Suppression or cure?

Imagine you have a painful rash. You take a painkiller to stop the pain, but you know that as soon as the effects of the pill wear off, the pain will return. Painkillers can temporarily hide pain and alleviate suffering but they can’t heal the rash. Treat the cause (the rash) and the effects (the pain) will naturally subside.

The goal of pharmaceutical drugs is the reduction of symptoms and alleviation of suffering. This may sound like a noble goal but in the long term it can unintentionally create more suffering.

Noriko for example, suffered from eczema and was prescribed Mometasone Cream. She applied the cream for about a month until the eczema faded away. Noriko and her dermatologist regarded the treatment as a success.

If you are in a hurry and need to quickly clean a room you might hurriedly sweep the dirt under the rug and hide the rubbish in the cupboard. The room might look the clean to your guest but you know it isn’t really clean. Was Noriko’s treatment really a success or did the dermatologist simply sweep her symptoms under a rug?

Four years later Noriko, still eczema free started having breathing difficulties. For Noriko there was no relation between her eczema and her breathing difficulties – they were two completely separate illnesses. On her sister’s advice she decided to consult a homeopathic physician.

The concept of suppressing symptoms is well understood in psychology. When a person suppresses an emotion, the emotional turmoil gets pushed deeper, causing the person to explode at some future point in time, often at people who had nothing to do with the original problem.

While most people are familiar the suppression of emotions, few are familiar the suppression of physical symptoms. A physician, who focuses solely on the symptoms while paying little attention to the patient as a whole, is very likely to suppress those symptoms, driving them deeper into the person.

The Homeopathic physician treating Noriko understood that the mometasone cream Noriko used did not cure her eczema; it simply drove the symptoms into her lungs. Suppressed eczema often manifests as allergies or asthma.

Homeopathic treatment was begun, and over the first two months Noriko’s breathing difficulties lessened and her overall health improved. On the third month of treatment her eczema reappeared! The reappearance of a past illness along with a concurrent improvement in overall wellbeing is recognized by homeopaths as a reliable sign of deep healing. This verified the claim that the mometasone cream had suppressed, rather than healed her eczema.

It was explained to Noriko that it was important for her to avoid using mometasone cream during treatment, as this would stall her progress and cause a recurrence of her breathing problems.

Noriko understood this and after several months of treatment her skin healed completely. In addition, she felt younger and more energetic than she had in years.