Why choose homeopathy?
To celebrate Homeopathic Awareness Week (10-16 April) Sue Leach, owner of The Natural Health Hub, outlines 10 reasons to choose homeopathy over conventional medicine
- Kit yourself out for day-to-day ailments
You don’t have to have a degree in homeopathy to use it highly effectively on a day-to-day basis. With a kit of a dozen or so homeopathic remedies you can ease a remarkable number of problems, avoiding taking painkillers and antibiotics and nipping complaints in the bud. Give arnica for bruises, falls and shock; arsenicum for food poisoning; and apis for stings and bites. Bathe wounds with a few drops of calendula tincture in warm water as a homeopathic antiseptic. You can even take nux vomica for hangovers!
- Treats just about any complaint
The list of illnesses homeopathy can help with is extensive. While it is great for short-term problems such as coughs, colds and accidents (minor to major!), it is also highly effective for recurrent problems such as ear infections and period pains. It can nip a headache in the bud, but also rid you of headaches or migraines you’ve lived with for years.
Chronic problems such as asthma, eczema, hayfever and insomnia respond particularly well to homeopathic treatment. Longterm conditions such as angina and high blood pressure can be dramatically improved.
Homeopathy cannot perform structural work (mending broken bones, for example, or torn ligaments), but it can be given in conjunction with physio or osteopathy to help promote and speed healing.
- Helps you – and only you!
One of homeopathy’s strongest points, in my view, is that it treats the person rather than the disease. If you have arthritis, it treats you with your arthritis rather than the disease arthritis. So a homeopath can focus on your own particular symptoms, the idiosyncracies of your arthritic condition – what makes it better or worse, where it is located, when it started, your pain threshold, your personality.
All these factors will lead a homeopath to potentially different remedies. We have over 50 for treating arthritis, for example – my job is find the one, or few, that are just right for you.
- From cradle (and before!) to grave
Homeopathy can be used for all ages. The remedies, made from plants, minerals, metals and a host of other substances, work by kick-starting or stimulating the body’s own natural ability to heal itself.
Babies benefit particularly from remedies (and are also proof that it works – placebo doesn’t work on babies!). We can help treat a wide spectrum of problems from cradle cap to colic to constipation.
In older children, as well as helping with most childhood ailments, homeopathy can deal with more psychological issues such as bedwetting or excessive nervousness or behavioural problems. Children who have regular homeopathic treatment need to make fewer visits to their GP, and homeopathy not only helps the ailment being treated, it also builds up a child’s immune system for later life.
In adulthood homeopathic remedies are a gentle, non-addictive, non-toxic alternative to drugs. They are marvellous for hormonal changes, such as puberty and menopause. And as we age they can help maintain longterm problems in balance, such as thyroid conditions and diabetes, reducing side effects and often even preventing the problem from worsening.
In pregnancy there is a course of remedies to help the baby develop and progress healthily, providing the minerals they need at specific points in their growth – and make sure you aren’t wiped out providing for that growth!
- Gets to the heart of the problem
The problem with many drugs is that they work by managing a condition rather than by curing it. Steroid creams, for example, can make eczema disappear miraculously. But all too often the body responds by doubling its energy to produce eczema! As soon as you stop applying cream the problem comes back with a vengeance.
Homeopathy is not suppressive in this way. It looks into the causes of people’s illnesses to get to the heart of why they are sick.
If someone comes to me with hayfever, my aim would be not just to manage their streaming eyes and sneezing but to help their body heal itself so they no longer have hayfever.
- Puts YOU in charge!
Homeopathy puts the power back to the patient. It helps you take charge of your own health. For many complaints a few appointments with a homeopath can not only relieve your symptoms, but also gives you alternatives: forget reaching for the Nurofen for every headache, or Renees for your heartburn! Women don’t have to take HRT if they’re menopausal!
- More power in your batteries
For many complaints a few appointments with a homeopath can not only relieve your symptoms, but also increase your overall vitality and ability to ride the stresses of life. Health is not just about treating the physical, if physical problems are eased it gives you renewed mental and emotional power. One of the sentiments I hear most in my practice as people get better is ‘Wow, I have so much more energy!’
- Eases chronic complaints
Many longterm diseases such as diabetes and heart problems can benefit from homeopathic intervention. Remedies can be used in conjunction with existing medication to reduce dependency, ease side-effects and generally make life more pleasant.
- Protection factor
Regular homeopathic treatment can help you ward off the sicknesses that may lurk in your future. By improving your overall state of vitality and immunity, you could fend off blood sugar problems, even heart disease. Homeopathy can treat your susceptibility to certain diseases, be it a family tendency to allergies, for example, or a susceptibility to keep going down with the same old colds year in year out because your immune system is insufficient.
This is particularly the case for children: if treated early your child could fend off the genetic likelihood you’ve given them of succumbing to hayfever!
- Help you through the tricky patches
Homeopathy isn’t just a one-shot wonder! As well as helping your existing complaints, it can be there waiting in the wings for if/when you have to go through difficult times. For bereavement, for example, periods of prolonged stress, divorce, redundancy, exams, it can help you deal more healthily with emotional trials – so they don’t take their toll of you physically.
To book an appointment with Sue click here [link to https://www.thenaturalhealthhub.co.uk/therapies/homeopathy-2/]