Ever Wonder Why Homeopathy Works?

July 24, 2008 | 122,262 views | + Add to Favorites

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In this interview snippet, Dr. William LaValley, M.D., explains the homeopathic healing process, and why feeling worse for a while may be a sign that the treatment is working.

Dr. LaValley has practiced Integrative and Complementary Medicine as a licensed physician in Austin, Texas and Nova Scotia, Canada since 1988.

He is a member of the American Medical Association (AMA), the Texas Medical Association (TMA), the Travis County Medical Society (TCMS) in Austin, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and Doctors Nova Scotia. He has also served as the chairperson of the Complementary Medicine Section of the Nova Scotia division of the CMA since 1994, and served as Complementary Medicine Expert Advisory Committee member for the federal Health Canada Natural Health Products Directorate from 1997 to 2004.

Dr. LaValley has successfully adapted and incorporated the theories of traditional Chinese medicine to restore optimal health by balancing your chi using homeopathic remedies and electro-dermal screening.

To find out more, and to hear the entire fascinating interview, join the Mercola Inner Circle.

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

One of the ways homeopathy works is by helping to balance your body’s energy, or chi as it’s called in traditional Chinese medicine. This energy is circulated through your body along specific meridians, and when this circulation gets disrupted -- something you can test for using electrodermal screening -- illness can result.

Homeopathic solutions themselves contain miniscule doses of plants, minerals, animal products or other compounds that cause symptoms similar to what you are already experiencing. The remedies have been diluted many times over, and the idea is that the substance will stimulate your body’s own healing powers.

In so doing, however, the treatment may evoke symptoms in your body.

You May Feel Worse When You Start Homeopathy

And this often causes people to wonder if the treatment is working. According to Dr. LaValley, who has mastered the art of healing with homeopathy, feeling worse is actually a sign that the solution is doing its job. It’s known as a “healing reaction.”

The healing reaction occurs because as your body’s energy gets stabilized, the buildup of what’s known as deposition products -- which is your body’s way of trying to “seal” off an active disease state so it can’t continue to cause problems -- become mobilized. As they circulate through your system, they provoke an inflammatory response that can make you feel sick or in pain.

How do You Know it’s a Healing Response?

This is the question that comes to most people’s minds when they find out about the healing response. How do you know you’re getting better, as opposed to getting worse?

You stop the treatment.

If it’s a healing response, you will feel better. If it’s a progression of your health problem, you will continue to feel worse.

“If it’s a healing response,” Dr. LaValley says, “you would predict that worsening, that inflammatory exacerbation will resolve [upon stopping the treatment]. If in fact it’s not a healing response, and they’re just having a bad day … and they continue to feel worse, then it was probably their illness that was causing their symptoms and not the healing response.”

Dr. LaValley suggests that whenever you try a homeopathic remedy, you start slowly and gradually increase the dosage until your symptoms begin to worsen. When that happens, stop the medication, let your body restore itself, and then start again at a dose that is one increment less than when your symptoms worsened.

Eventually, your immune system will enter into what’s called the “anti-inflammatory” response, and this will help you maintain homeostasis.

What Does Science Say About Homeopathy?

Numerous studies have proven that homeopathy can, indeed, be beneficial. One study in the British Medical Journal, for instance, found that people with allergies who received homeopathy had a 28 percent improvement in their nasal air flow whereas those in the placebo group had only a 3 percent improvement.

A great resource for those of you looking to learn more about homeopathy is Impossible Cure: The Promise of Homeopathy by Amy Lansky, Ph.D. Lansky provides an in-depth account on the history, philosophy and practice of homeopathy, as well as dozens of testimonials on the power of homeopathy in curing various health problems, including her own son’s autism.

Keep in mind though that it takes a very knowledgeable practitioner to develop effective homeopathic remedies. It took Dr. LaValley, who is one such physician, decades to get to the point he is at today. So if you consider homeopathy for yourself, be sure you find an extremely knowledgeable practitioner.

I am a strong believer in energy medicine and would personally always use it over conventional modalities, but please realize that it should be used to support your healthy lifestyle, not be a substitute for it.

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Ever Wonder Why Homeopathy Works?

July 24, 2008 | 122,262 views | + Add to Favorites

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