Antidote Question

Do nothing without your homoeopath's advice and consent. It is very important that you do not take your treatment into your own hands without understanding all the principles and guidelines of case management and prescribing.

I would direct the question to your homoeopath, and see if they wish to adjust dosage based on that information (if they don't already have it).

You won't be able to unless you study all the principles behind case management. It takes years to get a good grasp of homoeopathy. That is why you should have a qualified homoeopath taking your case and then guiding your progress.

Taking doses without knowing or understanding why you are taking them, if you should be taking them, is extremely risky.

Stumbling on to a good remedy at this stage after trying so many incorrect ones doesn't really bode well for future treatment. How will you know when to repeat, when to change potencies, when to move to a new remedy, when to try a complementary medicine, when to reduce your allopathic meds, how long to wait, how to react to symptoms that may be provoked by a medicine? We have a variety of principles to guide us through case management - Direction of Cure, Hierarchy of Symptoms, Healing Crisis, Quieting of Miasms, Constitutional improvement amongst others.

Basic rule for redosing (although there are many individual situations that will call for something different) is to wait until the symptoms direct you to do so.

You redose when:

1. the symptoms markedly relapse
2. curative movement clearly stops without any healing crisis or change of symptoms
3. an old state reappears, does not resolve within a reasonable amount of time, and the symptoms still match the original remedy

You change potencies when:

1. repeating the remedy does not reverse a relapse AND the symptoms have not changed OR they are still covered by the same remedy
2. the main focus of the disturbance in the person's health changes position (potency matches how the symptoms manifest in the patient)
3. repeating the remedy does not move the case forward after it has stalled for a reasonable amount of time, AND the symptoms are still found within the same remedy
4. the patient's vital energy changes - the higher the vital energy the higher the potency, and visa versa (potency matches the intensity of the vital disturbance)

You change the remedy when:

1. the symptoms clearly change alongside the general state of the patient, such that the same remedy no longer covers it
2. some event or trauma occurs which causes a new state to appear (general condition affecting the whole person)
3. a genuine acute disease appears and again the symptoms are no longer found in the remedy
4. part of the case has improved but part has not - either it is worse or it is unchanged (possible need for complementary)
5. new symptoms have appeared at a deeper level/in more important organs (disease has been suppressed)
6. improvement appeared, perhaps even dramatically, without any aggravation and after a short while the symptoms returned worse than before

You will know you have antidoted, because the case will fall apart. If that doesn't happen, you shouldn't react as if it has. I know that may sound obvious, but it is surprising how tangled up people can get in the complexities of homoeopathic prescribing, that sometimes the simple answers can be missed as well.

Another suggestion on how to approach prescribing with homoeopathy - always use caution, tread carefully and slowly, and ALWAYS wait rather than act if you are unsure.