With Thanksgiving around the corner and Christmas upcoming, this article is going to talk about using homeopathic remedies for aiding in digestion of the Thanksgiving and holiday party dinners. 

If any of these conditions persist for more than several days, please see your physician. In the case of severe food poisoining, see your physician with in several hours.

Hyperacidity -  This condition is caused by too much acid in the stomach.  This can be caused by too much alcohol consumption, overeating, and generally unhealthy meal.  A good remedy to take for hyperacidity is Natrum_Phosphoricum 6X.  Take every 10 to 15 minutes until the condition subsides.  

Food Poisoning  -  Generally not feeling like eating all.  You may also feel dehydrated.  Accompanied by diarrhea and also vomitting.  Drinking too much alchohol may cause these conditions.   The remedy to take would be Arsenicum Album 6C every hour up to 10 hours

Heartburn - Heartburn happens 30 minutes after eating.  A craving for alcohol, fatty foods or spicy foods even though it upsets the stomach.  Take Nux Vomica 6C every 10-15 minutes until the condition subsides.

Overeating- Generally happens in the evening approximately 2 hours after eating. This may be accompanied by nausea or vomiting.  This indigestion is typically caused by eating rich or fatty foods.  Take Pulsatilla 6C every 10-15 minutes until the condition subsides.

Stomach Flu with severe cramps -  Caused by viral stomach infection with possible diarrhea.  Take Colocynthis 6C every hour up to 10 doses.

  What are some other homeopathic remedies you use to treat indigestion over the holidays?  I would love to add more to this list.

References

Complete Guide to Homeopathy - Dr. Andrew Lockie and Dr. Nicola Geddes

  A series of homeopathic trials were published in the Lancet medical journal.  These trials questioned the benefits of homeopathy.  A Swiss and United Kingdom of researchers reviewed 110 double blind placebo trials.  They came to the conclusion that homeopathy works no better than a placebo.  The researchers had said that in the smaller lower quality studies, homeopathy shows a more positive effect than a placebo.  The trials claim in larger studies homeopathy seems to be the same as a placebo.  The researchers used 14 of the larger studies in homeopathy studies to come up with their conclusions.  These trials also had allopathic medicine as a third comparison group.  The trials compared asthma, allergies and muscular problems.  The allopathic trials showed that there was a  significant improvement in their condition compared to the placebo and homeopathy groups in the larger study groups.

  Of course once these trials were made public, the media was all over it.  The BBC published an article saying  Homeopathy benefit questioned.  Lancet stated that this evidence shows there is no medical evidence to tell anyone to use a homeopathy treatment.  Many homeopaths questioned the trials but they fell on deaf hears.  Surely, a reputable medical journal such as Lancet would have accurate homeopathy trial information.  Skeptics and critics now announced that they had ample proof that homeopathy does not work.

  Researcher George Lewith, Professor of Health Research at Southampton University, looked at the data.  The trials did not say which trials were of larger quality and which trials were of poor quality.  Assumptions of the data also were not mentioned such as what constitutes a large trial.  The conclusions become unreliable due to the changing conditions of larger quality trials.  The data seems to be manipulated to meet a preconceived conclusion by the researchers.  There are a limited number of homeopathy studies so researchers choose the homeopathic studies that had an unfavorable response.  The matching with conventional medicine was meaningless.  Conventional medicine trials were not matched at all with the homeopathy trials.  The researchers saying that conventional medicine trials showed a greater response than the homeopathic and placebo trials proved not to be true.  The conventional medicine trials were just randomly chosen trials by the researchers.  They did not match the placebo or homeopathy trials in anyway.  

  The conclusion of the Homeopathy Lancet trials is that this data is totally unreliable.  Researchers manipulated the data to reach a preconceived conclusion about these trials.  Conventional medicine showing a greater effect than a placebo or homeopathy was actually not true either.  There were no matching of these trials.

  Why is a medical journal like Lancet publishing such poorly done trials?  Why is the media also not researching the trials before publishing them?  There is a forum posting to continue this conversation. You can post your opinions on our homeopathic forum about these Lancet homeopathy trials.

References

Reference: Lüdtke R, Rutten ALB. The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analyzed trials. J Clin Epidemiol 2008. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.06.015
Rutten ALB, Stolper CF. The 2005 meta-analysis of homeopathy: the importance of post-publication data. Homeopathy 2008. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2008.09.008. 

  Arthritis is a condition where joints become inflammed.  There are several forms of arthritis.  Osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis which happens from over exertions of joints, old age and possibly joints not in proper positions.  Osteoarthritis is basically a painful inflammation of the joints.  Another form of arthritis which is especially disabling is rheumatoid arthritis.  This is an autoimmune diesease that where the body's own defense system attacks its joints.  This causes painful inflammation and possibly joint destruction.  Other forms of arthritis are gouty arthritis, psosaris arthritis and septic arthritis.  

  In this article, we are going to examine 3 homeopathic arthritis trials.  Two trials are using classical homeopathy where each homeopathic remedy is individualized for the person depending on their personality traits.  Each participant is examined by a trained homeopath and given a specific remedy for their rheumatoid arthritic condition.  The third trial is done using a combination of homeoapthic remdies 

  In the first trial, there were 46 patients with rheumatoid arthritis taking anti-inflammatory drugs. Half the patients took additional homeopathy and half took a placebo. The trial followed a conventional design. There were  improvements in pain, joint tenderness and stiffness in patients receiving homoeopathic remedies. Patients taking placebo showed no benefits.  Researchers concluded that larger studies are needed to determine if homeopathy may help patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

  The second trial that we will look at is the follow up trial to the initial trial.  This trial had 112 participants with 58 participants completing the trial.   These patients were also taking antiinflammatory drugs.  Both the placebo and homeopathy groups showed an improvement in thier pain levels.  However, it was discovered that the placebo group and the homoepathy group show no statistical significance between one another.  The researchers concluded that there is no evidence from this research that homeopathy can help treat rheumatoid arthritis.

  The final study we will look at did not use classical homeopathy.  This study used a homeopathic combination formula to treat osteoparosis.  This study was double blind and examined how homeopathy compares to acetaminophen when treating osteoarthritis.  The study examined 65 patients.  The study found that homeopathy offer better pain relief than acetaminophen.  The pain relief offer by homeopathic remedies were not statistically siginificant.  The researchers concluded that homeopathy remedies seem to be as same as acetaminophen in treating osteoarthritis without the added side effects.  Larger trials and more research is needed. 

   The research is fairly inconclusive.  Classical homeopathy for treating rhumatoid arthritis does not consistiently show that it offers additional pain relief for people taking prescription drugs.  Homeopathy treatment of osteoarthritis not using classical homeopathy shows that the treatment works as well as acetaminophen.  More research in homeopathy is needed with arthritis in general to determine if homeopathy can be effective in treating arthritis.

References

1)  (Gibson, R. G., S. Gibson, et al. (1980): "Homeopathic therapy in rheumatoid arthritis: evaluation by double-blind clinical therapeutic trial." Br J Clin Pharmac 9: 453-459)

 2)  A randomized controlled trial of homeopathy in rheumatoid arthritis.  P. Fisher and D. L. Scott.  Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital, Great Ormond Street, London WC1N 3HR and
1 Department of Rheumatology, GKT School of Medicine, Kings College Hospital, East Dulwich Grove, Dulwich, London SE22 9PT, UK    

3) (C. N. Shealy, MD, R.P. Thomlinson, V. Borgmeyer: “Osteoarthritic Pain: A Comparison of Homeopathy and Acetaminophen”, American Journal of Pain Management, 1998;8:89-91)

  Why are combination homeopathic medicine showing fairly good results when treating osteoarthritis?  Why are researchers having a hard time duplicating their results with classical homeopathy?  

More Interesting Articles on Homeopathy and Alternative Medicine have been added to our links blog.

See them below and vote on our blog for your favorite articles.

Homeopathy key to ovarian cysts — Article talks about homeopathy to treat ovarian cysts as compared to allopathic treatments.

Travelling? Pack that homeopathy first-aid kit  Pack your homeopathic first aid kit. Article helps identify which remedies to pack.

Claims that homeopathy is just a placebo are seriously flawed, say experts  More issues with the Lancet Trials 

New evidence for homeopathy   — Recent Lancet Trials seem to have issues.