Dealing with diabetes, the homoeopathic way

Homoeopathy treats the patient who has a disease instead of the disease the patient has, writes Dr Pankaj Aggarwal

Many are doubtful about the efficacy of homoeopathy as a branch of medicine in respect to its scientificity in general and in various diseases in particular. Homoeopathy is a holistic way of treatment whatever may be the disease. This system understands each disease holistically (mind, body and spirit) and tailors the treatment for each patient.

So, homoeopathy treats the patient who has a disease instead of the disease the patient has. This actually reflects a lot of wisdom in the field of medicine. It implies that an individual develops a disease according to his personality, which means traits and characters achieved from heredity and environment (psychobiological and psychosocial). A homoeopathic doctor has to understand each disease and the kind of personality it will appear in. That is the reason why some people are susceptible to one disease and others to another kind.

I have tried to understand Diabetes Mellitus (type 2), DM 2, especially the personality inclined to have this disease. DM 2   is a somatic disease which has psychobiological and psychosocial dimensions. The recent concept of PNI (psychoneuroimmunology) has proved how it happens in humans.

The relationship between psychiatric and endocrinological illnesses is important because of shared biological background. Blood glucose level and its regulation directly affect the brain and mental functions, and conversely blood glucose is affected by mental and emotional changes. Many researchers have shown the relation of personality and glucose regulation. These traits and characters are:

• Anger
• Anxiety, helpfulness, understands the preferences and needs of others as well as their own and tries to cooperate with others. High antagonism and disagreeableness.
• Depression, unhappy, passive, harm avoidance. Everyone feels sad now and then. When sadness goes on for months and one loses interest in things that once made you happy, often with changes in sleep and eating patterns.
• Fatigability, tend to be more inactive, lead a sedentary lifestyle and gain weight. History of tuberculosis (TB) is one of the reasons for easy fatigability, a constitutional trait that goes to the next generation of TB family, though modern medicine considers TB an infectious illness.

This disease, for the purpose of treatment, is divided into different stages:

Prediabetes: This stage often doesn’t show any signs, but recently they have been isolated as below:

• Darkened skin around neck, fingers, knuckles, elbows, armpits, back of knees and other folds, a condition called Acanthosis Nigricans.   
• Increased thirst
• Frequent urination
• Fatigue
• Blurred vision

These signs are present as early as in childhood, which is an alarming situation. Homoeopathy can treat this stage efficiently along with correction of lifestyle.

Diabetes: An early stage (blood glucose levels below 180) but yet not requiring any other medication. Here, homoeopathy has a good scope to treat with success. But once it is above 180 and below 300, then a careful homoeopathic treatment is required along with strict monitoring. A level above this can be dangerous, so it needs combined treatment with allopathic consultation and medication.

Complications: DM leads to innumerable complications. In this stage, combined treatment is needed.

Conclusion: The mind and body connection is very powerful. Having good mental health leads to healthy body, which is unfortunately failing in recent times. For long, medical science has been denying this relationship, but now has agreed to it due to a lot of research. The same is true for DM. We must educate the masses to be happy and take homoeopathy (H+H), which has the key to success, and sure cure of DM.

The writer is a Delhi-based homeopathic physician