One of the natural healing methods I grew up around is homeopathy,
but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I started looking into it a little
deeper and learning what exactly it entails. I also took a class on Homeopathic Cell Salts to further my knowledge.
It’s definitely in a league of its own, being quite different from
herbal supplements or Western medicine.
We take Harlee to a homeopathic pediatrician in St. Louis, so other than
a small dose of antibiotics he had to be on several months ago (I’ll share that
story a different time) that we combated heavily with probiotics,
he has never had any conventional medicine in his system. And we’ve used homeopathy for quite a few
things – he’s not some super child by any means, he’s definitely had his bouts
of sickness or ailments – and homeopathy has ALWAYS done the trick. He was a very colicky kid as a newborn with
lots of tummy aches that kept us all up all night, which was fought with Nux Vomica from his
pediatrician, along with multiple trips to the chiropractor, and he was a new
baby in about two months (normal colic lasts 3-6 months). In his early days of figuring out how to take
steps and keep his balance, he fell and twisted his ankle. That was a scary night – poor guy just screamed
and screamed, which he hadn’t done in nearly a year since we’d solved the colic
problem, and anytime he pulled himself up on anything he’d clearly avoid
putting pressure on the affected ankle.
Crawling was difficult, putting his pants on was a chore… we were
beginning to wonder if he broke something.
We went to the ER early the next morning after his fall, had x-rays
done, and fortunately it was just a sprain, not a break. But that didn’t help his pain… so we went to
the pediatrician and were given Arnica,
and within hours of administering the first dose he was putting weight back on
that foot like nothing ever happened.
Amazing! And now just a couple of weeks ago,
we visited his pediatrician to see what we could do about his ridiculous cough
and persistent runny nose. I held off
and held off, not wanting to be one of those parents that race to the doctor
just because of the sniffles, but seriously, nearly two months of a drippy nose
and two weeks of a cough is enough.
Sure, the peppermint and eucalyptus fumes he’d inhale at night and at
bath time definitely relieved a lot of it, but it wasn’t getting rid of the
problem. Added to the fact that he had a
low-grade fever a couple nights before our visit to the doctor, it was time to
just do something about it. Pulsatilla was prescribed, and
his cough was reduced to pretty much nothing (he might still bring up one
smaller cough maybe once or twice a day, if that, as opposed to the great fits
he’d go into in the previous weeks) and his nose is finally starting to show
signs of giving us all some relief. And
Harlee isn’t the only one who’s benefited from homeopathy lately – I recently
visited my own naturopathic/homeopathic doctor to help get my system back in
order after a long enough time dealing with postpartum depression, and she got
me on a VERY high dose of chamomilla,
which is calming and soothing in low doses (I’ll give Harlee some if he’s
feeling crabby or teething), but in this high of a dose it helps relieve the
anxiety of trauma. Let me tell you, I
was a new person overnight. I’m not
exaggerating. It was literally
overnight. I went from feeling exhausted
from trying so hard to remain positive about life, trying to not think about
Harlee’s birth outcome, trying to find the bright sides, trying not to worry
about the future, to the next morning feeling like “Yeah! I got this!
Life is good and I’m thankful for all my many blessings!” It was suddenly easy to find the positives,
it was easy to not think about Harlee’s birth and remain in the present, and
just appreciate everything I had in life.
Crazy!
Even better? No side-effects, no
dependency, no stress on the organs.
Okay so how does this stuff work, anyway? Well, it’s definitely a curious thing, that’s
for sure. Let me give you a little
history, taken from Miranda Castro’s book Homeopathy
for Pregnancy, Birth, and Baby’s First Year. Homeopathy was founded by Dr. Samuel
Hahnemann in the late 1700s when he translated the works of Dr. William Cullens
and learned about Peruvian bark, or Cinchona,
from which quinine is derived (the treatment for malaria). Hahneman tested small doses on himself, and
found that he experienced similar symptoms of malaria, which went away as soon
as he stopped taking the doses.
Therefore, the thing that was used to cure a person with malaria, caused
malaria-like symptoms in a healthy person.
Thus the concept of homeopathy – like cures like. Hahnemann continued experimenting with this
concept by observing the symptoms a certain substance produced when it was
administered to a healthy person, and in turn learning what that substance’s
healing properties were. He set up his
medical practice to treat patients in this way, and found more and more that
his theory was truly effective.
Unfortunately there were side effects to his medicines, so he started
exploring the outcomes of using smaller doses.
Well, when he diluted it to create smaller doses, sure there weren’t as
many, or any, side effects, but it wasn’t curing the ailment as well anymore,
either. He then experimented with a new
way of diluting his medicines – before he just stirred the substance, so this
time he instead shook it vigorously, which he called “succussion”. Alas, the medicine no longer produced side
effects, and he also discovered that the more he diluted it using his new succussion
method, the better his remedy cured! He
numbered his remedies by how many times they’d been diluted, so if it was
diluted six times (which meant one hundredth of the liquid was taken out each
time and 99/100 alcohol was added) it was a 6C.
He found this “potency” to be effective, and prescribed at that level
until he discovered that the more diluted it was, the more effective it
was! He worked his way up to prescribing
to the 30th potency, and his successors took dilution even further
from there. Of course the conventional
medical profession at the time frowned on this – they couldn’t explain how
something so dilute could actually work, and so they could not accept it. But homeopathy survived nonetheless and spread
pretty quickly – it was simply that effective!
One of many things that I like about homeopathy is that it treats the
WHOLE PERSON. “The concept of treating
the ‘whole person’ is an essential element of classical homeopathy. The basis of this belief is that symptoms,
diseases, or pains do not exist in isolation, but are a reflection of how the
whole person is coping with stress.” –Homeopathy
for Pregnancy, Birth, and Baby’s First Year Chapter 1. Take Harlee, for instance. His cough is a symptom that I wanted to
address. The doctor took into account as
many aspects of his recent personality and behavior too – he’s been moody,
especially at night, he’s been clingy, sensitive, wasn’t sleeping as well, been
kinda off-balance (I was wondering if his ears had something going on with them
even though he wasn’t showing signs of an earache), he’s had a thick nasal
discharge, the cough (obviously), and felt better if he was outside or held and
rocked. Well the doctor prescribed
Pulsatilla 200C
(you should know what that means now!).
I went home and looked up Pulsatilla in my book Homeopathic
Medicine for Children and Infants by Dana Ullman, MPH and, wow, wouldn’t ya know, it hit the nail on
the head in its description of Mr. Harlee!
“Emotional, sensitive, moody, relieved if in the open air.” A few of the primary indicated conditions are
“common cold, cough, earache, fever, insomnia”… So crazy! I sometimes forget about that element of
homeopathy – that it treats the whole person.
I’ll get sucked into the modern, conventional way of thinking, that “Okay
he’s got a cough so we have to fix the cough” and forget that, no, it’s not
JUST a cough going on here, we’re gonna look at the BIG PICTURE. Well, two days later, after administering
both doses, his cough has pretty much subsided, his nose is looking a bit
better, but interestingly enough his balance has improved, he’s not as clingy,
he’s sleeping WAY better (no more crying!), and he’s a lot happier (he’ll just giggle
at random now…). Impressive. Trust me, I still question the concept – it’s
easy to when you’re surrounded by people who only know of or only use
chemical-based “medicines” that treat one or two symptoms at a time and are in
the form of a pill or a liquid with actual physical measurements instead of
something so diluted it’s pretty much not even there… yeah, it’s easy to
question homeopathy! Especially when we
leave the doctor’s office with a little bitty envelope filled with the remedy,
which is in the form of TEENY TINY
little sugar pellets that are literally three, maybe four times the size of the
period at the end of this sentence. I’m
supposed to give him four of these little dots every half hour for four
hours? And that’ll fix his problem? Oooookaaayyyy… Yeah, it’s enough to bring out
the skeptic in even myself. But, it
worked. I KNOW this stuff works, I truly
believe in it, but still, EVERY TIME
I’m given a remedy I’m ALWAYS surprised when it works. Which pretty much eradicates the placebo
effect, right? :)
So that’s one of the natural remedies we use around here. For smaller cases at home that don’t require
a trip to the doctor, I just have bottles of Hyland’s
Homeopathics on hand in my medicine cabinet. Arnica for bumps and bruises, Aconite for
fevers, Nux Vomica for indigestion, Ipecacuanha for nausea and vomiting (that's better for adults, though), and Chamomilla for irritability and teething, to name a
few, all in 30X potency (that’s usually the dosage you can buy without a
prescription).
I couldn’t be happier that we have this healthcare option available to
us, both at the local health food and supplement store in town and online, and
from a qualified doctor nearby. Having
an effective option for healing that doesn’t cause any side effects, doesn’t
require putting dangerous chemicals in our bodies, and doesn’t stress our
organs is of huge importance to me. And
it works. I’m still not 100% sure HOW,
but it has for hundreds of years and it still does today, and I’ve seen the
positive results of it first-hand. I
intend to continue to use it, too, as my first choice before ever resorting to
conventional medicine!
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