What is the difference between Naturopathy and Homeopathy?

These are regularly confused, and there can even be overlaps between the two, as Homeopaths will give lifestyle advice and Naturopaths use homeopathic remedies. When you go by mainstream medical definitions both are holistic forms of treatment that avoid the use of pharmaceutical medicines. Both health professionals have an in depth first consultation that takes time, and will often spend

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Food Poisoning

Summer is here and with it the good old Kiwi Barbecue. One risk with barbecues and camping is food poisoning – something no one wants to deal with. The best treatment is prevention, so here is a reminder of the basic food safety rules: Wash your hands, especially after handling raw meat. Wash any utensils or chopping boards in hot

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Homeopathy for Whinging

The summer school holidays are long. The first couple of weeks there is a lot of excitement- a busy term 4, then Christmas and new years, and by now, coming up 3rd week of January, some kids are bored, missing the routine of school, and there can be fighting with siblings, or just relentless whining and whinging going on. (If

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Goals for 2024

I am not a New Years Resolution person, but for the last few years I have taken this time to reflect on the previous year, and then set intentions for the New Year. Reflection is a really important skill to foster as a Health Professional, and one that both the New Zealand Council of Homeopaths and the Pharmacy Council require

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A Time for Reflection

At the beginning of the year I set myself a number of goals, and shared them with you here to make sure I was accountable. You can read the whole post here. So let’s have a look at those goals and how I have done:  Firstly, write a post every week – achieved, and sometimes more than once a week.

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Emergency remedies

It’s 5pm on a Friday night, your child has started vomiting and you have only one or two Arsenicum pilules left.  It’s a long weekend, your youngest has an ear infection, and you realise you forgot to replace the Chamomilla drops. You pull it out and there’s maybe one or two drops left in the bottom.  You’re away at a

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Sugar – the remedies

Yesterday I talked a bit about sugar and the effect in the body. Today I want to discuss the sugar remedies, as there are a few of them, and then I will talk about the remedy I use most.  There are two main forms of sugar – that from Sugar Cane (which is the form of sugar that Chelsea Sugar

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Sugar – the biochemistry

Sugar. It’s found in so many of our foods, and can have physical and mental effects, including spikes of dopamine our reward neuro-chemical.   In homeopathy there are a few different sugar remedies, which we will discuss tomorrow. First let’s look at sugar itself and what happens in the body. Because this is impossible to keep small and then discuss

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Acne – a holistic and homeopathic approach

This is a common skin condition in teenagers, but does occur in adults as well.  Our skin is out outermost layer, and healing here usually requires working from the inside out. In addition hormones have a big affect on the skin – the reason why puberty is the time acne often starts – so if you have done all you

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Remedies for Christmas and Summer

It’s the final week of November, and only a few more weeks of school. Now is the time to get prepared before school ends, the silly season is upon us, and you can’t get the remedies you need over the Christmas and New Year period. So let’s talk about some good remedies to have on hand. Here are brief notes

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All Roads Lead to Rome

I was recently discussing a case with a friend and colleague, and one of the things that came up was how different Homeopaths approach things, and it reminded me of the idiom that all roads lead to Rome – because there are many different ways of approaching healing, even within Homeopathy. Even back in Hahnemann’s day, there were differences in

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Antibiotic Awareness Week 2023

It is once again Antibiotic Awareness Week. A time to reflect on how we use antibiotics, so that we are not over using these life saving medicines and contributing to antibiotic resistance. While we focus on appropriate antibiotic use in a medical setting, another area of concern is antibiotic use in agriculture: this is not my area of expertise, but

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Four More New Zealand Native Remedies

In September for Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori (Maori language week) I did a post on New Zealand native remedies. I wrote about four, and then I had a number of people point out other remedies that I had missed and didn’t even know about! So this is the follow up, with a few more remedies.  If you missed

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Cake Week

It’s cake week in my house. The official celebration starts on the 5th with my birthday, and ends on the 12th with my eldest’s birthday. Cake week is characterised by celebrations, and lots of cake. Sometimes it stretches into cake fortnight, which is dangerous for diets and waistlines. This year cake week is a milestone for me – 40 years.

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Apple Tree

This is a remedy a colleague suggested for a case of mine earlier this year (thanks Anne!) and shared some materia medica with me. Since then I have used the remedy again and again with amazing results, so I really felt it was a remedy I needed to share.  The remedy Apple Tree is Malus Sylvestris, and the write up

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Trust the Process

This post is a contrast to yesterday’s post about following the symptoms, and is about how sometimes you need to let things play out. The beginning of this term my 6 year old came home on Monday with sore nostrils and was rubbing them a lot- but no runny nose. Still I gave him Arsenicum Album as a single dose

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Follow the Symptoms

One of the most important principles of classical homeopathy is finding the Simillimum – which means matching the symptoms of the person to the closest remedy picture. Generally when there is no response to a remedy it means it wasn’t the simillimum. This also means that when the symptoms change, it is time to change the remedy. I am sharing

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Homeopathic approach to Measles

Recently there has been a case of measles in Northland , which has brought measles back into the media (1). Regardless of whether or not you choose to vaccinate, it is useful to know how to support yourself or others if you develop measles. Before we talk Homeopathy, let’s discuss the basic supplements you can have on hand and use

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Holistic Health and Well being

Health is more than the absence of disease. It is a holistic well-being on every level, including physical, emotional and spiritual, and peace and balance with the world around you.* This doesn’t mean that bad things do not happen in your life, but that you have resilience. You feel emotions but do not become stuck in them; you get acutely

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Bach’s Flower Essences

Dr Edward Bach’s work with flower essences was groundbreaking, and his technique has been used all over the world to extract the emotional and spiritual healing properties of flowers and plants.  His original work he called “The Twelve Healers” which he published because they were so effective, even knowing his work was not complete. He went on to discover 26

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The Bowel Nosodes

It is quite well understood now that the gut is not only important in its own right, but also is important for immunity, general health and mental health. Dr Edward Bach was very much ahead of his time when he identified the Bowel as a leading cause of disease.  When he started working with the bowel he cultured faecal samples

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Dr Edward Bach

Happy Birthday to Dr Edward Bach, who was born on this day in 1886, in Moseley near Birmingham in England.  Most people know about Dr Bach from his work with flower essences- and even if they don’t know his name, know of Rescue Remedy- but there was another important contribution he made to Homeopthy: the Bowel Nosodes. Tomorrow I will

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Headaches

Headaches  Headaches can be debilitating, and affect a large number of people – a 2022 review showed the prevalence of active headache disorders in the Global population was 52%. All types of headaches also disproportionately affected more women than men. (1) Common types of headaches include Tension headaches and Migraines. Tension headaches are the most common type of headache, can

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Four New Zealand Native Remedies

It is Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, and so an opportunity to reflect on the Māori language, and for me, time to reflect on remedies that we have from New Zealand. There aren’t many of them. There are obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi to protect our tāonga, including Rongoā rakau, our plant medicines. New Zealand native species are

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