Having a tooth removed is quite traumatic, as I know from personal experience. I had all my wisdom teeth removed years ago. My lower ones came out first, one at a time, with a local anaesthetic. The dentist drilled into my jaw bone so that he could prise one of them out. If this wasn’t bad enough, my mouth tasted of blood for a couple of days afterwards and I had huge bruises on my face for a week.

After this experience I insisted on a general anaesthetic when it was time to have my upper set attended to. My dentist insisted that I would be fine with a local, but I wasn’t having it. By this time, I had begun homeopathic treatment for my recurring sinus infections, so I asked my homeopath whether I could have some remedies to help me with this as well. I remember the set of remedies she gave. Arnica (for bruising), Phosphorus (for bleeding and to offset the anaesthetic) and Hypericum (for trauma to nerve endings).

The operation was all over quickly. My mum collected me afterwards and I started taking my remedies in the car. When I got home, I slept for a short while, and then I was ready to eat some lunch. No nasty taste in my mouth, and no bruising. I didn’t know much about homeopathy, but I liked her prescription.

I have given clients the same set of remedies many times over the years. You could try it too, if you find yourself in the same situation (though hopefully you won’t need to). Arnica 30c, Phosphorus 30c, Hypericum 30c. Take one at a time, one hour apart. Repeat the remedies a couple of times. Stop when you feel better.

Our milk comes in glass bottles, delivered by a proper old-fashioned milkman. We’ve moved house three times in the last twelve years and stayed with the same dairy the whole time.

The milk we buy is organic, skimmed (mostly) with a couple of bottles of semi-skimmed for the kids. We also get a bottle of orange juice and a big carton of Yeo Valley yoghurt every Saturday.

I am very cost-conscious about our food budget. We have been having supermarket deliveries since selling our car, and because I quickly realised that spending £1.99 on delivery was nothing compared to what I would spend on impulse buys once I was wheeling a giant trolley around a shop. It is much cheaper to get a weekly delivery.

All our fruit and veg come from the local market. Good quality, very fresh, hardly any packaging. Cheap.

Back to the milk. Why organic? It does cost more. Well, call me old-fashioned, but I like to think that the milk, yoghurt and cheese that I buy comes from cows that are traditionally farmed on small-scale farms and with a minimum of medical (antibiotic) treatment.

I was delighted when I heard that Yeo Valley use homeopathic remedies to treat their cows, as part of their overall preventative health strategy! Wow!

It may come as a surprise that farmers use homeopathy – but they do. I don’t know any farmers personally, but I guess that they are pretty down-to-earth. If homeopathic treatment for their animals is cost-effective, and it works, what’s not to like? And the animals – well, I guess they don’t know any different, but that is simply more evidence against the ‘placebo’ argument.

Which reminds me of the time when I treated our cat with homeopathic remedies. But that is another story…

I went on a girls’ night out the other night. I met up with the friends I made when I was pregnant with my youngest. We hung out together when our kids, all boys, were babies. We listened, laughed and helped each other out whenever we could.

None of my friends knew much about homeopathy when they first met me, but they all use it now. I was both entertained and delighted last night when they told me their little stories about homeopathy. One lad likes to get his mum’s remedy kit and sit under the table pretending to be a ‘doctor’. And his mum was amazed at how quickly her last cold cleared up with a few doses of Gelsemium after she texted me for advice.

Another story was about Chamomilla, the most amazing remedy for teething and upset babies. One friend’s baby had terrible problems whenever he had a tooth coming through, but Chamomilla 200c would help him to settle and able to get off to sleep again. My friend said that her partner used to look at their son sleeping, and say. ‘Have you been giving him one of those little white pills again?’

Babies love taking remedies – you might say that it is because they like the taste of sugar, and maybe it is. But I also think that it is because they know it helps them to feel better too.

The first thing I’d noticed about him was his huge smile. No surprise that he was great fun to dance with, despite the fact he had an equally huge bandage on his thumb.

This might sound obvious, but hands are used a lot by men that jive. They have to ‘lead’ the woman into every move, and the more skilled the lead, the more the dance will flow. Thumbs aren’t used much, but they are close to the action, so to speak. To have any injury is an inconvenience for the serious social dancer, so an injured thumb is really not great.

Anyway, we danced, and I didn’t see him again until we were waiting for the same train at the end of the evening. We chatted all the way back to East London (he had even further to travel than me) and he told me the story of his thumb. He had injured it at work, losing part of his nail, and it was very badly bruised and swollen. He’d had it X-rayed but nothing was broken. It was taking a long time to heal.

He hadn’t heard of Arnica when I asked him, but was interested when I mentioned that it could reduce healing time by around one-third. I seem to recollect spelling the name for him a couple of times and telling him where to find it and how to take it.

To be honest, this conversation wasn’t uppermost in my mind when he turned up on Tuesday. I recognised him straight away – I never forget someone I’ve enjoyed dancing with. When I asked him for a dance, I was pretty sure he knew me, but wasn’t sure if he could ‘place’ me. It turned out that I was wrong about that.  At the end of our dance, he showed me his thumb! ‘Look, do you remember? It’s better now, thanks to the Arnica! Thanks! It really helped a lot!’

We only had a few seconds to find another dance partner and I didn’t see him again. But it really made me smile.

Do you know someone who has had flu this winter? Did you have flu recently? It’s no fun. This is why the papers love writing about it, it is something we can all identify with.

In Cuba, there is something worse than flu. The endemic seasonal disease there is something called Leptospirosis. It is spread by contaminated water, and exposure to rodent urine. Similar to flu in some ways, early symptoms are high fever, severe headache and muscle pain, nausea and vomiting. Sometimes there is a rash. Psychological changes are often seen, with patients feeling depressed, confused, aggressive and sometimes psychotic – with schizophrenia and hallucinations, personality changes and violence. It sounds really horrible. Apparently it takes weeks to fully recover from a mild attack, but more severe cases can lead to organ failure or even death.

Leptospirosis is highly contagious and appears every year from September to December; it is especially bad during the hurricane season. In both 2007 and 2008 Cuba was hit by severe hurricanes which led to huge numbers of the population being affected.

In 2007 the Cuban Government, through the Finlay Institute which manufactures most vaccines used in Cuba, decided to ‘homeopathically immunise’ the bulk of the population in the Eastern region as it was the area worst affected. Records showed that dramatically fewer cases were seen, although Leptospirosis continued to affect the rest of the country.

As this intervention was found to be successful, it was refined and then repeated in 2008. It might be worth mentioning here that although good records were kept, this was not a ‘drug trial’ – it was simply one element of a cost-effective public health campaign aiming to reduce the impact of a highly contagious local illness that was a massive drain on health services and the economy.

The data shows that once again the strategy was an unqualified success. Building on this experience the Cuban government decided to undertake a massive homeopathic immunisation of the total population against Swine Flu in 2009/10 involving over 9.8 million people. The results of this intervention will be later this year once data has been assembled and analysed.

However, already it seems that the Cuban initiative in safe, effective, and low-cost infectious disease prevention, makes the Cubans world leaders in this area of immunisation. Hopefully this will be followed with great interest by both practitioners and public health scientists around the world.

If you lived in Cuba, would you want you or your family to take the ‘homeopathic immunisation’ against Leptospirosis? I know I would.

Read more at:

ainsworths.com

hpathy.com

medicalnewstoday.com

Sleeping in the same space as the rest of my family, it was me the mosquitoes sought out for their nightly feasts. Being told I had sweet blood was little compensation for the itchy swellings erupting all over my limbs. Eventually my GP prescribed an anti-histamine cream that seemed like a small miracle.

Some years later I was bitten on the leg by something that must have had teeth because it left a hole! Maybe a horse fly? They have serrated jaws to help them penetrate horse skin. Nice. Whatever it was, they also left behind some nasty bacteria because it became inflamed and tracked down the veins in my leg. This was one of the times I ended up with antibiotics. Sorted. Thank goodness.

The following year, it happened again. This time I was into my homeopathy training and rang the homeopathic helpline and spoke to David Needleman. I was told that Hypericum was good for a horse fly bite. When I started taking it, the bite literally began to discharge a steady trickle of fluid. Lovely. I walked around with a tissue on my arm for the rest of the day. It soon began to heal. I was delighted.

This year I have been bitten by something different. I think they are called flea beetles. They live in grass at my allotment and jump up and bite my legs when I am gardening. I’m really not sure why. Bad enough to be bitten, as they draw blood, but even worse, I seem to be allergic to them as huge patches of both legs started to swell up within a few hours.  (I thought about taking a photo to upload, but vanity won over in the end!)

The remedy that has helped me? Apis 200c. Made from bee venom. Not a nice idea, especially if you are vegetarian, but a very useful remedy indeed. It is indicated for skin that is red, hot, swollen and better for cold applications. It is not the most appropriate remedy for every bite, but is excellent where there is an allergic component to it.

My bites have healed, mostly, just small scabs left behind. I’m just glad to have these remedies to hand. But I think I may need to look at insect repellent next time I go gardening.

In recent years, I have tended towards one spectacular feverish illness per winter, rather than succumb to everyday coughs, colds and sore throats. This is probably due to the fact that I have a tendency to try and get as much value out of every hour in each day, with a distinct tendency to overdo it.

Anyway, this winter I have had three sore throats, one in November, one in December, and this last one that started in January. I have put it down to the fact that we are moving house in a couple of weeks. It has been a frustrating process. Sore throats often signify that something is left unsaid.

So with the most recent sore throat I shrugged it off and carried on, thinking that it would resolve once we had exchanged contracts. That day hasn’t arrived yet, and in the meantime my sore throat has run on and on.

A couple of years ago I wouldn’t have allowed things to get this far, I would have looked up my symptoms and chosen a likely remedy right at the start. These days I am less keen to self-prescribe. Not because I can’t, but because I find it hard to be objective enough.

Well and truly fed up with it by Sunday evening I decided to call the Homeopathic Helpline. This is a great telephone service, run by experienced homeopaths David Needleman and Francis Treuhertz (and a couple of others).

I remember the first time I called them, 12 years ago. My homeopath at the time was on holiday, and she left the number of the helpline on her answer machine. I was pregnant, and had taken powerful antibiotics for a Strep B infection that had left my digestive system battered and unable to tolerate anything but the most bland food. I spoke to David Needleman, bought myself a remedy (Lycopodium, as I recall) and started to get better quite quickly after that.

I have had some lovely chats with these gentlemen over the years. They have been there for me when my daughter developed an unexplainable rash while on holiday in Suffolk, and when I thought she had measles but it turned out to be scarlet fever. They helped me through a stubborn bout of cystitis and the evening when I was an emotional wreck while we were having our kitchen refitted.

One of the things I love about the helpline is that they often suggest the remedy that is lurking in the back of my mind. And so it was on Sunday. I had already tried Mercury for my sore throat, but it hadn’t really helped. I was told to take Hepar Sulph – a wonderful remedy for many different types of infections, including nasty sore throats. Hepar Sulph and Mercury both help to antidote Mercury toxicity. I am sure I have a fair bit of that floating around as I have several amalgam fillings.

So, three doses before bed and the following morning I knew that I had turned the corner. It’s Tuesday now and my sore throat is negligible. Coincidence? Unlikely. I just wish I’d taken it before.

I remember another homeopath giving me some remedies when I travelled to India back in 1997. Unfortunately they got mixed up with my lavender oil and were completely unusable. When I succumbed to traveller’s diarrhoea I ended up seeing a Tibetan doctor (physician to the Dalai Lama, I found out later) who diagnosed and treated me with little herbal pellets wrapped up in scraps of silk and tied with colourful thread. I got better.

Anyway, today I have put together a collection of remedies for diarrhoea, insect bites and the effects of jet lag. I regularly hand out packets of jet lag and insomnia remedies when my patients, colleagues and friends head off into the sunset. I haven’t done long-haul for years, so I rely on feedback from others with regards to their effectiveness. I am told that they help.

I have prepared two remedies for Malaria prophylaxis. This is a very controversial subject, as Malaria prevention is something to be taken seriously. On this trip, the risk of Malaria is only slight, as it is not the rainy season. We also have a long list of things to reduce the likelihood of being bitten, though I am sure that there is nothing an Indian mosquito would like to dine on better than a nice juicy Englishman.

There has been some research that confirms the effectiveness of homeopathy in preventing Malaria. One study conducted over 18 months (2003-2005) in Kenya involved 33 volunteers (and their families) taking homeopathic Malaria Nosode 30c on a weekly basis. Although this was only a small-scale study, the statistics are impressive.

During the 18 months preceding the trial, 21/33 had developed symptoms of malaria, from 1-3 times, 7/33 had no incidence of malaria, 3/33 had never suffered malaria in their lifetime and 2/33 had no information on their status.

Throughout the eighteen-month trial, only one person thought that he had contracted malaria (though this was not verified by a blood test and the worker recovered very quickly). None of the participants experienced any side-effects.

A comprehensive overview of herbal and homeopathic prevention and treatment of Malaria is given in ‘Silent and Deadly: the Prophylaxis and Treatment of Malaria’ by Theresa Partington in the Journal of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths, Spring 2006.

Food for thought.

We just received a letter inviting our youngest child for vaccination against swine flu. Neither of  our children have been immunised, and we’re not starting now. The standard NHS approach to childhood immunisation is not based around parents making an informed choice about which, if any, vaccines to choose. If one does not follow the prescribed route, one is questioned closely at best, and patronised or bullied at worst. Therefore, it is pretty much all or nothing.

In my homeopathic practice I am often consulted by parents concerned about vaccines. Some wish to vaccinate, but want remedies to help reduce any possible adverse effects. Some are looking for alternatives to vaccination. Others bring their child to see me because they suspect that their child has reacted badly to a vaccine and they are looking for something that may help.

In my private life, I don’t usually talk (or write) about this topic, unless someone directly asks me for my opinion. Most people don’t ask.

Last year someone did ask. Tower Hamlets NHS Trust are carrying out some research to find out why some parents choose not to vaccinate their children. Someone who knows me suggested that I might like to take part. The researcher interviewed me for two hours. There was a lot to talk about. She said that I was clearly someone who had thought about the issue very widely. I hoped this was a compliment. When she asked whether I had any message that I would like her to convey to the Trust, I asked her to say that in my view, the decision not to vaccinate is not taken lightly by parents, and for GPs and Health Visitors to show greater respect for parental choice.

I am not entirely against immunisation. However, in my opinion the current childhood vaccination schedule is simply ‘too much too young’. There are too many diseases in the multiple vaccines. Babies are  vaccinated from a very young age, before their own immune system is fully developed. Contra-indications and side-effects are not taken seriously by many healthcare practitioners, and anxious parents are simply told not to worry and that the vaccines are safe. Ultimately, we do not yet know the long-term effects of the current immunisation programme. I also feel uneasy knowing that the development, testing and marketing of vaccines is carried out  by profit-making multinational companies.

In the news this week: The Council of Europe have recently alleged that the pharmaceutical companies pressurised WHO to declare Swine Flu a pandemic, in order to seek more profits. The New Statesman reports that the council is likely to probe pharmaceutical companies, based on some evidence. http://www.newstatesman.com/healthcare-and-pharmaceuticals/2010/01/swine-flu-council-europe

I am eager to hear how this pans out.

Out with another homeopath friend in my favourite local pub ‘The Camel’ the other evening, we found ourselves chatting to some people at the next table. It all started with face cream, I have no idea why, but eventually there came the question, ‘So what do you do for a living?’ My friend and I looked at each other and replied, ‘We’re homeopaths.’

I expected any kind of response except the one that followed – ‘That’s Hahnemann, isn’t it?’ one of them asked.

The guy went on to explain that his dad had been treated by a homeopath called George Foster in Walthamstow. I had heard of him, he was legendary in the local area. He retired in 2006, aged 88, having treated over 26,000 people. (Apparently he still works one day a week in Leigh-on-Sea.)

Astonishingly, the guy in the pub also knew the name of the remedy that had helped his dad’s arthritis. It was Rhus Tox 6c. His line of work was window cleaning, and he missed several days work a month during the winter, until he saw George Foster. Nothing had helped to relieve his complaint except the Rhus Tox.

I was not surprised that the remedy was Rhus Tox, but I was amazed to hear this story in the pub on a Friday evening.