Homeopathy is a gentle, holistic system of healing, suitable for everyone, such as infants, pregnant women and pets. Homeopathy focuses on you as an individual, concentrating on treating your specific physical and emotional symptoms, to give long lasting benefits. Homeopathy will take into account the range of physical, emotional and lifestyle factors in order to prescribe the right remedy.
Homeopathy is practiced by licensed physicians and other qualified prescribers in many regions of the world, including Europe, Asia, the U.K., and the U.S. Information on the use of several hundred remedies has been collected for nearly two centuries by homeopathic practitioners, through research studies known as “provings,” as well as documented clinical cases and recent scientific trials.
Two important ideas on which the science of homeopathy is based are the Law of Similars and potentization. Simply, the Law of Similars states that since exposure to a substance can cause specific symptoms in a healthy person, that substance—when correctly prepared as a homeopathic remedy—can stimulate the body’s curative powers to overcome similar symptoms during illness.
For example: A person who chops an onion can develop watery eyes, a runny nose, sneezing, coughing, and throat irritation from exposure to the onion’s active substances. The homeopathic remedy, Allium cepa, made of potentized red onion, can help the body overcome a cold or allergy attack in which the person has similar symptoms (watery eyes, runny nose, sneezing, coughing, or throat irritation.) The actual symptoms of the illness were not caused by exposure to an onion, but the remedy made from the onion can help the body overcome them, because the symptoms are similar.
The safety and non-toxicity of homeopathic remedies is reassuring; however, remedies still must be chosen carefully on the basis of specific information—and used correctly—or they may affect the symptoms only superficially, or have no effect at all. Homeopathic remedies are not selected simply to treat an isolated symptom or a named disease. To work correctly, they must be chosen to match the way an individual’s system expresses its unique response to the current stress and illness. Even within the same diagnosis, different people respond to different remedies.
Within the limitations of available scientific funding, interesting research is being undertaken to understand how and why such highly-diluted remedies have profound and curative effects. Formal studies published in current medical journals show that homeopathic remedies, when used correctly, are significantly more effective than placebo. Researchers theorize that, during potentization, an energetic change occurs in the remedy substance and its medium of dilution (usually water), enabling them to stimulate a person’s system to deal with stress and illness more efficiently. Homeopathic remedies do not have chemical action in the body, and thus work differently than nutrients or drugs—which has made it difficult for some researchers accustomed to assessing drugs to adequately consider them.
