What the homeopath actually does.
Hi Beverly, I have not written yet on diabetes and homeopathy except to
mention I have had diabetic cats of clients, and they are now well.
Feline diabetes is a bit between type 1 and type 2. Cats start type 2
and get amyloid deposits in the pancreas that destroy the pancreas beta
cells, causing them to need insulin like a type 1. The cats I helped may
well have had *some* beta cell function left, and I do not know if it is
possible to regenerate pancreas with no beta cells to stimulate. Maybe,
no harm trying.
and Jeff wrote:
<< Irene, a Type 1 diabetic PERSON comes through your door. (Pretend
your clients are human). Precisely what does or will the homeopath do,
exactly with the diabetic client whichever form they possess?>>
Perhaps I can try to answer you both here, and please understand this is
necessarily rather superficial as an answer.
First I’ll say that when a client comes to a homeopath, they are seen as
a total being, including all that pertains to them emotionally and
physically, as well as all that has happened to them in the past, and
which may have had a bearing on the current state of health; and even
inherited "miasms" are considered (a miasm being a bad influence or
tendency.)
This approach is the case whether your main problem is diabetes, asthma,
autism, cancer, arthritis, concussion or some as yet undiagnosed
*chronic* condition that has symptoms that bother you. A diagnosis is
not essential in homeopathy as symptoms alone are used to determine the
remedy to use, but diagnosis often suggests where to look for symptoms
or organ damage to repair.
(Acute conditions with more immediate causes like snake bite, black
eye or sprained ankle are handled somewhat differently from chronic
conditions.)
So the first job of the homeopath who sees you as a client is to find
out as much as possible to determine all your current symptoms (which
includes how you feel about things, your likes and dislikes, and what
makes you feel better or worse, whether you have damaged organs - lab
tests help) as well as your health history that may be relevant
(including things like chemical exposures, vaccinations, illnesses,
drugs you have used, emotional traumas since they always have physical
impact internally).
The next job of the homeopath is to find which of the 4500 or so
homeopathic remedies with known symptom-helping ability, fits you best
overall. This best matching remedy is found using a technique called
"repertorizing" and it is called your "simillimum."
Repertorizing is time consuming and takes a long time to learn to do
well; it is the crux of the matter for success in homeopathy. It
involves several steps leading to your unique remedy:
First the homeopath converts your symptoms to "rubrics" and these are
weighted and used in proportions that are appropriate to your situation.
A rubric is a symptom in the format in which it is represented in books
called "repertories". The repertory is like a dictionary of proven
homeopathic remedies. More rubrics and remedies are added as new
remedies are proved annually, and added to the HPUS. Only proved
remedies are in the HPUS (Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States
- which specifies exactly how each remedy must be made, by a
manufacturer with an FDA license to manufacture them.)
The rubrics are listed in a particular way (called homeopathic order as
opposed to alphabetic order) to make them standardized and easier to
look up according to body section or "mind" or "general". Each rubric
has a list of remedies after it, with a reference to the proving that
got it there. These are ALL the known remedies which are proven to have
helped that particular symptom/rubric in multiple human volunteers and
documented cases over the years/centuries. So EACH of your rubrics is
looked up and the remedies associated with it noted. There may be ten or
there may be several hundred remdeis that help a specific rubric.
The homeopath then will select a short list of remedies which are common
to most or all of the rubrics that suit you as the client. There will
often be quite a few remedies that are known to help most or all of your
rubric symptoms.
At this point more skill comes into it as the homeopath’s knowledge of
remedies and experience with them, will also help in this selection of
top contenders as your simillimum. It’s tricky because some remedies
have 8000 known rubrics and others have 360 known rubrics, because they
are less well known - not that many *proven* symptoms for them yet.
So it is important to give appropriate weighting to remedies that come
up often in the repertorizing using your specific symptoms - but not to
ignore lesser know ones that may turn out to suit you ideally.
Next the homeopath will consult the materia medica books - often several
volumes in a set. These books list in laborious detail by remedy in
alphabetic order - all about what that remedy is good at helping, with
case histories as well as proving results. The short list of remedies is
EACH investigated in the materia medicas to see which remedy best suits
your situation. To be simplistic as an example: If you have the rubric
"anxiety", one remedy may be good for anxiety about work, where another
remedy may be better for anxiety about health and another will be more
suited to anxiety about flying. So the homeopath is looking at these
remedies in detail with your situaiton in mind - to see which one gives
*you* the best symptom cover.
The remedy so selected will be your simillimum.
Next the homeopath has to determine the strength of your disease - if
mild you will need a low potency of the remedy - if severe, you will
need a higher potency to restore health.
Next the homeopath must asses your life force. Best way to explain this
is that a young virile person has lots, and a terminal patient very
little and a dead person none.
It matters as a person with low life force needs a slower and lower
potency dosing rate, or a different more gentle and long-term potency
series. (There are several potency series, some more like a kick in the
pants, others gentle slow and deep acting, others between.)
These and other considerations go into choosing what potency to give
you, and how often to dose it, and when to move to the next potency.
In chronic cases it is usually necessary to start low potency and work
up, or to use the slow deep LM series and expect to take the time to heal.
The speed of the disease is also considered. Some diseases move too fast
to mess about and you have to kick it in the pants first - and mop up
with resistance building later.
The homeopathic remedy removes the symptoms that match between you and
the remedy, leaving you not only without them, but also resistant to
recurrence of those symptoms. (If you take a remedy without having
symptoms - you just develop the resistance - so it’s a prophylaxis method.)
What’s left: The homeopath ensures you have the building blocks for the
healing. Homeopathy does not provide nutrients - only impetus and
direction and *directed energy* to heal. So you will only get success if
you also are taking in the necessary nutrients to do the work needed to
rebuild health. Also if there is a toxin or other impediment to success
and which perpetuates the condition - like smoking if lung cancer is the
chronic disease - the smoking also needs to be removed from the picture.
A lot of other homeopathy techniques might also be employed as needed,
but the above is basic.
Others that may apply in diabetes are:
* Homeopathic sarcodes (organ regulation remedies) to stimulate the
pancreas and to regulate insulin. These are slow working - and I expect
those I am using to take a couple years to re-initiate beta cell
function in my pancreas.
* Glucose suppression remedy - works in conjunction with sarcodes.
* Drainage remedies - these may be needed to ensure proper functioning
of all the organs of elimination.
A simillimum can have a powerful effect to "detoxify" your system
(to improve the metabolic efficiency) and if your organs or elimination
are not working well, you can build up released "toxins" (by-products of
changing metabolism to heal) instead of excreting them during the
healing process.
* Organotherapy remedies - these being organ support remedies to
specifically help organs that are damaged (could be pancreas, thyroid,
kidney, liver, whatever is *your* case).
All these additional approaches each have techniques associated with
their selection and use as well.
I have been very brief here, homeopathy is an involved system, but I
hope this gives at least some idea of what the homeopath actually does.
My own case as an example:
My current simillimum is Capsicum (made from cayenne pepper). I had a
few others before that. I am using the slow and deep LM series of
potencies, changing potency once a month for a series of 30 months. The
remedy matches my symptoms from the endocrine tumours I have that being
my primary *current* problem, diabetes being secondary - and my case
being so complex as to need to be handled in "layers" - the MEN-1 layer
being most urgent currently. Meantime I am using sarcodes for diabetes
to keep it from getting worse while MEN-1 is handled.
As a measure of my progress - the cortisol from tumours as a *previous*
layer was causing me to be so ill in 2001, I was not expected to survive
the year and I could not walk across a room without collapsing.
Yesterday I rode my bicycle 20 miles. Before I got ill (1997) I was
doing long distance bike races and doing well. So I have a long way to
go but I am making steady progress.
What is wrong with *me* (or you) is not really the issue. In homeopathy
the issue is finding a remedy that *matches* you well - whatever is
wrong. It doesn’t really matter whether it is diabetes or cancer or
something else or both as in my case. (MEN-1 is multiple endocrine
neoplasia type one).
What matters in homeopathy is whether your simillimum can be found.
If not, the remedy will have no effect.
So your main challenge with homeopathy is not about whether
homeopathy works - it does. It’s about whether your homeopath with your
help (as the homeopath can only use what *you* tell them) can find
*your* simillimum so it can work for *you*.
In my case, there are no allopathic cures anyway, and homeopathy -
unlike drugs - has no side effects so there was certainly nothing to
lose in working at finding the simillimum I need.
No two people are the same.
Ten diabetics will likely have ten different simillimums.
And someone else who takes my simillimum may not have diabetes or MEN-1.
However their symptms will fit *within* the range that is handled by
capsicum. The other things capsicum remedy can handle that the
individual does not have - are irrelevant. It will only remove symptoms
that are there.
Finally - Capsicum LM potency as I am using - is made from cayenne
pepper - but the symptoms it can help in this potentised form are vastly
different from what it would do as plain cayenne pepper, or as herbal
cayenne pepper. The only way to know what it will help in potency is to
"prove" the remedy. This is done with all potentised remedies in
homeopathy - not one remedy is used without proving and documenting
first, what symptoms it can help. There is no guess work on that.
Ther emedies you buy in stores called "homeopathic" are noit necessarily
homeopathic remedies. To be one, the remedy must have a single
ingredient only and a potency number - like Arsenicum album 30C or
Capsicum LM13. No mixtures - mixtures have not been proved - nobody can
predict what they can do.
I hope this answers what you wanted to know?
Namaste,