Pathways to Healing

by Elaine Zablocki

Personal Experience is a Great Convincer

Deborah Gordon, MD, graduated from UC San Francisco Medical School in 1979 and completed a residency in family practice. Today, she describes herself as a holistic physician, relying primarily on homeopathy, nutrition and hormonal balancing to help her patients achieve optimal health.

“I was first introduced to homeopathy in medical school, and it was presented in a fairly respectable forum, but I walked away thinking, ‘This doesn’t impress me,’” she recalls.

A few years later, personal experience changed her mind.

She first visited a homeopath because she hadn’t been feeling well and a friend suggested it; she went casually, not expecting much. “We talked, a very nice woman, great long interview, and she gave me a remedy. I went back in six weeks and said, ‘I feel great, I haven’t been sick, but I can’t believe it’s the remedy, it must just be that you and I had such a nice talk.” Then, over the next year, Gordon noticed that she wasn’t having problems with hay fever any more. In the past, she’d had Raynaud’s disease every winter; now, it had disappeared. “I’d never even told her that I had those problems! It was only in retrospect I noticed, hey, it’s spring, how come everyone else is sneezing and I’m not?”

That was intriguing, so Gordon gathered some basic materials on homeopathy. “My first patient was my dog. We’d been on a long hike the previous day; she was an old dog and she was exhausted. In the morning she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t drink, she wouldn’t stand up. I put a remedy in her mouth and she was up within 30 seconds. At that point I realized something unusual was happening.”

MD Says: We Don’t Have to Know Why It Works

Homeopathic remedies are based on the principle that “like cures like.” A fact sheet from the

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) says: “Homeopathy seeks to stimulate the body’s ability to heal itself by giving very small doses of highly diluted substances. … There are challenges in studying homeopathy and controversies regarding the field. This is largely because a number of its key concepts are not consistent with the current understanding of science.”

Many people who rely on complementary healthcare methods haven’t tried homeopathy, because it doesn’t fit conventional patterns of thinking. “Frankly, most of us don’t really understand how gravity works, either, but we use it all the time,” Gordon says. “I know if I want an apple to drop into a hole, all I have to do is let go of it and let it fall.”

Homeopathy emerged from the vitalist tradition, which believes that people have an energy inside “that can’t be measured or put in a test tube,” Gordon says. “You can access the vital energy of chamomile, it can interact with your vital energy and you can be healed. Well, thinking like this this completely defies the logical explanations of our everyday world on how things work. Personally, I didn’t come to the field as a Vitalist; I was drawn by the benign nature of the treatment, having been well-schooled in the complex and often hazardous nature of pharmaceutical medicine.”

The practice of homeopathy is not diagnosis-based, it is person-based. If two people both come down with strep throat, they may receive completely different remedies. The homeopathic practitioner will ask a wide range of questions: are you better in the day or the night? have you become irritable or suspicious? have you become chilly or hot? which side is most affected? “The patients’ responses lead to different treatments,” Gordon says. “The treatment is designed to strengthen their vital source. Your symptoms reveal how your vital source is interacting with the strep.”

Because homeopathic treatment is person-based, finding the most appropriate remedy is a complex process. The practitioner must be alert, present, flexible. “When a patient comes in and says they have strep throat, I ask them, ‘What’s the strep throat like?’” Gordon says. “I try not to ask leading questions, because the patient may experience pain, or lethargy, or changes in mood … each person’s experience is unique.”

Gordon sees a new person with an acute problem for half an hour, while new patients addressing chronic problems have a two-hour initial intake interview. “I try to get a holistic image of the person and how all their systems interact. Then I prescribe what is called a constitutional remedy, designed to support that person’s vital energy in a wide range of situations.”

Gordon herself is still seeing that homeopathic practitioner, the same one she visited so casually 25 years ago. “I’ve had three different constitutional remedies over the whole time I’ve been seeing her,” she recalls. “It makes a great shortcut. When someone calls me up and says they’ve got the flu, I say, ‘Take some of your constitutional remedy. Call me if you’re still sick in two days.’”

Balancing Conventional and Homeopathic Care

Starting in 1989, Gordon attended classes at the Hahnemann College of Homeopathy, which offered a posttraining program in homeopathy. The students were all certified health professionals, including physicians, nurse practitioners, acupuncturists, and chiropractors. They studied homeopathy in four-day sessions, once a month, for two years.

For several years, Gordon’s private practice combined homeopathy and conventional medicine.

She would do a two-hour long initial interview, and then she would maintain both mindsets as she considered the patient’s needs. “I found myself thinking about what’s the new drug for hypertension, and what do you do if there is a fluid imbalance due to hypertension. At the same time I’m trying to get the real essence, the holistic image of how that particular patient feels when they have a migraine. I’m going through lists of medications and at the same time trying to get a picture of their vital force, their essential energy.”

Nowadays, she no longer admits patients to the hospital. “If I think there is something serious going on with a patient, I say, ‘We’ll do homeopathy, but you also need to see your conventional doctor within the week and get this looked at.’ Nowadays, I still take the time to think about the person on both levels, but I am primarily thinking physiology rather than pharmacology.” Gordon maintains the diagnostic skills that she’s acquired through years of training and conventional practice. What has changed is her attitude towards treatment. “I’m still a good doctor. I’ve made correct diagnoses of people who had not been diagnosed earlier in other settings,” she says. “At the same time, I no longer choose to rely on short-term pharmacological interventions. I choose to support healthy long-term physiology through homeopathy and lifestyle changes.”

Resources

Madrona Homeopathy, Ashland, Oregon: http://www.madronahomeopathy.com

Gordon recommends these books on homeopathy:

Impossible Cure: The Promise of Homeopathy, by Amy Lansky, PhD

Discovering Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century, by Dana Ullman, MPH

Homeopathic Education:

The course that Gordon attended is no longer available. She says, “Here are the schools I know about and would vouch for. There are many others, too.”

American Medical College of Homeopathy

The National Center for Homeopathy

School of Homoeopathy – USA

Vancouver Homeopathic Academy

Elaine Zablocki has been a freelance health-care journalist for more than 20 years. She was the editor of Alternative Medicine Business News and CHRF News Files. She writes regularly for many health-care publications.