Homeopathic Doctor

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Overview of Naturopathic Philosophy

Naturopathic medicine as a philosophy of medicine has its roots in antiquity, while it modern form it dates back to the late-1800s when it was established as a profession by European immigrants to North America. According to naturopathic medicine, the actual symptoms that patients complain of do not represent the disease but are the manifestation of some underlying imbalance in the organism. Because human beings are incredibly complex, there is usually no unique perspective that fully explains any given imbalance. Indeed, living beings are not machines running according to simple cause-and-effect relations; rather, we exhibit a fairly consistent pattern of being — consisting of heredity, early childhood environment, family relationships, social environment, temperament (psychological tendencies, strengths, weaknesses), past medical interventions, unusual events causing physical or psychological trauma, food intake, physical activity, exposure to toxins, and so on. These constitute the complex web of interacting factors that form the physical and non-physical self.

This philosophical perspective translates into treatment methods that do not target symptoms directly but instead strive to shift the organism away from its current state toward a state of better overall health. In fact, interventions that target symptoms without addressing the underlying pattern are generally regarded as non-ideal or ‘suppressive’ and are used only as temporary measures. Indeed, the attainment of a better state often requires one to stop chasing symptoms as they arise but instead focus on fundamental, long-term improvement, during which process discomfort might take a while to be alleviated.

The Distinction Between Classical Homeopathy and Naturopathic Medicine

Naturopathic medicine is a medical movement and profession that has recently moved to the forefront of health-care innovation in North America and whose influence in beginning to be noticed elsewhere in the world. Naturopathic medicine is a comprehensive medical approach which integrates scientific knowledge with several well-established alternative therapeutic systems. It combines what is known as naturopathy (an approach based on correct living, optimal nutrition, and herbal medicine) with up-to-date medical knowledge and a multifaceted perspective on healing.

In addition to the methods of traditional naturopathy naturopathic medicine currently encompasses the use of Chinese medicine and acupuncture, classical homeopathy, physical manipulation, and more. Naturopathic doctors usually specialize in one or more of those disciplines. A homeopathic doctor is one who specializes in classical homeopathy and was trained either as a naturopathic doctor or as a medical doctor.

While homeopathic doctors encourage a healthy lifestyle with proper nutrition, their focus is not on the material aspects of health but on its spiritual aspects. Often people who consult with homeopaths have already made significant changes in their life, but find these changes ineffective or else overly restrictive. In these cases there are internal factors that contribute to ill-health, such as a fixed way of thinking or of perceiving things in daily life.

Unique Diagnostic Method = Clinical Effectiveness

Classical homeopathy takes a very specific perspective on a patient’s problem. Its point of view is quite distinct from (yet often complementary to) the perspective of other clinical systems such as conventional pharmacology and surgery, physiotherapy, psychology, and nutrition. What makes the homeopathic perspective especially powerful is that the homeopathic diagnosis leads directly to homeopathic treatment (as described below). This is markedly different from conventional medicine where a clear diagnosis does not necessarily guarantee clear or effective treatment. Examples are the common conditions ‘essential hypertension’ (hypertension of unknown cause so it cannot effectively be treated except through the chronic use of medications), and ‘autoimmune disease’ which refers to the increasingly prevalent tendency for people to develop symptoms due to the body’s attacking some of its own tissues (asthma, allergies, arthritis, many skin conditions, and possibly many other conditions fall into this category).

Homeopathic diagnosis relies on sophisticated and thorough clinical methodology. A typical first appointment lasts 1 to 2 hours or more, during which the patient (or family members in the case of small children or the incapacitated) is asked to describe his or her concerns in great detail. With the help of very specific yet open-ended questions the patient is led exactly to describe the symptomatology and own experience of the disease. Following that, areas which the patient has not already touched on are enquired about: major illnesses, traumatic events, childhood history, recurrent dreams, fears, food cravings or aversions, reaction to weather, etc. This allows for information from diverse aspects of the patient’s life to be used in determining the picture (recurrent pattern, morphology) of the disease.

The resultant diagnosis is only mildly dependent on the presenting disease (‘flu’, ‘diabetes’, ‘depression’); rather, it is based much more on many small details about the pathology (When did it begin relative to stressful events in the person’s life? What is the exact sensation? What things make it better or worse?) and about the person in general (stress factors, lifestyle and hobbies, physical constitution). This means that two people with arthritis will most likely receive different homeopathic remedies for their treatment, and conversely that the same homeopathic treatment might be appropriate for multiple diseases. Through this approach which is unique to classical homeopathy (as opposed to other popular forms of homeopathy in which multiple remedies are prescribed concurrently) addresses not only the patient’s chief complaint but also improves secondary pathologies, aches and pains, and will tend to increase energy, improve mood, and enhance overall vitality and joie de vivre.

Why Homeopaths Emphasize Clinical Results over Theory

Classical homeopathy is first and foremost a clinical science concerned with the healing of living beings. As such its foremost concern is the practice of medicine, in contrast with conventional medicine where theoretical considerations (such as through what mechanism a medication exerts its effect) are primary.

What is important for homeopaths is that their observations correspond with the reality of the clinic rather than with the rational-scientific point of view in which we are taught exclusively to think. This is because many things about people do not make sense from this rational perspective, which is able to explain only part of human reality. For example, we regularly experience symptoms that cannot be explained physiologically, unusual sensations that we find hard to describe without first apologizing that “they do not make sense,” and strange phenomena we have experienced but likewise find embarrassing to tell others (or at least our doctor).

Conventional medical thinking is based on the view that what cannot be explained cannot be addressed, so it regularly excludes many ‘strange’ symptoms that patients complain about. In contrast, classical homeopathy seeks to include all such phenomena in its investigation of the patient, with the goal of fully perceiving the patient’s own life experience rather than imposing an external interpretation of it.

Clearly the first approach has its advantages, and conventional medicine is indispensable under some situations such as emergencies. What homeopathy offers, in contrast, is a system of medicine that respects all of our experiences and successfully integrates them within the homeopathic diagnosis. In this way it is able to deal with medical situations that make no sense to the medical doctor, as well as to cure many conditions which doctors declare as incurable. At its best, homeopathic treatment can address lifelong spiritual challenges (e.g. self-defeating behaviours), mental-emotional issues (e.g. persistent thoughts or feelings), and constitutional weaknesses (e.g. allergic tendencies from birth).

Overview of Homeopathic Philosophy

Classical homeopathy rests on a rich philosophical foundation established by Hahnemann in his Organon of the Healing Art at the turn of the nineteenth century and developed over the past two centuries since:

A clear understanding of the dynamics of health and disease

Classical homeopathy is rare among systems of medicine in having a clear and thorough view of the dynamics of health and disease. In homeopathy disease is regarded as an affection of the spiritual core of the person, and the treatment of disease is guided by specific laws of healing:

1) The law of similars calls for the application of remedies made from substances whose disease pattern best matches that of the person — hence the origin of the term homeopathy (from the Greek): homeo- (homoios, similar) + -pathy (pathos, suffering). The disease pattern of remedies is determined through a combination of sources including formal experiment and collected clinical data. Because of this unitary understanding of disease—that regardless of its specific symptomatic appearance, all illness is spiritual in nature—classical homeopathic treatment usually consists of prescribing one remedy at a time even when multiple symptoms are concurrently present, in order to address the spiritual cause of the illness.

2) Classical homeopaths are very attentive to the phenomenon of suppression, and carefully distinguish between it and true curative action. Suppression is defined as the disappearance of symptoms, whether spontaneously or in response to medical intervention, that is associated with a lack of improvement or a worsening in the overall level of health of the person. Many conventional and alternative therapeutic approaches rely on suppressive treatment; indeed, side effects from medications can be regarded as suppression arising from the incorrect understanding of the dynamics of healing. Suppression is sometimes necessary or even life-saving, but it is counterproductive in most situations. Suppression sometimes resembles cure (after all, most patients are happy to see a bothersome symptom disappear and care little for philosophy), but may lead to worsening overall health down the road. Those wishing to achieve a deep level of healing are advised to consult with a classical homeopath whenever specific symptoms have improved but overall vitality has not, in order to ascertain whether suppression has taken place and to act accordingly.

3) Early homeopaths following Hahnemann observed the existence of principles of direction of cure that needed to be respected in order for permanent recovery to take place:

1. The progress of healing of an ailment will tend to be in reverse order of time to the order its appearance: the body has a memory of its past states, and during treatment old symptoms will frequently reappear (in weaker form and for a shorter period) before finally disappearing.
2. Disease symptoms will tend to evolve from more superficial to deeper tissues, whereas healing will progress in the reverse order. This hierarchy ranges from the skin (most superficial), through the respiratory and digestive tissues, through vital organs such as that heart and liver, to the brain. It is essential for both the homeopath and the patient to respect this natural hierarchy throughout the progress of treatment.

4) Hahnemann established the ideal of minimum dose during the early days of his experimentation with homeopathy. Although his impetus was the reduction of side effects from the aggressive medical approaches of the time (which included the frequent use of mercury and bloodletting), through this he was led to the serendipitous discovery that whenever there is a correspondence between remedy and disease state a medicinal effect will persist even when the original substance is diluted so much that it is no longer present in chemical form.

The Followup Appointments

After the first prescription the patient returns for regular appointments so that the homeopath may determine the response to it and decide what to do next. These visits are scheduled once every few weeks—more frequently at first and less so as treatment progresses. The whole process of interview, analysis, and prescription is repeated during every appointment, albeit on a smaller scale than during the first visit. Just as important, the patient and homeopath continually discuss the patient’s experience of illness in order to facilitate the long-term spiritual healing that most patients ultimately desire and which classical homeopathy is capable of facilitating.

The Prescription

The homeopathic remedy that is prescribed is based on matching patient and remedy with respect to their totality of symptoms, following the law of similars on which classical homeopathy is based. These remedies originate from a huge variety of substances of natural or man-made origin: remedies can be prepared from various minerals, from plants, from animal products, from synthetic chemicals, and from sources of radiation such as x-ray. Regardless of origin, the final product, which is dispensed either as sugar-based tablets or in liquid form, contains very little or none of the original substance, having undergone a prolonged process of dilution.

Thus the patient need not ever worry about ingesting a harmful substance or about chemical interaction with other medications. The only effect these remedies have is through a mechanism, possibly electromagnetic in nature, that is still not understood by science but nevertheless works daily in the clinic. In recent years several clinical trials have obtained results in support of homeopathy, although such research is still shunned by the mainstream scientific community.

Case Analysis

The portrait of disease is represented through a totality of symptoms which the homeopath deduces from the information collected during the interview. This totality is a carefully selected subset of the collected symptoms, one which emphasizes those things about the patient that are strange, rare, or peculiar: strange symptoms are ones that do not make sense from a logical point of view (e.g. a pounding headache made better by hitting the head against a hard surface); rare symptoms are phenomena rarely observed in the general population in that time and place (e.g. tuberculosis in modern Israel); and peculiar symptoms are very detailed symptoms whose presentation is unique (e.g. a tickling sensation inside the left knee felt only when drinking water).

Whether common or not, symptoms belong to one of two categories: pathological and characteristic. Pathological symptoms are those that are of concern to the patient: these include physical pathology, pain, bothersome sensations, and thoughts or feelings which interfere with normal functioning. Characteristic symptoms are phenomena not medically problematic but which distinguish the patient from everyone else with the same complaint: these include details of the patient’s personality, reaction to external influences of food, weather, and the like, and significant past events in the patient’s personal and family history, such as accidents, emotional trauma, and serious disease. To these are added the homeopath’s observations of the patient’s physical appearance and behavior.

Through respecting the subtle differences between different people’s life journey, classical homeopathy achieves the ideal of individualization. Classical homeopathy demands fine skill of its practitioners, as in order to prescribe successfully the practitioner must perceive the patient’s state with great precision and a minimum of bias.

The Initial Homeopathic Intake

The initial interview in classical homeopathy typically lasts around two hours for chronic complaints and as needed in the case of acute complaints. The homeopath begins by listening to the details of the patient’s ailments as well as anything else that the patient feels is relevant to the case. In addition to eliciting objective symptoms relating to these complaints, the homeopath, through the use of many open-ended questions, encourages the patient to describe his or her exact experience of the illness or discomfort in progressively greater depth and detail. The aim of this process is for the homeopath to perceive the inner state of the patient, which is the state that best points to the correct prescription. This inner state is expressed through mind and body but is deeper than both; although in everyday life many of us are unaware of it, it is constantly expressed in the way we speak and interact with others, in what we choose to do in our spare time, in how we dress, and (perhaps most importantly) in our dreams.

This elaborate interview process, when competently guided, inevitably leads to a holistic view of the patient’s state, and to a perspective that ties together seemingly disparate phenomena into a unified story and picture of disease.