with conventional drugs.
Swayne J. The cost, effectiveness of homoeopathy. A pilot study, proposals for future research. Br
Homoeopath J 1992; 81: 148–150.
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 10 of 12
Basic research
The effect of high dilutions
In a multi-centre study including four research centres in Europe the effect of high dilutions of
histamine (10-30 – 10-38 M) were confirmed. Researchers were able to document that high dilutions of
histamine inhibit human basophil degranulation. Results cannot be explained through molecular
theories.
Belon P, Cumps J, Ennis M, Mannaioni PF, Roberfroid M, Sainte-Laudy J, Wiegant FAC. Histamine
dilutions modulate basophil activation. Inflamm. Res. 2004; 53: 181-188.
The effect of high dilutions was documented in an experiment showing the effect of highly diluted
Belladonna on acetylcholine-induced contraction of the rat ileum. The model is reproducible and
highly recognised in ‘the scientific world’.
Bastide M (ed). Signals and Images. Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997: 161-170
Information to be included
Lorenz, I., Schneider, E. M., Stolz, P., Brack, A., & Strube, J. 2003, "Sensitive flow cytometric method
to test basophil activation influenced by homeopathic histamine dilutions", Forsch Komplementarmed
Klass Naturheilkd, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 316-324.
Treatment of animals
In a blinded study where rats were treated for urinary infections results showed that rats treated with
homeopathic remedies had clear reduction of bacterial colonies. Results were at least as clear as for
treatment with antibiotics. Untreated rats had no changes in bacteria colonies, compared to a reduction
to 33 % of original bacteria levels in rats treated with antibiotics, and 22 % and 39 % in rats treated
with homeopathic remedies (Phosphorus and self-nosode).
Gonçalves et al. O uso da homeopatia no tratamento da infecção urinária em ratas. Anais do VIII
SINAPIH; 20-22 May, 2004: p.25-26.
A study of homeopathically protentised remedies showed a reduction in the need for repetition of
insemination and reduced semen loss in treatment of fertilisation of female pigs.
Riaucourt A. L´Exemple de la Filière Porcine. Annals of the “Entretiens Internationaux de Monaco
2002”, 5-6 October, 2002.
In a study of homeopathically potentised remedies the incidence of haematomas was reduced by 30 %
in turkeys during transportation. The study was randomised, placebo controlled and double blinded.
Filliat C. Particularité de l´utilisation de l´homéopathie en production avicole. Annals of the
“Entretiens Internationaux de Monaco 2002”, 5-6 October 2002.
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RESEARCH WEBSITE ADDRESSES
Pubmed (National Library of Medicine) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
British Medical Journal http://bmj.bmjjournals.com (search for 'homeopathy')
New Scientist www.newscientist.com (search for 'homeopathy')
Healthworld Online (Medline, Medical Research & Document Delivery)
www4.infotrieve.com/newmedline/summary.asp
Biomail www.biomail.org This site offers free regular updates by e-mail. Hosted by Medical Informatics
Department at State University of New York, Stony Brook University Hospital and Medical Centre.
An evidence-based resource about Complementary and Alternative Medicine www.cam.org.nz
Funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Health.
Annals of Internal Medicine www.annals.org/cgi/search?fulltext=homeopathy
University of York www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/ehc73.pdf
Biomed Central (homeopathy review) www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/1/12
British Homeopathic Library www.hom-inform.org
The Research Council for Complementary Medicine www.rccm.org.uk
Groupe International de Recherche sur l'Infinitésimal www.giriweb.com
National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
www.campain.umm.edu/ris/risweb.isa (search for 'homeopathy')
National Centre for Homeopathy www.homeopathic.org/research.htm
Homeopathic Educational Services www.homeopathic.com/articles/research/index.php
Homeopathy (the journal) www.harcourt-international.com/journals/homp
Boiron www.boiron.com/en/htm/04-politique/clinique.htm
Official Indian research centre www.ccrhindia.org
Carstens stiftung (Germany)
www.carstens-stiftung.de
www.carstens-stiftung.de/eng/index.html (English pages)
ISI Web of Knowledge (resembles PubMed but includes more areas)
http://isi3.isiknowledge.com/portal.cgi
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine (free articles)
www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882
NAFKAM, Tromsø (Norway) (research info will be included) http://uit.no/nafkam/omnafkam
Vifab (Denmark) www.vifab.dk
Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients publishes a print alternative medicine magazine.
www.townsendletter.com
An Overview of Positive Homeopathy Research and Surveys, ENHR, March 2005 Page 12 of 12

Top Ten Reasons to Use Homeopathy

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1. NO HARMFUL SIDE EFFECTS
A special preparation process called potentization refines the medicines to remove any toxic side-effects. It is safe for babies and during pregnancy and menopause. However it is advised to be under the care of a qualified homeopathic practitioner if you are pregnant.

2. GENTLE
Homeopathy works by stimulating the body's own natural defense mechanism to heal itself. Although gentle the results may be powerful and long lasting.

3. HOLISTIC
Homeopathy takes into account the whole person. Often only one remedy may address all your complaints.

4. INEXPENSIVE
Homeopathic medicines cost surprisingly less than allopathic prescription medication. The homeopathic medicines are intended to boost the immune system, making you stronger and less likely to get sick.

5. PREVENTATIVE TREATMENT
By boosting the body's immune system, homeopathy can help improve a person's resistance to illness and infections.

6. NO ANIMAL TESTING
Humans respond differently to medication than animals do. All homeopathic medication is tested on healthy humans. The symptoms that a substance taken over time elicits in a healthy person, are shown to be exactly those that can be cured in a sick person suffering from those symptoms.

7. EASY TO TAKE
Homeopathic medicines are given either as small pleasant tasting tablets which dissolve in the mouth, or in liquid form. Granules, powders or drops are available for babies and children.

8. PERSON'S INVOLVEMENT
The homeopath will ask many questions, not only about the symptoms which are bothering an individual, but how they react to the condition, as well as wanting to know about general health and lifestyle.

9. INVALUABLE FOR FIRST AID
Homeopathic medicines can be safely used in the home or workplace to treat simple problems-such as bruises, minor burns, sprains, insect bites and gastric upsets. However more serious or chronic complaints should be treated by a qualified practitioner.

10. THE MEDICINE OF THE FUTURE
With over 6000 homeopathic medicines in existence and new homeopathic medicines being discovered all the time, Homeopathy is a growing art. However unlike allopathic medicine that takes drugs off the market every year as new side-effects are discovered, homeopaths still use the same medicines they were using 200 years ago with new medicines to broaden their scope. Scientists are only now discovering breakthroughs in quantum physics that helps us to develop a deeper understanding of homeopathy, as it was used 200 years ago.

By Gabrielle Traub, M.Tech (HOM), HD (Hon)

The Principles of Homeopathy

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The Whole Person
Mind and body are not separate but are a whole organism. Homeopathy treats the whole person - on the mental and emotional level as well as the physical.

The Vital Force
There is a life energy, or vital force, that always strives to bring the living organism back into balance and health. Homeopathic remedies stimulate this life force, or immune system, to bring about healing.

Susceptibility
Disease or illness takes a hold when we are susceptible to it; it is not usually something that hits us completely out of the blue. In many cases, emotional and/or physical stresses, or the environment in which we live or work, make us susceptible to illnesses that otherwise might not affect us.

Inheritance
Samuel Hahnemann talked about 'miasms' – inherited tendencies towards certain types of illness. In modern terms, we are talking about genetically inherited tendencies that come to us from our parents, grandparents and the many generations before which were affected by major diseases. We all carry these 'imprints' but we do not have to succumb to these inherited tendencies. Homeopathic treatment aims to make the best of our inheritance.

Like Cures Like
A substance which causes certain symptoms in a well person can be used in microscopic doses to cure an unwell person showing similar symptoms. This is Hahnemann's Law of Similars.

Provings
To find out what types of illness a substance might cure, 'provings' of remedies have been carried out. This involves human guinea pigs taking doses of a remedy until they begin to exhibit symptoms. These symptoms are then noted as being ones that would indicate the use of that remedy as a cure.

Minimum Dose and the Single Remedy
It is an important homeopathic principle that one should bring about cure with the minimum amount of medication. Most homeopaths also use only one remedy at a time. If several remedies are used at the same time, it is impossible for the homeopath to be clear as to what is happening as the case progresses, i.e. which remedy is doing what. In acute cases, several remedies may be used in quick succession until one takes effect.

Succussion and Dilution
Remedies are diluted over and over again to achieve the minimum dose – and, paradoxically, to increase their potency. As well as being diluted, the remedies are also succussed, or shaken. It is in this process, discovered by Hahnemann that the remedies appear to release their healing energies.

Direction of Cure
In the 19th century, the homeopath Constantine Hering discovered what became known as Hering's Law of Cure. This says that disease tends to move from the exterior of the body to the interior, from the extremities to the upper body, and from the less vital organs to the more vital organs. A curative homeopathic remedy can reverse these directions, with symptoms disappearing in the reverse order of their appearance, a process which can involve the brief return of old symptoms – sometimes mildly alarming for the patient, but a sign that healing is under way.

A Brief History of Homeopathy

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Although homeopathy has its roots in ancient Greek medicine and in the work of the 16th-century physician Paracelsus, modern homeopathy dates back 200 years to the work of the German doctor and chemist Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann qualified as a physician but ceased to practice as a doctor because of what he saw as the barbaric medical practices of his day - which included bloodletting and the overuse of toxic medicines, leading to horrific side effects.

A brilliant linguist, he earned a living from translating books and was interested by a reference in a medical textbook to the use of China (Peruvian bark) as a cure for malaria. Intrigued to know why China worked, he took doses of the remedy until he himself began to exhibit malarial symptoms. He stopped taking the China and the symptoms went away. From this he deduced that the ancient principle of 'like cures like' actually worked.

His next step was to see if there were safe levels at which toxic substances could be given - and still cure the type of symptoms that they might otherwise cause. His experiments with dilution led him to discover that the more a substance was diluted, the more potent it appeared to become.

Homeopathic medicine was born, but in practicing it, Hahnemann and his followers were subjected to ridicule and persecution by the medical establishment, despite the fact that they were seeing patients getting better on tiny doses of medicines, prescribed on the basis of 'like cures like'. Many European practitioners immigrated to the United States, where homeopathy flourished in the 19th century – until the medical establishment there systematically acted to remove its influence.

Hahnemann ended his days as a renowned and very busy practitioner in Paris, working into his eighties. His grave is at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise, where there is a large monument to him and to his discovery of Homeopathy.

The bronze statue of Hahnemann was built and dedicated in Washington D. C. by the American Institute of Homeopathy (AIH) with the help of President McKinley, a supporter of homeopathy and guest of honor at the ceremony, on June 21, 1900. The monument is located at the intersection of 16th Street and Massachusetts Avenue (Scott Circle) in Washington D.C.

Summer is here: how to better protect and nourish our skin?

2010-08-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

Summer is here: how to better protect and nourish our skin?

In summer the skin becomes a very important organ to cool down the body and to keep the internal temperature more stable through the sweating. During this process many mineral salts are lost and the vitamin’s turnover increases. In addition, the skin increases its detox function, releasing internal toxins produced as a result of the higher metabolic rate. One more reason to keep the skin clean and well nourished, using products which respect its hydrolipidic layer and help it to ‘breathe’ properly.

Don’t forget to drink freshly juiced fruit and vegetables (organic please!) in order to replenish the body with antioxidant, vitamins and minerals lost because of the sweating. Wear natural/organic clothes to favor transpiration. Reduce the intake of alcoholic drinks (alcohol increases internal heat) and avoid sweets, eat only natural sugars from fresh and dried fruits or honey.

If you live in the city, the exhaust fumes and pollution - hence the ‘oven’ effect - is even greater with a consequent increase in sweating and loss of electrolytes (mineral salts). The skin is therefore under a greater stress.

Fumes and micro-particles tend to block the skin’s pores, altering the respiration/transpiration process due to the oxidation effects of pollution. This results in the alteration of the hydroplipidic layer. In these circumstances, it is essential to have a diet rich in vitamins and minerals increasing the intake of water. I also suggest to have a shower twice a day using warm water, and to gently exfoliate the skin with a natural sponge in order to get rid of pollutant micro particles. If you do use soap make sure you choose an organic one with a balanced pH.

However, wherever you are keep the skin well moisturized using a nourishing organic body oil (such as INLIGHT Body Oil with Arnica) in order to also re-establish the skin’s natural balance.

In the hot season the skin is exposed to problems arising mainly from the damaging action of the sun’s UVA and UVB rays, wind and sea salt. The sun is not an ‘enemy’ (it is essential to activate Vitamin D and to stimulate the production of the so called “hormone of happiness”), but we need to take some precautions to avoid its harmful effects. The first step is a gradual exposure to the sun, starting with a few minutes, ideally in the morning and late afternoon when the sun’s rays are not vertical. I am not in favor, except in specific cases, of high SPF sun creams as these may ‘clog’ the skin. Better to be sensible and, if too hot, find some shade.

Even more than in winter time, in the hot season the skin must be prepared by using moisturizing body oil with a natural sun screen and nourishing and antioxidant ingredients. (I have to suggest INLIGHT Organic Daily Face Oil and INLIGHT Organic Body Oil with Arnica which really fit the purpose). Sometimes though even with these precautions the skin can still be dry, therefore after a swim and a shower, to wash off salt residue, use a rich balm to feed the skin further nourishment. I can suggest INLIGHT Body Butter. Beside many health-giving ingredients I have combined in this product organic coconut oil and shea butter specifically chosen for their repairing and restorative actions.
Enjoy the Summer!

Nature always has the right answer. We only have to learn how to read it.

Loving Homeopathy – Loving your skin

2010-08-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

Loving Homeopathy – Loving your skin

Homeopathic treatment may be impeded by some of the synthetic chemicals found in conventional skincare.

Homeopathic treatment may be impeded by some of the synthetic chemicals found in conventional skincare, most of which can be absorbed into our system via the skin causing possible impairment in its health. Homeopathic remedies may also be antidoted by certain other strong substances such as coffee, mint, camphor or eucalyptus.

Traditional homeopathic practice states that no obstacle should be applied to the skin during treatment, in order to safeguard the skin’s eliminatory function, which is such a key feature in the centrifugal homeopathic healing process.

However it is really important to keep the skin in tip top condition especially when the body is trying to expel toxins through it.

Therefore the first step is to keep this amazing organ well cleansed and nourished, by choosing homeopathically friendly skin care of the highest quality with natural and pure ingredients of close affinity to the skin which will not antidote any remedy. Organic of course, very gently scented and preferably with food grade ingredients of vegetable origin. Being a homeopath myself, trust me, I know what I am talking about!

My general advice is not to use ‘on’ what you wouldn’t use ‘in’. Be especially aware of what you are applying if you are under homeopathic treatment, so as to avoid “intoxicating” an organ that needs to be at its peak.

Homeopathy and Surgery: How to heal quickly

2010-07-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

Homeopathic remedies can be used to promote healing after surgery, dental procedures and childbirth.

Homeopathic medicines can be used for healing from surgery as well as from the anesthesia. In the United States there are over 7 million procedures and surgeries performed each year. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery some plastic surgeons are beginning to advocate the use of the homeopathic remedy, Arnica Montana, to decrease postoperative bruising and swelling.

Surgical procedures can be traumatic to the body. The following list represents some of the commonly used homeopathic remedies for post-operative healing. It is best to have the chosen remedy(ies) on hand before so they can be used immediately following the procedure.

Arnica montana is the first medicine to use following dental procedures and surgery. In addition, Arnica is useful for bruises, swelling, muscle soreness, sprains and strains, falls and blows, overexertion from lifting, sports and childbirth.

Staphysagria is useful for surgical wounds and lacerated tissues that have required stitches. It is also useful for wounds that remain painful and sensitive after a procedure. The mood can also be sensitive. It can help to quickly reduce the pain and inflammation to allow the wound to heal.Staphysagria can be used to speed up the recovery following episiotomies in childbirth and Cesarean sections.

Hypericum is excellent for the injury to nerves, especially fingers toes, nails, brain and spinal cord. The characteristic pains are shooting and sharp, very sensitive to touch. Hypericum is also indicated for puncture wounds (including the site of an injection).

Ledum is the primary remedy for puncture wounds. It can also be used to an area of the body following a procedure that is cold.
Phosphorus can be used to treat the ill effects from anesthesia. It is indicated for nausea and vomiting following anesthesia. The person can be fearful and prefer to have company around. There is a craving for cold drinks or ice chips.

Dosing

Example:
Arnica 30C (or a higher dose, i.e. 200C)- 3 tablets to be taken 4 times a day after surgery for several days. With improvement decrease to 1-2 times a day then discontinue. Major surgery may require the remedy be used for several days.

Choose the remedy on the symptoms. Change the remedy as the person's symptoms change. With improvement, the remedy should be used less often. Remedies can be used in conjunction with other medications. For any worsening symptoms always contact your doctor immediately.

Vaccination Alternative: HOMEOPROPHYLAXIS

2010-07-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

What is HOMEOPROPHYLAXIS (HP)?

While no medicine can guarantee 100% immunity, two centuries of medical literature reveals that the homeopathic remedies are as effective in conferring immunity as anything developed in conventional medicinal system. They may be taken for general immunization or used to increase the immune response during season of high risk. Homeopathic immunization - also known as Homeoprophylaxis- is a safe and effective way to protect you and your family against childhood and other epidemic diseases. Homeopathic immunization is safe for all ages. It protects children and adults as well as the elderly, and can even be used during pregnancy. It has none of the adverse reactions or side-effects associated with vaccines.

The substances (nosodes and homeopathic remedies) used in homeoprophylaxis are prepared according to FDA regulations for homeopathic medicines. In contrast to vaccines, they are free from adjuvants and preservatives which have been shown to cause harm. They work to reduce susceptibility to disease which includes in increase in immune system function and stimulating antibody levels.

The prophylactics are supplied as small, round, sugar pills that dissolve easily in the mouth. Children and adults love them as there is no unpleasant taste. When given to babies they may be first dissolved in a little water. Simple!
Homeoprophylaxis can be used for poliomyelitis, chickenpox, meningococcal disease, hepatitis (all types), Japanese encephalitis, Hib, influenza, measles, pneumococcal disease, cholera, smallpox, typhoid, typhus, whooping cough (pertussis), rubella, mumps, diphtheria, malaria, tetanus, yellow fever, dysentery, and many other epidemic diseases. Communities around the world have used its protective effect for over two hundred years.

Recent Research:

Two recent meningococcal studies from Brazil (1974 and 1998) involving over 114,000 people showed that homeopathic immunization provided 91–95% protection against meningococcal disease. The larger study was funded by the Brazilian government and conducted by a Brazilian university through its medical professors, doctors, and city officials.
In Cuba, the ministry of health recently reported that in 2007 and 2008 in two provinces they reduced the incidence of Leptospirosis due to flooding as a result of the seasonal hurricanes with a homeopathic nosode of the disease. Of the 5,000,000 people given the prophylactic in these two provinces only ten developed the disease, a marked contrast to the several hundreds of people that were normally infected each year. In addition, the program cost in comparison to the traditional and less effective vaccine programs.

A Comparison of Homeopathic Immunization and Vaccination:

The largest study in the world on the long-term health effects of homeopathic immunization was completed at Melbourne's Swinburne University (Australia) in 2004.

It found that:
• Homeopathic immunization had a 90.4% efficacy against epidemic childhood diseases - a rate similar to or better than that of conventional vaccines.
The study also looked at the relationship between four different immunization choices (homeopathic immunization, vaccination, a mixed naturopathic approach, and nothing) and the development of chronic disease in 781 children over a 12-year period. It found that of all groups, those who had been immunized homeopathically had the lowest incidence of chronic health problems. They suffered less asthma, eczema, allergies, and behavioral issues. The sickest children came from the fully vaccinated group. On asthma alone, they had a fifteen times greater incidence of the disease than un-vaccinated children.

Benefits of Homeopathic Immunization"

1. Homeopathic immunization is extremely safe. It does not poison, create addictions, or produce toxic side-effects. Chemical interactions with other medicines do not happen. There are no harmful effects of homeopathic immunization.

2. Instead of targeting the pathogen, bacteria or virus present in epidemic disease, homeopathic immunization has its effect by naturally strengthening the resistance of the individual. For this reason, pathogens can never develop a resistance to the prophylactics.

3. Homeopathic immunization fulfills susceptibility towards diseases for which no vaccine exists; for example, the 'B' strains of meningococcal (meningitis) disease that is present for most meningococcal infections in countries such as Australia.

4. Homeopathic immunization can stimulate immunity when vaccines may be unsuitable, (e.g. those who have already had an adverse vaccine reaction, the malnourished, the sick and debilitated, the immune-compromised, the pregnant, those allergic to vaccine materials, and those on steroids.)

5. Recent Australian research showed that homeopathic immunization provided 90.4% protection against childhood infectious diseases. This figure is consistent with overseas studies. It also compares favorably with the 75-95% protection rates offered by vaccines.

6. Homeopathic immunization is easily distributed and dispensed. One dose usually consists of oral administrations of two milk sugar pilules/pellets. It does not need needles or syringes, require refrigeration, or depend on teams of trained health workers for distribution or administration. It is clean, natural, environmental medicine at its best.

FACTS:

• In 1813, Hahnemann achieved a success rate of 100% in treating 183 typhus patients, at that time Typhus was considered incurable.
• Scarlet Fever was effectively both treated and prevented by Hahnemann using the remedy Belladonna.
• During the European Cholera epidemics of the mid-1800’s, the death rate was between 54% and 90%, while the rate amongst persons who received homeopathic treatment was between 5% to 16%.
• During the 1918-1920 Influenza (Spanish Flu) epidemics in the United States, the mortality rate was around 30%; the mortality rate among individuals treated homeopathically was less than 1%.
(Source: Vaccination & Homeoprophylaxis - Dr I Golden)

If you would like more information about this or would like to use this as a alternative please contact me @ www.theartofcure.net

Whooping cough kills 5 in California - State declares a epidemic?

2010-07-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

From Dr. Mercola's newsletter:

After the deaths of five infants, California health authorities have declared an epidemic of whooping cough, also known as pertussis.

The announcement came after authorities noticed a sharp spike in reports of pertussis, which often is mistaken for a cold or the flu and is highly contagious.

A CDC study suggests that the resurgence of whooping cough is due to the vaccine causing an increased and more virulent toxin.

The CDC acknowledges that whooping cough is recurring in highly vaccinated countries -- and that it is not just because some children are unvaccinated, although that can be a factor.

According to the CDC:

"The reemergence of pertussis has been attributed to various factors, including increased awareness, improved diagnostics, decreased vaccination coverage, suboptimal vaccines, waning vaccine-induced immunity, and pathogen adaptation ... Pathogen adaptation is supported by several observations."

In other words, vaccinating against the whooping cough pathogens has caused the pathogens to evolve with a more virulent strain.

By Barbara Loe Fisher

Reports of whooping cough outbreaks in California 1 2 and in other states this summer are nothing new. Every four to five years – no matter how high the vaccination rate is, there are reports of whooping cough increases.

Whooping cough is a respiratory disease. Toxins in Bordetella pertussis bacteria stimulate the production of large amounts of thick, sticky mucus that can clog the airways of tiny babies and children, making it difficult for them to take a breath without vomiting, choking and making a whooping sound 3 as they struggle to breathe.

Why Whooping Cough Cannot be Prevented, Despite Near 100 Percent Vaccination Rates

There is an acellular pertussis vaccine – DTaP - which was licensed for American babies in 1996. 4 DTaP replaced an older, very reactive whole cell pertussis vaccine - DPT - that was associated with more cases of high fever, collapse/shock, convulsions, brain inflammation and permanent brain damage. 5 6

It is well known that pertussis vaccines, which can contain various amounts of bioactive toxins 7 8 9 10 11 and also aluminum 12 13 14 and mercury 15 additives, have killed and brain injured some children.

Over half of the 2,480 awards for vaccine injury and death totaling $2 billion dollars made under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act involve pertussis vaccine.16

Pertussis vaccination rates are very high in the U.S. According to the CDC, 84 percent of children under age three have received four DTaP shots. 17 By the time American children enter kindergarten nearly every child has gotten all the CDC recommended pertussis shots. 18

In 2009, the CDC said that the proportion of totally unvaccinated children in America is only six hundredths of one percent (0.06). 19

Even with super high pertussis vaccine coverage in America and other countries like the Netherlands, Australia, Finland and Canada, whooping cough disease cannot be prevented. 20

There are number of reasons for this fact.

* First, pertussis vaccines widely used since the 1950's have not prevented whooping cough disease from circulating in vaccinated populations. Unknown numbers of children and adults, who have gotten all government recommended pertussis shots, can and do develop whooping cough or are carriers without symptoms. 21 22

* Because pertussis vaccine immunity is only temporary and does not last, health officials are now telling teenagers and adults to get more booster shots. 23 But that is not going to matter if scientific evidence that B. pertussis organisms have mutated and become vaccine-resistant turns out to be correct. 24

* A second important reason is that another Bordetella organism – parapertussis – also can cause whooping cough. 25 B. parapertussis symptoms, while often milder, can look exactly like B. pertussis.

But doctors rarely recognize or test for parapertussis. 26 And there is NO vaccine for parapertussis.

The DTaP vaccine given five times to children under age 6 and booster doses for teenagers and adults does not protect against whooping cough caused by B. parapertussis.

In highly vaccinated countries like the U.S., parapertussis is on the rise and it is estimated that perhaps 30 percent or more of whooping cough disease is actually caused by parapertussis! 27

So which bacterial organism is causing much of the whooping cough being seen in California, Nevada, 28 Oregon and other states this summer?

Is it B. pertussis or B. parapertussis?

Has there been any attempt by health officials to do expensive PCR lab tests on suspected whooping cough cases to find out? 29

Asking the Right Questions is Imperative

Another question: Are public health officials being transparent with the public about just how many children and adults reported to have whooping cough have been fully vaccinated?

In 1985 there was a lot of publicity about whooping cough outbreaks in eight states and all the blame was put on parents of DPT vaccine injured children calling for a safer pertussis vaccine.

But 25 years ago I investigated those whooping cough outbreaks and found 50 to 80 percent or more of the children and adults with whooping cough symptoms had been vaccinated. 30

* Bordetella organisms causing whooping cough disease live in animals like sheep, pigs, cats and dogs, as well as humans, and have been part of the earth's ecosystem, evolving to survive, for thousands of years. 31 32 Yet, mass vaccination of humans with pertussis vaccine is only 60 years old.
* So why are the unvaccinated being blamed for whooping cough outbreaks in California, 33 Oregon 34 and other states?

* The majority of Americans alive today have gotten 3 to 5 pertussis shots.

* The truth is that, whether you are vaccinated or not, you can get a mild or serious case of whooping cough from B. pertussis or B. parapertussis organisms. And both whooping cough disease and pertussis vaccines carry a risk of injury or death, which can be greater for some than others.

* There are no guarantees.

* It is time for public health officials and doctors to look at themselves and stop pointing fingers at those who have examined pertussis vaccine benefits and risks and come to a different conclusion.

Vaccine Does NOT Equal Assurance of Immunity

After my precocious two year old son suffered a convulsion, collapse/shock and brain inflammation following his fourth DPT shot in 1980 and was left with multiple learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder, in 1993 my two youngest children, then 5 and 10 years old, came down with whooping cough. They coughed violently and spit up huge amounts of thick mucus for 8 weeks before fully recovering and going on to become honor roll students.

The profile on whooping cough in the 1985 book I co-authored with medical historian Harris Coulter, "DPT: A Shot in the Dark," 35 is about my sister and her family, who were fully vaccinated. Her newborn baby almost died of whooping cough but survived and attended college on a full academic scholarship. Even so, other babies who get whooping cough do not survive.

There are no guarantees.

A quarter century later, DPT: A Shot in the Dark still stands as the most comprehensive, referenced analysis of whooping cough and pertussis vaccine risks and why America's mass vaccination system is in urgent need of reform.

Go to NVIC.org 36 and become a family donor supporter of the National Vaccine Information Center and you will receive a complimentary copy of that historic book.

Protect yourself and your child by making educated vaccine decisions. It's your health. Your family. Your choice.

References

1 California Department of Health. Press Release: Whooping Cough Epidemic May Be Worst in 50 Years. June 23, 2010.

2 Scheck J. Whooping cough afflicts region. Wall Street Journal. June 24, 2010.

3 Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Pertussis (Whooping Cough) Sounds. Accessed June 6, 2010.

4 CDC. FDA Approval of a Second Acellular Pertussis Vaccine for Use Among Infants and Young Children. MMWR. 1997;46:110-111.

5 Gold, R. Pertussis: The Disease & the Vaccine. Canadian Family Physician. Vol 32, January 1986, pp. 79-83.

6 Legido A, Tenembaum SN, Katsetos CD, Menkes JH. Autoimmune & Postinfectious Diseases (Chapter 8). Child Neurology – 7th Edition. Lippencott Williams & Wilkins, 2006. Pages 631-634 (Neurologic Complications of Immunizations).

7 Sidney M, Furman BL, Wardlaw AC. Effect of hyperreactivity to endotoxin on the toxicity of pertussis vaccine and pertussis toxin in mice. Vaccine. Vol. 7, Issue 3. June 1989. Pages 237-241.

8 World Health Organization (WHO). Requirements for Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis 7 Combined Vaccines (Revised 1989). Technical Report Series, No) 500. 1990.

9 Steinman L, Weiss A et al. Pertussis toxin is required for pertussis vaccine encephalopathy. Proc Natl Acad Sci, 1985. December; 82(24) 8733-8736.

10 Businesswire. Chiron Biocine Genetically Engineered Acellular Pertussis Vaccine Proves Superior to Currently Licensed Vaccine. Chiron Press Release: July 13, 1995.

11 Hofstetter HH, Shive CL, Forsthuber TC. Pertussis Toxin Modulates the Immune Response to Neuroantigens Injected in Incomplete Freund's Adjuvant: Induction of Th1 Cells and Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis in the Presence of High Frequencies of Th2 Cells. The Journal of Immunology, 2002. 169: 117-125.

12 Gupta RK, Relyveid EH. Adverse reactions after injection of adsorbed diptheria – pertussis – tetanus (DPT) vaccine are not due only to pertussis organisms or pertussis components in the vaccine. Vaccine. Vol. 9, Issue 10. October 1991. Pages 699-702.

13 Bergfors E, Trollfors B, Inerot A. Unexpectedly high incidence of persistent itching nodules and delayed hypersensitivity to aluminum in children after the use of adsorbed vaccines from a single manufacturer. Vaccine. Vol. 22, Issue 1. December 8, 2003. Pages 64-69.

14 Rimaniol AC, Gras G et al. Aluminum hydroxide adjuvant induces macrophage differentiation towards a specialized antigen-presenting cell type. Vaccine. Vol. 22, Issues 23-24. 13 August 2004. Pages 3127-3135.

15 Waly M, Olteanu H. Activation of methionine synthase by insulin-like growth factor – 1 and dopamine: a target for neurodevelopmental toxins and thimerosal. Molecular Psychiatry (2004) 9, 358-370.

16 HRSA. National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Claims Filed and Compensated or Dismissed by Vaccine. (up to May 5, 2010) and Statistics Report: Awards Paid (as of June 7, 2010).

17 CDC. Immunization Rates Remain Stable at High Levels Among the Nation's 19 through 35 month old children. CDC Press Release: August 27, 2009.

18 CDC. Vaccination Coverage Among Children Entering School – United States, 2005-2006 School Year. MMWR. October 20, 2006. 55(41); 124-1126.

19 See Reference #17.

20 Mooi F R, van LooIHM, King A. Adaptation of Bordetella pertussis to Vaccination: A Cause for its Reemergence? Emerging Infectious Diseases. Vol. 7, No. 3 Supplement June 2001.

21 Grilc E, Pirnat N. Pertussis outbreak in recently vaccinated children in a kindergarten in Ljubljana during a resurgence in pertussis incidence. Eurosurveillance. Vol. 10, Issue 33. 18 August 2005.

22 Srugo I, Benilevi D et al. Pertussis Infection in Fully Vaccinated Children in Day-Care Centers, Israel. Emerging Infectious Diseases. Vol. 6, No. 5 September-Oct. 2000.

23 Brooks DA, Clover R. Pertussis Infection in the United States: Role for Vaccination of Adolescents and Adults. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine 19:603-611. 2006.

24 See References #20 and #21

25 Kheief N, Danve B etal. Bordetella pertussis and Bordetella parapertussis: two immunologically distinct species. Infection & Immunity. 1993 February; 61(2): 486-490.

26 He Q, Vijanen MK et al. Whooping Cough Caused by Bordetella pertussis and Bordetella parapertussis in an Immunized Population. JAMA. 1998; 280: 635-637.

27 Liese JG, Renner C. Clinical and epidemiological picture of B pertussis and B parapertussis infections after introduction of acellular pertussis vaccines. Archives of Diseases in Childhood 2003; 88: 684-687.

Also see Reference #26.

28 Magin K. Low vaccination rates cause worry over whooping cough. The Union (Nevada). June 15, 2010.

29 LabCorp. A Technical Review: Bordetella pertussis and Bordetella parapertussis Detection using Real-time PCR. 2007.

30 Fisher, BL. Presentation to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Centers for Disease Control, May 12, 1986.

31 Preston A. Bordetella pertussis: the intersection of genomics and pathobiology. Canadian Medical Association Journal. July 5, 2005. 173 (1)

32 Diavatopoulos DA, Cummings CA et al. Bordetella pertussis, the Causative Agent of Whooping Cough, Evolved from a Distinct Human-Associated Lineage of B. brohchiseptica. PLOS Pathogens. December 2005: Vol. 1, Issue 4.

33 Weerasekara P. California Mulls Mandatory Shot for Whooping Cough. New American Media. July 3, 2010.

34 The Oregonian. Putting other kids in harm's way. July 4, 2010.

35 Coulter HL, Fisher BL. DPT: A Shot in the Dark. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1985.

36 Become a Donor Supporter of NVIC – Stand Up & Be Counted.

Sources:
CDC August 8, 2009
New York Times June 23, 2010
National Vaccine Information Center

FUTURE OF HOMEOPATHY: HOW I SEE IT

2010-06-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

In order to look at the future homeopathy one must look at the past of it. The history of homeopathy begins with the discoveries of its founder Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician. Hahnemann first coined the word "homeopathy” to refer the law of similars that is its basis. Actually, the law of similars was previously described by Hippocrates and Paracelsus and was utilized by many cultures, including the Mayans, Chinese, Greeks, Native American Indians, and Asian Indians, but it was Hahnemann who codified the law of similars into a systematic medical science. Hahnemann was particularly disliked by many in the medical profession of the time and the apothecaries especially because he recommended the use of only one medicine at a time and believed in prescribing only limited doses of it. Because he recommended small doses of each medicine, the apothecaries could not charge much for them. And because each medicine required careful preparation, Hahnemann found that the apothecaries were not always making them correctly or were intentionally giving his patients different medicines. As his distrust grew toward the apothecaries, he chose to dispense his own medicines, an illegal act at the time in Germany. The apothecaries then accused Hahnemann of "entrenching upon their privileges by the dispensing of medicines." Arrested in Leipzig in 1820, he was found guilty and forced to move. He then moved to Kothen, where he was delegated special permission to practice and dispense his own medicines by Grand Duke Ferdinand, one of the many European royalties who supported homeopathy. Despite the persecution, homeopathy continued to grow. It grew not just because it offered a systematic approach to treating sick people, but also because orthodox medicine was ineffective and even dangerous. Most medical historians today agree that orthodox medicine of the 1700s and 1800s frequently caused more harm than good. Homeopathy then comes into strong opposition from the Physicians of the time. They criticized herbalists, midwives, and various other "non-regular" practitioners because they were not medically trained. Homeopaths, however, could not be discredited as being unlearned, since they had been were graduates from many of the same medical schools as "regular" physicians. In fact, many of the initial practitioners of homeopathy graduated from some of the most prestigious medical schools of the day. Perhaps the most important reason that conventional physicians disliked homeopathy and homeopaths was well expressed at an A.M.A. meeting by one of the more respected orthodox physicians who said, "We must admit that we never fought the homeopath on matters of principles; we fought him because he came into the community and got the business." Hahnemann's principles posed a philosophical, clinical, and economic threat to orthodox medicine. Although most physicians, past or present, won't as easily admit it, economic issues play a major role in what is practiced and what is allowed to be practiced.
Homeopathy despite so many attempts to be snuffed out is again experiencing a renaissance in the United States. In the early 1970s there were only 50-100 physicians who specialized in homeopathy, and yet by the mid-1980s, it can be estimated that there are approximately 1,000 physicians who specialize in homeopathy. There has been many a news article speaking to the numbers of physicians in the U.S. who specialize in homeopathy and even speculate that it has doubled from 1980 to 1982. Approximately 1,000 other health professionals in the U.S. use homeopathic medicines, and these include dentists, podiatrists, veterinarians, physician assistants, nurses, naturopaths, acupuncturists, chiropractors, and psychologists. Although these numbers still represent only a very small percentage of licensed health professionals, the rapidly growing interest in homeopathy portends significant increases to come. The rediscovery of homeopathy by the general public is even more encouraging. It is difficult to predict how the future of homeopathy will be in the United States in the 21st century. Growing numbers of consumers are learning to self-prescribe homeopathic medicine for common acute conditions and hopefully will demand homeopathic care from their physicians for more serious medical conditions. All of this struggle; this rich and dramatic history brings us into the NOW and into the future of homeopathy. In Washington State today 2009 homeopaths still must fight for the legal right to practice because homeopathy falls into the scope of “practicing medicine with out a license” the Naturopathic doctors curiously aren’t supportive of the lay homeopath and want the exclusive rights to homeopathy. These brothers with a similar vision in healing are now part of the suppression of the lay homeopath. The medical community and state laws currently enacted completely ignore aphorism 11 from the Organon which beautifully states that “the spiritual vital force” is the only thing that is being treated in homeopathy. I believe they are in violation of a human beings right to practice a form of healing that delves into the spiritual realm and should never be suppressed. I am finding that it is requiring of me more than anticipated. Not only do I desire to be a healer but it is now requiring me to be an activist as well. My vision for the homeopathic future is long, I also see it being arduous and difficult but I also see it in micro steps just like these beautiful micro doses that our founder placed in the world for us. Diane Miller a Minnesota attorney and activist for homeopathy states: “I think homeopaths need to be leading the world in understanding energy, people and the law of similars. Homeopathy is by nature evolving, just as the human spirit and consciousness is evolving. Homeopathy is assisting us in out own understandings. If homeopathy can’t evolve, it will harnessed and corralled by those that do not honor or understand energy and the breadth of the human experience and homeopathy will lose its vitality and it will become impotent and die.” I believe homeopathy shouldn’t be regulated by the government, but we regulate ourselves so that it is allowed to evolve and grow in a natural way. I believe homeopathy is safe and like many professions in out culture that should be protected as always being free to practice in the public domain. I will fight for that right as long as I am blessed with the gift of homeopathy and its wonder.

Unlike children's over-the-counter cold and cough medicines, homeopathy is SAFE and EFFECTIVE.

2010-06-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

Does your child have a cough or cold? With homeopathy there is a safe and effective way to help them!

Newspapers around the country ran headlines in early October 2007 about the withdrawal of several popular brands of cold and cough medicines for young children. Doctors have warned that these products pose health risks of kids up to age 6 and especially for children under age 2. According to USA Today, "54 children had died from 1969 to 2006 after taking kids' medicines that use the ingredients ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and phenylephrine. The FDA also found that 69 deaths of children were linked to antihistamines that contained diphenhydramine, brompheniramine and chlorpheniramine. Most of the children who died were under 2, and the FDA said that the medicines haven't been proved to work in little kids. Earlier research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 1,500 children under 2 had suffered serious health problems after using the medicines. The American Academy of Pediatrics also has warned that kids' cough and cold products are not safe or effective for kids under 6."

As most parents who regularly use homeopathic remedies know, homeopathy provides a safe and effective way to help their young children. For example, the NCH provides an introductory Child Resource Guide which can be downloaded from our page of introductory articles. It provides many handy tips for parents.

Unlike conventional allopathic medicines, which only suppress symptoms rather than curing -- sometimes at the expense of dangerous side-effects, homeopathy supports the natural curative mechanisms within a child's body and can lead to a gentle and often rapid resolution of a cold or cough. Homeopathic medicines are readily available at all drugstores and mass merchandisers as well as natural food stores. They are generally recognized as safe and are inexpensive. They are easy to use and label directions should be followed.

Consider the following testimonial from a parent whose child had recurrent intense croup. In this case, "constitutional" treatment by a homeopathic doctor, based on the whole symptomatic picture of the child (both physical and mental) led to a resolution of the chronic condition entirely (rather than merely symptomatic relief). For a more simple case of common cold or cough, self-treatment using over-the-counter homeopathic remedies would usually be adequate (see resources below).

"My daughter Sophie, who is now ten, suffered from recurrent, spasmodic croup from age 2 to 81/2 . It was labeled "recurrent" because children usually grow out of croup by the time they are 4 or 5. She was hospitalized twice, with difficulty breathing, and the only effective treatment was a strong steroid, which she was given in the hospital to open her throat and airways and which we carried around with us in case of emergency. The side effects are not at all desirable, especially for a growing child.

We took her to specialists, but every time she had a little runny nose, we would hear the characteristic bark, and her fear and memory of previous attacks would tend to make it worse. When we moved to New York, I brought her to a homeopath (Dr. Edward Shalts) who, after much deliberation and a thorough interview with her and with me, prescribed a one-time dose of Calcarea Sulphurica 30C (not the textbook croup remedy) and I am happy to say that it cured her. We in the family all felt this was a miracle - no croup for the rest of the winter! When, the following year, the tell-tale cough reappeared mildly, I gave her another dose and it went away immediately.

Sophie and her father and I are so grateful, and relieved not to have to rely on the heavy drugs. I now look to homeopathy first. Thank you Calcarea Sulphurica!
Sincerely, K.R."
- Editorial Note: There are MANY other remedies for Croup and they are prescribed individually.

Research studies also support the effectiveness and superiority of the homeopathic approach in comparison to conventional allopathic treatment. Consider the following study:

Homeopathy versus conventional treatment in respiratory tract complaints: homeopathy gets 82.6% response, conventional gets 67.3% response.

In an outcome study, 30 practitioners in four countries enrolled 500 consecutive patients with at least one of three complaints: upper respiratory tract complaints including allergies; lower respiratory tract complaints including allergies; or ear complaints. Of 456 patients, 281 received homeopathy and 175 conventional treatment. The primary outcomes criterion was response to treatment, defined as cured or major improvement after 14 days of treatment. Results showed a response rate of 82.6% in the homeopathy group compared to 67.3% in the group receiving conventional medicine. The authors concluded that homeopathy appeared to be at least as effective as conventional treatment of patients with the three conditions studied.

Riley D, Fischer M, Singh B, Haidvogl M, Heger M. Homeopathy and conventional medicine: an outcomes study comparingeffectiveness in a primary care setting. J Altern Complement Med 2001; 7: 149–159.

There are many homeopathic self-help books that can help parents treat their children, safely and effectively, for common colds and coughs.

Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines
Homeopathic Medicine at Home
Homeopathic Medicine for Children and Infants
Homeopathy for Pregnancy, Birth, and Your Baby's First Year
The Complete Homeopathy Handbook

The National Center for Homeopathy's magazine, Homeopathy Today, also includes numerous articles about the home use of homeopathic remedies for treating problems like the common cold, cough, croup, ear infections, and more. One is provided below, followed by other suggestions accessible to members of the NCH. For full access to the online archives of Homeopathy Today, join the NCH!

From Homeopathy Today September 2004
Beyond Flat Earth Medicine - Colds, coughs, and earaches
A do-it-yourself guide to caring for your kids
by Timothy R. Dooley, MD, ND

"How is your daughter?" I inquired of one of my students at the naturopathic medical clinic. Jim had brought his little girl into the clinic the day before with an upper respiratory and middle ear infection—like zillions of other kids I have seen and successfully treated with homeopathy.
Jim's eyes were shadowed with fatigue. "I had to take her to the emergency room last night," he replied. "What happened?" I asked. "Well, the remedy didn't work. Her fever was 103°. She's now on antibiotics."

An unnecessary trip to the ER
I was surprised to hear he had taken this unnecessary trip to the ER, but I didn't want to make him feel bad, so I simply said, "How's she doing now?" "I think she's a bit better," he replied.
In retrospect, I probably should have taken Jim aside when he was better rested and talked to him about his decision-making process. I mean, "had" to take her to the emergency room? If his daughter had been prescribed antibiotics instead of a homeopathic remedy, he would never have gone to the ER just hours later because her fever had not yet dropped. He would have given a fever-lowering drug such as Tylenol and allowed the antibiotics time to work.
I think he was really saying something like: "Even though my daughter had been taking the homeopathic remedy only a few hours, I don't really believe in this stuff and am more comfortable with conventional medicine."
So, why the double standard? Why was this man, now a naturopathic medical doctor, unable to give natural medicine a chance?

Fear, a powerful motivator
I guess the simple answer is this: he's a human being whose kid was ill. He was scared. And when you are in a state of fear, you don't always do the rational thing. I used to be an emergency room doctor, and I know that the overwhelming majority of kids brought in by their parents in the middle of the night are there because their parents are afraid, not because the child's illness constitutes an emergency.
If I had known my student's tendencies a bit better, I would have cautioned him in advance not to be afraid if his daughter had a fever during the night. After all, fevers often spike up in kids at this age, especially at night. It's part of their natural immune response to an illness. I would have advised Jim to give the homeopathic remedy a little more frequently if the fever spiked. And I'd have told him that I'd be happy to re-check his daughter the next day if needed.

A dangerous practice
More and more evidence is accumulating that taking antibiotics when not really necessary is a dangerous practice. For example, antibiotic use and breast cancer were recently shown to be correlated in a study published in the February edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. In other words, the more antibiotics a woman has taken, the higher her risk of breast cancer. As a naturopathic physician, I routinely use homeopathy successfully to treat patients with many health conditions for which most doctors would use antibiotics.
All that is required to help parents overcome their natural parental fear is the experience of treating a few ill children with homeopathy and seeing that the kids do indeed get well—and usually more quickly than they would on antibiotics. You don't have to be a doctor or medical student to treat your children with homeopathy. Any parent can do it with a few simple observations and a handful of homeopathic remedies.

5 remedies for kids
Here are five common homeopathic remedies useful for treating young children with upper respiratory and ear infections. For good results, pay particular attention to the unique symptoms of the child, as opposed to just the diagnosis. (If none of these remedies seems to fit your sick child, you can consult one of the many excellent self-care books on homeopathy for more choices.)
Chamomilla. Children needing this remedy are really cranky. They demand to be carried; they demand a certain toy, then throw it down and complain loudly. The tone of their crying and complaining is quite irritating—enough to set your teeth on edge. They often get into this state with an upper respiratory infection or ear infection, especially while teething. Curiously, one cheek is sometimes glowing red and the other pale. They occasionally have diarrhea which can be greenish in color.
Pulsatilla. This remedy is commonly indicated in young children with colds, ear infections, coughs, fevers, etc. The child usually feels wimpy and needs attention and hugs. Their cry is not as irritating as the cry of a child needing Chamomilla. Discharges are often green or yellow-green. They typically aren't very thirsty and are better when you bring them into the open air—that is, they cough less, seem calmer, etc.
Aconite. When the child goes to bed pretty much OK, but wakes in the middle of the night feverish and with a croupy-sounding cough, this is usually the remedy to give. Think of it for feverish illnesses with a sudden onset, especially associated with a fearful anxiety and restlessness. The child is usually thirsty and sometimes has the curious feature of a flushed face when lying down that turns pale when they sit upright.
Belladonna. Like children who need Aconite, those needing Belladonna often have feverish illnesses with a sudden onset. But instead of that anxious restlessness associated with Aconite, these children's faces have a glowing flush and they have bright, often dilated eyes. When you touch them, your hand will feel hot. They are usually dry and while not anxious like Aconite, they are excited and have a "twitchy," restless sleep. Their senses become overly reactive, making them averse to jarring, light, noise, etc. This is a helpful remedy in many illnesses and feverish states in children.
Ferrum phosphoricum. Think of this remedy for those with feverish inflammatory illnesses (such as bronchitis or ear infection) without the intensity of Aconite or Belladonna. In other words, the child may be feverish and flushed but does not have the excitement or anxiety associated with those remedies. Ferrum phosphoricum is usually indicated in the early stages of illness and not so often in more established illnesses.

"Take two & call me in the morning"
Any of the common homeopathic potencies sold for home use (such as the 6c, 12c, 30c, 6X, 12X, or 30X) can be safely used. As a general rule, you give a dose (usually 2 or 3 pellets) more frequently when the patient is in a more acute state and less frequently when more stable. For example, when the patient seems more ill, in pain, or has a high fever, you might give a dose every 10 or 15 minutes. When that acute phase passes and they don't seem quite so sick, just give a dose every 2 to 4 hours.
Don't be afraid to change remedies as the symptoms warrant. For example, a child might need Ferrum phos in the early stages of an illness and then need Pulsatilla for a few days as they recover.

Develop confidence to treat your family
These homeopathic remedies are safe and non-toxic. Can you use them concurrently with conventional medicines? Yes, you can, although the conventional drug may make it more difficult to determine which homeopathic remedy is most indicated, because it may mask the body's innate symptoms.
Using homeopathic remedies does not necessarily mean you will never use conventional medicines again, however. There are times when conventional treatment can be lifesaving. You will find, however, that you'll need a lot less conventional medicine the more you use homeopathy as your first treatment choice.
Don't be afraid of illness, but do respect it. Have your ill child checked by a medical practitioner as you treat them homeopathically. Develop a criteria with your practitioner about when a trip to the ER might be appropriate, and don't be shy about going if needed. Your practitioner may or may not be competent in homeopathy; what is most important is that they be supportive of your efforts to care for your family's everyday health complaints. Over time you will develop confidence in the ability of the body to heal itself, with the help of this gentle, yet effective system of medicine, homeopathy.

Sidebar:
In a study of 20,000 Canadian children and 1,200 physicians from 1996 to 2000, researchers found that when children went to the doctor for a respiratory illness caused by a virus, 45 per cent of physicians prescribed antibiotics—contrary to Canadian Pediatric Society guidelines (antibiotics do not work against viral infections like colds).

The study also found that children were more likely to receive an antibiotic for a viral infection if:
—their doctors were general practitioners vs. pediatricians
—their doctors trained outside the U.S. or Canada
—their parents had a low income
—they were boys.

—Source: Toronto Star, July 23, 2004, "Children at risk from antibiotics; preschoolers may be building up resistance."

About the author:
Dr. Timothy R. Dooley is a graduate of National College of Naturopathic Medicine as well as Oregon Health Sciences University School of Medicine. He practices homeopathy in San Diego, California, and teaches at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine and Health Sciences. He is the author of the easy-to-read introductory book, Homeopathy: Beyond Flat Earth Medicine. The complete text can be read on-line at http://www.beyondflatearth.com. For more information, visit http://www.drdooley.net. He can be reached at or drdooley@drdooley.net.

New Evidence for Homeopathy

2010-06-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

The press release below has been picked by a wide variety of media outlets, thanks to the efforts of the NCH and others.

Two new studies conclude that a review which claimed that homeopathy is just a placebo, published in The Lancet, was seriously flawed.

George Lewith, Professor of Health Research at Southampton University comments: ‘The review gave no indication of which trials were analyzed nor of the various vital assumptions made about the data. This is not usual scientific practice. If we presume that homeopathy works for some conditions but not others, or change the definition of a ‘larger trial’, the conclusions change. This indicates a fundamental weakness in the conclusions: they are NOT reliable.’

The background to the ongoing debate is as follows:

In August 2005, The Lancet published an editorial entitled ‘The End of Homeopathy’, prompted by a review comparing clinical trials of homeopathy with trials of conventional medicine. The claim that homeopathic medicines are just placebo was based on 6 clinical trials of conventional medicine and 8 studies of homeopathy but did not reveal the identity of these trials. The review was criticized for its opacity as it gave no indication of which trials were analyzed and the various assumptions made about the data.

Sufficient detail to enable a reconstruction was eventually published and two recently published scientific papers based on such a reconstruction challenge the Lancet review, showing that:

• Analysis of all high quality trials of homeopathy yields a positive conclusion.
• The 8 larger higher quality trials of homeopathy were all for different conditions; if homeopathy works for some of these but not others the result changes, implying that it is not placebo.
• The comparison with conventional medicine was meaningless.
• Doubts remain about the opaque, unpublished criteria used in the review, including the definition of ‘higher quality’.

The Lancet review, led by Prof Matthias Egger of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Berne, started with 110 matched clinical trials of homeopathy and conventional medicine, reduced these to ‘higher quality trials’ and then to 8 and 6 respectively ‘larger higher quality trials’. Based on these 14 studies the review concluded that there is ‘weak evidence for a specific effect of homeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions’.

There are a limited number of homeopathic studies so it is quite possible to interpret these data selectively and unfavorably, which is what appears to have been done in the Lancet paper. If we assume that homeopathy does not work for just one condition (Arnica for post-exercise muscle stiffness), or alter the definition of ‘larger trial’, the results are positive. The comparison with conventional medicine was meaningless: the original 110 trials were matched, but matching was lost after they were reduced to 8 and 6. But the quality of homeopathic trials was better than conventional trials.
This reconstruction casts serious doubts on the review, showing that it was based on a series of hidden judgments unfavorable to homeopathy. An open assessment of the current evidence suggests that homeopathy is probably effective for a number of conditions including allergies, upper respiratory tract infections and ‘flu, but more research is desperately needed.

Prof Egger has declined to comment on these findings.

References
Lüdtke R, Rutten ALB. The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analyzed trials. J Clin Epidemiol 2008. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.06.015. (For an abstract, see www.sciencedirect.com)

Rutten ALB, Stolper CF. The 2005 meta-analysis of homeopathy: the importance of post-publication data. Homeopathy 2008. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2008.09.008.

For further information, please contact:
Prof George Lewith Tel: +44 (0)7970 067884 email: gl3@soton.ac.uk
Rainer Lüdtke Tel: email: r.luedtke@carstens-stiftung.de
Dr Lex Rutten Tel: +31 765 227340 email: lexrtn@concepts.nl

Homeopathy for Summer: Your book, your bag, your skin

2010-06-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

Summer Greetings from all at The Art Of Cure,

What can I do if my child is sick?

For simple mild conditions many parents are interested in starting home treatment with hopes of not needing to go to the doctor. I love doing workshops on this subject and teaching parents to be empowered, you can learn to help your babies on your own in the beginning stages of illness. One option is to use the A to Z section of a book I personally love and recommend: Natural Baby and Childcare by: Lauren Feder. You can look up common complaints for children & (adults too). The suggestions are compiled from Dr. Lauren's experience (and other parents)in treating her own babies when illness shows up at their home. It is empowering for parents to be able to treat mild conditions.

Remedies for Travel:

The summer is now upon us which means many of us will be leaving town for vacation. I am often asked about natural medicines to bring on the trip for prevention or just in case someone gets sick. I have found it invaluable to bring some of the more common homeopathic medication and herbs; travels kits are a cost effective option. Especially for time changes and jet lag, consider boosting up with PROBIOTICS which is great for the gut.

Homeopathy for your summer bag:

ARINCA: I highly recommend keeping ARNICA with you (which I keep in my purse all the time) to treat all bumps and bruises. I like to give it to my boys when they might hit their head or fall down. I recommend Arnica to all my clients for all active and contact sports, injuries, and after surgery care.
APIS MELLIFICA: This is great to have on hand in the event of a bee sting that is improved by cold and the person is experiencing swelling and intense itching.

Sunblocks and Sunscreens:
(Excerpt from Natural Baby and Childcare by Lauren Feder, M.D.)

At the beginning of your outdoor season, take your child out for ten minutes a day, preferably in the morning hours before 10 a.m. and increase exposure time gradually. Avoid the noon hour outside. Gradual exposure allows her skin to become accustomed to the sun, and within several weeks, she will be at less risk for sunburn. If skin ever appears too red, go inside. When outside, drink plenty of water and eat vegetables (the antioxidants in vegetables help protect against sun radiation). Be sensible and avoid excess exposure.
Sunscreens are absorbed into the skin creating a chemical sun barrier which are usually invisible when rubbed into the skin. I prefer and recommend the use of the more natural varieties that are chemical free and PABA free.. PABA (para-aminobenzoic acid) is known to cause allergy and is rarely used these days.
In addition, emerging research suggests sunscreens may not be enough to prevent skin cancer, since they do not offer protection against the formation of moles, which have been implicated in skin cancer, including the common and sometimes fatal form, melanoma. Only clothing can prevent moles from forming on the skin.
Most sun damage occurs during childhood, so it is particularly important to take precautions in these early years. Children and babies are more vulnerable to the effects of the sun and should be well covered, whatever the weather. Dress your child in a long white t-shirt (an adult sized t-shirt can be used to protect legs) and hat. The hat should also protect the eyes. If this is not sufficient, consider sunglasses with 100 percent UV filtration. Clothes provide minimal protection with an SPF of 5.9. and remember that sunscreen should not be used on babies less than six months old.

TEETHING NECKLACES: Why Every Mom should own one

2010-06-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

WHAT IS AMBER TEETHING NECKLACE?
A Baltic amber teething necklace is made for wearing (not chewing) when a baby is teething. The warmth from the skin releases the active ingredient in the Baltic amber, succinic acid. Recent scientific research has proved that succinic acid has a very positive influence on the human body. It improves immunity and the balance of acids when absorbed into the bloodstream; it stimulates the thyroid glands to help reduce drooling and soothes red inflamed cheeks. Amber's anti-inflammatory and therapeutic properties are recognized by allopathic medicine as a natural analgesic, which will help to relieve teething pain and calm a baby without resorting to drugs. The skin's warmth releases healing oils from the amber, a resin, which is absorbed into the bloodstream.
HEALING PROPERTIES OF NATURAL BALTIC AMBER It reduces red inflamed cheeks and stimulates the thyroid glands to reduce drooling. Amber is associated with sunlight and warmth and reputed to boost the immune system, reduce inflammation, accelerates the healing of wounds; reduce inflammation of the throat, ear and stomach infections and respiratory disease. There are no tablets, medications or pastes that can compete with this amber teething necklace, the necklace is unique and has amazing results which are all natural.
SAFETY USING AMBER TEETHING NECKLACE As a safety feature there is a knot before and after each bead, so that even in the extremely unlikely event of the string being torn, no beads are lost and there is no risk of choking. Amber teething necklaces are secured with a traditional screw clasp, not a hook and ring!
PERFECT & LUXURY BABY GIFT Baby necklaces are a worthwhile investment as a treasured family heirloom to pass down from generation to generation. These necklaces also make wonderful luxury baby gifts for special events such as christenings, birthdays and name days.
AMBER TEETHING NECKLACE FACTS:
• A natural analgesic, amber will help calm a baby without resorting to drugs.
Amber is a fossilized resin, not a stone. It is therefore warm to the touch, as well as very comfortable and light to wear.
• Wearing Baltic amber necklaces on the skin can have a soothing and calming effect on teething babies and toddlers.
• When amber is worn on the skin, the skin's warmth releases miniscule amounts of healing oils from the amber which are then absorbed via the skin into the bloodstream.
• Amber's anti-inflammatory and therapeutic properties are also recognized by allopathic medicine. In Austria, Switzerland and Germany, you will find amber teething necklaces sold in local pharmacies.
• They are 13 inches long

Protect Yourself Durning FLU Season

2010-06-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Let us talk about the flu, and what your alternatives to the vaccines are. I first and foremost am a classical homeopath so I have a very specific point of view that should be taken into consideration for those of you who are pro vaccine so keep that in mind. Now there is a lot of information here but I feel it is important and necessary.
As a homeopath I am always very passionate about this stuff and love to spread the word and I am always taking new patients. I do not tell people whether they should get the shot or not I just pass along information and let the patient make up their own mind.

Every autumn and winter, many children and adults suffer from the familiar flu symptoms. Body aches and pains, congestion, fever and chills - we all know the symptoms of the flu. During these seasons, we are inundated with information about the flu shot, and other latest standard medical products. As a physician, I receive many inquiries regarding the natural or homeopathic approach to flu prevention.

This is the following list of general recommendations during the flu season:
• Common sense - you have it, use it.
• Frequent hand washing
• Avoid swimming during autumn and winter, especially for susceptible children and adults.
• Get plenty of rest
• Avoid becoming chilled, wear an extra thin layer of clothing
• If your child is ill, keep him or her at home
• Minimize junk food (refined sugar compromises the immune system)
Many families take the homeopathic flu product called Winter Tonic Influenzinum. It has been used in Europe for years during the flu season. Every year, the World Health Organization predicts which flu viruses are most likely to infect and cause flu symptoms. Based on this information, the homeopathic solution is reformulated year to year to help prepare the body during the flu season. It has no side effects, can be purchased over-the-counter, and is for the whole family. During the flu season beginning in November, 8-10 pellets are taken weekly for 4 weeks and then once three weeks later. Like all homeopathic medicines, it is pleasant tasting. It can be repeated again in January-February

Another common homeopathic medicine used during the flu season is
Oscillococcinum (this you can get at whole foods)
Oscillococcinum is useful for all types of flu, especially in the earlier stages. Many of my patients claim that Oscillococcinum greatly shortened the duration of the flu. It can be used for both children and adults.

CAN BE BOUGHT AT SEVERAL ONLINE HOMEOPATHIC WEBSITES:

HERE ARE 2 homeopathic pharmacies FOR CONVENIENCE:

http://www.hahnemannlabs.com/
http://www.homeopathyworks.com/

THIS IS AN ARTICLE THAT I THOUGHT HELPFUL AS WELL:
H1N1 (Swine) Flu Shot Update:
by Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP

I have seen more children and adults with influenza-like illness: 104 degree fevers, muscle soreness, sore throat and negative tests for strep, than in any summer I can remember. I haven't used the "flu swab" to test anybody, but I'm sure that many if not most of these sick people had Swine Flu. They all felt miserable, and they are all feeling just fine now.
Preventing outbreaks of this "novel H1N1" influenza may be a mistake of huge proportions. Yes, sadly, there will be fatalities among the 6 billion citizens of the planet. Tens of millions of cases of any illness will lead to morbidity and mortality, but this is completely (tragically) unavoidable. The consequences of not acquiring immunity this time around, however, could be really terrible and far outweigh a mass prevention program.
Here's my rationale for not using Tamiflu: If (if, if, if) this virus circles the globe as the rather innocent influenza it now appears to be, but mutates and returns as a very virulent form of influenza, it will be quite wonderful and life-saving to have formed antibodies against its 2009 version. These antibodies may be far from 100% protective, but they will help. This is incredibly important but being ignored in the interest of expediency.
In 1918, it appears that influenza A (an H1N1, by the way) did this globe-trotting mutation and killed millions. The times and state of medical care are not comparable, but a milder parallel occurrence is possible. Perhaps this happens every 100 years or so, perhaps every three million.
Whenever possible, we should form antibodies against viruses at the right stage of their existence and at the right stage of our lives (For example, chickenpox in childhood and EBV/mono in early childhood. There are many other examples.) Getting many viral illnesses confers lifetime immunity, and very few vaccines do.

Tamiflu is a very powerful drug with little proven efficacy against this bug, and with its major side effect being tummy upset. I'm not using it at all. Psychiatric side effects are also possible.
I also won't be giving the flu shot to the kids and parents in my practice unless there are extraordinary risk factors. I anticipate giving none at all this year. I doubt that there will be any really large problems with the vaccine, but I also doubt any really large benefits. As I said, I think that this year's version of this particular H1N1 is as "mild" as it will ever be and that getting sick with it this year will be good rather than bad. The chances that a new "flu shot" will be overwhelmingly effective are small.
I consider this, and most seasonal and novel influenza A vaccines, as "experimental" vaccines; they've only been tested on thousands of people for a period of weeks and then they'll be given to hundreds of millions of people. Not really the greatest science when we're in that much of a hurry. Yes, one can measure antibodies against a certain bacterium or virus in the blood and it may be associated with someone not getting sick, but there are very few illnesses common enough or enough ethics committees willing enough to do the right tests. That is, give 1000 people the real vaccine and 1000 placebo shots, expose all of them to the disease and see who gets sick. Seriously. I know it sounds terrible.
This is, obviously, a difficult public discussion because it touches on the concept of benefits and risks, again, of morbidity and mortality. Few public officials have the courage or inclination to present all facets of this difficult decision. I give vaccines to my patients every single day, but I always err on the side of caution. Implying that this is a dangerous new shot is not scientifically or statistically correct and represents hyperbole and even dishonesty on the part of the so-called "anti-vaccine" camp.
It sure isn't "sexy" to suggest handwashing, good nutrition, hydration, extra sleep and so on. It's not conventional to suggest astragalus, echinacea, elderberry and vitamin C. Adequate vitamin D levels are crucial, too.
I just think that giving this new H1N1 vaccine is not the cautious nor best thing to do.

Best,
Jay Gordon, MD FAAP

Homeopathy: An Introduction

2010-06-29T11:15:00.001-07:00

HOMEOPATHY: AN INTRODUCTION

I had just turned 30, met a wonderful man, and was working of my first television series. Life was blooming and I was going to get married. Then out of nowhere I started experiencing these horrible anxiety attacks. I’d think to myself…Am I having an allergic reaction? Maybe it was those apples I ate. Am I having a heart attack? Something is seriously wrong here! So I took myself to the doctor. I had lots of testing…an EKG and EEG, my thyroid and other blood work, x-rays, and various other pokings and proddings. The results? “You are a perfectly healthy woman…it must be in your mind!” How could this be, how could I be having such chest pain and be healthy? I was told I should see a psychiatrist and a psychologist and sent home. The journey was beginning and I didn’t even know it. My life would be forever different. I began a regimen of anti depressant and anti anxiety medication. I felt so angry and pissed off, a mental illness are you kidding me, god I’d rather have something that I can get rid of not something I’m going to have to manage my whole life. I never in a million years thought I’d be wishing for a “Different” disease. I remember hearing people break down the word Dis-ease. I wasn’t unhappy, was I? The universe was showing me my Dharma; it was showing me the way. The medication helped, sort of, but somehow I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t the end of the road and certainly not a solution. I am not against taking medicine if you’re postpartum and going to hurt your baby or if you’re suicidal but this was not me. So I took my medicine like a good girl, went to yoga, and changed my diet, tried super hard not to take the Xanax that felt oh so good towards the end of a long hard day, and wondered will I have to deal with this forever?
As time moved on and the medicine was managing my symptoms. I slowly was forgetting that I even had this issue. It’s like the medicine worked but didn’t cure me, I didn’t have to work on it myself, I didn’t have to think about anymore. I didn’t have to change or confront the reason that this illness was presenting itself in the first place. So time had passed and my husband and I had decided to have a baby and I didn’t want to take any medication during the pregnancy because depending on which doctor I talked with each had a different opinion as to whether the medication would hurt the baby. I felt like I could handle myself and a little discomfort so I stopped the medication until the pregnancy was over. Well about 2 months into my pregnancy my symptoms resurfaced with a vengeance. What was I going to do now? I was being pushed to look within, to go deeper, and to become a seeker of my own personal truth. I couldn’t avoid ME any longer. I was back to where I started! I sought out acupuncture, a naturopathic doctor, and even tried neurofeedback. Imagine me with a skull cap on with hundreds of electrodes attached. I looked like something out of the horror film hellraiser or some science fiction film. I then came across the word “homeopathy” in my search for answers. I sought out a practitioner and, knowing nothing, went to an appointment feeling like I’d become a full time doctor junkie. This pivotal moment changed the course of things to come. My visit with the homeopath took 2 hours. I talked and talked; I cried, became hysterical, despairing that I’d never get better! That I just new there was something wrong with me. Through my tears I explained that normally, “I’m a very happy person.” It makes me laugh now because this seems so long ago and I have learned so much. So what is homeopathy anyway? How does it work? What happens when you take it? Here is the official definition…

WHAT IS HOMEOPATHY?

Homeopathy is a natural system of medicine that works by using a small dose of a substance to help stimulate the body's healing forces. Homeopathy is an effective safe treatment that is gentle yet extremely effective when used properly. The principle of homeopathy is based on the "law of similars." In other words, a substance that could cause symptoms in large amounts can heal you in minute homeopathic doses.

Let's look at an example: The homeopathic remedy Allium Cepa (Red Onion) is used to treat the runny nose and watery eyes from a cold or hay fever, the very symptoms it would cause if one were cutting a red onion in the kitchen. There are thousands of remedies made out of plants, animals, minerals and many other interesting and imponderable things like color and sound, the planet venus, and even xray.

Homeopathy was founded by Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician, over 200 years ago. Homeopathy is a natural therapy that is safe and effective treatment for accidents and illnesses. It is an energetic medicine that helps the body by elevating the vital force (or the immune system) to defend itself against illness and infection. Homeopaths treat the whole person rather than a single symptom. The homeopath does not diagnose an illness but treats the whole person. It is not necessary to know the name of the disease. Each person may receive a different remedy at a different potency designed to match each one’s need. Homeopathic remedies are small pellets and are generally taken under the tongue or are dissolved in water. They are non-toxic and are safe for pregnant women, infants, adults, and pets and are FDA approved. I find this interesting since the medical world won’t even recognize homeopathy yet they want to regulate the medications. Homeopathy is not herbal or vitamin supplements. It can take time; a typical homeopathic appointment can last from 1 to 2 hours they will ask you everything about yourself, your dreams, what is perhaps peculiar about yourself and unique. It can be an awesome experience, and for some make you think about yourself in a whole new way. Homeopathy works with your body to enable it to fight disease more effectively. Disease is part of life. It cannot be removed, but it can be dealt with effectively. In allopathic medicine (the more traditional medicine practiced in the United States) treatment is by opposition. “Allos” from the Greek means “opposite” and “pathos” meaning “suffering”. When you think of allopathic medicine you hear words like antibiotic, antidepressant, antiviral, antacid, anti-inflammatory. The one thing they all have in common is the prefix “anti”, meaning “against”. Homeopathy works with the body…not against it. Now this is where I get turned on, where I get so passionate, this is where I could babble on and on about this beautiful system of medicine. Homeopathy works on the bigger picture not just a local site. In an acute situation like an accident, a homeopathic remedy like aconite works quickly to help with shock. In the long term, if you have a chronic condition that allopathic medicine can only placate on manage, homeopathy looks to the horizon and perhaps may offer hope and a cure. Interestingly children treated with homeopathy from the beginning of their lives most of the time; do not end up with chronic illnesses. This I believe is because they have fortified their vital force and worked with their bodies and have not suppressed their symptoms. Suppression means that when you treat a disease allopathically you push it deeper into the body. A good example: When young children have psoriasis or eczema and use cortisone creams it’s not uncommon that you will see asthma in their futures In life today it seems almost inevitable that we get these chronic conditions, it’s normal to see the elderly on numerous pill just to stay alive. I find it so awesome to think that it is not inevitable that we end up on tons of pills, that we get chronically sick, that there is a different way to grow and age. That for me is the wave I choose to ride in my life, It gives me hope.

Who can homeopathy help?

Children
Your child’s health is very important to you and as a parent you will face many decisions about your child’s care...from vaccinations to childhood illnesses and behavior problems. Homeopathic treatment works very well for children and used long term prevents chronic illness as they grow to adulthood. Many parents use teething tablets when their infant starts teething. Teething tablets are one of the most common forms of homeopathic treatment and many parents use them without realizing it is a homeopathic remedy. Many childhood ailments can be treated effectively with homeopathy – ear infections, coughs, skin rashes, allergies, and behavior problems are just some of the things I see in my homeopathic practice. In more serious cases homeopathy works very well as a complementary treatment with allopathic medicine to help your child retain his vital force and maintain it after treatment.

Women & men
Women and men seek homeopathic care for a variety of physical and mental conditions. The most common theme however would be that they want more out their health care experience. They are experiencing side effects from their allopathic medicines, or their doctors simply cannot help them. Pregnant women seek treatment for safe treatment during pregnancy since they are unable to take most allopathic medicines.

ANIMALS
Animals respond very well to homeopathic treatment. Family pets can suffer from many ailments - arthritis, allergies, dry skin or eczema, ear infections, coughs, auto immune problems, and cataracts. Dogs and cats can take a remedy the same way an infant would.
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When my first child Bodhi was small, I noticed that he wouldn’t sleep with my husband and me. He would head butt out of some impulse and bite at the breast. It was as if he was adverse to hugs and cuddles. I didn’t know if this was just his personality or something that was like a heavy cloud that he was burdened. Homeopathy says that we inherit the suppressions of our ancestors (genetic predisposition) to some extent and that this inheritance can affect what we become sick with. In homeopathy this is called a “Miasm” a very long and interesting subject in and of itself. Given the little knowledge I had, I was convinced that homeopathy could help. He was given an individual prescription and his remedy worked right away. He has since become and open hearted, polite, inquisitive, loving little boy and that dark cloud is a thing of the past. It is like homeopathy came in and blew a gentle wind on the cloud and it just dispersed. I have used homeopathy for nightmares, temper tantrums, growing pains, pregnancy, teething, fevers, and everything else that we have needed in our health care lives. It seems that homeopathy uses in our lives are never ending and I am forever grateful for it, in face can’t imagine my life without it. I am a different person because of it.

Philosophy
Jennie Vaughn-Campbell received her professional education in classical homeopathy at the Los Angeles School of Homeopathy in Los Angeles, California. She performed her clinical internship at the Los Angeles homeopathic clinic. I am a member of the North American Society of Homeopaths (NASH) and a practitioner member of the National Center for Homeopathy (NCH). I am also involved with the Washington State Homeopathy Association, National Health Freedom Coalition and the World Homeopathy Awareness Organization. I am seeking to promote and expand Homeopathic education and knowledge. I have studied with some of the most renowned prominent homeopaths in the world, and my education is always on going. Jennie was introduced to homeopathy when she was diagnosed with an illness and went on a personal mission to heal herself. Her love of homeopathy was born from this journey due to the success of her treatment. Her practice provides comfort and healing because it is based on understanding, nurturing and in-depth communication. Homeopathy is not just about the ailment or illness; it seeks complete understanding of health issues via personality type, habits and lifestyle. Jennie is devoted to helping each of her patients reach their health goals Jennie is from Vancouver, Washington and currently resides in Pasadena, Ca where she can practice being an open minded person about alternative medicine and have a holistic approach to healing the human body. Her practice is based on the belief in the body’s inherent ability to cure itself. From time to time the body requires a slight boost to the vital force. It is known in Chinese medicine as CHI, and in the yoga world PRANA. It is the energy that animates all living beings. As a mother, Jennie understands the importance of homeopathy and personally experiences how it keeps her children healthy. She enjoys the honor of watching her clients heal. Her ability to understand, nurture, and communicate provide a great source of comfort regardless of a persons age or ailments. It isn't just about the ailment or illness. It is a complete understanding of each unique individual’s personality, habits and lifestyle which enable Jennie to treat with compassion and commitment. She works with each patient to help them reach their health goals.