Author: Maeve Smith
Natural Medicine Treatment: Part Two: Remedies
Friday, 10th October, 2008 at 12:38 pm, Isle of Wight
In part one of Maeve’s article, she looked at the dreaded ‘flu and covered some of herbal preparations that can help. As a registered and experienced homeopathic practitioner, Maeve sets out below some of the homeopathic remedies that she has found helps keep the runny noses at bay. Ed
Remedies
There are over 50 remedies in the homeopathic materia medica indicated for flu, here are just a few of the most common remedies I use for flu in my practice.
But first:- how to give homeopathic remedies-
Remedies if bought from a shop usually come as pills; remedies can be taken straight into the mouth or dissolved in a glass or bottle of water.
I recommend putting 4 tablets crushed in a bottle with 150mls of water, this is then sipped at intervals. This method is both economical and the shaking between doses increases the strength of the remedy incrementally. It is a lot cheaper to buy remedies directly from a homeopath.
Aconite
* Symptoms come on suddenly, from one moment to the next,
* There is anxiety and restlessness
* A high temperature accompanies symptoms.
* Cold winds can be a cause of an aconite state.
* Very good Children’s remedy useful for earache, fright, croup, viruses, infectious illnesses common in childhood with accompanying Aconite symptom profile.
Bryonia
* Wants to be left alone completely, they are irritable and do not want or like to be disturbed, they are like a bear with a sore head.
* Everything feels worse if they move and so they want to lie as still as possible preferably on the side that hurts the worst as pressure helps.
* Big chest remedy and one of our pneumonia/pleurisy remedies, also headaches and broken bones! The keynote of this remedy is that all movement aggravates including breathing.
Baptisia
* Sudden onset like Aconite and is indicated for quite serious states where the person feels “scattered all about the bed” or the person complains of being broken or double and tosses about the bed trying to fit the pieces together.
* The face looks dusky, heavy besotted and there is delirium and always muscle soreness.
* Discharges will be smelly.
* This remedy will need to be repeated often until improvement is evident
Belladonna
* Rapid onset of symptoms, which are worse or peak at 3pm and after midnight.
* Very high radiating temperature that is still felt in the fingers after touching the patient. It is a dry heat; the patient has delirium and is restless sometimes with a desire to escape and may jump up out of bed confused or may just be restless. The pupils are big and the eyes look glassy, shiny. Nightmares involving black animals are common.
* Lemonade is often craved.
* Belladonna is a fast acting remedy for localised inflammation so if there are no results after 6 doses it is quite likely the wrong remedy or puss has already formed. This remedy will bring the fever down and quieten the patient so they sleep soundly,
* Pains are of a throbbing nature and the patient favours a darkened room and may become fearful when disturbed needing reassurance. Great children’s remedy, useful for teething, earaches, and common viruses and infectious diseases common in childhood.
Euphatorium
* Terrible excruciating bone and muscle pains, the patient feels as if there bones have been broken, accompanied with a headache, as are all these remedies with throbbing pains. This remedy is worse at night. Useful for flu, and any injury or illness with bone and muscle pains.
Gelsemium
* Slow, creeping onset, unlike Aconite, Belladonna and Baptisia, people report feeling rough over a couple of days,
* Chills, sometimes alternating with heat that run up and down the spine and up the back of the head.
* Person feels HEAVY tired, weak, and shaky or shivery, there is a bursting headache, the eyes hurt to move them and the eyes feel heavy. There is an absence of thirst and some people report feeling a little better for passing urine. Dizziness or vertigo is common. Useful for any illness with the accompanying symptom profile.
If you do not have a homeopath to call on, do not hesitate to call for professional medical advice in the event that the remedy given or self prescribed has not helped after 6 doses. Self prescribing with homeopathic remedies is not a substitute for professional homeopathic advice or medical advice.
Maeve Smith LCCH RShom (Licensed & Registered with the Society of Homeopaths)
Natural Wisdom Homeopathic Practice. Tel : 01983 559006.
Images
Runny nosed possum image: Kthypryn
Aconite Flower: Chidorian
Gelsemium sempervirens: Chuuken Hachigou
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Again, in the interests of balance, I think VentnorBlog readers should be made aware of the profound scepticism that exists regarding homeopathic remedies. Some herbal remedies (such as St John’s Wort for depression) have proven to work, or at least do more good than harm. Homeopathic remedies, in which the substance used is diluted to a point where it is statistically highly unlikely that even a single molecule of the original substance remains, are something different altogether.
Edzard Ernst, the first professor of complementary medicine in the UK, suggests that Britons spend £500 million each year on unproven or disproven alternative therapies. This year Professor Ernst, co-author of ‘Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial’, wrote to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society saying that he felt that they were in breach of their ethical code by not forcing high street chemists who sell homeopathic remedies to warn customers of their unproven efficacy.
“My plea,” wrote Professor Ernst, “is simply for honesty. Let people buy what they want, but tell them the truth about what they are buying. These treatments are biologically implausible and the clinical tests have shown they don’t do anything at all in human beings. The argument that this information is not relevant or important for customers is quite simply ridiculous.”
People should be aware that homeopathy is a faith-based medicine, rather than an evidence-based one; that influenza and colds are self-limiting unless your immune system is compromised. If readers want evidence-based advice on treatments for colds and flu, Professor Ron Eccles’ (director of the Common Cold Research Centre at Cardiff University) advice in the Independent can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/457hv5
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hi i think when you find modern tablets are not working or have awful side effects you will try anything , at the moment partner useing crushed raspberries for skin cancer and , wait for it the area seems smaller ???
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Hi Jimmy, thank you for your open minded scepticism and comments regarding my article. I to was sceptical of natural medicine and homeopathy prior to my personal experience of homeopathy curing my allergic rhinitis and controlling my asthma over 15 years ago. However it would appear by the many positive double blind trials which can be viewed at (www.homeopathy-soh.org) and the many millions who use it around the world that scepticism alone can not disprove natural medicine. I would like to also bring your attention to the fact that natural medicine has been around for thousands of years and conventional medicine for only 200 or so years and it has got a very interesting history, mercury, thalidomide…. It may interest you to know that I have great respect for our modern medical profession but will always look to homeopathy and natural medicine before I turn to ‘emergency medicine’. Finally it is my belief that Pharmaceutical companies have no interest in curing people as that would be detrimental to their profits. I believe that whilst our Doctors and Nurses are truly committed to ‘doing no harm’ Pharmaceutical companies are more interested in profiting from disease rather than health. Autonomy in health and patient choice needs to be protected at all cost. We all have that right Jimmy.
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I am also sceptical of the Pharaceutical Industry and modern ‘conventional’ medicine, but I am also a sceptical rationalist. Many effective medicines – including analgesics and anaesthetics – are of course of herbal origin, e.g. apsirin, codeine etc. But homeopathy is not the same as herablism. It is based on the principles of ‘like causes like’, and extreme dilution, with an alleged ‘molecular memory’ that doesn’t stand up to any kind of rational scrutiny. (Never ask a homeopath for orange squash!)
I think it is specious to argue that the antiquity of a treatment or approach is significant if it still fails all reasonable clinical tests. And in the case of homeopathy, the more rigorous and extensive the trials, the more transparently ineffective homeopathy has been shown to be – as far as I can assess and understand all the evidence I have seen.
I think there are many areas of life where business models, profit motive, competition etc are inappropriate, and I would include education and health care provision and scientific research in that list. I would say that profit motives have damaged standard pharmaceutical research and health care provision – but I am also suspicious of the entire ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ industry. Very few practitioners do it for free, or purely out of the goodness of their hearts. They make money, often out of the same credulousness, ignorance, and craven worship of ‘authority’ and ‘expertise’ that compels the unwell to unquestioningly trust conventional medics.
The injunction that a practitioner must ‘do no harm’ to the patient also applies to complementary and alternative practitioners. And there is evidence that, for example, some homeopaths have promoted their treaments in cases where they are inappropriate, ineffective, and may even cause death or injury: e.g. prevention and treatment of malaria. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that conventional medicine – and its misuse – undoubtedly injures and kills significant numbers of people.
Homeopathy undoubtedly provides benefits, but the evidence suggest that this is through placebo effects – which includes homeopathic practioners taking the time to listen and counsel their patients in the way that ’standard’ medical practioners rarely do. This is valuable – and I would not condemn anyone for choosing this approach over a perfunctory 10 minute appointment with an NHS GP that ends in a prescription for something that’s expensive, often unnecessary, and often producing unpleasant side-effects. Particularly when perhaps often the cause of the ailment is related to stress, poverty, and poor diet and lack of exercise.
I too wish to protect autonomy and patient choice, but I do not agree with Maeve Smith that these should be necessarily “protected at all cost” – they should not be protected at the cost of reasonable evidence or rational thinking on life-threatening conditions and the most effective treatments for them.
Assessing clinical trials is complex, but I think there is sufficient research now to show that homeopathy is most likely a placebo and faith based treatment. We can all advance anecdotal evidence about the alleged effectiveness of treatments, and whilst it’s an individual choice to believe what one wants, I am uncomfortable with the idea of any practitioner exploiting patients’ basic scientific and medical ignorance for profit, or criticizing standard medicine merely because it is perceived as ‘modern’, profit based, or because it has made high-profile mistakes when corrupted by profit motives.
The charity Sense About Science has produced a useful pdf file about homeopathy which summarizes the evidence. It also covers the difference between a placebo effect and a clinical effect, and also mentions (and dismisses) the controversial claim that veterinary homeopathy is effective. If you have any doubts, Sense About Science also provides a helpline you can ring.
http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/pdf/SenseAboutHomeopathy.pdf
A true sceptic is sceptical of all claims, whether standard, conventional or alternative. You have a choice, but why not make sure it is a fully informed one?
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