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Advantages of homeopathy

Note: Even though most of the points outlined below apply to homeopathy in general, some of the points apply mainly to constitutional prescribing as opposed to acute prescribing.

1. The remedies are highly efficacious (as you will witness on the videos in Dr. Sharif’s Visual Homeopathy seminar or on the Visual Homeopathy website). The patients often feel better before they even leave the office!

   The efficacy of homeopathic remedies can be demonstrated on many levels: The amazingly fast speed with which it takes effect in the body, the depth and impressive level of cure it provides, the number of improvements it brings about, the various levels of our being that one remedy can touch (physical, mental and emotional), etc. You will see examples of all the above cases and more in the patient videos that are shown during the seminar.

   It’s important to mention that with children it’s common to give a dose or two and cure their chronic complaints once and for all. For example, I once had a Nat mur boy with chief complaint of numerous fears. Two doses of his remedy given over a period of about two months cured him of any fear (The first dose helped by about 50%, and the second dose cured him.) His mother was truly amazed by the efficacy of his remedy. Another example, a Pulsatilla boy with numerous warts was cured of all (but one) of his warts with two doses of his remedy over a period of less than two months.

   Patients are almost always shocked to feel all the positive effects (on an emotional/mental and physical level) within minutes after taking their remedy. If not within minutes, they are very likely going to feel better in some profound way overnight, assuming they took the correct constitutional remedy. The maximum amount of time it has taken for my patients (to be noticeably “helped” by their chronic complaints or at least their chief complaint) after taking their constitutional remedy has been one week so far. Notice that I am not claiming “cure” within a week, just that the patient will be “noticeably helped”. Being helped by a condition that has haunted a patient for sometimes decades within even a week is impressive for most if not all patients.

2. Homeopathy is convenient for the practitioner:
   Constitutional prescribing is very convenient because once you know a person’s remedy, and they return to you at any point, complaining of any acute illness or asking you to continue helping them with their chronic illness, all you have to do is to evaluate to see if their constitutional remedy is still “working” or not. If not, you redose their remedy.

   Are they always going to need the same remedy? For the most part, yes. A person’s “constitution” might change with time, or they might enter an “acute” state. But, that’s a more advanced topic that we can’t totally address at this point. By far, in the majority of cases, the patient’s remedy stays the same whether you continue to treat their chronic or acute diseases. Once you learn how/when to redose a person’s constitutional homeopathic remedy (i.e. how to evaluate whether the remedy is still working or not?), you can assess their state homeopathically and treat them literally within a few minutes. In this way you will be done with the visit in a fraction of the time it would take to write down several other supportive naturopathic treatments! You can simply redose and send them home. Of course, as a responsible naturopath (especially if you are acting as a PCP), you should and will have to do physical exam, and do the review of systems; However, for all practical purposes, your treatment plan can be very short and efficient.

   Constitutional homeopathic prescribing is very convenient for the practitioner as you simply place a few pills in your patient’s mouth, and their healing process quickly starts before they even leave the office.

   The homeopathic practitioner doesn’t have to write down elaborate treatment plans for the patient to address their acute conditions (the flu, sinusitis, or bladder infection, etc.) or chronic conditions as the patient’s single constitutional remedy can be so potent that can save the day without any supportive therapies.

3. Homeopathy is convenient for the patient, as far as dosing and expense:
   The patients don’t have to take a supplement 2-3 times a day, day after day, week after week, or month after month. One dose of a homeopathic remedy can often help the patient more than all the other supplements. If you can do both (homeopathy and basic naturopathy), that would be wonderful. Give them herbal and nutritional supplements to nourish their organs/tissues and/or offer them Biotherapeutic Drainage medicines (UNDAs, etc.) to cleanse/drain their liver/kidneys and other organs, AND offer them their similimum (or constitutional) homeopathic remedy at the same time.

   The remedies are inexpensive. No one will turn down the remedies due to financial hardship. Patients are used to buying large grocery bags full of supplements, so once they find that their homeopathic remedy is something they take once a month or so, and it costs only dollars per dose, they feel extremely liberated and happy.

4. Babies and children love to suck on those small, sugar pills! Additionally, ONE dose lasts for days to weeks, if not months, and often they need 1-2 doses to cure them of a chronic illness!

   A two-year-old autistic child might only need a remedy every month or two. This is very convenient as opposed to taking tinctures or herbal pills which children (especially autistic children who are typically very picky eaters) don’t like at all. Most of the autistic children in my practice will not take regular supplements, but they have no trouble sucking on the sugar pills or drinking water with the remedy dissolved in it.

5. Patients fall in love with homeopathy once they get the hang of it- They come in asking for it because the pills help them feel so good emotionally. The patients do not necessarily fall in love with other non-homeopathic (but yet natural) therapies. They might merely like how they feel with the non-homeopathic therapies, but are not likely to love the effect of such therapies. They don’t come in excited that they are going to get a bottle of some vitamin or herbal capsules, or worse yet, some alcohol based tincture. When patients truly love how they feel with their medicines, you will achieve a higher compliance level in your patients.

   The emotional uplifting effect of the homeopathic remedies is sometimes so powerful and potentially life changing; those patients forget what their physical or emotional complaints were.

6. One homeopathic remedy helps a patient’s acute and chronic illnesses at the same time.

   For example, you might prescribe a constitutional remedy to help with symptoms of the flu (an acute condition), and the person’s poor disposition and mood (a chronic issue) will improve as well. I recently treated a six-year-old boy with the flu who had been suffering from a significant amount of fear at nights for quite some time. His constitutional remedy alleviated the flu symptoms within an hour, and his chronic night time fears were significantly reduced starting that same night. The first dose of his remedy partially wore off in a month, and redosing the remedy eradicated his fear altogether.

7. In management of chronic diseases, only energetic approaches to healing can bring a person out of the depth of disease and ultimately cure them. For the most part, homeopathy is a rather easy energetic tool to learn and practice.

   If you don’t practice constitutional homeopathy, you will probably not be able to appreciate this concept fully. In most likelihood, you won’t even know what an amazingly healing tool you are missing in your practice because you may never have witnessed the same deep level of healing in your own patient population.

   Refer to Dr. Herscu’s Map of Hierarchy in the Visual Homeopathy book. My understanding of this illustration is that the more deeply ill constitutions are in the higher phases. In my opinion, patients in Phases III and IV cannot be truly helped even with the best herbal and other natural therapies. Only homeopathy can bring them out of these deeper ill states. To further understand this concept, you will have to delve into the ocean of miasms, and further study and practice homeopathy.
   It has been my observation that the patients in phases III and IV are those who are mistreated by many doctors (MDs and NDs alike) unless the practitioner understands homeopathy or other very deep modalities such as energetic and spiritual healing techniques.

   For example, the depression of Aurum (phase IV) or Stramonium (phase III) is much deeper than the depression of Nat mur and Ignatia (both in phase I). A person with depression who is in phase I may be helped by pharmaceutical anti-depressants or herbs (such as St. John’s wort) and other natural therapies (such as 5-HTP) for depression. However, the depression in patients in phase III and IV is not one that will likely respond to anything other than high-level energetic approaches such as constitutional homeopathy and/or other energetic/spiritual approaches.

8. There are some conditions that are very difficult to cure with non-homeopathic medicines. One example is warts. One single dose of a constitutional remedy can cure numerous warts on the body within weeks. The conventional approach for treating warts is cauterization which is impractical in many cases. Perhaps the patient has too many warts or the patient is a child.

   Other examples of conditions that are very difficult to treat using non-homeopathic medicines include autism and deep-seated depression (depression in phases III and IV, refer to the above section).

9. Homeopathy can result in such a large variety of improvements, on the physical as well as mental/emotional levels (in such a short amount of time). This leads to much higher compliance on the part of the patient because they have most likely never felt so many positive changes in such a short amount of time.
   
   
10. Homeopathy is planet friendly. A diluted, trace amount of a substance (from the earth, plants or animal tissue) can be sufficient for a countless number of patients! You do not need to endanger any herbs, as the population of people who like naturopathy/herbal medicine grows. If we use homeopathy more, we will not need to use as much herbs. Of course, we will always need to use herbs, but we can cut down on the amount of our consumption. Notice that Drainage therapies (UNDA numbers) are also homeopathic in nature, and thus are planet friendly.
    
    
11. There are situations where the patient can not take herbal or nutritional medicines, and homeopathy can be of great help. For example, if a person is in a comma, you can place a homeopathic pill in their mouth, or dissolve it in water and place a small amount of this solution on their body (perhaps in the naval). It will get into their body through the skin. Remember, homeopathy is energy medicine and the medicines can affect a person’s energy field without going through their blood. Another example would be that of a post- chemotherapy patient with absolutely no appetite and extreme difficulty swallowing pills. In such a case, one homeopathic remedy can stimulate the patient’s appetite and improve the desire for swallowing food and supplements.
    
    
12. Homeopathy helps your practice grow. How? Once you treat a complicated case, your patients will refer every ill person they know to you. For example, the autistic child’s mother told her neighbor who has Lugaric’s disease that I was able to treat her daughter’s autism and that I might be able to treat Lugaric’s disease as well. So, I ended up seeing him as well.
    
    
13. When patients experience the deep healing power of homeopathy in their body, they realize there is much more to natural medicine than non-prescription, over-the-counter nutritional supplements. They will come in to see you again and again for deeper and deeper levels of healing on a physical and mental/emotional level, and they will not ever forget about their deep healing experience or the experience of their loves ones whom you have also been treating.
    
    
14. Homeopathic remedies are the deepest acting medicines and can bring about cure. Herbal medicine and nutritional medicine are much more palliative, although homeopathy can also be used in a palliative fashion. Constitutional homeopathy is not palliative. It is ultimately curative (especially if combined with other healing modalities- refer to 7 Steps to Healing in the Visual Homeopathy book- and if you learn how to handle chronic cases homeopathically).
    
    
15. Unlike over-the-counter herbal and nutritional supplements, patients cannot get the prescription strength (200C, 1M or higher) homeopathic remedies on their own, and therefore your patients will return to your office for follow-up on a regular basis. This will assure that they will not treat themselves, and you can monitor their progress month by month, year after year, and eventually lead them to an optimized and healthy state of being. Taking a hyoscyamus patient from Phase IV to Phase I over a period of a few years does take some know-how and experience with medicine/healing in general. At this point in the evolution of humankind, patients (or their parents, in case your patient is a child) are by no means equipped to travel the path towards complete healing on their own. They need a guide.
    
    
16. Homeopathy is a wonderful alternative to those who are not responding to pharmaceutical drugs, herbs or nutritional supplements.
    For example, if a person with the chief complaint of depression is not responding to anti-depressant drugs or herbs (such as St. John’s wort), or nutritional supplements (such as 5-HTP), you can very effectively treat them using homeopathy. In fact, homeopathy may be the only therapy they might respond to favorably.
    
    
17. Homeopathy can set you and your practice apart from other practitioners and make your practice highly sought after.
    Numerous health care practitioners are currently prescribing supplements. Chiropractic doctors, nutritionists, alternative medical doctors, osteopathic doctors, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and even unqualified health food clerks are making supplement recommendations to patients. So what is the one modality you can offer to your patients that clerks at health food stores as well as most health care practitioners (including even most naturopathic doctors) do not offer? The answer is homeopathy. I have had numerous patients who were already seeing other naturopathic doctors who decided to come to our office instead once they heard about how amazing our patients felt with their constitutional homeopathic remedy.

Advantages of combining naturopathic medicine and homeopathy

As a naturopathic physician, you can also do physical exam on your patients, order lab tests and diagnostic imaging, prescribe nutritional supplements, herbs, and other natural therapies, and even pharmaceutical drugs, if absolutely needed. As a homeopath, you cannot do all of the above. Therefore, as a naturopathic physician (as opposed to simply a homeopath), you can offer so much more to your patients.

If you practice naturopathic medicine and homeopathy concurrently, you will gain deeper insights into the human condition, and health and healing than if you practice only one of the modalities. Healing a person is often not a straightforward subject. You will find that you can’t often provide a cure for your patients if you only use homeopathy in your practice. Patients often need other naturopathic and even allopathic treatments. It’s difficult enough to cure patients with all the tools you have including homeopathy, let alone if you did not have this amazingly powerful tool in your toolbox. Therefore, the larger your scope of practice, the more you will be involved in the care of your patients, and the more you will learn and understand all the intricacies of healing.

For example, if a person comes in with fibromyalgia, you will most likely not be able to cure them with homeopathy alone. They need lifestyle recommendations, nutritional advice, and often very deep organ and cellular cleansing. If you were a pure homeopath, you would give a remedy (and at the best some nutritional advice) to such a patient, and send them out the door. Hopefully, you would be wise and refer them to a naturopathic doctor who would take on the rest of the program. However, there are a number of problems that can arise if the ND starts to detox such a person. Detoxifying the liver of some people (especially a fibromyalgia patient, due to high level of toxicity) can potentially (completely or at least partially) antidote their homeopathic remedy, whether you use UNDA numbers, herbal medicines or even castor oil packs for detoxification purposes. If you oversee the homeopathic care of your patient as well as the other naturopathic treatments at the same time, you will not only develop a deeper understanding of what happens to such a patient(s), you will also be able support the patient more appropriately once they call you and say something like “I drank dandelion root tea the other day, and I have not felt as good since- All my bodily aches and pains have returned, and I have also noticed I am more grumpy.” An herb (dandelion) has been an antidote to their homeopathic remedy. It’s very important that you develop such insights so that you can then navigate such a patient through the maze of healing. I find that pure homeopaths that do not offer other naturopathic treatments (such as herbal and detoxification medicines) are often too idealistic, and truly do not possess sufficient knowledge in medicine to entirely cure many of their patients. Such practitioners, at the very best, offer lifestyle and nutritional advice, and might even genuinely (and if I may say, naively) believe that such suggestions are sufficient as a complementary modalities to homeopathy. What they are missing in their protocol is botanicals and other naturopathic treatments that target organ and cellular cleansing/regeneration which are absolutely critical in many of the cases that you will see in your naturopathic practice. Detoxification and organ repair and regeneration are not bonuses, they are critical to offer as therapies to patients. As a practicing ND and homeopath both, you can offer all these therapies and aid your patients in the complex maze towards optimal healing.