Things to Ponder
Even though it's September, I always think of this time of year as the beginning of a new year. Summer fun is over and it's "back to school," even if we aren't going to school anymore.
Here are a few tips, news items, and other miscellaneous things to ponder as you get off to a fresh start this Fall.
Homeopathy Works by Activating Self-Healing
Parents who write to me often ask a question of the following form:
"Will homeopathy help -X- if my homeopath is treating my child for -Y-?" (Usually, -Y- is autism.)
This question is rooted in a confusion most of us have between allopathic and homeopathic medicine. A conventional doctor (and even many holistic doctors) will give you one medicine for -X-, another for -Y-, etc. However, the way
homeopathy works is really fundamentally different. Reading Impossible Cure, especially Chapter 4, will help you to understand this better.
Your homeopath is not picking a remedy just for your child's autism (or -Y-). He or she is a picking a remedy that matches your child. The idea is that if it is homeopathic -- i.e. matches your child's overall state well --
it will enable them to heal as best they can. If that means healing from -X-, it will. If it means casting off vaccination damage, it means that. If it means sleeping better to gain strength, it will do that. If it means the brain or
the gut repairing itself, it will do that.
In other words, homeopathy helps a body heal itself. The body has its own deepest (and often unknowable) wisdom about how it can best heal itself and in what order. Rules of thumb, like "Hering's Law" give us some guidelines about
what this usually looks like -- from the most serious internal symptoms (including mental/emotional symptoms) outward toward less significant symptoms that are less life-threatening to the organism.
In other words, homeopathy doesn't attack a specific ailment or chemical or body part, like conventional drugs or even supplements try to do. There are, of course, certain remedies that tend to affect certain symptoms or ailments more
than others, and they can be useful for them. But the best, deepest forms of healing are the kinds that are accomplished by a remedy that simply matches the individual state of the patient, no matter what their disease may be. The
remedy then triggers a process of healing in the patient that can be truly and deeply curative. It isn't a patch, it's a transformation.
Australia's Hopewood Children
Many of you may have heard about how Amish children, who generally are not vaccinated and who also tend to eat wholesome natural diets, have virtually no incidence of autism. An analogous situation has occurred in Australia -- to a
group of 85 babies whose mothers could not care for them and so were taken in by a philanthropist who raised them in a holistic environment: the "Hopewood Children." The story can be viewed
here.
Is the "Gold Standard" of Allopathic Medical Studies Real Gold,
or Just Fool's Gold?
This fascinating article by Steve Hickey, PhD and Hilary Roberts, PhD,
Evidence-Based Medicine: Neither Good Evidence nor Good Medicine may be a bit weighty for some, but
it should be read by everyone who is curious about the practical meaning and usefulness of the much-touted "evidenced based medicine."
The bottom line is that "evidence based medicine fosters marginally effective treatments, based on population averages rather than individual need." In other words, just because something is statistically true of people "on
average" doesn't mean it will work in any particular case. The article describes in very understandable terms why this is true, as well as other intrinsic weaknesses in the results of this type of medical science. Their conclusion is
that hanging our health-hats on "evidenced-based medicine" is not only misguided, but could be dangerous to our health. Instead, as they say,
"Doctors must encompass enough knowledge and therapeutic variety to match the biological diversity within their population of patients. The process of classifying a particular person’s symptoms requires a different kind of
statistics... as well as pattern recognition. These have the ability to deal with individual uniqueness."
This is something homeopaths have been saying for 200 years! Individual disease must be treated individually. Homeopathy is all about pattern recognition -- matching the unique pattern of an individual patient to the appropriate
remedy that is uniquely suitable to them.
Fun Homeopathic Stories From the Home Front
The National Center for Homeopathy's weekly and monthly newsletters are always chock full of useful links and information. One of my favorite regular features
are the stories contributed by members. I thought I'd reprint this one for you. I particularly like it because I often use the remedy Coffea to explain how homeopathy works -- because in today's era of Starbucks, almost
everyone knows the effects of material doses of coffee!
From NCH Newsletter -- 3/14/12
"Our two boys are 9 and 7 years old. Bedtime has always been a chore at our house, but last fall, the problem escalated. No matter what we did in the afternoon/evening, by the time they should have gone to bed, they were "wired" to
the max. We consulted many specialists, starting with our pediatrician, received lots of good advice, but none of it worked. Having quiet hour worked no better than a walk, which was no better than exercise or roughhousing. We
changed diets, beverages... you name it, we tried it. Except for homeopathy!
"My mother-in-law suggested we give that a try. She came for a visit, and observed them for 3 nights, after which she announced, "They need a remedy called Coffea." My husband was aghast, "Coffee for hyper kids?" His mother calmly
explained this thing called 'Like Cures Like' and showed us some sentences in a book called Materia Medica ("Sleeplessness from overexcitement of body or mind"). She reminded him that nothing else had worked, and that we needed more
sleep.
"So we gave each child a dose of Coffea tosta 30C. That was two months ago. They've had a total of 3 doses. My husband still occasionally mutters, "What the heck IS that stuff?" but no one in this household is sleep-deprived any
more. [..and now, I'm really into homeopathy!]"
