A friend’s daughter once got a stomach flu and asked me for help. The little girl had been suffering from nausea for several days. Her stomach felt so full and bloated that she couldn’t eat anything. She also looked dull and lifeless. According to her symptoms, I prescribed a homeopathic remedy Nux vomica 30c for her. Several hours after taking the remedy, she stopped feeling nauseous, her appetite was back, and her energy improved.
The daddy said her daughter got stomach flu very often. It usually took more than two weeks before the girl got back to her normal state. Being a first-time user of homeopathy, my friend felt astonished to see how quickly her daughter fully recovered (within three days!). He kept saying "It’s amazing!” and asked me "Are those tiny pills magic?" My answer was “Acute diseases can be treated effectively by homeopathy because it greatly improves the body's immune function, allowing the body to heal itself quickly without producing any side effects.”
A video documenting the production process of homeopathic remedies, made by Helios Homoeopathy, a homeopathic pharmacy in the U.K.
So what are actually those “mysterious” pills? They are made from natural sources – most of them are made from plants or minerals, such as calendula, chamomile, sea salt, and gold, while small parts of them are made from animals, such as honey bees, cuttlefish ink and oyster shell.
For plant sources, extract of the original substance, the mother tincture, is first diluted with distilled water or pure alcohol at a ratio of 1:99. The solution is then shaken vigorously for at least ten times to become a solution of the first potency (1c). It is diluted and shaken in the same way again, and a solution of the second potency (2c) results. If the same process is repeated 30 times, we will get a solution of the commonly used 30c potency. Finally, small lactose or sucrose pills will be wetted with the potentized solution – these are the remedies that a homeopath gives a patient. (Potency represents the strength of a remedy. The higher the potency, the greater the healing strength. A homeopath decides on the potency according to the patient’s condition.) There are several other methods for preparing homeopathic medicines, but the centesimal dilution described above are the most commonly used. In addition to sugar pills, homeopathic medicines are also available in tablet and liquid forms.
There are more than 2,000 homeopathic remedies, of which about 150 are commonly used. All of them have been tested on healthy people to assess their properties. The results from these tests (called “provings”) as well as their clinical usages are recorded in homeopathic reference books known as materia medica, which are important daily tools for every homeopath.
Homeopathic remedies are safe and suitable for everyone, including infants, toddlers, pregnant women and the elderly. It can also be used for animals.
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