Acute versus Chronic prescribing
The difference between acute and chronic prescribing
In a simple sense, an acute illness is one that has developed recently and will either go on to cure or death, whereas a chronic disease has developed over many years and will continue to worsen and remain unless treated.
In the homeopathic treatment of acute situations, the restoration of a health can be expected to occur rapidly. Physical injuries, sprains, strains, minor burns and bruises will respond to remedies within hours, as do fevers and (recent) coughs. Flues, bacterial and virus infections usually clearup in days with very little discomfort while more longer term acute ailments such as measles, chicken pox and mumps will run their normal course but in a fraction of the time and with no real repercussions.
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Other common acute ailments that have recently arisen like cystitis, bronchitis, whooping cough, boils, diarrhoea and constipation are all easily treated with homeopathy. However, if they are part of a longer term disease picture they would be considered chronic. For example, the constipation may have been happening for years in conjunction with severe bloating. A general tendency to boils would also be considered chronic. Hayfever is a chronic illness. It has some acute symptoms that can be helped with acute prescribing, but hayfever needs chronic prescribing to cure.
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Chronic illness has developed over a longer time- years and often decades. It has built up from birth (often before) and will usually involve many layers of health disturbance.
A homeopath needs to know as much as possible about everything that has impacted your health throughout your whole life. Inherited familial tendencies, your mother’s (and father’s) health when in the womb, any birth trauma, childhood illnesses and how they were treated, vaccination history etc. are all vital information. Then, after childhood, every physical, emotional and mental shock, grief, surgery, bacterial infection, and any other of the myriad of illnesses known to mankind, will impact the immune system.
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If illnesses that arise during one’s life are handled homeopathically (or in some naturopathic way) at the time, the ailment would be considered acute and the effects removed. However, what tends to occur is the modern desire for an ‘instant fix’ and the proliferation of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, steroids, statins and painkillers has effectively suppressed a lot of illness. That is, these substances do not remove the symptoms permanently and at best only palliate. While this has some benefit in the short term, it tends to take away the body’s own ability to heal and the disturbance in the body that manifested those symptoms has not been corrected. Hence, by the time people get to 30 or 40 years old there are many disturbances layered one on top of each other within an individual’s health profile. Of course, the body, in it’s innate wisdom, will always attempt to mitigate any aberration, but the energy required for the body to keep the areas of disharmony under ‘wraps’ leads to a general decline in health and more serious ailments will emerge on a deeper, more pathological level.
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The way to treat the manifestation of chronic illness, then, is to remove layers of illness, one at a time using a series of different homeopathic remedies. During this process some of the old illnesses may emerge which is really good sign. This time they are not suppressed and are cleared from the persons health matrix.
Depending on the history of the patient, this process can take months and sometimes years. During the treatment, however, there can be regular indicators of improvement, even if seemingly small, indicating a gradual progression towards the ultimate aim, which is the restoration of health.
