True stories

Jager Wetherby hasn't always been the happy, healthy child you see here. At 18 months, she was scratching patches of her skin raw in her sleep. A conventional dermotologist diagnosed severe eczema and prescribed cortisone cream. Wanting a more holistic cure, Jager's mother brought her to me. Jager's story --and the other two cases here--reveal the

YOU'VE GOT A "STOMACH" PROBLEM. YOU'RE GASSY. QUEASY. THIS ISN'T THE FIRST TIME. A few years back you picked up this bug and couldn't shake it for two weeks. You tried to eat better, looked for ways to cut stress in your life, and finally gave in to the antacids that you picked up at the drugstore. This time, you've had the same bug for a month and you can't seem to shake it. You need to see a doctor. What kind will you see?

Let me guess--"homeopathic doctor" does not spring to mind. Based on my 20 years of work as a homeopathic physician, however, I think homeopathy has great power to help people overcome a variety of health problems, including the one described above. People don't often turn to homeopathy, though, because they don't understand how it works.

Homeopathic medicines work on a very simple principle: they jump-start the body's own ability to heal itself. They tap into the same power that heals a cut or helps you get over a cold. And these remedies do work. I say this with confidence because, one, I've seen them work, and two, nearly 90 scientific studies have shown that they do. (See "Four Tough Questions About Homeopathy".)

There are many reasons why we get sick why our self-healing powers don't operate flawlessly--besides the obvious ones like stress or poor eating habits. Each of us has innate constitutional weaknesses that manifest themselves as ailments, and these can pop up from time to time for no apparent reason like the weak stomach mentioned earlier--or because our body's defense system is running low.

If I were your homeopathic doctor, I would match a remedy to your weak stomach. In addition to helping you get well, this remedy could also give your immune system the periodic boost it needs to keep you healthy. In this sense, homeopathy is lifelong medicine.

The following three cases demonstrate how this principle works. In some ways they are remarkable stories--the patients at times overcame problems that conventional doctors might have struggled to treat. But in other ways they're typical of thousands of cases I've seen. They will give you an inside look at how I determine the right remedy, and how I must sometimes find that remedy through trial and error. But as you will see, once the correct remedy is found, its effects can be profound.

Homeopathy has relaxed me. It has changed my life. I don't think my anxiety will ever totally go away because it's part of my temperament. I can control it, but I can't talk myself out of it.

PATIENT: Shaun Diaz PROBLEM: Anxiety, insomnia and nightmares, scattered thinking AGE WHEN FIRST SEEN: 7 AGE MOST RECENTLY SEEN: 15 (1997)

I first saw Shaun in September 1989. A bright-eyed, talkative 7-year-old boy, Shaun was having trouble sleeping because he was fearful and anxious, and he was having bad dreams. He was afraid to be alone in his room, and would wake screaming from nightmares, sobbing and unable to go back to sleep. Shaun was also afraid of the dark, and of ghosts or strange noises in the night.

In addition to his fears, Shaun was often forgetful and had trouble concentrating. Despite these problems, I saw clearly that Shaun was a creative, imaginative child with energy and a strong love of music.

Although there are literally thousands of remedies to choose from in homeopathic medicine, I find that about 80 percent of the time, people can benefit from one of the 20 to 40 most common remedies, which we refer to as polycrests.

Shaun's symptoms matched perfectly with the remedy picture for the element Phosphorus. Patients who do well on this remedy are extroverted and sympathetic; have a great many fears; and are thirsty for cold drinks, among other things. They also have difficulty concentrating and prefer creative to academic pursuits.

I use several criteria to determine a dose. The two most important ones are, first, how clearly the patient's symptoms match the remedy and, second, how strong the patient's constitution is (younger patients can often tolerate higher doses). I prescribed a dose of Phosphorus for Shaun and asked his mother to bring him back in six weeks.

I have to pay careful attention to dosages. I don't want to give too high a dose or administer it too frequently. This is because homeopathic remedies are not designed to mask the symptoms of the illness, as conventional drugs do, but instead to produce a healing response. Sometimes the healing response produces symptoms (like coughing during a cold helps to expel phlegm). In homeopathy, it's not the drug that cures the illness, but instead the response of the body's healing mechanisms to the remedy. The idea is to give the smallest amount of drug possible to bring about a response. After I give a remedy, I watch the patient very carefully to see how the healing response changes. This can take four to six weeks, because a remedy can only proceed as quickly as the body can heal itself.