A healthy balance: how homeopathy helps the body heal itself. (natural remedies).

Publication: Vegetarian Times

Publication Date: 01-APR-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Vegetarian Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

MEGHAN MALONE, a working mother of three, doesn't think she needs to run to the pediatrician for her kids' every sniffle. And frankly, she's wary of antibiotics. When her youngest, Kyle, came home from school with a sore throat, stuffy nose and chills, she gave him a combination homeopathic cold and flu remedy. The next morning, Kyle joined in the usual raucous morning mayhem at the Malone residence. His cold was far from gone, but his symptoms had subsided considerably. By the next day, he was back in school.

Four years ago, Donna Reno's husband dragged her into the office of Todd Rowe, an M.D. trained in psychiatry and a licensed homeopathic physician. Donna didn't put any stock in homeopathy and was almost certain Rowe couldn't do anything for her lupus--an autoimmune disease that attacks the joints, muscles and organs--or her chronic back pain. But nothing else (not even steroids or chemotherapy) had helped. And her husband, Steve, had found that homeopathy relieved his headaches and sinusitis, and he hoped it could ease the constant pain his wife was in.

After an in-depth consultation that covered everything from childhood illnesses and past relationships to Donna's favorite foods and pet peeves, Rowe prescribed a single dose of kali carbonicum, highly diluted potassium carbonate. Within a week, Donna's back pain subsided. Within a month, her lupus symptoms had abated. She hasn't had a flare-up in three years.

These scenarios illustrate the two faces of homeopathic treatment and the possibilities it offers. In classic homeopathy, a practitioner explores a patient's physical, mental and emotional symptoms, then prescribes a single-ingredient remedy. But with today's do-it-yourself drugstore homeopathy, people treat themselves with multi-ingredient "shotgun" remedies, hoping that something in the mix will hit the target and heal them.

A Kinder, Gentler Medicine

Homeopathic medicine is built on the idea that the...

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