Placebo or Powerful Medicine?

There seems to be a belief in the ‘real world’ that homeopathy is just placebo and it baffles me how people can continue to believe that. Maybe they want to believe it, but let’s consider some facts that disprove their theory – first thousands of animals are treated successfully each year with homeopathy in this country alone – and, as well as that millions of babies and young children are treated very successfully using homeopathy alone.

I used to work in an accountant’s practise, and you can’t get much more nerdy than that, but I’ve always had an interest in holistic medicine, probably because

a) I’m a complete coward when it comes to medical procedures;
b) it makes me cringe to put chemicals and toxins into my family’s body: and
c) it always made perfect sense to me that this amazing world we live in would have provided a more natural way to stay healthy.

However, when I found myself studying homeopathy and pretty near the start of our course we learned how remedies were made, even I raised my eyebrows a bit...... really? I thought. Now at that time I’d never even had a homeopathic remedy so I really didn’t understand the power of homeopathy – it all just seemed like a great idea to me and I’d handed over a few thousand pounds for my first years training. What in the world have I done I wondered! (read this blog post to see a little background about how I came to be where I was: http://newtonabbothomeopathy.co.uk/blog/?p=9) I immediately began studying everything I could about how remedies were made and gradually it started clicking into place and I accepted it until it no longer seemed at all strange.

After that, I and other members of my family tried, and were helped enormously by homeopathy and of course, during my last 10 years or so of practise I’ve had hundreds of patients, some, rather reluctant ones sent by a family members and they certainly don’t think it’s placebo.

I’ve done a quick audit of my practice just for my own satisfaction. I have records of 410 patients:
• 92 have never returned so unable to tell if they’re no better or much better – both are reasons I have discovered people don’t return!
• 28 showed no improvement that I (or they) could detect
• 69 showed some improvement which they were very pleased with
• 221 said their improvement varied from enormous to full cure

Those stats aren’t bad – if this was placebo that’s a lot of people to be fooled, and some of them are very young. Here are a few examples of some cases where people doubted it would work – and thankfully it did!

Case 1: when my youngest daughter was born she had thrush on her tongue. My husband (whose family are all in the medical profession) did not want to try homeopathy on our tiny new baby so she was given something by the nurses in hospital. It didn’t clear up at all, not even a tiny bit. After a few weeks he relented and said I could give homeopathy a go, but he wouldn’t let me prescribe for her – I was after all still studying – so a qualified homeopath prescribed calc-carb and within 15 minutes of her having the remedy the thrush disappeared. We were both amazed.

Case 2: Just after I moved to Devon I saw a 3 year old boy who had suffered with constant diarrhoea since birth. They had been to specialists, had all sorts of tests, cut out many foods – and all to no avail. I prescribed Nitric-acid 1M. His mum returned for the follow up appointment – put the money on the side and said “We didn’t really need to come – he’s fine now, but you HAVE to tell me what you gave him – it’s unbelievable.” No more diarrhoea since day 3 of taking the remedy!

Case 3: Last year a young man visited me with his mother – he clearly wasn’t very keen, but did talk to me and gave me a great picture of his problem. I didn’t hear from him for months, then I got this email message:

Case 4: 4 year old boy suffering from asthma, eczema and epilepsy. Mother brought him to me as the doctor wanted to put him on some pretty strong medication to stop the epilepsy. I prescribed Silica and encouraged the mother to stay within the medical system for the time being. She returned after one month delighted that the seizures had stopped but told me she had a specialist appointment the following week. I felt she should still go, but for now suggested he didn’t take the medication. She went and the doctor insisted epilepsy didn’t just disappear and said he’d prove it on another scan. He re-scanned the young boy and there was no longer a shadow. The doctor did actually phone me to ask me what I’d done but wasn’t that impressed when I explained – however, he couldn’t deny those results – that wasn’t a placebo effect!

There are of course many, many more stories I could tell – over 300 obviously – but if anyone looks into homeopathy with an open mind they will come to the same conclusion that I and millions of others have come to – this is not placebo!