Intro to homepathy

We often have people coming into the shop and ask about certain conditions and what they can take. As someone who uses homepathy as my main healthcare resource it is often something that I would recommend, and find the responses quite interesting.
There seems to be 3 standard responses;
1. No idea what it is, don't ask, just want to feel better
2. Oh yeah, homeopathy , I use it all the time
3. No way, never used it, it doesn't work and it's dangerous

I thought I would just do a little bit about the history of homeopathy and 'how it works' and follow up with some remedy pictures over the next week. I'm not planning on being controversial, if you don't like homeopathy I don't want to get into a debate really but I am happy to answer genuine questions so please feel free to get in touch. If you don't like homeopathy then that's cool with me and I certainly wouldn't try to convince you except to say that if you try it you might be pleasantly surprised.

First of all, I really don't know how it works, and to be honest I don't think anyone really does know at this point. But I also think this doesn't detract from the fact that it does work for me and my family and the patients I have treated, not always perfectly but I would think that is to do with my ability to prescribe rather than the remedy itself! During my last 2 c-sections I had epidurals (obviously) and then no pain relief at all following the op, just my remedies which I self prescribed. After each one I was up and about within 2 hours and was home the following morning. This is not something I am recommending without discussion with your GP and medical practitioners, but it worked for me and the doctors at the hospital were genuinely amazed by my recovery. I've got the kids through colds in a day, bruises in a matter of hours and calmed my hysterical 8 year old immediately with one dose of aconite after he had a fall at school among many other things. It has been almost my sole healthcare resource for about 9 years now

Is it placebo? I wish it was...it would make prescribing an awful lot easier. I have had more than one occasion (quite a few more than one) where I have prescribed the wrong remedy and nothing has happened, and then changed the remedy and had a full and complete recovery. It follows logically (at least to me) that if it was placebo then it wouldn't matter what remedy you gave, the result would be the same. There is also the argument that it works on animals, babies, plants etc and they have no idea that they are meant to get better when they take the tablet. And quite frankly even if it was placebo, why the hell not - if it makes me better and has no side effects I don't actually care whether it is placebo or not. But as I say I wish it was placebo, it would be alot easier.

My thoughts are that we simply don't know yet how it works - once upon a time we didn't know how electricity worked, or gravity, or cars, or fire even but they worked too and eventually we found out exactly how they worked. And as a by-the-way, we don't actually know how anaesthetics work either but we all take them for granted (and very fortunate we are to have them).

Anyway, homeopathy is not a new thing. It was 'invented' by a guy called Samuel Hahnemann back in the 18th century. He was a GP who decided that there must be a better way than leeches (which are still handy little critters today though), drilling holes into peoples skulls to let the bad spirits out and dosing people up with copious amounts of mercury and silver nitrate. He wasn't the easiest of blokes by the sound of things - he was just a wee bit arrogant (which becomes very clear if you read his writings), but he definately put alot of effort into putting the system together. I won't do any more of the history at this point as it is a bit long, except to say that historically homeopathy has been practiced by doctors and it's provision is written into the NHS charter, so at some point it was recognised as a mainstay of the British Health Care system. This remains true in Europe, where it is practised by GPs and hospitals and is a major part of health care in countries like India where the health system is much less drug based and more holistic.

So how does it work - well, on each bottle you will see a little number, usually followed by a 'c' or less often an 'x'. This indicates the number of times that the substance had been diluted. So I will run through how they make a 3c solution and you can work out the rest from there:

The substance to be used is selected (let's use arsenicum - arsenic) and is made into a dilutable form. Imagine there is a row of 3 test tubes in front of you. You take one drop of the substance and put it into the first test tube, then add 99 drops of water to the same test tube. This gives you 100 drops of liquid in the first test tube. The test tube is the sucussed (basically shaken and banged about), this was historically done by banging it on a hefty bible. That bit seems to be the bit that does the work of turning it into a remedy - no idea how, but there are several theories around which are trying to explain it. When you have banged it 100 times then you put that test tube back in its rack.
Now you take one drop of the succussed solution in test tube one (now a 1c solution) and put it into test tube number 2. Then add 99 drops of water to the second test tube, so you have 1 drop of the 1c solution plus 99 drops of water = 100drops in total in test tube 2. Now succuss in the same way (with the bible) and you have a 2c solution. Now put test tube 2 back in it's rack.
Take one drop of the 2c solution and put in test tube 3 along with 99 drops of water (100 drops of liquid in the test tube) and succuss again. You now have a 3c solution.
Get the picture? Obviously, you need to be a careful with some substances you use to make remedies as they are often poisonous (for reasons I will explain in anther blog), so remedies are made by qualified homeopathic pharmacists and are only sold in potencies which are so diluted that they are no longer poisonous, for example you wouldn't buy 1c of arsenicum to be on the safe side.
The two most common potencies (ie. number of dilutions) is 6c and 30c so the first means it had been diluted and succussed 6 times and the second means it has been diluted and succussed 30 times. Generally you can use either potency but most commonly people tend to use 30c's for acute complaints but it doesn't really matter that much, one might just work a bit better than the other but if the remedy is right then it should work anyway. Its a bit like having 1 or 2 sugars in your tea I suppose, one might taste a bit better to one person and the other might taste better to another person but in the end the sugar has sweetened the tea.
This is getting a bit long so I will stop now and do a how to prescibe blog tomorrow. Hope this made sense, but if you have any questions you can get in touch via the vits n' pieces website at http://www.vitsnpieces.com/ . Tomorrow I will do a bit about prescribing and how to take remedies. Speak then xx