Blending traditional medicine with homeopathic medicine.

You might as well get used to it. If you’re going to use homeopathic medicine, you’re going to look like a fool. You’re going to look like a fool because most doctors in our country think homeopathy is no more than a sugar pill. They’re plenty fine with you using it, but they certainly have a good chuckle at your expense.

• The more progressive doctors point out homeopathy may be helpful because the placebo effect is a powerful one.  Really? Even to test tubes? (check this out: http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-12/285)

I am more than willing to use whatever tools are at my disposal to help my children. I don’t care if it’s herbal, allopathic or homeopathic as long as it works and it’s safe. The interesting thing about homeopathy is that you can use it in conjunction with allopathic (traditional) medicine. You can use homeopathic medicine with any other medicine and it won’t make the traditional medicine dangerous or less effective, but it could make the homeopathic medicine not work so well.

For example, when you use a steroid cream on a rash, it is meant to suppress the rash. This is good for making people comfortable and for maintaining skin integrity so that it doesn’t become infected. When you have a rash and you choose to treat it with homeopathic medicine, the goal is not to suppress, but to expel. So, if used alone, a homeopathic medicine would generally push whatever is causing the rash out. A poison ivy rash treated with homeopathic medicine will appear much worse for a few hours before completely healing within a day or so. A poison ivy rash treated with a steroid will appear better, but continue to linger for weeks. When you use a steroid cream with a homeopathic remedy, the steroid cream will work, but the homeopathic remedy will be unable to work its magic.

Another example would be if a person took a homeopathic remedy for an infection or illness. A homeopathic remedy works by stimulating your body’s own healing mechanism. In cases of illness and infection, your natural healing response is usually a fever. So, if you were to take a homeopathic remedy for an infection and it gave you a fever, that’s good! It won’t last long, it shows your body is working. If you then go and give Motrin, the Motrin will win. The fever will be brought down or eliminated, but then the homeopathic remedy is less effective. Since a fever is almost never dangerous itself, I generally avoid  fever reducers as a general policy. (And for the record, the AAP has a similar view.)

I knew a woman who used homeopathy on a wart. She would get one or two frequently for years. Quickly, she had dozens of warts all over. It was disgusting to her and frightening for her. Then, remarkably, within a day or so, they all vanished and never came back. The root cause of the wart was being expelled from her body, a homeopath would say.

Homeopathy doesn’t kill viruses and bacteria. Your body does. Homeopathy is like the coach directing a sports team. He isn’t playing the game for them, he is instructing them on how to play. Your body can heal itself. Sometimes, it just needs help being shown how. That is what homeopathy is supposed to do.