The Healing Power of the Micro-Dose

Every minute of our lives, bacteria, viruses, toxins and pollutants are attacking our bodies. When healthy, we are equipped a strong and powerful immune system capable of combating these invaders and preventing disease. Armed with forces from the thymus, spleen, lymph nodes and blood cells, our immune system prevents disease by destroying hundreds of illness-producing organisms a day. Stress, antibiotic overuse and poor diet can compromise immune function.

Today, doctors treat the diseases they have diagnosed with standard drugs designed to replace normal body processes (hormones), inhibit body responses (pain killers, anti-inflammatory drugs, antihistamines), or weaken or kill bacteria or viruses (antibiotics). All these drugs do something to and for the body rather than stimulate and aid its own energies and health itself. Many drugs are used to eliminate the symptoms, without attempting to treat and heal the underlying cause of disease, often causing greater difficulties for patients than the symptoms that brought them to the doctor to the first place.

Conventional medical treatment for illness does little to boost immunity or strengthen the body against disease. Treatments focus on symptom relief, often with immediate, yet, short-tem, results. On the other hand the homeopathic approach to illness enhances the immune system and offers more long-term benefits.

Homeopathy is a system of medicine that assists the body’s inherent healing process by strengthening the immune system. It recognizes symptoms as a response to causes (a virus, an injury, an emotional upset or shock), a response that seeks to return the person to health balance (homeostasis) and wholeness. Homeopathic medicine uses naturally occurring substances of plant, mineral or animal origin, which, when taken in very small doses, stimulate a person’s natural defenses and healing powers.

Since symptoms are actually efforts of the body to reestablish homeostasis, these remedies support rather than suppress the body’s efforts to heal itself. Unlike drugs which relieve the patient’s symptoms (i.e. aspirin for fever), homeopathic remedies may sometimes temporarily increase the symptoms the person is experiencing. This occurs because these medicines are designed to strengthen the person’s defenses by boosting the immune system response and enabling a cleansing effect on toxins, viruses and bacteria.

Based on the words ‘homeos’, meaning similar, and ‘pathos’, meaning suffering, homeopathy is based on the principle of similars, often referred to as “like cures like”. Simply put, a substance that produces certain symptoms in a healthy person will cure those exact same symptoms in a sick or injured person when taken in minute homeopathically-prepared doses. Rhus toxicodendrum, made from poison ivy, is used to treat both skin rashes where there is swelling, redness and itching, and also used for hot painful swelling of joints or ligaments.

In the late 1700’s, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician, discovered that micro-doses of certain natural substances stimulate the body’s healing mechanisms. He noticed that cinchona (quinine), which was used for treating malarial fevers, also produced, as a toxicological effect, feverish attacks similar to those for which it was used as a therapeutic agent.

He collected hundreds of plants, mineral and animal substances, blended and diluted them into specific potencies and recorded which natural substances when taken full strength caused specific symptoms and when taken in a highly diluted, homeopathic dose, cured those same symptoms.

By diluting a vigorously shaking these natural substances with “impact succession” and repeating the process many times, he could produce the correct potency that would eliminate the malady. He also discovered that the more he diluted and repeated the process, the more effective the remedy became.

Today, following Dr. Hahnemann’s methods, homeopathic remedies are prepared by a process of serial dilutions and shaking, known as “potenization”. The homeopathic pharmacist first makes a mother tincture of an animal, mineral or vegetable substance by macerating it in alcohol. The shaking of each dilution is the crucial factor in the preparation and allows a homeopathic remedy to maintain potent past the point where none of the original molecules remain in the dilution.

The more the homeopathic remedy is diluted and shaken, the more potent it becomes. Imagine one drop of ink dissolved in nine drops of water. Only 1/10th of the solution would be ink. If you diluted it again with one hundred drops of water, only 1/100th of the ink would remain. Barely any color would be visible. If you repeated this process 6 times, only one pert per million of the original drop of ink would remain and the mixture would appear colorless.

A homeopathic remedy showing its strength as 6x or 9x represents its number of dilutions. The 6x potency is one of the least diluted potencies commonly used in homeopathic practice. Yet even these micro-doses can still be powerful healers. For example, the same substance in an onion that causes our eyes to water is used in its homeopathically diluted form as a natural decongestant. Ipecac, when used in large doses, induces vomiting, while a homeopathic dose will cure nausea and stop vomiting. More simply, small doses have a curative effect of the same symptoms that appear when taken in a large dose.

Some of the raw materials used in homeopathic medicines are known poisons. Yet, as any toxicologist knows, a substance is poisonous only at certain doses. (Virtually anything is poisonous in certain doses – too much oxygen can impede respiration; too much calcium will lead to brittle bones.) As a result of the tiny doses used, homeopathic remedies are completely safe. The homeopathic dilution process removes any harmful effects a substance may have had.

Homeopathy has been used in this country for over 200 years and has an impeccable reputation for safety. Research in America is just beginning, but Europe has an impressive history of studies that show the efficacy of homeopathic remedies. The latest evidence comes from a study published in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet. Researchers at the University of Glasgow, the largest medical school in Europe, conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 28 asthma patients, wherein 81% of those given homeopathic medicines showed improvement. Prior to this study, a 1991 analysis of 107 clinical trials testing homeopathy published in the British Medical Journal found that at least 77% of the trials showed significant results in treating influenza, rheumatoid arthritis, fibrositis, and migraine headaches.

Allopathic (traditional) medicine has relied upon the laws of homeopathy in developing immunization programs to protect us from contagious diseases. For example, smallpox can be prevented by administering a small dose of a similar, but less serious disease, cowpox. Minute doses of nitroglycerin have been used as a treatment for angina since the 1850s. Allergy treatment using a dilute solution of ragweed is another illustration of this principle.

Homeopathy should be among the first line of treatments for a number of reasons: it is non-toxic and doesn’t have uncomfortable and/or dangerous side effects; it doesn’t interact or interfere with other drugs, creates no allergic reactions and is non-addictive. In all the millions of cases treated with homeopathy, it has never proven to have a harmful side-effect. It is suitable for pregnant women and children, as well as for the elderly.

If an incorrect homeopathic remedy is used, nothing happens. The body ignores the remedy and no harmful effects are produced. The worst that can happen to a consumer who chooses or uses the wrong remedy is that it won’t work. These remedies are easily adapted to self-care and are extremely inexpensive, especially when compared to current pharmaceutical prices.

Homeopathy has experienced widespread growth over the past twenty years due to emerging concerns with modern medicine – an alarming increase in dangerous side-effects, drug interactions and toxicity problems with each new generation of modern medicines, and the need to use more powerful drugs to match stride with increasing germ resistance to medicines.

Conventional medicine is of great value in certain acute conditions – however the cure for most chronic diseases using conventional medicine is still “just around the corner”. Homeopathic medicine, in contrast, is widely recognized by practitioners and patients to be of greatest value in the relief and cure of chronic conditions. Since these remedies work by stimulating the body’s own immune and defense systems, homeopathy will definitely play a major role in dealing with our present and future health problems.