What Is Homeopathy, Anyway?

Primary Assumption: Respecting the Wisdom of the Human Body

The basic assumption behind homeopathy is that symptoms of illness are not simply something “wrong” with the person but are actually responses and efforts of the organism to defend and heal itself against infection and/or stress. The human organism does not become ill by surrendering to these forces, but as a result of the body’s efforts to fight them.
Every organism survives because it has incredible adaptive capabilities, and one of the ways that an organism adapts is through the creation of symptoms. The inflammatory process is one of the important ways that an organism begins to learn what has infected it and how to deal with it. So, the creation of symptoms is one of the ways that the organism learns to live in its environment.
On the one hand, conventional medical thinking maintains great respect for the human organism, its defensive functions, and its symptoms; yet on the other hand, it commonly assumes that symptoms must be inhibited, suppressed, and controlled. Fevers must be lowered, inflammation must be suppressed, and discharges must be stopped.
Because these symptoms are important ways in which the human organism is trying to heal itself, efforts that impede this process tend to provide short-term relief for pain and discomfort, but also tend to create more long-term health problems. For instance, basic pathology texts affirm that fever is an important effort that the body deploys to fight and burn out infection, that inflammation is vital for the body to wall off pathogenic material, and that discharge is an essential way that the organism expels dead cells and infective organisms.
Therapies or drugs that suppress the body’s natural defenses create new, deeper, and more chronic health problems.
Inherent in conventional medical thinking about health is the assumption that whatever the body is doing is “wrong.” Conversely, inherent in homeopathic thinking is the assumption that there is an internal wisdom to the human organism. This difference in assumptions leads to completely different approaches to healing.
It is useful to note that the very word symptom is derived from Greek and means “sign” or “signal.” A symptom is best understood not as the disease itself, but as a sign or signal of the disease. Treating the sign or signal is akin to unscrewing a flashing oil light on a car. Although this treatment “works” (the light goes off!), it does not solve the fundamental problem.
Remember: The symptom is a signal of something; don’t simply unplug the signal

The Principle of Similars

If one recognizes that symptoms are beneficial responses of the organism to defend and heal itself, the primary principle of homeopathy, called “the principle of similars,” is completely logical. The principle of similars refers to an ancient method that created profound healing by utilizing small doses of a substance individually chosen for its capacity to cause symptoms similar to those that the sick person is experiencing.
Because symptoms are actually defenses of the body, using a medicinal substance that causes and mimics these defenses augments a person’s healing abilities.
It is not simply a coincidence that two of the very few conventional medical treatments that augment immune response are immunizations and allergy treatments, both of which are ultimately based on the homeopathic principle of similars and using “like to treat like.”
The following example may be instructive at this point: A homeopath may give a very small and specially prepared dose of coffee (Coffea cruda) to a person who has a migraine headache and has difficulty falling asleep. Because coffee is known to cause such headaches, as well as insomnia, homeopathic

doses of it will help to heal a person who suffers from these symptoms. The trick to making homeopathic medicines work effectively is to find the correct, individually chosen remedy that has the capacity to cause, if given in overdose, the similar symptoms that the sick person is experiencing.

Individualize the Remedy to the Person, Not Just the Disease

It is important to understand that there is no one remedy for every disease, because each person experiences his or her unique variation of a disease. For instance, people with a headache may experience many similar symptoms, but some people will have a headache in the front part of the head, and others in the back part. Some will have head pain worse in the morning, others worse in the late afternoon or evening. Still others will have head pain relieved by hot applications, others from cold applications; and some will have dizziness with the head pain, while others will have nausea, sore throat, or fever.
It is amazing how well we have been effectively but inaccurately indoctrinated into thinking that people with the same disease should receive the same medicine. In actual fact, each person has his or her own “syndrome” of disease, and the most scientific way to treat this person is through the homeopathic method mentioned above.

The Experimental Basis of Every Homeopathic Medicine

In order to determine what condition a homeopathic medicine is effective in treating, a medicinal substance undergoes an experiment in toxicology called a “proving.” A proving is a trial on healthy human subjects to determine what a substance causes in overdose. These experiments are typically conducted on healthy people because if they are done on people who are ill, it becomes difficult to separate out which symptoms a substance causes distinct from which symptoms the sick person is experiencing as a part of his or her illness.
Provings are usually conducted with extremely small, homeopathic prepared doses of a substance. The 30th potency of a medicine is commonly used, and the subjects are told to take the medicine once or twice daily until symptoms develop and then to stop and carefully observe what symptoms the substance elicits.
Not all subjects experience symptoms of a proving, and generally, those people who develop symptoms experience them for a couple of days to a couple of weeks.
People who volunteer to do a proving are asked to keep a diary and to list obvious or subtle physical or psychological symptoms that they experience. They are encouraged to describe in detail the precise type of pain or discomfort and what types of things aggravate or ameliorate them.
This careful cataloging of symptoms helps homeopaths develop texts and computer software, even expert systems, that enable them to prescribe the homeopathic remedy accurately for sick people who have similar symptoms as the substance’s.
Homeopaths also utilize information about the toxicity of a substance from standard toxicology texts. However, the homeopathic provings provide a considerably more detailed description of the subtle physical and psychological symptoms that a substance creates.

The Unique Homeopathic Pharmaceutical Process

Homeopathic medicines are made from various plants, minerals, animals, or chemicals. Ultimately, every substance on the planet is a potential medicine, and that’s because every substance on the planet is also potentially toxic.
The way that homeopaths reduce the potential for toxicity and actually increase the potential for healing is through a specific pharmaceutical process that is unique to homeopathy called potentization. Potentization refers to a process of sequential dilution with vigorous shaking in between each dilution.
More specifically, the tincture of a plant may be diluted in double distilled water (usually in a 1:10 or 1:100 dilution). This mixture is vigorously shaken and then diluted again 1:10 or 1:100. This process of dilution and shaking is repeated 3, 6, 12, 30, 200, 1,000, 10,000, 50,000, or more times.
When a substance is diluted 1:10 six times, it is called a “6X” potency. When a substance is diluted 1:100 six times, it is called a “6C” potency. The simple way to remember this is that “X” is the Roman numeral for 10, and “C” is the Roman numeral for 100.
The surprising and startling part of homeopathic medicine is that 200 years of experience by hundreds of thousands of homeopathic doctors and by tens of millions of homeopathic patients has confirmed that the more a medicine is potentized, the longer and deeper it acts, and the fewer doses are necessary to effect a curative response.