Suppression
Posted December 18, 2011 by Dr. Karin in Uncategorized. Leave a Comment
There is a time and a place for suppression. If a patient is having an asthma attack, the use of steroids or other medications is sometimes needed! Also, short-term suppression of acute or chronic problems is less likely to be harmful in the long run. One example would be using combination homeopathic remedies or decongestants to treat a cold or flu (though the total length and severity of an acute illness is reduced when an individualized remedy is used instead). If, however, the a combination homeopathic remedy (or other medication) is chronically used to treat a chronic, recurrent problem, then there would be suppression over time. This is why I generally discourage the long-term use of homeopathic ‘sleep aids’, ‘allergy aids’, and so on. You shouldn’t have to use it for weeks or months. A rational basis of medicine will consider suppression as a link to ‘different’ diseases developing over a lifetime.
Suppression is a subject poorly understood (and infrequently considered) in conventional medicine as well as in integrative/alternative medicine. Consider one general rule: no matter what kind of treatment we undertake (homeopathy, herbs, supplements, regular drugs, surgery, etc.), there are two possibilities for the outcome.
We can either move disease toward cure, or toward deeper seated disease (suppression). Any therapy has the potential to suppress diseases…even homeopathy! How can we know exactly how we are affecting disease when we treat it? How can we know whether we are suppressing or curing disease?
In homeopathic practice, there are ‘rules’ for doctors when tracking patients’ symptoms. Hering’s Law describes in general terms how, in healing, disease should move from deeper to more superficial expressions:
The 5 Directions of Cure:
1. From organs of more importance, to organs of lesser importance
(for example, asthma improving, but the patient may still have a chronic sinus problem)
2. From above, downward
(for example, chronic eczema should clear up on the head first, later on the legs)
3. From inside, to the outside
(for example, ulceration of the gut improving, but acne getting worse)
4. From center, to periphery
(for example, someone with rheumatoid arthritis should notice their spine and hip pain improving, then later the hands…not the other way around)
5. In the chronological reverse order of disease development
The suppression of disease generally occurs in the opposite directions as those listed by Hering. This whole scheme is complicated by many factors, especially multiple layers of suppression over years’ time.
A simplistic spectrum, showing how superficial (or how deep) any particular disease or symptom is, might look something like this :
:) <—-skin/sinuses<——>digestion/gut<——>musculoskeletal issues<——->heart/lung/organ<——>endocrine/hormonal issues<——->neurologic symptoms/cancers—-> :(
(more superficial diseases are on the left, leading deeper and deeper as you ‘read’ to the right).
For example, a patient who presents with hypertension as the primary complaint, may relate a history which includes many years of ‘treating’ painful joints with some kind of over-the-counter medication such as ibuprofen. From the conventional point of view, these two ‘diseases’ have nothing to do with one another. From the homeopath’s perspective, they are directly related…the suppression of the ‘disease’ in the joints, led to a deeper manifestation of disease tendency over time.
In the detailed medical history of a patient, a typical story of suppression might go something like this:
Patient X had a normal birth, no complications (the mother had an uneventful pregnancy). In infancy she had some eczema. This was treated with topical cortisone (steroid) creams, and ‘cured’. As a toddler, she had recurrent ear infections. These were treated with multiple rounds of antibiotics. She ‘outgrew’ this tendency. When she was 5 she developed asthma, which was treated with inhaled steroids and bronchodilators. She also ‘outgrew’ her asthma by the time she was a teenager, but by then she had menstrual cramps, irregular periods, and headaches. These were treated with various medications over the years. In adulthood, she deals with chronic insomnia, migraines, anxiety, hypothyroidism, and hypertension. And on and on and on, until we eventually are dealing with diabetes, heart disease, neurological disorders, cancer.
Now for the good news :)
Cure generally proceeds in a reverse order as the suppression of disease. While not every person is curable (our inherited tendencies, habits, past treatments, & so on will always influence an outcome), homeopathy is profoundly able to tap into the body’s inherent wisdom to help it help itself.
Here is an example of how a case might proceed toward cure:
Patient Y presents with the complaints of chronic depression, fatigue, sleep disturbances, joint and back pains, irritable bowel syndrome, and irregular periods with debilitating hot flashes. After taking a thorough history, a constitutional remedy is prescribed. After one month, her hot flashes have reduced in intensity and frequency, the back pain has improved (other joint pains have not), her mood has lifted, and she is often sleeping deeper and able to remember dreams. Her energy is beginning to improve. Her response to the remedy indicates, for a number of reasons, why we are on the right track.
First, she is having a global response. Multiple areas she had complained of are getting better at once. This is the mark of the body’s own mechanisms of healing kicking in. Second, she is improving in such a way that the 5 Directions of Cure are not being violated. (If, instead of the response indicated above, she had reported that her hot flashes were not better, sleep and fatigue were about the same, but joint pains and bowel function were greatly improved, then I would know I had prescribed an incorrect, suppressive remedy.)
Third, mood, energy, and sleep are deep-seated indicators of overall vitality and state of health. They must be among the first symptoms to improve.
After being on the remedy longer, this patient should experience improvement in all the areas she had complained of.
Vaccination and Suppression
A 1996 study in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that tetanus vaccine disables the immune system in HIV patients. Tetanus vaccination produced a drop in immune T cells, a classic marker of immune deficiency, in 10 of 13 patients, with a rise in viral replication.
Results of the Christchurch Health and Development Study in New Zealand, published in 1997 in Epidemiology, point to higher rates of asthma and allergy episodes among vaccinated children.
A study using the Mumps-Measles-Rubella (MMR) vaccine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, researchers investigated the association between childhood asthma and live-virus vaccines, concluding that “universal childhood vaccination using live viral strains may be contributory to the rise in IgE [antibody]-mediated disorders.”
In 1994, a committee of investigators at the Institutes of Medicine directly associated vaccines with the rising occurrence of autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, that attack and destroy the myelin sheaths (insulating and conducting apparatus) of nerves.
A study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal in 1996 revealed that an epidemic of diabetes followed a massive campaign to vaccinate children against hepatitis B. The study showed a 60% increase in childhood insulin-dependent diabetes, an autoimmune disease, occurring in the years following the 1989—1991 vaccination program of children aged 6 to 16.
Other studies have shown that widespread use of the Haemophilus meningitis vaccine has resulted in diabetes epidemics. Diabetes has also been frequently observed as a consequence of the mumps vaccine: Three European studies reported 22 cases of diabetes that began within 30 days of mumps vaccination.
While vaccination programs have undoubtedly decreased the incidence of childhood diseases, have we created a higher incidence of more chronic-deep seated diseases as a result? Have we simply shifted the burden of disease to later life? Unfortunately most parents are not presented with a choice regarding vaccinating their children. Nor are they presented with the possible harm that may be done by vaccination. Homeopaths world-wide, through established methods of detailed history-taking and long-term follow up of disease progression (or regression), have observed a relationship between vaccination and the onset of many chronic diseases. This is a very unpopular area for research, but clinical observation gives empiric evidence (seeing what happens when one treats a patient for vaccine-related disease) in support of this theory. It isn’t always possible to discover through patient history whether a disease state is vaccination-induced, but treating with a remedy from a group called nosodes (in this case, made from the innoculations themselves) can clear an otherwise muddy case.
A tangential comment:
I have often contemplated why homeopathy is still so poorly accepted, when quantum physics can explain it. Granted, advances in surgery have been massively beneficial, but scientifically, why have modern medicine’s methods not advanced beyond the age of Newton? I know that medical students, well-intentioned though they may be, are offered little alternative to the pharmaceutical fare during their medical educations. Doctors have learned the lessons of Big Pharma, plausibly the earth’s most powerful industry, and are often complicit in the generation of its massive profits through implementation of unquestioned vaccination regimens, and later by the uninhibited use of pharmaceutical drugs (many people are on 5-15+ drugs daily). The implications of the theory of suppression are staggering, in terms of disease progression. Yet I can understand the doctor who refuses to seriously contemplate the possibility of having ‘done harm‘ through the accepted practices of today. Perhaps this is why homeopathy, an effective method of treatment which is both safe and cheap, will unlikely be a serious threat to the established machine of modern medicine in my lifetime.
