What are Homeopathic Aggravations
There is a lot of worry about aggravations from homeopathic remedies so I thought I would write about aggravations, what might be happening and why.
First of all, homeopathy is a safe, natural medicine without the negative side effects that often occurs with mainstream medicine. The reason for it’s safety is because it is a totally different type of medicine which works by stimulating your own body to respond in a different way. The remedies are made from extremely diluted substances which are then potentised. This means that the dilution is so dilute it only holds an energy memory of the original substance. The energy of the remedy will be used to stimulate the body to make a change to the way it is currently reacting.
Stimulating the Self Healing System
When we select the correct remedy, we expect it to stimulate the body to make a change. The energy of the remedy will be as closely matched to the energy of the organism as possible. The potency of the remedy is chosen to also match the vitality of the organism.
When the body makes that change you must watch and wait to see if the body can complete the healing or if a new remedy will be needed to continue the work. It is a mistake to rush in and counteract the healing process with different remedies addressing the new changed symptoms. Remember you are teaching the body to heal itself, you are only giving it a nudge with the remedies so you mustn’t confuse your body with mixed instructions.
Out of Balance
The symptoms the patient is experiencing are signs saying that something is out of balance and it is having difficulty mending it and bringing the body back into balance. Mainstream medicine works by stopping the symptom. Homeopathy works by asking your body to change the way it is responding, we don’t want to stop the symptom, we want to address the reason the symptom. The remedy we use needs to stimulate the body into it’s usual self healing and balancing technique. We are asking it to remember how it reacted before the health disturbance.
We need the remedy to be a tiny bit stronger than the energy of the patient. When the remedy is given it stimulates the self healing mechanism to react to the remedy. The reaction is allowing the organism to find a new way of bringing back the balance of health which it seems to have temporarily forgotten.
We ask the body to react to the remedy, it needs to react in a gentle way. If the remedy is correct and the potency is right, the reaction will be gentle and easy to manage. Some people experience a couple of hours of discomfort, others have a couple of hours of emotional sensitivities as things rebalance, other people don’t feel anything at all.
Aggravation of Symptoms
Sometimes there is a short period of time when the symptom becomes worse before it becomes better, occasionally the symptoms become worse and take a few days or even weeks before the symptoms subside and the body learns the new way of responding. If we see this, we know that it is a good sign and the message has got through to the body loud and clear and it is learning to respond to the imbalance.
Because everyone is different, the response they experience to the remedies will differ. As a homeopath, our aim is to make the response as gentle as possible, for some sensitive people, we need to go very carefully and slowly as their bodies only need the gentlest of pushes to change things. Our consultation technique allows us to anticipate how you will react so that we can choose the right potency.
Watch and Wait
An aggravation is therefore, usually a good sign in the direction of cure. If it is bearable then please don’t take anything which will counteract the action of the remedy and stop the progression of returning to health. If the symptoms change, it might be a sign to change the remedy for the next layer of health so report these changes back to your homeopath.
When people are self prescribing they are often quick to counteract a change in symptoms with a new remedy. I would ask you first to watch and wait, and see if the body is actually making the changes it needs to make and no further interference is necessary.
If the new symptoms are too much to bear it is possible to change the energy level of the remedy by taking another dose of the remedy in a glass of water. The should be enough to take the energy down a level and give the body a different instruction. It will stall the healing process.
The way you react to remedies will depend on a number of points:
- Your vitality (available energy for healing)
- Your level of health (how long you have been suffering from multiple illnesses)
- Your sensitivity (sensitivities may have been inherited or set in after emotional or physical trauma).
- The remedy being close but not exact.
- The potency of the remedy being too high
Your homeopath is trained to take all of these into account to find the right remedy that gives the minimal aggravation to stimulate the self healing process.
