How to Use Homeopathy Treat Domestic Violence

Over the past several years, we’ve seen the popularity of natural and herbal remedies steadily rise, coinciding with the explosion of demand for organic foods and natural household and personal-care products. Consumers have come to a greater understanding of the unwelcome side effects and dangerous properties of many common products, and many lack trust in ingredients that we are commonly told are safe. This phenomenon has led even those who have traditionally placed their faith in modern science and medicine to seek natural alternatives for conditions such as anxiety and depression.

If you follow this blog, you know about homeopathy and other natural treatments for anxiety, but in the course of your research you may have heard about something called homeopathy. Today we’ll take a look at whether or not homeopathic remedies for anxiety are safe and effective.

Homeopathy Basics

Homeopathy is practicing worldwide, especially in Europe, and in India, where it is considered one of that country’s national systems of medicine. This medical philosophy was born for much the same reason that so many of us today are seeking alternative medical treatments. In the late 1700s, German physician Samuel Hahnemann was appalled at how medicine was practiced in his day, which at that time included blood-letting and the use of poisons. He created the practice of homeopathy based on the belief that “like cures like” – that is, that you can actually cure disease with very small amounts of the same substances that in high doses cause disease.

These very small amounts are the source of controversy and skepticism for many in thescientific and medical community (more on that later), but homeopathic practitioners and proponents believe that ultra-high dilutions are what make the remedies effective, as they are supposed to trigger the body’s natural healing response, while the very low concentration of the active ingredient makes the medicine non-toxic.

The active ingredient in homeopathic medicine is typically a plant or mineral. The remedies are prepared in special pharmacies using a process of dilution and a type of vigorous shaking called succussion. These preparations are most commonly found in liquid solutions or in pill form, and are typically “prescribed” by trained homeopathic practitioners (called homeopaths), though the remedies are available over the counter without a prescription. Homeopathy proponents say that the remedies work immediately and recommend taking only one dose and waiting to see if symptoms are relieved before taking any more of the medicine.

Homeopathy for Anxiety

There are a number of purported homeopathic remedies for anxiety. Homeopaths tend to tailor their treatment plans to each individual patient’s circumstances, and the remedies themselves are also very specific in their indications. Rather than a few homeopathic remedies known for their general anxiety-fighting properties, there are nearly a dozen homeopathic preparations commonly used to treat highly specific types of anxiety and anxiety symptoms. Just a handful of these include:

Argentum nitricum: This is prescribed for those who are feeling a sense of uncertainty in their lives, perhaps in the lead-up to a big event such as wedding. These people experience a great deal of “what-if” thoughts and often crave sweets.

Calcarea carbonica: This is prescribed for patients who feel overwhelmed and fear having a breakdown – typically structured people who crave routine. They are often sluggish and fatigued.

Gelsemium: This remedy is given to those who have weak muscles, often as a result of performance anxiety. It is given to those who tend to be paralyzed by anxiety, and is used to treat agoraphobia.

Kali phosphoricum: Those who are prescribed this treatment tend to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, overworked, and oversensitive.

Phosphorus: This is prescribed to social and excitable people who fear of being alone and who are highly empathetic, which often drains them of energy.

Homeopathy Controversy

Homeopathy is one of the most controversial alternative medical therapies. It was developed by Samuel Hahnemann and is based on three main principles:

the principle of similars, the vital force principle, and the principle of potentization, the last causing the most questions about whether homeopathy actually works. Double-blind randomized trials have been performed to test the efficacy of homeopathic treatments, but these give mixed results and are problematic for a variety of reasons. But however dubious, science, particularly quantum theory, gives potential reasons for why homeopathy does work well enough to keep it from being completely dismissed, despite serious efforts to do so.

The principle of similars employs the practice of using substances which in a healthy person would cause the symptoms experienced by the ill person.

The vital force is the life force which is attached to any complex living organism. This principle also takes a person’s mental and emotional aspect into account, these being considered as important as the physical symptoms. When physical, emotional, and mental states are in disharmony vital force is diminished and disease springs up; when in balance, disease cannot thrive. Potentization is considered the most controversial of all three principles. When a solution is potentized, it is drastically diluted and shaken forcibly between each dilution or succussion. The controversy arises because often none of the molecules of the original substance are still present in the solution. This implies that the healing occurs as a result of the placebo effect, and while more impressive than healing through medicine, for the intent of a trial the results are insufficient to say one way or another.

Then how is that possible given that the patient is not actually ingesting anything? It is believed and suggested by experiments, that water has a sort of memory. This implies that although the original substance may have been diluted to where all molecules has disappeared, the water has been imprinted with its essence and is therefore able to carry forward its healing properties. This is similar to how people who have meaningful interactions change one another even when they are no longer in each other’s company. Then, given that water is the most easily absorbed solution, the energy of the substance is then directly transferred into the cells changing their energy and it is this change of energy that creates the healing.

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THE BIRTH OF COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

The essence of the change was a rebellion against orthodox medical science as taught and practised in the teaching hospitals, and the introduction of a series of radically different but all-embracing beliefs on the nature and treatment of disease. The empirical quack continued in the background and still exists today, although in an attenuated form. But the new irregulars—the literate ‘book-reading’ practitioners—were usually educated men and often medically qualified.

They were therefore not so much quacks (although frequently derided as such) as practitioners for whom the terms ‘alternative’ or ‘complementary’ is more appropriate. Indeed, supporters of CAM have good reason to object to the term ‘quackery’ being linked in any way with such practices as homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture and herbalism. It would be impossible to review the history of all the current forms of alternative medicine, so I am confining this paper to one of the earliest and still the most frequently used unorthodox system: homeopathy.

HOMEOPATHY

While it can scarcely compare in antiquity with Chinese or Indian medicine, homeopathy is the longest established CAM to have arisen in Europe.7 It was founded by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), who grew up in Meissen in Germany, received his medical degree in Erlangen in 1779, and died a millionaire in Paris in 1843. During his first fifteen years as a physician Hahnemann struggled desperately to make a living. One day, however, he made a discovery. He started to take regular doses of cinchona or ‘the bark’ (i.e. quinine). This, he said, produced all the symptoms of intermittent fever (malaria) but to a mild degree and without the characteristic rigors of that disease. This led Hahnemann to an idea which was published in 1796 as Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Power of Drugs, which was followed in 1810 by his famous work The Organon of the Healing Art.1

Hahnemann believed that if a patient had an illness, it could be cured by giving a medicine which, if given to a healthy person, would produce similar symptoms of that same illness but to a slighter degree. Thus, if a patient was suffering from severe nausea, he was given a medicine which in a healthy person would provoke mild nausea. By a process he called ‘proving’, Hahnemann claimed to be able to compile a selection of appropriate remedies. This led to his famous aphorism, ‘like cures like’, which is often called the ‘principle of similars’; and he cited Jenner's use of cowpox vaccination to prevent smallpox as an example.

The differences between orthodox medicine and homeopathy could hardly be more vivid. From its beginning homeopathy always began with a long consultation, lasting at least an hour, in which all aspects of the patient's illness and life were discussed—homeopaths like to stress that they practise ‘holistic medicine’—and the appropriate treatment chosen. In contrast, during the first half of the nineteenth century, when homeopathy was becoming established, orthodox medicine was immersed in the belief that advances in understanding disease could only come from a detailed correlation of symptoms and signs of the sick patient on the ward, and the findings at autopsy: clinico-pathological correlation. As Bichat famously put it put it at the very end of the eighteenth century:

‘For twenty years from morning to night you have taken notes at patients' bedsides... which, refusing to yield up their meaning, offer you a succession of incoherent phenomena. Open up a few corpses: you will dissipate at once the darkness that observation alone could not dispel.’8

Clinico-pathological correlation demanded the understanding of a very long and complex collection of diseases accompanied by heated debates between the contagionists and the anti-contagionists. This was way beyond the comprehension of the general public. Moreover, medical treatment was to a large extent crude and ineffective, consisting largely of potentially dangerous polypharmacy, purging, and profuse blood-letting.

Hahnemann showed no interest in detailed pathology, and none in conventional diagnosis and treatment. He was only interested in the principles of homeopathic medicine which he used to name the illness.2 Classical homeopathy was therefore seen by its supporters as an attractively safe system, simple, easy to understand, and centred on the patient as a whole and not on pathological lesions. This goes a long way to explain why homeopathy was popular.9

But there was one aspect of homeopathy which, from the time it was first announced in about 1814, led to open warfare between orthodox medicine and homeopathy. This was the result of Hahnemann's belief that drugs should be given in a dose which only just produced the slightest symptoms of the disease which was being treated. To achieve this aim, Hahnemann diluted his medical preparations to such an astonishing extent that if one assumes that that the substance he employed was completely soluble, by only the fourth dilution the ratio of the medicine to the solution would be 1:100 000 000. The physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) in the USA, always a master of ridicule, said that Hahnemann's dilution would take ‘the waters of ten thousand Adriatic seas.’1 But Hahnemann insisted that homeopathic medicines retained their therapeutic power provided you shook the preparation violently during the process of dilution—a process Hahnemann named as ‘potentization’ by which every homeopathic medicine not only retained or even increased its therapeutic power, but persisted as a ‘dematerialized spiritual force’. To orthodox practitioners this was sheer nonsense.10 Hahnemann claimed that by his methods he could cure all or nearly all acute diseases. To make matters worse, he announced in 1828 that all, or nearly all, chronic diseases were caused by ‘the itch’ (scabies).

Whereas Hahnemann claimed that homeopathy could cure all or virtually all diseases, his followers modified these claims in the hope of becoming accepted by orthodox medical practitioners. One of the first institutions devoted to homeopathy was the American Institute of Homeopathy, founded at the end of the nineteenth century, when it seems that ‘a rapprochement between homeopaths and conventional physicians gradually unfolded. Homeopaths adopted new orthodox treatments... while allopaths [regular orthodox physicians] borrowed homeopathic remedies... In 1903, after long antagonism, the American Medical Association... invited homeopaths to join [the Association].’9 The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1939 in the USA allowed homeopathic medicines to be sold openly on the market. Five homeopathic hospitals were founded in Britain, the two largest (in London and Glasgow) having in-patient units. Today the ten most common diseases treated by homeopaths are (in order of frequency) asthma, depression, otitis media, allergic rhinitis (hay fever), headache and migraine, neurotic disorders, non-specific allergy, dermatitis, arthritis and hypertension.

There seems little doubt there has been a remarkable revival of homeopathy since the 1960s and 1970s in many countries, but especially the USA where, in 2002, it was estimated that the number of patients using homeopathic remedies had risen by 500% in the previous seven years, mostly by purchasing over-the-counter remedies. In the USA patients seen by homeopaths tended to be more affluent, more frequently white, present more subjective symptoms, and to be younger than patients seen by conventional physicians.9 In Britain a survey by the BBC in 1999 found that 17% of 1204 randomly selected adults had used homeopathy within the past year (this includes homeopathic remedies bought over the counter) and another survey in 1998 estimated that there were 470 000 recent users of homeopathy in the UK. It is likely that most patients in the UK who use complementary medicine are largely middle class and middle aged.11 One of the well known features of homeopathy is that from the nineteenth century to today it has been firmly supported by royalty and the aristocracy. Edward, Prince of Wales was the patron of the London Homeopathic Hospital, while the Duke of York, later King George VI, gave the title ‘Royal’ to the hospital. He also named one of his race-horses ‘Hypericum’ after a homeopathic remedy. He entered it for the Thousand Guinea Stakes at Newmarket in 1946 and it won.12

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HOMEOPATHIC AGGRAVATION

An aggravation is the temporary appearance of new symptoms, or a temporary intensification of existing symptoms, following a dose of a homeopathic remedy.

Aggravations are harmless, usually mild, and short-lived. They sometimes occur following the first dose of a remedy as part of the initial rebalancing effect, or when the remedy has been taken more often than needed, or if the person is unusually sensitive to that particular remedy.

If person’s existing symptoms intensify, it is called a similar aggravation and means the remedy selection is correct and improvement will follow but don’t redose until improvement stalls or symptoms return. If the aggravation involves new and different symptoms (while original symptoms remain unchanged), it is known as a dissimilar aggravation and indicates that the remedy choice is wrong and a new remedy needs to be selected.

If the person is unusually sensitive and experiences an aggravation on each dose of the remedy, the dose should be adjusted to suit their sensitivity.

Aggravation means the increase of intensity or degree of suffering. Each aggravation of symptoms or the appearance of new symptoms, when nothing untoward has occurred in the mental or physical regimen, invariably proves the unsuitability of the given medicine, either the remedy itself or its potency or dose.

This homeopathic aggravation involves the generative power.

Ø  Modality Aggravation

Modalities are circumstances that modify a particular or general symptom, either appearing artificially induced during provings, or as experienced by the patient suffering from the natural disease. Modalities can make a symptom better or worse.

Each remedy has its own mode of action and acts best under certain conditions. Thus, modalities belong to the distinguishing features that help differentiating remedies. Especially, if they are strange, rare or peculiar they highly individualize a case and assist in choosing the homeopathic remedy.

Modalities can be classified as physical, temperature, time, climate, dietary modalities, localized modalities (lateralities) and miscellaneous modalities.

Similar, homeopathic aggravation

A similar aggravation occurs when the original symptoms of the patient increase temporarily at the beginning of treatment. This is a sign that the remedy is correct but that the potency was too high, or the dose too large or repeated too frequently.

A homeopathic aggravation is often appreciated by the homeopath, especially the forth or fifth Organon prescribers, as indicating that the chosen remedy is correct and working. However, an aggravation is neither necessary to know that the remedy works, nor for cure. Any aggravation delays or might even prevent cure if the primary action of the remedy is too strong and suppresses the secondary, curative response of the vital force. Hahnemann just wrote, that a slight homeopathic aggravation is a very good prognostic that the acute disease will most probably yield to the first dose!

The intensity and duration of the similar aggravation gives us a clue about the correctness of the chosen remedy, the patient’s vital force, prognosis, and for case management.

A quick and short similar aggravation followed by improvement indicates that the remedy was chosen correctly. Improvement will be long lasting. The patient has a strong vitality and good reactive power. Organic changes are unlikely or only present in non-vital organs. The case is curable, the prognosis is very good.

A long continued aggravation but eventual and slowly progressing improvement indicates that the patient is on the borderline of incurability. The vital force is struggling to start a secondary curative reaction. Pathology is likely to be present. Prognosis is uncertain. The patient may recover if treated properly and the vital force strong enough to initiate and maintain the healing process.

A prolonged aggravation and slow decline either indicates the incurability of the case due to irreversible organic pathology and a too weak vital force, and/or, that the vital force has been overwhelmed by a too high potency or dose and is unable to start a healing reaction.

Hypersensitive patients may react to and aggravate on every remedy. High potencies are to be avoided.

Ø  Accessory symptoms

As it is almost impossible that the symptoms of the remedy and the symptoms of the patient’s disease cover each other exactly, “there is hardly any homeopathic medicine, which during it‘s action does not bring about some very slight unaccustomed complaint or small new symptom”. 

Accessory symptoms of the correctly chosen remedy may also appear when the dose was too large, the remedy repeated too frequently, and/or the potency too high, so that medicinal symptoms of the remedy which were not experienced before, are displayed. This may especially appear in oversensitive patients who prove remedies easily.

If the accessory symptoms are troublesome, the remedy will not be capable of effecting real improvement.  A medicine, although homeopathic to the case, does harm in every dose that is too large. The greater its homeopathicity the greater the harm of the remedy in too large doses as the patient‘s susceptibility is increased. The danger lies in establishing an artificial, medicinal disease with new and more severe symptoms, without extinguishing the old, natural disease.

What are we to do?

1.   If the aggravation is trifling or not dangerous the action of the medicine should not be interrupted. Wait till the aggravation wears off and amelioration follows. If repetition is necessary, repeat the remedy in a more suitable potency and/or reduced dose, or repeat less frequently. When remedies are applied in watery solution the dose can be easily adjusted to avoid aggravations.

2.   If the aggravation is of burdensome intensity it should not be endured. Either repeat the same remedy in a lower dose or potency, or in descending potencies to decrease the intensity of the remedy’s action, until the aggravation subsides. Check whether the remedy is truly indicated.

3.   If the aggravation is very severe or even life-threatening the action of the remedy should be interrupted by giving an antidote. Apply a remedy which is known to antidote the previously given remedy and which is most similar to the new troublesome symptoms. Let it act until the symptoms subside, then return to prescribing, adjusting potency and dose. Check whether the remedy is truly indicated.

4.   If the homeopathic aggravation appears towards the end of treatment the doses must be reduced further and/or repeated at longer intervals, or even stopped for several days, to see whether no more medicine is necessary for cure. If no further medicine is necessary the symptoms caused by the excess of the remedy will soon disappear and leave undisturbed health.

Ø  Dissimilar aggravation

A dissimilar aggravation occurs when an incorrectly chosen remedy produces new, persisting and possibly troublesome symptoms which the patient had never experienced before. With the wrong remedy the patient does not feel better in general apart from the palliative relief of some superficial symptoms. If the remedy is allowed to act the internal disease will be intensified, new ailments will develop, and an artificial, medicinal disease might be produced that suspends the natural disease. Beware to think the patient’s original disease has improved and another, old layer is coming to the surface!

What are we to do?

1.   If the remedy is similar enough to remove a considerable part of the disease without causing too many or severe accessory symptoms, the treatment is to continue.

2.   Don’t repeat the remedy if it causes too many new and troublesome symptoms due to insufficient homeopathicity.

3.   If there appear symptoms of some moment, don‘t allow the dose to exhaust it‘s action but take corrective measures.

4.   If the new symptoms are not severe, a better indicated remedy should be given immediately.

5.   If the new symptoms are troublesome or even dangerous, the action of the remedy should be stopped by an antidote before giving a better chosen remedy. Chose an antidote that is known to antidote the action of the previously given remedy and which is similar to the new, troublesome symptoms.

6.   To chose a better remedy the remainder of the original symptoms and the newly developed symptoms are to combine in a grand totality, as the new symptoms are of such a nature as the disease itself was capable of producing.

Ø  Disease aggravation

An aggravation of the patient’s disease occurs if treatment is inadequate and the natural disease and pathology progresses. Inadequate treatment is the prescription of a wrong remedy as well as the improper application of the homeopathically correctly chosen remedy. Maintaining causes may also attribute to a continued diseases aggravation and should always be investigated. Intervention is necessary by retaking the case and adjusting treatment and lifestyle.

Cure and the reappearance of old symptoms

True cure means to restore the sick to health and includes the normalization of all vital processes and increased resistance against all sick making forces. This can never be reached through the suppression of symptoms or mere removal of pathology.

When following Hering‘s direction of cure a decrease of the most recent complaints and the return of old symptoms is part of the reversal of the disease timeline and indicates that the correct remedy is working deeply and towards cure. Reappearing, old symptoms should be less severe than the original incident and pass off quickly, unless the potency or dose were too large or the remedy repeated too frequently. They should resolve within a short time and be followed by a subsequent improvement in health. Their reappearance should be accompanied by an increase of well being and an amelioration on the general plane. These symptoms should not be treated by changing the remedy or using allopathic medicine.

Apart from the reappearance of old symptoms, an aggravation of symptoms as experienced before the beginning of treatment may still occur. Cure needs time and not all symptoms are going to ameliorate immediately.

Elimination symptoms

The truly indicated, homeopathic remedy balances the vital force, stimulates the defense system and supports proper desintoxication so that increased discharges from the skin, mucous and serous membranes, kidneys, bowels, lungs or skin may appear.  This elimination of residuals through channels is a positive sign of the vital force throwing off the disease. Related symptoms are transitory and pass off soon whilst the patient feels better and his symptoms ameliorate.

Conclusion

The different forms of aggravation demonstrate that the correct choice of the remedy, potency and dose are important in the treatment of patients. Any aggravation is to be avoided, as it delays or even prevents the cure. Ideally, the patient does not aggravate, or experiences only a slight homeopathic aggravation, followed by steady improvement that follows Hering´s rule. In practice this is not always possible to achieve. However, correct prescription and case management are only possible if the reactions of the patients and different forms of aggravations are properly understood.

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Funder of Homeopathy "Hahnemann Quotes"

Homeopathy lays only over my experience. Do imitate me, but do it well and you shall see at each step the confirmation of my statements.

Samuel Hahnemann

The more tangible the truth, the more time will it spend to conquer the space it belongs to. Obstacles present themselves due to the fact that this truth generates true hate - because it announces a revolution, a disturbance in the existing interests and conquered places.

Samuel Hahnemann

In time, our art shall become the God-blessed oak. It will extend its enourmous branches, steadfast through the storns. Humanity, who has already suffered from so much evil, shall rest below its righteous shadow.

Samuel Hahnemann

The pleasant feeling of mission accomplished has fully rewarded me and all I can do now is mourn the mass of blind spirits that obstruct the truth; I don't nourish any feelings of rage agains them, though. 

Samuel Hahnemann

Is it really possible to believe that, in this century of light, a piece of work based solely on experience, as my Organon in rational medicine, is set aside by the non-sense words of old school, while only experiments and counter-experiments could confirm or refute them? 

Samuel Hahnemann

The most inestimable treasures are: impeccable consciousness and good health. Love to God and sef study provide one; homeopathy provides the other. 

Samuel Hahnemann

The sole and raised mission of the doctor is to restablish the health of the sick, which is called cure.

Samuel Hahnemann 

Changes that come to material substances, specially the medicinal, through the trituration of non-medicinal powder, agitation of non-medicinal fluid, are so incredible that may be compared to miracles, and is a reason of joy that those changes belong to Homeopathy.

Samuel Hahnemann 

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BACKGROUND OF HOMEOPATHY

Like many forms of alternative medicine, homeopathy evolved from its founder's disillusionment with current medicine practices. In homeopathy's case, the founder was a German medical doctor named Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann.

 Although homeopathy is only 205 years old, it is now practiced in a variety of ways, most of which bear little resemblance to what Hahnemann taught. In the public mind the word "homeopathy" has become so vague that for some it means only an "alternative medicine" and for others a combination of homeopathic medicines that you buy in the health food store, one mixture for allergies, another for headache, etc.

Based on his observations, he formulated the so-called PRINCIPLE OF SIMILARITY, which states that a given substance can cure in a diseased person the symptoms that it produces or causes in a healthy person.

Homeopathy is the system of medicine which works on the principle of 'like cures like' (Similia Similibus curanter). This system of holistic healing was founded by Dr.Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician. Hahnemann, who was translating the book on the medicinal properties of drugs, was reading the properties of the medicine Cinchona, when he read that Cinchona cures malaria, because of its bitter taste. Hahnemann was surprised by this statement and when he read on, he found a footnote which said that cinchona poisoning leads to malaria-like symptoms. This set him thinking and he decided to test the medicine of himself. He experienced the symptoms of malaria, by repeatedly taking the Cinchona medicine and after continuing his experiments found that those medicines which cause disease-like symptoms in healthy individuals are capable of curing the diseased individuals. So, homeopathy relies on the Materia Medica - a book containing the properties of medicines, properties which have been proved on healthy individuals. Homeopathic doctors rely on the materia medica as the authority for it contains not empty theories, but details of symptoms which were experienced by hundreds of provers. It is thus a system based on sound principles and as a result of solid experiments.

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