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.
