Some Homeopathy basics for those new to my page, or a refresher for those who have been around a bit longer.
Homeopathy has been a vibrant and holistic system of medicine for over 200 years. It is also is a system of medicine that serves over 200 million people worldwide, half of these in India where many of them solely use Homeopathy.
For those concerned with ethics, Homeopathy is not tested on animals. In fact this is a founding tenant of Hahnemann’s who tested the remedies on himself, and later on family and colleagues. These days Homeopaths, students and volunteers still conduct Provings where they take a homeopathic remedy and record their symptoms in order to elicit the remedy picture.
Efficacy in scientific studies varies- but when reading any scientific study you need to carefully read the method and look at the statistical analysis. Designing a study to test the efficacy of Homeopathy requires not only an understanding of homeopathic principles – like treats like- but also the individual nature of this holistic discipline. Because of this studies are much harder to design. The Homeopathy Research Institute is an organisation that specialises in research into Homeopathy with some amazing results.
Of course there is also over 200 years of recorded case studies across the thousands of remedies, you can pick up many an old Homeopathic text and find examples of illnesses and injuries supported with homeopathy.
The holistic and individual nature of homeopthy is key. For this reason a diagnosis is less important as we look at symptoms and use those to build a whole symptom picture, and try and match that to a remedy. This means that mental and emotional symptoms as well as physical are important, as is medical history and family history. Is is why an initial consultation takes so long (an hour for children, an hour and a half for adults), and why the question “what remedy do I take for a cold?” is actually impossible to answer without a whole lot more information.
The dilution factor in Homeopathy is problematic for many. First of all though, it is not solely a dilution, at each step the remedy is succussed (hit against a firm surface) a number of times to impart the energy of the substance into the new dilution. I’m not a physicist and don’t understand the process, but an increasing amount of research is looking at this. Here is the abstract of one article showing Nano particles in homeopathic remedies
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20970092/
Is it possible to overdose on a homeopathic remedy? Yes and no. Homeopthy is about the frequency of dosing. If your child sits down and swallows an entire bottle all in one go, it’s considered one “dose” and therefore is not a problem. However if they sat there and ate one pilule every 10 minutes for an hour or two they may well start to “prove” the remedy, or get symptoms from it that you can use the remedy to treat.