Traditional medicine focuses on treating physical symptoms. So does homeopathy. There are conventional medications available for emotional ailments such as depression and anxiety: again, homeopathy treats these ailments too. You won’t, however, find a conventional med that gives you relief from “flaring tempers.” Homeopathy is unique in that it claims to treat – with orally administered medication – moods and emotional conditions that traditional medicine considers to be out of its jurisdiction.
If you went to see a conventional medical doctor and complained that you’d recently been on a short fuse, she would first ascertain that you weren’t a danger to yourself or others, and then she would probably recommend therapy. A homeopath, on the other hand, might suggest you take belladonna. Because homeopathic medicine goes by the principle of “treat like with like,” if you had symptoms similar to those caused by belladonna poisoning, you would take homeopathic belladonna to treat them. Rage is one indication of belladonna overdose - hence the homeopath’s prescription of this remedy for someone complaining of a short temper. This remedy would also help you with hot flashes, throbbing headaches, earaches, and inflammation.
If you were feeling lethargic during the day and restless at night, a traditional doctor might give you a comprehensive physical exam. Then, assuming you were healthy, she would perhaps recommend you get more exercise, stop eating sugar, and cut out caffeine, tobacco and alcohol. If things truly got bad, she would probably prescribe a sleeping pill. Homeopaths, however, would treat this symptom with abies nigra, especially if stomach pains accompanied your sleep problems. Silica treats an even more specific variation on this sleep problem: True Star Health’s homeopathy site states that silica is best used for people who “often go to sleep at first, but awaken suddenly with a hot or surging feeling in the head—and find it hard to fall asleep again.”
The Web site abchomeopathy.com describes the homeopathic remedy Thuja occidentalis as treating “fixed ideas, as if a strange person were at his side; as if soul and body were separated; as if something alive in abdomen… Emotional sensitiveness; music causes weeping and trembling.” You’d be hard pressed to find conventional medication that treated all these diverse emotional symptoms, especially if they weren’t severe enough to fall into the category of depression, anxiety, or another mental disorder.
Plenty of people pooh-pooh homeopathy, saying it’s good for nothing but a placebo effect. Plenty of others, however, rely on these remedies to treat ailments for which there’s simply no traditional medication – such as a short temper – and claim homeopathy works for them.
Originally published on GrannyMed.com