Arnica Montana is a plant that belongs to the sunflower family.  Common names for Arnica are leopard's bane, wolf's bane and mountain tabacco.  Arnica naturally grows primarily in mountainous areas in  Europe.  The plant looks very similar to a dandelion and it is a poisonous plant if eaten.

 picture above of Arnica Plant

Herbal Uses For Arnica

  Arnica is used for sprain, strains and other aches and pains in ointments.  The plant seems to create an antiflammatory effective.  Arnica is applied externally to aches and pains.  Arnica is generally not take internally because the plant is poisonous.

Homeopathic Uses For Arnica

  Homeopathic arnica is diluted.  This application is usually applied externally.  Some homeopathic arnica prepartions may be taken orally since the poison has been diluted.  

Homeopathic arnica is used primarily to treat aches, pains and bruises.  The  herbal preparation and the homeopathic preparation generally treat the same conditions.

Research on Arnica

  There have been several double blind trials with Arnica Montana in Homeopathy. 

  These 2 trials were of the highest quailty.  Other trials with Arnica exist but many of them had similar results to the trials above.  Many people say that Arnica works for them. 

Some trials showed a slightly positive result. A 2007 controlled study looked at homeopathic arnica in patients who had their tonsils removed. One group received arnica and the other placebo. Patients were surveyed afterward; 111 out of 190 patients returned their questionnaires. The arnica group reported slightly lower pain levels than the placebo group.  However, the study was far from conclusive.  The patients stayed in the hospital the same amount of time and took the same amount of pain killers.

The question remains is whether Arnica should be researched in double blind studies?  Is this the best way to measure this homeopathic remedy?  Is the homeopathic remedy effective in reducing soreness, brusing and inflammation?  Let us hear your comments.

References

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/content/ETO_5_3X_Arnica.asp 

10 Myths about Homeopathy

This article is going to dispel some myths on homeopathy. There is quite a bit of misinformation floating around. This is a start to clear that up.

1) Homeopathic medicines are nothing more than sugar pill that contain no measurable substance.

Certain homeopathic medicines have no measurable substance. However, many homeopathic remedies do have measurable substances. In medicine that is 24X or 12C has no measurable substance. However, homeopathic medicine potencies such as 6X, 6C, 12X will have a measurable substance.


2) Homeopathic has never been successful in large scale well designed trials. Homeopathic trials have only worked when homeopaths were doing the trials or poorly designed trials with quite a bit of author's bias.

Trials in Homeopathy is a very mixed bag. Sometimes people are looking at the wrong information source. Many skeptics will take successful trials and point out that when looking at larger trials in the study, homeopathy does not seem to work. Although, the author’s conclusions were that homeopathy seems to works better than a placebo.

However, some homeopathic trials that were successful were fairly large. Oscillococcinum trials were quite large and well designed but still yielded a positive result in shortening the flu duration. Similar studies with Osccillococcinum were replicated as well. (1)

The idea that homeopathic remedies have never been successful in a large scale well designed trial is not true.

3) Homeopathy should not be used to treat life threatening diseases.

Homeopathy can treat life threatening diseases with the help of a well trained homeopathic physician. Also, the general medical doctor and other specialists involved in treating the diesease should be included on the treatment plan.

Medical doctors should always be seen if you have a life threatening illness. Homeopathy can not cure all life threatening diseases
but many people with life threatening diseases have faired well with Homeopathy.

Homeopathy malaria trials show that in trials that homeopathic medicine worked as well as conventional medicine in treating people with malaria.

4) Homeopathy and modern allopathic medicine can not work together

Homeopathy can be quite complementary to allopathic medicine.
Many patients under going chemotherapy have seen their side effects reduced when taking homeopathic remedies. Homeopathic trials with reduction of cancer treatments provided encouraging results.

5) Homeopathy, Herbal, and Ayurvedic medicine are similar.

Homeopathy, Herbal and Ayurvedic are forms of alternative medicine but these forms of medicine are not similar in any other way.

Homeopathy use diluted substances to treat patients. Every homeopathic medicine has been diluted in water or alcohol.

Herbal medicine is medicine based on the use of plants.

Ayurvedic is an ancient system of medicine started in India that operates
with the theory that all materials of vegetable, animal, and mineral origin have some medicinal value. Ayurvedic use these materials to treat patients.

Ayurvedic and homeopathic medicines are used quite a bit in India so that creates some confusion in people thinking they are the same thing.

6) Homeopathy is slow to work

Acute conditions such as flu, colds, motion sickness and pain relief can be
treated quickly using homeopathic medicines. Chronic conditions are slow to work because they are complicated to treat. Chronic conditions would
be acne, eczema, irritable bowel syndrome and other conditions will take longer to treat with Homeopathy.

7) Homeopathy is only for human use.

Actually, homeopathy petmeds is one of the fastest growing use of homeopathic products. Homeopathy offers a safe and inexpensive way to treat your pet of acute conditions such as allergies, anxiety and joint stress relief.

8) You can get a book on Homeopathy and treat yourself.

This may be the case in acute conditions such as cold and flu. However, more complicated and chronic cases will require you to see a homeopathic doctor.

Chronic cases involve generally taking quite a few remedies in the course of a treatment. A book can not tell you which homeopathic remedies to take and how much to take when your condition starts to improve or worsen.

9) Homeopathic remedies are not widely available.

This may have been true a few years ago. However, homeopathic remedies can be found pretty much all over the US. Walmart, CVS Pharmacy, Target and larger retailers carry combination homeopathic remedies for acute conditions such as cold and flu and insomnia.

Single homeopathic remedies which homeopaths claim to work the best are not as readily available.

10) All homeopathic remedies work the same on all people.

Homeopathy works different on different people. Classical homeopathy treats different individuals with different remedies according to their personality type.

One person may use one remedy to treat a illness, while another person would use a different remedy to treat the same illness .
Homeopathy assumes everyone is different so using the same remedy to treat everyone will not work according to Classical Homeopathy principals.

 References

(1)  http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001957.html

If you know of any other myths, put them in the comments section..

Here is a list of interesting Homeopathic links in this week.

Interesting link about the reduction of Homeopathy prescriptions in England.

Homeopathy Prescriptions Reduction in England: The True Story.

The article talks about homeopathy in England is not really in dire straights as the media want people to believe. Homeopathy seems to be growing but many people are getting their prescriptions from places other than pharmacies.

Homeopathic Cures Treats Symptoms As An Imbalance

The article talks about Homeopathy as a system of medicine that tries to bring the body back into balance. Homeopathy assumes that body is out of balance. The homeopathic remedies are suppose to help the body bring everything back into balance. Homeopathy treats the whole person not just the symptoms.

Top Homeopathic Blogs

A listing of the top homeopathic blogs. Our company was thrilled to be on the list. This is a great list of places to get more information on Homeopathy and alternative type medicines.

Could water have a memory

This article takes about scientific research on homeopathic medicines. There is still no proof on the scientific evidence on Homeopathy.

Liddell Laboratories sends open letter to consumer reports

This article is about consumer reports recent report on Homeopathy. Consumer reports states that the research they found shows no evidence in Homeopathy ever working for any conditions. This is a rebuttal to that consumer report.

Authors Commentary.

Interesting rebuttal article for Liddell laboratories with quite a few homeopathic trials. Misinformation on Homeopathy is being epedemic. Many homeopaths are even afraid of well conducted trials since they believe so many trials have become negative. There are plenty of negative trials on Homepathy but there are also plenty of positive trials. Homeopathy trials are a mixed bag. Larger well conducted trials are also a mixed bag. Another misconception seems that larger trials always yields negative results. This does not seem to be the case everytime either.

Send us your interesting links.

If you find some interesting links or a good place to get interesting links on Homeopathy, please put them in the comments section. We may them on your next issue of interesting homeopathic links.

You can double click the file above to start the call or you may expand the window. After expanding the window, you can download the mp3 file to your computer.

Summary of the Conference Call.

Homeopathy 101

Dr. Mike Smith, a homeopathic doctor, with Carolinas Natural Health Cente,r treats patients with homeopathy. He can be reached via email at drsmith@carolinasnaturalhealth.com.

Below are a series of questions that were asked to Dr. Mike Smith.

What is Homeopathy?

A seperate medical systems that has been in use for the last couple hundred of years. It is based on like cures like. Homeopathy is suppose to stimulate the body to correct the imbalance and heal itself.

How is Homeopathy different than conventional medicine?

Homeopathy makes an effort to treat the whole person. It helps your body stimulate its own defenses to fight off the ailment or diesease. Modern medicine or allopathic medicine tries to kill or suppress the ailment or diesease.

What conditions are appropriate to treat yourself and when do you need to see a doctor?

Acute illnesses can be self treated such as flu, toothache, and others.

Chronic illnesses needs to be seen by a doctor. Eczema, Acne, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Irritable Bowel Syndrom and Chrohns diesease would be examples of chronic illnesses.

What are some good books on Homeopathy for people finding more information?

Homeopathy beyond flat eath

Complete Homeopathy Hand Book

Homeopathy Medicine at Home

First Aid Homeopathy

Homeopathy Self Care

What should you do to find a homeopathic doctor?

There is no standard in homeopathic training. Find doctors specializing in homeopathy. Doctors with conventional medical training are highly recommended. A good resource to find practioners is homeopathic.org.

What are some homeopathic remedies to combat sweating?

Sweating due to anxiety -> arsenicum album, phosphorus, Argentum Nitricum

Inappropriate sweating-> Mercurius Solubilis, Sulphur

Where you should yo keep homeopathic medicines?

Keep them in their container and keep them out of excessive heat. Try to avoid exposure to radiation.

What potencies of homeopathic treatment should be used when doing self treatment?

Try lower potencies when doing self treatment such as 6C.

As many people know that on many search terms, Wikipedia comes up number 1 in Google. They are almost definitely in the top 10. So when the search term is Homeopathy, how accurate are they?

I was looking at following wikipedia page on Homeopathy. The general definitions and information on Homeopathy seem to be for the most part correct. The part where all of the information that is incorrect seems to be in the research side of Homeopathy.

The first paragraph with issues are as follows below:

" Positive results have been reported, but no single model has been sufficiently widely replicated, local models proposed are far from convincing, and the nonlocal models proposed would predict that it is impossible to nail down homeopathic effects with direct experimental testing. ^[129] For example, while some reports presented data that suggested homeopathic treatment of allergy was more effective than placebo,^[130][131] subsequent studies have questioned the conclusions.^[132][133]"

This first example has some incorrect information. Study 132 is about Belladonna 30C. The study attempts to find out if Belladonna 30C is given to a healthy person, what happens. The study shows nothing happens but this certainly has nothing to do with allergies. Study 133 is about people who suffer from Asthma from dust mite allergies. Study 130 and 131 were on different subjects. Study 130 and Study 131 were on hayfever and allergic rhinitis. In all fairness to Wikipedia, Study 133 was an attempted replication on a successful study on Asthma from dust mite allergies. However, Wikipedia fails to mention that study all together.

This maybe an oversight on Wikipedia so I looked at some information on Homeopathy to see their results. I used Wkipedia to search for oscillococcinum. The results were very surprising on the trials section.

The quote from Wikipedia.

"Various clinical trials of Oscillococcinum have been conducted; however, the statistical significance and the scientific rigor of these studies is debated, and some studies attributed the results to the placebo effect."

I looked through the Internet, I did find some studies that were debated with Oscillococcinum. Some studies did debate the quality of the trials which is valid. However, no study attributed the shortening of the flu duration to a placebo effect.

Another quote from Wikipedia.

"In one systematic review of the published clinical studies, the authors reported that the studies showed that Oscillococcinum possibly reduced the duration of the flu by about six hours, but has no effect on preventing it. They concluded the data are not strong enough to make a general recommendation to use Oscillococcinum for flu.^[2] Another review of flu treatments (vaccine, medicine, homeopathy) has concluded that the popularity of Oscillococcinum in France was unsupported by the current evidence as to its efficacy"

This second review is someone looking at flu prevention treatments. Wikipedia makes it seem as if trials of Oscillococcinum never yield any other postive results in shortening the duration of the flu other than the first trial. Two other successful replications of Oscillococcinum have taken place which are listed below.

Also do not forget,

Malaria is a highly pravalent diesease in tropical countries. Malaria is contracted by mosquitio bites. People with malaria often experience fever, chills, and flu-like illness. Left untreated, they may develop severe complications and die. Each year 350-500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

First Trial - Homeopathic neem preparation in Tanzania

Objective

In the first trial, a homeopathic neem preparation is being used to prevent an outbreak of malaria.

Trial

152 patients, 79 children and 73 adults, were in the trial.

Subjects reported a decrease in Malaria. More adults reported progress than children which could be due to children not taking the medication properly.

Conclusion

From this trial we conclude that the researched homeopathic neem drops are effective and can be safely used up to 6 months when a drug holiday of a week is observed after every 2-3 months of treatment.

The results from this study show that homeopathic neem reduces instances of malaria outbreaks. This effect was observed in both adults and children after 6 months of preventative treatment. More research is needed to clarify the durability of this preventative effect in the long term.

Issues wth the trial

Some problems with these trials is the malaria is extremely easy to misidentify. No doctor was there to clinically confirm that no malaria was present. A placebo effect may have biased the results towards the positive. Researcher bias may also play a factor with in this study. This “study” had no control group with which to compare the effects of homeopathic neem leaves.

Trial 2 -Malaria and Homeopathic Remedies in Ghana
An Open Study and a Double-blind Randomized Clinical Trial

Objective

The basis of this study is whether homeopathic remedies would work better than chloroquine, a drug to treat and prevent malaria.

Which homeopathic medicine should be used when individually prescribing medicines to treat malaria?

Trial
The patients that exhibit signs of Malaria such as high fever, chills, and other conditions were treated with the following homeopathic remedies and few others homeopathic medicines that are not listed.

Arse­nicum album, Cina, Eupatorium Perfoliatum, Natrum Muriaticum, Pulsatilla, Rhus toxicodendron, Nux vomica and Sulphur.

Each treatment was individualized for the patients. 92 patients were tested. 17 patients did not return for a follow up treatment. 68 out of the 75 showed improvements. 2 groups were treated, one with homeopathic remedies and a chloroquine placebo. The other group with a homeopathic placebo and chloroquine.

Conclusions

The results of the study show that the homeopathic remedies do have an effect on treatment of malaria which is significant and slighly better than chloroquine. Also, individualized homeopathic medicine seem to show a significant effect on Malaria.

Issues with the Trial

Larger trials with more test verification should be done in the future. This initial trial is very small and it can not be used as a recommendation for homeopathic treatment of Malaria until some larger trials are done.

References

Homeopathic neem on Malaria

http://www.hpathy.com/research/barlow-neem.asp

Malaria and Homeopathic Remedies in Ghana

http://www.giriweb.com/vanerp.htm

Classical Homeopathy consists is very similar to what Hahnemann prescribed when he first discovered Homeopathy. Classical Homeopathy consists of examing the person and individually prescribing the correct homeopathic remedy for them.

Classical Homeopathy also looks at the constitiutional types of people to determine the right remedy. Classically trained homeopaths will ask a series of questions to determine the constitiutional type of the person. The homeopathic remedies will then be prescribed mostly one at a time based on the individual person. Remedies may need to be changed and potencies may need to be decrease or increased depending on how the patient is doing with the condition that they have.

Classical Homeopathy aims to treat the whole person(mental, physical and emotional) not just the symptoms of the diesease or illness. Different individuals may be prescribed different homeopathic remedies for the same condition. If an individual has a bad head cold, a classical homeopathic could prescribe him Belladonna based on his symptoms and consititutional type. Another individual who also has a bad head cold, make take Pullstilla to relieve this condition because he has a different personality type.

Modern Homeopathy is pretty much a shotgun approach. Many homeopathic remedies may be taken at one time to help cure an illness or diesease. Popular examples of modern homeopathy are combination remedies such as Calms Forte.

Calms Forte helps cure mild insomnia. It uses a combination of homeopathic remedies that different individual types may use to cure insomnia. Calms Forte has been used successfully by many people to cure insomnia. However, classically trained homeopaths discourage using combination remedies when treating serious conditons. Severe insomnia may need to be treated by prescribing one remedy at a time depending on the person's constitional type.

Homeopathy trials with classical homeopathy have been very few. The few trials with classical homeopathy have been encouraging so far.

A total of 32 trials (28 placebo-controlled, 2 comparing homeopathy and another treatment, 2 comparing both) involving a total of 1778 patients met the inclusion criteria for classical homeopathy. The methodological quality of the trials was highly variable. Some individuals were prescribed a homeopathic remedy based on their constitutional type and others were given placebos.

The authors conclusion was that the results of the available randomized trials suggest that classical homeopathy has an effect over placebo. The evidence is not convincing because of trial short comings and inconsistiencies. More research is needed on classical homeopathy.

References

Allopathic uses for Belladonna

Belladonna is given in small amounts for over the counter flu and cough medicines. It is also used in prescription drugs for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, acute enterocolitis and as an adjunctive therapy in the treatment of duodenal ulcers. Eye doctors also use this drug in small amounts to dilate pupils.

Homeopathic uses for Belladonna

Hanhemann proved this remedy in 1799 and used it to treat scarlett fever. Belladonna is used to treat conditions with a sudden onset. The type of conditions Belladonna treatments are similar to the symptoms if someone is poisoned with Belladonna. Belladonna poisoning results in people getting a high fever, sore throat or loss of voice, nausea, delirium, muscle spasms, flushed skin and dilated pupils. Homeopathic Belladonna is used to treat these type of conditions in a person.

Belladonna is also used to treat cold and flu symptoms, infections with inflammation, intense pounding headaches, boils, earaches, seizures, labor pain, pink eye, nose bleeds, nephritis(inflammation of the kidneys) restless sleep, teething pain, tonsillitis, acne and sunburn.

Female use Belladonna to treat breast infections, urinary bladder infections, menstrual cramps, and irritated nipples due to breast feeding.

Symptoms for these conditions are usually better with warmth and standing. Conditions usually worsen with cold air, at night, movement and lying down.

Information Referenced from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_nightshade

http://www.answers.com/topic/belladonna

Complete Guide to Homeopathy. Dr. Andrew Lockie and Dr. Nicola Geedes.

If you know of other uses for allopathic or homeopathic Belladonna, please put them in our comments section.