I work with a woman whose husband has bels palsy and has a lot of pain with it - also affects his eye - can homeopathy help this condition? Don't know much about all his symptoms just what she has mentioned to me at work
Thanks

It is possible to cure this condition with homoeopathy - I have cured 2 cases. There are no incurable diseases in homoeopathy, only some incurable patients.

__________________
David Kempson.<br />Dip.Homoeopathic Medicine.<br />Lecturer Australian College of Natural Therapies (Brisbane Campus)<br />Member AHA, AROH, HMA<br />Member Australian Homoeopathic Association. Member#0442.

David

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/health_and_.../bells_doc.htm


"What is the prognosis?
The prognosis for Bell’s palsy is generally very good. With or without treatment, most patients begin to get significantly better within 2 weeks, and about 80 percent recover completely within 3 months. For some, however, the symptoms may last longer. In a few cases, the symptoms may never completely disappear"


Since 80% fully recover on no treatment, it is a little difficult to claim 'cure' for all on the basis of 2 patients.

[ 01. September 2003, 19:31: Message edited by: Francine ]

Actually, Francine, what you might consider an 80% cure rate is probably just empty numbers.

A disease like Bell's Palsy actually involves a great deal of pain and discomfort for sufferers who are afflicted with it. Many suffer disheartening symptoms of depression along with this disease, particularly as it often recurs, like other diseases which affect the nerves directly, whenever the body is run down or made susceptible through whatever causes, emotional or otherwise. Most people suffer recurring bouts of Bell's palsy over the course of several years.

When you can instantly remove all the symptoms of Bell's Palsy with a remedy and immediately improve the patient's life so that they can function with full health, why would you stupidly tell a patient: "Oh, don't use homeopathy, that's silly, this disease will go away as it might for its sufferers...slowly, over time...I'm sure you're one of the 80% who will be just fine in a few weeks, or months, or years. Just let nature take its course!" Patients are SUFFERING. They don't want something to just take the pain away "for now", or a number of prescriptions to stop the depression, stop the painfulness, and cover up the physical disfiguration caused by the disease. And they don't want to just take care of it "this time" and wonder when the next bout will hit. So: take the case, find the remedy, and the symptoms are gone. Forever. How silly to believe people would just choose to suffer through and do nothing to help themselves.

You seem resistant to do the work of fully understanding the paradigm of all vitalist medical traditions, beginning with Hippocrates on down to Hahnemann: if the body's vital force cannot cure itself as it is meant to do, then medicine must be used to empower the body's vital force so that it can do whatever it does to restore full health.

Truth is, ALL diseases can be cured by the body. Human beings are designed to cure all ailments which may befall them. Some challenges are too great for some compromised, less-than wholly vital, vital forces. If people thought as you do, we'd all just lay back and do nothing about any of the illnesses which befall us--just lie back, close our eyes, and die.

What if we applied this logic to other diseases which actually have a 100% cure rate--the flu, or measles, or chicken pox....all of these diseases resolve themselves, most often with full recovery, for all but a tiny minority of people who suffer from them. They all "end" their course through the body--either by going through their course and having the body cure them, or by going through their course and overcoming the body, resolving in death. Let's just take, for example, the 100% resolution we can see with a disease such as a very high fever...say, in a 4 year old...a kid with a fever of 105 degrees...you could either bring that fever down and resolve whatever disease process is taking place so that the body doesn't need to produce the fever (say, with a dose of belladonna or aconite, whatever potency is on hand) and watch the fever end immediately; or you could let it take its course. Imagine, in your mind, arguing the merits of "your" position to the parents of this child...oh, and forget about using children's tylenol, which will only prolong the fever bout indefinitely until the child's liver gives out; or children's aspirin, which will only drive the disturbance into the lungs and cause pneumonia and death, or any of the other variations on these 2 drugs given to children to bring that fever down. Go ahead: I'd like to witness you "comfort" these parents with the truth that fevers always come down, in children they are cured 80% of the time, not to worry, not to worry...."

Fortunately, you can't "sell" that type of treatment idea to too many people.

[ 01. September 2003, 21:02: Message edited by: Divina ]

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

Divina

That's not a cure rate, that's a going away completely all on its own rate.

What are 'empty' numbers? Your saying you can make them all better is empty without some numbers. If it turns out that your numbers are small, then those are really empty numbers.

How many patients have you seen with this problem?

Do you have long-term (years) follow-up on at least 100 patients with this problem to show that you are getting more than 80% better (unless you have at least 100 patients you don't have a large enough bunch to draw any valid conclusion that you're doing better than Mother Nature left to her own devices)?

But if your promises aren't true then they suffer double.

Divina

Well, I'm afraid that's just silly. Many of us use this drug many times and that's just not true.

I did not say I can cure all cases of Bell's Palsy, I simply said I have cured 2 cases.Obviously both patients had exhausted other options before coming to homoeopathy, and the condition had resulted in a long term change to their health - in other words the condition had "stuck", so it was evident that it would not clear up on its own. Each case showed clear and marked improvement after a very short period of aggravation, and also showed improvement in parts of the case other than the pathology ie. general and mental levels. Since in homoeopathy we look at cure as applying to the person as well as the disease, this showed me that the remedy had "cured" the condition.

We do not treat the pathology directly with homoeopathy, but stimulate the vital force into greater health - thus, whenever we say we have "cured" a condition, ultimately we are saying we caused a positive change in the person's overall health, which resulted in the person's vital force throwing off the diseas itself.

Cure in homoeopathy has definite parameters, much broader and deeper than orthodox medicine.We know that we cure a case when the patient feels better in themselves, has greater energy, a better appetite, improved sleep, more natural sexual function etc etc. I have had many hundreds of patients, and over 80% of them improve. The specific medical diagnosis they were given is of much less importance to me. The vast majority of them had suffered with the condition far longer than would be expected if mother nature were going to clear it up on its own. Many had been to naturopaths, acupuncturists, herbalists, doctors, specialists - so if mother nature were going to resolve things on her own, one of these other practitioners would have claimed the success.

I also wonder at your motives for asking the question, if you already thought you knew the answer?

[ 01. September 2003, 22:31: Message edited by: DavidJK ]

__________________
David Kempson.<br />Dip.Homoeopathic Medicine.<br />Lecturer Australian College of Natural Therapies (Brisbane Campus)<br />Member AHA, AROH, HMA<br />Member Australian Homoeopathic Association. Member#0442.

David

My point was just that 'cure' is a very strong word. On the basis of just 2 patients with a condition that mostly goes away anyway you just can't tell that it wasn't a coincidence, and unless you've followed them for years afterwards, you can't tell your 'cure' was permanent.

F.

Try comprehending Aphorism 8, and the rather chirpy footnote that is attached to it.
Warning:
It's deep!

Francine, honey, get yourself a good Physician's Deskside Reference book on popularly prescribed drugs, will you? If you think the tylenol dangers are "just silly", then you've proven yourself to know very little about these medications.

By the way, even doctors and nurses warn their patients off the use of these drugs. Just so you know.

I don't claim to "cure" anyone of any disease.

My patients tell me what is happening with their cases and let me know over the time I work with them what their development or progress is. When a person tells me that Bell's Palsy is painful, recurrent at particular moments in their lives, crippling to their self-esteem and to their mood, as well as to their ability to function in the world--and then they tell me all this goes away after a remedy is taken, immediately...well, you figure it out, Francine. If they continue to work with me over the course of many months or years and the Bell's Palsy is never mentioned again, then I guess I have to take my patients' words for it.

If you really think that Homeopathy is nonsense, please, please, please, don't use it. But you're not going to get very far in convincing that a remedy which alleviates the suffering of Bell's Palsy for a patient is actually just a "promise" which will double the patient's suffering.

Or a promise that brings a child's raging, spiking fever down so that he or she avoids convulsions...

Now, I have quite a long, long, long, list of prescription drugs which claim to make all kinds of promises to all kinds of patients, many of which are disappointing and quite physically damaging in ways most people don't wish to know about. How is it you don't seem to be upset about this as much as you are about the healing possibilities of homeopathy? Could you be biased?

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