Is AIDS A Point Of No Return?

There is nothing quite as life-altering as being told you don't have long to live. It’s impossible to imagine what that must be like.

Over the years, I’ve felt the pain and suffering of thousands of patients but I have to say that looking at someone suffering from AIDS is the most soul-stirring. Kunal Joshi told me what it felt like.

(Watch the full video below)

I will never forget his words… “What is the point living? Why should I trouble others for months and months?”

Kunal’s haunted and hunted look, and his empty eyes said it all. His body was in the process of breaking down. It had been four years already. But even more alarming, his Mind had also given up. And when the Mind gives up, the body will necessarily follow suit.

That is the sad reality of patients suffering from HIV and AIDS. Kunal’s was a case of full-blown AIDS. What can be worse than a body attacking itself? Why would the human body wage a war against itself when self-preservation is the very driving force of life? What makes the human body self-destruct?

The answer lies in the extremely subtle and complex interplay between Mind and body. On the physical level, Kunal’s condition actually has very little to do with the HIV virus, or for that matter, any virus. At the very centre of our health and well-being, both physical and mental, is the immune system.

For most people, the immune system is something that is weak when we are unwell. And when our “immunity builds up”, we begin to recover. Although that is correct, it is wrong to believe that the sole purpose of the immune system is to “keep illness at bay and to fight infection”. In fact, the mechanical view of the human body perpetuated by conventional medicine leads some to erroneously believe that illness weakens our immunity when it is actually the other way around!

Apart from fending off infections and devouring pathogens that invade our body, the immune system plays a vital role in keeping us alive. That is because its primary function is to defend. If we had no defences, we would not be alive and ticking.

At any given moment, every human being is defending at two parallel levels – physical and mental. But what are we constantly defending against? At the physical level, the immune system battles pathogens and chemicals such as toxins that make us sick. It mops up harmful substances in the bloodstream, kills potent microorganisms, transports toxins to the liver to be neutralised before elimination, and generally keeps our organs healthy. It essentially defends against biological breakdown.

Just like the body, at the mental level too – and this relevant in the homeopathic context – the Mind is constantly and reflexively defending. And, believe it or not, our psychological and mental defences too depend on how our immune system behaves and its state of health.

But why is the mind constantly in defensive mode? This may seem like an extreme statement but, indeed, we build our perception of the world and live our lives as a reaction to perceived threats – loss of love, financial insecurity, feeling unwanted, feelings of inadequacy, abuse and trauma, fear of losing respect, etc – that we harbour deep in our subconscious minds. When the mind and body sense a vulnerability, there is an instinctive and innate need to defend. It is the law of survival.

We each one of us builds elaborate mental defences, weaves intricate thought processes and designs personality systems to protect ourselves against our core sensitivities. Since most of our psychological injuries and weaknesses take root in infancy and early childhood, they are largely subconscious but they stay with us for the rest of our lives.

It is these core issues and the unique way in which each individual experiences them that I call Key Sensitivity. The next step for the homeopath to discover how exactly the patient has defended their Key Sensitivities.

To link this to our material state… As is the case with pathogens, our brain interprets emotional complexes too as ‘threats’ and calls upon our immune system to start ‘defending’. Thus, physical as well as emotional defences draw on our immune capabilities. And since our key and core issues persist throughout our lives, imagine the toll they take on the immune system.

It is the immune system, along with its complex interaction with the brain, that mediates between Mind and body. It is, in fact, where Mind and body neurologically and biochemically intersect. Thus, it is not only our physical state but our underlying emotional and mental health that depend on our immune system.

The quest of the homeopath is to find the right remedy for each patient, and this right remedy does nothing but optimise the patient’s immune system – because a healthy and strong immune system keeps the mind healthy. For the layperson reading this blog, make no mistake, it is not possible to optimise and strengthen your immunity via chemical drugs, no matter how cleverly they are marketed. And food supplements and vitamins can go only so far. But imagine your mind and body being in a state of optimal health, and then living and eating healthy. Isn’t that an enviable place to be? Homeopathy not only cures disease; it also restores the balance within mind and body and helps you be the healthiest person you can be.

But what is it like to have no hope of living and wait helplessly for death to come a-calling? Millions of people around the world are routinely led to believe by conventional medicine that the HIV virus is a killer. Am I saying it is not?

AIDS Case: Kunal Joshi

The initial clips are in Marathi but following this, the patient narrates his case in English. Homeopaths can click here for the Case Analysis

Kunal was a 36-year-old who was diagnosed with AIDS four years before he came to my clinic. He was an ambitious man, who had always dreamt of doing something worthwhile with his life. He wanted to “become someone” (his Key Sensitivity) and enjoy a secure social standing.

Kunal was unable to fulfil his deep-seated need to “become someone”. The best he could do was land a modest job in a telecom company. Adding insult to (perceived) injury was his wife’s constant nagging. She said he could have done much better with his career. She also claimed he didn’t look after the family as he should have nor did he care for her and their children enough. His wife made Kunal feel like failure, which only built on his feelings of inadequacy.

All this gnawed away at Kunal, day after agonising day, weakening his immune system over the years. He finally contracted the HIV virus, presumably from sexual encounters outside his marriage.

When Kunal came to my clinic, his nervous system was a wreck. He could barely speak, he couldn’t walk properly, his vision had diminished greatly, and he did not have full bladder and bowel control. Kunal was taking as many as 17 different drugs but he still grew weaker. The side-effects of these drugs were phenomenal. Worse, Kunal had hidden his condition at work and from people at large. But he lost his job anyway as he was too sick to continue.

Despite his attempts to conceal his condition, there was always a possibility that people would get to know the truth. Apart from being a “failure in life” and as a “husband and father”, he now faced possible social stigma and rejection. This was the third and final blow in an area of Key Sensitivity.

I treated Kunal for 8 months, and the improvement in his health was dramatic. All the difficulties mentioned above had reversed themselves. His health improved to the point where he was able to work again. The last time we spoke, Kunal said he had landed a new job and was excited about getting back to leading a “normal life”.

Note: There was a point during treatment, when Kunal suffered extreme skin eruptions. This was an excellent sign as the toxins in his body – imagine the toxic build-up in an AIDS patient in addition to the by-products of the allopathic medication – were expelling themselves from his system. This is called the Healing Crisis, sometimes dubbed as “getting worse before you get better”.

The skin eruptions were so severe that the blisters burst, his skin cracked and Kunal bled. Usually, skin eruptions that occur during a healing crisis do not break the surface but Kunal was in an extremely destructive or Syphilitic stage when he came to me. His Miasm had not yet reversed to Sycosis or Psora when the boils and blisters appeared.

But the key question remains: Why had Kunal come to a point where his body was unable to defend itself any more? Note: This is not only the case with AIDS but happens with people who contract any serious illness (unless, of course, the body is under sustained chemical or toxic assault or you live in a radiation zone, which eventually will overwhelm the immune system).

Kunal’s downslide began some time before he fell sick. The cumulative effect of feeling like a failure finally took its toll till Kunal’s immune system could defend him no more. His Mind had unwittingly chipped away at his immune system, ironically causing both Mind had to cave in.

Here are some fingertip facts:

• The Mind is much more powerful than we realise
• All illness begins in the Mind
• We can use the Mind to reverse illness and restore us to good health
• Conventional medicine is not the last word on your state of health

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.

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.

Gunk In The Plumbing

It’s odd how when you walk into a room of relative strangers and you’re introduced as a homeopath, all conversational roads lead to homeopathy. It happened to me for the nth time recently, at a social gathering where a peppy young lady said, “Tell me, Doctor, why does someone under homeopathic treatment become worse before getting better?”

The young lady obviously didn’t realise that her seemingly benign conversation opener was actually the key to what homeopaths call the “healing crisis”. Since we have discussed in previous posts why homeopathy is a holistic system of medicine, let’s focus here on the healing crisis per se.

If you’ve been treated by a homeopath before, you may have noticed that soon after treatment begins, chest congestion, skin allergies and joint pain ‘mysteriously’ and temporarily show up. As I reassure Harpreet Kaur in the video that follows, this is an EXCELLENT sign! It indicates that the body has begun to fix itself.

Journey of Disease (Dur: 2.31)

Turning The Key
Homeopathic remedies begin by ‘turning the key’ and unlocking the disease process that has either caused your first major illness or, as the case may be, yet another physiological breakdown in a series of illnesses.

When you unlock the disease process, the gunk or toxins in the system begins to clear out. It’s like unclogging blocked plumbing. A body that has been functioning below par or organs that have been malfunctioning or only partially functioning accumulate plenty of cellular debris over the years. They overproduce or underproduce chemicals, they are constantly compensating for other organs, they shrink or swell, and they get stressed and damaged as they bravely keep trying to give of their best despite the odds.

Homeopathic remedies, mild as they are, first shake up your system on the path to good health. They change and correct your faulty metabolism at the molecular level, thus RELEASING toxic chemicals and energy that are locked into disease patterns which set in a long time ago.

Unclogging Debris

After “loosening the gunk”, the body needs to eliminate the cellular debris and it looks to the organs of elimination to achieve this. This toxic debris and unblocked energy must be allowed to leave the system naturally for healing to be permanent and complete.

Inflammation in the form of fever, chest congestion (mucous discharge leading to a cough and cold) and joint pain are typical signs of a healing crisis, a sign that your body is trying to cleanse itself. Acidity is also a common sign of such “chimney sweeping”. After all, aren’t the stomach and small intestine the very seat of our metabolic gravity?

The skin, the largest organ we have, as well as the bowels are the obvious organs of elimination. Hence, toxins that no longer need to be stored find a way out through these organs and give rise to temporary rashes, boils, pustules, allergies and bowel disturbances. After each round of cleansing, rest assured you advance to a higher level of health. Thus, while the road to health and vitality is exhilarating, it is initially marked by short and sharp dips in the road.

But it’s not only about clearing away all that is dead and diseased. When your body is truly healing, it also RETRACES the path it had taken to deterioration. This means old symptoms, long since suppressed, will invariably flare up.

What this simply means is that the body is re-starting a fight it once gave up – a battle against microbes, toxic chemicals, addictive substances and other harmful influences that left it diseased. Emotional trauma, which is stored as cellular trauma, is another powerful cause of disease and has more to do with illness than most people realise.

Dark Secrets

Though your body gave up the struggle a while ago, these pathogens, harmful chemicals and traumatic memories continued to impact your body, progressively weakening your organs, muscles, tissues, glands, and metabolic and immunological processes. This is the root of chronic disease.
Now revitalised through homeopathy, the battle resumes and inflammation will result.

Supporting the body with appropriate nutrition, rest and cleansing will allow the healing process to run its natural course. Not to mention that your immune system is also strengthened, eventually leaving you permanently disease-free. Alternatively, if this process is interrupted by allopathic drugs, the vicious cycle of suppression resumes and inhibits the healing process.

Hence, periodic flare-ups in chronic illnesses are nothing but a sign that the body is feeling strong enough, albeit briefly, to resume its struggle and try and heal itself. Thus, contrary to what most people believe, periodic flare-ups are not a sign of disease but of healing!

Multiplying Disease
At this juncture, it is pertinent to note that the healing crisis is as far as you can get from the approach that drug medicine takes. They are polar opposites.

And there’s a huge price to pay for conventional medicine’s seemingly efficient approach to curing ailments. Allopathic drugs invariably work by suppressing, controlling, managing and regulating the symptoms of disease because conventional medicine is founded on the myth that the removal of symptoms is the same as curing disease. Allopathy assumes that the symptom IS the disease.

Disease Is Multi-Layered

Drug medicine therefore does not remove the DISEASE PROCESS, which continues to rage, gradually chipping away at your body till it can no longer defend itself. Years of suppression though painkillers and antibiotics, not to mention bad nutritional habits and unhealthy lifestyles lead to toxic overload.

Here’s something to think about for anyone who regularly takes multiple types of medication for MULTIPLE ailments. (I cannot emphasise this enough) The fact is that all your ailments arise from the SAME disease process which, in fact, manifests as a range of symptoms. So you don’t really suffer from asthma, arthritis and constipation – you suffer from ONE SINGLE disease process, whose destructive force has damaged your lungs, joints and bowels respectively.

When resorting to conventional drugs, you’re actually suppressing one set of symptoms and driving the disease process deeper. The disease is thus bound to show up elsewhere, even years later, as a more serious ailment. In a double-whammy, the medication you take to relieve, say painful gout (thus inhibiting the formation of uric acid) could encourage the formation of kidney stones at a later stage.

Thus “fixing your body” (like it’s a broken blender!) and “healing” are like chalk and cheese. It is vital to make this distinction to understand how homeopathy works.

How Homeopathy Works (Dur: 1:27)

Homeopathic remedies are aimed at correcting dysfunctional metabolism and by unlocking cellular trauma, releasing blocked energy. They rebalance your biochemistry, realign and fine-tune your physiological processes so that disease is rooted out at its source.

Once your metabolism is rebalanced, ALL your ailments will disappear. Again, unlike allopathy, homeopathy also REVITALISES the individual, leaving you energised, rested, stronger and disease-resistant in general. Where else do you get a bonus like that?

Innate Intelligence

The healing process is far from random and is guided by an inner intelligence. There is NOTHING RANDOM about the way your mind and body functions. (I am deliberately using the singular for we are but one whole entity of mind, body and spirit) It follows a superior logic that for the most part is unconscious in most of us. Yet it’s always there – to use or abuse as we may choose.

Thus, just as every minute physiological and metabolic process follows an innate logic, so does the healing process. This process was first described by Constantine Hering who gave us the Laws of Cure.

Laws Of Cure

These laws are like a rudder, guiding the classical homeopathy while tracing the journey to healing, which follows a very specific direction.

Inside-Out: Healing starts at the very deepest level – the mental and emotional levels and the body’s vital organs. From here, it progresses to the skin and the extremities. It also takes place first in more vital organs and proceeds to less vital organs – from the interior of the body towards the skin. (In our video, young Meghna Masurkar’s chest-to-skin or asthma-to-vitiligo progression)

Rewind: Symptoms disappear in the reverse order of their chronological appearance.

Top-Down: Healing also begins from upper to lower parts of the body. (Vandana Kapoor’s hand-to knee progression)

Many patients, most of them schooled in allopathy and used to its quick-fix effects, often ask me how soon they can “expect results”. Well, if the treatment course extends over a longer period than the wham-bam allopathic approach, tangible “results” usually begin to show within days or a week of starting on homeopathy.

And for my readers who are still iffy about choosing this wonderful healing way, there’s no better endorsement from Vandana Kapoor, who came to me with complaints of depression and recurring nightmares as she tried to battle a controlling husband.

It's been more than six years but I still remember what the young lady had said:

(This is the concluding part of my two-part series on disease and healing, The MindHeal Way)

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 crm@mindheal.com. Website: www.mindheal.org. We’ll be happy to answer all your queries.