a little more on Homeopathy

I've had a request to talk a little more about Homeopathy, and what I'm doing with it for Jacob. I like requests, it prevents me from having to think up a topic to write about!

I originally wrote about Homeopathy during my back-history of Jacob's autism, and I'd encourage anyone not familiar with how Homeopathy works to read there first before continuing here.

I have long been a fan of Classical Homeopathy, using it as our primary health care option for any illness or injury, long before we became aware of Jacob's Autism. In fact, long before I even seriously considered having kids. So we were using Homeopathy with Jacob before we had a diagnosis -- even before we had an inkling of what was "wrong". In fact, I had taken him to a Professional Homeopath before I even suspected a thing, although I didn't employ the Homeopath that eventually helped us until after I knew there was something wrong (see my posts about The Storm).

Every child is going to have a different Constitutional Remedy, even those that may have the same presenting symptoms. A lot of Classical Homeopathy depends on finding exactly the right remedy for the child based on their individual temperment and make-up, in addition to the problems they are experiencing. In Jacob's case, the proper remedy was Argentum nitricum, which we arrived at under the guidance of a Professional Homeopath.

We started out by giving him a 30c dose twice a day for the first day, and a follow up dose the following morning. Then we waited and watched to see what happened. We would give him a follow-up dose of 30c whenever he experienced a meltdown or tantrum of extreme instensity or duration (think 3 hour earth-shattering meltdown), which is something that I've heard would be refered to as a "neurological event", and that's a description I quite agree with. Or when he experienced a string of meltdowns or intense anxiety attacks (several in the same day). The dose would return him almost instantly to a more settled, regulated state.

Once we realized that this was the proper remedy for him, we started fiddling around with the dose so that we could give it less often and have a more lasting effect. We finally settled on 200c pellets, which we gave to him as above. These seemed to help him maintain a more settled emotional state for a week or two at a time -- we'd only see small tantrum and "normal" (HA!) meltdowns, mild anxiety, etc. It would wear off over time, and we'd need to re-dose him, but eventually we got down to about once a month, and there it stabilized for quite some time.

Then we discovered RDI. Via our RDI work, Jacob developed self-regulation, and that is what finally ended the need for his Homeopathic remedy. We haven't given him a dose of that since....oh, gosh I can't remember. Mid-summer 2006, I think. Maybe early summer. Around the time that he mastered Stage 4 he no longer needed it. There were no more meltdowns. He wasn't an anxious child anymore. He could handle change. He could regulate himself, maintain his composure in all but extreme circumstances.

Did Homeopathy work to cure his Autism? Nope. Not even a little. But it did make it possible for him to be able to live with himself while we were doing the work to help him develop his own self-regulation. It prevented him from being self-injurious, and from lashing out at others. It ended seemingly endless "neurological events". And I think it prevented any more emotional damage being caused to him by the developmental route his Autistic brain was taking. It was a really important first step for us to get in control of this thing and give us the time to seek out actual solutions. It took us out of crisis mode and set us onto a path of healing.

Incidentally, and I refer to this in my original post on Homeopathy too, there is a practice called "Sequential Homeopathy", whose proponents claim works to "cure" Autism. It didn't make enough sense to me, in our particular situation, to pursue this -- we were already making strides with RDI before I'd ever heard of Sequential Homeopathy, so I didn't see a need to pursue it. It may be of use to some families to look into it, however, especially if they feel that their child's autism has been caused by or is being exacerbated by physical illness. I think the folks that find help with biomedical interventions may find help in pursuing Homeopathy too.

We still use Homeopathy for Jacob, for illnesses and injuries. Just like we do for any of us in this family, including our pets and farm animals. Other than having given Zoo Boy antibiotics once for an ear infection, and Jacob's continued use of Glycolax to keep him pooping regularly (a topic for another day....), my kids have never had any western medications -- no antibiotics, no fever-reducers (what a bizarre concept anyway -- the fever is there to naturally fight off the disease, why would you want to get rid of it???), no cold medicines. Homeopathy helps their bodies fight off infections naturally. It's worth reading about for anyone's health, but especially that of kids with ASD, whose neurology may be adversely affected by medications (I mean more than the average person would be affected!).