hello,

i think i may have seborrheic dermatitis on my scalp and above my eyebrows. for the last 4-6 months i've had red scaling and patchyness. and for the last 2-3 months, my scalp has been extremely itchy and flaky and quite oily.

my situation is this -- i live in canada, so to an extent, my health is covered. so i can make a visit to the doctor without having to pay, however i don't have that same luxury with a homeopath. i have been to a local homeopath about a year or two ago for my cold sores, and her treatment seemed to help quite a bit. thus, i'm feeling quite ocnfident with her and somewhat skeptical that the only thing a doctor/dermatologist will do is give me a pill/lotion/shampoo to take care of it on each occurence. and i'm worried that i just make my scalp even worse by putting more chemicals into it. whereas i have some hope that a homeopath treatment may be able to reduce the symptoms to an extent more permanently, but obviously i'd have to pay a bit of money.

health is important, obviously, so the money issue isn't the greatest priority, the question is really whether a homeopath will be able to do anything for me that a doctor/dermatologist won't? as i said, i don't want to go to a doctor and just be given treatments that may or may not work but will wear our my sensitive scalp even more.

what would you suggest?

thank you kindly for your time and help

Hi CS,

If you've been treated homeopathically, you have to take a somewhat larger view of your symptoms at present:

are these new symptoms, from which you've never suffered before? Or is this the first time you've experienced them?

Has this symptom remained despite homeopathic treatment?

Has it responded to homeopathy, but still lingers in the one spot at the moment?

Your answers to these questions would really help out...also, if you were to see your homeopath about these symptoms, they could be repertorized and treated perhaps with another dose of the remedy you initially got...or with another remedy which covers your whole case including this new symptom.

Anyway, you won't be treating it with coal tar shampoos or steroid creams of any kind...and you do have a chance to get rid of it once and for all with homeopathy. So call your homeopath again! Remember...OHIP may cover the dermatologist visit...but you'll be paying out of pocket for all the prescriptions unless you've got a great job and a terrific insurance plan...and if you had that, the money issue would be moot.

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

yes, quite right on the point of prescription fees, divina. i did actually actually go to a walk-in about this problem, but the doctor was so over-worked he said he may not have time to hear the multiple problems i came in to ask about. so you can imagine my hesitation when i went to shopper's to pick up my $45 lotion, which i didn't purchase.

i had great luck with my homeopathic treatment last time, which was for cold sores, and i understand that it involves my entire being, and not just the symptoms i'm experiencing. i should probably go ahead and book another appointment with my homeopath as she already has my past history. and i can simply update her on the last 2 years since i've seen her. given that there are quite a few things that aren't right with me physically (tonsilloliphs, scaling around eyebrows, itchy flaky scalp, swelling in fingers on right hand), it's probably best i go to my homeopath and discuss it in more detail that way.

thanks for the reassurance, divina

take care and thank you for responding.

Walk-in clinics. The freshest form of hell, and one of the most ingenious examples of institutionalized indifference.
Right next to it, Shopper's Drug Mart...which is starting to look so much like the Bay that I've forgotten they actually sell drugs on the premises. Somewhere, way at the back of the building.

Just a little old complaint about good old Canadian Health Care.

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

it's not all bad, i often see customers coming in and asking the drug mart folks for help with their symptoms, to which the employees oblige, something which i would think was beyond their job requirements? at least there is this option, i used to live in the states and there they didn't even have walk-ins (i never heard of them when i lived there for 10 years), imagine all the parents without health care from their jobs who couldn't afford to take their kids to the doctor.

canada doesn't have it the greatest, there will always be problems in any health care system, but it certainly isn't the worst either.

anyways, a bit off topic from these forums, pardon

It is definitely beyond the scope of their minimum wage jobs! Even the pharmacists shouldn't be doling out OTC drugs, in my opinion. But it could be much worse...particularly if the sell "homeopathics" or what they claim to be homeopathics. A lot more education is definitely needed there.

Walk-ins have overtaken the scene here, as GPs are really hard to find. Very hard to get any kind of care out of them. Last time I went to one with my mom so she could get an x-ray the wait for 4 hours long and she came home suffering from that experience. Last time I went to check out the possibility of a broken bone, I saw a young woman reacting to a bee sting be strapped up and carted away on an emergency ambulance, right to the hospital...and I saw her just long enough to know she could have avoided all that frenzy with a little dose of apis. "All this for a silly bee sting?" she cried, as she was wheeled out by a troupe of paramedics.

I know its off topic, but things could be a lot better!

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