homeopathy – Dr Amrita

September 13, 2020

Why do Homeopathic Doctors ask so many Questions?

“I can figure out when a patient has been taking homoeopathy,” said my father amusedly over a meal one day. You see, my father is an allopathic general practitioner. If you were to visit him with a cough, he’d hear you out, ask you a couple of questions, examine you and off you’d go with a prescription. In and out of his cabin under five or ten minutes!

But if you came to me, a consultation would just be beginning when you thought it had ended. I’d bore / irritate / surprise you with seemingly inane questions like what time of the day does your cough increase or what colour is your phlegm.

Yes, it’s a different experience. But once you get the hang of it, you become an expert at observing and narrating your symptoms in detail. Which is exactly how my father would know when a patient has been taking homeopathy. A patient once put it as, “I went on and on about the colour and the smell and what not about my poop. The way your father smiled, I realised then that he didn’t need so many details. But I’ve gotten so used to it now…”

So why do homeopathic doctors ask so many questions?

God is in the Details

They say that God is in the details, but for a homeopath, it’s the remedy that is in the details. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have a dry cough. I have about 514 remedies that I can choose from. So how do I know which one to pick for you? If you go on to tell me that your cough worsens while you are eating, that narrows it down to about 93 remedies for me. Then if you say, ‘Doctor if I am just sitting still, I am okay. Whenever I do any movement, I begin to cough’. What a great observation, but that still gives me 79 remedies to think about. Now if you say that you get a stitching kind of pain in your chest every time you cough, and I consider everything that you’ve told me so far, it still boils down to about 31 odd remedies. (And that is why I will continue to hound you with questions!)

The Timely Call

Just then you happen to get a phone call from your boss, whereby you apologetically excuse yourself, step out, answer your call and come back into the warm cabin room. And this warm air in the room sets you into another fit of cough. ‘Oh yes, I’ve noticed this every time I walk into a warm room.’ The minute you say this, a smile spreads across my face. A combined analysis of your fantastic observations have just narrowed it down to two remedies for me now! I ask you about your thirst for water and you narrate how you’ve been as thirsty as a sponge since the last two days. Cha Ching! We’ve now struck gold!! A few more questions to confirm that I have the essence of what remedy you need and now I have that one remedy out of the 514 that fits your condition exactly and will work like magic.

One size does not fit all

Why do you need so many remedies for dry cough? Why can’t you just have one size that fits all and get done with it? Well, homeopathic medicines believe in treating the person with the cough and not just the cough. And just like no two people are alike, neither are their coughs. Some people have a cough that comes on only at night, while others get a bout when they talk. I’m sure you’ve noticed how different the illnesses are with every member of your family. Not just the symptoms, but also what triggers each illness, how quickly it comes on, how long it drags out, what depth it goes to, how much damage it leaves behind … It’s all so different for every person. Different people with different ways in which they are affected need differing remedies too, don’t they?

It begins at the end

If Mr. Kamat came to an allopath with cough since more than three weeks, night sweats, evening fevers and weight loss, the allopathic would gather that this is what Mr. Kamat has in common with all patients who have tuberculosis. A few tests would confirm the diagnosis and this is where the story would end with a standard regimen of treatment.

However with a homeopath this would be the beginning. After a few tests to confirm the diagnosis, they would try to find out what it is that sets Mr. Kamat’s tuberculosis apart. None of the common symptoms that led to the diagnosis would be considered. Just like we saw earlier, all peculiar symptoms and signs would be analysed to pick a remedy that specifically suits Mr. Kamat’s tuberculosis.

Knowing what to look for

So how would you know what symptoms are common and what are important for your homeopath? Well, that’s not your headache, it’s your homeopath’s. All you need to do is observe yourself and report anything that you notice is a change from your routine self. Which of them to use to diagnose your illness and then which to use to diagnose your remedy is your homeopath’s job.

“Oh but Doctor, when it comes to my kids, I want to be absolutely sure that I am not missing out on anything. If I know what to look for, I will see it better. Can’t you give me a list of things that I need to observe?” Mrs. Lokhande said to me one day. I was amazed at her diligence, her intelligence and her burning desire to leave no stone unturned for her kids. Mrs. Lokhande, this one is for mothers like you – a list of things that you can observe for various types of complaints…

April 13, 2019

No… two… no, no, three!

Jason* is one of the cutest three year olds that you could ever meet. He has eyes which actually twinkle brighter than Sirius and are constantly dancing with wonder like the Northern Lights. His smile is a mix of a hint of shyness, loads of what-mischief-should-I-do-next and tonnes of just pure happiness… a smile that hardly ever leaves his face (even when he is really sick too!).

Jason’s cough

Jason had been to his grandparents’ place. He had developed cough and had been brought by his father to the clinic. Homoeopathy is a customized medicine system and we have different sets of medicines depending on whether you fell ill after you had oily food, cold drinks, simply over ate, or… (you get the drift, don’t you?) With this in mind, I was asking Jason’s father if he knew what had triggered Jason’s latest episode. His father admitted that he wasn’t sure as he had not accompanied Jason, “Actually the kids had gone with their mother. And she couldn’t make it here today. It could be any of those things really, you know how it is with grandparents never saying no to kids!”

The predicament

Jason’s sister who is five years old is quieter, more composed and it takes slightly longer for her shyness to thaw. She had been observing this conversation. You could see on her face, the ‘should-I-tell-or-should-I-keep-quiet’ debate that was going on within. Finally she decided that it would be better for Jason if she did. To keep it subtle, she whispered to her father, in her mother tongue (how kids possess such wise judgement is something that always amazes me!)

I waited as her father translated, “She said he had an ice cream there.” I turned to Jason to see his reaction. Will he have a guilt-ridden face? Will he be angry at his sister for ratting him out? Will he be scared of a backlash from his father?

Out of the blue

What Jason did next was totally unexpected… He jumped off his stool and held out four stubby fingers. “No, not one, I had two… no, no three three ice creams! One pink and two white!!” “Oh wow” I replied reflexively, “You enjoyed them, didn’t you?” Jason nodded with a dreamy smile and his wide Disney-character-eyes brimmed with excitement. You should have seen the sheer ecstasy on his face as he relived that delicious memory of having three ice-creams at a go!

Clean Glasses, not Kaleidoscope

What a beautiful state of mind, I thought to myself. To just see things for what they are, without any prejudice. To not think of it as my sister complaining about me, to not worry about my father scolding me or my doctor judging me. To just take things at face value. ‘I had an ice cream and boy, was it yummy!’ To leave things at that. No shame, no guilt.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we too could clean up our glasses of the colors of emotions and past experiences? Wouldn’t it be better to just view things as they were, rather than through a complicated kaleidoscope? No ‘she always does this to me’. No ‘he did it on purpose’. No ‘this always happens to me’. Just facts. What a pure way to look at life!

* Name changed to protect his cuteness from the evil eye (just kidding!)

May 22, 2016

How Homeopathy Taught Me To Steal Shoes

“Wow, you just read my mind! How do you do that?!”

“Doctor I bet now you know me better than my husband of thirty years does!”

“Uff, one should never have a homeopath for a friend…. They know you so well they can catch your lies like that (snapping fingers)!”

If you have been a patient of homeopathy or have a homeopath for a friend, the above instances would feel familiar. I for sure, get a lot of that! And no, I have no mind-reading super powers nor do I have an extra ordinary IQ. It is because Homeopathy taught me to steal shoes…

How I learnt to steal shoes:

Homeopathy believes that when you have constant headaches, it’s not just your head that’s sick, but it’s you that is sick in toto. That’s why a homeopath will try and understand the entire ‘you’ vis-à-vis your headache – why you keep getting them, how you have been affected mentally or emotionally, blah blah. In-depth patient interactions over a decade is how homeopathy has taught me – to steal (ok, maybe steal was an exaggeration) – to borrow your shoes, walk around in them, and get how it feels to be you walking through your office, your home, your relationships, your dreams, your hopes, your fears and your lives.

Or so I thought:

Lost in my reveries last week, it struck me and I got off my high horse of being in the “high and mighty profession of homeopathy”. Isn’t this true of every profession? Whether you are a software engineer trying to understand the end user’s needs to give your software a user friendly UI, or you are a salesman trying to figure out why your customer should prefer your insurance policy over the others…. We all have to learn to steal people’s shoes and walk in them. Not just to sell to our customers but also to understand why our loved ones react in certain peculiar ways that they sometimes do.

The time I failed to steal:

All this stealing shoes business is easier said than done. Just yesterday, I found myself utterly exasperated by a friend who loves to gossip. (I did not have a problem listening to her gossip about others, until I got to know that she had gossiped about me too!) Let’s call her Reena (to be honest, she still is my friend, wears pointy high heels and could seriously maim me!) Coming back to the story… my frustration, anger and hurt had swollen up my feet so much, I could not get my feet to fit into her shoes! I decided to sleep over my options which varied from a heart – to – heart talk to pounding her to a pulp (puny people do tend to have obese imaginations!)

Sense Prevails:

Today morning, I woke up with a clearer head. I realised that, I needed to get back on my trusted horse of homeopathy. I tried to wiggle my still sore feet into her shoes. Why did Reena gossip? Well maybe, she wanted the attention of the group… Maybe it was just an attempt to spice up a conversation… Or maybe it wasn’t intended to be hurtful gossip. But that was just who she was, and nothing I would say to her would change the person underneath. If I had that much of a problem, I could stay away. Or I could “get” her and let go off of the hurt.

And that is how homeopathy taught me to steal shoes.

You can steal too!

Whether a software techie or an insurance salesman, you are probably already doing it at work. If we could try to do the same for every loved one, acquaintance and even stranger’s shoes – we’d all suffer from lesser sore feet, lesser bruised egos and lesser hurt hearts.