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So we are going to move on now. Trauma remedies. Trauma remedies covers quite a lot of different things, so we're going to go through them one by one and we're going to start, first of all, talking about bumps and bruises.
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This is one of the commonest things that people need first aid for every day they fall over, they bang their knee, they stand up too quickly and hit their head on the kitchen cupboard. They trip on the last stair and bang into the it happens constantly.
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I've included for everybody the advice from St John's ambulance (an emergency care organization in England) for all of these situations, just so that you know, and just so that we can make sure that you know what is safe and what is dangerous.
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I think probably most people, especially when it's their family, are aware of when they need to seek help. And don't delay seeking help. You can give remedies as well as seeking help. There is no contraindication between a homeopathic remedy and an orthodox remedy.
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So you don't have to think, well, what if they give this medicine at the hospital? It won't matter, you can do them at the same time. So the St John's ambulance view you of bumps and bruises. So one is to reduce the pain, hold something cold on the skin immediately.
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For example, a bag of peas or ice wrapped in a cloth. Don't put it directly on the skin. You don't want to freeze the skin. Wrap it in a cloth and hold it on the skin and don't hold it for more than ten minutes.
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I would say five minutes, then off again and then back on again just to help ease the swelling. If the area is painful, lie the person down and raise the area above the heart, if that's possible, to slow the flow of blood to the injured area and reduce the swelling.
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If a bumper bruise becomes very swollen, then you may need to take them to a healthcare professional for advice. It doesn't say remove rings. I would have added remove rings to that. If somebody injures their hand or something, I would say remove the jewelry before the hand swells so that you're not going to have trouble with that later.
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That's the advice from the St. John's Ambulance for your average thumps, bumps and bruises. And the remedy we're going to talk about first is Arnica. It's just usually known as Arnica, but its full name is Arnica Montana and it's a mountain daisy, so it's one of the daisy families.
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It looks slightly different to our ordinance or garden daisy, which is another homeopathic remedy known as Bellis perennis. But this is Arnica, the mountain daisy, and probably Arnica is the best known homeopathic remedy in the world.
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Just to let you know that on the PowerPoint presentation, which you will get to keep, the words that I have put in dark type or bold are the ones that you really need to remember about this remedy. And occasionally a remedy may fit more than one complaint and we may do a remedy recap which helps you remember them.
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And when we do the remedy recaps, you'll see that these are the words that are coming up, whatever the complaint is. So I've put the remedy. In plain type, but the keynote words that are really going to be important for you to remember, if you want to be able to remember the remedies, are the words in bold type.
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So, Arnica, as I say, probably the best known remedy in the world for trauma. And I think whenever you say homeopathy, or if I say I'm a homeopath and people say, oh, homeopathy, what's that? And I say Arnica.
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Oh, yeah, Arnica. Immediately they know, they know what it is. Oh, yeah, Arnica. That's great, isn't it? And any traumatic injury to the body may require Arnica. It's specific for bruises, but in any emotional shock, trauma, you might we're going to cover burns, but even if somebody burns themselves, if they've been quite traumatized by it, you may start with Arnica before you move on to any burn remedy.
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So it's for trauma, generally, 100%. Any traumas that people have, Arnica may be able to help with, but specifically for blows, injuries, falls and bruises. And it's great for bruises. Sometimes you knock yourself really, really hard and it's starting to bruise and swell immediately and the Arnica can really help to deal with that.
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And very occasionally you sprain your ankle or something and you take Arnica and the ankle becomes black. It actually brings the bruising out sometimes. So it can either stop the bruising coming out if it's given early enough or depending on the type of injury, but occasionally it brings the bruising to the surface to clear it.
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But it's an absolutely amazing remedy and something that most people know about. It's used in countless homes across the world, and when children injure themselves, they say. Supposing your child falls off their high chair?
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They say the gap between the impact and the cry will tell you how much they need Arnica. If there's no impact, often, they say, it means there's no shock. They possibly don't need it as long as they're not they obviously haven't hurt themselves.
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But when you hear a thump and a few minutes later you hear that, ah. That's a sign that they've been shocked. They're kind of almost shocked out of themselves for a moment, and that's a sign that they may do well without a dose of Arnica.
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Sometimes when people have been really unwell, maybe you'll see somebody, they've been not seriously injured, but they've been clipped by a car and thrown fallen on the floor, and you run over, Are you okay?
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And they get up to their feet and they'll all say, yes, yes, I'm fine, I'm fine. No, really, I'm fine. And you think, I'm sure you can't be fine. You were just hit by a car and knocked backwards into the road.
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Well, let me get you a glass of water. Come and sit down. No, honestly, I'm fine. Leave me alone. I'm fine. This is something that Arnica often do when they're ill. If it's a stranger, there's not very much you can do.
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You can offer them Arnica, you can give them a seat, bring them some water, but you can't force it down them. If it's a family member, you might say, Actually, you're really not fine, and I'm going to give you some of the Arnica out of the first aid kit.
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But that I'm okay. I don't know if you've seen the Monty Python film where the knights who say, me, they're fighting and one gets a leg cut off or something, and he's hopping about, and they say, You've lost your leg?
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No, it's a flesh wound. It's a flesh wound. I'm fine. He is in a very Arnica state. Honestly, I'm fine. When you can see that they're not fine. So sometimes they downplay the severity of what's happened to them after a shock or a trauma, sometimes people feel
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almost as if they've been kicked or beaten. They feel kind of bruised everywhere. Even. Sometimes that happens when people have been in a car accident and they think, oh, I'm okay. That was lucky I got away with that.
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But it was a big fright. The car spun around, but luckily everyone's fine. But they may wake up the next day and they may feel, oh God, I feel like I've been through the mangle. And that's just the effect of the tension that did in the shock and that they've held that tension and that they've got lactic acid in their muscles.
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And Arnica can ease that sense of bruised and beaten feeling after someone's had a shock. In a typical arnica state, they may feel muscular soreness and restlessness as well as that muscular soreness.
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They will be almost like it hurts to lie on that side. I'm going to move around, I'm going to move and I'm going to lie, I'm going to lie and oh no, that hurts just as much. And they find it very difficult to get a comfortable position.
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It's a wonderful remedy for injuries. And as well as relieving the shock and the trauma, it can relieve pain. I'll tell you a story that I like that when I was studying, a homeopath came to teach us from America.
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He had a big clinic in Arizona and was very well known homeopath and a great teacher. And he told me a story and since then I've always kept Arnica in my glove compartment of the car. He told me that he was out in his car and he was driving along the top of some canyon and he saw a guy on horseback go down into one of the guess, like a path down into the canyon.
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And as he watched him, he saw the horse stumble and fell. And they fell over the lick of the road onto the one below and the man landed underneath the horse and the horse couldn't get up. So he phoned what they phoned in America 911.
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Got his Arnica out of the first of his glove compartment, ran down until he got to the man and he said, I phoned 911 and I'm here to help you. But the man was trapped under the horse, his legs were pinned, he was in serious pain.
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It looked like the horse was badly injured. And so he gave the man some arnica and he said, don't worry, I'm going to stay with you. Ambulance is on its way. Or I think it was an airlift, actually, but said, they're on their way.
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I'll stay with you till they're here. And every so often he was giving him some arnica. Then the ambulance came, they took him away to the hospital and the guy went to see how he'd got on. He found where he'd gone and gone to the hospital and he said, oh, hi, do you remember me?
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He said, oh, God. He said, I am so glad to see you. He said, I've been trying to find out who you were. You saved my life that day. He said, if you hadn't been there and hadn't seen, I might have laid there for days.
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I might have died. He said, I was so lucky that you saw me. He said, not only that, I was even luckier that you had that morphine with you. He said, what do you mean? He said, well, that morphine stuff you gave me, that really strong painkiller that you gave me.
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He said, oh, that wasn't morphine. He said, what was it then? Some similar thing? What was it? He said, no, it was Arnica. It's a homeopathic remedy. And he told him about it. He said, I'm a homeopath and this is what homeopathy does.
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He said, I can't believe that. Well, the moral of the story as to why you should carry your Arnica in your glove compartment was it turned out that he was a multi billionaire and he set the homeopath up in a great big clinic in Arizona where he still works from.
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Ah, so grateful was he for the homeopathic morphine that was, in fact, Arnica. So it's capable of causing great pain relief in someone who's in a very distressing situation and is an absolutely amazing remedy.
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Nowadays, if you are having surgery, your hospital may say, please don't take Arnica before surgery or after surgery, as it will make you bleed. Well, as a homeopath, we would give something similar to the suffering, so there's no suffering happened before an operation.
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So, I personally would never give it before an operation. I would only ever give it after an operation. But I have to say, I have used it after surgery for my patients in. I wouldn't be able to count.
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I mean, I would be well past 5000, maybe even past 10,000 people who have given it to post-surgery. And they all, without exception, it's commented on. The surgeons actually say to them, oh, my goodness, you're doing really well.
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How are you up and about? Or how are you so bright eyed and bushy tailed? And they say, Arnica. Sometimes the surgeon goes, oh, great stuff. Other times they go, but the nurses, my friend had a mastectomy and one of the nurses said, you're up and about, you know, you're going to go and wash your hair.
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Everyone else is still lying in there with their chest drains in and moaning and on their morphine pump, how are you doing so well? And she said, Well, I think it's the Arnica. And the nurse said, you know, we have it in the nurses station, but we're not allowed to give it to the patients.
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And yet, without exception, it's commented on by the doctors, the surgeons and the nursing staff how much more quickly people heal when they have been given Arnica. It's essential, in my view, is useful after dental procedures, especially extraction that can be quite traumatic.
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And a lot of. Hug, hugging and pulling and wisdom teeth. My friend had bruising on her chest because the dentist almost had to get his foot on her chest and pull out. And she said, I got a bruise on my chest as well.
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Lucky didn't break her ribs. But when dental surgery has been a little traumatic, it will help to calm down the inflammation and again, speed up the healing. And it's a fantastic remedy during labor.
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And afterwards, if the person who's having the baby is into homeopathy, they can have a homeopathic first aid kit and take it into the hospital with them. And again, it's completely safe. No harm can come to the mother or the baby.
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That's one of the wonderful things about remedies that you can give them. And if they don't work, they just don't work. That's it, nothing else. And if they work, then bingo, you've got the right remedy, you're going to be really pleased, and the mother in labor is going to be really pleased.
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So Arnica is always in kits for labor. Sometimes mums just feel, I'm exhausted. They don't call it labor for nothing. And they just say, I've had it, I'm done. And you can give them some Ignati, some losing the plot now, some arnica under their tongue, and it's almost like woo.
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You know, like when you see boxers and they give them water and a cold sponge, and then they're up and they're back into the ding ding, round two. And it's like that, it's just like, oh, okay, back in the game.
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And it really makes a difference to them. And afterwards, labor, women experience it very differently. But for some women, they have a very long, very complicated, very tiring and painful labor. And I see that quite a few patients I see with postnatal depression, actually, I think they have post traumatic stress.
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And I will say that when any of my patients are going to have a baby, I say, don't forget your Arnica. Take it after the childbirth, take it for a few days. And I say to my students when we're studying Arnica, I say, if you've had a baby, or if not, if your friend or your sister or anyone else has had a baby, dig out the first pictures of them with their baby still in their hospital.
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Greens are in what they were delivered in, still here, all over the place. Lovely baby. And they're smiling at the camera. If you get a piece of paper, you'll see that their mouth is smiling at the camera and their eyes are going, what just happened to me?
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And that means they were in an Arnica state. And if they get Arnica, it can relieve a lot of that. Shock trauma, not only to the body, but to the spirit, and I think can help prevent sometimes postnatal depression.
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Not always, because sometimes it's a hormonal issue, but quite often. I do think that it may be a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, but it's brilliant after childbirth and it really helps hugely.
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So the next one there, shock, that says it all, really, any sort of shock. It's a fantastic remedy. It's useful for both acute and chronic. Certain chronic. We're not going to be using it that way. And sometimes, maybe we should say recent and remote.
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One of my first ever, ah, proper cases when I qualified as a homeopath, was a man who had forgotten what you call it now, where you fall asleep all the time. No. Narcolepsy. Thank you. Narcolepsy brain's just gone.
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He had narcolepsy and he had also started to develop a heart condition because he was on speed. Basically, he'd been on amphetamines for 25 years because he would fall asleep in his dinner. He'd fall asleep.
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He wasn't allowed to drive if he didn't take them. It was a very complex case. He fell asleep everywhere. But he also had really horrible nightmares at night. The narcolepsy came after he had a head injury and the symptoms of the falling asleep and the horrible dreams were the things that affected him most.
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The night before, he told me he'd dreamt he was casting a fishing line and it flipped back and he pulled his own eye out. Really horrible dreams like that, those were the kind of things and he'd wake up with a shudder.
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And I gave him Arnica. I didn't know where to go with this. I don't know quite I was quite inexperienced and I thought, Well, I do know the Etiology, and the etiology was a head injury. And there was a few other symptoms that he had that the Arnica suited.
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I gave him Arnica. It was 35 years after the initial incident and it wasn't the only remedy he needed, but it was an amazing remedy, how much better he felt after it, how the nightmares disappeared and slowly, slowly he regained his health.
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But Arnica was a remedy he needed, even though the injury was so far ago. We also can get Arnica cream and you can use that on, ah, bruises and bangs and head injuries. The only proviso with this is that it's not meant to be used on broken skin.
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It can irritate broken skin, but as long as the skin isn't broken, you can use Arnica on any bruises, any bangs or knocks that are painful. And we're not going to be talking about these now, because they're slightly more in depth problems, but when the symptoms agree, sometimes Arnica can be used for gout, flu and boils.
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So it's a big remedy and as I say, it's probably one of the best known remedies in the world. Homeopathically, I always think you know how when you're talking about recreational drugs and newspapers often say that cannabis is the gateway drug to harder drugs?
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Well, I always think Arnica is our gateway drug. It's our gateway drug to people try it and they go, oh, my God, this stuff's great. And then they get onto the harder Pulsatillas and such like. But I do so think it's that it's our it's our gateway drug.
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It's most people's introduction into homeopathy and they may have said, oh, I'm not sure about this homeopathy. And they try it either after an operation or after an illness, and they go, oh, my God, I feel so much better.
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How did that just happen? So, yes, I think of it as the homeopathic gateway drug. Quick question, pre operative. Some homeopaths still suggest that you take it, but the only reason is if you don't bleed a lot.
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Is that right? Arnica is in the rubric for excessive bleeding after operations. It actually can help. It does what your body requires it to do. Some people are going to bleed after surgery. I don't believe it's anything to do with any Arnica that they take.
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But my advice, and that's only my advice other homeopaths do different things. My advice would be to take it after when you actually have the symptoms that you're trying to clear. I believe that a remedy is only homeopathic when it's given in combination with the symptoms.
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In other words, it's similar to the suffering, because it isn't the remedy, it isn't the drug, it's your body, it's the action it has in your body. So it has to be similar to the suffering. So to give it when you're not suffering doesn't really make sense to me.
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So someone may have to it. I certainly don't think it can be harmful and I don't think that it will do any harm. But I always give it afterwards just because that's what I've always done and that's what I advise from my patients.