I had the great opportunity to attend the Joint American Homeopathic Conference (JAHC 2016) this past weekend. Having the conference only an hour away was too good to pass up!
I thought I’d share some highlights. I offer services in nutrition, herbalism, and holistic health counseling, not homeopathy, but wanted to learn more about it.
From Homeopathy and the Human Microbiome: The Key to Lyme and Other Chronic Diseases: Having years of antibiotics sets people up for being an ideal host for lyme disease. Healing the gut flora with fermented foods, probiotics, and probiotics (foods that feed the gut bacteria) is key. [Prebiotic foods include onions, leeks, garlic]
Months of antibiotic treatment directly after lyme infection may not help patients, as it acts like an anti-inflammatory, suppressing the body’s natural response, while killing off human immunity in the form of gut flora. [Short term inflammation is good, because it is the body fighting back.]
We should view ourselves as “super-organisms” – a human ecosystem, inseparable and interdependent with good bacteria all over the body that benefit us. [Gut bacteria convert vitamins B and K for us, and talk with our immune system.]
Women with forty-times antibiotics use rates have five times higher breast cancer rates [not an exact quote here]
Testing Columbines in Homeopathy: Barbara Seideneck from Boulder’s Homeopathy School International ran homeopathic testing on two kinds of versions of Columbine flowers. Results included groupings of common dream themes during the 3-5 days of testing, including dreams of water, narrow places, rainbows, and changing a bad/violent situation to a positive one. It also caused irritability and “buzzing” feelings in testers.
The genus Aquilegia means eagle, and the back of one of the flowers looks like eagle’s talons. Coerulea species in one of the names means blue in Latin.
Photo used with permission: http://www.visoflora.com/photos-nature/photo-ancolie-commune-aquilegia-vulgaris.html
One of the flowers travelled to the USA from northern Europe, and had ties to Norse goddess Freya in folklore.
Apparently both Columbines are available as homeopathic medicines now, but there haven’t been much actual case research yet. The testing was only done in 2003 or so. Once there is, the plants may be added to the list in the official homeopathy pharmacopeia.
You can read the full results at the Homeopathy School International website. [Remember that these were extremely diluted forms of the flower, so much that there isn’t any of the original substance left in the substance, not the straight flower taken internally!]
Extending the Boundary of Cancer Treatment: It is good to have life in balance, including time to do things that make us happy and stress free. The speaker recommended surgery removal of cancer first, then homeopathy to control metastases (spread of cells) via blood stream or lymph.
He liked using MRI or ultrasound to find the possible spread of cells, instead of CT scans or thermograms, which add radiation to the body, which can cause cancer.
From Using Homeopathy During Conventional Cancer Care [from a doctor who went through it]: Dr. Amy Rothenberg, ND, wrote about her double mastectomy operation and cancer journey in the Huffington Post. Brisk exercise immediately before radiation can make it more successful, because then cancer cells are more oxygenated.
She believed that people could use positive thoughts, religion and meditation before chemotherapy, too. Rubbing aloe over the chemotherapy area right afterwards (while dressing) can help stop radiation skin burns.
The use of opiates can cause people’s pain thresholds to become much lower, so she recommended trying to use something else for pain after the first day.
She recommended talking to your own cells to get the outcome you desire. She shared a story where she had to raise her blood counts over 120 in order to receive chemotherapy, and joked that it wasn’t a very good reward. She did raise them to 240 between Friday and Monday through talking to her cells, exercise, Chinese herbal use, nutrition and more.
Arnica is often used for bruising after an event. She said not to take it before surgery as it can cause the anesthesia to not work as well. Right afterwards can be very helpful, though.
Her articles at the Huffington Post include: Naturopathic Oncology (1/27/14), Say Goodbye to the Girls (2/23/14), Angelina’s Choice (3/30/15), and Positively Radiant: Naturopathic Medicine Approaches to Complement Radiation Therapy (7/7/14).
The Homeopathy Research Institute is looking for funding for further studies about how and why homeopathy works. (It’s run by a whopping three people!) Alex Tournier, a researcher soon to be with the Heidelberg Water Research Lab, spoke via recorded video at the conference.
He talked about quantum coherence domains (QCDs). These elements have a cross talk effect, meaning they can travel and affect nearby things that don’t contain the same elements. A anti-growth medicine that is sealed in a glass test tube can affect a fish tank of tadpoles, and slow down their growth, when the sealed tube is placed into the fish tank!
This could be a problem with medicines for testing being stored right next to placebos! Apparently the effect stops in the finished homeopathic medicine, or drugs stored near each other would be tainted with each other as they over-lapped.
Other areas of research to explain homeopathy include infra-red (IR) spectrometry, conductimetry, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Read more at the Homeopathy Research Institute website, or check out watch their YouTube channel.
Here’s the full 2016 JAHC homeopathy conference schedule (held in Westminster, Colorado).
I’d also like to mention the fun people I met, organizers to attendants, who lived nationwide. I even met several in my local area, so that was a pleasure.