“If medicines can protect us from the contagion of a raging epidemic, they must possess a greater power to alter our vital force than the epidemic.”  Dr. Samuel Christian Hahnemann, MD (1755-1843), a German physician known to be the founder of homeopathy

Historically, homeopathy has been one of humanity’s most powerful treatment modalities for dealing with epidemics/pandemics.  There is a plethora of research on this subject that you can find just with a simple google search.  Just months ago, the Austrian government confirmed the potential for homeopathy to tackle the serious subject of antimicrobial resistance.  Within a similar time frame, the Swiss government concluded that homeopathy is medicinally effective, cost-effective and safe.  In India, the government allows homeopaths to work alongside conventional doctors in hospitals to help manage Covid-19 patients.

Although you are probably not familiar with PASC (or post-acute sequelae of Covid-19), unless you never listened to or read the news, you probably have heard of long Covid (or Covid long-haulers), chronic Covid, post-Covid syndrome or post-acute Covid Syndrome.  Although there are some differences among these terms, more or less they all describe the same phenomenon- an illness that comes AFTER the acute phase of Covid-19 infection.  According to a New England Journal of Medicine article, “Long COVID – in which patients experience persistent COVID-19 symptoms for months or develop new symptoms after the period of acute infection has passed – will now be referred to as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, or PASC. PASC can occur even among those who initially experience moderate COVID-19.”  About a year ago, a BMJ (British Medical Journal) article stated that, “approximately 10% of people experience prolonged illness after Covid-19.”  However, we now know that far more people struggle with long-Covid than just 10%!  As of recently, the CDC puts it as high as 1 in 5 adults.

In my experience, post-Covid or long-Covid is a far more challenging condition to deal with than Covid itself.   Due to lack of any formal testing, post-Covid is certainly far more difficult to diagnose, and often more challenging to treat than Covid itself.  Yes, acute Covid has a significantly higher potential of being immediately life-threatening in certain cases, but long-Covid can be a chronically debilitating condition with no light in sight unless proper treatment is ensued.   In my practice, I am finding that most practitioners, regardless of their medical training, are often unfortunately missing the diagnosis of post-Covid in their patients.  I am basing this statement on the fact that the majority of the patients that I diagnose with post-Covid (and end up being able to successfully treat) have received either no diagnosis at all from their previous doctors or ended up with diagnoses that definitely did not fully explain their post-Covid signs/symptoms.

Since the diagnosis of post-Covid or long-Covid appears to often be missed by the majority of health care practitioners, the possibility for proper treatment is low.  Furthermore, there is no telling how long your “long” Covid or post-Covid signs/symptoms may last if you are not receiving the proper treatment.  This is a tragedy beyond measure since countless number of our fellow human beings have and will continue to be afflicted by this condition. I strongly believe that post-Covid is the #1 health challenge facing humanity at this point.

I see several post-Covid patients per day in my practice, most of whom sadly do NOT realize they have post-Covid due to various reasons including: 1) they have never tested positive for Covid,  2)  they never became sick with anything that presented like Covid (based on what they hear about on the news on how Covid typically presents- A cough, fever, etc.), 3) they somehow didn’t put two and two together, and come up with the realization that their symptoms were related to Covid, 4) they were fully vaccinated and boosted, so they mistakenly think that they could not have possibly contracted Covid, and 5) post-Covid signs and symptoms can be extremely variable (affecting any body part from head to toes), and so most people (including many doctors) are unaware of the pervasive nature of this nebulous condition.

Homeopathy is not just a tool for treatment, but also for diagnosis of diseases.   Using their unique system of medicine, homeopaths are usually able to not only properly diagnosis post-Covid simply based on the patient’s characteristic signs/symptoms, but also effectively help get their post-Covid patients better.  More often than not, we homeopaths, are able to (perhaps not with 100% confidence but with a fairly healthy level of certainty) figure out what sort of an acute viral (or bacterial) condition the patient may be suffering from without requiring a confirmed lab-based test result.  Specifically, in regard to any epidemic or pandemic disease including Covid (as well as post-Covid), there are not only “common” symptoms that all practitioners (including homeopaths) look for in the patient, but also specific, what homeopaths would call “characteristic” symptoms, as well.  It is these “characteristic” symptoms that can guide a homeopath to a possible diagnosis (without necessarily requiring any test results) and treatment.  It is critical to realize that the characteristic symptoms of an epidemic disease including Covid-19 might change as new variants and subvariants show up, and as the characteristic symptoms of the epidemic disease change, so do the top remedies that are most likely going to help treat it.  To my understanding, up until this time in the Covid-19 pandemic, the three most common CHARACTERISTIC symptoms (versus COMMON symptoms) that many of us homeopaths see in the majority of our of Covid and post-Covid patients are: 1) left-sided symptoms (such as more pain or any other symptoms on the left side of the body than the right side)  2) excessive dryness in at least one or multiple regions of the body (including mouth, throat, eyes, intestines, vaginal tract, and skin) and 3) extreme pain anywhere in the body (more likely to be worse on the left side of the body).  These characteristic symptoms may occur in other viral diseases such as the flu, but are extremely unique to Covid and post-Covid.

For example, I had a patient who could not walk without a walker due to severe pain in her LEFT knee for nearly a year and a half.  Her conventional doctors, including neurologists, could not offer any diagnosis that could justify her symptoms.  Based on her unique set of symptoms (i.e. left-sided knee pain and a few other characteristic symptoms), I decided that she was suffering from post-Covid (or long-Covid).  I offered her a homeopathic remedy that matched all of her symptoms (not a set diagnosis).  Her condition gradually improved, and after a year and half of not being to walk without a walker, she was able to walk without a walker (or even a cane) within a month of using her remedy on a daily basis.  Her testimonial can be found on the Patient Testimonials page on our website.

Sometimes the road to recovery in a post-Covid case involves a few different remedies prescribed back to back as the patient’s signs/symptoms change over time. Just like there are no set homeopathic remedies for Covid itself, there are also no set remedies for post-Covid, hence the need for a consultation with a homeopath.  As a reminder, not all NDs (naturopathic doctors) are homeopaths. Homeopathy is a branch of natural medicine utilized by all kinds of health care practitioners including licensed homeopaths, NDs, MDs, DOs, nurse practitioners, etc.  If you or someone you know is suffering from long-Covid, please refer them to a qualified homeopath.

I wrote my first blog on long-Covid titled “Long COVID or Chronic COVID: DIAGNOSIS (frequently missed) + TREATMENT Ideas” on Mar 14, 2021.  This blog covers the signs and symptoms that may be present when someone has the condition known as “long-Covid”, “chronic Covid” or “post-Covid”.  The medical community as a whole, including the homeopathic community, has learned much more about the subject since then.  Since the beginning of the pandemic, a significant amount of international research has been conducted regarding the subject of homeopathic management of Covid and post-Covid, and the results have been positive and promising.  I shared a number of these research articles in my recent presentation “Homeopathic Management of Covid & Post-Covid” at the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians convention in Spokane, WA.  You can view the powerpoint presentation/slide show for this talk on our website: www.DrSharif.com.  (Unfortunately, audio/visual recording of this talk will not be available for another few months.)  This is a large powerpoint presentation with over 250 slides packed full of useful information for practitioners only.  This presentation was intended for naturopathic doctors and other health care professionals who may be interested in the homeopathic management of Covid and post-Covid, but require further continuing education for treating this illness.  The detailed study of this presentation is not suited for the lay person, but you may find it interesting to glance through the slides.  A more in-depth study of these slides may be intriguing to those of you who are highly interested in learning more about the subject.

I believe regardless of our medical background, the occurrence of future infectious epidemic/pandemic diseases feels not like a probability, but rather a certainty, to most of us.  Therefore, I would imagine that most of us would feel much more secure knowing that we have alternative therapies that may be helpful to us for managing these dreadful diseases that threaten us, our loved ones, our society/country as a whole, or hopefully our entire species.

Humanity definitely needs to be prepared for epidemics/pandemics!  You may be interested to know that prior to the Covid pandemic, in August of 2019, I presented a talk on the “Homeopathic Prevention and Treatment of Epidemics & Pandemics” at the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians convention in Portland, OR.  (You can watch the entire one-hour Vimeo presentation on the homepage of our website, www.DrSharif.com, located towards the bottom of the homepage.)  The intention behind this presentation was to help encourage my fellow naturopathic doctor colleagues and other health care practitioners to prepare for future epidemics/pandemics and to give them a therapeutic framework that they can use for managing the top most common epidemics/pandemics in the world at the time.  Homeopaths have always had a high degree of sensitivity for feeling the pulse of epidemics, and often behave as the canary in the coal mine.

In order to handle epidemics and pandemics in the most efficacious manner, we need a medical tool that is effective, is readily available, is safe and cost-effective, easily transportable, can be administered even by lay individuals (not just health care workers), and does not necessarily rely on any lab test results (i.e. patient symptoms are usually sufficient).  This tool I described has fortunately existed in our human civilization for over 200 years, and it is called homeopathy.

Disclaimer:  If you have Covid-19 or post-Covid, you must consult with your doctor.  Do NOT self-treat!  This blog and the AANP presentations cited in this blog are only meant to share the latest developments in the field of homeopathy (as it relates to Covid-19 and other epidemic/pandemic diseases) with other naturopathic doctors in the country and abroad and/or with other health care practitioners interested in this subject.  None of the presentations cited in this blog are meant to be for the lay person.  If you have Covid-19, you must consult with a professional homeopath.  It’s imperative to realize that homeopathy does not have any remedies for ANY specific conditions, including COVID-19 or post-Covid.  In homeopathy, we treat people, not diseases.  Regardless of the name of the disease, mainly based on the person’s state and unique set of signs/symptoms, we find a remedy that best matches the case.  Therefore, homeopaths are not claiming that they have a specific verifiable cure/treatment OR method of prevention for COVID-19 or post-Covid.