Phoenix Homeopathy

Avoiding medical interventions

Homeopathic induction (inducing the onset of labour with the use of homeopathic remedies) is an important aspect of my job as a homeopath. If you’re pregnant, you may feel increasingly worried as your due date nears with no sign of imminent labour, and you might be worried that your choice of a home birth, for example, may be slipping away. More and more women understand that being induced in hospital can seem to increase the chances of needing further interventions during the labour, such as epidurals, ventouse, episiotomy and even c-section. A homeopathic induction can help to give a small nudge to your body, encouraging it to do what it was already preparing to do, and help to avoid these interventions affecting your birth plan.

Last-minute induction with homeopathy

If you’ve been seeing me throughout your pregnancy, it’s usually easier for us to discover together the deeper issues preventing your itlabour starting, and it’s more straightforward for me to select your remedy. Sometimes, though, I get a call out of the blue a few days before the induction is scheduled, which is a bit more challenging, so even if you’re not an existing patient, it’s worth giving me a call.

Homeopathic remedies to help the onset of your labour (childbirth)

The homeopathic remedies that even non-homeopathic midwives may have heard of are Cimicifuga and Caulophyllum, which are believed to act directly on the uterus and cervix, and which can work well, but good homeopathy always comes back to treating the person, not the symptom (the symptom being the fact of being overdue), so I wouldn’t advise using these remedies routinely. It’s best to get your homeopathic prescription after an in-depth consultation (over the phone if easier).

Looking at the deeper issues

In my view, if you’re overdue and there’s no obvious reason why, it’s important that you tell me your personal story, because both you and your baby may have your reasons why the labour isn’t progressing. Labour can even begin straight after the consultation, because exploring what may be holding things back can be enough to allow release, although I do give individually-chosen homeopathic remedies, too.

It’s important to bear in mind that homeopathic induction won’t override the body’s own vital intelligence, so if either you or your baby aren’t ready to begin your birth, then it’s not going to happen.

Connect with your baby

During the homeopathic induction consultation, I’ll ask you to inwardly connect or check in with your baby, and ask if he or she is ready to be born, and whether your baby has any concerns about the birth. This might seem crazy, but it’s incredible what can emerge when this question is asked in a caring and supportive space. In any homeopathic casetaking situation, I’m always looking for an opening into the deeper issue underlying the problem, so if you offer me a door, I’ll try to go through it with you.

Your general health

I always ask about your general health and any physical complaints during your pregnancy, for example any bleeding, food cravings or aversions and any other physical symptoms, because these can help to narrow the remedy choice down, but we’ll generally gently focus on your emotions.

Life changes or traumas

I’ll ask about any major changes going on in your life (other than the pregnancy, of course!) - for example, moving house, leaving work, grief, anger or divorce. I also ask if your pregnancy was planned, and whether you’re feeling connected to your baby. If there is a history of abuse or trauma, this may also have a bearing, so, if you want to, we can talk about this. We can also discuss your fears or concerns about the birth itself, about motherhood and the changes that the birth will bring, any body issues or fears about looking undignified, your feelings about breastfeeding, as well as the reactions of others around you to your situation. Your dreams can shine a light on your subconscious fears, too. I might therefore also ask “what are you definitely not afraid of?”, because, paradoxically, the answer you give may in fact highlight a fear.

The post-partum period

At the homeopathic induction consultation, we talk about what will happen after the birth, and I’ll encourage you to tell me how you see this time, whether you’re prepared for the post-partum period, and how you feel about finances, support, time, your other children or family etc. We may also talk about how you feel about how your partner will cope, because the woman needing Phosphorus, for example, may hold back labour because she can pick up on the fact that her partner is nervous about the birth!

Your baby’s position

I’ll ask you to tell me as much as possible about your baby’s position, both now and during the pregnancy: it’s well-known that Pulsatilla can help a breech baby to turn (in one case, I’ve had success with this even when the mother had been told it was too late for the baby to turn). However, even if your baby is in the right position now, if it’s been breech during the pregnancy, a dose or two of Pulsatilla 200c may still be the right remedy. A posterior presentation usually requires a dose or two of Kali-carb 200c. (Remember, though, that professional homeopathic advice is recommended.) The reason these remedies can work so well to turn your baby is simply because homeopathy is always working in tandem with your body. Your baby and your body both know that the most effective way to be born is in a vertex, anterior position, and both will strive towards that position with the guidance of the remedy. If it’s not safe for your baby to turn, then your baby’s own wisdom will prevail, and it will remain in the alternative position - although I haven’t yet seen this happen.

Your birth plan

We’ll also talk through your birth plan, so I can gauge how comfortable you are with your care providers, birth partner, planned venue for the birth and so on. While we’re talking about these topics, if I’m face to face with you (I also do homeopathic inductions over the phone), I’ll be noticing whether your body language seems to contradict what you’re saying, and I’ll look for what you don’t say, too, because this may help us to unlock together any blocks you may be unaware of.

Fear

In my experience, understandably enough, some sort of fear is the main issue that seems to hold back a labour. In order for the remedy to work, it’s important to find out what your exact fear is, and which remedy addresses that particular fear, so I haven’t given any suggestions here, because a professional homeopath has over 4,000 homeopathic remedies to choose from!

I’ve learnt to get to a fear by asking “How did you come to know that?” For example, if your fear that you won’t have enough milk to breastfeed, I might ask you “How did you come to know that you may not have enough milk?”, as this allows you to answer from a place deep within yourself. This helps us to get at the root of the fear so I can truly understand where you’re coming from, and have more of an opportunity to address the fear with you.

For more information about how homeopathy may be able to help you through conception, pregnancy, childbirth and beyond, call 0845 166 8108 (outside the UK, call +44 1273 715822) for your FREE mini-consultation, or visit www.phoenixhomeopathy.com.

Disclaimer: Any views or advice in this weblog should not be taken as a substitute for medical advice or treatment, especially if you know you have a specific health complaint. Please remember that homeopathic remedies should be individually-selected to match the whole person, not just the unwelcome symptom. For chronic, severe or long-standing complaints, seek professional advice rather than self-prescribing.

The Daily Mail’s front page story today carried warnings of a more severe than usual flu season this winter. Yet it seems that the flu vaccine may not give as much protection against flu as is commonly thought, despite it being aggressively marketed and available in many high street pharmacies.

Does the flu jab work?

The flu vaccine’s creator, Dr Graeme Laver, is reported as saying of the flu jab “I have never been very impressed with its efficacy” and “It is better than nothing and I wouldn’t want to advise people not to take it, but you can’t rely on it doing any good.”

What’s in the jab?

This might come as a bit of a shock to the 15 million Britons who have the flu jab each year, and is a pretty worrying confession, given that recent flu vaccines have been reported as containing thiomersal (can lead to poor memory and confusion), formaldehyde, three different antibiotics, as well as three strains of flu virus - in my view, not ingredients to have injected into one’s body lightly!

Are there any risks?

According to the Lancet (1998; 351), the flu jab can be a trigger for asthma, and has little effect against flu, flu-like illnesses or pneumonia for older people living in their own homes (Lancet 2005; 366).

Side effects of the flu jab include flu-like symptoms, allergic reactions to the egg protein it contains, and joint or nervous system inflammation.

Flu in vaccinated people

There are many flu-like illnesses, and flu viruses are constantly changing and mutating, meaning that the strains of flu in the jab may be superseded pretty fast. At best, the jab may give three months’ protection from the flu strains included in it. Homeopathic remedies don’t have the same problem. This is because the remedies don’t have any direct effect on the virus itself.

Instead, they seem to modify our body’s response to it by enabling our defence mechanisms towards a better recognition of what needs to be fought off.

Flu treatment options

Last winter in the Phoenix clinic, two patients reported suffering flu: incredibly, both had been vaccinated against flu during the preceding month!

Dr Laver is concerned that new flu treatment medicines like Tamiflu should be made more widely available in order to save lives.

Certainly, flu needs to be taken seriously, because it can kill, and quickly.

However, given the excellent survival statistics for homeopathy in the terrible 1918 Spanish (bird) flu epidemic (at the time, homeopaths reported a 1% mortality rate, whereas conventional doctors were losing at least 30% of their patients), at home we put our trust in homeopathic remedies like Gelsemium (Yellow Jasmine), my number one homeopathic remedy for flu and flu-like illnesses (indicated where there is great weakness and heaviness of the limbs, eyes, head and body, and the patient is thirstless and has chills), Eupatorium perf (indicated for flu with bone pains as if the bones are broken, or flu where even the eyeballs are sore), or Bryonia (can help where the patient is very hot, dry, thirsty for cold drinks, and needs to lie perfectly still) .

Homeopathic help

Given the latest concerns about a flu pandemic, now might be a good time to consult a homeopath for:

• constitutional treatment to address current health problems and boost immunity
• specific remedies to help to prevent flu-like illnesses
• acute remedies to aid recovery from fever and flu

Phoenix also has limited stocks of a free Flu Information leaflet, available to registered patients.

We all know that orthodox drugs have side-effects, but who knew that the contraceptive Pill could make you blind? Sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it, but that’s what one woman claims in The Daily Mail. Read her story here.

It happened to me, too, but with steroids

In a desperate attempt to reverse my worsening neurological symptoms, back in 1995-6, doctors gave me increasing doses of intravenous and oral steroids. Soon after, I too, experienced raised intra-cranial pressure from too much fluid building up, which was removed over time, via repeated lumbar punctures and Acetazolomide, a diuretic.

Meningitis-like headache

The headache I developed from the pressure building up in my skull was so intense that the sound of someone buttering toast on the other side of the room was agony, and I was given Pethidine to help me to endure it. Through the haze of drugs, I was vaguely aware at the time that these symptoms were unusual for the disease I’d been diagnosed with, but I was never told that the problem could be an effect of the steroids.

It was only years later, as a practising homeopath researching possible steroid side-effects for a patient’s case, that I realised the likely cause of that terrible episode.

Informed choice about adverse drug effects

I don’t blame the doctors: they were doing their best to suppress my worsening neurological symptoms, not realising that these symptoms were a sign of a deeper disorder - the stress of being on the wrong life path, from suppressing rather than acknowledging and releasing my emotions, not to mention an unhealthy and fast-paced lifestyle.

Would it to have helped, at the time, to know that I was one of the quarter of a million people in the UK admitted to hospital due to adverse drug effects? Maybe not, but being warned about possible side-effects, no matter how rare, would at least have empowered me to make an informed decision.

Homeopathic treatment and coffee

Traditionally, homeopaths have often asked patients to quit coffee while taking homeopathic remedies, warning that coffee-drinking may antidote their treatment.

At Phoenix, we try not to be too prescriptive about this, reasoning that if the patient’s vital energy has already reacted to the stimulus of the homeopathic remedy, there’s a fair chance that ingesting a material substance like coffee won’t reverse this reaction. Indeed, well-known homeopath Ian Watson jokes about a case in which the patient misheard his homeopath, and put his remedy in his mug of coffee: and the remedy still worked well.

Nevertheless, patients having homeopathy often choose to swap their morning latte for a herbal tea or a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon, and generally feel the benefits of increased and sustained energy through the day. And if you’re someone who gets jittery or overstimulated after drinking coffee, or if you’re trying to detox, coffee’s best avoided.

Latest research on coffee and health

A new study from Finland has shown that coffee drinkers are at increased risk of high blood pressure. The odd thing is that, although the research showed that drinking coffee increased the risk of high blood pressure, there was no link between the amount of coffee consumed and increased risk of high blood pressure. The risk was the same among those who drank one cup daily, and those who drank eight cups or more each day.

According to the National Public Health Institute of Helsinki, the “relationship between coffee consumption and cardiovascular disease risk is complicated, and further studies are needed.”

A related study showed that people who didn’t drink any coffee at all had a lower risk of hypertension (high blood pressure) than those who drank up to three cups each day.

Symptoms that may be associated with drinking coffee

• Coffee may interfere with your body’s ability to keep homocysteine and bad cholesterol levels in check, most likely by inhibiting the action of the vitamins folate, B12 or B6.
• Studies have shown that caffeine can raise your levels of stress hormones. In large quantities, it can lead to heart palpitations, jitters and nervousness.
• Since coffee is a stimulant, it’s likely to worsen anxiety. People with panic or anxiety disorders may be especially sensitive to caffeine and may find that even a small amount of the stimulant exacerbates their problem.
• And we all know that caffeine will linger in your body for hours after you drink it, so for some of us it adds to insomnia, keeping us awake at night even if we drink it long before bedtime.
• Pregnant women are often advised to avoid coffee, because it’s suspected of increasing the risk of miscarriage.

Homeopathic help for ‘coffee addicts’

If you’d like help to reduce your caffeine intake, ask your homeopath if a few doses of the homeopathic remedy Nux vomica would be helpful. This remedy can help with caffeine withdrawal headaches, make us less dependent on coffee (and other stimulants like cigarettes), and tends to suit ‘liverish’ types, including people who are stressed, bad-tempered or who find it hard to get going in the mornings without their caffeine hit.

Time after time, I’ve had patients report that their morning ‘fog’, grumpiness, nausea or inability to face breakfast resolves after a course of this remedy, and they’ve often found that they naturally and painlessly reduce their coffee intake, too!

Put simply, stress is when you feel that you are under too much pressure.

Symptoms of stress

A moderate degree of pressure can be positive, but too much pressure, or pressure that’s too long-lasting, can lead to stress, causing a whole host of symptoms, including:

• headaches
• indigestion
• feeling sick
• excess sweating
• palpitations
• constant tiredness
• constipation, diarrhoea or other stomach and digestive problems
• food cravings or loss of appetite
• nail biting or skin picking
• dizziness or fainting
• muscle cramps or spasms
• frequent crying
• pins and needles
• restlessness
• sleep problems
• nervous twitching
• anxiety
• fear
• depression
• irritability
• frustration
• feeling so unwell that you start to worry that you have a serious illness like cancer

Risks of stress

Longterm stress is implicated in high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes and impotence, so UK National Stress Awareness Day on Wednesday 7 November is a timely reminder to do what you can to reduce your stress-related health risks.

Around 12 million people in the UK visit their GP (doctor) each year in relation to stress-related problems like anxiety and depression, but with such a variety of symptoms that can be down to stress, once diagnosed, orthodox medicine sometimes struggles to fix the problem.

Take action on stress, now!

In-depth consultations at Phoenix Homeopathy, by phone, Skype webcam or email, can provide the time and space needed to understand the deeper, root causes of stress, and can be a valuable way of taking time out from a busy schedule. You might be surprised to know that quite a few healthcare professionals have chosen Phoenix Homeopathy for their own healthcare, because they understand that giving themselves a little me-time (and a carefully chosen homeopathic remedy or two) helps them to relax, recharge and revive. Homeopathy can even help patients to work out how to change behaviours (like having trouble saying ‘no’, procrastinating or taking too much on) that can lead to stress.

I have a particular passion for helping people to bring their stress within healthy limits, because I’m convinced that work, family and relationship stress contributed to me developing a serious neurological condition in the Nineties.

So if stress is getting to you, do something about it right now.