Specialization in age, gender or disease makes no sense to homeopaths because our practice is holistic.

So why focus specifically on women's health issues?

It recently came to my attention that women – wanting only to do the right thing, have placed themselves in harms way simply by following trusted medical advice:

CRISIS: HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY AND HEALTH RISKS

In 2002 the medical establishment was thrown into a crisis when researchers found a definite link between Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and breast cancer. In an unprecedented step, Women’s Health Initiative researchers stopped their large-scale clinical trial because of undeniable increases in the incidence of breast cancer in women taking HRT. This came after a decade of concerted effort by the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry to enlist women into using HRT to prevent osteoporosis, heart disease, and other degenerative conditions.

Women throughout the country—on their own initiative—almost instantly stopped taking hormones. Stock prices of pharmaceutical manufacturers plummeted. Everyone was left scrambling—and wondering.

HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED ?

(NCH Newsletter, December 2002)

Happenings such as this are all too common and arise from women wanting to do the right thing. Women in particular are under singular stress given the following:

First, women experience various cyclical changes that are an opportunity for problems to arise if health and vitality are compromised.

Second, these natural changes can sometimes be viewed with mistrust and misunderstanding even in relatively healthy women.

Third, our complex, fast-paced age has left an information void, making the medical expert - not the mother or grandmother, the voice of wisdom.

Natural cycles and treatments are interfered with and/or replaced by artificial ones as in the above example. Birth control pills are another example, but that is a different story.

Take the example of pregnancy. Pregnancy is seen as a medical condition, rather than a time for inner personal growth and reflection. For another, I have heard numerous women describe their periods as having the "normal" pains! Their pains may be common, but as they are symptoms of disharmony, they are NOT "normal" !

Cyclical changes are 100% natural and ought to be easy, comfortable, and virtually pain free. This applies to all such changes including menarche (first period), monthly menses, pregnancy, labor, delivery and menopause. This may sound like wishful thinking (from a naive male?).

However, in his History of the Indies Vol. I, Bartolome de las Cases - an eyewitness in Cuba around the time of Columbus, writes the following about the Arawak Indian women: "They multiply in great abundance; pregnant women work to the last minute and give birth almost painlessly; up the next day, they bathe in the river and are as clean and healthy as before giving birth."

Is this sort of health and vitality still attainable in today's condensed space/time warp where symptoms of dis-ease abounds?

The answer is a resounding, YES!

Currently, women’s health issues include PMS, STD, UTI, chlamydia, candida, cysts, fibroids, genital herpes, amenorrhea (absence of periods), dysmenorrhea (painful periods), metrorrhagia (irregular bleeding), menorrhagia (prolonged bleeding), infertility, miscarriages, endometriosis, cervical dysplasia, ectopic pregnancy, ineffectual labor, premature births, caesarean births, and finally, menopause with hot flashes, profuse sweating, osteoporosis, etc. These are systemic, not local issues. And, as local treatments grow, so grows this list!

All systemic problems that are functional in nature can be resolved successfully with homeopathy depending on (1) the skill of the homeopath and (2) the determination and vitality of the women. This is possible because functional disturbances are a dis-harmony, a mis-tunement of the vital force. This is analogous to playing an instrument that is out of tune. Once tuned, it is capable of playing beautiful music again. All symptoms are a result, not a cause, of the dis-tunement. Like two magnets of similar polarity which repel each other, the similar substance (remedy) can remove the mis-tunement; the healing capacity of the organism does the rest.