Homeopathy is an alternative form of medicine that has been used for thousands of years to treat everything from life threatening illnesses to the common cold.  While many people used to modern medicine may find it suspicious, it is still one of the most used types of medical treatment worldwide and is steadily gaining popularity in the western world.

Homeopathic medicine is based on three basic principles.  The biggest principle of homeopathy is that like treats like.  Instead of treating based on the disease doctors think you have, treatment is done based on the symptoms you know you have.  The second principle is that there is only one treatment, not two or even ten like a traditional doctor might give you.  The third principle is that everything is given in extremely small doses.

To treat yourself homeopathically, you must figure out all the symptoms.  Once you know your symptoms, you find a substance that causes the exact same set of symptoms and take a small amount of it.  Because you are only taking a very small amount, the substance not only doesn’t harm you, it’s said to cure you, generally long term or even permanently. 

When most people hear about homeopathy, their initial reaction is “no way!”  Treating symptoms with something that causes your symptoms seems totally counterintuitive, but it’s a concept that’s used in modern medicine as well as more ancient cures.  Shots commonly used to treat allergies contain a small amount of whatever you’re allergic to.  Many vaccines contain a small amount of the disease they’re designed to protect against. 

While homeopathic medicine is not only considered effective, it has many benefits over modern medicine.  Like many other natural medical treatments, most homeopathic remedies are totally natural.  While this doesn’t necessarily make them safe, these remedies tend to cause fewer side effects, have little drug interactions, and are generally better for your overall health.

Homeopathic medications are also considered better for your body because they work with it. Many modern medicines work to suppress symptoms like fever or coughing. These symptoms are the body’s natural ways to get rid of disease.  Instead of suppressing symptoms, homeopathic medicine works to cure the problem itself while addressing the specific symptoms.

When the right treatment is found, homeopathy is considered very effective.  The big problem is that just like there are thousands of prescriptions and over the counter drugs, there are also thousands of homeopathic remedies as well.  And if you don’t pick exactly the right one, it won’t work. 

While you can buy homeopathic remedies over the counter, just like herbal and other alternative medicines, that doesn’t mean it’s 100% safe to treat yourself.  If you’re serious about this treatment you should speak to a doctor who has experience in alternative medicine or even see a specialist in the area.

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The best way to take care of colds is to prevent them with good nutrition and hand washing. But despite our best efforts, all kids will come down with a cold occasionally.

The advantages of natural remedies are, among other things, that they are generally safer than allopathic remedies, less expensive and easier to administer. Here are some of the more common ways to help ease your child’s colds.

If your child has a fever, fight the urge to attempt to bring down his temperature. Fever is quite helpful at limiting the course of an illness. Generally after a “good fever”, kids get better quickly. Unless your child is listless and not responding to you normally, he’s probably fine. Better to assist his body’s natural attempts to heal itself. Allow your child to rest and avoid overstimulating him with too much TV or electronic media. Read to him, play card games and just hold him as much as possible. Allow the chores and other things to wait as much as possible.

If your child has a sore throat, ease it with warm salt water gargles. Honey lemon tea is also nice. Just squeeze a little fresh lemon juice into a mug of warm/hot water and a teaspoon of honey. Homemade chicken broth is also very nice and serves to keep your child hydrated and nourished as well.

Avoid giving your child decongestants and antihistamines when he has a cold. These have been proven to have little effect on colds, and may even be harmful.

Using acupressure may ease the symptoms of a cold and your child may also enjoy it. Consult a guidebook on acupressure and follow suggestions for targeting the bladder, large intestine and lung pressure points.

Vitamin C, Echinacea and Goldenseal are all traditional remedies for colds. Give your child weight and age appropriate doses of these remedies short term to boost his body’s efforts to heal.

If your child has trouble breathing, try a cool mist humidifier. Be sure to keep it scrupulously clean.

Eliminate sugars as much as possible when your child is ill. The same holds true for junk foods. Supporting his body with good nutrition is very important at this time. Fresh vegetable juices, homemade soups and other easy to digest foods that provide hydration should be emphasized.

The number of children that are diagnosed each year with autism continues to grow. Each child diagnosed is different from the next and no one is ever quite sure what causes autism as each case appears differently. As of now, there is no cure, but as the research continues several autistic families are finding natural ways to improve the symptoms.

There are a few ways you can improve symptoms of autism naturally, meaning without drugs. The diet is the first and easiest way to start. You can approach this by going the dietary supplement way or the by getting rid of certain foods. For some families success has been gained by taking out wheat or other gluten products out of a diet. This would include breads, some kinds of oils such as soybean and canola, and other flours. With a growing concern for the foods we all put into our bodies there are several resources available for you to use in gluten free cooking. You could try a site such as www.glutenfreecookingschool.com

Another food that families find success with, by getting rid of that is, is dairy products. Milks, cheeses, yogurts, etc. Of course by taking out two very large parts of a regular diet you should probably consult a nutritionist to make sure you are still giving your child everything he/ she needs that would be in the products you are getting rid of. To know exactly what foods are going to make a difference in their diet you will have to take the time to experiment, but there are many great alternatives that you can find to most dairy and gluten products, just check out your local grocery store that has an organic/ natural/ gluten free section.

If their dietary intake doesn’t make a difference in symptoms you can try to add some nutrients to their diets. Because some nutrients may not exist in the food they are currently receiving, or because they have a poor absorption of the nutrients this could make a huge difference in their behavior. Two of the best nutrients found to improve autism symptoms are vitamin B6 and magnesium. In proven studies (http://www.autism.com/treatable/form34qr.htm), it is shown that both dietary supplements and different diets have made huge changes in autism better than most drugs. This is great news because it means that you have a better chance of improving your child’s quality of life by using their diet than a prescription pad.

Everyone has their own opinion on the treatments to use for autism. If you do not agree with your doctor or do not feel that your child is being taken care of the right way, you should consult someone else for a second opinion.

Not all autistic children need medication and for many the symptoms can improve with other vitamins, nutrients and diets. The down side is it takes a bit longer to go through and find something that works out of all the available options for diet and supplements.

By researching the symptoms your child shows you may be able to reduce this time and get better results faster, you can also get help from your local support group or online forum, as these too may decrease the amount of time you need to spend doing trial and error.  It can take a lot of time to see significant improvements, but the earlier you start, the better your chances, and in the end it will be well worth it.

Sometimes we get sick, and sometimes it’s our kids that get sick, either way it is difficult enough to take care of ourselves and the kids without having to run to the doctors and the pharmacy on top of it. Conventional medicines also have many unpleasant side effects and work to mask symptoms rather than heal. With that in mind, it might be a good idea to turn to our kitchens first to see what we can do for ourselves when we are feeling under the weather.

One item that most kitchen pantries have is honey. Raw or natural honey is best and it is great for your health. You can use it for coughs, infertility, allergies, and other many other ailments. In fact many in the natural remedy field recommend using honey everyday as a supplement to your diet; it helps your immune system and keeps you well. There is nothing better than a little preventive medicine right?

Apple cider vinegar is good for many sicknesses and illnesses. If you are sick it is helpful to restore your ph balance, and it helps your immune system. You will also want to add this to your everyday diet as it is helpful in several ways to your body. Make sure you buy organic apple cider vinegar to get the most benefits out of your purchase.

Another common ailment is constipation, and it can be quite painful and uncomfortable. There are two ways you can work with constipation. You can purchase karo syrup and take a teaspoon of this, or you can drink some prune juice. The karo syrup is also used for infants that are constipated. Either of these methods will help adults who constipation. In the future drink a lot of water with the fiber you consume. Getting lots of fiber from green leafy veggies daily will help too.

For the little ones at home they often get diaper rashes. These can pop up from being in the diaper too long, being allergic to chemicals in disposable diapers, having too much juice, or their body’s disagreeing with what they have eaten.

In any of these cases a good home remedy to use is corn starch. Corn starch is much like powder but without the scent. It is very dry and helps keep the rash and any sores dry. It can begin to heal the baby’s skin in little to no time. The cost is nominal for the amount of times you can use it, and the comfort it brings to baby’s bottom and mommy’s ears.

There is a nice plant you can keep around your house for cuts and scrapes. It is called an Aloe plant and it is absolutely a great investment. When your child (or you) get cut all you have to do is break off a little piece of the end of the plant and use the oozing ointment on the cuts. It is also good for sun burn, as it is in most commercial products that treat sunburn.

Another home remedy you can use is for colds and flu. Fruits have a lot of vitamin C in them and this vitamin helps to get rid of these illnesses. Invest in a juicer and drink a lot of juice and eat a lot of fruits to decrease your time being sick.

There are several products we keep in our house that are perfect for home remedies, using these products will keep you at home and more comfortable during your illness.

It can be rather difficult to get kids to eat healthy foods these days. Healthy foods seem to be their least favorite and they would rather eat candy, cookies, ice cream, cakes, and all the other junk than sink their teeth into some good ole broccoli. It is even harder when society teaches them to eat foods not good for them. These societal lessons can be learned via television, commercials, school cafeterias, and even family events. So what can you do?

Fortunately there are some ways we can get them to increase the amount of healthy foods they eat without stressing the whole family. Some involve how we cook, some involve how we shop and some even involve how we eat, whichever the way, you can do it, and have your kids eating more vegetables and fruits.

One way is to make the foods taste good. They have many tasty competitors on the market so taste is important. There are a lot of ways you can do this without making them unhealthy. You can add cheese to a lot of foods to make them taste good. Most vegetables would be good with cheese, just melt a bit of cheese and pour it on top of the veggies. You can also add natural sweeteners to foods like raw honey or sucanat instead of using refined sugars. There are spices you can add to food too that do not have any MSG or salt in them. You have to read the ingredients carefully, but it will make the food you eat healthy and yummy.

You can also encourage them to eat fruits, especially their favorites. This isn’t usually too difficult to do because they are already sweet and/or sour and these are two tastes kids love. One thing you can do is switch up the fruits available to them. Get some apples and oranges one week, grapes and pears another week, and plums and peaches another week. By switching it up they are more apt to eat all of the fruits every week. Put them in a big bowl on the kitchen table or counter and make them accessible for snacks.

Another tactic that works is to eat healthy foods yourself. Like it or not we are our kid’s role models and if we want them to behave a certain way, we should behave that way as well. Whether it be foods we eat, things we say or the actions we take, they are going to learn from us. So, make sure you have healthy foods on your plate at meal time, and they see you eating them.

There is a lot to say about how you shop. The first thing to do is to not go when you are hungry or craving. When you do that you will fill the cart with everything possible, and most of it will taste really good, which could mean it is really bad for you.

Instead shop after dinner or another meal and try to shop around the perimeter of the grocery store to get fresh and healthy foods for your family. You might also try shopping a grocery store that offers a natural and organic area to shop for condiments, and boxed foods.

Last but not least check out some new and useful recipes. You can make honey pancakes, put chopped up broccoli in your macaroni and cheese and more. These are additional ways to make foods healthy even when they still taste good. Give it a shot and your kids will be eating healthy in no time.

So you want to raise a natural child. Let’s say you are in the preconception or early pregnancy stage of parenting. What are some of the best ways to get started on the natural path from the beginning?

It all starts with food It might sound obvious to say that the main reason people rely on medicine is poor health, yet to many people good health is a mystery and ill health seems to strike randomly. Almost eighty years ago a dentist name Dr. Weston Price traveled to various primitive people groups around the world searching for their secret to radiant health and near perfect teeth. The most striking and consistent thing he discovered was that as long as they were eating their native diets, they were healthy overall and had very little dental caries. But once they switched to the modern diet, which was high in refined flour and sugar, it didn’t take long for their teeth and health to suffer, and it got worse with each generation. Also interesting were the difficulties women on the newfangled diet had in childbirth. Today degenerative diseases run rampant, and a good argument can be made that our modern diet leaves much to be desired. Begin by educating yourself on what real healthy eating means, and start putting what you learn into practice no matter what age you and your children are.

Consider giving birth at home The way a child enters the world has profound implications on how the child develops. If you want your child to grow up natural, what better way than to welcome him into the world in the most natural way possible, in the comfort and privacy of your own home? In addition to the birth, a home birth midwife can give excellent prenatal care, and often, she will use natural remedies to treat the various complaints of pregnancy. She can also help you keep on track with eating well.

If you’re having a boy, don’t circumcise him Circumcision (other than for religious conviction) is unnecessary and can be harmful. At the least, it’s elective cosmetic surgery. Most experts now agree that routine circumcision is inappropriate. There is nothing dirty or shameful about your baby boy’s anatomy.

Once your baby is born, use cloth diapers in combination with some elimination communication. From birth, your baby can control his toileting functions. Even if you’re only doing EC part time, each time baby pees or poops in the potty, that’s one less diaper you have to wash. When you do use diapers, buy or make cloth diapers. If you want to go further, use an all-natural soap to launder them. Even more important than diaper choice is how you feed your baby.

To raise a baby naturally, you will likely choose to breastfeed the baby. You are probably well aware of the many benefits babies (and moms) gain from breastfeeding. One of the interesting and not totally understood benefits is that the suckling action helps the child’s jaw grow properly, which can save you a mint in future orthodontic bills.

These are just a few natural parenting ideas…

Many individuals have chosen to use homeopathic remedies either as an alternative to traditional medicine or in conjunction with it.  Homeopathic remedies are attractive to many people because they are a non toxic system of medicine.

Homeopathy has been around since the 18th century and is practiced today by licensed physicians and other qualified prescribers.  This natural approach to healing and health care looks at remedies that can stimulate the body to turn on its own healing mechanisms as part of the process of returning the body to its homeostasis or balance.
Followers of the homeopathic tradition regard disease as the body’s own defensive attempt to correct its imbalance rather than as a foreign invader that must be destroyed.  Homeopathic remedies therefore seek to trigger the body’s own curative powers
Homeopathic remedies are created according to the “Law of Similars”.  This philosophy suggests that symptoms caused by ingesting or exposure to a substance in its raw form can be lessened or alleviated by taking the same substance (causing the symptoms) in a much more diluted form.  Substances are diluted with water, sugar or alcohol.

According to homeopathic principles, substances will have different properties and actions depending on the level of their concentration (low, medium or high).  Homeopathic remedies containing high concentrations suppress and low concentrations stimulate.
Following are ailments that many feel are best addressed through homeopathic means:
• depression
• anxiety
• allergies
• infections
• gynecological conditions
• skin conditions
• digestive problems
• chronic and acute conditions including colds and flu
Self-care using homeopathic remedies is sometimes practiced by those with moderate or short-term illnesses.  In those cases lower potencies are taken (6X, 6C, 12X, 12C, 30X, 30C). A 30 may act more quickly and with more intensity than a 6 and need fewer repetitions—but the higher the potency, the more precise the remedy choice must be to bring about the expected results. High potencies (past 30C) should only be used by those with formal homeopathic training or under the guidance of a health care professional.

Almost every baby who is in diapers will experience diaper rash at least once. If you want to avoid harmful ingredients that are in many conventional diaper rash treatments, try these tips.

The old saying goes “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. You can minimize your baby’s chances of getting diaper rash in the first place by using cloth diapers with a breathable cover (wool or cotton for example). Cloth diapered babies, as a rule, experience less rash. Changing your baby as soon as he or she wets or soils the diaper is also a good habit. You can also experiment with Elimination Communication (E.C.). Doing E.C. even part time will have many benefits, such as reduced diaper usage.

If your baby is using disposable diapers, try switching to cloth for awhile and see if the rash improves. If you’re already using cloth diapers, remove the cover and let him wear pinned on prefolds so lots of air gets to his bottom. Try changing laundry detergents and double rinsing your diapers, adding a half cup vinegar to the first rinse, and see if that helps.

Removing the diaper completely for as long as possible during the day will help the rash heal more quickly. Again, you can try Elimination Communication part time when your baby gets a rash. Take off the diaper and watch baby closely for signs that he needs to eliminate. Sit him on a potty or hold him over a toilet or sink, make a “pssss” sound and see what happens.

Sometimes diaper rash is caused by an overgrowth of candida (yeast). Suspect yeast if the rash is bright red and shiny, especially if you’re nursing and also have signs of candida overgrowth (pain during nursing, vaginal yeast). Giving your baby acidophilus powder can help. Read package labels for dosage instructions. If you’re nursing, take the powder yourself also. Acidophilus is safe for young babies. Older babies who are on solids can also eat yogurt with live cultures. Remove sugar and white flour from the baby’s diet to help starve the yeast. You can also make a rinse for your baby’s bottom from one cup of water mixed with one teaspoon baking soda to help kill candida.

Don’t use baby wipes when your baby has a rash, as the skin is sensitive and wipes can dry out the skin and make it worse. Instead, rinse your baby after each diaper change with water.

If the rash is dry and scaly, open a capsule of Vitamin E and apply it to the rash. Calendula is also healing and is available as a topical ointment. Kaolin powder, made from a clay, can help if the rash is weepy.

If you’ve just started baby on solid foods, he may have a temporary rash as his skin adjusts to the ph changes of his urine and stool. If your baby has a rash around his anus (like a bull’s eye) every time he eats a certain food, take it out of his diet for awhile, as he may be sensitive to it. You can try reintroducing it in a few months to see if his digestive system reacts differently.

If your baby has severe or chronic diaper rash, suspect food allergies. Talk with your baby’s health care provider about an elimination diet. The typical suspects are dairy, wheat, corn, eggs and soy. Keeping a food diary can provide some clues, but the most effective way to figure out if your child has food sensitivities is to take the common allergens out of his diet. Then introduce them back one at a time, watching for reactions.

If your baby develops other symptoms along with his rash, like fever or irritability, or if the rash looks infected and doesn’t respond to care at home, check with a health care provider.

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