a Good Health; Better Life

Homeopathy, a therapeutic system used for over 250 years, works on the principle that ‘like cures like’ — an illness is treated with a substance which could produce similar symptoms in a healthy person. However, medicines are given in highly diluted forms and are therefore extremely safe and have no side-effects.

It is a holistic system of treatment. It aims to treat the whole person, rather than just the physical symptoms.

The homeopath will ask not only about your illness but also about how you are affected by environmental factors such as temperature and the weather, what kinds of food you eat or avoid, your moods and feelings as well as your medical history in order to establish a complete picture of you, as a person. This is then related to the description of your current symptoms in order to prescribe the correct remedy at the right strength.

Whereas in allopathic medical practice, people diagnosed with the same condition will generally be given the same medicine.

Every individual reacts and adapts in a different way to their surroundings and this is accepted and respected in homoeopathy for remedy selection. The way people adapt to new home, family, or work environment; their reaction to external circumstances; their past and present experiences; and their general state of mind are all key attributes of patient assessment and treatment.

The subsequent consultations entail discussions about what has happened to the particular symptom(s) – are there changes in intensity or frequency, has the patient noticed any changes in his/her general health (appetite, sleep, bowel habit etc.). To a homeopath, this most recent picture is again a new symptom totality that needs to be addressed; the medicines are again prescribed taking this changing totality into consideration.

The second prescription is therefore based on the new symptom totality – which may also change from patient to patient even in cases where the diagnosis of the disorder might be similar. In homeopathy there are no fixed rules for describing a particular ‘plan of treatment’ for a particular disorder – the doctor would prescribe based on the totality of the presenting symptoms, then fine tune and adjust according to changes reported by the patient.

According to homoeopathy, mind and body are very much linked and physical problems cannot be effectively cured without understanding and putting right the person’s constitution and character. Constitution means a person’s state of health, including their temperament and any inherited and acquired characteristics. To determine the constitution of a person, a homeopath usually asks a great many questions.

Homeopathy believes that if your constitution is healthy, you will not succumb to any infection, i.e. bacteriae and viruses will not affect you as your susceptibility is low. This is the basic difference between allopathy and homeopathy.

Allopaths believe that one becomes sick due to infection, i.e. bacteriae and viruses; hence their treatment is aimed at killing the infection using strong drugs. This however, further reduces the immunity of the person making it weaker and the person becomes more susceptible and falls sick again and again. Homeopaths believe, however, that first your constitution becomes weak and then you become susceptible to infection. The bacteriae and viruses are the end products of disease process and not the cause of disease. The bacteriae and viruses are everywhere; they will not affect you till your immunity is strong.

The treatment is aimed at raising the vitality, i.e. immunity of the person so that he can fight out the disease himself. This is why homeopathy is able to cure permanently while in allopathy there are frequent remissions.