Tag: homeopathy

Posted by Christine Pope on in Health Care, Homeopathy, stress

Some healing remedies for Sydney

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The last week has been a little bit of a roller coaster with the fun of Christmas parties and the tragedy of the siege in Martin Place in Sydney. I thought I was coping okay on Monday mainly because I was thinking that my family was fine. My daughter was at UTS so no where near where it was happening, except when I realised she was at Chatswood I burst into tears. Turns out her Uni had been on security lockdown all day and then made a decision to finish her summer school classes early and send people home early. Good to know that they had a plan and reacted effectively but also concerning that we live in a world where we need one.

So my mind turned to what homeopathic medicines might be useful at this time. Such a mix of emotions to consider as this crisis has brought up fear, anxiety, relief and tears.

One of the first remedies to think about is Aconite which is good for the shock of the shock. The easiest way to explain it is thinking about a car accident. If you keep remembering the shock of the impact you are stuck in the shock of the shock. Symptoms are sudden and intense and may follow a shock such as an accident or natural disaster. Typically you may feel agitated, restless, and fearful. Other symptoms may include: dry skin and mouth; thirst; pounding heart. Aconite can also treat ongoing anxiety caused by a past  or recent traumatic event.

Arsenicum is a good homeopathic medicine if you feel anxious about security and safety and what might happen in the future. You often tend to worry about health or money. To manage this anxiety, you can become overly fastidious or perfectionist.  You feel better in company but can be a little controlling in behaviour. Usually people who need Arsenicum are overly neat and tidy, chilly and better for warmth.

Ignatia is helpful if you are very teary and can’t stop crying. Often you tend to be the sort of person who loses their appetite when upset and feel as though you have a lump in your throat.

A couple of other options are Bach’s Rescue Remedy which is lovely and calming. The best thing about rescue remedy is you can take it frequently – the recommended dose is four drops four times a day but during a period of significant stress more often is fine.

Also consider changing stimulants such as coffee for something more calming like chamomile or peppermint tea, which is less likely to leave you feeling jittery and upset.

Talking about your feelings with a good friend is helpful. This week I have had a few conversations with people around how they felt about what happened and most of the time people were overwhelmed by the positivity of the social media responses.If that isn’t possible try writing about what you are feeling. Writing it down can really help release stuck feelings and emotions. Many Sydney siders have queued in Martin Place to leave flowers and notes of support, a great way to express their support and concern.

Perhaps find a way to express your gratitude that your family are safe . My version was to track where my daughter was in Chatswood using my find a friend app on our phones and then help her shop at Vinnies for dressups, but at least we were together.

Hope you and your family are safe and well over the Christmas break.

Posted by Christine Pope on in Health Care, Homeopathy, Research

Back to grassroots

bigstock_homeopathy_7963486Spending a weekend in Hobart for a homeopathic conference is a good way to really focus on your practice. You query whether there is a better or faster way to get people well. Is someone else going to give you a gem that makes homeopathy crystal clear and straightforward? Well like a lot of homeopathic practice there were a few insights but I still feel I need to do more work and study.

Dr Joe Kellerstein, the keynote speaker, pvovided a good structure for case taking with his four quadrant approach. Reassuringly I recognised most of the key areas and took out of it some useful ways to drill up or down with questioning.

For perhaps the first time at a conference I also quickly recognised the homeopathic medicines presented. Now it was fairly easy with the Solomon Island’s homeopathy by numbers however identifying a homeopathic medicine I rarely use in a complex case was a bit more exciting.

The other aspect of any conference which is always useful is catching up with colleagues, particularly interstate ones who I haven’t seen since the last conference. The last night a few of us headed down to the Lark Distillery for a whiskey tasting and a great seafood meal at The Drunken Admiral. This was a real highlight for me as like so many small business people homeopaths are often isolated and it is good to be reminded that you have a “tribe” .

Usually with courses I am happy if I get one or two useful things which improve my practice. So what did this conference give me? I guess reassurance that I was on track with my case taking and remedy knowledge and perhaps a reminder to reconnect with my homeopathic roots a little more often.

Posted by Christine Pope on in Health Care, Homeopathy, Research

Water Medicine in the Solomons

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At the 2014 Australian Homeopathic Medicine Conference in Hobart, Jane Lindsay, a Queensland homeopath, shared her experiences in the Solomon Island’s. Homeopathy was originally brought out by the missionaries from the South Sea Evangelical Church as a way of looking after their own health and that of their congregations over a hundred years ago. Today is is prescribed by 150 dispensers as a primary form of health care for over 60,000 people in the Solomon’s. They use a simple numbering system as the common language is a form of Pidgin English. Symptoms can include such gems as “Belly Stop” and “Belly Run”.

The homeopathic medicines are numbered and the dispensers have simple symptom descriptions to decide which medicine is appropriate. Originally starting with 36 remedies now it has expanded to 51 as changes in the population’s diet and the introduction of vaccines has created the need for additional homeopathic medicines. (Jane also shared that they would love any materia medica’s that were no longer needed as they don’t have access to a lot of books)

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I really resonated with the idea of a simple number of medicines as I am always surprised by how many clients, once they do my first aid workshop, are able to successfully treat a range of illnesses and injuries. My favourite story was a client who travelled to Israel with her small first aid kit and treated her family’s headaches, PMS and stomach upsets.

This system seems to work reasonably well and it really brings into question for me why as homeopaths we seem to have so many medicines (I have over 600 in my own dispensary!!). I really think we might be better off focusing on a smaller group of better understood medicines rather than trying to choose own of the 1000 in our books. Are we over complicating it for ourselves as homeopaths and making it harder to practice?

So what do you think?

Posted by Christine Pope on in Health Care, Homeopathy, Nutrition

How to avoid the medicare $7 co-payment.

Health food ingredients in white porcelain bowls over papyrus ba

The Federal Budget had a few surprises in it however overall for many families your cost of living will increase. Whether its the 2% debt levy, loss of the Family Tax Benefit or the $7 co-payment that will be introduced if they get it through the senate

One of the best things you can do to reduce your cost of living is to look after your health. Fewer visits to the GP means fewer co-payments and also fewer hours you spend waiting and waiting!
I always remember as a new mum panicking when my children were sick. One of the things I try to get mum’s confident about when I run my homeopathic first aid course is when they can treat something themselves and when they should get straight to the GP. For example in a small child if the temperature is over 39.5c and they are floppy or disorientated seek medical attention as soon as possible.

There are some simple ways to improve your health and making these changes could help reduce the number of times you have to shell out for the co-payment. These include;

1) Eat well – lots of fresh fruit and vegetables (still not GST on those) and small amounts of lean protein.

2) Add good sources of probiotics – it could be a supplement or fermented foods such as yoghurt, kim chi, sauerkraut or keffir (much cheaper options). Good gut bacteria are your first line of defence for your immune system.

3) Exercise – you don’t need to join a gym just put the baby in the stroller or take the kids to the park and walk for half an hour a day – your stress levels will reduce and you will be less prone to infections.

4) Learn more about first aid through St John’s or do my Homeopathic First Aid Course. Its much easier to make a decision about health if you know when you should panic!

Christine Pope is a homeopath and nutritionist based at Elemental Health, St Ives. She is also head of nutrition at Nature Care College where she supervises nutrition clinic and lectures in Homeopathy. She can be contacted for appointments on 8084 0081.

Posted by Christine Pope on in Research

Research – can we research natural medicine?

A recent blog talked about how easy it was to poke holes in research so with this one I will look at some of the challenges when you are researching natural medicine interventions, such as homeopathy.

First up most clinical trials are set up on the basis of giving a patient one treatment and seeing how it compares to another or to placebo. Most of the time in natural medicine we don’t just give one thing so that does make it difficult to see how a more complex treatment works.

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The first part of a consultation is really listening to your client for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how long that initial consultation takes. Think about the value of really being heard for up to an hour. This process gives the practitioner time to think about how the whole person is affected by what is happening to them and what may need treatment. Sometimes I find in that time the solutions become clear to the patient and just that process alone can be invaluable in helping them heal.

How do we measure this?  There are tools in which natural medicines such as homeopathy perform quite well .  Valid forms of evidence  including case studies, patient reports of satisfaction , quality of life and observational studies. Here, homeopathy does much better than in Randomised Controlled Trials.

One of the largest observational studies was undertaken by the National Health Service in the UK. It involved a total of 6544 consecutive follow-up patients who were given outcome scores. The patients were all using homeopathic treatment for chronic diseases. Of the patients 70.7% reported positive health changes, with 50.7% recording their improvement as better or much better (1). A similar study undertaken at an Italian hospital in Lucca also showed 74% of patients reporting improvement with the most common conditions being respiratory, dermatological and gastrointestinal.

Isn’t this a better way to assess the value of a treatment like homeopathy?  A research tool which looks at the outcomes for the patient in terms of quality of life and improvement in their health.

 

 

(1) Spence DS1, Thompson EA, Barron SJ., J Altern Complement Med. 2005 Oct;11(5):793-8., Homeopathic treatment for chronic disease : a 6 year University- Hospital  outpatient observational study.

Posted by Christine Pope on in Homeopathy, Research

Research – is it all lies, lies and damned statistics?

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A recent press release by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) stated that where there was evidence to support the use of homeopathy the trials were too small and not well designed. Its kind of damning with faint praise isn’t it?? By the way most of the headlines were a lot less favourable but I read the detail of the report.

So I decided to write about research and try and explain what is contained in the report and perhaps shed a little light on the whole process. I did try and avoid a lot of maths in this discussion but this is going to be a little longer than my usual blog as it covers a fair amount of information.

Research – hierachy and different types

First up there is a hierachy in terms of research evidence in western medicine. At the top of the research hierachy is the randomised controlled trial (RCT) , which is regarded as the gold standard of evidence. Unfortunately it takes a lot of gold to meet the gold standard and it will always be more difficult with natural medicine which can’t really patent its findings to generate the types of revenues that fund this standard of research.

How much of western medicine is based on the gold standard of RCT’s? Surprisingly a lot less than you would think. Back in the 1980’s when the Cochrane Collection was established only 10- 15% of drugs in use had been subject to this research. The rest of the time they relied on long term clinical use (kind of like a lot of natural medicine). That number has at least doubled in part due to the efforts of the Cochrane Collection which is an independent research body promoting the use of evidence based research in clinical decision making.

Before you get to the RCT however there are other forms of research which contribute to the picture , this can include case study reports, in vitro research (cells in a test tube), animal studies and cohort studies, case control studies and clinical use. A case study report is usually a report which can highlight problems with an existing treatment or a way of dealing with a case which yields some new information. Studies on cells in test tubes or animals may be done at the start of research. They are  not considered as reliable as human trials as humans may react differently to animals.

Case control studies try to identify what is different between a group who have developed a condition and those who didn’t. They tend to be more cost effective but not always as reliable as a Cohort study where participants are tracked over a long period of time. Try remembering what you were eating like ten years ago? See? Its really not that easy. A Cohort study that tracks it over time can document what you were eating at different times in your life and see if the group who develop a condition were eating differently or eating more of a particular food group.

How do we design an RCT?

Whilst the RCT is the gold standard its fairly hard to find any RCT that is perfect. Typically an RCT is set up to compare one treatment against another or against placebo. You then recruit a group of people to your trial who need treatment for that condition – therefore you need to make sure they have the type of condition that will respond to your drug. To avoid complications you try to exclude people in the research who have other conditions as well. In the US students are often happy to participate in those trial’s as its a good way to earn some extra money.

So is that group of people you have just recruited to your study the same as the group of people who will ultimately take your drug? Quite often people as they get a little older are on multiple medications and they aren’t as robust as the group of students who did the trial.

So in your analysis you have just looked at the recruitment of participants and already you may not be that happy with the design.

See how easy it is to start to poke holes in the design of any trial and I haven’t even looked at numbers of participants yet?

Size of trial

To determine how many people you need in a trial you need to look at what the size of the treatment effect is and then a calculation is done (called a power calculation) to determine how many participants you need in your trial at the end to be able to see that the treatment effect is actually statistically significant.

This means a bigger group doesn’t add up to better research. It tends to mean that the smaller benefit someone gets from treatment the larger the group you need to show that it was  statistically significant and didn’t just occur by random chance. When newer drugs are being trialled against older drugs you often see only small improvements in the treatment so large scale trials will be needed.

Most natural medicine trials are quite small as funding is usually restricted however there are processes in place to ensure that the size of the group is adequate to measure the treatment effect. The NHMRC was generally negative about the fact that so few of the homeopathic trials had in excess of 500 participants but neglected to explain why that may not be necessary. They completely omitted the explanation of power calculations or whether in fact these indicated that smaller studies were still reliable evidence. Sometimes its not all about size!

Natural Medicine and RCT’s

In the next blog I will look at some of the reasons why natural medicine doesn’t fit well into the world of RCT’s. I was going to cover it here but its already a bit long!! Would love to hear your thoughts so please feel free to comment.