Journey To Homeopathy

I grew up interested in complex structures, building something new, and solving puzzles. I was convinced to become a civil engineer or an architect. I spent a lot of time with my best friend playing chess or making up toys for myself and my younger siblings. I even enrolled in a pre-architect program in grade 11 to get a taste of the field and be prepared for university.

However, my best friend had a strong passion for medicine, biology, and human sciences. During our bus rides to and from school, he often shared what he learned about biology, human physiology, and lab work. By grade 12, I realized that the human body is the most intriguing complex structure, and the amazing engineering intelligence within a cell and organ is far beyond any human-made system.

This realization, coupled with political changes in Iran, my home country, paved the way for studying medicine in Dakar-Senegal, where my brother-in-law was studying medicine. My fascination with the human body grew daily. The introduction to human psychology and psychiatric medicine from the second year of medical school made me even more fascinated with the intricacies of mind-body interactions.

By the fourth year of medical school, we had to choose a subject and work on a doctoral thesis. I had become so fascinated with the healing powers of the placebo effects (in every medical research, it can count up to 45% of all positive results) and the importance of the Doctor-Patient relationship in clinical outcomes that I decided to focus my thesis on those two subjects. Over the next three years, I read every paper I could put my hand on in our library on the topic. I became amazed by the spontaneous healings reported with many advanced pathologies.

 I became convinced that the body knows how to heal itself if given the correct information or ingredients to rebuild itself.

As I travelled through this fascinating journey of the mind-body relationship, I became increasingly aware that we still do not know how to cure a simple headache despite all the incredible advances in medical science. We know how to temporarily treat the pain and other symptoms, but we cannot cure any chronic disease. The exception was for infectious diseases, as we could identify the actual cause (a bacteria, virus, parasite, or fungus) and use drugs to kill those.

It was clear to me: you need to know the cause to cure. If you eliminate the cause, the body knows how to heal itself.

In our classes, the cause of non-infectious chronic disease was not discussed. We call these chronic diseases Idiopathic (unknown cause) or Essential. The awakening came with this question: if we do not know how to cure a simple illness like a headache or asthma, how can we ever hope to cure more complex pathologies?

After graduating from medical school, I specialized in infectious diseases. At least there, I hoped to find the pathogen and eradicate it. As marvellous as this journey was, having real weapons to treat devastating diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, and leprosy, other facts became clear: drug resistance and chronic recurring infectious disease. We treat ear infections, bronchitis, sinusitis, and pneumonia, and the patient returns after 6-8 weeks with another infection and then another infection. Killing the germ was essential but not enough. Why are some constitutions so prone to infections, yet others are not? Why do some overcome the infections so well, and others succumb to them despite the best treatments?

I knew I could not find my answers in the conventional medical approach. My professor of neurology, with 30 years of clinical experience, was still unarmed, facing a simple headache, and had nothing more to offer than a painkiller. I had nothing more to provide a child with recurring ear and sinus infections than yet another more potent antibiotic, causing yet more antibiotic-resistant strains with each prescription. I needed to investigate other models of health and disease and continue my research on the mind-body relationship.

My next journey was to study Chinese Medicine and acupuncture. I started treating patients with acupuncture and Chinese herbs with fascinating results. Then I enrolled in the two-year intensive program for MDs at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and had courses on clinical nutrition, Herbal medicine, nutraceuticals and supplements, Hydrotherapy, Massage, chiropractic, osteopathy, homeopathy, clinical psychology, …

While studying each modality, my two burning questions were still present: What is the real cause of a disease? It was clear to me that the cause meant a different thing to different practitioners and modalities. How do we make sure what we call a cause is the real cause, and how do we eliminate it?

Please watch this video to learn more about my understanding of the cause. Please watch this video to learn more about why I chose to specialize in homeopathy.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Yours in health,

Shahram