09/12/2025
At the moment I am learning from Jeremy Sherr at the Dynamis School of Homeopathy, and it is amazing. There is something completely different about looking at the textbooks when you are a practitioner with experience, compared to learning something as a student. It allows me to look at cases that I have had- some that were great, some that I didn’t get it right, or things didn’t go well, and really understand what and why.
As well as the lectures, there are recommended readings, and I have been slowly working my way through Kent’s Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy. (I mean slowly- there are 36 and I’m not in the teens yet!) so you may see some posts inspired by what I’m reading, as this one is today.
In Kent’s 4th lecture, titled “Fixed Principles”, Law and Government from Centre, Kent talks about how disease is an expression of an internal disorder, which Hahnemann mentions in his 4th aphorism in the Organon. That haemorrhoids or tumours are only an external expression of the disease and while they can be removed they are not the disease itself, if we don’t deal with the underlying cause they can reoccur (or in some cases with suppression of a symptom somewhere, it moves elsewhere in the body).
However what prompted me to write this was this statement “…the coarser things are such as can disturb more especially the body, such as improperly selected food, living in damp houses, etc. It is hardly worthwhile to dwell upon these things, because any ordinary physician is sufficiently well versed in hygiene to remove from his patients the external obstacles.” (Emphasis mine).
While that may have been the case for Kent, in the early 20th century, unfortunately this is not the case in the early 21st century. Our medical doctors learn a little about nutrition, but not much, and while they may recognise a damp house as a contributing factor of it is brought up, there is no systematic discussion of contributing factors for disease (in homeopathy what we can call maintaining causes or obstacles to cure).
If our doctors did this, there would be no need for naturopaths. If our regular doctors learnt this, there would be no need for the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM), who provide training to doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals in these areas.
This is not a post denigrating our doctors- many of whom work extremely hard within the system they are in. In fact it is this system that is extraordinarily broken- a standard doctors visit is 10-15 minutes, so there is no time to have any meaningful discussion about lifestyle. In comparison, an initial consultation with a Homeopath, Naturopath or Integrative Doctor can be 1-2 hours, and particularly when looking at lifestyle there may be an intake form with a wide variety of questions.
Medical school is long, and covers so many other, important things, so doctors once qualified need to choose to do further training in nutritional and environmental medicine. My fellowship with ACNEM allows three years to complete it, and this covers foundations, key areas like environmental medicine, gastrointestinal and mental health, and a choice to learn more about 3 specific areas. I can see though that once I have completed it I won’t be stopping as there are so many areas with more to learn about.
It’s also a comment on our lifestyle in the 21st century:
* While in New Zealand we have access to amazing whole foods, there is also an enormous amount of ultra-processed “foods”, which provide calories but no nutrition. A recent study showed that the average NZ diet contains nearly 50% ultra processed foods, and this is a huge contributor to our chronic disease burden. (Link to a recent lancet article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01565-X/abstract)
* Pesticides and herbicides are another problem, even when eating whole foods- while organic can be out of reach financially, prioritising spray free, and checking out the Dirty Dozen list and the Clean Thirteen to see which ones to prioritise will also lower your chemical burden.
* There are still toxins in our environment- we have removed lead from our paint, but it is still in kids products, included glassware! Follow Lead Aware NZ for more information about this- particularly if you are buying new crockery and glassware.
* Mould is found in so many houses in New Zealand- and for people with immune dysfunction, inflammation or chronic illness, this may be a huge trigger. Remediation is difficult, and costly, and unfortunately our new buildings are not necessarily designed to minimise growth of mould. A ventilation system will help, but Nicole Bijlsma, in her book Health Home Healthy Family: Is Where You Live Affecting Your Help talks about what to consider if you are building a new house (some of which I wish I had known 11 years ago!)
* Our use of medication and vaccines can also have a profound effect on the body. Research has confirmed over and over the importance of our microbiome- which can be damaged by antibiotics, vaccines and other medication. This then becomes an area the needs to be worked on and restored, or it too can become a maintaining cause of disease.
* Electromagnetic frequency radiation (EMF) is something we are all exposed to on a much higher level than ever before. Some people are more sensitive than others, but even if you don’t feel an effect, have no doubt it is affecting us as a planet. Arthur Firstenberg’s book The Invisible Rainbow talks about the history of electricity and how that affected our health- and published a new book (which I have not read) in January this year, The Earth and I.
So while I agree with many things that Kent says, I do not believe that we can leave lifestyle to “any ordinary physician”. At the very least, these issues will change the way we prescribe, but with identification and care we can support people to make different choices. This also comes back to scope of practice- dealing with these may well be outside my scope of practice as a Homeopath, (although my scope is much broader with my Pharmacy and ACNEM training), so I can refer to a nutritionist, naturopath or other integrative practitioner, particularly if there is a lot going on that needs more expert advice. I have a huge appreciation for these practitioners - not “ordinary physicians”, instead a highly trained health practitioners with expertise in what is sometimes now a very complex field.
