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ALTERNATIVE HEALTH

Understand Homeopathy

Will homeopathy be the medicine of the 21st century? 50Connect speak to two homeopaths to find out more. 

Gill Rose and Heather Haskell have been practicing homeopathy for six years and are both members of The Society Of Homeopaths. They met whilst studying and together they run a practice in Datchet, Berkshire. 

What was it that interested you about this particular branch of alternative medicine?

[Gill] To me, it's the most serious one. I'm not putting down anything other branch of alternative medicine, but to me homeopathy seemed to be the nearest to conventional medicine. Also, when I decided to train, other alternative medicines like acupuncture for instance, had that air of being a bit way out, with questions over whether people would accept them. I felt if we had tablets to give them, or a medicine then it wasn't a million miles away from going to a doctor and getting a prescription.

[Heather] The other thing about homeopathy is we give people time. A consultation takes an hour and half and is very individual. Before we can offer a treatment we talk to the patient at length to get to the root of their problem. Quite often people don't have others they can talk to or perhaps they aren't getting the emotional response they need from the people around them. Homeopathy heals the whole, taking all of these emotions into consideration as well as the physical symptoms. We are like a blank sheet of paper, we have no preconceptions and we aren't here to judge. You can talk to us about anything. 

How do you decide which treatment to give a person on the basis of your analysis?

[Gill] It's very individual. We have over three thousand potential remedies so it's important to gain a picture of that person in their disease. We try and understand a couple of things about their mental state, their physical condition and the emotional aspects of their problem. We call these traits rubrics. We then refer to a book containing all the treatments to find a range of remedies that can help the person. Each remedy is so different in character, we have to match the character of the remedy with the character of the person. A remedy also has physical affinities like an affinity with the heart or an affinity with the nervous system for instance, so it's a bit like a crossword or jigsaw puzzle. You're getting a picture of the remedy and a picture of the patient and matching them together.

It sounds like it can also be quite intuitive.

[Heath] It can be, but the thing you are looking at all the time is how people express themselves. Expressions are part of the mental aspect which gives you some sort of idea of the state they are in. We are always looking for what we call the uncompensated state, which isn't always easy because people like to hide behind their personas. The physical state, which we call modalities are also very telling to the homeopath. That's, do you wake up in the middle of the night for instance, and if so, what time do you wake, and do you do it every single night? That's also very indicative of what we prescribe. 

[Gill] Or what you eat, what side you like to sleep on, I mean we are all so different. I think people forget, especially in medicine, just how individual people are and it's finding that individuality from do you like hot or cold weather, down to do you like to drink milk for instance. 

So what we're looking for is a picture of the person, and a picture of that person in their disease. How they are to it, how they react to it, whether they take the attitude, 'it's nothing, I'll just get on with it,' or whether they're the sort of person who will be complaining they are in pain in a bid to get sympathy. Everyone reacts in their own way and each remedy affects that. 

Some remedies are made from familiar substances like onion or St. John's Wort, others from snakes, spiders and jelly fish. How are they tested?

[Gill] All the remedies are based on 'provings' which are carried out on humans. What happens is they make the remedies to start with and then do a proving which is a test on hundreds of healthy fit people. Then whatever symptoms they get are the particular properties of that remedy. So if I give you a remedy and you come back to me and say I've been taking this for a few days, I've got a twitch in my right eye, a rash on my left leg and I'm feeling terribly scared of the dark for instance, this is all written down and those are the rubrics associated with that remedy. So all of our remedies have been tested on human beings and that's how we build up a picture of each remedy. Whenever those symptoms appear in a sick person, then the remedy given will alleviate those symptoms.

Apart from ailments, can homeopathy treat anything else like addictions for instance?

[Gill] Anything. If you take a picture of complete health, which you don't see very often, any deviation from that can be addressed by homeopathy, whatever the problem. Besides treating the physical problems like menopause symptoms, arthritis, hearing problems, high blood pressure or insomnia it also treats fears, phobias, depression, behavioural difficulties and learning difficulties.

So it's good for children then?

[Heather] Oh yes, it works really well on children because they are still very pure, their body's aren't full of toxins.

Does it interfere with conventional drugs for high blood pressure or type two diabetes for instance?

[Gill] No, not at all and that's why we need to work very closely with doctors because obviously the ideal would be to wean people off these drugs or it may be that they need less of these after a course of homeopathic treatment. But we would never, never recommend anyone comes off their medication and besides, it works very well with conventional medicine. 

There are 5 dedicated homeopathic hospitals in the UK but are there any indications that homeopathy will be integrated into the NHS like acupuncture?

[Gill] Yes, there are indications. Some practices do have resident homeopaths and gradually we are being accepted. The Royal Society Of Homeopaths are making a big push to integrate them, but this is part of it, raising awareness and getting people to talk to their GP's about it. More exciting than that would be the actual integration of conventional and homeopathic medicines - getting homeopaths and doctors to actually work together.

[Heather] We are all basically the same profession, we all want to heal people but Doctor's are so overloaded with work they haven't really got the time to sit down and talk to people and I think there you have a big gap which is where homeopathy can come in. 

There's one thing I don't understand about homeopathy. Once a homeopathic treatment has been made there isn't any chemical residue left of the substance it was made from, so what are you taking?

[Heather] A tiny part of the substance is taken and diluted in either water or alcohol many times, creating different strengths. Each time the substance is diluted it's shaken, which we call 'potentization.' This brings out the energy of the substance. 

The remedies come in different strengths, you have 6c which is very low, 30c, 200c, 1m, 10m and so on, but the more the substance is diluted or 'potenized', the stronger it is. There aren't any molecules of the original substance left because of the extent it's been diluted, but water holds memory so what you are taking is actually energy and the memory of it, which is what people find very difficult. They think, what am I taking, absolutely nothing? But then it goes into quantum physics and electro magnetic fields. You just have to trust that it's been tried and tested, and works, but that's very difficult for people to understand.

[Gill] The best thing to do is show people how it works. Show them a bump on the head, give them arnica and watch the bump go down. Sometimes it's easier to give them a practical demonstration rather than trying asking them to agree with the concept behind homeopathy.

You mentioned that homeopathic remedies are based on the theory that water holds memory, isn't that the theory behind Bach's flower remedies?

[Gill] Edward Bach started out as a homeopath so they do have similar principles. It's all energetic medicine but the thing about Bach was he believed totally on mental symptoms, he didn't concern himself with the physical. He believed that the mind and emotions were the root of all problems, so by healing the emotions you could heal the physical, which probably holds quite a lot of truth because they do actually work very well. 

Bach found that as he went round his garden he intuitively got the feel of a mental state when he communed with his flowers, and he found that they did actually alter the mental state, but they are made from sunlight whereas homeopathic remedies are shaken. The energy is in this process which is called succession. With Bach flower remedies, a plant is put in water and placed in sunlight so the energy form the sun actually infiltrates the essence from the flower into the water, and the water is used, where as in homeopathy they are dissolved in water or alcohol by shaking.

There is practical proof that homeopathic medicines work but there isn't any scientific proof as to why they work. Do you have an opinion as to why they work? 

[Gill] I am very clear in my mind why it works. I feel everyone has a spirit which you can't see and can't touch, but which is fundamental to everybody. When your spirit is gone, your dead, unless your being kept alive by artificial means, but the sprit goes when it's time to die. That's what we're working with, the spiritual energy and these treatments are what the spirit recognises.

[Heather] This one of the reasons many women do it, because we are more intuitive and we don't think just from the logical, rational side of our brain. A lot of people who practice homeopathy do come from that angle, which is fine too, but it is holistic, meaning that the whole person iis treated - the mental, physical an emotiona sides, not just the symptoms which have manifested in the body. There are lots of off shoots of homeopathy, but we've been trained classically which encompasses everything, the practical and the spiritual.

Do you think its wrong you can buy homeopathic remedies over the counter?

[Gill] No, it emanates awareness which is good and they do try and give these indicators on how to use it. so I think it's better than nothing and they are also very weak. I think if someone is interested, tries homeopathy and it works, then fantastic for homeopathy. I hope they try and find out more about it! I know the dangers of course, people just going and taking loads of so-called natural medicine, but again we are quite spiritual people who believe that in many cases, people find what they need. If somebody goes to a health shop or chemist and decides to take something, then that is what they needed at that time, for good or for bad.

[Heather] The only one thing I think in having them on mass like this is the diagnosis. Only a limited range is available to the wider public but the difference between two remedies is so minute, sometimes it's hard to pin point which one is best just by reading a book. It's very difficult, because if they chose the wrong remedy for their personality, or emotions there's a fifty/fifty chance it won't work.

[Gill] It's a double edge sword really because we want them in the shops, we need to make people aware of then but we also want people to use them with success. There's also the quantity issue. We have the tendency to think we need more of something if it is doing us good but the opposite is true of homeopathy. Once the body goes into healing, it recognises the energy, but when you start taking more, it can go wrong and counteract the good done, so you do have to be careful.

Why do you think alternative medicine is becoming so popular?

[Heather] Because people are becoming a lot more aware, particularly younger people about what they put in their body and they don't just want to keep taking antibiotics, for instance. Thirty years ago the doctor was the oracle but today, people are coming back to themselves and taking responsibility for their own health, which I think is the way it needs to go. It's too easy to give responsibility to someone else and I think that awareness is coming, and it's not just in medicine, it's also the food we eat. We know too much animal fat is bad for us, we know that we shouldn't be eating too much sugar, so I think that's beginning to wake people up. We've become more aware in the last ten years.

A lot more of the young people are aware of what they are taking. I became interested in homeopathy because I had an asthmatic son and I didn't want him to take steroids for the rest of his life. Now, he doesn't take anything unless he thinks its absolutely necessary, but at the end of the day, you just want someone to live and no one should ever say, don't take your medication. It's balance and moderation, you have to be sensible and we are trained in that way. Education and awareness helps enormously because you can start asking questions, you can't if you don't. 

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To contact Gill Rose and Heather Haskell, or to find a homeopath in your area visit the Society Of Homeopaths website at http://www.homeoathy-soh.org or email them at info@homeopathy-soh.org

By Rachael Hannan





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