Homeopathy, Acute Prescribing Health Article

Benefits

Homeopathic physicians seek to cure their patients on physical, mental, and emotional levels, and each treatment is tailored to a patient's individual needs. Homeopathy is generally a safe treatment, as it uses medicines in extremely diluted quantities, and there are usually minimal side effects. Its nontoxicity makes it a good choice for the treatment of children. Another benefit of homeopathy is the cost of treatments; homeopathic remedies are inexpensive, often a fraction of the cost of conventional drugs.

Acute homeopathic prescribing is thought to benefit a wide range of ailments. These include altitude sickness, Bell's palsy, the common cold, allergies, coughing, dengue fever, dysentery, earaches, migraine headaches, fever, food poisoning, grief, influenza, motion sickness, shock, sore throat, surgical complications, and reactions to vaccinations and drug therapy. Acute remedies may also be prescribed for treat insect stings, animal bites, and problems related to poison oak and poison ivy. Homeopathy may be further employed in treating injuries including black eyes, burns, bruises, concussions, cuts, damaged tendons and ligaments, dislocations, fractures, herniated discs, nosebleeds, puncture wounds, sprains, and strains.

Description

Homeopathic prescribing differs in general from allopathic medicine in its tailoring of remedies to the patient's overall personality type and totality of symptoms, rather than to the disease. Whereas a conventional physician would prescribe the same medication or treatment regimen to all patients with the common cold, for example, a homeopathic practitioner would ask detailed questions about each patient's symptoms and the modalities, or factors, that make them better or worse. As a result, the homeopath might prescribe six different remedies for six different patients with the same illness. In acute prescribing homeopathy, consultations are more brief compared to constitutional homeopathic prescribing. A typical patient might spend just 10–15 minutes with the practitioner, compared to more than an hour for constitutional prescribing.