Pain Relief: The Right Cure

It all started about two years ago. Zeba Naqvi was asleep after a hard day’s work at an IT company in Dubai.

It was past midnight when she suddenly woke up with an unbearable shooting back pain. She waited until dawn before alerting her friends, who immediately rushed her to a hospital.

A doctor assessed the situation and after initial tests, administered shots to numb the pain. The much-relieved Zeba then fell into a deep sleep. But the pain kept recurring.

Zeba visited different hospitals hoping to find a permanent solution. She even decided to seek treatment in Mumbai. She consulted the top hospitals there, but each time the diagnosis was different.

"A friend’s child was being treated at Dr Ray’s Medical Centre, near BurJuman. She suggested I give homeopathy a try. ‘It may not help, but it won’t do any harm either,’ she had said," said Zeba.

Dr Riyaz S. Badami, the homeopathic doctor at the clinic, studied Zeba’s case and put her on a 15-day course of medication.

"Call it a miracle or coincidence, but within a week the pain subsided and it’s been over a year since I last felt the pain," said Zeba.

Dr Badami said: "I do not give anyone false hope. I can only try my best. Also, I do not accept patients I can’t help."

But alternative remedies are not accepted by many conventional doctors.

One Dubai-based physician said: "If you believe in modern science and how it has helped the world progress and get rid of so many ills, then you must also believe that orthodox medicine, which is a science, works.

"Alternative medicine has yet to conduct well-documented tests to be fully accepted by the scientific community."

A Sharjah-based child specialist disagreed: "I am not averse to alternative medicine. I leave it to patients to decide what works best for them. I certainly want to see both thoughts of medicine working in harmony as both have their merits."

However, he feels that homeopathy has to convince the medical community of its treatments by conducting scientific studies and publishing them in reputed medical journals.

How It’s Done

Homeopathic treatments generally begin with a detailed examination of patients’ histories, including questions regarding their physical, mental and emotional states, their life circumstances and any physical/emotional illnesses.

The homeopath then translates this information into a complex formula of mental and physical symptoms, including likes, dislikes, innate predispositions and even body type.

The goal is to develop a comprehensive representation of each individual’s overall health. This information can then be compared with similar established data in the drug provings found in the homeopathic materia medica.