Homeopathic Remedies for My Rheumatoid Arthritis

Homeopathy is a low cost, non-toxic system of medicine used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. It is particularly effective in treating chronic illnesses that fail to respond to conventional treatment and is also a superb method of self-care for minor conditions such as common cold and flu.

Homeopathic remedies are generally dilutions of natural substances from plants, minerals and animals. Based on the principle of ‘like cures like’, these remedies specifically match different symptom patterns or profiles of illness and act to stimulate the body’s natural healing response.

How Homeopathy Works

Homeopathy was founded in late 18th century by celebrated German physician Dr Hahnemann. His breakthrough came during an experiment which he twice daily ingested cinchona, a Peruvian bark known as a cure for malaria. Soon after his experiment, he began to develop periodic fevers common to malaria. As soon as he stopped taking cinchona, his symptoms disappeared. Therefrom, he theorized that, if taking a large dose of cinchona created symptoms of malaria in a healthy person, this same substance, if taken in a smaller dose by a person suffering from malaria, might stimulate the body to fight the disease. Based on his work, Dr Hahnemann formulated the principles of homeopathy:

1. Like cures like – Law of Similars
2. The more a remedy is diluted, the greater its potency – Law of Infinitesimal Dose
3. An illness is specific to the individual – A holistic medical model

Like Cures Like

According to Dr Hahnemann, ‘each individual case of diseases is most surely, radically, rapidly, and permanently annihilated and removed only by a medicine capable of producing (in the human system) the most similar and complete manner of the totality of the symptoms’. In other words, the same substance that in large doses produces the symptoms of an illness, in very minute doses, cures it.

The More Dilute the Remedy, the Greater Its Potency

Contrary to common beliefs that the higher the dose of a medicine, the greater the effect; the opposite holds true in homeopathy, where the more a substance is diluted, the higher its potency.

Potency levels of homeopathic remedies are designated with ‘X’, ‘C’ and ‘M’. The ‘X’ means that the remedy has been serially diluted on a 1:10 scale (one part substance to nine parts water), ‘C’ means the remedy has been diluted on a 1:100 scale (one part substance to 99 parts waters, and ‘M’ means a 1:1000 dilution.

A number value is placed before the scale designator to identify how many dilutions the remedy has undergone. A remedy designated ‘6X’ has undergone six dilutions at one part substance to nine parts water; a remedy that is designated ’12X’ has undergone 12 dilutions and is stronger than the 6X remedy.

Common potencies are 6X, 12X, 6C, 12C and 30C.

Illness is Specific to Individual

A session with a homeopathic practitioner is a unique experience for someone who has been accustomed to conventional medicine. For instance, if you suffer from chronic headache say migraine, conventional treatment for this condition is the same for most everyone, ie some form of analgesic or anti-inflammatory drugs. For homeopathy, it recognizes over 200 symptoms patterns associated with headaches and has corresponding remedies for each.

Is Rheumatoid Arthritis a Condition that can be Benefited by Homeopathy?

My understanding and experience with homeopathy had only been recent. This field of alternative medicine is not one that is commonly and widely used in my region; but my research of homeopathy had brought me to make believe that it is a complete system of natural medicine that can have a therapeutic effect on almost any disease – including RA, allergies, emotional disorders – when applied at the onset of the disease. Increasingly, clinical studies are supporting the efficacy and effectiveness of homeopathic remedies. The long term benefit of homeopathy to the patient is that it not only alleviates the symptoms but it reestablishes internal order at the deepest levels and thereby providing a lasting cure.

In homeopathy, the process of healing begins by eliminating the immediate symptoms, then progressing to the ‘older’ underlying symptoms. Many of these ‘layers’ are residues of fever, trauma or chronic disease that were unsuccessfully treated or suppressed by conventional medicine. As the stages of homeopathic healing progress, the patient may get worse before getting better. This is often referred to as the ‘Healing Crisis’ – Hering’s Laws of Cure. By Hering’s laws, homeopaths are able to track the progress of their treatment and restore a patient’s health, layer by layer.

My Homeopathic Remedies – RA Nosode & Hura Brasiliensis

So now, with the basic understanding of what homeopathy is and how it works, you must be wondering what specific homeopathic remedy am I currently taking for my RA? Remember, homeopathic remedies are highly individualized and specific to each individual’s condition; and the specific remedies that I’m applying are NOT representation that everyone else with RA can replicate due to differences – physical, emotional, psychological and others – surrounding the onset of the RA.

1ST REMEDY – RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS NOSODE

Homeopathic nosodes are very deep acting, powerful remedies made from the diseased tissues. What is a nosode? Whenever a germ can with confidence be reckoned as a causal agent in producing a disease, experience teaches us that one of the best agents for calling out the resistance of the body and so achieving cure, can be prepared from the causal germ itself. So, the products of a disease afford another source of Homeopathic remedies called Nosodes.

Nosodes when prescribed on the characteristics elicited by extensive provings on healthy human beings, cure many ailments and conditions either connected or quite unconnected with the disease of which they are products.The role of nosodes is highlighted when well selected remedies fail to relieve or effect a permanent cure. The prevailing idea is that being a product of that disease it should be used for that disease eg anything related to Syphilis must be treated with Syphilinum; or anything related to Gonorrhoea be treated with Medorrhinum; or anything Psoric be treated with Psorinum; or related to Tuberculosis be treated with Tuberculinum.

This is the homeopathic RA Nosode that I’m taking currently:
The active ingredients found in this RA nosode are as follows:

• YERSINIA ENTEROCOLITICA, TYPE 3: Acute gastroenteritis and mesentgeric lymphadenitis especially in children and arthritis, septicemia and erythema nodosum in adults.
• CAMPYLOBACTER JEJUNI: Common cause of acute gastroenteritis and thought to be a causal factor in rheumatoid arthritis.
• SALMONELLA ENTERIDITIS: A frequent agent of food poisoning related to infectious reactive arthritis.
• SHIGELLA FLEXNERI: Bacillary dysentery with abdominal cramps, fever, chills, diarrhea, headache, nausea and dehydration and infectious reactive arthritis.
• BRUCELLA ABORTUS: Related to spondylidis and purulent arthritis.
• CHLAMYDIA PNEUMONIAE: Causal factor in infectious reactive arthritis.
• MYCOPLASMA PNEUMONIAE: Respiratory tract infection and infectious reactive arthritis.
• BETA STREPTOCOCCUS: Weakness, poor feeding, jaundice, abnormal temperature, unnatural paleness, and low blood pressure.
• BORRELIA BURGDORFERI: Causal factor in Lymes Disease as well as involvement in infectious reactive arthritis.
• KLEBSIELLA PNEUMONIAE: The etiologic agent of acute bacterial pneumonia related to infections of the urinary and respiratory tracts.
• MYCOPLASMA ARTHRIDITIS: Mycoplasmas make an etiological contribution to the development of human rheumatic arthritis.

2ND REMEDY – HURA BRASILIENSIS

My 2nd homeopathic remedy is Hura Brasiliensis. Why Hura Bras?

According to ‘Homeopathic remedies for the stages of life: infancy, childhood and beyond’; probably the worst, and frequently the most hidden, kind of suffering occurs after the death of a child. The remedy for this is Hura Brasiliensis – the milky sap or latex that is called Assacu by the Brazilians of Hura.

People who need this remedy express their suffering through various joint and limb problems, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, and it is interesting to note that the blood of people suffering from RA has the coagulative properties of latex. The love of Hura Brasiliensis towards others is also like a piece of plastic – the more the loved one tries to move away, the stronger Hura Brasiliensis pulls the person back. The moment of crisis comes when the elastic breaks. Having experienced the death of their child as a sudden rupture in the bond of love, these people express their pain through elastic fibers of their physical body (ie in the joints).

Hura Brasiliensis and Death of a Child

Dr Didier Grandgeorge, a leading French Homoeopath, presents a facet of the remedy, based on the botanical properties of the plant. It has a globular fruit, made up of eight to twenty radiating nuts in rings, which on reaching maturity come apart and are thrown out forcefully by the mother plant to a distance of several metres. It is as if the mother plant has lost its children. Didier Grandgeorge has presented three cases in which Hura was curative, where the patients mourned for their lost child.

Case 1
One of us, Philippe Barthelet, presented one day the case of a woman suffering from rheumatic polyarthritis. He cured her well with Hura Brasiliensis. He divined this remedy because she dreamed she was putting candles on the grave of her child who had died from leukemia several years earlier.

This symptom was similar to one in the pathogenesis made by Benoit More with this remedy. I wondered if this substance was not linked with the anxiety resulting to the death of a child. Sometime after a woman came in with her 17 year old son. “My son is allergic to latex” I noticed the anxiety in her face “Has anyone lost a child in this family?” – because I knew hura brasiliensis was a latex (in the rheumatic polyarthritis the blood coagulates the latex) “my first child died of meningitis at 18 months!” she replied, weeping. I have subsequently treated, with success, a lot of cases resulting from the death of a child with this remedy.
Hura Brasiliensis is good for people who want to remain in fusional love with their children: to escape this one is obliged to die, or to have a disease like leprosy which exiles you from society. Our joints are composed of latex fibres which suffer in polyarthritis.

Case 2
A woman requested the Homoeopath to treat her child, who was suffering from terminal cancer and was dying. It started with a bone tumour, spread to lung and thence to liver. It was in a state of hepatic precoma with a huge icterus by compression of the bile ducts, emaciation and ascites. Even though the doctors had given up hope, she was visiting several doctors in France desperately seeking medical help to save her child, as she would not give up. She was treating her child with all sorts of symptomatic medicines at home. It was clear that the mother could not accept the idea of losing her child and was prolonging the agony of the sick child in vain. He therefore persuaded her to take a dose of Hura 30. Very soon she became very serene; her child died a few days later and the mother could reconcile to that loss and thanked the doctor for preparing her to face the loss.

Didier Grandgeorge says: “The underlying problem of Hura-brazilensis is linked to separation of mother from child. This supposes that the adult accepts the end of the link which she has formed with the child; above all in the case of a mother who has carried the child in her womb. Thus the Hura loves with an elastic love. The more you try to get away the more it holds you. If the elastic breaks, there is then separation with brutal expulsion to some distance. Hura wants to break things symbolically speaking to break the bonds attaching him to a loved one”. That is why in the above case the mother who became inconsolable because of the terminal illness of her child was able to reconcile to the death of her child. “This is what happens when there is a death. That is the way out for certain children who can find no other way to cut the umbilical cord. The adult is left alone and inconsolable”.

He also cured a case of rheumatoid arthritis in a patient who was very much affected by the loss of a child. Interestingly he says that “in the case of arthritis, with its positive latex index, the suffering is felt in the joints linking the limbs, which symbolizes the suffering relationships between members of the family, torn between wanting to be together and a pull towards independence.” The patient also had pain in the knees and Causticum did not help but Hura cured.

For those of you who have read up on all my blog posts would have known that the onset of my RA was triggered by the very incident of a missed miscarriage. With understanding of how Hura Bras works, it becomes apparent why this specific remedy was prescribed to me by my homeopathic/naturopathic physician in three different potencies ie 30c, 200c and 1M.

And if you are curious to find out whether these remedies work, do stay tuned for my future updates. I cannot comment much at this point in time because I’m only just getting started with them. One thing for sure, I’m going to keep an open mind about these treatments because there are bound to be some remedies out there that will work for us, and it’s all about finding the right combination or recipes that work for each of our individualized conditions. Fingers crossed and pray they work for me!

That’s all from me today. If anyone of you have tried homeopathic remedies that work for your RA, please share with me and all the readers of my blog. Your inputs will be very much appreciated.

Resources:
http://www.homeopathe.org/pdf/dg1_spirit.pdf
http://www.njhonline.com/2001/sep_oct_vol3_no5/mm/learn_a_remedy_through_cases.shtml