Homeopathy: Medicine For The People Miranda Castro FSHom, CCH

1
HomeopathyMedicine For The PeopleMiranda
Castro FSHom, CCH
2
What is Homeopathy?

• Homeopathy is an effective, elegant system of
  energy medicine that harnesses the innate healing
  power that resides within each and every one of
  us that acts as a catalyst for a persons own
  healing.

3
Homeopathys Basic Principles

• Homeopathy is based on several fundamental
  principles
• Treating like with like.
• The minimum (infinitesimal) dose.
• The single remedy.
• The whole person.
• Susceptibility.
• The vital force.

4
How Old is Homeopathy?

• Homeopathy was developed 200 years ago by Samuel
  Hahnemann, a German doctor, who became
  disillusioned with the treatments of his time
  (purgings leaches etc.)

5
Homeopathy Around the World

• Homeopathy spread rapidly throughout europe and
  the rest of the world in the 19th and 20th
  centuries as people sought effective, non-toxic
  ways to deal with their health care needs.

6
India (2007)

• India Mainstream Medicine
• 307 Homeopathic Hospitals
• 165 Homeopathic Medical Schools
• 10,000 students each year for 4-6 year full time
  homeopathic medical training programs
• Over 300,000 Practitioners

7
Europe

• UK Incorporated into the National Health Service
  in 1947
• 5 Homeopathic Hospitals
• Treatment available on demand
• Over 3000 professional homeopaths
• Approximately 40 of French English doctors
  refer patients to homeopathic specialists.

8
Elsewhere

• Popular in Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands,
  Austria.
• Spreading rapidly throughout the rest of Europe
  in the past 10 years.
• Accepted in New Zealand, Australia, and many
  South American countries

9
South America

• Highly respected in many South American
  countries. The following have many thousands of
  homeopathic practitioners
• Mexico
• Argentina
• Brazil

10
United States

• At the beginning of the 20th century (1900)
  homeopathy was more popular that anywhere else in
  the world
• 15-20 of all doctors were homeopaths
• 20 homeopathic medical schools
• 100 homeopathic hospitals
• 1000 homeopathic pharmacies

11
What Happened?

• Homeopathy faltered and fell due to
• A concerted effort by the American Medical
  Association and the pharmaceutical companies.
• In-fighting between the classical homeopaths and
  the routinists or combination prescribers.

12
Coherent Philosophy

• Homeopathy has a coherent set of principals
  governing every aspect of practice.
• These are the most important, defining principles
  of homeopathy

13
Like Cures Like

• A substance that causes a particular set of
  symptoms in a healthy person (that makes a
  healthy person sick) can cure a person with a
  similar set of symptoms.
• AKA the Law of Similars.

14
The Minimum Dose

• A substance that is diluted and shaken vigorously
  (succussed), becomes stronger curatively the more
  it is repeatedly diluted but only if it is also
  succussed.
• Substances that have been diluted without the
  vigorous shaking have no curative value, and are
  inactive medicinally.

15
Single Remedy

• Remedies are tested one at a time, and therefore
  should be administered singly. This is maybe the
  most difficult aspect of homeopathic treatment
  the selection of a single remedy.

16
Incredibly Energetic

• Homeopathic remedies or medicines are diluted by
  a method that releases their energy
  potentization.
• They are diluted beyond Avogadros number.
• Simple dilution does not work.

17
The Whole Person

• Homeopathic principles take the whole person into
  account (dismissing nothing).
• Homeopaths do not treat single symptoms or parts
  of single symptoms.
• They take the bigger picture into account.
• The best remedy is the one that matches the whole
  symptom picture of an individual person.

18
The Vital Force

• Homeopaths describe the energetic component that
  enlivens us, that literally gives us life - as
  the vital force.
• AKA Chi (Chinese Medicine)
• AKA Prana (Indian Medicine)

19
Summary

• Like cures like (law of similars)
• Minimum dose (potentized remedy)
• Single Remedy
• Whole Person
• Susceptibility
• Vital Force

20
Tested on Humans

• Homeopathic remedies are tested on healthy humans
  to determine their symptom complex.
• They are then verified on sick humans
  presenting with a similar symptom complex.

21
Healing Effects are Not Placebo

• You do not need to believe in homeopathy for it
  to work.
• Homeopathy works on animals and babies, and
  people who are sleeping or
• unconscious.

22
Resourcefulness

• Remedies are made from the widest possible range
  of sources, from anything and everything
  including
• Plants
• Metals, minerals, chemicals
• Animals
• Imponderables

23
Remedies

• Over 3500 substances have been tested and are
  available as homeopathic remedies.
• Most homeopaths use 100 500 remedies on a
  regular basis.
• Home prescribers use 10 50 remedies.

24
Ecologically Sound

• A single vial of a potentized remedy can medicate
  hundreds of thousands of pills.
• The planets precious resources are preserved.
• Theres no waste the
• active ingredients last
• indefinitely.

25
Affordable

• Single remedies cost around 6
• Home prescribing kits cost around 90 for a 50
  remedy kit (less than 2 a tube).

26
Non Toxic

• Therefore there are no side effects.
• The integrity of the organism is not damaged in
  the process of cure.
• There are no perceived bad agents (viruses or
  bacteria etc.) to destroy.

27
Non-Species Specific

• Homeopathy is easily applied to all living
  beings.
• It is increasingly popular among veterinarians
  and farmers
• Some farmers have shown it to work even on plants.

28
Treats All types of Complaints

• Emergencies/First Aid
• Acute (self-limiting) Complaints
• Chronic (recurring) Complaints
• Mental and Emotional Physical

29
Empowering

• Acute and First Aid treatment can be learned
  fairly easily and used safely by most people at
  home for a wide variety of everyday injuries and
  complaints.
• The more you know, the more you can do.

30
Types of Homeopathy

• Acute prescribing can successfully be learnt by
  home prescribers and health care practitioners
• Constitutional treatment is complex and should be
  practiced only by trained homeopathic
  professionals.

31
Who Can Benefit?

• Anyone but particularly the very young, babies,
  infants and children.
• Any complaint especially those the medical
  profession gives up on or has few answers for
• CFS, PMS, migraines, menopause, stress-related
  complaints, behavioral problems, autism,
  hyperactivity, autism etc. etc.

32
(No Transcript)
33
What Does it Cost?

• 150-500 for an initial visit depending on the
  length of time and the experience of the
  practitioner.
• 50-120 for follow up visits.
• Time between visits 4-6 weeks or as needed
  depending on the practitioner.

34
The Homeopathic Interview

• The first consultation includes a tremendous
  number of questions that range across the whole
  of a persons life
• emotional, physical, general, family, work,
  history, inherited everything.

35
The Clients Response

• After an initial consultation the most common
  comment is I have a sense of me as a whole
  its a wonderful feeling. I made connections I
  have never made before.

36
Complementary Medicine

• Homeopathy works beautifully alongside all other
  therapies including conventional medicine.
• Because homeopathy and acupuncture are so similar
  it is usually best to choose one or the other at
  a time.

37
Where is it Limited

• Where something is broken.
• Where something is broken beyond repair.
• Where information is lost in time.
• Where the stressors are severe and on-going.

38
A Blessed Sense of Well Being

• Homeopaths measure health as more than an absence
  of symptoms
• Increased flexibility and freedom on all levels.
• Increased sense of wellness, of well-being.
• Increased ability to withstand stress.
• Increased resilience to acute and chronic illness.

39
(No Transcript)
40
Myths Misapprehensions

• Many homeopaths, believing that the explanation
  of how homeopathy works is secondary to its
  success with literally millions of patients, have
  traditionally refused to reveal the names of the
  medicines they give. This and the lack of
  information they have provided about their
  practice has led to an aura of secrecy in which
  myths abound.

41
Homeopathy is a form of herbalism

• Herbalism is concerned with the known sphere of
  action of a plant based on its chemical
  constituents as well as its known healing
  qualities.
• Homeopathic principles of practice are different.
• Homeopathic remedies are diluted and succussed,
  herbal remedies are used in a material dose (as
  tinctures and teas etc.)
• Homeopathic remedies are not solely plants, but
  are made from poisons, metals, disease
  products.
• Homeopaths prescribe one remedy at a time rather
  than the mixtures of plant tinctures of the
  herbalist.
• Homeopathy is a mere 200 years old instead of two
  or three thousand years of herbal medicine.

42
Homeopathy is safe

• Because homeopathy can cure dramatically in
  some cases it can also cause harm.
• If you take too many homeopathic pills over a
  (usually long) period of time it is possible to
  prove it, i.e. to suffer from the symptoms that
  the remedy is supposed to cure. Your symptoms may
  improve initially, but then worsen if you
  continue to take them. Worse still, if the remedy
  was not the correct one for you, you may
  experience symptoms you never had before.
• This is a common danger of home prescribing it
  is important to be on your guard against this
  over-use of homeopathic medicines.

43
Homeopathy is form of vaccination

• Homeopathy and vaccination have similar concepts
  and very different practices. Vaccines stimulate
  the immune system directly to produce specific
  antibodies as if that person has contracted a
  particular disease. They must be tested on
  animals and then on humans to verify their
  safety, and even then children and adults can
  suffer side effects. Vaccinations bypass the
  bodys natural defense system, thereby stressing
  it in a way that is not fully understood.
• Homeopathic remedies affect the energy patterns
  of a person and stimulate the body to heal
  itself. They are administered orally in a highly
  diluted dose as opposed to being introduced
  directly into the bloodstream,

44
Homeopathic remedies are placebos

• Or You need to believe in it for it to work.
  This is ridiculous to anyone who has experienced
  a homeopathic cure for, a head injury or a
  middle-ear infection.
• Because homeopathic remedies do not always work
  they are believed by some to be ineffective, but
  antibiotics do not always work and that doesnt
  stop people from taking repeat doses of them.
• Because routine prescriptions such as Rhus
  toxicodendron for rheumatism and Chamomilla for
  teething babies are freely available, people are
  wrongly persuaded into thinking that they need
  not consult a homeopath (or an adequate first-aid
  book). If the remedies do not work it is assumed
  that homeopathy does not work if they do work it
  is attributed to a placebo effect some double
  bind!

45
Homeopathy is unscientific

• Homeopathic medicines are prepared in a pharmacy
  or a laboratory and their preparation involves
  techniques subject to precise and clearly stated
  controls (it does not involve mysterious and
  secret processes which put it into the realm of
  white magic or alchemy).
• Harris Coulter ( Homeopathic Science and Modern
  Medicine, The Physics of healing with
  Microdoses), discusses this issue at great length
  and also describes many of the trials that have
  been conducted over the past fifty years or so
  using plants, animals and humans as controls to
  prove the effectiveness of homeopathic medicines.

46
Homeopathy Research

• Because the premise of homeopathic medicine is so
  questionable in the eyes of the scientific
  communities, homeopathic research trials are
  often regarded in a suspicious light. There are
  plenty of trials and those concerning animals
  (for e.g. dairy herds with mastitis) are
  particularly interesting.
• Dana Ullman is the best place to go to find out
  more about homeopathy and research studies
• http//www.homeopathic.com/articles/by_category.j
  sp?id11

47
Finally .

• Homeopaths have traditionally justified their
  practice by their results, without feeling a need
  to explain how their methods work.
• Homeopathic patients mostly havent cared much
  either, have been happy to take any healing they
  could get often as a last resort i.e. when
  conventional medicine has completely failed them.

48
Finally .

• Homeopathic doctrine hasnt changed since it was
  formulated over 200 years ago. The rules and
  principles of practice constitute a unified
  hypothesis whose validity is tested out
  empirically and confirmed clinically, every
  single day in tens of thousands of homeopathic
  consulting rooms. The whole world over.

49
Resources

• The Complete Homeopathy Handbook, by Miranda
  Castro
• Homeopathy Simply Explained http//www.homeopathy-
  soh.org/
• National Center for Homeopathy www.nationalcenterf
  orhomeopathy.com