What To Expect When Using Homeopathy: Part 1

I get asked a lot of questions that demonstrate beginners’ confusion about what kinds of results to expect when they start relying on homeopathic methods.

People want to know how long they ought to continue with a particular remedy, how many times to administer it, how to tell if they have chosen the correct remedy or protocol and what kinds of obstacles might be preventing results.

Sometimes people make the mistake of not sticking with a protocol long enough, other times the mistake is sticking with a protocol too long.

I’d like to lay out some guidelines to help you have a clearer idea of what to expect.

I’m going to divide this topic into two articles, in this first article I’d like to address acute illnesses and injuries …

When treating an acute problem, we should expect to see results within minutes, hours or days, depending on the type of malady we’re addressing. So, for example with nausea or headache, we would hope to see results within minutes or hours.  With a cough or sprained ankle or urinary tract infection, it’s more reasonable to expect results within hours or days, with consistent improvement during that time.

Look at the photos above.  Does anyone remember Polaroid photos? In an acute situation, results can sometimes be as fast as watching a Polaroid develop.

In contrast, when dealing with chronics (which we’ll get to in Part 2), we need to carefully measure increments of change, in a similar fashion to how we would measure a child’s growth in height over time. This will often take weeks, months, or even years.

It would obviously be silly to expect months of treatment to clear up an acute problem, since in the normal course of events acute problems will clear up on their own within that time frame, with or without homeopathy.

The goal of homeopathy in the case of acute issues is threefold:

1) to alleviate the distress of symptoms

2) to aid the body in regaining health more quickly than it often can on its own

3) to avoid the negative repercussions of drugs and other suppressive treatments.

Now when I use the term “results,” what I mean is a movement toward improvement. So for example with a headache, one might very well achieve a perfect result within minutes — headache totally gone and life is back to normal.

On the other hand, one might find that after two doses of a remedy over the course of 30 minutes the headache is still present, but it has become more bearable.  It is no longer throbbing so intensely. The pain is still there but one can get back to some normal activity.

This is an indication that the remedy is working, and you’d continue with the remedy.

Or let’s take an acute rash as an example, it may be an outbreak of contact dermatitis from washing dishes with a harsh detergent.

“Results” in a case like this often means that after a few minutes or hours the rash is still visible, but the itching has become much less intense.  In this case, I would continue with the protocol until the rash was fully healed, but perhaps reduce the number of doses given over a period of time.

But let’s say, on the other hand, that one is suffering from a migraine and one is taking one of my favorite Banerji Protocols, Picricum acid 200 mixed with Belladonna 3 every 3 hours.

What if three hours go by and there is no noticeable improvement? How many doses should one take before moving on to a different remedy?

Generally, the number is about 4 doses. Remember, this is considered an acute condition.

That means that if by the 4^th dose no improvement is seen, the remedy ought to be abandoned and replaced with another.

If however, complete resolution of the suffering is seen after any of the doses, the use of the remedy ought to be halted.

Why? Because the remedy has acted, and the work is done.

If improvement is realized, even a small amount, don’t abandon the remedy choice. Continue with a 5^th and 6^th and even more doses until the symptoms are completely gone.

Now, as improvement ensues, the space between each episode might be better placed approximately every 6 hours or so. In other words, we use the remedies when needed. As the symptoms return, the gentle stimulus is used to move things along.

And as always, we look to cure, not suppress. This is the colossal appeal of homeopathy. Because regardless of the length it takes to resolve the condition, in the end, we have genuine health instead of covered-up symptoms that often return with renewed vigor.

The vigor is in the person, not the illness. Now isn’t that what we would hope all medicine would deliver?

I expound on this subject further in podcast #6, so should this subject be of interest, listen in.

In the next installment of this series, I’ll address chronic issues and what I call Obstacles to Cure — the impediments that may be blocking efficacy, even though our choice of remedies is correct.