"I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis, and I don't deserve that either."
Sir William Osler, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine," once said, "When an arthritis patient walks in the front door, I feel like leaving by the back door." There is one simple reason that Dr. Osler and many other conventional physicians since him have difficulty facing arthritic patients: there is little that conventional medicine offers them. The lucky ones get temporary relief along with drug side effects; the unlucky ones only get the side effects.
Homeopathic medicine is natural pharmaceutical system that uses extremely small doses of substances from the plant, mineral, or animal kingdom to augment a person's own immune and defense system. Based on the "principle of similar," homeopathy uses substances which would actually cause, if given in large dose to experimental subjects, the similar symptoms that a sick person experiences.
Because symptoms of illness are efforts of the person's immune and defense system to fight infection, deal with stress, or try to heal itself, an individually chosen homeopathic medicine is chosen for its unique ability to mimic the very symptoms that the sick person is experiencing. The homeopathic remedy thus aids the body's own defenses, as compared to conventional drugs which typically treat and often suppress symptoms. A homeopathic medicine is not chosen simply based on the disease a person has but on the individualized symptoms each person has.
These natural medicines are known to stimulate a person's own healing abilities. A recent review research on homeopathy was published in the British Medical Journal (February 9, 1991, pp. 316-323) and indicated that of controlled studies showed that homeopathic medicines were effective in treating a variety of common ailments. Not all of these studies were adequately controlled, and yet, a still significant number of the high quality studies of showed that the homeopathic medicines were effective
Self – Treatment vs Professional Care
Self-treatment of arthritis with homeopathic medicine is possible, including the use of homeopathic formula products for arthritis, though such care is generally only effective for treating acute exacerbations of the ailment, not the underlying disease. Although most arthritis sufferers would certainly welcome temporary relief, professional homeopathic care of people with arthritis offers the potential of deeper, more longlasting relief, possibly even a cure. Such treatment is provided through highly individualized constitutional treatment, usually a single remedy, though usually with a series of single remedies over time.
By Dana Ullman, MPH
