18/10/2017
Homeopathy: a holistic approach
Recognition of the benefits of a holistic approach to healthcare has been increasingly noted by health conscious individual. Our Family Doctor, a practitioner of Integrative Medicine views them as a whole, rather than a clinical condition or a set of symptoms. There is an interaction between patient and the practitioner. And, from this perspective, the patient is considered as unique and requires individual assessment and corresponding treatment, as an integrated entity, including the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social and any other aspects of a total person. Individuals is a self-healing living system, self-renewable, homeostatic and adaptive. Health is not merely the absence of disease/illness, but the ability of a system, e.g. cell, organism, family, society to respond adaptively to a wide range of environmental challenges. A disease is considered as a result of an off-balance state of the whole individual (mind and body) rather than a local disturbance.
According to the European Committee for Homeopathy (ECH):
Homeopathy looks beyond the labels of disease to cure their causes rather than merely their symptoms and it stimulates the body’s own natural healing powers to bring health, vitality, and well-being. It does not treat superficially by just driving away the symptoms but heals the patient from within. It uses medicines that cover the disturbance of the whole person rather than giving different medicines for different afflicted parts of the body. Patients often report improvement in overall energy, mood, quality of sleep, and digestion, and the disappearance of other symptoms apparently unrelated to the condition being treated with homeopathy.
Homeopathic doctors relate individual patterns of responding to environmental influences, infectious agents and potential stressors to specific homeopathic medicines that can remedy these susceptibility patterns. Skilled homeopathic prescribing requires that the characteristics of the chosen medicine should be as similar as possible to the characteristics of the illness in the patient. The more detailed the understanding of the symptom nuances of the patient, the more accurate the prescription. Thus, homeopathy is highly individualized and based upon a holistic assessment. As well as the patient’s actual complaint and conventional diagnosis, the following factors may play an important part in medicine selection, especially in chronic disease: the patient’s constitution, emotional and mental make-up, the way the patient responds to physical, emotional and mental influences/stress in his/her life, the patient’s personality, temperament, genetic predispositions and any strong family history of particular diseases.
