Homeopathy

---

Homeopathy
Small Doses Yield Big Results

After years of trying to fend off his hay fever with antihistamines, Richard D. Fischer was fed up.

“It was so bad that by the time I blew my nose and washed my hands, my nose would be dripping again. It was getting to the point that I could barely practice dentistry,” says Dr. Fischer (D.D.S.), a dentist in Annandale, Virginia.

Then a patient told him about a homeopathic physician nearby who had helped many people cope with their allergies. Dr. Fischer was skeptical, but on his third visit to the homeopathic doctor, a remarkable thing happened.

“He gave me a remedy that literally popped my sinuses open. You could actually hear it happen. It shocked the daylights out of me. When I experienced for myself what a profound change homeopathy could make, I knew I had to learn more about it,” says Dr. Fischer, president of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, a 500-member group of dentists, physicians and researchers that promotes the use of safe dental materials and procedures.

After 15 years of training from the National Center for Homeopathy, a nonprofit educational service in Alexandria, Virginia, that conducts seminars for physicians and dentists, Dr. Fischer says he now uses homeopathy to treat everything from bad breath to toothaches.

“I find it surprising that more dentists and doctors aren’t using homeopathy,” Dr. Fischer says. “It provides so many benefits with so little risk to the patient.......I can’t imagine practicing dentistry without it.”

What Is It?

Homeopathy, a form of medicine that relies on minute amounts of herbs, minerals and other substances to stimulate a person’s natural defenses and help the body heal itself, often tames illnesses with a single dose of medicine and causes virtually no side effects, proponents say. Worldwide, homeopathy is commonly practiced in many countries, including India, Mexico and Russia. About four in every ten people in France and one in three people in En gland—including the British royal family—use homeopathy, according to the National Center for Homeopathy.

In the United States, however, homeopathy is less well known. It was introduced in this country in 1825, and by 1890, there were 14,000 homeopathic physicians, 22 homeopathic medical schools and more than 100 homeopathic hospitals nationwide. But less than 50 years later, homeopathy was virtually forgotten in the United States as reliance on Western medicine steadily grew and scientists developed antibiotics and other powerful drugs that seemed capable of eradicating any disease.

But homeopathy is experiencing a renaissance in this country. Since 1970, when there were fewer than 200 practitioners nationwide, there has been a surge of interest in the medical community. While their number is small compared with the number of Western practitioners, today there are at least 2,500 doctors, dentists, chiropractors and nurse-practitioners who regularly prescribe homeopathic remedies, according to the National Center for Homeopathy.

Each year, more than 2.5 million people seek homeopathic care. Retail sales of homeopathic remedies have increased about 25 percent a year since 1988 and now top $200 million annually. In comparison, Americans spent $290 million for over-the-counter antacids and $56 billion for prescription medicines in 1992. But that disparity is somewhat misleading, proponents say, since homeopathic remedies cost a fraction of most conventional drugs. A typical homeopathic remedy, containing 30 to 100 doses, costs from $3 to $5, says Chris Meletis, N.D., a naturopathic physician and medicinary director at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon.

Like Cures Like

Homeopathy, which is derived from two Greek words, literally means “similar suffering.” Although the concept dates back to at least the tenth century b.c., modern homeopathy is based on the observations of Samuel Hahnemann, an eighteenth-century German physician. Dr. Hahnemann considered the medical practices of the time barbaric, because patients were regularly bled, leeched and blistered to purge them of fluids believed to cause most illnesses.

Disillusioned, he quit medicine and became a translator of scientific texts, says Maesimund Panos, M.D., a homeopathic physician in Tipp City, Ohio, and co-author with Jane Heimlich of Homeopathic Medicine at Home. But Dr. Hahnemann continued to experiment on himself with various substances in hopes of finding a more humane way of healing people. He suspected that disease represented an imbalance in what he called the body’s vital force (modern homeopaths believe he meant the immune system) and that only a small stimulus was needed to restore balance in the body’s natural defenses.

But that hunch didn’t fully bloom until he began experiments to discover why small doses of quinine, an extract from a Peruvian tree bark, cured malaria. To his surprise, Dr. Hahnemann found that large doses of the drug had unexpected effects. After taking massive doses of quinine for several days, he developed trembling, heart palpitations and other symptoms of malaria. As soon as he stopped taking the drug, his symptoms disappeared. From this experiment, Dr. Hahnemann developed his belief that “like is cured by like,” also known as the as law of similars, which is the basis of homeopathy.

Dr. Hahnemann theorized that if large amounts of a substance such as quinine cause symptoms of illness in a healthy person, then small doses of that same substance should cure an ill person who has similar symptoms. So if you have a cold, for example, taking a small amount of a substance that in large doses would cause coldlike symptoms should cure your sniffles, according to Dr. Hahnemann’s theory. But the remedy will work only if its pattern of induced symptoms matches the symptoms of the ill person.

Dr. Hahnemann and his early followers conducted more experiments, called provings, in which they gave large amounts of herbs, minerals and animal extracts to healthy people and recorded all of the symptoms they developed. Later, Dr. Hahnemann compiled these experiments into a book, Materia Medica, a reference guide first published in 1811 that helps practitioners match a patient’s symptoms with a corresponding homeopathic remedy.

Making Poisons Work for Us

But Dr. Hahnemann had to overcome one major obstacle. Some of the substances he used, such as arsenic, mercury and Belladonna (deadly nightshade), were extremely poisonous. So Dr. Hahnemann diluted the substances in water and alcohol until he believed he had safe doses that would trigger healing in the body without causing any harmful effects. In fact, Dr. Hahnemann theorized that as the doses got smaller, the remedy not only would become less toxic but would actually be more potent and effective as well.

Today, more than 1,200 substances are recognized as homeopathic remedies. These remedies are diluted so that 1 drop of a medicine is mixed with either 9 or 99 drops of a solution that is 87 percent alcohol and 13 percent distilled water, creating a dilution of 1 to 10 or 1 to 100, Dr. Meletis says. This mixture is vigorously shaken, then 1 drop of the mixture is diluted and shaken into another 9 or 99 drops of solution. After about 24 dilutions, there usually isn’t one molecule of the original homeopathic medicine left in the solution, Dr. Meletis says. This process, however, often continues for 1,000 or more dilutions and shakings to increase the solution’s potency, homeopaths say.

Homeopathic remedies are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Available as pill, powder or liquid, these remedies are considered safe enough that 95 percent of them are sold over the counter in the United States in many health food stores, according to the National Center for Homeopathy. (When buying, remember that remedies that are labeled X have been diluted 1 to 10, while remedies labeled C, which are more potent, have been diluted 1 to 100. So a 3C remedy, for example, has been diluted three times at a ratio of 1 to 100 and is the equivalent of one drop of homeopathic remedy in one million drops of a solution of water and alcohol.)

“Even poisons have a purpose in this world if you use them right,” says Deborah Gordon, M.D., a homeopathic physician in Ashland, Oregon. “The important thing to remember about the remedies is that we’re using very small amounts that are diluted to the point that they’re just a mirror of the substances.”

In fact, a toxicology expert has calculated that swallowing 100 times the homeopathic dose of the poison strychnine would still be too diluted to harm even a very young child.

Emerging Scientific Proof

Much of the support for homeopathy is anecdotal. But proponents say that most conventional medical studies of homeopathy are flawed because these studies attempt to measure the effectiveness of one homeopathic remedy in fighting one disease. Since homeopaths believe that individuals can have the same disease but different symptoms and therefore need different remedies, they claim any study requiring that every participant be given the same homeopathic remedy is bound to have inconclusive results.

“Homeopathic physicians have always been more involved with caring for their patients and haven’t had the time or motivation to do these kinds of controlled studies,” Dr. Panos says.

That is changing, however, as more homeopaths conduct research that proponents say is likely to prove that homeopathy does work. In a study of 478 people who had flu symptoms, French scientists found that 17 percent of the people who received homeopathic treatment improved within 48 hours of beginning treatment compared with 10 percent of the individuals who took placebos, compounds that look like the real medicine but have no pharmacological effect. A group of 40 Nicaraguan children who received homeopathic treatment recovered from bouts of diarrhea an average of one day earlier than children who were given placebos, according to researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.

In another study often cited by homeopaths, Scottish researchers gave homeopathic grass remedies to 56 people with hay fever. After five weeks, these people were less likely to have runny noses, irritated eyes and other symptoms of hay fever than a group that took placebos.

Let the Spirit Move You

Although these studies suggest that homeopathy may be effective, no one really knows how it works. But part of the answer may have to do with the dilutions and shakings mentioned earlier. Dr. Hahnemann believed that vigorously shaking the solution during each dilution releases a “spiritlike” essence that has the potential to heal the body.

Now some homeopaths think they know the science behind Dr. Hahnemann’s insight. The shakings, they believe, energize a solution with an electromagnetic impression of the original homeopathic substance. This impression remains long after the molecules of the original substance have been diluted. It may be the distinct electromagnetic energy pattern of each remedy that seems to jolt the body’s defenses into action against a specific ailment, Dr. Panos says.

Researchers at Hahnemann Medical College (now Hahnemann University School of Medicine) in Philadelphia, for example, examined 23 homeopathic remedies to determine nuclear magnetic resonance, a measure of the activity of small molecules. The researchers found that the homeopathic remedies had active subatomic particles—a sign that the remedies had been energized—while the subatomic particles in a group of placebo remedies were inactive.

“The key is the shaking,” says Kelvin Levitt, P.D., a registered pharmacist in Randallstown, Maryland, who has made and used homeopathic remedies for more than 17 years. “It releases pure healing energy into the solution, and when you take it, that’s what causes the body to start healing.”

How Homeopathy Can Help You

Before you treat yourself or go to a homeopath, there a few other things you should know. First, homeopaths say they don’t treat specific diseases. Instead, they treat the whole person based on all of his emotional and physical symptoms. So depending on their symptoms, a person who has a wart and a person who has a headache may be given the same remedy.

On the other hand, homeopaths also believe that two people with the same illness can have very different symptoms and need very different remedies.

It’s unlikely, for instance, that your migraine and your boss’s migraine will be very similar, Dr. Panos says. You might feel better with an ice pack on your head, but your boss might feel better with a warm cloth. You might feel awful when you move around, but his pain might be relieved if he gets up and walks around. You might get your migraines in the morning, but he might get them in the late afternoon.

“Nobody, from a homeopathic standpoint, is a textbook case, because we’re all individuals,” Dr. Panos says. “The main focus of homeopathy is to figure out what symptoms are present in each individual.”

Unlike a medical doctor who might give you aspirin for your headache, a decongestant for your stuffy nose, lozenges for your sore throat and a tranquilizer to lessen your anxiety, a homeopath looks for a single remedy that helps all of your symptoms.

“When a person is ill, we’re looking for the remedy that in the provings caused the symptoms most similar to the physical and emotional symptoms he displays,” Dr. Panos says. “To get the best results, you need to find the one remedy that is most similar.”

Often a homeopath will spend more than an hour with each new patient, trying to learn as much as possible about all of his symptoms, Dr. Panos says. A homeopath, for instance, might ask if you feel worse at a particular time of day, if you crave certain foods such as lemons or bacon or if you’ve developed any sudden anxieties such as a fear of water or dogs.

“Common symptoms are worth very little as a prescribing tool,” Dr. Panos says. “Knowing that you have a cough really doesn’t tell us much. But there are certain characteristics of a cough, such as whether it occurs when you enter a warm room or as you’re going outside, that help us narrow down to the right remedy.”

Give Yourself a Helping Hand

Although it sounds complex, homeopaths say the basics are easy to learn and many people can develop enough homeopathic skills to treat most of their families’ minor ailments at home.

“People who use homeopathy as primary home care or for first aid don’t have to go to the doctor very often except for really serious problems,” says Jacquelyn Wilson, M.D., a homeopathic physician in San Diego. “They can handle many problems at home and never have to go back to the doctor for a lot of stuff, such as earaches, colds, flus, rashes and sore throats.”

Try the remedies suggested in this book, but if you’re serious about using homeopathy more extensively, then practitioners suggest that you get at least 20 hours of instruction from a trained homeopath or join a self-help study group. The National Center for Homeopathy has a list of publications, classes and local study groups that can help you hone your skills (refer to the resource list on page 637).

If you’re uncertain which remedy is best for your condition, many health food stores sell combination homeopathic remedies for minor ailments such as colds, flus, headaches and allergies. Since these combinations contain several homeopathic remedies commonly used to treat an ailment, proponents say there’s a good chance that the one remedy you need will be contained in the mixture. The other remedies shouldn’t have any effect.

But if your symptoms persist, no matter if you’re taking a single or combination remedy, see a homeopath. He may recommend another homeopathic remedy or suggest conventional care such as antibiotics or surgery if you have a life-threatening infection or disease, a serious burn, internal bleeding, broken bones or another severe medical problem.

“There are some cases where it is better to have surgery or other treatment and then use homeopathy to help heal the body afterward,” says Cynthia Mervis Watson, M.D., a family practice physician specializing in homeopathic and herbal therapies in Santa Monica, California.