What is Not important and What is in Acute Diseases
When you visit your allopathic regular doctor, and you want some relief from an acute cough, cystitis, or any other acute illness, it usually does not take him long to be able to prescribe, unless some cultures are taken and the result is waited for. In fact, the modern world has evolved so far, that many over the counter remedies are available for a whole array of acute illnesses. Relief seem to be present in every pharmacy. While I just mentioned acute diseases, asking your homeopath for instance, “Give me something for my cough,” will always be met with many more questions.

• When did it start and what time of day or night is it the worst?
• Is it a dry cough or a wet one?
• Is there expectoration of mucus or is it blocked and if so, where exactly (bottom of lungs, sinuses, etc.)
• Is the cough from the lungs or from the throat?
• What is the color of the sputum?
• What is the consistency of the mucus?
• What are other symptoms going together with this cough? (Nausea, vomiting, itching, sneezing, tickling in throat?
• What is the emotional reaction of the person to this cough? Wants consolation? Wants to be left alone? Irritability? Clinging? Weeping?
• Is the patient thirsty or thirstless with this cough? Drinking big gulps or small ones?
• What is sound of cough? Croupy? Labored? Loose? Whooping? Constrictive? Deep sounding? Hacking? Hollow? Metallic? Racking? Scraping? Suffocative?
• Does the patient hold the chest while coughing?
• What are the situations that aggravate or ameliorate the cough? (lying down, cold air, warm room, bending down, eating, drinking, laughing, speaking, menses, sitting, sleep)
• Did it occur after a vaccination or was it a different situation like exposure to cold air, wind, rain, or after heat and sweating?
• Is there fever and how high?

And there are possible more questions. Well you could say, give me that over the counter stuff that seems to be easier. No doubt but is it better? When we are talking about some sniffles and mild cough, even those suppressive medications won’t do much harm but a cough definitely can be linked to more serious things and suppressing of symptoms most of the time can lead to appearance of other symptoms. And sometimes a simple unresolved cough can lead to many interventions and great costs. Let me give you an example I encountered in Kenya when I was there for a month. Before I went to a remote village to help the poor, I was invited to give two speeches about homeopathy in the two major hospitals in Nairobi. More than 200 physicians attended in each hospital and after my speech I was asked by one of the head doctors to consult his son of 8 years with a cough. He had this already for three weeks, antibiotics repetitive were not helping, a chest X-ray was taken, Valium (yes) was given, even a liver biopsy was done (don’t ask me why)…and yet this boy was not free of cough day and night to the point that his father was weeping hopelessly at his bed. So everything allopathically was done and nothing helped. The boy was very intelligent so when I was asking the above questions, he could answer very clearly as he was not biased like his father, the medical doctor. It was mainly a cough that was accompanied by nausea (especially) and sometimes vomiting. His tongue in spite of nausea was clear; it was a dry cough caused by tickling in larynx, often spasmodic in nature and he covered his mouth with his hand, in order not to inhale much air. The prescription was Ipecac and only two doses of a 1000C (watery doses) cured the boy completely. And even then the father wanted to know what the “diagnosis” was? A laryngitis? A sinusitis? No it was an Ipecac cough!

I give the reader this example as to know what information he needs to give his homeopath in case of acutes. Don’t ask: Give me something for diarrhea, constipation, ear pain, bladder infection, pneumonia…You will have to observe and answer many of these questions I mentioned before and then homeopathy works faster than anything else! And don’t forget, the acute illness that needs a remedy has to be moderate or severe and has a precise causality. At that point (see Lesson One) the chronic disease will be suspended (but not cured) till the acute disease is dealt with and then the chronic illness resurfaces as by miracle.

What is Not important and What is in Chronic Diseases
While we ask so many questions for acute diseases, there is not even a comparison with chronic illness. Here the homeopath, when he asked all the pertinent questions, will know you or your child almost better than yourself. Let’s see what is important and what not.

• What is not important is that you give your homeopath all the symptoms that are common to a disease name. For instance, diabetes with increased urination and thirst. These are common symptoms. Don’t say, “I have chronic fatigue, I am depressed, I have muscle pain…” so give me something. Every depressed person for instance will have a different reason that he started to get depressed and every depressed person will react differently to his depression. Some get drunk; others remove themselves from society and lock themselves in their home; others will phone everyone to tell them how miserable they are…
• In other words here are the important questions you must answer: What happened in your life you got depressed (or sick)? How did you react to this illness? What precisely are your symptoms, not those out of the medical Merck Manual, which will give a general overview of all possible symptoms but which ones are pertaining to you? And that is just the start.
• Make sure to make a time line of yourself or your loved one that comes on consultation: from birth on you write down what illnesses you had, what was done for them, what caused them, what mental emotional events took place in your life (what situations of grief for instance happened and again how did you react), vaccinations and reactions to them, etc. Try to be precise in your dates/years as the homeopath tries to see if there is more than one layer of illness or if there is a repetition of the same trauma, creating a huge layer
• Give from both sides of parents the family history as far as you can go back: age and diseases they suffered from and from what they died eventually. The homeopath uses this knowledge to see what your inherent weaknesses are and it will be important in the selection of your chronic remedy
• The medical diagnosis (name of the disease) can be very important so always bring your medical reports to the homeopath. The name of the disease guides us in selecting a remedy according to its miasmatic trait so we can apply a remedy that is much deeper working. It is also important to give us an idea regarding the prognosis: is it curable? How long is it going to take? A pure physical illness if not long-term suppressed will cure faster than an emotional one (depression for instance) and a mental/emotional one (ASD, ADHD, OCD, etc) will take more time
• VERY IMPORTANT: if your child suffers from an illness from birth on or discovered soon after birth: the homeopath is very interested what happened during the pregnancy and will ask you questions which no one has asked before. Let’s say your child suffers from ASD, ADHD, selective Mutism, etc, here are some questions that are VERY important in order to help your child.

1. What was the mother’s reaction when she heard for first time she was pregnant? Joy? Grief? Shame? Or any other emotion.
2. What was the reaction of husband and close family?
3. Was the husband absent during the pregnancy, either because of traveling, or there was a separation, or even death?
4. Were there a lot of fights between both parents?
5. Did anything acute emotionally happen during pregnancy? Fright? Grief? Indignation? Jealousy? Deception? Was there a lot of feat about the forthcoming delivery?
6. Did the family dynamic during the pregnancy change (mother or other children moving in?)
7. Did you continue working? Was it physically and/or mental very hard?
8. How were previous pregnancies? Did you have any special cravings and/or aversions for foods?
9. How old were you and your husband when you got pregnant? And how was your physical and emotional state when you got pregnant? It tool allopathy a long time to realize that even the age of the father was important when the conception took place. The odds of fathering an autistic child are about 6 in 1,000 for men under 20. When a man reaches 50 (way beyond what TCM favors!), those odds shoot up to about 52 in 1,000. “The optimal time for a man to father a healthy child is the same as for a woman—25 or so,” says Dolores Malaspina, a psychiatric professor at New York University and coauthor of the study. This same physician also conducted a study showing a connection between paternal age and schizophrenia. She found children born to fathers over 50 carried about three times the risk of developing schizophrenia as those born to fathers in their 20s. It is here that allopathy can learn something of TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine. For the Chinese the ideal age of the woman was between 28 and 35 and for the man to father a child, between 32 and 40. These are the ages when your child receives the best possible essence or hereditary energy from the parents!

I hope that this lesson might guide you in giving precise information to your homeopath as it will increase the possibility to cure. And don’t forget that you can ask other people in your family. Who can remember everything what one went through? Family members are a great help. And when you have a great family physician, don’t discard him. He is another possible great ally!

In the next lesson I will discuss the alternative modalities that might or might not work together with homeopathy.

Learn! Learn so you can be part of your healing process!

Warm regards,

Dr luc