After diagnosing mononucleosis and examining a teen for any potential complications, a conventional medical doctor typically has nothing to offer a mononucleosis sufferer besides good advice to rest and drink plenty of fluids (and to avoid heavy physical activity or contact sports if the spleen is swollen so as not to risk rupture). In fact, most teens and young adults do recover on their own without any lingering after-effects—but it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, and a small number of people do report lingering, chronic fatigue for much longer than that.

Thank goodness for homeopathic medicines. When the right remedy is chosen, healing is rapid and complete, as you can see in the various stories of mono patients in these pages. However, choosing the right remedy for a patient with mono can be tricky and requires expertise, since there are many possible choices, all dependent upon the individual’s unique symptoms. Below are just a few of the many remedies that might be indicated. If you or a loved one has mono, it would be wise to seek professional medical and homeopathic advice.

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Those who are skeptical of homeopathy often denounce it saying there is not enough “scientific evidence” to support it. They imply that conventional medicine is superior because it is “evidence-based.” Homeopaths often have countered that the evidence for much of conventional medicine is thin at best—and recently, this argument has been vindicated by a bastion of conventional respectability, the British Medical Journal.

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A remedy that can ease withdrawal

—compiled by Homeopathy Today staff

Throughout the history of homeopathy, Nux vomica has helped people with addictions. It can ease withdrawal symptoms, smooth and shorten the detoxification process, and address the lingering effects of overdoing any drug. Like any homeopathic remedy, however, Nux vomica is not a panacea and works best when selected to fit a person’s individual symptoms.

Modern-day homeopaths use Nux vomica in much the same way as did these homeopathic forebears:

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or … Alien Spouse and the Story of the Human Thumb
by Mary Aspinwall, ISHom, PCH

Those of you who have read some of my past articles in Homeopathy Today may remember that I have been living in both Ireland and Spain the past twelve years. Last November, my family and I got caught up in the media’s wild enthusiasm for The Secret—as seen on Oprah! This is a book that should come with a clear warning: “Reading this may change your life!”

Going for it

We decided to give it a go. We held a family meeting during which each of us—my husband, our 9-year-old son, our 16-year-old daughter, and I—had the chance to say what we would ideally like in our lives. We even selected some images to represent these ideas and stuck them on our fridge door.

Just in case you’ve been living in a cave the last few years, The Secret is based on the Law of Attraction. The idea, in a nutshell, is that by clearly visualizing what you want in life, you can manifest it. Or as one of the book’s contributing writers says, it’s like “ordering from the cosmic catalogue and confidently awaiting delivery.”

We mostly felt our lives were pretty good but needed a bit of fine tuning. We loved living in Ireland because of the great sense of community there, but the almost daily rainfall left us with more than a touch of cabin fever. We loved the outdoor life we were able to live in southern Spain’s near perfect climate, but because we were in a holiday/vacation town, the sense of community wasn’t there.

So we started to visualize a vibrant community with lovely weather, an outdoor lifestyle, great educational choices, art, live music, comedy, theatre, culture, organic food, and people who wanted eco-friendly lives with holistic healthcare—and that, dear reader, is how we ended up in Ojai, California.

Paradise found

We searched carefully for our perfect spot via the internet, and Ojai certainly looked promising. My husband did a solo reconnaissance mission in February and gave it three thumbs up. Luckily, after moving here in July, we all agreed that it is a very special place. A bit like dying and going to heaven…in fact, it was filmed as heaven (Shangri-la) in the 1937 Frank Capra movie, Lost Horizon.

So what makes it so heavenly? First, it is jaw-droppingly beautiful. Second, the people are laid back, savvy, and friendly. The owners of the house we are renting even organized a potluck supper so we could meet our new neighbors.

In just four short weeks we have managed to find a lovely home with fruit trees and a vegetable garden. We even have the offer of three chickens. It is darn near a Little House on the Prairie scenario, except we can walk to town. I have also signed the lease on a little downtown office with a patio garden. The children are settling in to college and school. We all have groovy high-handlebar bicycles, which are like riding on armchairs. We have discovered the joys of thrift shops and garage sales. At the Salvation Army car lot, we even found an old cheap and cheerful convertible that runs like a dream. We are there, ready, and waiting to do our bit to recycle/re-use other people’s discarded treasures!

Not so fast…

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Energy and emotional steadiness return after teen takes the right remedy

by Ann Jerome Croce, PhD, CCH, RSHom(NA)

Nearly ten years ago, a young woman came to see me because she was having trouble recovering from mononucleosis. Heather was eighteen, finishing high school and applying for college. She had contracted mono just before Christmas break and now, three months later, was over the worst of the symptoms but still slept at least twelve hours a night and took a nap every day after school. While fatigue after mono is not uncommon, most people are beginning to recover by this time, and Heather was showing no signs of improvement.

Acute or chronic?

First I needed to decide whether to treat Heather’s fatigue acutely or constitutionally, as homeopathy offers both options. Mono is contagious and generally resolves on its own, two hallmarks of acute illness; however, only those with an underlying susceptibility catch it, and it can create long-term fatigue, two considerations that in homeopathy lead us into the realm of constitutional (chronic) prescribing.

If I were to approach Heather’s fatigue acutely as a lingering stage of her mono, I would need a remedy that fit her particular mono symptoms including the current fatigue. On the other hand, if a constitutional susceptibility had led to her illness, a remedy targeted narrowly toward the mono might not be comprehensive enough to give her the healing boost that she needed.

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Fast recovery for a woman with severe mono
by George Guess, MD, DHt

As in the case of most viral illnesses, mononucleosis, an Epstein-Barr virus infection, stymies the best efforts of conventional medicine. Not so with homeopathy, which has a long and successful track record in treating this ailment—both the acute illness and protracted cases with tardy convalescence. Below is a case illustration from my patient files.

A 23-year-old woman came to me with mononucleosis, previously diagnosed by her allopathic/conventional physician. She had been ill for ten days. She had an excruciating headache located behind the eyes. She ran a fever from about 6 p.m. until 6 a.m., when she would have a profuse sweat. Her neck hurt considerably.

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Can we use them all together?
by Amy Rothenberg, ND, DHANP

When 39-year-old Carla first came to see me, she was struggling with anxiety, depression, insomnia, attention deficit disorder, chronic tonsillitis, and fibromyalgia. This single mother of two worked as a computer programmer and was stressed out in all areas of her life—physically, emotionally, and financially. She was terribly stiff and sore and had frequent throat infections, but her physical discomforts were overshadowed by her deep anxieties and worries, which were almost paralyzing.

Carla felt chronically overwhelmed at work and at home. She took no pleasure in life and felt there was nothing to look forward to.

For ten years, she’d been receiving medical care for her health complaints but, unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be helping much and was costly, too. This just added to her financial burdens while increasing her feelings of despair.

The tip of the iceberg

The list of pharmaceuticals that Carla presented to me was impressive. At various times and often in combination she had been prescribed Prozac®, Zoloft®, and Celexa® for depression; Ativan®, Valium®, Xanax®, and Klonopin® for anxiety; Ambien® and Lunesta® for help with sleep; Adderal® for attention deficit disorder; the anti-inflammatory Celebrex® and the muscle relaxant Flexeril® for fibromyalgia; and a veritable laundry list of antibiotics for her tonsillitis episodes. At the time of our visit, she was on Klonapin®, Celexa®, Ambien®, and Adderal®.

Carla is not alone. It is very common for new patients to come to me with a myriad of complaints and a long list of corresponding medications. It used to be mainly my elderly patients, but over the past 20-plus years, increasingly younger and relatively healthier people are coming to me with long lists of drugs they take or have taken. Some of these conventional drugs are amazingly effective or may even be essential for the person’s survival. But many others are amazingly ineffective, unnecessary, or even detrimental to health. According to a Journal of the American Medical Association article, 108,000 Americans died in 1996 from adverse reactions to FDA-approved medications that had been properly prescribed by licensed medical professionals, and another 2.2 million Americans had negative drug reactions. So, along with the over-prescribing and excessive cost of many drugs, there are growing safety reasons to use caution when beginning new prescriptions or when adding to a drug regimen.

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Knocked out by mononucleosis? Speed up the healing with homeopathic treatment!

by Susanne Saltzman, MD

Being a teenager can be pretty stressful. (Though, frankly, being a parent of a teen is probably worse!) Besides the pressures of keeping up with homework, school sports, and peer relationships, many teens are dealing with fluctuating hormones, mood swings, poor eating habits, and late night bedtimes. All these things can have a negative impact on immune systems, making teens especially vulnerable to a viral illness called infectious mononucleosis—or “mono,” for short. Known as “the kissing disease” because it usually spreads via saliva, mono can debilitate a teen for a few weeks—or a few months.

Teens have it worse

Mono is caused by one of the most common human viruses—the Epstein-Barr virus, a member of the herpesvirus family. Most people get exposed to this virus sometime during their lives. When children become infected, they usually show no symptoms or only mild, brief illnesses. When teens or young adults get infected, however, it causes mononucleosis almost 50% of the time.

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by, Edward Conway Member of the NCH Board of Directors

This point in history is marked by challenging times; a floundering economy, expensive health care, a rising cost of living and a world divided by war and extremist points of view, just to name a few.  Our lives seem to be filled with more stress and distractions than ever before.  Not to worry - we have homeopathy and the National Center for Homeopathy.   If you will indulge me for just a few more paragraphs, I will explain.

At the root of every great society, are the community organizations and the individuals that make up those communities.  These are the building blocks that form the foundation of our society, keep us from falling into chaos, help us overcome adversity and face the challenges of the future.  The National Center for Homeopathy is such an organization, the only national organization representing the interests of homeopathy.

Despite these trying times, our community is strong and vibrant.  I am consistently inspired by the individual members I meet at our annual conference, both young and experienced.  With varying levels of interest and education in homeopathy, each individual seems to have a unique and profound story about how they came to homeopathy.  I recall learning from one mom who came to tears describing the health ordeal of her own child.  After years of unsuccessful treatment allopathically, she found a homeopath, who transformed her son’s health and life.  One could only be humbled by her tears of joy and the details of what happened.  Within our rich community, there are hundreds, if not thousands of cases similar to this one.  These are the experiences that help define our membership; that bring us together, help us learn from one another and insure the future of homeopathic medicine.

While our community is strong, new technologies provide us an opportunity to accelerate and enhance the way we communicate.  They also offer the chance to broaden and strengthen our numbers, which can only be a good thing for homeopathy and for the many new individuals who will experience this powerful system of medicine.  To facilitate this, we have begun to build a new web application that will serve as a platform to help members stay connected and relate to one another more consistently and more personally.  Our goal is to build a member driven social network online, where members can interact with other members and groups, participate in blogs and forums as well as in the generation of content and future applications.  How often and how much you participate will be entirely up to you and the applications will have the appropriate privacy and user safeguards to accommodate individual levels of comfort.

Although we all have numerous options for engaging in social networking online, we believe our membership and shared experience is a solid foundation for creating a social network unlike any other, one that capitalizes on the unique strengths each of us brings to the organization and one that is united by the common interest in homeopathy.  Those who engage in this community effort should find it enlightening, fun at times and on occasion may even get to see it take on a life of its own.

Even though we can’t require members to participate, I do want to express that as members of the community we all have a responsibility to one another.  This technology can mobilize us and make us stronger.  We can make a difference and we can make a positive impact on the health of others and the health care system in general - should we decide to.  This is an exciting time for the National Center for Homeopathy, our community and for homeopathy.  I look forward to helping you launch this new community in the coming months.  In the meantime, feel free to email me your comments and suggestions for making this a better tool for you.  conway@nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org

A fever is a helpful and necessary part of the process of healing in an acute illness. An increased temperature generally indicates that the body’s defense mechanism is fighting an infection and temperature variations indicate how it is coping. During a fever the healing reactions of the body are speeded up: the heart beats faster, carrying the blood more quickly to all the organs; respiration speeds up, increasing oxygen intake; and perspiration increases, helping the body to cool down naturally.