Why Mothers Choose Homeopathy

There are a lot of reasons why people decide to try homeopathy. If each reason was a coin, a few piles would be the richest. But the richest of all, is the pile from mothers.

Hoping mothers-to-be can find success in constitutional treatment for issues of infertility...

Mothers may meet homeopathy when their midwives introduce them to this medicine, that is gentle and safe for pregnancy...

Laboring mothers move through slow labors, fear, vomiting, or stopped labors with the rapid efficiency of a well chosen remedy...

Breastfeeding mothers find relief from mastitis, low milk supply, over milk supply, and soreness from delivery (vaginal or caesarean) from appropriate remedies...

Mothers find homeopathic remedies to soothe the tricky colic of crying babies...

Babies and toddlers find relief from teething pain, coughs and colds, fevers and night-terrors...

Some mothers discover the use of homeopathic remedies to educate the immune system gently with homeoprophylaxis, as an alternative to traditional vaccines...

Mothers can soothe themselves from post-partum depression, overwhelm, anxiety and stress with constitutional care...

Mother's find that homeopathic care can greatly assist their children with autism or asperger's syndrome, in some cases reversing their symptoms...

Children receive relief from anxiety or labels from school (ADD, ADHD) without the use of prescription medication with good constitutional care....

They bounce back from sports injuries and the scrapes of childhood with remedies applied for first aid... 

Teens receive welcome emotional support from well-chosen remedies as they navigate the shifting waters of adolescence...

Mothers are empowered to treat their families naturally and gently at home, avoiding unnecessary antibiotics and trips to the doctor or ER, learning to trust their children's immune system and capacity to heal with homeopathic support...

Mother-Earth feels the gentleness of homeopathy's footprint on the earth- no pharmaceuticals or chemicals dumped in city water systems and cruel testing on animals....

To be sure, all individuals who find and choose homeopathy can find these benefits for themselves and their families, parents or no. But in my experience, its the mothers who are looking for the peaceful alternatives, the ge
ntle paths to support their children in being the best of who they are.

Here's to the mothers, and their role in bringing homeopathy to the next generation!

Ease Lyme Anxiety: Homeopathic Treatment of Acute Tick Bites

It's that time of year again. It's getting green and gorgeous, and the ticks are hungry.

Lyme is a big deal, I know. I know people personally with Lyme,  I know stories of people with Lyme I don't know personally, I have treated patients with Lyme. It can be a doozy.

But, you know what's almost worse?

Living in fear. Stress. Nothing to do but wait... and worry.  Folks try and ease this by getting their ticks tested for Lyme, but there's still the waiting. Will symptoms develop? And there can be _so_many_ symptoms, some classic, and some not.  The bulls-eye used to be the tip off...but no more.

So what to do? Avoid the woods? Cower? Run to antibiotics after every tick bite? Even those who do everything to avoid antibiotics in other ailments will fill their prescription.

I'm going to share with you my personal homeopathic protocol for tick bites. If you use homeopathy for nothing else, get yourself some Ledum, and follow this protocol.

In my house, we have tick bites. I have pulled multiple ticks off my son, myself, my husband, after days in the woods. None of us have contracted Lyme. Is it this protocol? I'd like to think it plays a part.

It also keeps me sane. It gives me something to do, to be proactive. An action and remedy that I trust. I don't send ticks in to be tested, but I follow my protocol, and I observe.

We know that fear and stress lower our resistance and immune response. Hitting the roof with fear with every tick bite opens the door to infection, I truly believe that.  How do we begin to shift that fear? When we know stories, we know people, perhaps we have been infected ourselves?

Start with your reaction. Move to your thoughts. Change your words. Make a choice.


Change- "Oh my god! It's a tick! I hope i don't have Lyme disease!" Fear. Panic. Adrenaline rush. Stress, manically saving the tick, sending it out for diagnostic tests.

to

"Oh, I/my child picked up a tick. " Observe what's actually in front of you. Don't project into the future. Note the severity of the bite- does it detach with gentle pulling? is it engorged? Save it *if need be.* Pull out your Ledum and tick-bite dosing protocol. Be proactive, and observe.

Don't even think Lyme disease. There's no Lyme disease yet. It's a tick bite. There's no disease until there are symptoms.

And that protocol? here you go:

1. Treatment for a tick that has latched on, but there's no engorgement and comes off quite easily with gentle pulling, and likely has been on for a couple hours.  

If you pull the tick off, there would be very little reaction- little to no swelling or redness. 

Give/Take 2 doses of Ledum 30c within 12 hours. One dose = 2-3 pellets. Age doesn't matter- this goes for children or adults. Monitor the bite site. If there's a local reaction, you can re-dose the Ledum 30c daily. Stop if the reaction exacerbates. Stop if any additional symptoms - fever, headache, achiness etc.- develop and contact provider of choice.

2. Treatment for a tick that is clearly engorged, is very difficult to pull off and has likely been latched on for many hours or days, give a single dose of Ledum 1M (you can purchase from an online pharmacy, it is not generally sold in stores).

 I have found this will immediately help bring down swelling and tenderness, though the site will begin to itch and continue to itch for several days to over a week. 

If the swelling returns or redness, you can follow the 1M with 30c as needed. The itching doesn't tend to respond to the Ledum, you can use Urtica urens (homeopathically prepared stinging nettle) in 30c to help if needed.  Again if local symptoms exacerbate or additional symptoms- fever, headache, achiness- develop, contact care provider.

The Ledum is stimulating the body to effectively respond to the bite; which may in turn also neutralize the Lyme bacteria and prevent the development of an infection.  This is the same principle by which you give someone with a high fever Belladonna; the remedy stimulates the body in its response to whatever infection or stimuli is causing the fever, often enabling the immune system to complete its work, without moving into a full-blown illness be it cough, flu, croup, etc. 

I think its important to emphasize that Ledum is treating the *tick bite* not Lyme disease. There is no Lyme disease when you get a tick bite. Yes, it *may* develop. And you *may* get the flu from someone at the grocery store. But, you might not.  

This is part of changing your mindset. We need to sever the cord of tick = Lyme always. 

Be proactive about your tick bites. Stay observant of your symptoms, and educated about what to take further action on. 

Having a Ledum protocol gives me great peace of mind, and I hope that it helps you too, feel more empowered and proactive. 

Why I Choose Homeopathy

It's Homeopathy Awareness Week.

Kind of like a birthday, it comes up as a time for reflection for me. Homeopathy is woven into the matrix of my life, enmeshed with significant events in my life and like a photo album, I can review those snapshots in time and remember.

I remember the first conversation I had about homeopathy. My husband- who was not my husband, or even my boyfriend, but my housemate who I had an un-acknowledged crush on- and I were driving in his dad's old truck. He was giving me a lift home from the University. He was telling me a bit about his family, how his dad was a veterinarian and incorporated some holistic approaches. I was a vegetarian and as into natural medicine as one can be at 20, being healthy and therefore never really faced with any big medical decisions anyway.

He said his dad was taking a homeopathy course, or had taken one. I made the classic assertion that it was like herbalism.  Kevin challenged me strongly that no, it was not. He explained that it was an energetic modality and maybe a bit more than that, but mostly I was like, huh? And went back to trying not to focus on the crush.

But like a tiny pebble dropped in a still pool, that ripple resonated.

I didn't think about homeopathy again until years later, our crush not only firmly acknowledged but consummated in marriage and a baby, I sought out a homeopath to treat our daughter. We had moved across the country, starting to set up our life in midcoast Maine. I asked around for a homeopath and my stepfather told me to see Dr. Dirk Vandersloot- the best guy in town.

I remembered the conversation years back with Kevin in the truck, but mostly I wanted to choose something natural and holistic for my baby. Dirk was a doctor, no longer practicing conventional medicine, but as a new mother still figuring this whole thing out, it bolstered my confidence. We used a few remedies with my daughter for teething and fussiness (pulsatilla, of course), and I saw him myself for a transient vertigo I sometimes experienced. I felt well, the vertigo went away. My daughter seemed to respond to the pulsatilla.

But still... I didn't really get it. I knew I wanted to learn more. I was intrigued. Dirk suggested a book, Miranda Castro's Complete Family Guide to Homeopathy. I bought it. I read the introduction. Many times. I acquired some remedies.

Homeopathy at that point remained like a picture on my wall. One I saw everyday, but didn't truly engage with. It was there, I acknowledged it, even stopped to ponder it a bit. But it remained separate, a part.

When my daughter was a month from turning 3, I gave birth to my son. It was fast. Two hours. The midwife barely made it time. The cord was around his neck, he was blue. He needed oxygen. When he came around, he screamed bloody murder, and wouldn't stop. The midwife asked if I had Aconite (for shock, fear, trauma). In fact, I did. The instant the remedy was on his tongue, he stopped screaming, and looked into my eyes.

This is the moment when picture came off the wall, the moment it stopped being something I looked at, and became what I lived.

If that seems strange, because I had already had a healing experience with homeopathy and so why did it take this moment to become three dimensional for me, I can only say that having talked to many people about homeopathy and their experience with it, my situation is not unique.

I have said before that homeopathy is fast, slow medicine. Unless one witnesses an experience like I did with my son, an instantaneous acute response (that's the fast part), the medicine is slow enough and gentle enough that sometimes we almost dismiss it. Maybe it was that I ate better those two weeks. Maybe it was that I slept better. Maybe the symptoms moved off on their own.

We never think - the remedy supported me to eat better.
                         - the remedy supported my sleep
                         - the remedy gently helped my symptoms move away

Many a homeopath, and patient, I have spoken with have concurred that despite having several positive experiences with homeopathy, it took time and some significant event to make them sit up and pay attention.

The instantaneous response of my son to the remedy was undeniable. When he went on to develop consistent croupy coughs, I discovered Aconite, Spongia, and Antimonium- tartaricum moved him through the symptoms within days. Rather than hanging on to colds and coughs for a week or weeks, we were through and moving on.

I needed to know more, and I knew this medicine was to be what I did in this world.

And so it has become that.

I call this post 'Why I CHOOSE Homeopathy' and not why I CHOSE homeopathy, because it is a choice to make, every day, at every opportunity that arises.

While there are a few go-to remedies, say Arnica for an injury, or the Aconite my son received for a physical shock, homeopathy is not, by its nature, 'match the best answer.' It requires us to stop and pay attention. Our symptoms are not a static picture to be looked at, but the story and action of our lives that we live, everyday.

When we view our symptoms as the static picture on the wall, many of the medical options presented to us are the equivalent of moving it to a different wall. Changing the frame. Moving it again. Touching it up.

When we take the picture off the wall, when we step into it, answer all those questions the homeopath asks, consider the present snapshot in the movie of our life, there's a flow, a continuation of one thing to the next, an opportunity to make sense of the whole- and not just the piece.

When you see the whole, you can make decisions for the whole. What does this ear infection need right now? Does it need antibiotics? Again? Does the ear need antibiotics right now, but because it keeps coming back, the child needs to be considered and treated in the bigger picture so the ear infection doesn't come back.

Does this back pain need anti-inflammatories day after day and maybe the opinion of a surgeon, or could this person benefit from a remedy to help manage stress, increase energy to enable exercise, a shift in perspective and confidence that may lead to changing an unsatisfying career, relieving the back pain?

Is more medication the only option for the side effects of cancer treatment, or can the patient consider homeopathic support to help tolerate the symptoms, and then a constitutional remedy for the whole being to help repair the vital force, build strength, and hopefully ensure the cancer does not return- as opposed to living in quiet anxiety from check up to check up?

This past fall, when I discovered that my left ovary had thoughtfully grown a very large cyst, I took that picture off the wall and stepped into it. I chose the advice of my very caring and experienced ob-gyn surgeon *and* I chose homeopathy and other modalities that helped me consider that moment, in the context of my whole life.

Homeopathy helps me to walk through life with my eyes and ears open. When patients come to me, having chosen homeopathy for their own reasons, I show up ready to help, having made that choice too.