List Of Acute Homeopathic Remedies

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Homeopathy For Acute Care: Ten Remedies That Everyone Can Use At Home

Disclaimer: The information shared by Desirée Brazelton on behalf of the National Center for Homeopathy is not intended to replace the at­tention of a medical professional.

Many parents, often mothers, discover ho­meopathy when they start looking into natural medicine as a way to support their children’s health and healing. That was the case for me. I was overmedicated as a child (my parents didn’t know any better in the 1970s and 1980s), and I wanted something different for my daughters. Fortunately, homeopathy literally fell in my lap, and I quickly decided that this was something that I not only wanted for my family but wanted to do professionally.

I have found that people have varying ex­periences with and degrees of understanding of homeopathy. In this article, I’m going to provide an overview of homeopathy and then introduce ten homeopathic remedies that all parents should have in their at-home toolkit. I will describe some indications for knowing when to use the remedies, giving examples of how I have used them so that you get a sense of what they can do. Hopefully, this will give you more confidence in using homeopathic remedies at home.

A COMPLETE SYSTEM

Homeopathy is a complete system of medicine, created in 1835 by German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Homeopathy is holistic in the sense that homeopaths pay attention to the person’s mental, emotional and physical state, taking the whole person into consideration at a given moment in time. In practice, homeopathy is fairly simple. After considering a person’s individual picture, a good homeopath will give him or her a well-indicated homeopathic remedy intended to stimulate the body’s own healing response.

Homeopathic remedies are created in a special way, which allows us to use the heal­ing energy of a substance without any negative side effects. This is true even for poisonous substances that, if taken in a material dose, would kill or cause incredible suffering. Rem­edies are prepared by diluting and “succussing” (shaking) them; depending on the homeopathic potency, that process may be repeated hundreds or even thousands of times. What remains is the energetic essence of the original substance, which is why remedies prepared from poisons are completely safe.

I like the way one of my colleagues de­scribes homeopathy as being more similar to physics than to chemistry. Humans are energetic beings, and homeopathy is energetic medicine. Think about the last time you got angry: Did your emotions produce a physiological re­sponse? That illustrates the interaction between our energy body—our vital force—and our physical body. Homeopathy “tunes” the vital force within us so that our physical body can be well.

Let me briefly comment on what home­opathy is not. After I tell someone that I’m a homeopath, I’ve often had people proceed to tell me all about the essential oils they have in their medicine cabinet. Essential oils—as well as things like supplements, herbs, dietary rec­ommendations, meditation and mindfulness— can be supportive, but they’re not homeopathy! Those other modalities tend to work more on a chemical level, changing something in the body’s chemistry. Homeopathy works on an energetic level.

The good news is that it’s not one or the other—you can use homeopathy in addition to anything else that you’re doing, including taking pharmaceutical medications. I start with where someone is at—I don’t want to take away the supports that their body may currently need. Instead, my goal is to give them a remedy that helps stimulate their body’s own healing re­sponse, and then, as they become stronger, we can assess whether they still need those other supports to the same extent or perhaps at all. I have worked with wonderful practitioners of other healing modalities for my own health, but in my personal experience and in my experience with clients, it is homeopathy that offers the deepest healing. In terms of overall wellness, I have not experienced or witnessed any other modality capable of providing such profound healing.

Years ago, I worked with a boy whose parents had tried just about everything to heal his excruciatingly painful head-to-toe eczema. He would rest during the day and then be up all night long, screaming and crying in pain, with his skin sloughing off and pus coming out. I was their last resort. Over the course of about six months, I gave him three or four different remedies, and by the time school came around that year, his skin was clear. That is the power of homeopathy. The parents had literally tried everything, but the homeopathic remedies stimulated something deep inside of him that allowed for complete healing.

I often work with children who are in the throes of an acute illnesses. Not infrequently, the families have waited a bit too long before con­tacting me and, again, they turn to homeopathy as a last resort. By the time they call, their child can barely breathe or has croup or a suffocating cough—and the anxious parents are just about ready to go to the emergency room. After I take the case and understand the symptoms, I will recommend a remedy, but because I know that waiting for a remedy to kick in can be stressful for the parents, I don’t dissuade them from going to the ER if they think they should. In many of these situations, the parents give their child the homeopathic remedy on the way to the hospital, and by the time they arrive in the parking lot, their child has stopped coughing and has fallen asleep. So, they turn around and go home!

One day the mother of a boy I had worked with for sometime called me and said that her son had a horrible stomach ache; it had been going on for a few days, and he was doubled over in pain and debilitated. After finding out what remedies she had immediately on hand, I recommended a remedy and then didn’t hear back from her. When I saw her months later, she said, “By the way, I wanted to tell you that when I put those pellets on my son’s tongue, his stomach ache instantly went away.” There are no promises that this will always happen, but often in these types of acute situations, homeopathy can make a difference very quickly.

ACUTE VERSUS CONSTITUTIONAL CARE

As these stories should make apparent, homeopathy can be used for both acute care and chronic conditions. The latter form of care is called constitutional care, and it considers the whole person—the mental and emotional lay­ers as well as the physical body. In this article, I am focusing on acute conditions that you can treat at home.

An easy way to distinguish between acute and chronic is to think of acute illness as something that has a beginning, middle and end, whereas chronic conditions go on and on. However, if an acute illness keeps coming back, it should be viewed as more of a chronic situation. For example, someone might ask me for help with a sinus infection. If they say, “It happens every two months” or “I’ve been stuffed up like this for eight months straight” or “I’ve had sinus issues my entire life,” then we are clearly looking at a chronic situation. In that case, the person needs constitutional care, and we will need two hours—not twenty or thirty minutes—to properly take the case and understand what is going on.

Another common example of acute versus chronic scenarios are childhood ear infections. As a parent, if your child has a one-time ear infection, you might be able to get a book on homeopathy and figure out how to treat it, but if your child is getting an ear infection every three months, I would recommend seeking out a homeopath. A good homeopath will take a 360-degree view, taking a history that looks at the pregnancy, experiences during infancy and even factors such as adoption, in order to figure out what needs to be healed and how to end the recurrent pattern of ear infections.

In homeopathy, we don’t have “first aid rem­edies” and “acute remedies” and “constitutional remedies”—we just have remedies, and we use them in varying situations. As a practitioner, I have around eight thousand remedies to choose from, and I am also part of a team of people who are creating or testing new remedies. But for home use, my goal is for you to feel confident in using ten specific remedies, each of which can be taken in a wide variety of situations. Whatever remedy you choose, it is either go­ing to work or it’s not, but because there are no side effects, it is worth a try. If a particular remedy does not do what you want it to do, you can always revert to caring for your loved one in whatever other ways you are accustomed to.

By the way, homeopathic remedies basi­cally last forever. In the U.S., the FDA regulates homeopathic remedies and requires an expira­tion date, but they don’t actually expire. I bought a remedy from one of the original homeopathic pharmacies in a French antique store; it was from 1905, but it’s still completely viable.

ARNICA MONTANA

I think of Arnica montana as the homeo­pathic “gateway drug” (though it is not a drug), or, perhaps more aptly, the “light bearer” for homeopathy. Arnica has become a very well-known remedy for injuries, bruises, sore muscles, other types of physical trauma (such as injuries from car accidents) and surgery. I have also used it for jet leg. Think of all the stressful aspects of air travel—packing, feeling tense about the flight, getting dehydrated, sitting in a tight space for hours—it’s no wonder that we often can’t sleep afterwards. Arnica in a 30C or 200C potency can help the body to relax.

People for whom Arnica is a good fit will often say “I’m fine,” even when they are not. Many years ago, my husband was hit by a car while riding his bicycle. A bystander came over and asked, “Are you okay?” He clearly was not okay—he had a severe concussion and a com­pound fracture with bones sticking out of his arm—but he answered, “Yeah, I’m fine.” That is an indication that Arnica may be appropriate.

Arnica can also be indicated if someone is worse from touch or pressure. This makes sense, because if you’re saying, “I’m fine” when you are not, you typically don’t want anyone to touch you. Or think about what your body does when you have an injury such as a sprained ankle—it swells and immobilizes that area. Your body is saying that in that moment, it doesn’t want to be touched or moved.

As an example of how I have used Arnica in constitutional care, I have a patient who has congestive heart failure. Arnica is her constitu­tional remedy because her way of being in the world is to be tense; she is always bracing for the next thing, waiting for the next shoe to drop. As a result, she tightens up energetically and sometimes physically and emotionally, and this has affected her heart. When she has chest pain, she takes a really high potency of Arnica, and it calms down. That is a situation ripe for Arnica.

APIS MELLIFICA

Apis mellifica is made from honey bees, and it is a great remedy for bee and other insect stings and any kind of intense stinging and burning pain. Apis is indicated if the affected area is hot, red and swollen, and gets better from cold applications—that is, it feels soothing to apply something cold.

Even if the person hasn’t been stung by a bee or other insect, Apis is the remedy to try first if he describes the sensation of a bee sting. Apis is also one of our “go-to” remedies for sudden-onset anaphylactic or histamine reactions and hives. In those situations, most practitioners would probably recommend it in at least a 200C potency or possibly even a higher 1M or 10M potency in severe cases of anaphylaxis.

ARSENICUM ALBUM

Arsenicum album is another really well-known remedy. Made from arsenic, it is one of the remedies that is derived from a poison but offers healing in homeopathic form. For home use, it is a good remedy to con­sider for food poisoning, where the person is experiencing vomiting and watery diarrhea. If no diarrhea or gastrointestinal issue is present, then you would probably want to choose a different remedy.

One of the keynotes for Arsenicum is extraordinary restlessness. No matter what the illness, the person cannot be still. Even if they’re in bed with the flu or some other acute illness, they’re perhaps moving their foot or tossing and turning in bed. They have an internal feeling of restlessness.

Burning is another hallmark sensation for Arsenicum—for when everything burns. The burning sensation might be felt with a runny nose, cough or sore throat, or the person might feel burning in their rectum when passing stool. (If someone simply has a runny nose that won’t stop running, but without the burning sensation, I would probably recommend Allium cepa instead.)

Another key indication pointing to Arsenicum is fear, and notably, fear (even if irrational) of impending illness. For that reason, it was a re­ally popular remedy during the pandemic. I worked with a lot of people who were very afraid and were tapping into the collective fear of that time. One woman contacted me who had some nondescript symptoms. I hadn’t worked with her before and didn’t know her constitution, but as I asked more questions and I learned that her husband was a trucker. He was about to come home, and she had exhausted herself because she was afraid that he was going to get sick when he got home. She was cleaning the house and disinfecting everything, and she planned to quarantine herself in her bedroom upon his arrival. This is the Arsenicum picture. Often, there are compulsive or perfectionistic tendencies that support the fear.

BELLADONNA

Homeopathic Belladonna derives from the deadly nightshade plant (Atropa bella-donna). As a side note, there is a Poison Garden in Nor­thumberland in the UK where all of the plants are poisonous, added to the larger Alnwick Garden in 2005 by the Duchess of Northumberland to educate schoolchildren about dangerous plant compounds. The gar­den, accessible only by guided tour, houses a deadly nightshade relative called Hyoscyamus niger (“black henbane” or “stinking nightshade”) and provides a fainting bench for people who get overwhelmed by the plant’s odor!

Keynotes for homeopathic Belladonna include high fever, a red face and dilated pupils or glassy eyes. A classic Belladonna fever may be as high as 104°F or 105°F. Children in this state may look like they are in an alternate universe and may even hallucinate. They have dry skin—they are not sweaty—and often describe the pain as “throbbing” or “pulsat­ing.” If a child says, “Mama, I can feel my heart beating in my legs,” that is a Belladonna symptom.

When my middle daughter was a few months old, around 5:00 pm she started becoming lethargic. I knew something was not right. I was newly enrolled in homeopathy school and still quite inexperienced, so I took her to the ER. As soon as I learned that she had an ear infection, I treated her homeopathically on our way out of the hospital, declining any medications. It was a quintessential Belladonna ear infection—right-sided, with a fever that came on quickly, and onset between 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm. If you administer Belladonna right away, your child could be well—or on their way—by bedtime!

BRYONIA ALBA

Bryonia alba is useful for sprains or headaches. The top indication for Bryonia is that the symptom is worse from motion. The person may have sharp stitching pains and will feel better from heat and pressure. With a Bryonia headache, the person might say, “My head hurts right here, and if I just press it, it feels better,” or they may feel better if they wear a tight hat or head wrap. I also regularly use this remedy for flu-like illness, where the symptoms include body aches and headache so intense that the smallest movement hurts. The sensitivity to movement means that even if someone just moves his big toe or eyes, the whole body hurts. He may not even want to open his eyes, because the mere movement of the eyes makes the head hurt.

Another giveaway for Bryonia is if the person’s primary concern is that he is missing work. I don’t always need to see this mental picture when I give this remedy, but it is a dead giveaway. The mental and emotional picture of this remedy is, “I have to keep producing.” If I ask, “What is the worst thing about your situation?” the person’s answer might be, “I’m missing a big presentation” or “I can’t see my clients” or, if it’s a student in school, “I’m missing my exams.”

CANTHARIS VESICATORIA

A somewhat more obscure remedy is Can­tharis vesicatoria. It is for burns with fluid-filled blisters that are better from cold applications. Whether it is a kitchen burn or a sunburn, there is a burning and itching sensation, and the skin is bright red.

Here is an example of how one might use both Cantharis and Belladonna. My daughter went on exchange for a year in Brazil, and for Christmas she spent the day at the beach with her best friend, a pale blonde from Holland. Afterwards, I got a frantic message from my daughter, asking, “Mama, what do we do for a really bad sunburn?” because her friend was in a bad way. We started with Belladonna, because her friend was dehydrated and lethargic, with dry, red skin. The next day, we switched over to Cantharis, because by then the skin had started to blister and had pustules. This illustrates the fact that sometimes, as symptoms progress, you may need to give a different remedy.

RHUS TOXICODENDRON

Like Cantharis, Rhus toxicodendron is a remedy for rashes and fluid-filled pustules. Rhus tox is made from the poison ivy plant and works very well for rashes that are similar to poison ivy (“homeopathy” means “similar suffering”). If you are treating actual poison ivy, I would say that it works about 50 percent of the time. The other remedy for poison ivy that I have success with is Anacardium orientale, which is in the cashew family.

Rhus tox is also useful for sprains, strains, sports injuries or soreness. Unlike Bryonia, the condition is better from continued movement. When you first get up, you feel stiff, but if you move and get things flowing, you feel better.

HYPERICUM PERFORATUM

Hypericum perforatum is a good remedy for nerve pain, sharp or shooting pain, numb­ness and tingling, often used in whiplash and dental care. One time, one of my young daugh­ters cut her finger, and I had to take her to the emergency room for stitches. As we sat there for several hours, I was alternately dosing her with Hypericum and Arnica. At some point, she said, “Mama, my finger doesn’t hurt anymore. Can we go home?” Unfortunately, we still had to get her finger stitched up, but Hypericum had taken care of the pain. Hypericum also works well when someone is having the kind of dental work that produces shooting pain in the head, jaw or neck.

LEDUM PALUSTRE

Ledum palustre is a remedy suited for puncture wounds, stings or tick bites. Unlike Apis-type stings, which are hot, Ledum wounds are cold to the touch. Oddly enough, however, they are better from cold applications and worse from heat. Ledum is the go-to remedy if some­one steps on a nail. I love to hike and backpack in Minnesota, so I keep Ledum in my bag, and it would be the first thing I would turn to for a tick bite, puncture wound or other accident.

NUX VOMICA

Nux vomica is a great remedy for overin­dulgence—symptoms that result from eating or drinking too much, such as nausea, cramping, belching or ineffectual vomiting. You feel like you want to vomit, but you wait and nothing happens. It is the feeling of, “I would feel so much better if I could just throw up or belch or pass a stool, but I can’t.” Both Nux vomica and another remedy called Carbo vegetabilis are good for constipation, especially constipation related to travel.

POTENCIES AND DOSING

People often have questions about which homeopathic potency to use. In homeopathy, “potency” refers to the depth and intensity of a remedy, which derive from the dilution and succussion process. The number (for example, “6” or “30” or “200”) indicates the number of times the substance has been diluted, and the letter (for example “X” or “C” or “M”) indicates in what ratio the dilution has been prepared.

Remedies in the 6X potency (six rounds of 1:10 dilution followed by succussion) are called “cell salts” or “tissue salts.” Cell salts are ho­meopathic remedies formulated to restore min­eral balance at the cellular level and stimulate the body’s natural healing process. There are twelve primary cell salts: three calcium cell salts (Calcarea fluorica, Calcarea phosphorica and Calcarea sulphurica), three potassium cell salts (Kali muriaticum, Kali phosphoricum and Kali sulphuricum), three sodium cell salts (Natrum muriaticum, Natrum phosphoricum and Natrum sulphuricum), and iron (Ferrum phosphoricum), magnesium (Magnesia phosphorica) and silicic acid (Silicea) cell salts.

Cell salts can be great for tooth reminer­alization. I also use a twelve-in-one cell salt remedy called Bioplasma when I travel if I feel like I’m coming down with something but I don’t have any distinct symptoms. I should note that other than Bioplasma, I don’t use or recommend homeopathic combination remedies, because there is no way to determine what’s helping or not helping.

The 6X remedies are different on the po­tency scale from remedies in the 6C potency. A 6C (six rounds of dilution and succussion at a 1:99 ratio) is best for long-term processes. I will use these in conjunction with constitutional remedies for organ, lymph or hormone support.

The 30C potency (thirty rounds of dilu­tion and succussion at a 1:99 ratio) is the “gold standard” for the first-aid situations that I’ve just described—the conditions that you are going to treat yourself at home. For certain remedies like Arnica and Belladonna, I would also make sure to have 200C potencies on hand, but beyond those two remedies, keeping it at a 30C level for home use is fine. (Belladonna is an intense remedy used to treat intense fevers, so we often use it in the higher 200C potency.)

Another common question is, how often should a remedy be taken? In the acute situationsthat I am describing, the answer is, it depends. With something like a bone break where the per­son is in extreme pain, you might initially give Arnica every fifteen minutes. In the example I gave of my husband’s bicycle accident, if I had been there, I would have been dosing him every five to fifteen minutes for his pain. You want to pay attention to your symptoms and slow the dosing down as you are recovering. If someone is experiencing something that is really debili­tating, I might dose them every two hours, and if a person is sick in bed, perhaps four times a day. And if you’re going about your regular life but you have a nagging condition like a sinus infection, then it might be once a day. I often tell people, if a remedy is helping, keep doing it; if it doesn’t help, then stop.

In the higher potencies, Dr. Samuel Hahn­emann recommended that people not take the same potency multiple times, because doing so can sometimes elicit “proving” symptoms— symptoms common to the individuals that need that remedy. (In general, proving symptoms quickly resolve if one discontinues the remedy.) The dosing I am referring to here is for acute situations where you are giving a remedy over a succinct amount of time. You would not want to keep taking a 30C potency long-term. However, for slow processes like bone healing, you could safely take a 6C potency for months. As a trained homeopath, I may give a patient remedies in the LM (Q) potency (fiftieth millesimal), but in those cases, we modify the potency slightly each day so that it continues to gain energy or potency as the patient is healing.

For something like migraines, which are an expression of deeper illness, Bryonia could be the indicated remedy but might not help in a 30C potency. A 200C or higher potency might be needed, and it might take time, even years, to fully resolve the migraines. If someone has had migraine headaches for a long period of time, we would first watch for other changes, such as less frequent headaches.

People often ask how they should take homeopathic remedies. Importantly, you don’t want to touch the pellets. You can pour them into the cap of the container and simply dump them under your tongue. The remedy is actually coated on the outside of the small sugar pellets, so you don’t want that to come in contact with your hand—you want it to come in contact with your mucous membranes under the tongue.

As for how many homeopathic pellets to take, the frequency of dosing is more important than the number of pellets. For the biggest pel­lets, two to five is fine. With the smaller pellets, it might be five to eight or even up to fifteen. You want to take enough pellets so that your mucous membranes have an experience with that remedy.

AND SO MUCH MORE

I am on the board of the National Center for Homeopathy (NCH), which has a first-aid guide that goes over everything in this article and more. NCH also publishes a wonderful Homeopathy Today magazine offering articles about everything from treating kids to animals.

At the Prometheus Homeopathic Institute, which I co-founded in 2021, we offer kits that include the remedies described in this article as well as other remedies described in the NCH’s first-aid guide. We also offer various training courses, including our “Acute IQ: Mastery in Homeopathic Acute Care” course, a once-a-month, twelve-session course that will help you hone your acute-care skills and build your confidence in using homeopathy in your home. We also have a low-cost, virtual “Magni-PHI” clinic for those who are seeking constitutional care. Students take the cases, overseen by our faculty.

In my homeopathic practice, I specialize in cancer care. But when people ask me what else homeopathy can help with, I have a simple answer: everything!

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