When can I treat my symptoms? When do I seek the help from professional homeopath?
Difference between Acute and Chronic Illnesses
Acute illnesses generally develop suddenly and last for a short time, often only a few days or weeks. They are sudden and self-limiting. they are not deep-seated and with time, they clear up by themselves.
The causes of acute illnesses are often viruses or infections but can also be caused by an injury resulting from a fall or an accident, or by the misuse of drugs or medications. In homeopathic terms acute illnesses can also have other root causes such as getting chilly from a draft or cold air, eating a kind of food that doesn't agree with us, receiving bad news and other causes that conventional medicine does normally take into consideration.
Acute illnesses are usually severe and sudden in onset and can cause a fever. An asthma attack is an acute disease within a chronic disease named asthma.
Acute illnesses may be minor or they may be serious. Nephritis, meningitis, pneumonia and cellulitis are example of serious acute illnesses which can be fatal.
These are not in the scope of the homeopathic self-prescriber. Furthermore acute diseases can develop into long-term, chronic illnesses.
Finally, symptoms that do not clear up within three weeks are no longer considered acute illness.
Chronic diseases are long-developing that keep happening or are with us for months or years. They are more deeply-ingrained diseases than acute diseases. They develop slowly, continue for many months or years along with general deterioration in health.
Their development has an unpredictable course and it is not possible to predict their duration. For instance osteoporosis is a chronic condition that may cause a broken bone, an acute condition. An acute asthma attack occurs in the midst of the chronic disease of asthma.
They can be set up by an acute illness and by side effects of medication too. Homeopaths observed that the the rise of chronic diseases in the modern era is partly due to overuse of conventional medicine, environmental pollution and chemical stresses.
Why shouldn't I self-prescribe or treat my family for chronic illnesses with Homeopathy?
Every science is developed on certain principles and the same is true for the Science of Homeopathy. Homeopathy has it own unique philosophy and prescribing method.
Homeopathic science or philosophy is based on eight fundamental principles. They are as follows:
- The Vital Force
- Law of Similars
- Single Remedy
- Law of Minimum Dose
- Doctrine of Drug Provings
- Theory of Chronic Diseases
- Theory of Drug Dynamisation
- The Law of Cure
As the reader realises, the homeopathic approach for chronic prescribing is much deeper and detailed than that for acute diseases and it takes into consideration the above eight principles of homeopathic philosophy of which a lay person will have little or no knowledge.
A professional homeopath approaches treatment and case taking of chronic illnesses in a totally different way than that of conventional medicine.
A homeopath will take into account a whole lot of information that couldn't possibly be fully detailed in this article. There are over nine thousand remedies to choose from and the professional homeopath will need to select the one that best suits the patient.
The cause or causes of chronic health issues are as if ingrained in the vital force and they need to be worked out throughly. In order to do that, a homeopath needs to go through all the layers of disease and the patient’s whole history; sometimes even from gestation to the present time and this is why seeing a professional homeopath is very important.
Each person's case has its own individual characteristics as to why that person developed the illness. Two different people with the same diagnosis of an autoimmune illness, for instance, will require different remedies as consultations and treatment progress because they are different individuals and have thus will have different histories.
Chronic illnesses are therefore quite deep and not at all like a sprained ankle for example, where an application of arnica cream or the ingestion of homeopathic Arnica remedy would help majority of people suffering from a sprained ankle.
Homeopathy is the best treatment for chronic illnesses as it helps treat illnesses by stimulating the natural, in-built automatic immune response our bodies are all capable of, in the gentlest and safest way, to overcome an illness. However one must know homeopathic philosophy to prescribe the correct remedies.
Having professional homeopathic help for long standing health problems is referred to as constitutional treatment.
By having constitutional treatment, your overall health and well-being and health history is examined in detail. Remedies are prescribed specific to your needs and individual symptoms. Your symptoms are eased and your overall health is improved as treatment and consultations progress. Long standing health issues improve and you become you are less susceptible to regular acute illnesses.
Homeopathy has little or no chance of side effects. It involves only homeopathic remedies which are not expensive.
It is safe to say that if, after self-prescribing two or three homeopathic remedies for an acute illnesses, no improvement is noticed, then it is best to book a consultation with a homeopath.
The reason for this is that according to homeopathic philosophy, if many remedies are taken (let's say more than just two or three remedies that haven't worked) untrained people taking further remedies can actually cause harm to the vital force of the sick person, confuse the case and even suppress the symptoms and illnesses.
It is always best to book a consultation with a professional homeopath after the second or third remedy choice has given no improvement.
It is appropriate to self-prescribe homeopathy for acute illnesses and homeopaths are in favour of lay persons being able to select acute remedies on their own and treat acute illnesses in their family.
Lay persons can learn homeopathic acute prescribing via a good book or a good online course for prescribing at home. It is good that our clients become more independent and confident in prescribing for their own acute conditions. However for chronic conditions, an expert must always be seen.
As an analogy, you can change the tyre of your car but you cannot reset the car’s computer system; you can do sums, division & multiplication and and check your bank balance but your cannot do accountancy. You can sign a contract for a mortgage, but to challenge something legal you need to hire a solicitor.
The same goes with homeopathy, you can learn to treat acute conditions but, if after two remedy prescriptions the health issue remains still the same, or after three weeks and symptoms have not cleared then a consultation with a professional homeopath must be booked. I don’t treat the chronic health issues of my husband and children because I cannot analyse their case objectively.
Summary:
When should I seek help from a professional homeopath?
- your condition is ongoing, long standing or recurrent.
- your goal is to boost overall health or get preventative treatment.
- you are having trouble to work out the most suitable remedy for an acute disease or have tried 2 or 3 without improvement.
- if symptoms that do not clear within 3 weeks from a bout of an acute illness.
- home prescribing is not helping and you or your child are becoming worse not better (if symptoms are worrisome also consider whether you need to consult a doctor).
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