Homoeopathy is useful in treating allergy
An article by
Dr Asghar Ali Shah
Homeopathic Physician
Published in The News International on August 16, 2009
An allergy, also called hypersensitivity, is a reaction to something by our immune system that protects the body from infections, diseases and foreign substances. An allergen is any substance that the body perceives as a threat, triggering a specific chain of events called an allergic cascade.
Substances that often cause reaction are pollen, dust mites, birds, animals, certain food items and insect stings. The reaction may cause symptoms such as sneezing, coughing, runny nose, sore throat, diarrhoea, vomiting, itching, swelling and asthma. Symptoms vary from patient to patient. Although allergies irritate you, they usually wont kill you. However, a severe reaction called anaphylaxis, no doubt, threats life.
Doctors all over the world now follow the homeopathic principle like cures like for treatment of allergies. The process, known as vaccination, involves receiving injections of small amounts of allergens, such as pollen for instance, that are considered to be responsible for your allergy.
Thus an artificial disease similar to the natural disease is intentionally given to the patient and the doses are gradually increased so that the body builds up immunity to the allergens. The injections of vaccines are given over at least three to five years. Discontinuation is based on having minimal symptoms over two consecutive seasons of exposure to the allergens. The immunologists and the allergists are of the view that this method of treatment is more effective than the conventional treatment (in which anti-allergic medicines like Avil, Rigix and other antihistamines are used), which only temporarily suppresses the acute symptoms of the allergies.
Immunology and homoeopathy began in the same year i.e. 1796. Edward Jenner, the father of modern immunology, gave his first smallpox vaccinations at the same time that the German physician Samuel Hahnemann discovered homoeopathy. A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. It typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism.
The agent stimulates the bodys immune system to recognize the invading agent as foreign, destroy it, and remember it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it encounters in future. The symptoms associated with an immune system response are often uncomfortable to the individual, but are actually quite necessary. Symptoms such as sneezing, runny nose, fever, coughing, itching, nausea, diarrhoea or shortness of breath are all produced as the immune system tries to fight foreign invaders.
Hahnemann introduced homoeopathy in 1796 in these words: One imitates nature, which sometimes cures chronic diseases by adding another disease, and then uses a drug that is capable of exciting another artificial disease as similar as possible to the natural disease to be cured: Like cures like. This principle states that a disease can be cured by a substance that produces similar symptoms in healthy people.
Hahnemann unlike his contemporary Jenner did not limit the scope of this great discovery to the preparation of certain vaccines only. He went further and started experimenting vaccines on himself. He would select a diluted vaccine and take its repeated doses and then record the symptoms. Slowly and gradually his family, friends and students also joined him in these experiments. Through great sacrifices the hidden properties of diluted medicinal substances were discovered and recorded. Then these records were used in clinics to match the signs and symptoms of patients with the recorded properties of a diluted vaccine. And miraculous results were achieved. Thus a fully mature homeopathic system of medicine was developed by its great German discoverer Dr Hahnemann. Now the homoeopathic materia medica has a record of carefully documented properties of more than seven thousand medicinal substances.
Homoeopathy does not treat allergies by blindly giving one vaccine made from allergens, which apparently caused an allergy, to all the patients suffering from that allergy. It rather carefully individualizes the symptoms of each and every patient and selects the most appropriate and suitable vaccine (homeopathic medicine) for that particular patient. In homoeopathy ten different patients suffering from an allergy caused by same allergen (the mulberry pollen for instance) may receive ten different medicines if their individual symptoms are different.
Homoeopathy during the last two centuries treated millions of people suffering from all sorts of allergies without any side effects. The author himself is a witness to its efficacy and has treated, by the grace of Allah, many stubborn cases of allergies and asthma without any side effects.
