How quickly you will notice improvement, after beginning homeopathic care, depends on the specific health concern, and on whether you take a single-dose or repeated medicine. With acute problems, such as flu or a bladder infection, you should notice a significant improvement within several hours. With chronic problems, you should notice some change within a week or two after beginning treatment. You may experience a brief worsening of already existing symptoms, which is a good sign. This will be followed by an overall improvement, not only of your chief complaint, but of most or all of your symptoms. Or you may just start feeling better. We wait five to six weeks before your second appointment in order to give the healing response enough time to evaluate carefully.
2. Long-Term Response
With many conditions, we estimate at least a 70 percent improvement in symptoms in order for us to feel satisfied that your medicine is correct. Again, this depends on a variety of factors. After six months to a year, you should feel significant, even remarkably, better regarding your specific problem, energy, mental clarity, and more. We recommend that you continue with treatment for at least a year to maximize your healing. Many of our patients have continued with us for ten years or longer. In our experience, they are generally much healthier than the general population. At the beginning of treatment, your appointments will be every four weeks. As you feel better and better, they will be less often.
We do not advocate the use of Ayurvedic, Unani and homoeopathy together because both are holistic medicine. Therefore, if you take two together, we don’t know how to evaluate your progress. We will not come to know which system you are better. Same with the case with allopathy. Also, these conventional medicines change the symptoms to such an extent that their original presentation of the symptom is lost, making it difficult to gather enough accurate information to prescribe the correct homoeopathic remedy. The symptoms are the compass that a homoeopath uses to find his way to the right remedy. If you were to take conventional medication to treat symptoms after beginning homoeopathic treatment, you could stop the action of the remedy, rendering it ineffective. Most acute conditions are handled well with homoeopathy but in some exceptional conditions, we do advise the patient to take allopathic treatment.
For chronic complaints one should report to the doctor only after a month but in any acute conditions/emergency, one should get in touch with the doctor immediately.
In homeopathy, we do not have separate medicine for the head, nose, ears, throat, etc. We give one single medicine which affects the patient as a whole and removes all his troubles. There is no medicine for any particular disease but there is medicine for the patient who is suffering from the disease. A single remedy is chosen on the basis of a holistic approach which treats different complaints of the same person etc.
First and foremost, you need to tell us how you feel about your chief complaint and associated complaint. Here it is very important that while reporting a chief complaint, it is better you also mention the new problems or if you have suffered from the same problem in the past because they indicate that we need to change your medicine/potency. Do mention your temperament, desires, sleep, dreams, and appetite. In the mental sphere, we need to know if anything had happened to upset you at home or at your workplace, like any quarrel, or some bad news, etc. All these symptoms when told in detail help us to treat you better.
During the course of homoeopathic treatment or after it has been stopped if something happens in your day to day life at the mental or physical level to upset the balance created in your system by the homoeopathic medicine the original complaint can be felt again. But it is true that with homoeopathic treatment, the capacity of the person to handle such upset improves and relapses may not occur.
Rarely after the homoeopathic treatment is given there can be an increase in your complaints. There can be two reasons for this. First and the more common reason can be the stopping of painkillers or ointment applications which may have kept your symptoms suppressed for a long time and due to the removal of that factor, the complaints will be experienced in their actual intensity. In that case, homoeopathic medicine will gradually bring the whole thing under control. Another possibility is that after the homoeopathic treatment, there is slight and short worsening followed by rapid relief. This initial worsening is often the reaction of our body before the cure occurs and is a very good sign. Another reaction that may be noticed during the course of homoeopathic treatment is that your original problems will get better gradually and then some new symptoms may appear. These new problems may indicate that we need to change your medicine and give you something that will cover this new picture and thereby help you in achieving a holistic cure.
You have to keep the medicine on the tongue so that it comes in contact with the nerves. That is the reason why we say not to eat anything half an hour before or after. So that the tongue has nothing else that will interfere with the absorption of the medicine.
It is a myth that homeopathy is slow acting. Most of the time what happens is the patient comes to us with a long history of chronic illness. Therefore the treatment takes time. Homeopathy is in fact fast acting in acute conditions such as fever, diarrhea, vomiting, etc.
Homeopathy can produce excellent results in infants, even those only a few days or months old. Infant colic, fevers, colds etc. can be taken care of effectively with homeopathy.
Homeopathic medicines can retain their potency for a very long time if they are kept in dry conditions and away from sunlight in a cool, dark place. They must be discarded if they get moist or change color for example if they go yellow. We prescribe medication for patients who will be out of postal contract for six months at a stretch, for example, because they are traveling abroad or are planning to spend extended periods at sea. Please remember that the medication must be kept away from strong-smelling substances like camphor, mint, menthol, strong oils, and perfumes.
The problem per se does not recur after the treatment. A mild episode of a chronic problem can recur sporadically due to undue physical or mental stress. However, these episodes will be very rare and their intensity will be minimal. This is because the medication makes you capable of handling situations better and fighting your stress better.
We can help in every acute situation very effectively and you will not need to resort to any other form of treatment. The medicines given at this time are fast-acting and can relieve you of any discomfort, pain, etc. Sometimes these episodes are very characteristic of the individual and help in understanding the long-standing complaint better. This enables us to help more effectively with the long-standing problem and the frequency of such acute episodes also reduces. We refer you to a specialist if there is a crisis situation that calls for this.
• The intensity and frequency of your chief complaint. • Your general wellness: appetite, sleep, dreams, energy levels. • Your moods, temperaments • Your capacity to deal with stress, sensitive issues, and your overall mental state.
In some cases, we see what is known as homeopathic aggravation. This is a good sign in the course of your treatment. At such times the symptoms intensify to a certain degree before the problem settles down completely. An old complaint that has been not taken care of might recur for a certain period of time during the course of the treatment. This is an important part of the healing process. Do not panic but inform your homeopath immediately. These symptoms will settle down completely. Sometimes a skin rash may appear during the course of the treatment. This is because as the treatment progress, the disease is thrown from a more important internal organ to a less important outer part like the skin. Patients may have recurrences of old skin problems like ringworm, eczema, boils, etc. depending on their susceptibility. These are an indication that the internal problem has been resolved and the general level of well-being is restored. The skin rash will also resolve in a short period of time.
Our medication can be taken on an empty stomach, after breakfast, after lunch, or at any time of the day. The only precaution is to keep the mouth clean for 15-20 minutes before and after the dose. This is necessary to allow proper absorption of the medication through the tongue.
Avoid the use of any balms, ointments, and suchlike which contain camphor or menthol. These are known to antidote the effect of the remedy and help only by causing counter irritation and diversion from the pain. Avoid strong perfumes. You can continue drinking your regular tea and coffee if you already do so, but don’t take them up during the course of the treatment. Do not stop taking any allopathic medication on your own. These medications have to be tapered down under medical supervision.
Any medicine that works has the potential for side effects. Homeopathic medication, if taken without the supervision of a qualified homeopath, can have adverse effects.
The reasons why what we prescribe for you will not have any no side-effects are as follows:
• The quantity is minimum. • The remedy is prepared by serial dilutions to liberate its healing properties, a process known as potentisation. Potentisation reduces the physical quantity while enhancing its potential. • The homeopath goes through a lengthy and painstaking process to find the remedy most suited to your entire personality. It is this intricate detailed Similarity between the patient and the prescription that removes the risk of side effects.
Homeopathy can give quick effective results within 5 to 10 minutes in severe cases of gallstones, and renal and abdominal colic. It can bring down your temperature in just 10 minutes in case of high fever and works effectively for chronic conditions such as arthritis, skin allergies, or asthma which have affected the patient for 15 or 20 years. The remedy will need to be given for six months to a year to treat the problem effectively.
The homeopath does not focus on the disease but rather on raising your immune response. To do this, they need to get to know their entire being: physical, intellectual, emotional as well as subconscious. Assessing all these together help in the selection of the medicine. The extensive case-taking you participate in helps us to put all these aspects together.
There are two ways of treating the sick individual. One is by the law of opposites and the other is by the law of similars. Homeopathy works on the law of similars. Simply put, this means that a medicine, which can produce sleeplessness in a healthy individual can cure the complaint of sleeplessness in a sick individual. And a medicine that can produce diarrhea in a healthy individual can cure a person suffering from diarrhea. Taking the medicine stimulates and enhances the body’s own mechanism to fight the disease. It corrects the body’s immunity, which in turn fights the disease.
• It corresponds to many diseased conditions to which a modern man is prone to.
• It is useful to those persons who lead a sedentary life, doing much mental work; or to those who remain under stress and strain of prolonged office work, business cares and worries.
• Such persons in order to forget their worries are apt to indulge in wine, women, rich stimulan t food and sedative drugs; and ill effects from which they are apt to suffer.
• The typical Nux. patient is rather thin, spare, quick, active, nervous and irritable.
• It affects the nerves, causing hyper-sensitiveness, and over-impressionability, mentally and physically.
• Produces Digestive Disturbances; partial congestion and hypochondriacal states.
• Dyspeptic persons who always select their food for experimenting, that is digested little.
• He is subject to spasms, convulsions, and fainting.
• The patient seems to be always out of tune; The Action is Violent, often irregularly fitful or inefficient.
• Twisting, and jerks.
• Spasms, tetanic, with consciousness; agg. by slightest touch, but amel. by grasping tightly, or when elbow was stretched.
• Tense contracted felling.
• Lightning-like pains.
• Neuralgia; prodromal.
• Sensation as of a rough body internally.
• Sensation of heaviness and lightness alternately.
• Bruised soreness; Of Abdomen, brain etc.
• Internal scrapy sensation or Rawness; in throat, larynx.
– Takes cold.
– Faintings, after stools, vomiting; after labour pains etc.
• Biliousness.
• Haemorrhages.
• Debauches; much drugged patients.
• Trembling.
• Epilepsy during stool.
• Paralysis from apoplexy, in high livers; partial, with vertigo and nausea; with sticking pains.
• Reflexes increased.
• Firm fibered brunettes.
• Reversed peristalsis.
• Ill effects; of masturbation, sexual excess.
• Varicose veins, without tortuosity, black hard cords; from much standing, or from sedentary habits.
Worse
• Early Morning.
• Gold; Open Air (dry); drafts; seats; wind.
• Uncovering.
• High Living; coffee; condiments, liquor, drugs, purgatives, over eating.
• Sedentary habits.
• Debauchery.
• Mental; exertion; fatigue vexation.
• Disturbed sleep.
• Slight causes; anger; noise; odours; touch; Pressure; of clothes at waist.
• Yawning.
• Tobacco.
• Music.
• Disappointment of ambition.
• Wounded honour.
• Mental shock.
Better
• Free Discharges.
• Naps.
• Wrapping head.
– Resting.
• Hot drinks.
• Milk.
• Fats.
• Moist air.
• Lying on sides.
Mind
• Active.
• Angry and Impatient; can not stand pain; so mad, he cries.
• Zealous; fiery temperament.
• Nervous and excitable.
• Aversion to work.
• Fears poverty.
• Sullen.
• Spiteful.
• Nagging.
• Violent.
• Ugly; suicidal, homicidal impulses.
• Fear of knives, lest she should kill herself or others.
• Fault finding.
• Reproaches others.
• Frightfully apprehensive about getting married, (girls).
• Time passes too slowly.
• Talks about one’s condition.
• Even the least ailment affects her greatly.
• Hypochondriasis.
• Melancholia.
• Delirium tremens.
• Can not bear noise, light, odour, touch, music, etc.
• Can not bear conversation or reading.
• Angry when consoled.
• Head-strong, self-willed.
Head
• Vertigo; brain and other objects turn in circle; with momentary loss of consciousness; with black spell; on empty stomach.
• Bruised sensation of the brain.
• Dizzy and faint in a crowd or where many lights are burning.
• Headache in the sunshine.
• Sensitive scalp.
• Swelled forehead.
• Head seems larger than body.
• Takes cold amel. wrapping head warmly.
• Migraine.
• Frontal head ache with desire to lean it on something.
Eyes
• Bloodshot.
• Lachrymation from affected side.
• Atrophy of the optic nerve.
• Photophobia.
• Paresis of ocular muscles.
• Lower eyeballs yellow.
• Loss of vision due to alcohol and tobacco.
• Exudation of blood from eyes.
• Spring conjunctivitis.
Ears
• Itching in ear through Eustachian tubes.
• External meatus dry and sensitive.
• Pain; stitching when swallowing.
• Loud sounds are painful.
Nose
• Oversensitive to strong odours; even fainting.
• Nose stopped, but runs water; on one side.
• Snuffles; of the new born.
• Nose bleed during sleep; from suppressed flow of piles, from coughing.
• Sneezing violent, abortive; from intense crawling in nostrils (left).
– Coryza, fluent by day, and in open air, dry at night.
• Smell before nose, like old cheese, burning sulphur.
• Smell acute.
• Nose looks sharp and pointed.
Face
• Red, turgid or yellowish agg. about nose and mouth.
• Left angle of the mouth drops.
• Infra-orbital neuralgia; with swelling of cheek, intermittent; amel. when lying in bed.
– Jaws, snap shut; stiff.
• Acne from eating cheese.
• Pimples from excessive use of liquors.
• Child passes its hand constantly over face (brain disease).
Mouth
• Teeth chatter.
• Toothache amel. warm drinks.
• Foetor oris; sour.
• Small aphthous ulcers in the mouth.
• TASTE; BITTER; sour, bad in a.m. low down in throat.
• Itching palate; eustachian tube.
• Gums; swollen white, and bleeding.
• Needles at edges of tongue agg. after eating; washing face in cold water.
Throat
• Rough, raw; as if scraped.
• Putrid taste in; on coughing.
• Small ulcers in the throat; pain agg. during empty swallowing.
• Nose bleed, before, during and from suppressed menses.
Face
• Pale.
• Neuralgia, with profuse lachrymation, agg. chewing, talking, or with hot or cold things in the mouth.
• Lips cracked; peeling; swollen.
• Licks lips.
• Crack in centre of lower lip.
– Acne in young girls.
Mouth
• Breath offensive.
• Dry or slimy; without thirst.
– Drawing toothache amel. cold.
• Taste; bad in a.m. ; loss of; from coryza; greasy, bloody; sweet; alternating.
• Tongue; yellow white; feels scalded.
• Much sweet saliva.
• Food; leaves an after taste.
• Taste bitter esp. for bread.
• Diminished taste to all food.
• Saliva; tenacious; frothy cotton like.
Throat
• Food lodges in.
– Dry; sore with sense of dysphagia.
• Sensation of worm wriggling up.
• As of a sulphur vapour when coughing.
Stomach
• Aversion; to water, fats, pork, bread, milk, smoking, warm food and drink.
• Craves; acids or what disagrees; refreshing things, pungent things, herring, cheese.
• Food taste too salty.
• Onions disagree.
• Sudden loathing; agg. eating.
• Eructations, taste of food, remain a long time.
• Nausea.
• heartburn.
• Thirstlessness; with nearly all complaints.
• Vomiting of food eaten long before.
• Visible pulsations in the pit of stomach.
• Stitching pain agg. walking or misstep.
• Weight as from a stone.
– Stomach DERANGED; FEELS HEAVY.
• Hiccough when smoking tobacco.
• Hunger; but does not know for what.
Abdomen
• Cutting; pulsation; in epigastrium.
• Painful, distended; loud rumbling.
• Pressure as from a stone.
• Feeling of numbness.
• Pains extend into groins.
• Stools; changeable, not two stools alike; green, bilious; agg. after midnight.
• Two or three normal stools daily.
• Hard painful lumps in both groins.
• Blind piles, agg. menses, lying down.
• Diarrhoea in jaundice, with sensation of heat.
• Discharge of blood from rectum even when not at stool.
• Diarrhoea after fright.
Urinary
• Urination; involuntary of lying down, laughing, coughing; sneezing; hearing sudden noise; after pleasurable surprise; shock; passing flatus; during sleep esp. in little girls.
• Haematuria after urination.
• Heavy pressure or cramp in bladder, after urination.
• Sensation as of a stone rolling in the bladder.
• Urine dribbles when angry.
• Urging to urinate when lying on back.
• Stricture of urethra, urine comes in drops or stops and starts.
Male
• Burning down left spermatic cord.
• Acute prostatitis; enlarged prostate.
• Orchitis; gonorrhoeal; or from sitting on cold stones.
• Epididymitis.
• Testicles hang low down.
• Bloody emissions.
• Thick yellow discharge, late stage of gonorrhoea.
Female
• Amenorrhoea; from wet feet; nervous debility or anaemia.
• Feels like menstruating.
• Menses; dark thick; Too Late Scanty; after bathing; clotted, changeable, intermittent, irregular, vicarious; Delayed at puberty.
• Dysmenorrhoea.
• Leucorrhoea; milky, thick like cream, with pain in the back and exhaustion, acrid.
• Weak labour pains.
• Bearing down agg. lying.
• After pains; too long and too violent.
• Mammae; sore aching; lumps in; in girls before puberty.
• Thin milky fluid escapes from mammae in virgins; before puberty;.
• Milk; suppressed, scanty.
– Post-partum secondary haemorrhages from retained placenta.
• Weeps every time, the child is put to breast.
• Swelling of breasts after weaning.
• Galactorrhoea.
• Secretion of milk during menses.
• Maldisposion of foetus.
Respiratory
• Short Breath agg. lying on left side; smothering sensation on lying down; agg. if heated, open air.
– Cough; loose in the morning, dry in the evening and at night; must sit up in bed to get relief.
– Expectoration thick, purulent, slimy; sweet, saltish, bitter as it loosens up.
• Cough dry, hacking from tickling in epigastrium.
• Chest oppressed; as by a load.
• Soreness, or stitch beneath clavicles.
• Hoarseness comes and goes.
• Asthma from suppressions.
• Cough after measles.
Heart
• Palpitation; agg. lying on left side, anxious; with amenorrhoea; from emotions; after dinner.
• Catching pain, with short breath amel. by pressure of a hand and walking.
Back
• As if cold water was poured down the back.
• Pain in back land small of back as from prolonged stooping.
• Curvature of the upper part of the spine.
• Shooting pain in the nape and back.
• Backache agg. lying on back, amel. lying on sides or changes of position, esp. so during pregnancy.
• Back feels bandaged.
• Pain in sacrum on sitting.
Extremities
• Rapidly shifting pains in limbs.
• Arms feel broken and dislocated.
• Elbows numb.
• Joints; swollen; red.
• Dorsum of foot swollen, oedematous.
• Pains down lower limbs, alternating sides.
• Legs heavy.
• Sticking in tibia agg. lying amel. cool air and walking.
• Cold sweat on legs.
• Foul foot sweat.
• Veins full, varicose, painful.
• Milk leg.
• Periostitis.
• White swelling of knee.
• Inclination to stretch the feet.
• Numbness in legs when remaining long standing.
Skin
• Glands swollen.
• Ulcers; with hard, red glistening areolae.
• Varicose.
• Itches on being heated.
• Urticaria; after rich food; with diarrhoea; from delayed menses; after undressing.
• Measles.
Sleep
• Great sleepiness during day, wakes confused; languid, unrefreshed.
• Lies; with hands over head or crossed on abdomen, and feet drawn up.
• Dreams; frightful, disgusting, voluptuous, confused of cats, etc.
• Chattering in sleep.
• Talks, whines or screams during sleep.
Fever
• Chilly; yet averse to heat; in Warm Room; with pain; on lying down at night.
There are two ways of treating the sick individual. One is by the law of opposites and the other is by the law of similars. Homeopathy works on the law of similars. Simply put, this means that a medicine, which can produce sleeplessness in a healthy individual can cure the complaint of sleeplessness in a sick individual. And a medicine that can produce diarrhea in a healthy individual can cure a person suffering from diarrhea. Taking the medicine stimulates and enhances the body’s own mechanism to fight the disease. It corrects the body’s immunity, which in turn fights the disease.