Homeopathic treatment for allergies

I'm responding to the person who was inquiring about homeopathy some time ago. Being originally from France, I (and everyone else in my family in France) have been using homeopathic remedies for decades, even for our babies. They are safe, easy to use, and have NO side effects, which is a big plus for me. In the worst case scenario, if they don't work, they won't harm you either (whereas I almost died once and developed nasty side effects at other times with allopathic medication). I have found that, for most chronic conditions, it is very efficient. My daughter (now 15 year-old) developed allergies when she was 6 or 7 years-old and I have been giving her homeopathic drops. The remedy she uses now is by A. Vogel, a product from Switzerland that I found at Wild Oats market at the corner of University and California streets; it's in a small glass bottle in a tall rectangular box (white, I believe with some red, green and yellow lines!!) and it works very well for Allergy to pollen, Hay Fever, Sneezing and Watery Eyes. Now, I think that this product contains a little bit of alcohol and you have to let it sit for a few seconds under your tongue, so it burns a bit for a short while. But Wild Oats also has homeopathic pellets in a small blue tube for all sorts of conditions, by the French BOIRON laboratories. For those who have tendinitis, I use a pellet combination of ARNICA MONTANA and RUTA GRAVEOLENS 30C for 3-4 days whenever my arm hurts; also, the Arnica-based ointment--also available at Wild Oats--is very effective for bruises and strains, for those of you who have young children who tend to fall. You may want to talk to either one of the Wild Oats nutritionists (they are very knowledgeable and patient!). Good luck!
Patricia

Homeopathy for ear infections

When my daughter was small she had many many ear infections. After a year of 11 prescriptions, we turned to homeopathy when she was 2-1/2 and finally found that pulsatilla worked best for her. I also bought a cheap earscope and learned to look inside her ears for the swollen reddened ear drum indicating an infection and a trip to the docs; a shiny white bulging drum meant pulsatilla. At 8 she had her tonsils out (I resisted to the last minute, but finally decided after a cold accompanied by sleep apnea). She has had no infections since. PS Check out "Somnus" website. They offer a radio-frequency technique for reducing tonsil size. (July 1999)

By all means check out homeopathic alternatives before tubes. When my daughter was 14 months she had a terrible ear infection. I gave in and tried antiobiotics, but she had a reaction to one. Our pediatrician suggested another pediatrician who uses homeopathic remedies (he had sent his own children to her). I highly recommend Dr. Ifeoma Ikenze (415) 258-9600. She is in Kentfield (Marin), is great with children, and is super knowledgeable about different remedies. The homeopathic approach took a bit longer (but who knows given that the antiobiotics didn't really do anything), but I felt much better about the fact that what they were really doing was jump-starting my daughter's body into healing itself and into fighting off future infections that could lead to ear trouble. We still use a "constitutional" weekly (or so)- remedy to strengthen her immune system. It has been over a year and a half and she has had one minor ear infection. I think the homeopathic remedies have helped her weather starting preschool without too many colds, too! Curryville

There was talk of tubes for my son when he was suffering from repeated ear infections, but I resisted and am so glad I did. You'll find pediatricians and even pediatric ENTs divided on the issue. I say, don't go there until you've exhausted ALL the possibilities, including Sally Savitz, a wonderful homeopath in the Rockridge area Oakland, whom I took Chris to last Spring (phone: 655-9644). While part of Chris's miraculous recovery my be in part due to growing out of it and also seeing a Cranio-Sacral therapist (she said his temporal bones were jammed--he's very active and falls alot and jammed temporal bones apparently block the drainage of the Eustachian tubes), I am convinced we would still be caught in the vicious cylcle of antibiotics if I hadn't decided to step outside of the "usual" approach to chronic ear infections. Apparently, chronic ear infections is one of the things for which homeopathy is especially effective, and Sally's assistant gave me some pertinent articles that I found very informative. Good luck, and if you're interested in the Cranio-sacral therapist, her name is Nancy Burke in El Cerrito (phone: 526-0115) and she's great with kids. Chris sees her now once a month for a preventative "tune-up".(But I still knock on wood everytime a cold doesn't become an ear infection--when you're a parent even superstition is worth a try). Beth

Our daughter (4 1/2 yrs.) had fluid trapped behind her eardrum for several months. My regular doctor suggested we might consider tubes. Anyway I took her to a homeopath who suggested that she chew large wads of gum, drink more water and blow up balloons. Mostly what we did was have her blow up balloons. It took her 2 days before she could blow them up by herself and she was quite excited and proud of this accomplishment. In two days she blew up 17 balloons. That was it. Apparently this helps to equalize pressure in the eustacian tubes so that the fluid can drain. A week later and another visit for a check up and we were told her hears looked great. Fluid gone.

Hi, All this talk of homeopathic remedies, which I would like to believe in, has me wondering two things:

1) Has the meaning of the word "homeopathy" been changed recently to mean something other than its original meaning, which was:

        ho.me.op.a.thy
   n [G Homoopathie, fr. homoo- homeo- + -pathie -pathy] (1826):
          a system of medical practice that treats a disease esp. by
          the administration of minute doses of a remedy that would in
          healthy persons produce symptoms similar to those of the
          disease -- ho.meo.path n 

I'd be very interested to learn the answer, if anyone here knows.
Joyce

At http://www.ihr.com/homeopat/research.html there is an article called "The Scientific Evidence for Homeopathic Medicines" which might answer some of your questions about clinical trials. Certainly the precise way in which homeopathy works is not fully understood, but because we don't yet understand the system by which something works doesn't mean that it isn't effective. Witness the evolution of modern scientific understanding over the past couple of centuries.

I'm pretty adamant about speaking up in defense of homeopathy. I grew up in a homeopathic household and my extended family has experienced remarkable success with it. The successes have involved many ailments that weren't things people grow out of: epileptic seizures, arthritis, Meunier's (sp?) disease.

Here's a little statistical blurb on where homeopathy is used throughout the world:

excerpted: Homeopathy is particularly popular in France, England, Germany, Greece, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and South Africa. Approximately 40% of the French public have used homeopathic medicines, and 39% of the French physicians have prescribed the medicines. About 20% of German physicians occasionally utilize these natural medicines, and 45% of Dutch physicians consider them effective. According to a survey in the British Medical Journal (June 7, 1986), 42% of British physicians survey refer patients to homeopathic physicians, and a New York Times article reported that visits to British homeopaths is growing at a rate of 39% a year.
Chris

Certain alternative therapies such as herbal medicine and acupuncture have been finding increasing acceptance, even among standard practitioners of Western medicine, and there are clinical studies using placebo and double-blind methods which have supported the efficacy of SOME of these treatments. However, it is difficult to find credible research to support homeopathy.

As Joyce pointed out, there is a lot of confusion about homeopathy because the term is sometimes used interchangeably with natural/herbal/naturopathy, etc., even when these are not the same thing. For instance, arnica, a popular ingredient in homeopathic preparations, is also used in allopathic, naturopathic, and herbal concoctions, but in much much much stronger doses. I don't think we can say that the homeopathic dose (often something like 1:1,000 dilutions or more) and the 5% solution are the same thing...we certainly don't think so when the ingredient is something like belladonna, which also appears in homeopathic dilutions, but I hope you wouldn't dream of using a non-homeopathic dose on your children!

During the flu season I tried to get my husband to take echinacea, as I do. He at first didn't want to, because he associates echinacea with a friend who promotes its use as well as the use of homeopathy. I told my husband that although many people who use homeopathy also use echinacea, the echinacea in question is not being given in homeopathic doses, and furthermore, there are some well-designed studies which support the efficacy of echinacea in bolstering the immune system. (Zinc, on the other hand, is questionnable.) There are also some intriguing studies involving ginseng in prevention of cancer. However, we are not talking about homeopathic dilutions.

In 1995 the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine convened a panel to examine the possibility of developing practice guidelines for alternative medicines. The panel found that there were two impediments: One, the lack of data from well-designed clinical trials; and two, the divergent theories about the nature of health and illness even among the alternative disciplines (acupunture, herbal medicine, homeopathy, etc.)

In well-designed clinical studies, in which a homeopathic preparation is given to a randomized sample of patients, and another group is given a placebo, and both the patients and the researchers are "blind" to who got what (that's the "double-blind" part), homeopathy is no better than placebo. This has been found in studies of homeopathic preparations for pain, for warts, and for upper respiratory tract infections, etc.

HOWEVER! I understand why parents might want to consider homeopathy for treatment of ear infections. Many, many parents have reported that their children have done better with homeopathic treatment than they have on a standard course of antibiotics. Here's why (I believe): Studies have found that over 80% of children with acute otitis media will improve if given _placebo_, rather than antibiotic. Furthermore, prophylactic antibiotics are not effective in _preventing recurrent_ otitis media. As we all know, antibiotics are overprescribed in this country, partly because parents and physicians want to "do something" and partly because IT IS better than nothing for nearly 20% of the cases. So if you use homeopathic treatment rather than antibiotics, you have a better than 80% chance that your kid will be fine. It's up to you as to whether you want to take that chance.

Homeopathy developed during the 19th century, at a time when people were still being cupped, bled, given emetics and all sorts of horrific treatments. It's no wonder that homeopathy was, and in many cases still can be, an attractive alternative to such violent treatments.

Many studies have demonstrated the importance of the "placebo effect." One shouldn't simply write off placebos or homeopathy as "doing nothing" - I think what they do is allow the patient to feel that she or he is DOING something, and is therefore not powerless in the face of disease. Also, it may allow the body/mind system to begin to heal itself, rather than be assaulted by some of the more violent alternatives. But I would like people to consider the possibility that in choosing homeopathy they ARE doing something, and that something is NOTHING. It is laudable to try do something, and it may be appropriate to have that something be a NOTHING, a nostrum, a placebo. I do object to the practioners and purveyors of homeopathic treatments making such profits from their tiny pills. (Not that larger profits from larger pills are any more attractive).

Think twice before asking for an antibiotic for a virus, and think twice before spending money on a homeopathic remedy when a nice warm cup of milk, or tea, or a cuddle, or a good book, might be just as salutory.

Natasha Beery

What is unique about the Alternative Medicine Sourcebook? Unlike practically everything else written about alternative medicine, this book tells both sides. It combines sharp criticism with informed appreciation, in about equal measure. For, while alternative medicine has much that is useful to offer, it is a very mixed field, with a very high nonsense and commercialism quotient. This book is also unique in that it tells "the story from the street." Rather than idealized depictions of wonderful cures, The Alternative Medicine Sourcebook contains realistic information on how to actually use alternative care in real life. The author is a physician whose practice integrates alternative and conventional medicine. He has also received extensive alternative treatment himself, so he knows the field from both sides.