Saturday 19 February 2011

Homeopathy at Wellie Level

Homeopathy At Wellie Level is an organisation set up by Christine Lees who has an agricultural degree but is also a qualified homeopath. HAWL provides courses to help the farmer help himself, and looks at homeopathy as an additional farm management tool, not as something designed to take the place of conventional treatment.

Here is an article in Farmers Weekly about Christine and her work




Prince Charles is a great supporter of her work and most HAWL courses are run at Broadfield Farm on the Duchy Estate in Gloucestershire.

The three day course is spread over several weeks to allow farmers the chance to practice what they have learned between sessions. Day one covers the basic principles of homeopathy, learning what a homeopath looks for when observing animals and six remedies which can be added to everyday farm management. Day two covers assessing a sick animal and choosing the right symptoms to help find an appropriate remedy, and day three looks at the longer view, learning how to build homeopathy into the farm year.

OMSCo the Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative offers funding to members to do the course and will cover half the fees.

Under the organic standards for milk, routine use of medicines such as antibiotics is prohibited and homeopathy (under veterinary guidance) is encouraged as an effective alternative and a powerful tool in the maintenance of herd health. With increasing levels of disease on the farm over the years OMSCo believes farmers need another tool to complement conventional treatments.

Yeo Valley are an organic dairy in Somerset which use homeopathy for their cows. Here is a blog post about their use of alternative treatments on the farm.

For information about homeopathic vets in your area or information on homeopathy for animals in general go to the British Association of Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons website

Have look at this video of farmer Oliver Dowding talking about how homeopathy has worked for him and his animals.



Update - in June 2011 MRSA was found in milk because of the routine use of antibiotics to deal with the health problems associated with the extremely high levels of milk being produced per cow. See this article from The Soil Association 


I have an Amazon AStore with a selection of books on Veterinary Homeopathy this is by no means a definitive list but these are some suggestions if you want to find out more about how homeopathy may be able to help with your animals.




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Jo Rhodes is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

Thursday 10 February 2011

Fire Walking for Lineham Farm


One of the reasons Peter, the web designer, suggested I did a blog was because I do loads of different things and not just homeopathy. So, this is one of those very different things.


I will be walking on hot coals for charity on Thursday 7th April!


A friend Penny works at Lineham Farm Children's Centre which is a fabulous place just north of Leeds where kids and adults can come and stay and have fun. It is run as a charity which provides free week-long activity holidays for local children in need of a break. It can also be hired out by community groups at weekends. Visitors can try all sorts of activities including rock climbing, mountain biking, growing veg, looking after the animals, art, climbing, walks in the woods and much, much more.




However, all this farmyard fun, frolics and adventures come at a cost. And this year they need to raise over a whopping £100,000. Their laundry bills alone are £2000! (The kids do love their mud.) The heating bills are £8,000 (the kids need to wash that mud off). And – deep breath – £80,000 to refurbish the toilets.


A group of us will be doing a sponsored Fire Walk on the evening of Thursday 7th April to raise money for the centre and people are welcome to come along and watch us.

The event is organised by Blaze Firewalking and please DO NOT try doing this yourself! If you want to join us there are still some places available so contact Clare Beard at Lineham Farm on 0113 2817880 or clare@linehamfarm.co.uk

I have set up a page on the Just Giving website if you would like to sponsor me click on the link below.

Thursday 3 February 2011

Skeptics ,Science and Mice

Well, it seems the skeptics are planning another of their mass overdoses this weekend. The whole idea of a mass overdose clearly shows how little they know about homeopathy. A single dose (1 pill or 100 pills at the same time still count as a single dose) of a remedy will only have any effect if the remedy fits the persons physical and emotional symptoms. So taking a random remedy is unlikely to do anything. If by chance they take a remedy that does fit them then there would be positive effects.

Homeopathy is extremely safe, especially when compared with allopathic medicine. As a conservative estimate the painkiller Vioxx is thought to have killed 2000 people in the UK, and that is just one drug. However, if you repeatedly take a 'wrong' homeopathic remedy for a long time there is a good chance you will produce symptoms that are related to that remedy and not to you. The homeopathic materia medica has been developed from just such experiments known as provings. Healthy people took homeopathic remedies, often over a period of weeks to see what symptoms were produced. The results are collated and when someone has symptoms which fit the picture produced by a proving then we know that remedy is very likely to help them.


The dictionary definition of a skeptic is someone who doubts the value or truth of an idea or a belief.
Doubting something is reasonable but it seems to me whatever evidence, research papers and personal stories indicate homeopathy has an effect, they continue to say it's unscientific and impossible. The skeptics don't seem to even want to look at the research available, let alone consider that there are many papers showing plants, animals, young babies and cells have responded to homeopathic preparations. No placebo effect with that lot.

Science, according to Wikipedia, 'is an enterprise that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world'. Theories can and do alter according to new evidence and theories. Science is not static and new ideas help move things forward. It seems the skeptic approach is to just say 'homeopathy is rubbish' and refuse to look at anything that challenges that view which seems decidedly unscientific to me.

For an interesting perspective on the mass overdose have a look at the exellent blog Elephants and Mice


And for sound, sensible and scientific information about homeopathy have a look at the website Extraordinary Medicine.

Stunts such as mass overdoses and negative articles in the press have very little effect on the public at large and only serve to stimulate discussion. The vast majority of people come to see a homeopath because they have friends or relatives who have been helped by homeopathic treatment. Most of them don't tweet, blog or really care what some journalist in London says about anything.
If there is a story about homeopathy in the media, most people don't remember whether it was negative or positive. If someone has benefited from homeopathic treatment, any negative story is likely to prompt them to say how much it helped them.

I, and many other homeopaths, actually get much busier when the skeptics pull stunts. So we will look forward to a busy few weeks. Thanks guys!