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HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINE
What is it?
Homeopathic Medicine is a medical therapeutic system. It is a branch of Medical Science being an established medical specialty in many European and other Universities worldwide. It is also a holistic therapeutic system because it’s main principle and practice is to treat the patient as a whole. Its’ principles originate from Hippocrates the Greek, “the father of Medicine”. But the foundation of Homeopathy as a therapeutic system began 250 years ago in Germany by Dr Samuel Hahnemann professor of Medicine.
What does Homeopathy cure?
Any patient independently of illness or age can visit the homeopathic doctor.
Homeopathy has very good therapeutic results in illnesses like: allergies, migraines, hormone diseases, menstrual disorders, gastritis, colitis, anxious or phobic neurosis, depression, skin problems, eczema, psoriasis, recurrent vaginitis, recurrent infections of the urinary tract, recurrent colds, hypertension, bronchitis, asthma, hair falling, obesity, acne, tonsillitis, cholesteremia, thyroid diseases, back pain, dorsal syndrome, arthritis etc.
Homeopathy can also act preventively in healthy persons reducing their predispositions for illnesses, that is, their weak points. It strengthens the organism, raises the vitality, lessens the levels of anxiety and increases productivity of body and mind.
Although results come quickly especially in acute or functional illnesses the aim of the homeopathic doctor is not just to relieve the patient temporarily from his symptoms. His main purpose is to cure permanently and in depth by dealing with the original causes of his disease. Of course any deep acting treatment needs more time to develop. This will enable the patient to have at the end of the treatment a better state of physical health and a more stable psychological balance.
Homeopathic treatment, although highly effective is definitely not a “panacea”. And this is also true for any therapeutic system. It does not claim to cure anything. It has its’ limitations depending on the progress of the disease and on the reversibility of the caused effects. But even in long term or chronic and severe diseases, there is always the possibility of substantial relief, depending of course on the case.
Therapeutic Advantages
- Homeopathic medicines are natural and therefore absolutely harmless. It can be given without any second thought even to babies, pregnant women or allergic people.
- Homeopathic treatment, when successfully carried out has permanent results. It is not a mere relief of symptoms but it is a removal of the causes of disease.
Homeopathic Medicines
Homeopathic medicines are natural. The raw materials used for their preparation are simple minerals and pharmaceutical plants. But they are not just mere herbs or food supplements or vitamins. They are transformed into highly effective drugs after a series of scientific but natural preparations of the original raw material.
They are prescribed by medical doctors and can be bought from homeopathic pharmacies, that is, common pharmacies that have a homeopathic stock. They are produced by European Pharmaceutical Companies, imported by Greek companies and are available in pharmacies.
Diagnosis and Treatment
The homeopathic doctor, just like his allopathic colleague asks questions to take the case, performs clinical examinations, orders blood and other examinations where needed so as to diagnose the illnesses of his patient.
From that point on the homeopathic doctor takes the case in a unique way so as to diagnose the idiosyncrasy of his patient that is his special type of physical organism and his special type of psychology.
Homeopathic case taking includes several questions asking details about his physical and psychological characteristics, his habits, his way of life, his views on every day matters etc. This is absolutely necessary so as to prescribe the “Simillimum” that is, the remedy most similar to the patient’s specific type at that certain phase of his life. Homeopathy as a term originates from the Greek words “homeo pathos” that is, “similar pathology” because the remedy administered is similar to the pathology of the patient taken as a psychosomatic whole not only of symptoms but mainly of type, of idiosyncrasy. This similar to the patient remedy will activate the patients’ therapeutic mechanisms, both physical and psychological and this will result to cure.
When a patient is already treated with any kind of common medicines or treatments it is not necessary to stop it so as to start receiving homeopathic medicines. He can take both at the same time without any complications of any sort. In fact it would be wrong, from a medical point of view to stop suddenly and abruptly any allopathic medicine long given and necessary for the patient. When the homeopathic treatment has progressed successfully, the patient feels better and does not need the allopathic symptomatic treatment and if examinations become normal, then and only then, the homeopathic doctor reduces the dosage or stops the allopathic drugs.
This could be done in collaboration with the allopathic doctor that treats the patient when necessary, for instance in severe or special diseases or by the homeopathic doctor in most cases, since he is a medical doctor himself. Medical doctors no matter what therapeutic system they practice should collaborate with each other for the benefit of the patient. The benefit of the patient is after all or should be after all the sole aim of doctors and Medicine.
Basic principles of Homeopathy
-Every person is but a special organism and has his own specific personality. That’s why we call him an individual. Being a living and changing creature he is affected at any phase of his life by a certain idiosyncrasy. That’s why we should individualize either in diagnosis or in treatment prescribing his individual, similar to the case and phase homeopathic medicine.
-Every man, every patient must always be viewed and treated as a united psychosomatic whole and not merely as isolated organs, systems, symptoms or illnesses. Mind and body interact and must both taken all the time in consideration no matter for what kind of illness the patient comes to the doctor for help. In fact as a rule mind is dominant to the body.
-Hippocrates said: “Benefit! Do not harm!” We should restore nature to order by natural means so as always to benefit and never to harm. These natural therapeutic means give the patient’s organism the chance to activate his own psychosomatic therapeutic mechanisms and thus heal himself without side effects of any kind.
-Doctors following any kind of therapeutic system should collaborate with each other for the benefit of the patient. The benefit of the patient is the sole aim of Medicine.
Why do we get sick?
Each person is born with certain physical and psychological predispositions for illnesses. This means that he has certain weaknesses and sensitivity in certain organs or systems. That is his “dowry”. For instance he has a very sensitive nervous system, a quite sensitive skin and a less sensitive stomach.
When one is young and if not troubled, these sensitivities, these predispositions are not felt. But as time passes by the organism is weakened by unhealthy nutrition and unnatural way of life. Our soul and mind is troubled by misfortunes and everyday anxiety coming from unnatural living. If we only think for a minute what we eat, what we drink, what we inhale and what psychological problems we face everyday then we will all come to the conclusion that we live under adverse conditions. All these irritate our predispositions and then illnesses come forward.
The important role of idiosyncrasy in Disease
We have already mentioned Predispositions and External Irritating Factors as causes of Disease. Idiosyncrasy is another important factor causing Disease. Idiosyncrasy is but the special individual physical and psychological characteristics of a person, the ones that make him a special individual, those that make him unique.
Of course this is not our inner self. Deep down all people have a good and balanced inner self because of the “drop of divine spirit” each one of us has inside him. But on the outside, every day we function according to our external self. This external self is unbalanced, full of passions, egoism, wrong thoughts and feelings and wrong behavior. All these unbalanced special physical and psychological characteristics are but the contents of an external self. There are many kinds or external selves, many kinds of idiosyncrasies, many kinds of personalities, many kinds of human types. These external selves are nothing else but the “clothes” that we choose to wear over our good inner self at a certain phase of our lives according to our will and passions. We don’t wear the same clothes from birth to death. In the same way we are not affected by one idiosyncrasy during our life.
We have already said that idiosyncrasy consists of unbalanced special characteristics. We are stuck with such characteristics and they constrain our freedom to think, feel and act in a balanced and appropriate to the circumstances way. For instance if you are wearing heavy clothing and you go to a hot place you will get uncomfortable the least or even get sick. You have to change, you have to adjust and you have to be free to adjust according to circumstances.
But idiosyncrasy is a restraining factor. It does not adjust. And most of the times we act promptly, automatically according to our idiosyncrasy. Even worse many times we don’t discriminate between our inner self and our external self and we tend to say that “I am my idiosyncrasy, this is my character, this is myself, that’s what I am. What do you want from me? Why do you want me to change myself? You are wrong and you should change!”
Now let us see how idiosyncrasy, how our external self can cause Disease. John is born with a very sensitive nervous system, a sensitive skin and a less sensitive stomach. These are his Predispositions. He eats junk food, drinks a lot, smokes like a chimney, sleeps a little and has no physical exercise. These are the External Irritating Factors. In addition he has a certain nervous and anxious idiosyncrasy he is egoist enough to quarrel with everybody and is never content with his life being a very ambitious person.
Gradually he gets weaker and weaker because of many professional problems. At the top of it he has that severe love disappointment. This is the end of balance and the beginning of Disease. It is more than certain that the first symptoms he is going to have will be from his sensitive nervous system, secondly from his skin and thirdly from his stomach. He may have anxious neurosis, eczema or gastritis, a combination of them or all together. It is not likely he has hypertension because he hasn’t got such a predisposition. If one of the three causing factors of Disease was less strong then he could be still balanced and healthy.
If he was not so egoist he could have accepted the fact that his relation came to an end and would go forth to life and be balanced and even happy. But he is affected by that rigid idiosyncrasy and acts automatically so any end of relation tends to be translated as bad, as disappointment, as loss of self prestige. So he gets sick.
What can one do about his Predispositions?
The patient himself can’t do anything to lessen his given predispositions for disease. He can only try not to irritate them by his unnatural way of living.
The Allopathic Medicine does not lessen in any way his predispositions. The reason is that most of the allopathic chemical medicines act by suppressing the symptoms of the illness and not by annihilating the causes of the Disease. So when we stop the chemical drugs symptoms come back again and again and many times even worse because the course of the Disease was not stopped. That is the reason why allopathic drugs are many times given for too long periods or for life. Furthermore the patient has many side effects or is addicted to the given drugs.
The worst of all is that when strong chemical medicines are given for long and in high dosages they may suppress the present illness in such a degree that it changes course, goes inside and affects internal organs more important to life and in a more chronic way. For instance, if we suppress eczema for long it may withdraw inside and take the form of asthma or if we suppress skin psoriasis it may take the form of psoriatic arthritis.
The superficial symptomatic way of acting of the allopathic drugs is clearly seen in the case of recurrent illnesses. Antibiotics may drive away the symptoms of a cold, a vaginitis or urinary tract infection but they will not cure the predisposition so the patient will have again and again recurrent episodes of the acute illness. The reason is that the symptoms of the acute illness are suppressed but the chronic disease, the chronic predisposition isn’t annihilated. Pain killers will relieve temporarily the acute episode of migraine but they will not cure the chronic predisposition for migraines. Antihistamines and cortisone will suppress immediately but temporarily the acute episode of an allergy but they will not in any way cure the allergic predisposition.
In phobias, neurosis and depression the sedatives and anti-depressive chemical drugs may relieve the patient but he has to take them for long and many times when stopped then the illness comes back. These drugs affect only the chemical function of the brain but they don’t in any way cure the psychological disorder of the patient. They can touch the brain but they can’t touch in any way the immaterial psyche, the immaterial soul. The same stands bold for the psychosomatic illnesses. With chemical hormonal agents you may regulate temporarily the levels of certain hormones in the blood but you will not cure the cause that is responsible for the excess or the lack of that hormone.
The clinical experience of Homeopathy is that it can not only cure the acute illness but it can also, after an adequate time of systematic treatment, cure the predispositions of a certain patient. The child who has the recurrent colds will be stronger and have the normal frequency of episodes just like other healthy children. Recurrent infections of vagina or of urinary tract will stop. Neurosis, phobias and depression will, most of the times, be cured permanently. Hormonal disorders come to a balance in a definite way. Homeopathy can lessen predispositions and strengthen the organism and the patient’s psychology in such a way that a new higher level of health be achieved.
What can one do about his External Irritating Factors?
Any patient can help himself by tracking his predispositions and weaknesses and trying to avoid certain external irritating factors. For example if I know from my experience that I have a very sensitive stomach then I must try not to eat junk food. Or if I have weak lungs why on earth should I smoke? There are no “magic pills” sold at any pharmacy. The only magic pill is “to know yourself”. That is to track your weaknesses and avoid irritating them.
What can one do about his Idiosyncrasy?
There is a popular saying in Greece: “At death, soul comes first out of the body and then mannerism (habit)”. That is definitely true. It is so difficult for anyone to get rid of his physical and psychological tendencies so most of the time we carry our idiosyncratic tendencies to the grave! That does not mean that we are affected through our entire life with a certain one and only idiosyncrasy. We do change by slipping from one idiosyncrasy to relative ones and rarely to opposite ones, but we are not Dr Jekyll and Mr. Haydn! Most of the times we may be able to control temporarily our idiosyncratic tendencies but they tend (that’s why they are called tendencies) to come out automatically and affect our body, mind, behavior and habits.
The homeopathic medicine does not change a person’s certain idiosyncrasy. But it can balance the extremity of one’s physical or psychological characteristics. For example an extremely irritable person who is extremely hot and sweating following homeopathic treatment will get less irritable and less hot and sweating. A coward or timid person can become more expressive and less timid. A very sensitive and easily offended person can become less sensitive and not so easily offended. But you can never transform a wolf to a sheep! The main tendencies tend to remain vaguely the same. But this balance of the extreme characteristics can act preventively by not leading the person to extreme behavior and thus to imbalance and illnesses.
What can Homeopathy do?
From what has already said we come to the following conclusions about the therapeutic actions of homeopathic treatment:
- It can cure quickly and definitely the symptoms of an acute illness without suppressing it and thus without any side effects
- It can cure both and at the same time body and mind as a whole. It cures not only the acute present illness for which the patient comes to the doctor but at the same time all other illnesses that the patient suffers from
- It can lessen the physical and psychological predispositions for illnesses by treating the causes and not the symptoms thus leading to a higher level of health
- It improves and restores to normal the general condition of a patient (sleep, menses, physical strength, appetite, defecation, mental capacity, memory, sexual desire, etc)
- It balances the extreme idiosyncratic characteristics of a person leading to a more normal and balanced behavior thus preventing imbalance and disease
- It can act as preventive medicine even to a healthy person by lessening his predispositions and by balancing his idiosyncratic tendencies
Fast Food yes, Fast Cure no!
We live nowadays at societies where everything must be done fast and most of the times in a superficial way. Most of the times Fast Food is junk food, although there are exceptions. Accordingly most of the much-publicized treatments are but temporary suppression of symptoms or even worse of the illness leading to deeper and more chronic problems. Any kind of deep treatment with permanent results needs time and effort from the patient as well as from the doctor. The same stands bold also for homeopathic treatment.
I don’t refer to the treatment of an acute disease. In acute diseases improvement or complete cure may happen in hours or in a few days. I refer to the chronic or recurrent diseases. Usually, when a patient adopts homeopathic treatment improvement of symptoms begins to happen after some days or weeks. Sometimes it may happen after only some hours but this is not the rule. It all depends on the severity and chronic course of the disease and on the condition of the reactive mechanisms of the certain patient. Most of the times the patient feels a lot better after the first month of the treatment.
But this only means that “we have won a mere battle but not the war”. Even when after some months all the symptoms of the chronic disease have subsided that does not mean that the problem is over. There is still left untouched a certain amount of predisposition, less of course than the original but still capable of producing a relapse when adverse external irritating factors come across. It is wiser for the patient and the doctor to continue treatment for a while so as to ensure that only a little predisposition is left untouched and the patient is strong enough to carry on without any support. Often things resemble a floating iceberg. The one tenth of the volume of an iceberg is over the sea level (illness) and the nine tenths of its volume are under the sea (predisposition).
An average time of homeopathic treatment so as to have deep and permanent results in common chronic problems is from 4 to 8 months. It may of course need less or more depending on the case. Then the patient can stop the treatment. Does this mean that he became invulnerable? Of course not! He may have a higher level of health and fewer predispositions but if we only for a minute think of the adverse and unnatural way of living we have nowadays it is possible that imbalance may occur again. It is sure that his relapse will not be so severe like the original illness because he has fewer predispositions but nevertheless complementary treatment will be faster and easier. Even if the patient after the original treatment is well a short preventive treatment from time to time is advisable so as to enable the patient to run his life without any problems.
What Therapeutic System to choose?
We human are but the “children” of “Mother” Nature. Anything natural is positive to our body and mind. Anything unnatural has negative effects. The same thing stands bold either be it food, exercise, activities, relations or therapeutic systems. If it is critical to our health what to eat and how to live, how much more critical is what treatment to choose and what medicines to use?
How can a chemical remedy, strange and hostile to our body chemistry, support our health if it has side effects no matter how “scientific” it claims to be? The mere existence of side effects cries to us saying “I am unnatural, I am harmful!” How absurd is to consider anything causing disease to one part of our body that it will promote health to another?
There is only one criterion to help us choose any Therapeutic System: Natural Principles and Philosophy and Natural Means of Application (drugs)!