How do Homeopathic Medicines Work?

Homeopathic physicians believe that within every living person there exists an intelligent force, a life energy called the “vital force” that is responsible for maintaining balance and health in the body, mind and emotions.  This idea is ancient and universal, and can be found in every culture and medical system throughout the world (except for modern medicine which ignores this concept).  From this point of view, illness can be understood as resulting from an imbalance with the organism, the complaints that we suffer are expressions of that imbalance.

Hahnemann theorized that giving a homeopathic medicine to a patient with a “similar” illness was like giving a tiny push the imbalanced vital force, stimulating the body’s natural defense mechanisms to put the organism back into balance and heal the disease.

Homeopathy treats people, not diagnoses or disease names.  When a person is ill, that illness has a unique pattern.  Everyone tends to get sick in a way that corresponds to the heredity, environmental factors, stresses and weaknesses that are unique to that individual.  As a result, five different people with flu might require five different homeopathic medicines, because they have five different set of symptoms.  Treatment is thus individualized based on the unique way that each of those five people is ill with the flu.  The homeopathic physician is not so much trying to eliminate symptoms, but rather find the right medicine to stimulate the body’s healing powers so that health is restored.