As a nation we are used to going to the doctor when we get sick. Recently in our family some of us, like some of our friends had tonsillitis. Had we gone to the doctor I’m sure we’d have been prescribed antibiotics as our friends were, but I chose to use homeopathy instead. Let’s look at why.

What’s the point of a fever?

When you have an infection your body releases chemicals into your blood which tell your brain to stimulate a fever and increase your white blood cells in order to attack the infection and get rid of it. That’s clever right? So, why in modern medicine are we encouraged to do all we can to get rid of the fever? Well – for one thing fevers feel lousy – and none of us like feeling ill. Also, I think most of us mothers are worried about our child’s fever getting so high it causes complications and so, we do all we can to make our children, or ourselves, as comfortable as possible. We might lower our temperature by using Paracetamol or Aspirin and we might decide to kill the infection using Antibiotics. Now, it’s true that using those drugs will make the fever go away and will kill the infection – but is that the most successful outcome we could hope for? If you knew what was going on, would you still choose drugs?

When you take drugs at a time like this you’re basically telling your body it’s not good enough to fix itself. We are in effect saying, ‘take a rest, let me do all the hard work’. That still sounds OK – I’m all for conserving my energy now and again, but as the drugs take over, your immune system has now missed an opportunity to learn how to fight disease and so it becomes lazier, leaving you vulnerable to more infections. Another problem is that antibiotics do of course get rid of all our bacteria, they are unable to differentiate between the bad bacteria – which we want gone, and the good bacteria, and we really need the good bacteria, in fact we can’t survive without it. Some of the valuable things our good bacteria do for us are fight infection, aid digestion, and keep us slim (yes – just google it, it’s true!)
So, whilst it appears that the antibiotics have helped you back to full health – they have in fact killed a lot of your good bacteria, leaving you more vulnerable to further infection, told your body not to bother healing itself, so weakening it, and in fact, with repeated use, they also weaken your overall health which will eventually aggravate whatever chronic illness you are susceptible to, whether it is something like eczema or asthma, or something different like diabetes or chronic fatigue syndrome.
Now I know that sometimes we have to resort to mainstream drugs – antibiotics have saved lives, I know that – but wouldn’t you like to avoid them when possible? Is there an alternative which is safer?

The answer is Yes!

Homeopathy has the ability to stimulate the body to reduce fever and pain and to fight infection – but the beauty of homeopathy is that instead of telling your body to take a break, it tells it to heal itself faster, strengthening your overall immune system, and it strengthens your body chronically whilst doing it. Does that sound too good to be true? I realise that it does but the only difficult part is knowing which remedy will do that for you. It is, however simple to learn some first aid homeopathy at home (you can download my first aid book for just 99p from my web site) and have a first aid kit to help your family when they get ill.

When I knew I was coming down with Tonsillitis I took Belladonna 200 to help with the fever, a while later I took Gelsemium 200 as I felt weak and trembly, followed by Arsenicum 200 a while later because I was unnaturally cold. I went to bed in the afternoon and slept for a couple of hours and woke up feeling much better. In all, I was ill for 6 hours and felt a bit weak and tired for a couple of days afterwards. I was delighted with that, as some people around me – stronger and younger had been so much worse. A win for homeopathy I think – and in fact, a win for my doctor, who knew nothing about it.

* If your immune system is compromised and you get a lot of infections ring me for some help.
* If you have had to have antibiotic treatment, always have a good probiotics afterwards to help replace the good bacteria.