Welcome to the February 2008 Homeopathy Seattle newsletter

This month I am writing about love and chocolate. It all ties into the lecture that I will be doing with my colleague Lone Pedersen at Marlene’s Market in Federal Way on February 14th – Valentine’s Day. The lecture is entitled “Love, Sex, Chocolate and Homeopathy.” We will tackle some heady issues here – romantic disappointments, sexual dysfunction (men’s and women’s), chocolate (and other homeopathic substances). And we will view them through the lens of the homeopathic perspective.

To view the flyer here’s the link:

http://www.timsarnica.com/lovesexchocolate/LoveSexFlyer.pdf

For anyone who can make it please come – we’d love to have you!

The Cindy Crawford workshop

Also, I will be giving a workshop with Lone again two days later on Saturday, February 16 from 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM at the Phinney Neighborhood Association building. The workshop is entitled “Caring for your family with Homeopathy” and it is inspired by Cindy Crawford’s visit on Oprah where she discussed her homeopathic kit and how she is “the doctor of the family”. We will have homeopathic kits on sale from Washington Homeopathic Products. This workshop is $65.00 and will be a hands on practicum on how to use homeopathic remedies for acute ailments.  I will be donating 20% of my profits to Greenwood PTA - we're in need of money for our music program...Hope to see you there.

To view this flyer here is the link:

http://www.timsarnica.com/workshop/HomeopathyFlyer.pdf

To order a homeopathic kit on your own, just like Cindy has, go to Washington Homeopathic Products at www.homeopathyworks.com.  They are a very cool, old fashioned homeopathic pharmacy from days gone by. Give them a shout.

Health Freedom!

One more housekeeping note: Here in Washington a group of practitioners and consumers are have come together to promote a need for protection of health freedom. Some practitioners in our state have become targets by the department of health and have been fined hefty sums. This all about our right to choose, and giving those practitioners who do no harm, a safe harbor to practice.

We are working with Diane Miller, JD of Minnesota, the same person who helped pass Health Freedom laws in six states around the country. She is amazing and dedicated to this cause. We need your help too! We are raising 10K dollars to help pay for lobbyists to shepherd our bill through the legislative process. We have raise 3K to date! We are looking to have 10K by April. So please, send you support. We will also be in Olympia at the state house February 18 for a rally. Diane Miller will be there and give the keynote address.

For all information on how to get involved please go to www.healthfreedomwa.org.  You can give a donation, read the bill, and find out more about what is happening here in Washington state. Thanks for your support!

Love and Chocolate

As any romantic knows February includes Saint Valentine’s Day, smack in the middle of the shortest month of the year. I think it’s fair to say we’ve all been affected by this day, its magnetic pull on the heartstrings. I recall with fondness the little cards that got passed around in elementary school and dejection when I didn’t get one from someone I was sweet on. Alas we grow older and sometimes these feeling stick around through adulthood. Dejection, romantic disappointment, unrequited love – it’s the stuff from a Jane Austin novel. Too many songs have dealt with this issue, poems, movies, books – there is nearly a cultural addiction and obsession around the topic of love and romance. Look at the offerings at any supermarket checkout line, it’s all there. Yet, we are people will real feelings and emotions and getting over heartbreak can be tough. But what about repeated heartbreak? Or repeated disappointment? A pattern can emerge that emotions and feelings play out on the physical body. How could it not? Our mind is quite powerful.

This month I want to feature Chocolate as the homeopathic remedy of the month. It is a fascinating substance with a interesting history and its own story.

Chocolate, the emotional currency of Valentine's Day

Growing up in the 1970’s I was privy to all of the advertising on the TV, and chocolate from my memory was always there. As a kid, Halloween and Easter candy was mostly chocolate – M & M’s, Crunch bars, Almond Joy, Chocolate bunnies, Hershey’s kisses, etc. The Hershey’s kiss is really the archetype of all chocolate here in this country. Those cute little silver teardrops wrapped and twisted with the white tag to open. Just a small dose of chocolate, yet the branding of kiss implies a bit more. There is a romantic sensibility here. It is the great love affair with chocolate, or with Hershey’s kisses. I’m sure the folks in Hershey, PA sell more at Valentine’s Day than at Halloween. I feel that there are a few substances that are marketed and embellished around the idea of relationships namely chocolate, roses and diamonds. These are the culturally accepted forms of romantic currency. What man hasn’t attempted to curry favor with their loved one with these substances? Valentine’s Day is littered with heart shaped boxes filled with chocolate coated creamy things or chocolate covered nuts. It is nearly expected on Valentine’s Day. And for those on a budget, chocolate may be the most affordable, roses clocking in close behind. Diamonds are a different price range all together. Interestingly enough all three of these substances are employed by homeopathy.

Adamas (diamond) – has a feeling of detached and disconnected, a sense of hard and cold. It is a carbon remedy.

Rose Canine (wild rose) – is from the plant family Rosacea and this family has these sensations elicited from Dr. Rajan Sankaran:

Pinched, pressing – inward/outward pressure. There is an impulsive
desire for travel, for wandering, moving quickly.

Chocolate, the substance and the homeopathic remedy

The seeds of the Theobroma cacao. N.O. of the Malvales.

So here is some information that we have on Chocolate, the substance, and Chocolate, the homeopathic remedy. This information is gathered from Frans Vermeulen’s Synoptic Materia Medica, which includes quotes from Jeremy Sherr’s homeopathic proving on chocolate. A proving is our version of a double blind study. We test a new remedy on healthy people and record what kind of symptoms it produces in people. Then we can potentially give the remedy to people who actually have these symptoms naturally. Basically in homeopathy we give artificial diseases to natural diseases and the two counteract each other. It’s a pretty amazing process and ethical too – we only test on healthy people, no animals involved.

“Cocoa and chocolate are made from the edible seeds of the tropical American tree Theobroma cacao. The name Theobroma means ‘food of the gods’; cacao is derived from ‘Nahuatl cacahuatl, the Aztec name for the cacao tree. Cola Nut belongs in the same plant family.”

“The explorer Hernan Cortez introduced the drink to Spain upon returning from his Mexican expedition in 1519. Gradually spreading from Spain through Europe and into England, the chocolate drink became increasingly popular. In the 17th century, chocolate houses were the social meeting places of the day.”

“In 1828 the Dutch made chocolate powder by squeezing most of the fat from finely ground cacao beans. The cocoa butter from pressing was soon being added to a powder sugar mixture, and a new product, eating chocolate, was born. In 1876, a Swiss firm added condensed milk to chocolate, producing the world’s first milk chocolate.”

“From the three chests of cacao beans that Cortes exported to Spain, cocoa bean exports in the world reached 1.5 metric tons in 1977. One fifth of all the exports went to the United States. With this tremendous usage of chocolate, the United States still ranks 10th in the world with a per capita consumption of 10 lbs annually, far behind the first place Swiss, who eat 21 lbs per person annually.”

“When the seeds of Theobroma are ripe they rattle in the capsule when shaken. Each capsule contains about 25 seeds; if separated from the capsule they soon become infertile, but if kept therein they retain their fertility for a long time. The cocoa tree is unique in that its fruit is borne on the main trunk and not at the end of branches, as in most plants.”

“Oil of Theobroma or cocoa butter is used as an ingredient in cosmetic ointments and in pharmacy for coating pills and preparing suppositories. It has excellent emollient properties and is used to soften and protect chapped hands and lips. Theobromine, the alkaloid contained in the beans, resembles caffeine in its action, but its effect on the central nervous system is less powerful. Its action on muscle, the kidneys and the heart is more pronounced. It is used principally for its diuretic effect due to stimulation of the renal epithelium. Theobromine salts can cause headache and nausea when taken in moderate doses, and dizziness and diarrhea in larger doses.”

“It seems that the chocolate addiction is not so much a physical but rather an emotional phenomenon. Chocolate is often used as a substitute for love, an idea exploited by the emphasis on romantic themes in chocolate advertisements. In patients the desire often arose at times in emotional stress especially regarding relationships. Research has shown a connection between chocolate and enzymes produced when people fall in love.”

“Another theme that seemed to emerge was the affinity between chocolate and the circulatory and hormonal systems. The need for chocolate often appeared during or before the menses. Chocolate is known to contain many substances that effect the heart.” “Feelings concerning the texture, smoothness, warmth and ‘melting in the mouth’ qualities were often associated with nourishment, breast feeding and motherly love…the connections did become clearer once the reports of people with extreme addictions or aversion to chocolate were incorporated. These aspects seemed to revolved around family issues often in connection with nourishing and raising children. In modern human civilization the process of raising the young has been stretched beyond its natural boundaries, often in isolation from a supportive community or ‘extended family,’ thus adding new dimensions and stresses to the modern human psyche. This evolution appears to be in contrast to our animal instinct of expelling the young as soon as they can fend for themselves…This dichotomy between animal instinct and over civilized behavior is obvious throughout the proving.”

Dr. Rajan Sankaran of India discusses the remedy Chocolate in his Sensations method. The plant family, Malvales has this sensation:

Main Sensation:

Attached and then detached
Joined and then separated
Together and then separated.

Passive reaction:

Estranged
Indifferent
Indifferent to everything
Aversion to husband

Active reaction:

Communicative
Affectionate
Dream of falling in love
Company, desire for

Compensation:

Independent
Self Confident

He gives a lovely case of a healing with the remedy Chocolate.

Here is the symptom picture of homeopathic Chocolate:

Mental/emotional:

Affectionate alternating with indifference or aversion.

Chocolate can be compared to a hedgehog: it has a soft front and a prickly back. Chocolate patients like children but don’t like looking after them. They don’t like to nourish them any longer than necessary. They turn their prickly backs on the kids. 

From the proving by Jeremy Sherr: 

“We all adore children, but we really don’t want anything to do with them, like bringing them up or looking after them.”

“In the evening, felt angry with bristling down my back. Irritable with the kids, shouted a lot, slammed doors. Feeling very uncomfortable with my daughter near me. I made a huge issue over something small which I would normally leave. I wanted to leave and walk out of the door on them. Felt very unsympathetic to the children. ‘You either go, or go to bed.’ Couldn’t cuddle the children and took longer to say ‘It’s alright’. I thought that their father should look after them instead of me (very usual). The feeling I can’t be where I want to be because of them. I want to be roaming outside without my possessions. Left kids alone in the house for the first time. I was surprised at how easily I let them go. My daughter liked it very much.”

Mind rubrics:

Affectionate in evening.
Anger in evening.
Anxiety about money matters.
Aversion to husband.
Desire for darkness.
Attempts to escape from family and friends.
Estranged from family.
Indifference to children.
Irritability, wishes to be alone.
Desire to wander.

General symptoms:

Activity alternating with lassitude.
Sensation of heat.
Worse from cold.
Desire for covers.
Better from warmth of the bed.
Appetite increased in the morning on waking, and in evening.
Desire for fruits and refreshing things.

Particular symptoms:

Headache; forehead. Heaviness; pressing pain.
Obstruction of nose in warm room.
Watery discharge in open air.
Redness of face.

Comments / Feedback

I would love to hear from you! If you have any comments or feedback regarding this newsletter, please feel free to email me. I look forward to reading your responses. Thank you!