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Well-Trained Homeopaths, i.e., those with 1,000 or more hours of study at a reputable school, are, unfortunately, hard to find.  You can get a list of homeopaths from the National Center for Homeopathy.  If you join the NCH, you will receive a very informative monthly newsletter.

What Can I Expect During My First Consultation With a Homeopathic Doctor?

The homeopathic interview is unlike any interview in the rest of medicine.  You will find your homeopath knows how to listen and knows how to ask questions.  You will be encouraged to speak at length about your problems, and he or she will ask you further questions about many aspects of your life, including:

• How you react to temperature and weather
• Whether you are on the chilly or warm side
• How you react to drafts and wind
• Your perspiration patterns
• Your sleep abnormalities and your dreams
• Your appetite, including the foods you crave and dislike

In other words, your homeopath will ask about how you react to just about everything in your environment. 

You will be encouraged to express your hopes and fears, worries and anxieties, tendency to anger, depression, and grief.  Your homeopath will ask you about your hobbies and interests, work situation, and your family situation (both the family you grew up in and your present family).   Everything about you is important.  Together, this information builds a composite picture of you and will lead to the correct prescription.

You will then be given a homeopathic medicine.  It might be in the form of a drop of liquid or a few granules or pellets of sugar which have been medicated.  These will be placed on your tongue and allowed to dissolve.  You may or may not be given some pellets or tablets to take with you. Some homeopaths give the medicine in water, a very effective, gentle method.

What Do I Expect Now That I've Been Treated?

Hopefully you'll start to get better.  This can be rapid if it is an acute problem or slow if it is a deeper problem.  If you have been very ill for years it will take months.

Sometimes the patient feels worse in the first day or two or three.  This is actually a good thing as it signifies the Vital Force has been stimulated and is beginning to make things happen.  Homeopaths call this initial worsening an aggravation.  Occasionally it will go on longer than three days, especially if it is a skin problem.  But in general it is a good thing.   If you should call your homeopath he will undoubtedly tell you not to worry, that it will pass.  But do call if you are concerned.

Sometimes it is next to impossible to know if you are having an aggravation (in those first days) or if you are coming down with an acute illness such as influenza.  If it is an acute illness it is usually obvious within a day or two.  Most homeopaths prefer not to treat an acute illness coming on soon after the constitutional medicine was given.  But if the illness becomes quite severe then, of course, he will treat it.  If it is an aggravation you can expect an intensification of some or all of your presenting complaints.

In a chronic condition some improvement will usually be obvious by the third and fourth weeks.  There are often many changes for the better, including but not limited to the problem you came in for.  Often there is a new sense of well being.  Often the homeopathic medicine can work very deeply and many old (even years old) symptoms will return briefly and disappear.  These old systems are a kind of retracing and are a very good sign.

How Often Will My Homeopath Want to See Me?

In general, the classical homeopath will want to do a follow up consultation in a month or six weeks.  He waits this long to allow the medicine to act.  Follow-up visits are much shorter than the initial one.  If he or she is satisfied that you are progressing, you will continue on the same medicine.  If there appears to be no change, another remedy will be sought.  If the first remedy acted and now you are in a completely different state, you might be given a different medicine. What happens in follow-up interviews depends entirely on what's happening with you.

You Keep Referring to "Classical" Homeopathy.  What Other Kinds of Homeopathy Are There?

The simple answer is the classical homeopath uses one and only one medicine at a time.  Other practitioners give combinations of homeopathic medicines.  While these often act, one never knows which of the various ingredients actually did the job, so it is difficult to be precise.  Also combinations often give momentary relief and the underlying problem tends to recur.

Some practitioners use machines to diagnose and prescribe homeopathic medicines.  They, too, have their successes.  However, the classical homeopath believes that machines can never take the place of a detailed history which seeks out the all important mental symptoms.  Machines simply can't pick up on subtle sensations or mental and emotional states.

Also, the classicist, after giving one remedy, waits to let it act.  He usually waits four weeks in a chronic case before deciding the medicine did or did not act.  Other types of practitioners are more likely to give many more medicines in a shorter period of time.  Often this simply confuses the picture, making cure more difficult.

Do Homeopathic Medicines Cause Side Effects?

A side effect is a harmful, possibly damaging, effect  - common in pharmacologicals.  Homeopathic medicines do not cause side effects.  The homeopathic aggravation, when it occurs, is not a side effect but a direct effect.

Homeopathic medicines are eminently safe.  Incidentally, homeopathic medicines are monitored by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) which regularly inspects the homeopathic manufacturers.  Homeopaths have their own pharmacopoeia (book detailing the medicines) just as the allopaths have theirs.

Do Homeopathic Medicines Act Slowly or Quickly?

Both.  In acute illnesses the remedies often act swiftly, sometimes within minutes.  (For instance, it is common to see a child with a hot, inflamed throbbing ear and a high fever who is howling with pain drop off to sleep in one or two minutes after homeopathic Belladonna.)  In chronic illnesses the person usually gets better more slowly. 

If a Person is Being Treated With Drugs, Can He or She be Treated Homeopathically at the Same Time?

In an ideal practice, the homeopath would only see patients who were free from the symptom-suppressing effects of drugs.  Drug-free patients provide clearer symptoms making it easier to choose the appropriate homeopathic medicine.  In the real world, however, it could be dangerous for the patient with a chronic illness to stop drugs so they will be continued as homeopathic treatment gets under way.  Later, with sufficient improvement, the homeopath might recommend decreasing and then stopping certain drugs.  An M.D. homeopath can himself wean a patient off drugs.  Other homeopaths would have to work with a medical doctor.  Patients should never just stop their drugs on their own.

Although drugs like thyroid and insulin do not seem to interfere with homeopathic treatment, some prescription drugs do.  Say you had migraines which had ceased under homeopathy.  Then you get an infection, go to another doctor and take antibiotics - perhaps not realizing that homeopathy could have treated the infection.  Within a few days or weeks the migraines reappear.  In that case the antibiotics antidoted (cancelled) the homeopathic cure.  Not to worry.  Homeopathy can again handle your headaches.  Schedule a visit to your homeopath for retreatment.

Remember, once you have started homeopathy, it is best to stay with homeopathy.

Do Homeopaths Use Vitamins, Minerals or Herbs?

Though not a nutritionist, I do recommend a few vitamins and minerals.  Massive doses can be a problem, however.  If you are on, say, megadoses of vitamin C daily, and it is keeping you from getting colds, you may very well find that you get colds again when you stop it.  (In such a case vitamin C is simply suppressing your tendency to get colds.)  With correct homeopathic prescribing your tendency to catch colds can be eliminated.  Then you can take a multivitamin (with a little vitamin C) for general health maintenance.  In general, I discourage megadose vitamin therapy.

As for herbs, I am not an herbalist but I am most respectful of herbs, and use them myself in special situations when I prefer not to interfere with the constitutional homeopathic medicine.

Should you become ill with a cold, sore throat, or flu, for example, I would recommend you take the herb Echinacea in liquid or tablet form plus extra vitamin C.

What  is the Responsibility of the Patient Who Undertakes Homeopathic Treatment?

Be a good observer of yourself.  Note what feels bad and what makes your symptoms better and worse.  The more you can tell the better.

You can bring in your previous medical records if you like.  They will be appreciated, but they are not necessary for the homeopath to prescribe for you.

Be candid.  Tell it like it is.  Expect to get better, yes, but avoid unreasonable expectations of a "miracle cure."  Astounding improvements do occur under homeopathy, but not always - and certainly not immediately.  (Even when astounding improvements do occur, they usually take time.)  In a chronic problem the going may be slow and even rough, but stick with it.  The results are often rewarding.

Homeopathy is highly demanding of the physician.  The reason he or she spends such a long time with each new patient is because he is selecting, from hundreds of medicines, the one remedy which most exactly matches the patient's symptoms.  Because it is not always an easy task, no homeopath always finds the exact remedy the first time.  Be patient.

Once the correct medicine has been found, again, be patient.  In the weeks and months to come there may be ups and downs, particularly if the complaints have been with you for years.  A good homeopath is reluctant to treat again too soon.  If he tells you at the follow-up visit that he wants to wait before he treats you again, that is good.  Even if some of your symptoms remain, don't push for a remedy.  Indeed, the most common mistake made by homeopaths is treating too often.

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