Archives for March 3, 2008

The Holistic Concept …. Dr. Vikas Sharma

A lot is usually said about the funny little questions that homoeopaths often ask. Even comedian Jaspal Bhatti couldn’t resist making fun of it about a decade back. Speaking from a patient’s point of view, frankly, a lot many questions do sound too strange. But the truth is that asking too many questions shows a lot of medical wisdom. It certainly helps in deciding the line of treatment.

Let us for a while consider a hypothetical situation where you have chronic skin and a nasal allergy and you visit a homoeopath for its treatment, and a physician starts asking about your nightmares or your response to anger, or if you weep very easily or about your worst moment in life, etc. The physician may also ask about the kind of diseases and lifestyle your forefathers had.

Surely, this is not what you expect when you visit a physician. More so, it makes you wonder what emotions and stress have to do with nasal and skin allergy.

Recent researches suggest that the human body stands as a single entity with the mind and body as an indivisible continuum, and the old concept of mind-body dualism seems more obsolete than ever. A whole new range of diseases called psychosomatic diseases have been identified in the last few decades.

In some disorders, a necessary biological component (eg the genetic tendency to asthma), when combined with psychological reactions and stress (e.g. depression, loss of a loved one), results in conditions sufficient to produce a disorder.

A recent research in the field of Psychoneuroimmunology (a branch that deals with the relationship between our immune system, the psychological and physical aspects of our nervous system) has shown an interrelationship between reactions affecting the mind (brain) and alterations in immune responses mediated by lymphocytes and lymphokines. Thus, changes at our psychological level can make our allergies go berserk or even reduce our resistance to infections. So, it makes great sense when the homoeopath assesses your psychological stress levels in order to treat the skin and nasal allergy.

‘But what have my father’s smoking and drinking habits got to do with my skin and nasal allergy?’ Crazy as it may sound, but it does mean much more than you can think of. Researchers in the field of genetics found in a study conducted in Europe that the grandchildren of well-fed adolescents had a greater risk of dying from diabetes whereas those descended from the famine were less likely to die of heart disease. This suggests that factors such as lifestyle and diet not only influence our susceptibility to disease but also leave a trail of foot prints on our genome.

This means that the earlier belief that at the stage of fertilization the genome is completely reprogrammed is not true, and that some changes survive the process. So, the information on the illness and the kind of lifestyle of your parents and grandparents actually gives the assessment of the kind of impressions you have inherited which the homoeopath in his language calls “miasms” and can be one of the factors influencing the prescription.

With growing evidence, we now know that the diseases in our body exist in a bigger parameter. The earlier belief the disease is just confined to an organ is not true.

Homoeopathy has always looked at this broad parameter to treat the sick, and even though it has an unconventional outlook it surely is a science that tries to understand you at the deepest level.

Broaden your horizon

Understanding the holstic concept of health can help you in overcoming many chronic disorders like allergies.

Work together

Homoeopaths always require a close cooperation from their patients. The more information you give to your physician about your health, the better are the chances of your disorder being cured?

All in the family

Medical history of your family is equally important and in some chronic disorders it can form the basis for prescription in homoeopathy. Also today if you are what your grandparents ate and how they exercised, your generations too depend upon how you lead your life. So, improve your lifestyle

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IN a given situation, where one finds a hair in a bowl of soup, broadly four different types of human reactions occur. The first flies into a rage and throws the soup at the waiter. The second expresses disgust, shrugs it off, and leaves the restaurant. The third begins crying because bad things always happen to him. The fourth looks at the hair, picks it out and goes on eating. For many it may look like a humorous pantomime but for a skilled homeopath they are typologies – characters that fit into certain remedies.

Remedies, as homeopaths learn to realise them, step forth as personalities. For a homeopath this constellation of “body and mind types” haunts them everywhere they go – restaurants, trains, queues. They become creatures of temperaments – mental or physical. They have likes and dislikes craving and aversions, sensitiveness to meteoric conditions as well as to human interaction. They realise their terrors, real or imaginary – their strange obsessions.

Homeopaths acknowledge certain groupings of bodymind symptom patterns that a person has and which correspond with the sensitivity of a particular homeopathic medicine. The word “symptom” here is most broadly defined as any sensation that is discomforting or that limits a person’s physical or psychological functions. Homeopaths also enquire into factors (which homeopaths call “modalities”) that seem to aggravate or ameliorate these sensations. In addition to prescribing on these factors, a homeopath may utilise information about the person’s body type, temperament and disposition, and behavioural tendencies to determine the appropriate medicine.

There is, for instance, the “phosphorous type,” the “sulphur type”, the “arsenic type,” and the “natrum mur type”. Each of these typologies refers not only to a type of medical problem, for instance, but also to those factors that make it better or worse, other physical symptoms which may be related to it, various past or present symptoms and diseases, food cravings or aversions, sensitivity to temperature and weather, energy levels at varying times of the day.

Over the years many schools of homeopathic practice have come into existence. Some adhere strictly to the original principles laid down by Hahnemann while others have explored different methods of utilising homeopathic remedies Homeopathy is a rigorous discipline that demands both years of immersion and a commitment to its philosophy. Choosing a single remedy that is the most appropriate in any given situation can be very difficult. It depends on the practitioner’s understanding of which symptoms are the most significant.

Through a homoeopath’s viewfinder the set of most distinct, individual symptoms and also that are truly characteristic of the patient, form the basis of “constitutional prescribing”.