This month I would like to reflect upon observations I have made during my years of practice.
I'm sure you ask yourself the same questions I ask myself. For instance, how is it that so many people today are allergic to wheat, to peanuts and to so many other things? When I was a kid, no one had life-threatening peanut allergies. If smoking causes lung cancer, then why do only 25% of smokers suffer from lung cancer? And why are so many non smokers getting lung
cancer? How is it that there is so much skin cancer? Is it really because of a change in the outer environment? Why are so many people not feeling well, not so sick that they can't work, but sick in the sense that they cannot enjoy life to its fullest extent. They have persistent, nagging symptoms like fatigue, insomnia, joint pains, reproductive problems, fibromyalgia, anxiety, fears, depression, etc. How about Lyme Disease? Isn't that also relatively new?
So often when I have wanted to learn the truth about things like nutrition, mercury, fluoride, root canals, etc.,
I have found it beneficial to seek the wisdom of the "old timers". What were their observations at a time when a clearer picture could be had...when drugs and toxins weren't so pervasive, and before money and politics so strongly influenced the medical and nutritional information we receive.
For instance,
Dr. Weston Price, who traveled the world in the 20's and 30's, observed different cultures and recorded the effects of their diet on health and development. In subsequent visits, he noted the effects of changes in diet on those populations, and eventually he wrote the seminal book on nutrition, "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration". The other genius in nutrition was
Dr. Royal Lee. He found that it was important to consume whole food nutrients.
The observations and conclusions both men drew are valued today, because they are based on a foundation of truth. Truth does not change with time.
So what is the truth with regard to the nature of disease? What is the underlying basic cause of disease? Here again, I find that the answers have been given to us in the past.
I have been rereading the works of
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann and his followers. Dr. Hahnemann was the German doctor who uncovered the principles of homeopathy. He practiced medicine in the late 1700's and early 1800's.
Homeopathy is based on fundamental laws and thus what Dr. Hahnemann said 200 years ago is still valid today. Homeopathy has a firm foundation; it is not based on a foundation of quicksand like much of our modern medicine. If your paradigm is not based on laws of nature, then things are forever changing. One year this is the best treatment for a certain disease and the next year another "school of thought" recommends a different treatment.
I have observed that just a few mercury fillings or one root canal can have devastating effects on some people, while others are seemingly unaffected. Some people can be bitten by a tick carrying the Lyme bacteria and be OK, even without antibiotics, while another's health is forever changed, even with antibiotics.
How does homeopathy approach wellness and provide answers to these questions?
We need to understand the underlying principles of homeopathy in order to address these issues. What are the foundational principles?
First, is the law of "like cures like". That which will cause illness in a healthy person will take it away in a sick person. Allergy shots are a bastardization of homeopathy, but they are based on like cures like, they give you the allergen you are allergic to, in order to desensitize you.
Another law, when a person is actually being cured, is that a person heals from the top down, from inside to outside, and the disease should disappear exactly in the reverse order in which it came.
Another foundational truth is that symptoms are a manifestation of an ongoing internal battle between what Dr. Hahnemann called the "vital force" and a toxin, acute infection or a chronic infection.
Underlying all this are those inherited traits or what Dr. Hahnemann called miasms. Today we would refer to them as our genetic predispositions.
Also, extremely important is the fundamental truth about suppression of symptoms. When you suppress symptoms you do not cure the underlying disease, instead you drive it deeper and it manifests in another way. By the time a person exhibits pathology (an identifiable physical change), that person has usually been suffering for a long time. By suffering I mean that there have been symptoms which have been subtly or non-subtly crying out for treatment. There have been symptoms which are nagging and persistent, symptoms
which often deal with the senses and for which modern medicine has no answers. For instance, a person may be affected by the phases of the moon. Another may catch cold whenever their chest is exposed to a draft. Others may have an altered sense of taste or be sensitive to smells. These are the beginnings of what will follow and they may manifest themselves in different external symptoms that modern medicine will now give a name to and treat with a drug which will then suppress these symptoms.
According to homeopathy, these beginning changes are vibrational and to treat them, homeopathic remedies, which themselves are vibrational, are to be used. According to Dr. Hahnemann homeopathy is the only path to a real cure.
Next month I will talk further about miasms and how they lay the foundation for the development of chronic disease.
© 2009, Mark A. Breiner, DDS
The information presented is for educational purposes only. You should consult a qualified health practitioner for diagnosis and treatment.
