Homeopathy and Other Modalities
In my experience homeopathy is one of, if not the single most profound of all healing modalities. Of course, this is true only when the remedy prescription is highly accurate! But yes, when such is the case one would be hard-pressed to find a health care intervention more finely tuned to the precise issue underlying a client’s illness.

That said, the question can be raised: what happens when homeopathy is utilized simultaneously with another powerful modality, for example, acupuncture? In my experience using both modes of care together is not optimal. Here is why:

The timeframe for an accurate constitutional remedy is usually in the vicinity of six weeks. The timeframe for a single powerful acupuncture treatment is several days (which is why acupuncture works best when performed at least twice weekly).

Let’s employ the metaphor of our having been assigned two work projects. The first work project will account for perhaps, sixty percent of my yearly income and will require my full-time involvement five days a week. While thus engaged I am offered a second work project that if given my full effort could be completed within three days. Assuming that I were to accept this second project on top of the first one, which project would be likely to suffer? At least according to my reasoning—and this is my own chosen metaphor—the second project would suffer. This is because, despite my greed I should be unwilling to risk under-performing in relation to the project on which my livelihood principally depends. Thus, the smaller project receives less than my optimal effort.

Similarly, acupuncture being the “smaller” project is diminished in its effectiveness. Being an acupuncturist as well as a homeopath, when the choice is left up to me, I opt for acupuncture especially when confronted with a client in obvious physical pain due to musculo-skeletal trauma. Otherwise, but especially when dealing with chronic illness my choice is constitutional homeopathy. I refrain from using both modalities together except for when seeking to blunt the edge of a homeopathic aggravation.

Despite a professional bias in favor of homeopathy other modalities hold tremendous healing and diagnostic value. Just now I should like to single out the usefulness of nutritional counseling as well as the remarkable skill of well trained Reflexologists (who perform foot massage based on ancient Egyptian or Traditional Chinese Medical diagnostics) and—provided you can find such a person—-a Medical Intuitive who is gifted with “second sight” diagnostic capability. As it happens Helen Chin Liu, a remarkable Reflexologist has recently joined my practice at Vital Force Health Care. I recommend her work highly. Read more about Helen at http://www.healingplacemedfield.com/.

From time to time I also have the privilege of working in conjunction with an extraordinary Medical Intuitive, Wendy Marks. Check out her video magazine interview at http://boldfacers.com/index.cfm?page=videos&video_id=142&channel=profiles.

Posted on October 19th, 2008 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Health, Perspective | 2 Comments »

Let’s discuss the well-known Curse of the Bambino.  This refers to the Boston Red Sox’ inability to win a World Series after basically giving away to the New York Yankees, and for a piddling amount of cash, Babe Ruth, who as it would turn out would become widely recognized as the greatest player in the history of baseball. In 2004 with the Red Sox’ miraculous come from behind playoff win against the Yankees, and their subsequent rout of the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals the infamous Curse was finally, and after 86 years was put to rest. How did this come about? Homeopathy provides the answer.

The power of the curse was not mystical. Rather, it represented an entrenched fear and its related behavioral rigidity. States of stuckness of exactly this sort are routinely identified by classical homeopaths as underlying disease states in their patients. But “remedy states” need not be cured by homeopathic remedies alone. Homeopathic “behavior” can also do the trick.

The fear underlying the Curse of the Bambino was that team management might again some day commit an error as serious as giving away Babe Ruth, the great Bambino. The associated rigidity is: beware of making any baseball trades that are even remotely suggestive of this possibility. When installed as a core front office belief a fear such as this delimits managerial flexibility, creativity, and thereby places the team at a disadvantage with respect to other teams in the trading marketplace.

There exists a shibboleth in baseball that the value of even a handful of good players cannot equate that of a single great player. The reason for this is that truly great players are irreplaceable while many even very good players can be readily exchanged for others having equal value. Avoidance of any such trade would be fully in keeping with the fear and associated rigidity of the Bambino Curse. Now, homeopathy teaches that “Like Cures Like.”  Thus, the homeopathically recommended way out of the dilemma is to indeed engage with the original error, but to perpetrate a micro-dosage of the mistake. Yes, facing the demon once and for all is better than doing nothing.

Nomar Garciaparra the Red Sox shortstop had been anointed the greatest Red Sox player since Ted Williams by no less a luminary than Ted Williams himself. Yet in 2004 General Manager Theo Epstein was inspired to trade the inimical and  irreplaceable Garciaparra for three talented but lesser lights: outfielder Dave Roberts, and infielders Orlando Cabrerra and Doug Mentkiewicz. The day on which the trade was announced talk show radio hosts went berserk. The trade was denounced in the newspapers as another Babe Ruth giveaway.

One can of course say that the team’s improved chemistry due to the three new players, each of whom went on to play significant roles in the Red Sox’ 2004 triumph that lifted the Bambino’s curse. I would argue that it was Epstein’s fear-dispelling moxie that did the trick, thereby liberating the team to perform at its optimal level.

Posted on August 14th, 2008 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Health, Humor, Perspective | No Comments »

Welcome to my new blog!

These are days when truth often takes a terrible beating at the hands of perception so on occasion, let us seek some degree of redress. It will be my intention to live up to a self-imposed dictum, “Truth in Healing and in Health.” Over the next few months I hope to address a number of topics from this perspective, including: vaccinations, autism, and the politics of health care. I will also be critiquing articles such as The Itch (The New Yorker) as well as introducing innovative uses of homeopathy as in marital therapy. In the minute category of homeopathic humor you may also expect to see unusual features such as “A Case of the Blues,” and the proving of some “unsual” remedies such as Bovinus Foetor.

But for today, let’s talk briefly about the role of the FDA in relation to homeopathic remedies. By way of beginning, here is a multiple choice question: What is the official status of a homeopathic remedy? A) a drug; B) a nutritional supplement; C) a placebo; D) an herb.

Give up? Ok, be honest, how many of you picked A) a drug?  Yes, this is the correct answer. As opposed to general perception, homeopathic remedies have more legal status than either nutritional supplements, placebos, or herbs. If you got it wrong no need to feel bad. Hardly anyone at the FDA can answer this question correctly either. Or, if any official at the FDA does know it, he or she is not likely to admit the fact. Here is how it works: in 1938 the FDA was a good deal smarter than it is today. In this year the agency grandfathered homeopathic remedies included in the HPUS into its drug category. Moreover, the FDA said something even more surprising by today’s standards: It averred that an as yet, non-existent remedy would be declared kosher prospectively, just so long as it went through the rigors of HPUS’s proving rotocols! Even more significant is the fact that the FDA at that time was able to grasp a philosophical notion: genuine principles are not true here and there, or now and then. They are ALWAYS true. Of course, there is one more quirky feature of the drug that is a homeopathic remedy. Although the principle that Like Treats Like is indelible, in other words, always true, this also means that a homeopathic remedy is a drug ONLY when it has been prescribed in accordance with the Law of Similars. So Arsenicum Alb is a drug when I prescribe it for the fastidious, anxious, perfectionist patient in my office. But it is NOT a drug in the foolish event that I should choose to self-administer Ars (being myself, somewhere in the vicinity of Bufo, Anhalonium or Pulsatilla).

Is there a possibility that the FDA at some point will carry out its threat to subject homeopathic remedies to an inquisitorial process? Not likely, as this would only call attention to the decision the agency made in 1938 and which would have to be overturned. Doing so would also place strictures on the freedom of physicians to titrate, manipulate the strength of their own pharmaceutical prescriptions.

Now for some great mysteries. What is the status of over-counter-homeopathic remedies? I have no idea. On the one hand, they are empty products for which one must nevertheless make attach a single clinical indication. “Empty” though they are, you will not see Medorrhinum or Tuberculinum on any pharmacy shelf even in a low potency because here, the FDA chooses to assert that the few impossible to discern molecules of these nosodes sufficiently determine the “controlled substance” status of these “dangerous” remedies. Patent laws suggest that natural substances are not patentable, either singly or in combination. So, what Agency official has permitted this to take place, or determined how many remedies may effectively be combined into a single, commodifiable “remedy?” (Assuming that we are sensitive only to a single ingredient, why not combine ALL remedies into one giant saltlick that any sick individual can go and lick from…)

I am sure there are perfectly reasonable answers to these and many other questions. But the Land of Oz where they may be heard does not appear on my GPS, and someone took my ruby slippers to the local Goodwill.

Posted on August 1st, 2008 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Humor, Perspective | 1 Comment »