Healthy skin, I’m told is a reflection of our overall wellness. I like the sentiment, but there seems to be a lot more to it than that. Holistic practitioners believe that skin symptoms are usually the healthiest way our body’s have of showing an imbalance within. So, if, for example you’re living through a very stressful time, getting a bit of eczema is a preferable symptom to getting a pounding headache, or sleeplessness or digestive problems (or a myriad of other symptoms we might get). The symptom is on the outside, it’s not easily ignored, it’s not life threatening and basically it’s a sign to us from our body that we need to do something different.
Many of us know someone who had eczema as a child which, when treated, their skin improved, and then they got asthma because their original, relatively harmless symptom was suppressed nicely with steroids. I have had quite a few patients come to me with asthma which we’ve healed nicely with remedies and, to their horror, some eczema has returned. Given a bit of time of course we can work through that and get rid of it naturally, but it clearly shows that suppressing a symptom will not solve the actual problem, our body will eventually, in effect ‘shout’ louder for help with a more serious symptom if we just do this.
That said, skin problems can be horrible to live with. It’s not only the itching and discomfort, even pain, but many industries make a fortune out of our desire to have beautiful or younger looking skin. I’ve seen the occasional person who has preferred to go back to their inhalers as a quick fix for the asthma because they hated the return of their eczema so much.
There are of course some sensible things all of us can do to improve our skin. I’d put good nutrition up there as the best thing – lots of plant based meals, as organic as possible. In my practise I notice a huge improvement when people cut out dairy and gluten. This is difficult, but when people see the difference it makes, the temptation to eat or drink what has aggravated their condition so much is far less. Just try it for a couple of weeks and see the difference! Drinking lots of water is always good too, then there’s exercise and living a stress free life…
What can homeopathy do for my skin?
That is the question isn’t it? Many medical practitioners, including homeopaths find skin problems the hardest of all to ‘fix’. If you doubt this, think of the many people that live with psoriasis, doctors would love to help them but this skin problem remains a tricky one to solve for mainstream medicine. Eczema, as I’ve mentioned above often seems to be easily helped – but at what cost? Teenage acne is another problem doctors solve with low strength antibiotics taken over a long period of time. Research now shows a huge increase in chronic hay fever in older people who had this treatment in their teens, and I personally think there are probably many other side effects – so again, at what cost?
The reason homeopathy may not get a gold star from some people with skin problems is because with most problems we treat, if we just get a ‘good’ remedy for the person, rather than an ‘excellent’ remedy, they will still be helped enormously, giving us homeopaths a chance to refine our choice during treatment and discover that ‘excellent’ remedy which will lead to total healing. With skin problems this often doesn’t seem to be the case – to see much of an improvement we need to find that ‘excellent’ remedy straight away. Remember we’re healing from the inside, so not just looking for a remedy to calm down the skin symptom, we could all do that, but that’s not our goal or we know that sooner or later you’ll be back with a worse problem.
Another problem I’ve come across is that I’ve prescribed a remedy which has helped other things enormously, and not (yet) touched the skin complaint. This is because your body is doing the healing, enabled by the remedy – and it will sort out more life threatening things first. I recently had a lady return who had fibromyalgia, a number of other symptoms, and alopecia. On her return she was delighted to have no more pain (at all she claimed). I was thrilled, but she wasn’t at all pleased that her hair was still falling out at the same rate! Her body knew what it was doing so at least one of us was pleased, but sadly it wasn’t her.
So, in short, yes, homeopathy can help your skin enormously. Above I show one of my young patient’s eczema improve using homeopathy over 5 weeks. If you have problems with your skin give me a call on 07725 520476 and we can discuss how homeopathy can help you.