Challenging A Life Sentence

Three severely pathological cases… three gut-wrenching stories of abject despair… and three happy endings! I never fail to feel a sense of joyful elation that I was chosen to be an instrument of this amazing healing system.

People like Siddesh, Shrutika and Rukshana make it all worthwhile...

Watch the videos below

Mental Retardation: Is There A Cure?
One of the most heart-rending moments for any parent is the realisation that your child is mentally challenged. The diagnosis, usually delivered in the clinical confines of a doctor’s or psychologist’s office, is comparable to little else. It hits you like a thunderbolt.

I’ve met countless parents who have suffered this blow and by the time they decide to opt for homeopathic treatment for their children, they have lived with this crushing diagnosis for around three to five years.

Raising a mentally challenged child implies a life sentence for both child and parent. Apart from the fact that the child will probably never be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with other children, and later other adults, it suggests a life of constant supervision.

Mental retardation is a pathological disease that is usually genetically loaded and linked to chromosomal abnormalities. Sometimes, it arises from birth trauma to the skull and brain, and at other times, from medication taken by the mother during pregnancy and if she has a history of substance abuse. And there are other causes.

But its etiology makes little difference to a parent whose child is unable to comprehend the simplest commands and take care of himself/herself. By now, shattered dreams are a distant dot on the horizon. Having a mentally challenged child requires parents to draw on all their strength and inner resources to simply raise their child as best as they can.

But the question is: Does having a mentally challenged child necessarily mean being handed a ‘life sentence’? Is there hope? How much can homeopathy help?

The great thing about homeopathy is that is has a remedy for ALL ills. Indeed, it is a panacea for everything that ails you – on both the mental and physical planes. But how successfully can homeopathy treat pathological cases or cases of genetic abnormality?

The interaction between your genetic template, your basic constitutional nature and homeopathy is as complex as it is unbelievable. If it is your constitutional nature that determines your potential as a human being, it is the twists and turns in this basic constitutional nature that leads to disease.

While genes play a dominant role in determining who you are, the ‘who you are’ is not set in stone. That is because although your genetic endowment is the primary determinant of your constitutional nature, its expression depends on many other factors. And this is where homeopathy steps in – it can correct the effects of many, if not all, of these impediments.

For instance, the mother’s emotional and physical history is sometimes crucial to whether the child is born healthy or not. The mother’s history (for instance, the effects of a Cesarean Section) interacts with the child’s genetic template and can produce disease whereas the same child born via the normal birth process would have probably been born normal and healthy.

Another example. Sickly babies are often assaulted with a barrage of strong drugs soon after birth. (See Shrutika’s case below). If the child is genetically predisposed to, say, mental retardation, the drugs further twist the baby’s constitutional make-up and this leads to all sorts of complications.

Case 1: Mental Retardation: Siddesh

So what exactly am I saying? With homeopathic intervention, can a mentally challenged child hope to live a normal life? Young Siddesh, who was born mentally challenged – and who now dreams of becoming computer engineer – would definitely answer in the affirmative! I have been treating Siddesh for ten years and have watched him evolve from a hopeless and helpless four-year-old to a boy who enrolled in a school for normal children and who, as a teenager, now uses the Internet. (Watch the video)

The word that best describes Siddesh when he first came to my clinic is ‘slow’. He just sat there and stared at me, tongue protruding slightly and saliva drooling ever so slightly. His mother said he took 30 minutes to drink a glass of milk; he would sit almost motionless; and stare blankly into space.

Siddesh and his mother kept their appointments diligently for around seven months before their visits began to wane. Thankfully, the boy showed rapid improvement in the first four to five months: his power of comprehension improved significantly; he was more alert; he began playing with other children; and he even became demanding and threw a few tantrums when he didn’t get what he wanted!

Then something terribly significant happened. A few months into treatment, Siddesh developed convulsions. He would wake up screaming at night and go into a seizure. Oddly, this usually coincided with the full moon.

Siddesh’s mother was naturally upset and worried. But I took a bold decision and thankfully, she went with it. I advised her not to take her son to an allopath, who would inevitably prescribe medication that would undo the good homeopathy had done. Siddesh’s seizures were a sign that his brain was finally ‘waking up’. It was a sign that there was sudden and enhanced neural activity in his brain, and wasn’t this precisely the result we were looking for? If I needed proof that I was on the right track, Siddesh’s mother told me that ever since the convulsions had begun, her son’s mind seemed to get sharper! Remember the Fever Effect?

A couple of weeks later, the case took another sharp turn. As treatment progressed, the boy suddenly started exhibiting certain peculiarities, and the frequency of his convulsions had also increased. He began making odd squeaking sounds to gain attention and would also laugh inappropriately. Children who do not speak, including autistic children, are difficult to assess and treat. All I had was a description of Siddesh’s behaviour from his mother, and isn’t a mother impression of her child always skewed? It was a tough case to crack.

Finally, I used all the mental resources at my disposal and was able to solve this case. By the end of a year since he came to me, Siddesh was back to where he was before his peculiar behaviour manifest itself. His mind had woken up; his power of comprehension showed increasing improvement; his attention span had greatly increased; his social interaction had also improved; and he executed all his daily activities as any other child would. And, yes, his convulsions had also stopped.

A few months down the line, when Siddesh and his mother dropped in to my clinic, I was in for another surprise – Siddesh was now studying in a school for normal children! And, what do you know? He had also stood first in a writing competition!!!

Let’s return to the original question: Can homeopathy help a mentally challenged child live a normal life? If being able to take care of oneself and being content is the yardstick, the answer would have to be a resounding ‘yes’!

Case analysis for homeopaths: Click here.

Case 2: Hydrocephalus: Shrutika

Little Shrutika was cursed by fate. Or so it seemed. There was a time, before her mother brought her to me, that her parents felt their daughter was better of dead. The child was seriously ill and beset with numerous health issues, including hydrocephalus. Worse, three months of hospitalisation had not helped. At the very end of their tether, they brought Shrutika to me.

There was always something about her eyes – sad yet smiling. Yes, there was definitely something special about little Shrutika. Perhaps it is her Life Force shining through, a Life Force that keeps the child on top of every situation, including those that almost did her in. When Shrutika smiles, you can’t help but smile back at her.

Like Siddesh,  Shrutika’s case too was very challenging. It is another pathological case, shaped by genetics and exhibiting serious abnormalities.

Shrutika was born of a normal delivery but soon after birth, she developed pneumonia that rattled ominously in her little chest. She also had a severe rash that she couldn’t shake off. Add to this the build-up of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in her skull and underdeveloped fontanels (soft skull plates) and you have a child whose chances of survival are slim.

Due to her health problems, doctors had bombarded Shrutika with serious drugs that made her resistant to medication. Due to her persistent rash, he was plastered with various ointments, keeping the building toxins trapped in her body. Doctors also advised her parents to allow them to embed a shunt in her brain to drain the excess CSF. Due to a turn of fate, the surgery could not be scheduled as Shrutika was still riddled with infection. I would have to say her survival is nothing short of a miracle.

As is often the case with pathological cases, Shrutika was brought to me in desperation. She was only seven and a half months old. Today, the child is a bubbly seven year old. No, nothing but nothing can keep her down. I believe Shrutika’s indomitable spirit is a reflection of a very positive and strong Life Force, something that will see her through think and thin – always with a smile on her cherubic face.

Case 3: Mental Retardation: Rukshana

Sometimes, I honestly feel my clinic is a halfway house for the damned. Harsh words like these come to mind when I look at the utter despair on the faces of parents with seriously challenged children and wonder what could have gone so wrong.

But ours not to question why. It is the homeopath’s duty to only understand, assess and treat with zest and perhaps even a prayer. These were the thoughts that ran through my head when Rukshana, her mother and her sisters walked into my clinic ten years ago. The case is so stark that I can still picture the girl as if I had met her only yesterday.

Rukshana was mentally retarded – and so were her two sisters and four brothers. Yes, every single one of the seven siblings was mentally challenged, to varying degrees. Two of her brothers had died and the three that survived were so unstable that they sometimes had to be put in restraints.

But back to Rukshana. The teenager’s salient symptoms were: childish and regressive behaviour and constant inappropriate giggling. She would keep lifting her hand to her mouth and giggle at nothing in particular. Her sisters behaved in a similar manner and would also get angry.

I treated only Rukshana. A few weeks later, the teenager developed the classic cold and cough associated with the homeopathic Healing Crisis. This is a stage where the immune system starts responding to the homeopathic remedy and begins to fight disease. One of the first developments is the classic ‘homeopathic cold and cough’, where the body begins to eliminate toxins produced by disease. This is a definite indicator that the practitioner has administered the right remedy and that the patient is on a healing path. The Healing Crisis is also associated with the other organs of elimination such as the skin and bowels.

Three months into treatment and Rukshana’s peculiar behaviour vanished. She no longer behaved childishly or laughed inappropriately. In fact, the young lady had progressed to a stage where her parents had even got her married!

Cheers to happy endings!

Re-awaken the healer in you…

- Dr Anita Salunkhe, MD

MindHeal Homeopathy is an ISO-certified clinic based in Chembur, Mumbai. To find out more about The MindHeal Way, call: 022-25230530 / +91-9930363981. Or write to us at crm@mindheal.com Website: http://www.mindheal.org/. We’ll be happy to answer all your queries.

Autism: Louder Than Words

It starts with the subtlest signs… a suspicion that’s usually pushed into the subconscious for fear of facing a devastating truth. Many, many months on, crossed fingers and even prayers don’t seem to work as vague symptoms turn into a definite pattern that confirms a painful reality. It’s a moment of truth parents of 2 in every 1,000 children face every year, globally, when they are forced to verbalise what they were afraid to admit all along – the A-word.

Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder that continues to baffle medical science even today, although there is a general consensus that it is broadly the result of ‘faulty signalling’ in the brain. In other words, in autistic children, there appears to be a dysfunction in the chemicals and neural pathways that help different areas of the brain communicate with each other.

This faulty signalling results in the classic symptoms of autism: Withdrawal, bursts of aggression, inability to communicate and socialise, repetitive behaviour, hypersensitivity to stimuli such as touch and light, and a host of physical deficiencies.

It is a heart-rending experience to watch an autistic child, and the only way I can describe what they are experiencing is a feeling of being trapped.

Autistic children are prisoners of their brain – with no way out. What we label as ‘sudden and violent outbursts’ are nothing but an expression of unbearable frustration at being unable to express their thoughts and feelings or convey what they want. Try as they might, the words just won’t come… they just won’t! When frustration boils over, a ‘violent outburst’ follows. What we call ‘obstinacy’ is thus nothing but an expression of utter helplessness. An autistic child cannot understand why adults don’t understand them!

According to medical research, autism has a strong genetic component, which suggests that autistic children are born autistic or with an autistic predisposition. However, it is not quite clear whether this applies to all autistic children, as researchers have linked other, external factors to this disorder: overload of vaccines and / or antibiotics and steroids, and exposure to harmful chemicals. This implies that some children are born with an autistic predisposition and external factors precipitate the onset of the disorder.

Classical homeopathy is not inconsistent with the medical view although the interpretation is vastly different. Here’s where the twain diverge: whereas conventional medicine is unable to treat autism, homeopathy can bring about considerable improvement and, on occasion, bring an autistic child to a state of being where they approximate normalcy.

Caring for an autistic child is emotionally and financially exhausting. Which parent hasn’t done the rounds of speech, neuro-developmental and behaviour therapists? (Many, as at the behest of misguided physicians, even approach psychiatrists.) This course can, to some extent, bring about improvement in the child but progress is, at best, minimal and / temporary. Allopathic drugs cannot reverse the genetic or neurological processes that cause this disorder; they only ‘control’ and ‘manage’ the child’s behaviour 9as they do all disease).

Speechless!

Unfortunately, homeopathy is rarely chosen as the preferred remedy for autism. Yet, it is the best form of treatment for ASD. Am I saying that homeopathy can work miracles? Well, take a look at 4-year-old Sami Khan, who was diagnosed as autistic at the age of one and a half.

Just 2 months after I began to treat Sami, he began to speak a few words; he began to sing; he had established eye contact; and his destructive bouts had ceased.

Oct 11, 2001: Sami is brought to MindHeal. He shows no signs of speech and is given to extremely violent outbursts. He screams when hungry, and cries and rolls on the floor when he doesn’t get his way. Sometimes, he is downright destructive, throwing things, hitting out at people around him, pulling their hair and even biting them. In other words, his behaviour is often uncontrollable. (‘According to classical homeopathy, his behaviour is ‘out of control’, which is typical of the Syphilitic Miasm.)

At times, Sami also ‘goes missing’, wandering aimlessly in the neighbourhood if unsupervised. He writes on the walls at home and refuses to play with other children. But he loves watching television and often hums along with a song playing on TV.

Sami’s parents have taken him to doctors at one of Mumbai’s best hospitals, Bombay Hospital. They are advised to get the child psychiatric treatment and speech therapy. Doctors also prescribe strong medicines to keep Sami’s destructive behaviour under control.

Dec 3, 2001: Sami is calm and composed. He begins talking. And he establishes eye contact.

In the course of 10 months, Sami is admitted to school, a red-letter day for any parent, more so for Sami’s!

Homeopathy & Autism

In the context of homeopathy, autism is a disorder which indicates that the child is born into the last of the Three Miasms. The Third Miasm (Syphilis) is the destructive or most severe stage of disease, any disease. When you fall sick, you usually transition from the First to the Second and / or the Third Miasm, whereas autistic children are born directly into the Third (Syphilitic) Miasm. This is what makes treating autism so challenging. Case Taking is especially difficult as autistic children cannot communicate. So there is little to go by except the child’s behaviour and the parents’ history.

Click here for Sami's Case Analysis

Mom’s The Word

Mother’s History: Thus, diagnosing autism rests largely on the parents’ history, especially the mother’s history. Following are the aspects to focus on:

1. Mother’s emotional, psychological and mental balance

2. History of miscarriage

3. Cesarean delivery: (An unnatural form of delivery where the infant is abruptly ‘ripped’ from the womb.)

4. Hormonal treatment during pregnancy

5. Antibiotics to treat infections during pregnancy

This does not mean that every pregnant mother who fulfils one or more of these criteria will bear an autistic child. But the reverse is usually true. That is, autistic children are most likely to have mothers who would check off one or more of these criteria.

Dad’s The Word

Father’s History: There’s tons of literature on the all-important role of a pregnant mother and her influence – how she feels and what she does – on the growing foetus. So you can’t blame dads for feeling left out! But ‘pregnant dads’ are not off the hook. Read on…

When it comes to all birth-related and genetically loaded disorders (such as autism, hydrocephaly, mental retardation and muscular dystrophy), the parents’ history is crucial in determining whether the child develops the disorder or not, and its expression.

What do I mean by ‘parents’ history’? Unlike conventional medicine, which views ‘history’ as ‘prevalence of a specific disorder in the parents and in the extended family’, homeopathy goes much, much deeper.

When it comes to the mother’s history, points 2 – 5 (above) need no explanation. It is point 1 that provides the key to diagnosing and prescribing. So, does point 1 apply to the mother or father when it comes to figuring out these all-important clues?

In either case, the mental and emotional state of the parent before and / or during conception (in the case of the mother, during pregnancy as well) is critical to the disease picture in the child.

Generally, it is the mother’s history that is important. The father’s mental and emotional state is relevant only when the child’s genetics closely resemble the father’s genetics. Clues to this can be found in a strong physical resemblance between child and father and / or when the nature and temperament of father and child are similar.

In Sami’s case, I found that the child’s mother felt neglected by her husband, who didn’t speak to her for almost her entire pregnancy. As a result, she indulged in attention-seeking behaviour including tantrums, tearing at her clothes and even biting and injuring herself. Note how her emotional state and even her behaviour perfectly mirror Sami’s autistic expression.

Here’s a case where the autistic child’s genetics matched those of his father. Shamik bore an uncanny physical resemblance to his dad. Both were lean, and their facial features and tapering chins indicated their especially sensitive nature. Apart from this, they were both extremely quiet, withdrawn and depressed.

GENETICALLY SIMILAR: Young Shamik and his dad

When I took the father’s history, I found that he was struggling with serious emotional issues before and during his wife’s pregnancy, and his emotional reaction to these issues perfectly mirrored Shamik’s autistic behaviour!

The ‘Fever Effect’

Four years ago, researchers from the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore in the US discovered an intriguing phenomenon – intriguing to the world of medicine and homeopathy.

They discovered that when autistic children developed a fever, they showed significant improvement, sometimes dramatic improvement, in speech, language, attention span, eye contact and the ability to communicate. The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, were the result of a study on 80 autistic children aged 2 to 18 and whose behaviour was rated by their parents, before, during andafter an episode of fever. In 80 per cent of the children, symptoms of autism subsided and even disappeared during the fever but re-appeared after the fever subsided.

Unable to explain this at the physiological level, the researchers made the following observations: "The results of this study are important because they show us that the autistic brain is plastic or capable of altering current connections and forming new ones in response to different experiences or conditions," said Andrew Zimmerman, a senior researcher on the project.

According to Dr Gary Goldstein, President and CEO of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, "Pilot research studies such as this provide clues about the underlying metabolic changes in the brain that may prove to be targets for novel autism therapies." 

I am quoting this research study as it highlights a stunning parallel between the homeopathic approach to autism and these findings in the realm of conventional medicine.

Again, although conventional medicine has found no cure for this disorder, homeopathy has been treating it with considerable success for decades. Indeed homeopaths have long since observed that autistic children show significant behavioural improvement when they develop a fever.

The objective of homeopathy is to return a sick individual from the Syphilitic or Sycotic (Third and Second Miasm) to Psora (First Miasm). The Psoric Miasm is typified by ‘inflammation’ and fever. A return to Psora is thus always typified by ‘inflammatory’ symptoms such as a runny nose, cough, skin eruptions and high temperature.’ This is a sign that the mind and body are expelling toxins from the patient’s system in the process of rooting out disease. It is also a sign that the patient is returning to the Psoric state.

The italisised quotes 9above) made by the researchers are of special interest to homeopaths. One, that “the autistic brain is plastic” or changeable and that autism is a reversible disease. And two, that fever causes fundamental, if temporary, metabolic changes in the brain.

While treating all disease, the fundamental aim of the homeopath is to reconfigure and fine-tune the patient’s very metabolism and immune system. It works just the same with autism. A skilled homeopath cures by rebalancing the constitutional nature of an individual to correct (faulty) genetic expression. 

Could conventional medicine have stumbled upon what homeopaths have known for 200 years? Could homeopaths and medical doctors be speaking the same language? I believe this is true. It’s how we use and practise this knowledge that makes the crucial difference between ‘cure’ and ‘managing disease’.

Next: In Part II of this post, we will continue to explore pathological, genetically linked disorders

Re-awaken the healer in you…

- Dr Anita Salunkhe, MD

MindHeal Homeopathy is an ISO-certified clinic based in Chembur, Mumbai. To find out more about The MindHeal Way, call: 022-25230530 / +91-9930363981. Or write to us at crm@mindheal.com Website: www.mindheal.org. We’ll be happy to answer all your queries.