Considering, diet, lifestyle, etc --- I wonder if we don't place enough importance on the diet sometimes. What are others experience with this?

I would like to know, for example, if anyone (homeopaths) recommends dietary changes for patients with deep pathology like cancer. If so --- what changes do you recommended to your patients.

Lisa

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"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham

well..for one thing ..most of the people in america are eating food that has nothing in it...no vital force...so to speak...as in parsley which has good enzymes in it..so I would think eating foods that have life in them wouldn't hurt and staying away from dead food would be essential.

Or is it the case...that if one is healthy..has a strong vital force....they can eat whatever the hell they want?

I can't eat bread or cheese...which also happen to be bad for me according to the blood type diet. Will I ever be able to eat those things...do I want to be able to eat crappy cruddy disgusting processed flour? Or create lots of extra mucus in my body by eating dairy? How is a kick in the butt from a remedy going to enable me to deal better with excess mucus or help me digest flour that is undigestable. Its not like when i've got the right remedy I'll now be able to eat cotton.

I recommend that people eat as natural a diet as possible. Organic plant foods; grass fed, hormone free, antibiotic free animal products; increase in omega-3 fatty acids; eating primarily locally, so you eat based on what is in season; no processed foods, no refined sugar; if a particular food or group of food causes distress, don't eat it; eat as much variety as possible; enjoy your food and don't obsess about it.

A healthy human being should be able to eat a variety of wholesome foods without problems. There are cultures that eat an almost completely plant based diet, there are cultures that eat an almost completely animal based diet, there are cultures that eat a high dairy diet; and they all do fine.

There seem to be as many different ideas about diet as there are people, so I am somewhat reluctant to tell people that they should be following anything specific, other than the above, unless they seem open to hearing about it. I do know that insulin resistance is helped by a diet low in carbs and high in protein. There are other diseases that respond well to particular diets. I have someone currently who has bone cancer. She is on a macrobiotic diet and her last biopsy was negative.

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Shirley Reischman

Shirely, I agree that a healthy person should be able to eat a variety of wholesome foods without problems.

I was asking more specifically about chronically ill patients -- and what recommendations other practitioners might advise to them. Thanks for sharing (your last paragraph) your thoughts.

I also have a friend who's got cancer and has been eating live, raw foods for over two years now. Probably very similar to the macrobiotic diet. It's an extreme change in diet, but it seems to have helped. Eating this way seems to be an effective way to detox -- and starve the body of toxins (for lack of a better word) that are in your average food at the supermarket. Although, it's not necessarily a terribly well-balanced source of nourishment for the long term (rebuilding).

Obviously the goal would be to restore someone to a place where they are able to eat well rounded wholesome foods.

Anyhow, just came across this recently again and was pondering it a bit more than I had recently where homeopathic treatment is concerned.

If you get a patient who is obviously aggravated everytime they eat fatty foods, for example...do you ask/advise/tell them to forgo fatty foods for a while?

Best wishes,
Lisa

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"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham

Short answer: No.

I repertorize the symptom (it does affect the case generally, after all) and include it in the totality of the case. The remedy I select will have to address this issue, or I won't give it. They've got to keep eating fatty foods for me to know whether or not cure has taken place.

I'm convinced healthy bodies will take good nutrition from whatever sources of food exist. I've read about cases where malnutrition/malabsorption issues plagued certain children who ate no more and no differently from other around them, yet simply would not thrive...suddenly, on receiving their remedy, they began to flourish, even though they still ate the same foods, in the same amounts, as before.

If you're on a hiking trip and all you can eat out of the food provided is Smarties for the duration of the trip...you'll very likely derive all the nutrition you need from Smarties.

...unless you have a pathology which keeps you from assimilating nutrients from your food...and no amount of dietary change or supplementation will fix that.

Sometimes diets like the raw food one you describe, Lisa, are helpful and supportive in that they certainly lessen the taxing demands on a body that must save all its resources. And there, they are useful.

But to use as a "cure"? Diets or nutritional changes are not very curative, and can certainly suppress or mask the expression of the real disease. A lot of times, they are focused on eliminating or palliating the symptom (suppression!) and not on permanently fixing the problem.

One dose of calc carb given to a calc carb patient at the right time...is worth a metric tonne of calcium carbonate derived from sea coral or whatever supposedly highly absorbable form sits on the market shelves at the moment.

Actually, its worth more, because it will remedy the problem completely...and the supplement just won't.

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...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

I tend to agree with Divina.

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Shirley Reischman

Oh, I wasn't proposing diet is used for CURE, Divina!! I think you misunderstood me. Though I did get sidetracked by asking that fatty-foods question...

I am more interested in cases of deep pathology - like one would find in cases of cancer. I want to know the EXPERIENCE of other homeopaths.

I remember Hans posted a case once --- breast cancer. Did that patient, for example, need to change her diet in any way? If so -- what were teh changes, and why... Or did he deem that she was eating well enough that nothing needed changing.

Hahnemann says we have to take into account the diet (along with other factors) and I simply wanted to discuss this a bit.

[ 19. February 2004, 19:15: Message edited by: LisaAnnan ]

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"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham

I think Hans' case was of a patient who improved on the remedy alone. I don't recall that he ever mentioned the diet at all.

I think if a patient opts for cancer treatment where they will be subject to chemicals which are poisonous, then everything which can be done to help the body get rid of those poisons can only help the case along. If that means eating a diet of raw foods from organic sources in order to keep from taxing the overburdened system, then, yes, it's a very good idea.

It's an especially good idea given what I know of the "typical" diet imposed on chemo patients in the hospital! There is no possible way anyone could digest the type of food they are fed on site, nor should anyone be forced to subsist on junk "filler" foods like Encore nutrient supplement "drinks".

I think Hahnemann was right to have us examine our patients' diets--its necessary for us to be able to determine, if we can, that what we are seeing as symptomatology is somehow related to what is being eaten (or not being eaten). We can also use the information plus the other info about symptoms in the case to determine whether or not the diet itself is a problem, or whether it is an indicator of a problem. I think what Hahnemann does really well is illustrate that every food desire or aversion exists because of some physical reality in the body: cravings arise out of physiological need; as do aversions; inabilities to digest certain foods or to feel better as a result of certain foods also point out physiological realities. It's not accidental that sugar cravings, for example, take place in people who suffer from hypothyroidism; or, for another example, the craving for soup expressed by patients who need carcinosin or cuprum does coincide with the high copper content found in many soups. Rajan Sankaran has quite correctly pointed out that often that which a patient craves in crude form is the remedy they need in potentized form.

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...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

The other thread about aging brown spots is an example of when I would recommend dietary changes - if the patient brings it up.

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Shirley Reischman

Thanks Divina...

And thanks too, Shirley. That's more the kinda of thing I was interested in.

__________________
"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham