Homeopathy and Sporting Spectators

If you were fortunate enough to have been successful with the Olympic ticket ballot earlier this year, you are probably looking forward to watching some of the world’s best sportsmen and women take to their respective ‘sporting stages’ later in the summer. And with many of the events taking place outside, spectators are strongly advised to consider the best methods of preventing sunstroke and dehydration before they arrive at the Games.

Watching a sporting event often requires the spectator to sit for long periods of time in the same place, often in direct sunshine with little or no shade to shield them from the heat. With few opportunities to get up, move around and keep the blood flow moving, it is recommended that spectators keep hydrated by drinking fluids regularly (avoiding alcohol), and protect themselves with sun cream, re applying frequently. 

Additionally, to avoid pins and needles and any circulatory problems, small exercises whilst sitting, such as moving ankles or shoulders around in a circular motion, can be extremely helpful.

Despite these preventative measures, if you do happen to find yourself unwell due to the heat and sun that you have experienced, below are a few remedies which may be able to help. Please note, however, that these are only a guideline and so consult with a homeopath for a more specific course of action. 

Alternatively, if you do not have any remedies to hand and are suffering from sunburn, try applying cold tea, cool whole milk or plain yoghurt to the affected areas. To relieve a throbbing headache from excess sun exposure and sunstroke try:

Belladonna 30c 

Glonoinium 30c

To ease sunburn, gently rub the following creams into the areas which have been exposed and are causing discomfort and irritation:

Aloe Vera 

Calendula 

Hypercal 

Urtica

This article was first published as part of Homeopathy Health Medicine - a free promotional newsletter that all homeopaths can use freely.

The Homeopathic 'must haves' for any Olympian - or Sportsman or Sportswoman

With a summer packed full of sporting events, from the Euro 2012 to Wimbledon, Ascot, the British Grand Prix, and both the Olympics and Paralympics, sporting prowess will be on show at every turn! 

And if all the media coverage of these events, combined with the offers that many gyms and sporting venues are using to entice new clients, inspires you to take up a new sport, we have compiled a basic list of homeopathic medicines which may come in handy when you’re starting out.

Arnica - eases bruising and soreness

Bryonia - useful for torn/damaged ligaments or tendons, especially if the least movement is excruciating

Ledum - if the injury is purple and feels cold to touch

Rhus Tox – helpful for muscle strain, worse on first movement, better for continued movement, better for warmth

Ruta - particularly good for tennis elbow, use when bones feel bruised

In addition to the above remedies, the pain of sprains may either be eased by hot baths and applying warmth to the vulnerable area, or the opposite, by the application of an ice pack to reduce swelling. 

Resting sore muscles and tendons is also advisable. 

In the event of suspected dislocation, seek professional help immediately, though firm bandaging may help to alleviate the pain whilst you wait.

As everyone knows, prevention is always better than cure, so make sure that you warm up before undertaking any exercise and warm down after. Try to gradually build up your tolerance for any new sport by partaking in your chosen exercise in small, short bursts at the beginning and increasing slowly as you go along. 

Although this seems obvious, it is believed that the majority of amateur sporting injuries are because of over exertion too quickly, so take note from the misfortune of others!

This article was first published as part of Homeopathy Health Medicine - a free promotional newsletter that all homeopaths can use freely.

How Homeopathy can help with Sports Anxiety

It has long been acknowledged that a competitor’s state of mind plays a large part in the winning of a race or game, and that it is as important as their physical aptitude. This is especially true when competing sportsmen or women have skills and abilities on such a similar par, that there is little to differentiate between them, apart from their mental attitude.

Whether you are the sprinter Usain Bolt, trying to break another world record, or a primary school-child entering your first sports day event, keeping a positive mental attitude can often make the difference between first place or no place at all. Since anxiety is one of the greatest mental hindrances for professionals within the sports industry, below is a list of some useful remedies which may to help keep your nerves under control and abate the understandable anxiety you will probably be feeling before an important race or match. In addition, these homeopathic medicines can also be used on the sidelines by restless, anxious parents!

It is suggested that you take one tablet in the 30C potency every 15 minutes, for up to six doses. If the anxiety symptomes still persist after that time, then you need to consider if another remedy would be more appropriate.

Aconite – you may have a nightmare feeling deep inside, and feel a sense of real terror about the forthcoming event/race/match

Arg Nit – there’s a feeling of anxiousness rather than terror and you have a sense of not being able to go through with the event 

Gelsemium – you have severe anticipatory fears which are often visible in the form of physical shaking and trembling

Lycopodium – there’s a lack of self-confidence and you are constantly worrying

Nat Mur – consolation offered to the anxiety sufferer makes the situation worse, whereas standing out in the open air may help

This article was first published as part of Homeopathy Health Medicine - a free promotional newsletter that all homeopaths can use freely.

Why Homeopathy can help our Olympic Athletes

The word homeopathy is derived from a combination of two Greek words ‘homoios’, meaning similar, and ‘pathy’, meaning suffering, and it is based on the principle of ‘treating like with like’. This principle had been applied to the practice of medicine by a number of early civilisations, but it was Hippocrates who developed this into a system of medicine which was used widely in ancient Greece. Much of this early understanding of the healing potential of a homeopathic approach was lost over the centuries, as other ways to practice medicine were developed. It was not until the end of the 18th Century, that homeopathy as we recognise it today was introduced as a system of medicine by the German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann.

As another ‘creation’ inspired by the ancient Greeks takes centre stage in London this summer, Homeopathy Healthy Medicine has decided to take a look at how homeopathy can help the athletes in the sporting arena. With over 10,000 competitors participating in the Olympic Games, it is inevitable that sporting injuries and health issues will be in the forefront of trainers and athletes minds during the event in July and August. If a competitor’s fitness is compromised or misjudged, not only can it be the end of their Olympic dream for another four years, but it can also result in the demise of their career.

It is really important to try to prevent any detrimental physical conditions from developing in the first place, and although conventional medicine is often prescribed for sport-induced ailments, homeopathy brings a number of positive advantages by comparison. These include:

Homeopathic medicines do not produce harmful side effects Homeopathic medicines are highly diluted substances so they are free from ingredients which might contravene any drug bans

Homeopathic medicines cost less than conventional medicine

Homeopathic medicines can be safely stored for many years. Often only a few tablets from a bottle are needed for each episode of treatment 

Homeopathic medicines are not tested on animals. They are tested through systematic trials with healthy human volunteers 

Homeopathic medicines work with, rather than against, the body’s own repair mechanism

Homeopathic medicines appear to speed up the healing process and get you back to training and performing more quickly

In practical terms, these points seem to hold great weight when assessing the best method of looking after professional sportsmen and women. When Dr Jean Marcel Ferret, the doctor to the French football team from 1993-2004 was asked why he had chosen homeopathy, he said ‘I am open to all techniques. As a sports doctor I quickly discovered that, except for anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants, I was very limited in the care of athletes’.

The doctor, who was in charge of the French soccer team during their World Cup win in 1998, continued ‘The greatest value in sports? It’s speed of action. I can use it directly on the soccer field, within seconds of the trauma, and note the results almost immediately. The players are highly trained, a population at risk, with slightly defective immune systems. We have to protect their health. This involves an emphasis on prevention, taking into account the personality of each player. 

I now know that this approach is that of homeopathy’.

Fight for Homeopathy - Now!

Homeopathy is regularly having to defend itself - from attacks from supporters of the Conventional Medical (ConMed) Establishment. Actually, we have become quite used to it. Hahnemann himself, 200 years ago, was under regular attack from the ConMed practitioners of his day! It is what happens, I suppose, when an effective and safe medical therapy is in 'minority', but threatens ConMed, which has always struggled to find treatment that was not totally ineffective, or dangerous - and it is now in serious trouble.

When ARH members were discussing the 'consolidation' of the Medicines Act recently, one of our members wrote in with a heart-felt plea - to reject this particular attack, one of a series over recent years, and not to allow matters to rest. This is what she said:

Dear all!

I've been reading all your comments about Medicines Act Consolidation in the few past days, sometimes with disbelieve, but mostly with great concern, not just for homeopathy, or our businesses, but for the future of the humankind. 

I am very worried because some of you do not realize what is going on, and propose for waiting, and being decent and polite, and quiet above all.

I beg you not to be quiet, and not to wait! I beg you to shout, to write to your MPs three times a day, to go to the press and media, to go to the streets before it's too late.

You may think I'm being paranoid, but I live in Serbia, a country where it is too late already, where yesterday people elected a fascist for a president, where I practice homeopathy, illegally, because only (conventional) medical persons can practice.

I have practiced homeopathy for last 13 years, with over 2 years working with Helios, and some time practicing in Wales. I've also lived through starvation, war and bombing, none of which was my choice, but I used every possible way to stand against it. Mind you, one of Serbian dictators was overruled by the noise we all made by the whistles. Maybe it wasn't decent, certainly it wasn't quiet, but it worked against Milosevic.

There isn't a place on this planet where you can be safe or where you can avoid the consequences of not doing what is in your power to do NOW. Otherwise, what's next, who's next? 

* Compulsory vaccinations?

* GMO food?

* Poisoned water?

* Killing the people and animals, killing life? 

It is YOUR choice? If not, do something now, please.

Marija Mihajlov sent her 'love and hope to all' - but she sent us more than this through her message. She reminded us that we, as Homeopaths, cannot be content to treat people, and heal their illnesses and disease (although, of course we must continue to do so). We cannot just allow our opponents, and the vested interests they support, to attack us without responding vigorously.

Our health freedom is at stake here. Already, children are being removed from their parents because they refuse to allow them to have a vaccination. Already, a British MP is calling for compulsory vaccination. And in most parts of the UK, local NHS bureaucrats are stopping patients from gaining access to homeopathy - insisting they take ConMed drugs instead!

And perhaps Marija is right. If we meekly accept any of these things, we will not be facing an NHS which has become a monopoly supplier of ConMed treatment; but an NHS that goes one stage further;  and NHS that insists we do not even have the right to refuse dangerous vaccinations and drugs.

In 1776, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, foretold something of what is now happening:

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution the time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to doctors and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic."

Medical freedom is increasingly under attack. You will note that one major objective of the 'Homeopathy Denialists', is to oppose 'Patient Choice'. They state that Homeopathy does not, and cannot work, ignoring all the evidence that surrounds them that it does, and insist that we are treated with toxic chemicals and surgery - because they are based on their version of 'science'.

So I ask you all, in Marija's words:

I beg you not to be quiet, and not to wait! I beg you to shout, to write to your MPs three times a day, to go to the press and media, to go to the streets before it's too late.

Steve Scrutton

Director, ARH

Health Debate (4) The Cost-Effectiveness of Big Pharma drugs

This blog was first published at the Homeopathy Safe Medicine blog

The cost of ConMed treatment is exorbitant, and always has been. Given its ineffectiveness, and also its inherent dangers, the issue of cost-effectiveness should now be considered. We have a National Health Service (NHS) that has cost us in excess of £110 billion in recent years. From its inauguration in 1947, costs have risen year-by-year - usually alongside claims that the service is 'under-funded'.

We also have a situation where the numbers of people suffering from chronic diseases, like Arthritis, Cancers of all types, Dementia, Depression, Autism, and disease linked to heart, kidneys, liver, have all increased, often exponentially. We suffer chronic disease now at epidemic levels.

If we then consider (just) the known, and admitted side-effects, adverse reactions, and disease-inducing effects (DIEs) of Big Pharma drugs, the link between increased expenditure on conventional medical (ConMed) treatment (largely drug based) and increasing costs becomes clear.

But, of course, this essential feature of the 'health debate' is rarely discussed by the mainstream Media. Nor is the performance of ConMed ever compared with other medical therapies, like homeopathy.

Why is this? And what kind of questions should the Media be asking if it had any intention of entering into "the Health Debate"? Perhaps these are just of few of them!

• Why does the Media not ask searching questions about why Big Pharma drugs are so excessively expensive?

• Why does the Media not focus on either or both side of the 'cost-effectiveness' question when it comes to ConMed drugs?

• Why does the Media not ask questions about the link between increasing NHS expenditure, especially on Big Pharma drugs, and the rising levels of chronic disease?

• Why has the NHS conducted so few comparative studies on the cost-effectiveness of ConMed, Homeopathy, and other CAM therapies?

• Why are NHS resources spent almost totally on one medical discipline, ConMed? Why does the NHS not spend more money on Homeopathy, and other CAM therapies?

• Why, despite massive annual increases in NHS spending in recent years, are ConMed health services still overstretched, and often, apparently, quite unable to cope with the demands of ill-health and disease?

When HRT (hormone replacement therapy) was found to cause breast cancer in 2002 (it was actually known to do so many, many years before that), prescriptions for the drug (once said to be a wonder drug, and entirely safe) was reduced massively. There followed, over the next few years, a major reduction in new breast cancer cases in the UK. Of course, the mainstream Media has barely mentioned this (and has since allowed the ConMed Establishment to claim that this reduction in breast cancer is part of its successful campaign against the disease). 

But it is as well to remember that this is just one ConMed drug, linked to just one cancer. There are many other Big Pharma drugs, linked to the creation of many other diseases.

What this means, of course, is that ConMed treatment is not only expensive, in its own right, but it is expensive in that it creates other diseases, and treatment is then required for the new diseases! The pharmaceutical companies have developed a marvellous business structure! Their drugs treat disease; cause more disease; and so they then profit again from treating the new, iatrogenic, diseases.

The cost of some Big Pharma drugs is quite amazing. Several years ago there was a debate about the drug Herceptin, and whether it should be available, free of charge, on the NHS. Herceptin was said at the time to cost some £30,000 per person per year, and was designed to treat women with breast cancer. Many of these women, of course, would have been those who developed breast cancer as a result of taking HRT! The mainstream Media did not point at this time, either that the campaign for Herceptin was funded by the drug manufacturer; or that the drug had been known, for some years, to cause heart problems, and death. And so it continues

For the drug companies it is a profitable business. 

For many patients it is a personal disaster.

For the NHS, and the British taxpayer, it is a spiralling, out of control, bottomless pit.

The fifth part of this series will focus on the epidemic levels of chronic disease that we are now experiencing, and why burgeoning expenditure on ConMed treatments has not been able to cope with these epidemics.

If you would like to be informed when the fifth part of this series is published, why not become a 'follower', and sign up for this blog; or subscribe to it by email - and join the Health Debate.

The Health Debate (3). The safety of Big Pharma drugs

This blog was first published on the "Homeopathy Safe Medicine" blog by Steve Scrutton.

Many consumers of the mainstream Media, in all its many forms, believe that if there was a problem with the Big Pharma drugs, or the conventional medical (ConMed) treatment we were getting on the NHS, or if there was an health issue we should know about, the Media would tell us. Unfortunately, in matters of our health, this is just not so.

The dangerousness of Big Pharma drugs, to our health and wellbeing, has such a long and continuous history it should now be a matter of common knowledge to us all. The fact that it is not well-known is testimony to the abject failure of our Media to tell the truth about ConMed treatment, and its failure to enter fully into "the health debate".

If the Media were doing their job, they would be asking many questions about the safety of ConMed drugs, and it would be seeking to inform is readers, listeners and viewers, about the safety of ConMed treatment generally. They would be asking questions like these:

• Is the ConMed Establishment telling us (the Media, and the general public) the full story about the dangers of the drugs currently being prescribed by our GPs through the NHS? And if not, why not?

• The Media would not be content to parrot Big Pharma propaganda in presenting any new drug or vaccine as being ‘safe’? They would be aware of the long, and on-going  history of drug failure, and they would ask more questions about the side-effects, adverse reactions, and 'disease-inducing-effects' (DIEs) of any and all new drugs and vaccines. As it is, the Media rarely, if ever, brings to our attention the history of Big Pharma drug failure on grounds of patient safety.

• Why, when ConMed drugs have been found to have serious DIEs, does the Media fail to ask why this is, and in particular, why the Drug Testing process, and Drug Regulation system, consistently fail to discover this before patients are damaged (or even killed) often after taking the medication for decades? 

• Why is the public not being told at an earlier stage by the Media about the potential seriousness of the problems with each Big Pharma drug? Information about the dangerousness of drugs is usually well known many years before the Media reports it (that is, if they bother to report it at all). Why does the mainstream Media leave it to small magazines like 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' (WDDTY), and internet magazines like 'Natural News' to publicise this information, who have this information often many years before the drug is eventually banned or restricted, and the mainstream Media bother to report it?

• Why is the mainstream Media failing to ask questions about the dangers to patients of the drugs and vaccines currently being prescribed by the ConMed Establishment? Why are they not investigating, and telling us about these dangers, and how serious they are? When drugs and vaccines are found to be dangerous, why are conventional doctors not asked what patients can, and should do in order to protect themselves?

• Why does the Media not ask searching questions about the relationship between the serious epidemic rise of chronic disease, in all its many forms, and the Big Pharma drugs and vaccines that are probably a significant cause of such diseases? Why are they not asking questions about whether, and to what extend, ConMed drugs and vaccines are the cause death? Why does the Media fail to investigate the links between these modern epidemics with the massive increase in drug and vaccine consumption?

• Why does the Media fail completely to ask questions about alternative medical therapies, such as homeopathy, what these therapies can offer, and whether they are safer, firstly, by not causing disease, and secondly, in the treatment of illness and disease?

• Indeed, why does the mainstream Media consistently seek to criticise, undermine and attack alternative medical therapies - usually in line with the thoughts and interests of the Conventional Medical Establishment?

Drugs are regularly withdrawn from the market, because they have been found to be dangerous. Yet rarely is this reported in the mainstream media. 

Drug companies are consistently found guilty in US courts, and heavily fined, as a result of their drugs being unsafe and dangerous. Yet rarely is this reported in the mainstream media.

Drug companies, in recent years, have regularly been associated with corrupt or illegal practices in the testing, promotion and selling of their drugs. Yet rarely is this reported in the mainstream media.

The failure of the mainstream Media to report on these matters is a failure to work in the best interests of its paying customers, who are, of course, also patients and consumers of ConMed treatment. The Media seems completely unconcerned about the damage being done to its readers, listeners and viewers by ConMed! Indeed, the Media appears to be more interested in reporting 'positive' news about conventional medicine, and ignoring any news that is in any way 'negative' to their vested interests. 

It is perhaps time that the Media begins to ask itself the question: in whose interests, are they working when reporting on matters of health!

The fourth part of this series will look at the cost-effectiveness of ConMed drugs and treatments, and looking at the questions the Media fails to ask about this.

If you would like to be informed when the fourth part of this series is published, why not become a 'follower', and sign up for this blog; or subscribe to it by email - and join the Health Debate.