Homeopathic skin

In our modern society, skin problems cause a disproportionate amount of distress to the people who suffer from them. We live in an age when appearance is everything, where photographs of already talented and successful celebrities are air brushed in order to remove all signs of acne or dry skin or wrinkles. It's almost as if perfect skin and the perfect body are the only real assets that really matter. I have lost count of the number of teenage patients I see who want me to heal their terrible acne- yet sometimes all I can see on their skin is a very mild skin eruption, perhaps a few lumps only visible in the right light at the right angle. And yet getting young men to check their testicles and young women to check their breasts for the early signs of cancer seems to be an uphill struggle. But who is under threat of death, the acne sufferer or the 18 year old with testicular cancer? Our values around appearance and health are topsy-turvy by any standards.

As homeopaths, we see health in a very different way, and it's easier to understand this if you think about your own health over your lifetime, and the health of your family and friends over a long period of time. What you are likely to see is a pattern of deepening disease, interspersed with patches of seeming good health. I say seeming because underneath things are not necessarily as well as they appear. For example, we might have a relative who had eczema as a child. The new miracle steroids might then be applied as a cream, and the eczema disappears. It's not been healed- homeopathically speaking it's been suppressed, driven back into the body. The next disease that might appear is asthma. Now this is a deepening disease- after all, people rarely die from eczema, but frequently die of asthma. The disease has moved from the skin to the lungs- from an outer organ to an inner organ. Again, steroids might be used, probably frequently and for many years. The patient's lungs are likely to get weaker and weaker, and thus there are more coughs after colds, treated with antibiotics and  more steroids, then bronchitis, pneumonia and so on. All this time the disease is going deeper and deeper within the body, putting more and more strain on those vulnerable inner organs like the heart and the liver, until any weak area will just give out..

So that is frequently the pathway of a person's disease- typically the disease starts at a shallow, non-life-threatening level, is suppressed with drugs and emerges again in a new form at a deeper and more life- threatening level. The disease may manifest in a different way, but this pattern of movement from a shallow level to a deeper level is the pattern that tends to emerge for most people when they look at their own medical history.

This model of disease is based on observations of many thousands of patients over hundreds of years, and demonstrates the true science on which homeopathy is based. Homeopaths have examined the human experience of disease over lifetimes, evolved a model of disease progression, and then tested it by observing the way that patients move towards a healthy state. Because surely, if disease when suppressed goes deeper and deeper into the patient's organs, then logically when curing a patient the disease will go into reverse, i.e. it will move from a deeper level to a shallower and less life-threatening level?

This is indeed what happens, and is the sort of remedy reaction which makes a homeopath very happy! If we are treating a patient with serious lung pathology, whose lung symptoms start to improve and whose skin starts to get worse, then we know that cure is going in the right direction and that our patient is getting better. This is because the disease has started to move from the inside to the outside, and from a life-threatening condition to a less life threatening condition. At this point, the homeopath would like to drink a glass of champagne with the patient of course, but some explaining always needs to be done. The patient needs to be reassured that the skin condition will pass with the right treatment, and that in itself it is a very good sign, even though it is unsightly. This is known as 'Hering's Law of Cure' - disease in the process of cure moves from the top of the body to the bottom and from the inside to the outside.

 I am going to repeat myself - people rarely die of acne, or eczema, or even impetigo. As diseases go, skin diseases are more desirable than most!

Insomnia, over-stimulation and the adrenal system

I have had problems sleeping ever since I had children. I suspect that I started to sleep lightly then, so I would hear them if they woke and I would be ready to bounce out of bed and rescue them from whatever the problem was. I was over-anxious, and I think that my adrenalin levels started to get a bit higher at night, a time when they should drop right down. After all, these days we don't usually need our 'fight or flight' mechanism at 3 a.m.! We have given up our draughty cave life with its wild animals and barbarian invaders and instead sleep in our secure houses, with no wolves or invaders for hundreds of miles. Why then do so many of us battle all night long for a few hours of well-deserved sleep?

There are probably as many reasons for this as there are people suffering from insomnia. The most obvious issues in modern life are stress, stimulants and over-stimulation.

Over-stimulation means that adrenalin levels are too high for the brain to switch off. Have you ever driven a long way late at night, and then struggled to sleep afterwards? Your brain is still geared up to driving, it is still alert and watching for the red light, the speed limit, the police car sneaking up behind. And that's a good thing - after all, you want your brain to be alert and engaged when you drive. But turning it off afterwards can be a real issue. This is particularly true when you have driven when you are tired. It's almost as if your adrenal system has to turn on all the taps in order to cope with the demands you are making - and then it's a real problem to turn all those taps off later, when it is time to sleep. Over-stimulation can be as simple as watching a scary film late at night - the fear opens those taps again, and sleep becomes elusive. It can occur from playing computer games too - it's not just that the bright screen fools your system into thinking it is daytime not night time, but the game itself demands quick reactions and stimulates your adrenal system all over again.

Stress also over stimulates. A day of rushing around, dealing with difficult situations, trying to get everything done and managing yourself and others will be hard to wind down from, particularly if you carry on when you are tired - again, those taps have to open wider and wider in order to give you the adrenalin to keep reacting, to keep on top of your tasks. And that's before you even start to think about tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. Anxiety opens those taps too, a little surge of adrenalin floods through you when you start to panic about something. The system asks 'Fight or flight?' and provides the means to do either - but of course we don't use that stimulant, we carry on sitting there worrying and it just sloshes about in our system, leaving us bug-eyed and wound-up. If we worried when we heard a noise, saw it was an invader and either fought him or ran away, then we would have used that adrenalin for what it was for. But we don't, and that creates problems for us.

To add to our woes, we also take stimulants so that we can manage our stressful lifestyle. We drink coffee all day to keep going, and alcohol at night to relax. The coffee winds you up and makes it hard to relax after work and to sleep. The alcohol initially relaxes you, but then acts as a stimulant, so you wake in the middle of the night and can't sleep.

How can we fight these things and get a good night's sleep? There are some obvious things - don't drink coffee after lunch, avoid alcohol in the evening, take time to wind down before bed  - all the things that everyone tells you and that we have all tried.

What works? The first place to start is by imposing boundaries around what you think about and when. Think about work at work, and try not to think about it at home. Think about home issues in the evenings and at weekends, but never ever think about work or home issues in bed. Peace of mind at bedtime will bring you sleep, if you can manage it. It is hard, but you can manage it. I used to find that I worried hugely about work at home - one of the perils of self-employment and working at home. Then I started to put boundaries around my thoughts, and the first was 'Never in bed!' I still struggle with that, and have to re-impose the boundary because it slips, but it can be done. Nowadays I am restricting my worries in bed, and I make myself think about the things I am grateful for, not the things I want - so I think about my partner, my children and grandchildren, my health, my garden, my yoga practice - all the things I feel good about, that make me happy. I tell myself 'I'll think about that tomorrow' if  anxieties creep in. I know people who keep a notebook by the bed to write those thoughts in, so they can deal with them in the morning. Too organised for me! But peace of mind is the aim, and whatever gets you there will help you to sleep.

There are some new techniques that might help. An 'earthing sheet' that surrounds you with negative ions is the latest thing - see Amazon for details, but negative ions are reputed to be relaxing and de-stressing. Another idea is Magnesium. There are grounds for assuming that that we don't eat enough magnesium, which leads to insomnia, restlessness and night terrors. You can up your intake by eating more lima and kidney beans, almonds and cashews, and blackstrap molasses, or you can take a supplement of at least 200 mg before bed. Some health advisors are suggesting that, taken in a ratio of 2:1 with calcium, the combination acts as a sedative - the suggested dose is 600mg calcium to 250-300 mg magnesium.

I haven't tried the earthing sheet or the magnesium, actually because my 'peace of mind' regime seems to be working fine, but believe me I will give them a go if I start not sleeping again! Please let me know if you try either of them, I would be very interested to hear how you got on.

Well, all I can say now is 'Night night, sleep well'!