Homeopathy and diabetes

Patients ask me "is there a medicine in homeopathy to cure diabetes?"

I advice them "improve your lifestyle first and then we will think about homeopathy."

Most of the diabetics are overweight and they need to reduce body weight in proportion to the height

Supposing the height is 172 cm, then the weight should be 72 kg.
 (height in cm minus 100 is the weight in kg) .

 Abdominal circumference in a male should be less than 94 cm . 

Abdominal circumference in females should be less than 80 cm.  Now a days more and more women are seen with abdominal circumference more than 80 cm (it could be 90 or 94 or even more)

Most diabetics are overweight with increased abdominal circumference. They need to do something about it. 

How many can do it? 

It is not easy because they need a strong motivation and consistency in their efforts. How can we avoid the temptation to eat a delicious food? Food is our weak point.Eating is a biological pleasure in our life. Most of us live to eat rather than eat to live.  


But the good news is that our diabetes will be almost cured if we overcome this temptation and achieve ideal body weight and abdominal circumference. 

Homeopathy can be given at this stage if needed

The beginning

In 1991, I decided to pursue homeopathy. How to begin? I opened materia Medica and randomly read about the remedy Bryonia , which is used widely in practice. This is the description of Bryonia in the material medica by CM Boger

‘’Slowly advancing forcible processes, localizing in unyielding tissues. Very painful effects; on coughing holds sides, chest or head in joints etc. Bursting, stitching or heavy sore pain, going backward. Averse to least motion, even in distant parts. Dryness everywhere. Dryness of the mucous membrane. Scanty adherent secretions. Congestion. Inflammation, exudation. Streaks of red.  Gastro-bilious- rheumatic type. Determined, taciturn, irritable and ugly. Wants to be let alone or go home. Dull, dizzy or faint on rising up. Bursting, stitching or heavy , crushing headache, worse by moving eyes, coughing, straining at stool. Dry mouth, tongue dry, rough…………………….’’

I did not know how to use this information and how to identify a patient who will need this remedy. Now, Dr Phatak was not there to guide me and I had to find a way to go ahead.

I looked up another remedy, Rhus- tox, which is commonly used in practice.

It is described as follows:

“An infectious irritant, exciting typhoid, rheumatic or paretic effects. Nightly shooting, stitching, tearing pains; cannot rest in any position. Grippe,  variola. Sore, bruised or stiff. Flesh feels beaten or torn loose. Dislocative sensation. twitching muscles. Crawling. Numbness and trembling. Burning ,swelling and lividity. Cellulitis. Acrid, rusty red, meat water or musty secretions …………..”

I was confused. How to select a Bryonia or rhus tox patient based on these descriptions. How to proceed further?  An experienced homeopath would be able to find a correct remedy but I had not reached that stage. I was just a beginner.

History of homeopathy.

History of homeopathy

Dr. Christian Samuel freidrich Hahnemann(1755 -1843) developed a system of medicine and called it homeopathy. It is based on the principle "like cures like"

what does it mean? It means that a drug can cure in a sick patient what it can cause in a healthy person.  For example , Arsenic is a remedy in homeopathy. When it is given to healthy volunteers it produces vomiting, diarrhea of rice water stools, a rapid pulse and prostration. The patients showing such symptoms are cured by Arsenic. 

This principle "like cures like"  was known much before Hahnemann from the time of Hippocrates (460 - 361 B.C.).  Hippocrates prescribed mandrake root which produced mania in healthy persons and with the same mandrake root he cured a patient suffering from mania. Kalidasa, an ancient poet (4th Century) said " poison is the remedy of poison". Parcelsus (1490 - 1541), a pharmacologist proposed that a small dose of 'what makes a man ill also cures him'

However, Hahnemann worked systematically on this principle and developed  the system of Homeopathy. It began with the process of proving. Various remedies were tested on normal, healthy individuals (provers) The symptoms experienced by provers were recorded in exact detail and they form homeopathic Materia Medica. These remedies are arranged alphabetically in the Materia Medica.

     

As Hahnemann started exploring this system he observed that the workers in the quinine factory suffered from the cinchona poisoning which resembled malaria. These workers were cured by a small dose of cinchona. This experiment on cinchona bark was to Hahnemann what the falling apple was to Newton.  He himself had taken cinchona as a prover which developed symptoms similar to malaria. 

Following this experiment on cinchona bark several drugs were tested (proved) in healthy volunteers. Hahnemann himself tested several drugs on him along with other healthy volunteers and recorded the effects of various drugs in these provers so that these drugs could be used when similar symptoms were found in sick people.

                                                                         

 This period witnessed the ugly side of western medicine. Bloodletting and such harmful treatments like drastic purgatives, and emetics were widely practiced. It was very much worse than what it is today. This was the reason that prompted Hahnemann to develop homeopathy which was subtle and effective, using natural substances of plant, mineral and animal origin and which aimed to cure mildly, rapidly and permanently.    

"In therapy, first do no harm. Life is short, art is long, the occasion fleeting. Experience deceitful and judgment difficult".(Hippocrates: 460 -361)

The provings  are the bed rock of the Materia medica. It is an ongoing process. Now, there is a trend to conduct proving during a seminar. This is called as the group provings which was initiated by Rajan Sankaran, a leading homeopath.

  For example, during a seminar on homeopathy the participants were given a single dose of a remedy to be proved days before the start of the seminar. These provers were asked to note the symptoms, delusions and dreams during the next week and during the three days of the seminar. On the last day of the seminar each prover narrated his own symptoms and dreams.Nobody knew the name of the drug they are proving. Based on their symptoms and the dreams experienced by them the main themes of the remedy were defined. For example there is a remedy prepared from the venom of snake called Naja.

Here are the main themes of the remedy (Naja) that emerged from the proving:

1. Sense of duty and responsibility towards one’s own family.

2. A split in the mind between duty on one hand and being wronged on the other hand

  e.g. someone has harmed and betrayed the patient, and the same person after some time in future needs help and approaches the patient begging for the help. The patient will help that person. But at the same time feel bitter for what he had done in the past and feel that she should not help him. This is the 'split' in the mind. 

Another example would be of a daughter-in-law in our joint Indian families who has been harassed by mother-in-law. After some years, the mother-in-law becomes old and bed ridden. This is the time the daughter-in-law feels whether she should look after her and why she should? She is very bitter but still she would look after her as she is duty bound,but the bitterness in the mind will remain.

3. A feeling of being injured/affected

4. A feeling of being wrong or wronged

5. Anger, violence

6. A feeling of being neglected

If you find a patient with similar symptoms, Naja will be very effective, and it will remove the 'split' in her mind and she will experience peace of mind.

The symptoms reported during the povings of all the remedies are extremely reliable and this is the basis of selection of the remedy in a given patient.

When this patient who needs Naja goes to a psychiatrist, she will get an antidepressant which will give symptomatic relief  but it will not remove the 'split' in the mind. 

Depression is the result of a prolonged stressful situation. The symptoms are due to a deficiency of a neurochemical in a specific area of brain. Antidepressants elevate the levels of this neurochemical in the brain and relieve the symptoms of depression. However, depression can result from various life situations and the perceptions of that situation by the patient. For every life situation there is a specific homeopathic medicine and that medicine can give a long term relief. Antidepressants only will relieve the symptoms.

There is no such classification as antidepressanta, anti anxiety drugs in hiomeopathy.  

My encounter with homeopathy.

I have been practicing homeopathy for the last 25 years. I am an allopath having a degree of MD and have been practicing homeopathy to make up for the shortcomings of our modern medicine.

I started my clinical practice in 1971 in Mumbai after completing my MBBS from Goa medical college. It was in a suburb of Mumbai called Bhandup . It was a crowded suburb with nearly 50 doctors spread over the area. Most of them did not have proper qualifications. But patients were unaware of this or it did not matter to them whether the doctor has a qualification or not. The practice started at 9 a m till 3 pm and then 6 pm to midnight. All the clinics were full of patients, many of them standing outside as there was limited space inside.

I landed in that area and soon realized that I was the only MBBS doctor in that area. The next day, a patient entered in my clinic. He was having fever and wanted me to give an injection so that he could get a quick relief. I tried to convince him that he does not need an injection. He needs rest and some symptomatic treatment. He was not convinced and went away.

My nature was to treat the patient in ethical way. I was also interested in alternative medicine and thought of getting familiar with homeopathy.  Soon the message spread around that I was not interested in giving injections and false certificates. As a result there were not many patients seen in my clinic and the people passing on the street were taking notice of this fact. All other clinics were flooded with patients. The value of a doctor in that area was decided by the crowd seen in the clinic at any given time. But I was not ready to change and adapt to the local trend.

I wanted to develop a family practice and treat the patient in a professional way. I started using homeopathy where our modern medicine was not really effective.

There was nobody to guide me, but I started reading Materia medica and give homeopathic medicines to the patients.

One day (1976) I myself developed a little swelling on my face which was looking red and oozing little fluid. This could have been tackled easily by using antibiotics and steroid cream. But I thought, this is the opportunity to learn homeopathy. The swelling was slowly increasing, and it was embarrassing to sit in the clinic and answer the questions asked by the concerned patients. I continued to experiment homeopathy on myself and one fine morning was looking like a Frankenstein. My wife forcibly dragged me to a dermatologist who put me on steroids and antibiotics. The problem resolved totally within a week.  I was severely criticized by my family and friends for my foolish attempt to explore homeopathy and experimenting on myself. They were justified because during the next week I got a convulsion during my sleep. I was taken to a neurologist the next morning who suspected that the infection from the face permeated into the brain resulting into a convulsion. I was put on anticonvulsants for the next three years.

As a result my confidence was shaken. I started going to the clinic but I used to feel sleepy due to the medications. As such the patients were not much due to the impressions I had created earlier. I developed a guilt feeling of experimenting on me and suffering the consequences. I kept remembering that episode of convulsion and there was a fear that I may get another episode of convulsion. Slowly I started getting panic attacks. This compelled me to stop my practice in the year 1976..

 What next? I got this set back at the beginning of my career and really did not know what to do, sitting at home. Luckily I got the opportunity to teach pharmacology and physiology at a pharmacy college located at Ulhasnagar (a suburb of Mumbai).

During that period I started getting attacks of migraine, for which there was no satisfactory treatment in modern medicine and I was scared to experiment homeopathy on self. I consulted a very senior homeopath Dr. S.R. Phatak who was related to my wife. He cured my migraine with just a single dose. Dr. Phatak was an MBBS doctor who later converted to a homeopath. Off course he had to struggle for many years to get the success and he became an authority in homeopathy. Homeopathic doctors used to refer their difficult cases to him   

I asked Dr. Phatak whether he could teach me homeopathy. He gladly agreed and asked me to come to his clinic once in a week. I used to sit by his side while he was taking the history from the patient sitting in front. He used to prescribe the remedy and later explain to me how he selected that remedy. This went on for 6 months. Based on this knowledge I started prescribing homeopathy to my friends and relatives, but I failed many times. I was disappointed and discouraged. I remembered Dr Phatak talking about his cases where he failed. It appeared that there are many factors in selecting the remedy and how much weightage to be given to each factor is a matter of judgment which will differ from one homeopath to another. This means homeopathy is more of an art than science. Also, I had stopped my practice at that time and hence there were no patients to practice homeopathy.

I stopped learning homeopathy and developed a negative opinion about it. I thought homeopathy is primitive, unscientific and outdated system. You get results only by chance. I started criticizing homeopathy and homeopaths.

Around this time (1980) I got my MD degree and joined a pharmaceutical company as Medical Director. This totally changed my life. The work schedule was hectic and challenging, which also involved extensive travel all over India. There was no time to think about homeopathy and I almost forgot it.

In 1991 I left pharma industry and started my clinical practice again. One day my daughter complained of headache whenever she was exposed to Sun. She could not avoid Sun exposure due to her job and there was no satisfactory treatment in our modern medicine. I remembered my past learning sessions with Dr Phatak  in which he had treated similar cases of headache with Natrum mur. I gave the same remedy to her and with a single dose her headache disappeared completely. 

This gave me a jolt.  From 1971 to 1991 I had this love and hate relationship with homeopathy. I paid a heavy price for it. But I felt I should have a fresh look at homeopathy.  It is different from modern medicine. It is a laborious, challenging and many times a frustrating experience, but you can get success if you apply your judgment wisely. It was in my nature to face and enjoy challenging situations. I decided to learn homeopathy seriously in spite of a failure from 1971 to 1991.

Gradually I developed expertise in homeopathy and today I am a successful homeopathic practitioner.

In homeopathy, disease is considered as a delusion (false perception of reality) and it is cured when you become aware that it was a delusion. Awareness removes delusion just as light removes darkness.  In 1976, I thought homeopathy was a primitive, outdated and unscientific system of medicine. That was my delusion which was removed by gaining knowledge of it over the years.