The homeopath's perspective

I want to discuss in this blog what a homeopath treats, how they see disease, and what a homeopath looks for when assessing the action of a remedy in a particular patient.

For a  homeopath, exploring all the symptoms that a client has is like revealing a picture. So if a client tells us that they have a cold with watery eyes, a tingling nose and a watery nasal discharge that makes their nose sore, then that is a picture - and in this case it is a picture of the homeopathic remedy Allium cepa, also known as red onion. Like treats like, remember?

But the size of this picture varies from patient to patient. Our Allium cepa patient is showing us a very small picture - in other words, it's an illness that has only been happening for days not months, and there are a limited number of symptoms associated with it.  So, in picture terms, it's more like a postcard than anything else!

We call this an acute illness - it only lasts a short amount of time, it has a limited number of symptoms associated with it, and ( to be brutally frank)  it is self-limiting in that the patient either recovers or dies!

Treating acute illnesses is no great issue for your average homeopath. Usually the patient will need between 4-6 doses a day of the relevant remedy, for up to a week - then the job is done. You can learn how to do that for yourself with a good book and a few remedies, because it isn't rocket science. And that is amazingly useful if you have children, because it means you can treat that 3 a.m. fever with Belladonna, or stop that stomach upset in its tracks with some Arsenicum. The remedy stops the illness - but it doesn't affect the big picture, and it won't stop that child getting ill next week.

However, that's only the postcard picture - what about the picture that takes up most of the wall, is in deep rich colours, and tells a wonderful story? Well, that is what a homeopath calls a chronic or constitutional picture. This is the picture of the whole patient, and encompasses their medical history, their temperament, their recurrent illnesses, their genetic inheritance and so on and so forth. Lots and lots of symptoms, some which are true now, some of which were apparent in the past. Information on sleep and dreams and body temperature, on appetite and thirst, gynaecological history, and even anxieties and fears - all of this information helps to give the picture its depth and colour, and enables the homeopath to choose the right remedy. Every symptom is a signpost to the homeopath, helping us to find a way from a sick patient to the right remedy!

Constitutional treatment is work your professional homeopath does best. A constitutional remedy will do many things, depending on the level of illness of the client. In an adult with long term chronic illness, a good constitutional remedy will reduce the incidence and severity of the complaint, as well as lifting the energy and mood. In a child, or someone who is prone to opportunistic illnesses, the right constitutional remedy will lift the immune system so that they are less susceptible to getting ill, and don't suffer so much when they do.

This sort of treatment can go on for a while, because it is not a magic wand. A very rough estimate of length of treatment is one month of treatment for every year of suffering - so if you have been ill with, for example, migraines for 6 years, then it may take up to six months to get rid of them. For a child of course treatment is unlikely to be for as long, but this estimate is very approximate, and doesn't take into account the many variables which may change the recovery rate.

What frequently happens is the 'peeling of the onion'. For example, I treated a child constitutionally last year. He had had eczema as a baby, then very bad recurrent ear infections age 2-4, tonsillitis after that, then a few bad chest infections age 8-10, and finally came to see me aged 12 with asthma. He had been treated with steroid creams and antibiotics throughout, and now was on a daily puffer. Notice in this case how the dis-ease has started on a minor level with eczema on the skin. I say a minor level because while eczema is unsightly and uncomfortable, it is rarely fatal! The eczema isn't cured by the steroid cream, it just goes deeper into the body, and thus the ear infections start - then it moves to the throat. These are progressively deeper levels of disease, more and more towards the internal organs, more and more life threatening, finishing with the asthma.

Thus when I treated this child, the first effect of the right remedy was that he developed a sore throat. Nothing worse than he had ever had, and as the asthma was better, I felt happy that this was the action of the remedy and that he would come through it ok. He did, and I gave him another dose. Then his skin became problematic - dry, itchy and rashy. This lasted about a week and then went. His skin was clear, his breathing was fine, and his mum had conferred with his doctor and stopped his steroid inhaler, on the understanding that he could start it again should his breathing become problematic again-  although in that case, a remedy would be a better plan! Job done, from my point of view.

That's peeling the onion - the pathology builds up in layers, going deeper and deeper into the organs. Remedies peel back the layers until the patient is well again.

I hope that this blog explains some of what a homeopath does, how we see illness and how we assess remedy reaction. If you have any queries, please just drop me an email or a text and I will do my best to respond, either personally or in another blog.