As your naturopathic doctor, one way I help is to empower you to create the conditions for health in your home and life. This includes giving you tools to help you and your kids recover from and prevent common family health concerns like colds and flus, bumps and bruises, stings and strains, tummy aches, headaches and more. More often than not, minor conditions and symptoms respond to safe and gentle self-care methods and natural remedies you can keep in your kitchen and medicine cabinet. It’s a passion of mine to help make sure all of the families we serve are equipped to do this successfully.
My first experiences with “natural first aid” were as a child. By the time I began my formal medical studies I’d already experienced the effects of homeopathic treatment for two decades – covering conditions as diverse as cold and flu to emotional upsets to PMS. My mom made a powerful choice to make naturopathic medicine our family’s primary health care at a time when it wasn’t widely considered a primary choice as it often is today in Guelph where I practice. I’m so grateful my mom chose to seek complementary, non-toxic and health-promoting methods as I’m certain it’s shaped my health profoundly.
Homeopathic medicine is a safe, effective system of health care that’s been around for over 200 years. From childhood, I grew up receiving homeopathic remedies for colds, flus, injuries and various emotional upsets. Homeopathic remedies stimulate the body’s natural healing capacity to restore balance and optimize wellbeing. This experience formed a significant part of what inspired me to become a naturopathic doctor and continues to help me assess which homeopathic medicines may be indicated for my patients, including infants and children who tend to respond beautifully to this safe, gentle system of care.
Homeopathic medicine was discovered by 19th century German physician, Samuel Hahnemann. Fluent in several languages, Hahnemann noted that medical texts referred to a healing principle of “likes cure likes”, which was the opposite of the suppressive and purgative medical methods used by his contemporaries, such as chemical cathartics and bloodletting. Dr. Hahnemann noted that the plant Cinchona was used to treat symptoms of malaria, while excess doses of Cinchona could also cause poisonings that created similar symptoms to malaria, such as fever and prostration. Experimenting with smaller and smaller doses, Hahnemann discovered dozens of remedies and recorded hundreds of cured cases. Today, we have access to over 3000 remedies. I find I use about 20 remedies most commonly in my practice with good results. Homeopathic medicine has been especially valuable in my work with infants, children, and expectant mothers, with concerns ranging from constipation to insomnia to breech babies. Homeopathy is not only extraordinarily safe and gentle, it is uniquely customizable to the person’s ailments as well as their overall symptom “picture” and their unique traits as a person.
Homeopathy is an Empowered Health Choice
Because you can learn to use homeopathics to treat some of the common conditions that arise in yourself and your children, these remedies are valuable as part of your home first aid kid and give you some treatment options for the middle of the night and when there actually isn’t a pharmaceutical available for the particular concern. It’s also comforting to know that homeopathic medicines can’t be overdosed and there is no toxicity to them. There are no known interactions with other medicines.
Cases
Here are some examples of real cases treated with homeopathic medicine in my practice (details removed to preserve privacy):
-Breech baby turned at 38 weeks
-5 year old child with growing pains, extreme behaviour and mood swings, insomnia and recurrent throat infections well after 2 days of homeopathic treatment; effects consistent when symptoms recurred weeks later and remedy was repeated
-Constipation resolved in many babies
-Morning sickness 90% resolved throughout first trimester
-Overwhelming grief and sadness shifted and eased
-PMS (anger, irritability, breast tenderness, bloating) resolved reliably at each recurrence with repeat of remedy followed by years of lasting relief
-Child anxiety and fear resolved
-Child fever relieved without drugs
-Migraines successfully treated without drugs
“First Aid” or Chronic Condition?
It’s important to know whether you’re treating something minor and acute such as swelling and itching from an insect bite or a fever from a viral infection, or whether your goal is to overcome a chronic condition such as long-term constipation, anxiety, PMS or a skin issue.
In homeopathic medicine, the goal is to match the symptoms the person is suffering from to the medicinal action of the remedy. There are several remedies that you can learn to use at home when you see that “remedy picture” show up in yourself or your child. Some of the most commonly needed and valuable homeopathics are listed for you in this download, Homeopathic First Aid.
It’s also important to know how to how to recognize serious illness in your child and to seek prompt medical care if that’s the case. I’ve enclosed additional notes on this aspect in the download.
For individualized assessment or to find out which natural first aid remedies are most appropriate to your family’s needs, book an appointment with one of our naturopathic doctors.