why is it so bad to suppress a skin complaint, surely it is just wiping it off the surface...

Tha't exactly what its doing, just wiping an illness with deep roots, off the surface.
And then there is no evidence to show us whether the roots have been cured or not.
We remain under then the misguided notion that we are "healthy". But the roots continue to proliferate into deeper, more important organs hat you can't see till its too late.

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so how do we know all skin conditions have deep roots(as vithoulkas would say), some fungal conditions, for example are easily transmitted, if they haven't remained with us for some time, or are not hereditory, then are they less significant?

leaving more detailed clinical discussion of the fungal or like conditions, to those better qualified, i would nevertheless pose these points:


1. there is no such thing as an acute condition that exists apart from a host: fungal growth or not, it must take root somewhere, and in treating the superficial (by your account) disease, you nevertheless, and unavoidably, must treat it in context of the total person, the whole patient. in psychotherapy, i have seen people enter treatment in response to minor trauma, that others would have ignored, yet these patients have relatively far reaching symptomatic reactions. like dieing from a peanut allergy. or going into a suicidal depression because she bought a 20-pound turkey ... and was only having 4 guests for dinner.

2. so, there are a wide range of disease states, from simple to complex, recent onset to chronic and deep-seated, often (in allopathic terms) more than one diagnosis applying at a time (so-called co-morbid conditions), though in homeopathic terms we would recognize this as a single disease state, the patient's totality rather than a collection of segmented syndromes. some conditions will actually cure themselves if you wait; others can be cured by removing an exciting cause such as a substance to which the patient is sensitive; others require longer or shorter course of treatment; some have sudden onset triggered by apparently minor events, others show progressive, long-standing, insidious onset.

3. do you have a problem acknowledging that disease states vary in complexity and tenacity, or that the clinician will intervene differentially according to these states? that in homeopathy variable responses to disease states may include "constitutional" prescribing, acute prescribing, epidemic prescribing ... ? and if you already know this, why pose the questions you pose, as though recognition and skillful response to differentiated states was a problem for homeopathy?

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"The need to perform adjustments for covariates...weakens the findings." BMJ Clinical Evidence: Mental Health, (No. 11), p. 95.... It's that simple, guys: bad numbers make bad science.

Hi Imd,
A fungal infection means that there is a fungus that is proliferating on the surface of the skin as a parasite - but it also means that the host is susceptible to the fungal infection and allowing this to continue for a variety of reasons and that is what is not "healthy".

The fungal spores exist in the environment as do bacteria and viruses, but still, every one of us do not pick up every infection. This is because of differing states of health.

IF even epidemic situations are observed, the variety of reactive patterns and symptom expressions also speaks of these differences in the state of health and responses. In homeopathy we call this "individual susceptibility" which is different to what the medical definition of the term "susceptible" means.

So its the host factor that provides the roots and that is what needs to be treated. Once the host is healthy, there is no disease.

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http://www.homeopathy2health.com

So, my situation: I have acne - have had it since I was 12 or so, it went away during pregnancy, came back a couple days before I went into labour. If I understand this all correctly (bear with me, I've only been learning about homeopathy for about 3 weeks), the fact that I have acne indicates a deeper problem - in my case hormonal imbalance of some kind, which could be another symptom or a cause, which is moot, because in a nutshell the trouble is that my vital force needs "recharging" - right?
I have a whole pile of questions related to this, but will wait to address any questions until I've read a bit more - I go from "aha!" to "but what if . . .?" quite frequently in my reading, but I won't give up

YEs the hormonal imbalance itself is an indication of imbalance at a deeper level (vital force). Restoring that balance first with the indicated homeopathic similimum then restors the hormonal imbalance and thus - no pimples, no fertile ground for Staphylococcus to breed.

The homeopathic remedy is simply a stimulus of the central imbalance (vital force) to move in the direction of healing - with the body's own intrinsic healing mechanisms, be they enzymes, the immune system mechanisms, hormones, metabolic processes, etc.
So its vital that the stimulus is correctly matched to the imbalance expressed by the body at the superficial (symptom) level that "resonates" with the "frequency" required for healing - which we term the "similimum".
If this stimulus is incorrectly matched (wrong remedy) - there will be NO action, or incomplete action or partial action or furthur deviation into ill health (suppression), each that can be correctly interpreted and analysed based on a furthur progressive expression of superficial symptoms.

Wiping away a superficial symptom expression, hence, does not allow for clear analysis.

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http://www.homeopathy2health.com

brilliant, that has really clarified it for me.