How to take your remedies

I.e. for tooth pain

This guide is the same for most acute problems [flu, cramps, muscle strain, etc] and suitable for everyone [including babies and pregnant women].

When I have tooth pain, I start with 30c potency of the best fitting remedy.

Using 30c Potency.

1. Pop up to 3 pills of the best fit remedy into a bottle of spring water [filter water will do. You can use a glass if you don't have a bottle, and stir instead of shake].
2. Shake it hard three times.
3. Take a sip.
4. Shake and sip every 10 mins for up to 5 doses before changing the remedy if it hasn't worked.
5. If it hasn't helped at all, choose the next best fit.
6. If you see it start to work, stop and wait to see what happens.
7. If the pain improves but then starts to return, start to shake and sip again, every 10 mins. You are safe to take more as needed if you've seen it work before. Don't plug away at a remedy that hasn't worked at all.

If I don't have 30c or 30c doesn't work well enough:

Using 200c Potency

1. I'm going to use fewer doses of 200c and spread them further apart.
2. I still put it in spring water.
3. I shake or stir before taking a dose.
4. I'll dose every 20-30 mins.
5. I stop as soon as I see some improvement.
6. But if the pain is sending me skyward my first 3 doses could be 5 mins apart! Use your judgment according to how severe it is ... but don't keep dosing when it isn't working.
7. Be SURE to stop as soon as it starts to help.
8. Never be afraid to start taking it again if pain returns and it worked before.

If you find you are having to treat pain again within a day or so...

You probably need to see a homeopath and/or doctor or dentist to get more info about what's causing the pain ... if it is tooth pain, see my course for what to do about it! Some tooth pain can be referred from sinuses, ears and not be 'tooth' pain at all. You'll see info on the nerve makeup of the face in the final section of that course. Because homeopathic remedies are chosen according to the sensations, not the diagnosis, they will work anyway.

MORE ABOUT REPEATING DOSES

Dr A U Ramakrishnan:

If the same remedy is given again and again without modifying it, then one can get proving symptoms. For this reason the plussing method is used in order to avoid an aggravation.

I'm not able to speak for your homeopath if they do differently as there is an enormous amount of difference in the way homeopaths prescribe and in the way they are taught to prescribe, but I can tell you some of what I learned & believe from my clinical experience.  :-) 

Hahnemann [the father of homeopathy] didn't like people repeating remedies [that, after all is the way we do proving to find out what symptoms the remedy can produce in people].

He liked the 'single-dose-and-wait' method. Many of his students wanted to speed things up so Hahnemann began to work on finding good ways to do this without disrupting the work the patient's body is doing with the remedy or creating proving symptoms. He came up with water based 'homeopathic solutions' and 'plussing' [bashing the bottle].

'Plussing' changes the potency ever so slightly at each dose. I think it helps the body to not start ignoring repeats. Hahnemann's hope was that this would not disrupt healing.

Repeating can be like 'nagging' and I believe it can antidote or slow down healing in some cases.

One of the best ways to tamp down a remedy aggravation is to repeat the remedy ... so logically, it seems to me that repeating frequently is like dosing - antidoting - dosing - antidoting. In order to avoid antidoting you have to calculate when the body has finished its work with the dose [you wait for the symptoms to start returning]. If you dose again too soon you will tamp down the healing work the remedy is doing. 

Therefore, I'm not a routine 'repeat' prescriber. I rarely get through a lot of pills [and anyways, I'll recommend you make a solution].  

I only ask folk to repeat under very certain circumstances:  

1. if you are taking a medication that antidotes your remedies [we'll calculate the days between dose and relapse and dose at that frequency until we can wean them off the antidoting med]; 

2. when we are trying to work on correcting something that is on the tissue level [ie, dissolving scars or strengthening the thyroid]. We are not using that remedy as a constitutional and we are just prodding the organ in a way.  

3. when you are very weak and will not start responding to remedies ... then I may give them a low potency fairly frequently until they respond [but I'm more likely to use an LM potency ... and you always expect the aggravation to come at the end rather than the beginning with those potencies. They are *very* dilute and good for sensitive people]. 

4. When it is an acute illness you'll burn through the energy of the remedy fast so you'll need more repeats. You are trying to speed up the healing that would naturally take place [acutes are always self-limiting ... that's what differentiates them from a chronic] ... and 

5. when you are trying to just palliate for a painful condition where you will burn through the energy of the remedy fast ... like when you have period pain [and I'd be working constitutionally to overcome that problem longterm also].