Healing with Homoeopathie

After several queries, I have decided to write about the twenty most effective remedies that are regularly used for infants and children in homoeopathic practice. These are not ‘constitutional’ remedies (remedies for eradicating long-term problems or inherited tendencies) but those that are commonly used for acute problems and which every household with young children should stock.

This article is not meant to encourage home-prescribing, but to build up awareness about the great potential that homoeopathy has to solve most problems that children encounter; safely and gently, without the use of strong chemical drugs like antibiotics.

Nowadays, we see a lot of children in our practice that come with health problems that could easily have been avoided, had homoeopathy been resorted to in the first place. Instead, anxious parents, unknowingly, often compel their doctors to prescribe strong medicines like antibiotics even for routine coughs, colds and fevers. This way, the body’s own immunity does not adequately learn how to fight infections and hence the next rounds of infection come sooner and sooner. This leads to a vicious circle of infections and antibiotics with the child’s immunity taking a battering. As the child’s immunity continues to suffer, the child becomes more and more disposed to developing more serious infections and conditions like ear infections, chronic otitis media, tonsillitis, bronchitis and even bronchial asthma. Chronic ailments like skin allergies and eczema also become more common. These are usually considered as new ailments and never linked to the actual immunity lowering cause.

With correct homoeopathic prescribing, all the acute coughs, colds, fevers and even the more serious conditions like ear infections, chronic otitis media, tonsillitis, bronchitis and bronchial asthma can be treated well. Homoeopathic remedies stimulate the immune system to function optimally and, over time, the immunity improves and children’s own bodies are able to fight off most infections without the need for any medication. For such immunity-improving treatment, detailed constitutional therapy is essential – this requires a detailed case taking and proper case management. However, the list given below contains remedies often used for acute problems, from which, even at odd hours of the day or night, your homoeopath can choose the suitable remedy based on the symptoms present. Such a kit kept at home can be handy and valuable.

1. ACONITE
This is a remedy useful for the congestive stage of inflammation before localization takes place. Ailments arise from exposure to dry cold air, drafts of cold air especially when overheated. Ailments come on suddenly with intense symptoms. High fevers where the face is red or red and pale alternately. There is great thirst for large quantities of cold water, lot of restlessness and tossing about. Teething children may develop convulsions. Cough is dry, hoarse and croupy, more on expiration.

2. AETHUSA CYNAPIUM
Suited to children during dentition who develop complaints in hot summer weather, children who cannot tolerate milk. Milk is vomited in large curds as soon as it is taken, vomiting leads to intense weakness and drowsiness. The child sleeps and then wakes up hungry and crying, drinks milks again and the cycle repeats. The child’s face bears and expression of pain and anxiety.

3. ANTIMONIUM TART
Children with cough where there seems to be a large collection of mucus but nothing comes up. Child is clingy and wants to be carried but won’t let anyone else touch him. Vomiting that is followed by drowsiness and great weakness. Tongue is coated pasty, thick and white. Great inclination to sleep with nearly all complaints. Useful for children at birth who are pale, breathless and gasping; prevents asphyxia neonatorum. Most ailments seem to come on in damp weather or from living in damp rooms.

4. ARNICA MONTANA
Very useful for the falls and bumps that children get as a routine part of growing up. Prevents serious repercussions of head injuries and is known to absorb bleeding that has occurred into the brain after a head injury. Also useful for the bad effects of injuries received a long time ago. Useful also for mechanical blunt injuries that result in stupor from concussion with involuntary passage of stools and urine. Injuries bring on a sore, lame, bruised feeling, as if beaten. Whole body is oversensitive. Everything on which he lies feels very hard, keeps moving from place to place in search of a soft spot.
* Do not use Arnica ointment on any open wounds.

5. ARSENICUM ALBUM
For the start of colds with intense sneezing, watery nasal discharge and thirst for sips of cold water frequently. Fevers with restlessness where children want to be carried rapidly. Also useful for tummy upsets that result from cold food or drink or from eating bad meat. Nausea at the smell or sight of food, diarrhoea after eating or drinking, watery stools with great weakness.

6. BELLADONNA
Suited to children with great liability to catch colds; sensitive to drafts of air especially when uncovering the head or after a hair cut, tonsillitis after exposure to cold winds. Sudden onset of ailments with redness of face or eyes with most complaints. Tongue has a strawberry red appearance. Pulse is full and bounding, congestive headaches worse from slight noise, light, jar, movement; better by tight bandaging or pressure. Useful for convulsions during teething, with fever where the head is hot and the feet are cold. For children who get delirious with fever.

7. CALENDULA
One of the best antiseptic remedies in homoeopathy. Very useful for open wounds to promote healthy healing of tissue and prevent excessive pus formation. Useful as oral medicine as well as application of Calendula ointment on the wounds. Also for use post-surgically to promote rapid healing.

8. CHAMOMILLA
Useful for children – newborn and during the teething period. Ailments from cold, anger, dentition. Child is exceedingly irritable and fretful, quiet only when being carried. Impatient and demanding, rejecting the thing when given. Whining and moaning constantly. Intense pains (eg., ear pains) with great oversensitivity, one cheek red and hot, the other pale and cold. Great aversion to wind especially about the ears. Diarrhoea of teething infants where the stools are green, watery, like chopped eggs and spinach, hot and very offensive.

9. CINA
For complaints of children who are very irritable and cross, want to be carried but carrying gives no relief. They do not want to be touched and cannot bear anyone coming close. Constantly digging and boring at the nose. Worm complaints with startling and screaming during sleep and grinding of teeth.

10. COLOCYNTH
Very useful for abdominal colic. Agonising pains making the child bend double. Great restlessness, twisting and turning about for relief. Pains are better by hard pressure. Irritable and impatient, throwing things out of his hands.

11. FERRUM PHOS
Very useful for inflammatory conditions and fevers especially the first stages. Easy flushing of the face, less intense symptoms than of Aconite and Belladonna. Pulse is soft and flowing. Often useful in fevers of children when there are no other symptoms to guide to a suitable remedy.

12. IPECACUANHA
Also known as Ipecac, it is a very useful remedy for coughs of children that are dry, spasmodic and asthmatic. Breathlessness with wheezing. Cough that often results in gagging, retching and vomiting of white frothy phlegm. Most complaints are accompanied by nausea with profuse saliva and vomiting; vomiting without relief. Tongue is clean or slightly coated.

13. JALAPA
For the colic and diarrhoea of children where the children are good all day long but scream and are very restless and troublesome at night.

14. KALI MUR
A useful remedy to cut short colds right at the beginning, also useful for sub-acute inflammatory states. Stuffy colds with ear involvement. Greyish-white slimy coating of the tongue.

15. PODOPHYLLUM
Diarrhoea of children during teething and in hot weather, worse from eating and worse while being bathed or washed. Stools are profuse, painless, of varying colour, often yellow, watery and very offensive.

16. PULSATILLA
Commonly used for colds with yellow discharges, stuffed up noses where the symptoms are changing often. Most symptoms are better in open air and worse indoors. Absence of thirst with most complaints and indigestion from eating rich food. Tendency to styes and agglutination of eyes with yellow sticky discharges on waking.

17. RHEUM
Suitable for children, especially during dentition. Sour smell of the whole body, child smells sour even after washing. Children cry and toss about all night. Impatient, desires many things and cries, dislikes even favourite playthings. Constant sweat of scalp keeping the hair always wet.

18. RHUS TOX
For coughs and colds after getting wet that result in muscle pains and flu-like symptoms. Corners of the mouth are ulcerated with fever blisters around the mouth. Very useful for sprains and strains where symptoms are worse on initial movement and better by walking or continued motion.

19. SAMBUCUS NIGRA
For dry colds of infants where the nose is dry and completely blocked, preventing breathing and nursing. The child awakens suddenly, nearly suffocated and gasps for breath. Difficulty in breathing out. Suffocative coughs with crying children.

20. SENNA
Very useful in intestinal colics where the child seems full of wind. Clinically used most often for third-month-colic of infants.

Besides these twenty, many other remedies may be suitable to a given case, based on symptoms that individual children present. These are just some guidelines and I reiterate once more that it is best to consult your homoeopath for proper remedy selection and dosage, this will give safe, gentle and speedy results.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Homoeopathy in the minds of people is that it is a slow form of medicine for acute diseases and is only good for chronic diseases. THIS STATEMENT IS ONLY PARTLY CORRECT. Homoeopathy is certainly one of the best forms of medicine for all chronic diseases, however, even in acute diseases, Homoeopathy can act SWIFTLY and GENTLY leading to a rapid cure.

Let us first understand what acute and chronic diseases are. Acute diseases are a deviation from the original state of health with a rapid onset, rapid progress, and a definite duration. If not treated, they can end in either death or recovery. Eg., most infections like malaria, typhoid, the common cold, pneumonia, gastroenteritis etc., are acute diseases. Chronic diseases, on the other hand, are deviations from the original state of health with a usually slow, imperceptible onset, slow but sure progress, and indefinite, long duration which end only with death, if not treated. All the degenerative diseases of the modern day like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, etc., are chronic diseases.

It is generally proclaimed by the medical profession that most chronic diseases cannot be cured but can only be controlled by medication, or if cure is to be attempted, it is to be done with surgery by the removal of unwanted tissue or the replacement of malfunctioning parts. Will this be a real cure? Why has the unwanted tissue arisen in the first place? Why has the normal functioning of the body parts gone astray? The unwanted tissue like the growths of cancer and the malfunctioning organs or parts are not ‘the disease’ but they are the outcome of the disease process, an unseen process which has gone on for a long time in the body, much before the visible signs/outcome of the disease could manifest.

Hence, it becomes clear, that to really cure such a chronic disease, we need to deal with and treat the underlying disease process and not just the outcome of the disease process. If the underlying disease process is not treated, after a brief respite, the disease will rear its nasty head up again, resulting in new growths and new manifestations. Targeting the diseased cells and thereby trying to achieve cure is NOT the solution to a chronic disease.

No one can deny that there is a Life Force within each living cell and it is this Life Force that makes us a unity, and keeps our body functioning harmoniously with its millions of cells. This Life Force is dynamic and invisible and can be affected not only by physical factors of the environment, but also by other dynamic, invisible forces like stress, grief and anxiety. These inimical forces of our day-to-day living, after a period of time, bring about a derangement in the normal functioning of our Life Force. Once this happens, it is but a matter of time until visible malfunctioning in the state of health develops. In other words, the derangement of the normal Life Force leads to the underlying disease process which in turn, leads to the visible manifestations of disease, be they just functional signs and symptoms or more serious and dangerous structural changes in the health of the individual.

No two individuals are the same; it hence follows that no two individuals will have the same derangements in health from the same identical causative factors. Each individual has his or her own immune status, own tolerance levels to environmental and other dynamic influences, own in-born weaknesses and strengths. A highly complex interaction of all these factors takes place before an individual gets sick and hence the manifestations of the sickness are also highly individual in character.

Homoeopathy respects the uniqueness of the individual and the Homoeopathic treatment of a person’s chronic disease is begun after a detailed case history which takes into account not only the person’s past and present medical history but also the life history, emotional and intellectual characteristics of the individual to be treated. The focus of treatment is not on the diseased organs and tissues, but on the underlying disease process which has resulted in the creation of the diseased organs and tissues. Homoeopathic medicines never suppress the immunity but attempt to get the immune system functioning at the optimal level so that the Life Force which has been deranged in its functioning, can get back its normal functioning again. Once the Life Force is functioning normally, the diseased organs and tissues can gradually get back their own normal functioning.

It can thus be understood from the above paragraphs that setting an individual on the path of health in a chronic disease is not an easy short-term matter. Setting right underlying disease processes can take time, depending on how long the process has gone on before the patient has sought treatment. There is no standardized treatment for any of the chronic diseases, but in each case, the treatment has to be individualized to suit that particular patient who is an individual in his own right. Only if treatment is undertaken at depth, only if the underlying causes are dealt with, can real cure be achieved. Everything else is only temporary palliation.

June 2005.

Homoeopathy is a system of medicine that encompasses the human being as a whole, mind and body together. The medicines used in Homoeopathy are not harsh chemical drugs, but energy medication prepared from the plant, animal and mineral kingdom. Homoeopathic medicines work to stimulate the creative energies in the human being, bringing about healing and cure with the help of the body’s own curative and regenerative forces, thus resulting in an improvement in the body’s immunity over a period of time.

Children form one of the major groups of patients in a Homoeopathic practice and it is heartening for the Homoeopath to see how well he/she can change and improve the constitution of the child with correct Homoeopathic constitutional treatment.

We are all born with inherited tendencies that have come down the family line from both our parents’ sides. These inherited tendencies, apart from structural tendencies, comprise also functional tendencies which would include how our bodies function, tendency to certain diseases, weaknesses of certain organ systems and also emotional and mental tendencies like behaviour and intellect.

A Homoeopathic physician, in a detailed case taking, takes note of all the familial tendencies, and then during the course of treatment, takes measures to eradicate and lessen the effects of those harmful tendencies in the human being under treatment. Needless to say, the benefit of such constitutional treatment is best seen in children who ultimately develop and grow to their best potential. Such constitutional treatment may be spread over a number of years, and though it is a long term treatment, the long term benefits easily outweigh the costs.

Since Homoeopathy works on the immune system of the body, this system of medicine works well in chronic diseases like asthma, allergies, arthritis, digestive dysfunction, migraines, skin problems, etc. Even in acute illnesses that are by nature, short lasting, Homoeopathy can cure and cut short the duration of the illness. However, Homoeopathy has no specific medicines for specific conditions, unlike some other systems of medicine, and hence it is important that the patient give the utmost detail of the illness to the doctor for selection of the best possible Homoeopathic medicine which can cure in the least possible time.

To list some of the advantages which Homoeopathic treatment offers children, they are:

1. Easy method of administration of medicines.
2. Least resistance to taking medicines, as the medicines are mainly in a sweet sucrose or lactose base.
3. Builds up the body’s resistance and improves the immunity with proper constitutional treatment.
4. Helps in removal of inherited tendencies which have come down through the family line – e.g., tendency to catch repeated colds and chest infections, allergies, asthma, skin problems, arthritis, cancer, etc.
5. Improvement of memory and brain function.
6. Deals with behavioural and emotional problems like stammering, nail biting, thumb sucking, etc.
7. No side effects when given in proper dosage.
8. Does not develop dependency to medication.
9. Creates ideal bodily and mental health for optimum height and weight.
10. Treats chronic conditions in depth without side effects.
11. Regulates body functions without use of strong chemical medicines.

Homoeopathy hence offers a safe, gentle and easy way to creating and maintaining good health.

Most of us have experienced a state of panic when an infant or a child falls sick. When a child isn’t feeling well, the first thing that comes to our mind is to check for a fever. ‘Fever’ is not an illness by itself, but it is a sign that indicates that something is not right inside the body. ‘Alarm bells’ go off within most mothers and they react to this by instantly trying to bring down the fever, either by giving the child some medicine to bring down the fever, like a paracetamol, or by rushing to the doctor for stronger medications.

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