If Homoeopaths DON'T treat DISEASE, what DO they treat?
1/ Homoeopaths don't treat diseases as described in orthodox or 'western' medicine.
Instead, they treat what is called the 'Vital Force': this is shorthand for something about which much has been written and which one day may be described fully by scientists, although we expect it will then be given a different name!
The 'vitalist' tradition, an ancient way of looking at health, supposes that the 'vital force' works in an integrated way, and leads your body towards health.
When, in that process, it struggles towards health, it produces symptoms.
Those symptoms, individually or as a group, are recognised by doctors as diseases.
However, the range of 'symptoms' of interest to a homoeopath is usually far wider than those from which a disease is medically identified.
For a homoeopath, those 'symptoms' might include changes in the appetite for certain foods, emotional reactions, sleeping position, alterations in the pattern of the symptoms at certain times of day, and so on.
Those symptoms and their pattern are vital to homoeopaths.
This is because they show how your vital force is behaving. Homoeopaths use what are called 'remedies' to treat the vital force.
A remedy is chosen because when given to someone like you - but healthy - it produced a set of symptoms similar to those you are experiencing.
So the name of your disease, as described by your doctor, although of interest to your homoeopath, isn't necessarily relevant to finding the 'remedy' appropriate for you.
This means that you could easily have a dozen people, with the same 'disease' as described by a doctor, who are each given a different remedy.
Why? Because if you've ever had, for instance, a cold, you'll know that some people with colds ...
- feel hot or ...
- feel cold
- some sneeze
- some cough
- some feel tired
- some have muscles that ache
- some have only a headache
- others are wired, hyper, over-energetic (at least for while)
- some have blocked noses, some don't;
- some are thirsty, some not ... and so on.
Salvia Officinalis - Sage
Everyone is different and that's what makes homoeopathy interesting: it is always individualised. (By the way, we aren't allowed to say we treat 'colds' either!)
2/ The Advertising Standards Authority lays down strict guidelines for what claims can be made.
Even if a homoeopath has dozens of patients who have given written or video testimonials about a given condition or disease and how homoeopathy has helped them, we still can't mention or advertise what it was!
Click here for more about the ASA guidelines.