There are in life that can have a real impact on people’s lives – homeopathy is one of them.

My aim is to enhance the health and wellbeing of humankind through the use of homeopathy. I wanted to write a simple and accessible guide to managing common acute and minor complaints using homeopathic remedies at home. I want people to feel empowered. We all have innate health. Homoeopathic remedies act like keys to a lock – choose the correct key and it turns the lock, stimulating the body to heal itself. It’s good to remember that the body has a natural healing wisdom; we just need to turn the key and remind it what it needs to do.

This book is organized as an A–Z list of common complaints and briefly explains each condition and the best remedies. There‘s also a section on other home remedies, commonly found in most kitchens, that can be used alongside the recommended homeopathic remedy.

There‘s no better way to learn homeopathy than by practising it: taking (or giving) the remedy and seeing the effects. Start practising with simple first-aid problems such as minor cuts, burns and bruises until you‘re familiar with how the remedies work. Nearly everyone experiences the same symptoms with first-aid injuries, so it’s easy to learn which remedy to give for each situation. For example, in the case of bruising following an impact, Arnica is a go-to remedy.

As your confidence grows, start practising on acute complaints such as coughs, colds and headaches, where it’s much more important to focus on an individual’s symptoms. For example, with a cold, symptoms can vary from person to person. Therefore, the remedies used should be chosen for the individual.

What is health?

Many people’s concept of health is not being sick, but it’s so much more than that. Health is about vitality, the sense of feeling alive mentally, emotionally and physically. I remember when I was a child, I‘d be out all day on my bike during the school holidays. I’d come home, eat, sleep and leap out of bed the next morning, ready to do it all over again with enthusiasm, a sense of adventure and a zest for life. This is vitality. Most children have a strong vitality and embrace life with enthusiasm, wonder and being in the moment. Often, if they’re sick with an acute illness, they may have a fever or vomit, but the next day, they’re up eating their breakfast, ready for the next adventure!

What is dis-ease?

Health is about our ability to adapt to our environment. This could be a physical or emotional adaptation, such as a change between seasons or losing a loved one. Our resilience against illness depends on our vitality and susceptibility. These determine whether we become sick or unwell and our ability to recover.

Symptoms are the body’s way of saying, ‘Hey, there’s a problem here.’ If we don’t listen to the body at this point, we’ll be forced to listen when it falters. If we suppress the symptoms, we’re simply pushing the issue further into the body, which might result in a more chronic condition later.

Let’s use a car dashboard as an example. The oil light flashes, which means there’s something wrong with the engine; if we take the bulb out to stop the light flashing, there’s still a problem with the engine, and the car may break down a few miles down the road. In homeopathy, we see the symptom as the oil light flashing, so we go into the engine and fix the cause. Then, the oil light will no longer flash: the ‘symptom’ disappears.

Our susceptibility is constantly changing. Think of it as a scale. When you wake up in the morning after a good night’s sleep, your vitality might be at 8/10. Then, you open the post and get a shock; you have a large utility bill you weren’t expecting, and your vitality goes down to 6/10. You’re running late, miss the bus and must walk to the office in heavy rain. By the time you get to work, your vitality is down to 4/10. A colleague has a cold, so it’s no surprise that by the end of the day, you’re feeling unwell, too. Your lowered vitality made you more susceptible to catching a bug. Not everyone at your work goes home coughing and sneezing, just those with low vitality and increased susceptibility.

The homeopathic approach

Most conventional medications focus on relieving symptoms rather than addressing the underlying cause. In contrast, in homeopathy we see the symptoms as the body’s attempt to heal itself – perhaps needing help but of a gentle and supportive kind. Homeopathy treats an individual with a specific set of symptoms, focusing on why a remedy is being given rather than what remedy is given.

Homeopathy is a whole system of medicine that looks at each person holistically – physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s not about treating the symptoms, but about understanding the individual and their unique experience of the disease. It’s not just about what you have, but about how and why you have it.

For example, five people could receive a diagnosis of ‘Influenza’, but each person may experience different symptoms. One person might be thirsty for ice-cold water, while another would prefer warm drinks. One person may feel hot, while another feels chilly. One might have headaches, and another may experience pain in their bones.

In homeopathy, we don’t use a one-size-fits-all approach. Before recommending a remedy, we consider the totality of an individual’s experience of disease by gathering information and asking questions: what makes the symptoms worse or better, when the symptoms started, what was happening at the time, where the pain or symptom is located and so on.

Homeopathy comes from the Greek words ‘homeo’, meaning similar, and ‘pathos’, meaning suffering. The German doctor Samuel Hahnemann founded the principle of homeopathy around the end of the 18th century and developed it as a system of medicine that we still use and follow today.

Hahnemann was disillusioned with the medical practices of the day, with crude drug therapy doing more harm than good to patients. He left medical practice and became a translator. While translating a medical book from English to German, he came across a claim about Cinchona Bark being used for treating Malaria. As a scientist, he was sceptical of the claim and decided to test the bark on himself to observe its effects. What he discovered was that he began to develop the symptoms of Malaria. When he stopped the treatment, the symptoms disappeared. He carried on experimenting with other substances and concluded that a remedy’s therapeutic potential lies in its ability to produce effects on the body. Paradoxically, the same substance that can cause symptoms in a healthy person may alleviate similar symptoms in someone who is ill.
There are three main principles of homeopathy:

· Like cures like
· One remedy at a time
· The minimum dose

Like cures like

The concept of like cures like, or the Law of Similars, is not new; it goes back 2,500 years. Hippocrates is thought to have said, ‘By similar things a disease is produced and through the application of the like is cured,’ meaning a substance capable of causing the symptoms of a disease can also cure it; a remedy acts as a stimulus for the body’s natural healing response, providing the support it needs to carry out the healing process.

A good example of like cures like involves the common onion. Chopping an onion can often cause the eyes to water and the nose to run. These same symptoms can be experienced by individuals who have a cold or hay fever. Allium Cepa, made from red onion, is used in homoeopathy to treat these symptoms. Another example is coffee. Drinking too much coffee can cause restlessness, jitters and sleep disturbance. In homeopathy, Coffea Cruda, prepared from coffee, is a remedy used to help people experiencing insomnia or nervous excitement.

So, a substance that can cause symptoms in a healthy person can, in small, diluted doses, treat similar symptoms in someone feeling unwell by stimulating the body’s healing force.

One remedy at a time

When considering a remedy for acute conditions, the aim is to match the remedy’s characteristics to the totality of the symptoms presented. ‘Totality’ is a homeopathic term meaning the whole picture, including a person’s mental, emotional and physical symptoms. For example, Bryonia may be a remedy for someone with a hot, sore, swollen ankle who is thirsty for cold water, is irritable and wants to be left alone.

To see clearly how a remedy is working, it’s better to give one remedy at a time. Give a single dose, wait and assess the effects of the remedy, and repeat if the symptoms return. It may be necessary to repeat the dose frequently in first-aid situations. Sometimes a combination remedy, where several remedies are taken together, is appropriate – for example, teething or hay fever. The drawback is that the combination may work for a while, but if it stops working, it may be unclear which remedy within the combination helped, making it difficult to increase the dose of that remedy if needed.

The minimum dose

In homeopathy, remedies are diluted to very small amounts to stimulate the body’s innate healing potential. The aim is to use the least stimulus possible to restore health and wellbeing, not high, concentrated doses that come with possible side effects. Once the remedy gently stimulates the body’s own healing capability, it doesn’t need to be repeated unless the symptoms start to return or stop improving.