One of the most gratifying experiences in my practice is when I get to treat a person suffering from Shingles.  The reason for this is that Homeopathically, these people are relatively easy to help, results of very good, and traditional medicine has little to offer. In this blog I'm going to explain the Homeopathic approach to treating people suffering Shingles and give a case example in the hopes that if you are suffering Shingles, you don't settle for the long term pain or dangerous mostly ineffective treatments offered by traditional medicine.

Shingles, also known as Herpes Zoster, is said to be caused by a dormant virus lodged in the nervous system, originating with Chicken Pox.  For many people, often later in life, often after stress and depletion, this virus activates bringing on painful eruptions and neurological pains which can last many months to even years.  Anyone who has ever had it can tell you how painful and debilitating it can be.  Traditional treatments include, pain medications, steroids, and antiviral drugs which can sometimes shorten the duration and intensity of symptoms.  The condition is never considered cured by these treatments and symptoms can flair up much later.

In Homeopathy we view Shingles or any viral type disease in a different way.  Chicken Pox is one of those acute epidemic diseases well known by all of us.  In all epidemic disease, the Homeopath takes the vitalistic view that, even in epidemics, there is an underlying collective energetic susceptibility sweeping through large groups of people, which makes them susceptible to manifesting the symptoms know as Chicken Pox.  We consider the virus to be part of the expression of the disease and not the cause.  We affirm this is true by pointing out that when these epidemics ever sweep through a population, everyone does not become ill, even when repeatedly being exposed in close proximity to the infected.  Conversely, many become infected quite far away from any people who are already infected where no evidence of viral jumping can be found.  The other more profound evidence we offer is are extremely high success rate in history in treating these epidemics with our energetic medicines, starting with the plagues which followed the Napoleonic war to the Spanish flue of 1918.

Just as in any Homeopathic patient, when a person comes with diagnoses of Shingles, we look for unique characteristic symptoms to find the Homeopathic medicine and not the common symptoms of Shingles.  Common symptoms are eruptions, burning, itching, shooting pains.  Everyone with Shingles will have these.  Uncommon symptoms are those symptoms which don't appear in every case of Shingles.  We look at the location of the symptoms, the color of the eruptions, discharges coming out of the eruptions, situations where symptoms are worse or better, actions the patient takes to cope with their suffering, even the over all mental state of the patient when pains are bad.  In the case of people suffering Shingles, finding the right Homeopathic remedy is not hard and results are quite rapid.

Case Example:

A 53 year old man is suffering from post neurologic pain one month after Shingles out break.  The location of the eruptions and pains we on the left hip and leg.  The eruptions were very itchy with watery vesicles which leaked. Pains are worse when getting up in the morning with a strong sensation of stiffness in the hip and leg.  It's very stiff and painful when he first starts to move but if he keeps moving slowly, the pain reduces.  When he is sitting for work, he keeps moving around trying to find a comfortable position, but as soon as he thinks he has, pain and restlessness return.  He feels better when he exercises but than after he gets tired, pains come on again.  Over all he does not like to sit still or he feels stuck and playing sports makes him feel loose.  Any Homeopath knows this picture is the remedy rhus-tox, also known as poison ivy.  Right after taking the remedy the patient called to report immediate 50 percent improvement in pain and stiffness.  After two weeks, pains are 80 percent better only coming on slightly after long workouts.  He continues to improve with a prognoses that after a month, all issues will be resolved.

This is a very typical case I see in my practice.  It took me abut 30 minutes to determine the characteristic symptoms at a cost to the patient of 100.00 dollars plus 10.00 for the remedy he could pick up at Whole Foods.  Yes, I know, some of you just can't accept that any effective treatment for such a serious situation could possibly be so effective.  However, it is so, and in other countries where Homeopathy is openly endorsed and offered, countless people get to enjoy these kinds of cures.  Let me also point out that you should not take the above case example to believe that rhus-tox is the medicine for Shingles.  This was the medicine for this specific case only and you do not have the extensive training required to figure out what Homeopathic medicine would be applicable in your case of Shingles.  Always seek out a qualified Homeopathic practitioner if you want good results.  If you are suffering from Shingles, I would be most happy to show the benefit of this wonderous healing method.  Just click the "contact me" tab below to get started.

All statements here are not claims to cure or treat any disease, provide any health benefit, are for educational and thoughtful purposes only, and are not medical advice.  If you need medical advice, please seek a qualified health care provider.

Insomnia is said to be one of the most common conditions people in modern life suffer from. Many causes are attributed to insomnia such as work and family stress, anxiety and worry, consumption of stimulants, bad diet, electronic stimulation, or even a guilty conscience.  No matter the cause, if we aren’t sleeping, it is taking it’s toll on our health by lowering our defenses to our environment as well as leaving us too depleted to perform at optimum.  Eventually, if we don’t solve our insomnia problem it will be a continuing downward spiral of deteriorating mental, emotional, and physical health along with the loss of quality of life.

If you are suffering from insomnia there are a number of treatment options available and it is most important that you pick the treatment which fits your situation and does not end up compounding your problem.  Here is my personal Homeopathic approach on how I help my clients deal with insomnia.

1.  Life style:  If in taking your case I hear that you are consuming a lot of stimulants such as coffee, tea, soft drinks, energy drinks, or diet pills, we will come to see that the solution is self evident.  If I find that you can’t function without these stimulants, then I will be looking for your chronic mistunement which is manifesting as low energy and function so I can give the best homeopathic remedy to generate a healing reaction which will restore your energy level.  We will also look at your activities to see if something is over stimulating you or if some activity like yoga or exercise could help you.

2.  Drugs: If you are consuming sleeping aids, I will try to educate you that drugging is forcing you to sleep against the wishes of your vital force and that the result of drugging will be a rebound in your vital force to become more sleepless requiring ever more drugging to get you to sleep, which leads to addiction.  I will also point out to you that these drugs can have side effects and are ultimately toxic to your system. I will never tell you not to use drugs which have been prescribed by a doctor.  It is up to you to consult with your doctor as to when you should decrease or stop using any medication.

3.   Chronic mistunement: In most cases of people who come to me suffering from any condition, sleeplessness is a major symptom among many of the symptoms.  From a Homeopathic perspective, a chronic mistunement at the vital level will manifest as sleep disturbance because the mind is not at peace.  In such cases, insomnia continues despite the best lifestyle discipline in diet and activity. Each case of insomnia will be unique in it’s core issue and each case will require the one individuated remedy which mirrors the disturbance.  In almost all cases, when the right remedy is selected, the first response which shows that you are improving will be good sleep.  Sometimes, the person will become extremely sleepy moments after taking the remedy and will sleep long and hard as the vital force mounts it’s healing reaction.  As the healing reaction continues, you will heal as whole person from your mind to your body.

If you feel that your insomnia is rising from a level too deep to be corrected by simple life style changes and you don’t want the addictive and toxic consequences of drugs, I invite you to contact me at 214-587-4560 for a free 15 minute phone consultation to see if Homeopathic treatment is applicable to your case.

All statements here are not claims to cure or treat any disease, provide any health benefit, are for educational and thoughtful purposes only, and are not medical advice.  If you need medical advice, please seek a qualified health care provider.

So I get yet another call from the parent of a child I'm treating informing me that the day after a Homeopathic medicine he got a mild fever at night so they gave him aspirin.  This call came one week after his first Homeopathic treatment and the parent reports that the main problems of chronic cough and wheezing are much better.  Now even though I clearly instructed both parents to contact me first if anything came up, such as a fever, before taking any action, they did not contact me and decided to suppress the fever with aspirin.  Now I don’t offer any medical advice, but this is my opinion on fevers and Homeopathic Treatment based on my education, studies, and experiences.

A fever is the vital force’s natural healthy immune response to bacteria and other substances which don't belong in the body beyond their natural function to consume diseased cells.  This inflammatory response is the result of blood carrying antibodies to sick areas to aid in the healing process.  Once the sick tissue is gone and invaders are burned up, then the fever ends and life goes on, often with a stronger immune system to ward of future invasions.  The bottom line is that these mild fevers are a sign of good health and interference in this process by giving aspirin, soaking in cold water, or pumping the child with antibiotics can be counter productive.

Aspirin suppresses the natural inflammatory response which can allow the invading microbes to grow stronger because the bodies defense is not being allowed to operate.  Then when the aspirin wears off, the vital force is facing a more infectious situation and rebounds with a severe and dangerous fever which can bring on convulsions, delirium, unconsciousness, or worse.  Aspirin for children has also been discouraged by doctors because it has been tied to Reye’s syndrome.

One old time myth is to put the burning child in cold water to bring down the fever.  Not only does this interfere with the body’s defense, it shocks the body which lowers it’s strength, along with forcing a strong rebound which causes an even higher fever.

Doctors now understand the dangers of being too liberal with antibiotics.  Antibiotics replace the bodies natural defenses causing them to atrophy, thus leaving the person more susceptible to infections.  Also, because bacteria are scavengers which function to consume diseased tissue, the scavengers become even stronger to perform their function.  Antibiotics can also cause fungal growths and digestive problems.

Homeopaths don’t typically give a remedy just because a child has a fever.  As was in the case of the patient I fist described, under constitutional Homeopathic treatment, some fevers are a result of increasing health in children who were too sick to generate fevers to fight off infections and invasions. If your child has a high fever (over 103) where he is listless, unconscious, delirious, with chill and rigors, then we may suggest a Homeopathic remedy to try on your way to the Doctor’s office or emergency room.  Typically, if a good remedy is selected during a high fever situation, the results will be quick and dramatic.  In the case of mild fevers, Echinacea tincture in juice, vitamin C, zinc lozenges, and garlic capsules could be good non-suppressive natural remedies.

If your child is a Homeopathic patient, you should always let your Homeopath immediately know when your child has any fever, or cold and flu type symptoms as well as any worsening or improving of these symptoms.  In mild fever situations, do not panic and do no think that it means you need to do something against the fever.  In any situation where you feel your child is in real danger, you should seek a licensed health care practitioner.

All statements here are not claims to cure or treat any disease, provide any health benefit, are for educational and thoughtful purposes only, and are not medical advice.  If you need medical advice, please seek a qualified health care provider.

Since the art and science of Homeopathy came into being over 200 years ago, there has been fierce opposition against Homeopathy by the rational scientific allopathic medical industry, claiming that they can’t find any scientific bases to explain why Homeopathy works. Here I list and refute their objections to demonstrate that their objections are not scientifically motivated.

Objections:

1.  There is no way that Homeopathic remedies can have a medicinal effect because there is no measurable substance in the remedies.

2.  There is no scientific research which proves these remedies have any effect on people.

3.  There is no way that a substance producing similar symptoms can be curative and in fact can only serve to make a person sicker.

4.  There is no proof that Homeopathic Treatment has cured anyone of any disease or condition.

5.  Any improvement after a Homeopathic remedy is placebo.

Rebuttal:

1.  It is true that Homeopathic remedies contain no measurable substance.  However, it doesn’t take any huge leap of mind to accept that scientific instruments are limited in their capacity to measure just as the human eye is limited in it’s capacity to see in a narrow light spectrum.  Homeopathy grasps the natural law that disease begins beyond the perceivable spectrum as a mistunemnent in the vital force and that the measurable symptoms are the results and not the cause.  This reigns true for bacteria and viruses as well.  There always exists a susceptibility at the vital level first. Through the process of diluting and succsussing a substance, it is possible to activate the vital essence of that substance in a way that it effects the vital force of the person.  If this were not true, then our Homeopathic medicines would not have the long list of fantastic cures going back for over 200 years.

2.  It is not true that there is no scientific proof that Homeopathic remedies have any effect.  Homeopathy was using double blind studies on remedies long before the scientific method had even reached the allopaths.  Each remedy is tested on groups of people.  Some get the remedy and others do not.  Neither the subject nor the manager knows what the remedy is.  The subjects record their mental, emotional, and physical symptoms for a month after taking the remedy.  The managers probe this data and then send it to compilers.  The compilers pick out what symptoms are common among the subjects and organize it so it can be studied and put into our materia medica and repertories.  The fact that these remedies produce consistent symptoms among the subjects is scientific proof that these remedies, which have no substance in them, do in fact have an effect.

3.  The claim the similar symptoms can have no curative effect is so easy to debunk that you can do it yourself.  The next time you get a minor stove burn, put some Grey Poupon spicy mustard on the burn and see what happens.  The similar burn quality of the mustard presents a similar mirror image of the stove burn to your vital force.  By the law that attention can only be placed in one place at a time, your vital force will shift it’s attention to the mustard sensation and forget it’s own stove burn sensation.  In addition your vital force will generate a healing reaction to overcome the burning of the mustard which in turn will overcome the burn of the stove.  Go on and prove it to yourself, I dare you!  I will elaborate further on the law of similar and attention.  If you ever see someone who is suffering from debilitating grief and you present another person to this person who can appear to suffer a similar grief, the first person will shift her attention to the second person and offer support.  She then forgets her own grief symptoms and her own vital force will rise to help heal the other person’s grief thereby healing herself (grief support groups).  Amazing!  It’s just a natural law.

4.  The claim that there is no proof that Homeopathy has ever cured anyone is another false and unscientific premise.  Science has countless amounts of empirical evidence that people who receive Homeopathic treatment did improve because the patient's test numbers return to normal, growths shrink, inflammations reduce, and functions return.  These are often incurable cases according to traditional medicine and yet they unscientifically conclude that it was just some spontaneous remission.  Further, the allopaths always want to do their comparison tests on Homeopathy by defining the test as a single remedy treating a specific condition.  So therefore, they would want every test case of arthritis treated with rhus-tox and then compared with their anti inflammatories.  When challenged to define the tests in terms of treating the subjects with Homeopathy vs. allopathy, the allopaths often run for the hills.  However, now some allopaths have accepted the challenge and have discovered that indeed, those receiving Homeopathic treatment via, remedies which fit each individual, improvement rates are higher for Homeopathy.  In a proper test, the Homeopath takes each individual case and gives the remedy which fits that case, so if you have 50 people suffering arthritis, 50 different remedies could have been used in the test.

5.  Though placebo effect can and does happen, any experienced Homeopath knows when an improvement is placebo and when it is real.  The fact is, placebo effects are short term and can’t even happen to young children.  It may take several attempts before the best remedy is found in a case and until then, it is clear that there had been no real improvement.  Once the best remedy has been found, then results are observable, measurable, repeatable, profound and sustained.  This flies in the face of any charge of placebo effect or any claim of scientific method by the medical industrial complex.

I hope this little diatribe of mine helps you to see that charges against Homeopathy may not be quite so scientifically motivated and that there is plenty of scientific evidence as to why Homeopathy does indeed help many people world wide who suffer from disease.  As my final statement of proof that Homeopathy does indeed work, I charge that Homeopathy has survived for over 200 years in a hostile and often malicious environment opposed to all the might and wealth of the medical monopolies because the millions of people who use it know that it is working and don’t need self appointed self aggrandizing experts telling them what is real and what isn’t.

As an update to this article on February 11, 2011, I want to point out that it has been brought to may attention that the anti Homeopathy campaign has become increasingly organized and vicious.  I don’t believe any amount of disagreement over world view and methods could account for this level of viciousness and organization.  I suspect that this is happening not because they don’t believe Homeopathy works, but quite the opposite.  This much effort falls into the category of:  “Me doest think you protest too loudly.”

All statements here are not claims to cure or treat any disease, provide any health benefit, are for educational and thoughtful purposes only, and are not medical advice.  If you need medical advice, please seek a qualified health care provider.

Every day I get numerous calls from people who have figured out that traditional health care is very corrupt and is harming them, so they want to try Holistic Homeopathic treatment because they have heard it has no side effects and that people all over the world get very good and lasting results. Then they proceed to ask me if I take health insurance.  When I explain to them that insurance will not pay for Homeopathy in the U.S. they often decide not to use Homeopathy.  

Now I understand that if you have health insurance, you feel it is only fair that your insurance should cover any health care you want.  Sadly, this is far from the case and was intended to be so from the inception of the National Affordable Health Care Act.  If enough consumers were to really push the government hard, they might succeed in getting Homeopathy coverage, but this would be a disaster and an end for Homeopathy as an effective Holistic method established after centuries of development.  In this blog I will lay out the specific reasons for this in hopes you will see that it is in your best interest to keep Homeopathy completely separated from the corrupt system you are trying to find an alternative to.

Homeopathy is principle based healthcare:  This is very different from traditional healthcare which is materialistic, theory, political and profit based healthcare. In the U.S. only privileged (materialistic evidence based) treatments are accepted.  Because Homeopathy operates on principles based on vitalism (life precedes matter) and immutable natural laws as given by Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathy, it can never fit this evidence based system as the authorities define it.  If the system did accept Homeopathy, Homeopathy would have to be corrupted from a vitalistic method of principles to a materialistic based method of theory.  They would demand that remedies be used in low potency to treat pathology. Gone would be treating the whole person or the notion that mental and emotional symptoms are most important in selecting Homeopathic medicines.  Gone would be the application of the principles of individuation to select the deepest acting remedies.  Gone would be the use of high potencies remedies needed to effect deep mental and behavioral change.  Gone would be the application of Herring's Laws of Cure to measure healing.  Gone would be 90 percent of our medicines known to be very effective when applied in accordance with individuation.  Gone would be application of the first law of being a healer, which is to cure the sick.

Greed insurance corporations:  Insurance companies motived by profit would control and regulate Homeopathy to their end and not for the purpose of curing the sick. They would reject the notion of the long consultations to find the core issues and demand less money and time be spent on patients in accordance with their model.  They might even go so far as to encourage you to take cheaper corrupted counterfeit Homeopathic care which couldn't help you just to keep you away from expensive traditional treatments they don't want to pay for.

Greed of licensed practitioners:  Once upon a time, traditional medical care was not so corrupt and destructive.  When health insurance arrived on the scene, it immediately appealed to unprincipled physicians who saw the opportunity to exploit both patients and insurance companies.  Everyone knows this and yet people who want an alternative would have the same thing happen to Homeopathy.  Once Homeopathy goes down this road it will attract practitioners who are motived by greed and prestige. The war between practitioner and insurance company greed would turn Homeopathy into another bureaucratic nightmare. No way!

Control of education and training:  Currently in the U.S. there are few Homeopathic schools as there is little demand for Homeopathy thanks to suppression of the authoritarian system.  However, these few schools and teachers are teaching Classical Homeopathy in a accordance with it's founder, great tradition of practitioners and teachers, and in accordance to Homeopathic training used in Homeopathic friendly countries. If the system decided to allow insurance coverage and government subsidies to Homeopathy, they will insist on controlling that education and training to serve their ends of profit and control.  Often these interests are a guild of practitioners themselves who want a monopoly to keep supply low and prices high. 

Privacy:  The new system in the U.S. requires all records of all approved licensed providers and treatments be stored in a central database.  There is no deeper more thorough investigation of a person than the Homeopathic method.  That information in the hands of someone who doesn't have your well being at heart could be devastating.  Currently, when you receive Homeopathic treatment by your private practitioner, your records are confidential and inaccessible to anyone but your practitioner.  Do you want to lose this privacy?

So if you are seeking Homeopathic treatment I hope you will give this information due consideration.  You need an alternative to what you are being offered by a corrupt system, but you must support the fact that this alternative must remain free of the corrupting system you don't want to use.  If it turns out that the people who want an alternative to the corrupt system won't pay for the service unless it's part of the corrupt system, then this very beneficial alternative will soon be unavailable to them.  In it's place will, at best, be a mere vestigial counterfeit of Homeopathy.  The choice is yours.