HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT OF JOINT PAINS

Many of the patients coming to Homeopathic treatment have problems with their joints. These problems can vary from a simple joint sprain to severe deformity due to rheumatoid arthritis. One of the most frequent worries of patients with joint pains is that they are getting arthritis. Arthritis is an inflammation of the joint, but there are many different forms of arthritis, and each has a different clinical course and prognosis.

OSTEOARTHRITIS (OA) OA is the most common form of arthritis. It is caused by the degeneration of the cartilage that covers the ends of the bones, where they “articulate” with other bones. Most elderly people suffer from OA, particularly if they are overweight. OA in the hip also occurs in athletes, especially gymnasts and dancers, who have over-stretched the joint. OA of the shoulders is a particular problem, as it is not so amenable to surgery, it is difficult to treat. It is very painful and so can cause big problems for those who have to do a lot of heavy lifting. The joints affected by OA become stiff and painful, often creaking or grinding when being moved. There may be some swelling, but the joint is not usually hot or inflamed.

RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS (RA) RA is a condition that definitely runs in families, and does have a progressive course, sufferers sometimes ending up with crippling disease of many joints. The onset of RA is sometimes very acute, accompanied by an acute febrile illness, involving redness and swelling of one or more joints. More frequently the onset is insidious, presenting with pain in the small joints of the fingers or toes. These joints swell and become deformed. This is the form of arthritis that everyone dreads, but fortunately there are now more effective early drug interventions that can prevent the crippling deformities. They can, however, cause major side-effects. The use of homeopathy can reduce the need for such drugs, or at least reduce the dosage needed.

GOUT Gout is caused by an excess of uric acid in the blood, which deposits itself in the joints. The uric acid crystals set up inflammatory reactions in the joints, causing extreme pain, tenderness, swelling, redness and heat. It usually affects the big toe, but can affect other joints.

HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT Although it is absolutely necessary to make an accurate diagnosis of the type of arthritis for the general management of the patient, from a homeopathic point of view it is the symptoms that are important.

So, if a patient is suffering from joint pains, worse on waking in the morning with great stiffness; better on limbering up after a while; better for a hot bath or shower, generally better in the hot dry weather, and worse in the cold and damp; worse on over-activity, but stiffens quickly on resting – that patient will require Rhus toxicodendron whatever the pathology, especially if the patient is restless, and unable to stay in bed because of the pain. Ruta graveolens has identical modalities to Rhus toxicodendron, but has more a predilection to tendons and ligaments, rather than joints. However it can be useful for arthritis, particularly of the knees, where Rhus toxocodendron has been seemingly well indicated but has failed to act.

If, however, the sufferer prefers the cold weather, and the joints are so painful that they dare not move them, even splinting them to keep them still, they will require Bryonia. The symptoms of gout are often characterised by an exquisite sensitivity to touch, such that the patient cannot bear even the bedclothes on the affected limb. The joint is red, hot, shiny and swollen, and the pain is agony stinging in nature and much worse for the heat. This fits the remedy, Apis mellifica, but the modalities were identical with the exception of being worse for cold, Colchicum would be the remedy. Belladonna is appropriate when the onset is extremely sudden, the pain is throbbing or bursting in character, and the patient cannot bear being jarred in the slightest.

Rhododendron is suitable for those people who are “human barometers”. They are very sensitive to the approach of a storm, and will be able to tell from their joints that the weather is going to change. In particular they are worse from a change to cold, damp weather. Their joint pains tend to improve immediately on moving, and are better from warmth. They tend to shift about.

Ledum is good for chilly people, but who prefer cold applications on their painful joints. Their pains often start in the small joints of the feet, and then move upwards.

With Phytolacca, the pains are described as like electric shocks, shooting along the limbs. A strange symptom is that one foot is usually colder than the other.

Dulcamara is for a person who is extremely sensitive to the damp. It is said that even watercress makes their joints ache! They are better for walking, and are restless, with shooting, tearing pains, particularly or their hips.

Kalmia latifolia is very good for shoulders, when there are shooting, tearing pains, worse for movement, and worse at night. The odd characteristic of this remedy is that the pains move from central to the periphery, and from the upper to the lower part of the body, whereas Lac caninum has pains that move from side to side, and is particularly good for hips.

Guaiacum is a lesser-known medicine, but should not be forgotten for pain in the thumb joints, improved by cold applications.

Here, we have concentrated on the joint symptoms in guiding us to the right medicine, and this is called local prescribing. However, there are other approaches which can give more deep-seated results. It is important when prescribing homeopathically for any condition to consider the aetiology. Another approach is the constitutional approach, whereby the whole of the patient’s make-up is taken into consideration.

THE FUTURE More and more powerful drugs are being developed by pharmaceutical companies to modify the progress of arthritic disease, but rheumatologists constantly have to juggle the dangers of the disease with the dangers of the drugs used to treat it. Homeopathic doctors are lucky – our medicines are gentle, have no side-effects, and treat the whole person. Our homeopathic hospitals see a high proportion of musculo-skeletal problems, and a recent audit from the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital showed a 70% rate of improvement. We have a valuable complementary form of medicine that can certainly help to arrest the disease, or at least modify it so that lower doses or less powerful drugs can be used to treat it.

 

Abstract from the Article "Joint Pains" published in "Health and Homeopathy Magazine" (internet link is no longer available) 

 

PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF SPORTS INJURIES

Long seasons and important competitions are part of every day life for a professional athlete. This will increase both the athletes mental and physical stress levels. The chances for an injury will increase when these factors are present. If the treatment of the athlete as a whole is being ignored the risk of a setback is very real.

An imbalance will be created if an athletes mind is focused on a goal but the physical part is not. A part of the available physical energy is drained away and cut off from focus. This leads to fatigue which in turn can lead to injuries because the body is not focused on winning a competition. Only the mental part has this focus. Limitations following an injury may continue to cause trouble if not treated holistically. This will also affect his or hers future achievements.

Homeopathy offers an extraordinary way of treatment in the sense that remedies are chosen based on a persons unique mental and emotional state. A professional homeopath is able to help every athletes fitness levels by finding the remedy most suited for the patients spesific symptoms. This will help the athlete to fulfill thir highest potential in terms of health and performance.

There are few conventional medicines able to assist the healing process in spite of the potential damage and long term symptoms following a sports injury. Pain killers will do just that - reduce pain, non steroid and anti inflammatory drugs reduce inflammations, but apart from those there are few effective medicines available to promote real healing.

Pain killers and NSAID’s work efficiently, but their application is limited and there is a risk of developing side effects. These medicines may also contain substances banned for use in athletes.

A study on how German soccer doctors treat aches and pains was published last year. It reveals that Germany’s faith is in “homeopathic doping”.

The presumably objective study was carried out by an academic institute in Koblenz at the request of a leading manufacturer of homeopathic medicines. It found that 92% of doctors who work for the Bundesliga’s first- and second division teams prescribed such cures.

“The success stories are impressive”, said Peter Billingmann, a sports doctor and the head of the institute that carried out the study, in an interview with the Spiegel news magazine. “Homeopathic substances don’t have any side effects, and we’re on the safe side where doping is concerned.” (Source: Deusche Welle).

 

ARNICA MONTANA

Arnica Montana is a much used homeopathic acute remedy for sports injuries. It is the remedy most often considered by professional homeopaths whenever an injury occur.

Arnica works wonders both in acute and chronic complaints, but only when indicated. Symptoms successfully treated with Arnica includes: Bruising (also after surgery), shock, sprains and acute exertion. Anyone actively involved in sports and exercise should know about Arnica. Regardless of causation, Arnica is able to reduce bleeding and the following inflammatory symptoms like swelling and reduction of muscle tissue. When given frequently directly after injury, it will reduce tissue damage.

Arnica helps to stop bleeding from open wounds immediately. This remedy is also useful in cases of fatigue for athletes competing in endurance sports. It can be used before a competition to help delaying the manifestation of the fatigue.

Arnica may be able to speed up the recovery process and may also prevent complications following a serious head injury. It is given in addition to medical emergency aid immediately after an unconscious patient has awakened. As a general rule, it should be given after any form of head injury and concussion.

THE LAW OF CURE

What does a cure look like?

The successful homeopathic treatment of disease is often heralded by the reappearance of old symptoms. In essence, the progression toward deeper disease is put into reverse; the outermost disease state is met by a remedy and is lifted, revealing layers that had been suppressed before. These old symptoms can then be treated homeopathically, or, in many cases, do not need treatment at all, they simply pass through in lessened form and disappear by themselves…

As it turns out, the old symptoms that return during a curative process tend to occur in a particular kind of pattern or sequence. Homepaths call this pattern the Law of Cure… The Law of Cure states that cure tends to proceed:
- From the center toward the circumference.
- From above, downward.
- From more vital to less vital organs.
- In reverse order of appearance

Thus, internal (and more important) organs tend to be healed first, with the skin usually coming last. Symptoms also tend to return and be healed starting from the head and torso and progressing outward toward the limbs. Finally, symptoms tend to heal in reverse order of their appearance…

Since homeopathy deals with the whole person, not just the physical body, the Law of Cure actually applies on a much deeper and more complete level… Even before remedies help to heal the physical body, they often address the innermost part of our being, our psyche, our mind, and our emotions. Thus, a common pattern of homeopathic cure begins with an increased sense of inner well-being. A classic example might be a lessening of anxiety, followed by a cure of asthma, followed by the return of eczema on the face. After this heals, the eczema might migrate out to the limbs, and then finally leave totally…

Homeopaths usually attribute the Law of Cure to Constantine Hering, MD… Hering was born in 1800 in Saxony, Germany… he first came to homeopathy as a debunker; he was asked by his professors to write a paper condemning Hahnemanns new system. In his attemt to honestly do so, he repeated Hahnemanns original experiment with cinchona and found it to be successful… Soon he began to study and utilize the homeoapthic system, and he quickly became an ardent supporter…

Unfortunately, knowledge of Herings Law of Cure, simple yet critical observations about the signs of true cure, has yet to reach todays allopaths… because symptoms are routinely suppressed rather than treated homeopathically, doctors never get to see what a real cure looks like, with the return of older and lesser symptoms. They do not even know that such cures are possible.

Excerpted from the book: IMPOSSIBLE CURE: The promise of Homeopathy by Amy L. Lansky

ODE TO SAMUEL HAHNEMANN

Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, was a Renaissance genius who was skilled in many fields: he was a master pharmacist, a skilled linguist and translater who was fluent in seven languages, and the forerunner of today’s natural healers who promote a natural diet and healthy lifestyle.

He could also be called the first psychiatrist, because he was the first person in modern times to promote the humane treatment of the mentally ill as well as curing them with his remedies.

Decades before Koch and Pasteur, he understood the principles of contagious illnesses and successfully treated the deadly epidemics which ravaged Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. Hahnemann could even be considered a pioneer of modern public health and sanitation measures.

Hahnemann would merit a prominent place in the history of medicine for any of his contributions. His greatest contribution, of course, is the founding of the system of homeopathy, an unparalleled achievement: so far as we know, Hahnemann is the only person to have envisioned an entire system of medicine and then fully developed it into a powerful and practical tool within the span of a single lifetime.

He was a true visionary whose understanding of the energetic basis of health and healing anticipated by a century the paradigm of matter as energy in modern physics. And allopathic medicine has barely begun to incorporate an understanding of the mind-body connection which Hahnemann delineated nearly two centuries ago.

Hahnemann was born on April 11, 1755, in Meissen, Saxony, Germany where his father was employed as a porcelain painter. Money was scarce, and in his early years the young Samuel was frequently taken out of school for lack of money. He helped pay for his own education starting at the age of 12 by tutoring his fellow students in Latin and Greek. Hahnemann’s father cultivated original thinking in Samuel from the time he was young. Before going to the porcelain factory, he would often shut Samuel up in a room, giving him a knotty question to ponder. “Prove all things, hold fast to what is good, dare to be wise” was the substance of his advice to his son. Hahnemann was such a brilliant student that one of his professors arranged for free tuition. He left school in 1775 after presenting a dissertation in Latin on “The wonderful construction of the human hand.”

Hahnemann published many works on chemistry, the most celebrated being a treatise on arsenic poisoning. Some of his critics would later say that Hahnemann would have been a great chemist had he not turned into a great quack.

The year 1791, when Hahnemann was 46, marked a turning point in the development of his thought. Up to that point he could see the limitations, even the dangers, of the medicine he had been trained in, but he had no good alternative to offer.
In 1791 Hahnemann had a remarkable insight while translating Cullen’s Materia Medica. Cullen attributed the antimalarial properties of Cinchona bark (from which quinine is made) to its bitterness, but Hahnemann knew that other bitter herbs are not active against malaria. He began a practice which he would continue throughout his life and which demonstrated his great integrity and love of knowledge: he experimented on himself. He found that Cinchona bark (from which the homeopathic remedy China is made) could induce in him, a healthy person, the same symptoms it would cure in the sick person. This discovery led to the first law of homeopathy: the Law of Similars, or “Like Cures Like.”

Hahnemann also made his mark as a psychiatrist. Asylums at this time were usually run in connection with prisons; the mentally ill were crowded in close quarters with insufficient food. Worse, they were abandoned by physicians, who believed that insanity was contagious. Instead, the mentally ill were chained, flogged, and teased for the amusement of visitors. The first real asylum for mental patients was opened by Hahnemann in Georgenthal. It was designed for the wealthy insane and melancholic. He had only one patient, the well-known author Klockenbring of Hannover, who was suffering from a full-blown mania which modern psychiatrists would have great difficulty treating. Yet Hahnemann cured him completely in seven months. It was the first time in the modern era that insane people were treated with gentleness, humaneness and compassion instead of coercion.

In 1810 Hahnemann published the first edition of the Organon of the Healing Art, his most important work. This book laid out the foundations of his new approach to healing, including the Law of Similars, the principle of giving a single medicine which had been potentized, and in the smallest possible dose, and only giving remedies which had been proven on healthy people.

Success was achieved in 1813 when Hahnemann used homeopathy to treat an epidemic of typhus, which affected Napoleon’s soldiers after their invasion of Russia.

In 1831 homeopathy triumphed again, this time over the cholera epidemic which spread westward from Russia, while allopathic medicine was helpless against the virulent disease.

At every step in developing his system Hahnemann was met with great discouragement and abuse. He suffered from the attacks of the orthodox medical establishment of his time, which used all the legal and political weapons at their disposal to stop him. The journals of his time printed scathing, even libelous, critiques. The criticisms he endured only stimulated him to perfect his system.

Hahnemann’s integrity was strikingly displayed in his abandoning his medical practice when he found it harmful to his patients, instead trying to support his large family on a meager income from translating books. He also demonstrated his integrity by doing something which physicians and pharmacists of today would never think of: he experimented on himself with the remedies he gave to his patients.

This brings us to another admirable quality, his industriousness. In addition to developing an entire system of medicine and proving about a hundred remedies, he wrote about 70 original works on chemistry and medicine and translated about 24 works from English, French, Latin, Italian.

Finally, he was humble. He wrote to his friend Dr. Stapf, “Be as sparing as possible with your praises. I do not like them, I feel that I am only an honest, straightforward man who does not more than his duty.”

Excerpted from the book “Hahnemann revisited” by Luc de Schepper

AN INTRODUCTION TO HOMEOPATHY

Homeopathic medicine has been used around the world for more than 200 years. It has about 30 million users in Europe and many millions more across the globe. Homeopathy is based on the principle of ”treating like with like” (law of similars). The principle describes that a substance which produces certain symptoms in healthy people can cure the same symptoms in the sick.

This idea was known to the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates formulated the Law of similars as follows: ”Illnesses arise by similar things and by similar things can the sick be made well”. Paracelsus used ”like cures like” as a sound rule for prescribing, but it wasn`t until the early nineteenth century that it was developed into a system by the German doctor Samuel Hahnemann. In developing the laws of homeopathy, Hahnemann based his concepts (which he then demonstrated empirically) on those of Hippocrates and Paracelsus.

The homeopathic use of the law of similars has produced a remarkable array of effective natural remedies. The healing properties of the remedies have been found by extensive testing of substances on humans, and close observation of their specific reactions.

SUPPORTING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
The basic philosophy of homeopathy is that the body has an innate capacity to maintain health and the ability to reestablish balance if disease occurs.
Homeopathic remedies help to heal the body by enhancing the defensive responses of the immune system. In contrast, conventional drugs are generally prescribed to control or suppress symptoms. Because homeopathic remedies work with the body, they are intended to be an amplification of the body`s natural order and healing processes.

Symptoms are the body`s defense mechanism. A homeopath observes the symptoms and behaviors of an ill person, and questions his or her reactions to different conditions in order to find the correct homeopatic remedy.
In treating a chronic disease, we need to know about the patient`s personality and physical constitution, different traumatic events in his life, his work and home environment, and his preferences in food and temperature. Important is also the question: ”what was going on in your life when you became ill?”.

Homeopathy does not place the same value on lab tests, blood work or even on the disease name itself as does allopatic medicine. Our focus on the patient includes how he feels and why. Basically we search for the leakage in the patients` Vital Force (energy), which can come about through a physical or mental trauma. We look at the whole person who is suffering this leakage and at how the body is expressing it. All this information is put together into a totally individualized prescription of a homeopathic remedy.
This work requires the knowledge of the human body, an understanding of the human condition and the capasity to identify with the patients and sense the essence of their struggle in life.

THE HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES
Homeopathic remedies are made under a strict set of rules (according to strict pharmacological methods) whereby animal, vegetable, and mineral substances are dissolved or ground into fine powders and progressively reduced by a specific procedure of serial dilution that reduces the quantity of the active ingredients to an infinitesimal amount.

It has been established recently that the action of drugs often depends on their method of preparation and in the form in which they are administered. It has been established for instance, that if Aspirin is ground 30 times finer than it is now, its action will be doubled, and consequently, its therapeutic dose could be decreased.

Hahnemann understood perfectly well that strong doses of a remedy would add unnecessary strain to the parient`s body, which was already weakened by ilness. The principle of the minimum dose, which the homeopathy is based on, is the same as the Arndt-Schultz Law of biochemistry: minimum doses of a drug (or chemical, thermal or electrical stimulus) stimulate cellular activity, medium doses inhibit or depress it, and higher doses destroy it.
Two hundred years ago Hahnemann showed clearly that much smaller doses of the drug are needed to bring about a reaction in the diseased body.

There are, of course, many theories that attempt to explain how such a dilute substance can effect a healing response. Luckily, healing does not depend on our understanding of these sub-molecular processes. They work, but we still don`t understand exactly how they work. Not to forget; there are a number of convential medicines, including aspirin and certain antibiotics, whose mechanism of action remains unknown but are still prescribed with confidence by doctors…

Hahnemann, a true scientist, based his laws of homeopathy on experiment and observation.
In one of his books, ”Chronic diseases”, he stated:
”.. it requires quite an effort to believe that so little a thing, so small a dose of medicine, could effect the least thing in the human body. I do not demand that anyone should comprehend it. Neither do I comprehend it. It is enough that it is a fact and nothing else. Experience alone declares it and I believe more in experience than in my own intelligence…”

HOW HOMEOPATHY WORKS
What we do understand about the effect of the Homepathic remedies is that they produce an artificial medicinal disease state that is similar and stronger than the natural disease, but is not the same. This artificial ”disease” induced by the dynamic properties of the remedy is just slightly stronger than the natural disease and exists only on the dynamic or energetic plane, not on the chemical or physiological plane.

The remedy does not contain any molecules of the original substance which could cause side effects or adverse reactions. It strikes the Vital Force in allmost the exact same way the disease force does, arousing the Vital Force to react against it with a stronger counterattack than against the disease itself, because the artificial disease is slightly stronger (the homeopathic remedy strengthens the vital force in its efforts to throw the disease out of the body). The vital force has no difficulty throwing off the last removing traces of the artificial disease because there are no molecules of the original remedy substance remaining and the Vital Force can handle a dynamic (energy-based) disease more easily than a natural one.

In allopathy, the opposite happens. The drug acts against the symptoms of the disease (which in turn are simply expressions of the Vital Force acting against the disease) and thus the secondary action of the Vital Force enhances the disease itself, requiring ever-increasing doses to keep suppressing the symptoms.
Although, the homeopathic medicine does not cure. All that remedies can do is to stimulate the patient`s curative powers.

In acute conditions, as in sportsinjuries, a remedy given in water touches the nerve endings in the mouth and works almost instantaneously, faster than any pharmaceutical… In chronic diseases, however, common sense must prevail: an illness of thirty years` duration cannot be cured in a week or a month. It is in the nature of a chronic disease to develop slowly over a long period, and it makes sense that a cure must come in the same way.

In homeopathic medicines there are no adverse reactions since no residue is left in the body since there are almost no molecules of the original substance in the remedy. While homeopathic remedies do not cause side effects, they can cause what are called ”aggravations”, usually a temporary intensification of the patient`s symptoms on the way to a cure.

Homeopathy emphasizes prevention, and treat you according to the type of person you are – not for a specific disease symptom – so that your immune system is as strong as possible to do its job of protecting the whole of you. It enhances the healing power you were born with. It helps you stay tuned to the unparalleled inner guidance that is always present if you choose to pay attention.

IMPOSSIBLE CURE

"Dare to know

That the source of all miracles

Lies within you.”

This is how Amy Lansky introduces the reader to her book ‘Impossible cure: The promise of homeopathy‘. As I start reading it, I soon realize that this is the message that she wishes to share with the reader throughout the whole book. In these three lines lies the essence of the book as well as the essence of the therapeutic discipline she is introducing us to, namely homeopathy.

Amy Lansky used to work as a computer scientist. However, an incident in her family life made her change her professional path. This incident was her son being diagnosed with Autism, followed by a miraculous cure due to homeopathic treatment. As a result of this experience, Lansky left the field of Computer Science to study and write about Homeopathy.

Amy Lansky shares with the reader the true cure of her son. In addition she unfolds the history, philosophy and science of homeopathy. In a clear and subtle way she explains the reader what he or she needs to know to get a total picture of what Homeopathy is, how it is used and what can be expected from homeopathic treatment. More examples of cured cases are used to underline various topics throughout the book.

In the chapter: “What Is Disease? What Is Cure?” important facts comes to debate, most of which has to do with the importance of trusting our own immune system in fighting disease:

“Our bodies have built-in mechanisms to maintain balance, even in the face of physical and emotional challenges… We think we need all kinds of props to hold us up… This view is a modern creation, an illusion we have all bough into, largely due to the influence of the powerful medical and advertising industries…Within all of our bodies are mechanisms whose entire purpose is to maintain life, heal our wounds, and achieve balance. All parts of the body are interrelated and working together to create the best possible adaptation to every circumstance… If you artificially suppress a symptom so that it never reappears, you may have the illusion of cure. But in reality, the underlying disease state that is causing that symptom will have to find a different way to express itself.“

Do we dare to change our beliefs about health, disease and cure?

Are we ready to let go of medical truths imprinted in our minds?

If you read this book by Amy Lansky, she will guide you through wonder, disbelief, surprises and hope. Thereafter you will probably be ready to make up your own mind about the miracles that lies within us and the promise of homeopathy.