How I Healed Autoimmune Disease with Homeopathy
I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after my first son was born. It began in the middle of the night when I woke up to feed my baby and couldn’t move forward off the bed or get back into bed. I was stuck and in pain. The second time it happened I went to the emergency room and they gave me morphine, told me to rest and said I had pulled a muscle. I didn’t get better. I couldn’t walk, sleep or rest and my pain was constant and my ability to move was limited.
I saw a chiropractor who told me it was my spine, a Trager practitioner who made my pain worse by circulating the energy that was toxic, saw a general practitioner and went to the emergency room again. I stayed in the hospital for a few weeks and had numerous tests. As I was leaving the hospital the doctor casually asked me if I knew of any Rheumatologists. I didn’t even know what a Rheumatologist was and left the hospital with no plan to find a Rheumatologist and no idea why he even asked.
Back home I was lucky, I knew an Internist who looked at my blood work and told me I had a rare form of Rheumatoid Arthritis and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would pay me to be a guinea pig. I asked what my prognosis was. He said I would be treated with gold injections, I would get worse and worse and end up in the hospital and probably die. I asked if there were any other possibilities. He said he was working with Dr. Sharma, a Homeopath from London, who loved working with patients with chronic disease and suggested I try that. After much consideration I made an appointment to meet with him.
The first thing he told me was to let go of the crutches I was using. Then he told me that before I could go to London to work with him I must be free of the pain medication I was on for at least a month. It took me a month to get up the courage to stop taking it after realizing it wasn’t helping me get better. At the end of the post-medication month, my body started making enough endorphins that my pain level was the same as it had been on the morphine. A month later I finally visited Dr. Sharma in England.
The day I walked into his clinic he told me that I would need to stop smoking, stop drinking coffee, stop eating chocolate and ice cream. He sent me to a dance therapist to learn some exercises and stretches. He sent me to an orthopedic surgeon to review my x-rays, then put me on a grape fast and began my treatments with tinctures, homeopathic IV’s, & remedies. I was up and walking and with much less pain in three weeks and then continued to be treated and improved over the next 10 years. My healing took place on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. I wouldn’t be surprised if the markers for Rheumatoid Arthritis are no longer visible in my blood.
I now understand from my homeopathic studies, that my Homeopath was following the advice for healing chronic disease and especially autoimmune disease, that is indicated in the Organon of the Medical Arts by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann.
Chronic disease is complicated and must have an integrated approach, including understanding what in a patient’s lifestyle is an obstacle to cure. Dr. Sharma’s request for me to stop all medicine, remove all causes of inflammation or ill health in my diet and to increase exercise in spite of the pain, were all part of his prescription for my overall health and ability to respond to the homeopathic remedies to, “allow the distant flute to be heard.“ It was my good fortune that Dr. Sharma was indeed a true practitioner and he taught me that part of hearing that distant flute as a Homeopath is to help patients connect to that still point, to experience that quiet still place and soft heart where true healing takes place.
What happens when you have an autoimmune disorder? In simple terms, your immune system does not distinguish between healthy tissue and antigens. As a result, the body sets off a reaction that destroys normal tissues. It is often set in motion by emotional distress or trauma. Autoimmune disease can be very hard to cure. It is layered and complex and can be obscured by the medicine taken over years to suppress the symptoms.
Here are a few basic ideas or principles related to homeopathic treatment in chronic illness.
- Likes Cure Likes
- Minimum Dose
- Self-Healing
- Individualization
- Single Medicine
Likes Cure Likes
One way is to assume that the body knows what it is doing and that symptoms are the body’s way of taking action to overcome illness. This healing response is automatic in living organisms; we term it the vital response. The similar medicine acts as a stimulus to the natural vital response.
Minimum dose
The principle that only ‘the minimum dose’ should be employed is based upon the understanding that the stimulus of the medicine triggers the intrinsic healing response. Following this principle, we give only enough medicine to initiate this healing response. This response then carries on, driven by the body’s need to maintain health and balance. The use of the minimum dose has the advantage that it does not produce the gross side effects so often caused by conventional treatments.
Self-Healing
Translation: The homeopathic remedy provides the message; the amplification of the response is done by the vital force, but the work is done by the organism.
Individualization
Each person manifests their disease in an individual manner and these differences help to determine the particular homeopathic medicine we will prescribe. Three patients with the same autoimmune disease might receive three different medicines.
Single Medicine
Only one medicine is given at a time in order to accurately assess if the patient reacted well to it. The more changes or variables in a treatment, the harder it is for us to evaluate and adjust the prescriptions. Other reasons for giving only one medicine at a time are:
- If you give more than one medicine, one might cancel out the action of another.
- The possible interactions between simultaneously given remedies are not known.
We wait and watch while the healing process takes place. There may be a slight worsening of symptoms (aggravation) at the start, but this should be followed by an improvement as your vitality and immune system are stimulated by the medicine. During the healing of chronic disease, old symptoms, that might once have been suppressed, may re-emerge.
My experience as a homeopathic patient and now as a trained Homeopath highlights the need for great patience in learning how to report symptoms and changes in health and also how important it is to have clear communication between the patient and the Homeopath. The Homeopath should help manage the expectations of the patient about the nature of the treatment and the course of treatment, review the client’s commitment to healing and explain what it means to have obstacles to a cure in relation to mindset, diet, exercise and medicine. The Homeopathic mission is to treat the whole person, not individual symptoms, at all levels of your being – spiritual, emotional, mental and physical and finds the one medicine, ‘like cures like’, match for them.
The possibility that your chronic illness, which you may have been able to manage with suppression, can actually be cured is quite high. There is no need to continue suffering. Find the right relation to your vital force and a highly trained Homeopath and get started.
Joan Elizabeth of Green Amber Healing studied homeopathy at Baylight Center for Homeopathy in Portland, Maine. She decided to study homeopathy because it is easier to remain well then to cure chronic disease and because of her growing concern about the cost of health care, the over prescription of pharmaceuticals and how that causes illness. She believes Homeopathy helps you stay well and is affordable. For more information, visit: www.greenamberattunement.com or call 207-671-0899.
ELM™ | Maine
