Elementary Nutrition for Homeopaths

For thousands of years, healthcare notables from the Egyptian Imhotep (ca. 2650–2600 BC) onwards have had a lot to say on the importance of nutrition and diet, and we've had contributions to this along the way from the Alaskan Inuit to the Australian Aborigines and everyone in between. Samuel Hahnemann was far from silent on this issue. In the sixth edition of his Organon of Medicine, he points to an excess or deficiency of food as possible causes for acute disease (Aph. 73); he refers to the importance of considering the diet as a possible contributing factor to chronic disease (Aphs. 94, 208) and altering it as a means of contributing to the recovery from disease (Aphs. 150 and 262). In Aphorism 259, he suggests removing any possible medicinal food from the diet during homeopathic treatment. In Aphorism 260, he refers to dietary obstacles to cure, such as coffee, tea, beer, spiced food and drink, asparagus, celery, as well as elderly cheese and meat.

Joe Rozencwajg has recently weighed in to this commentary with his book, Elementary Nutrition for Homeopaths. Joe Rozencwajg is a ‘natural medicine doctor’ from New Zealand, who has medical and surgical qualifications from Belgium, Israel, and Canada. He has written several books on homeopathy and has risen to prominence lately on the back of his ‘Fibonacci potencies’.

Given the massive influence that nutrition has on the health and well-being of any living thing, anyone operating as a healthcare provider has a duty to clients to take their nutrition into consideration, both diagnostically and therapeutically. Homeopaths have the same responsibility and where Hahnemann gave us general advice in this area, Joe Rozencwajg has provided us with more detail on some of the common dietary obstacles to cure, and the types of dietary elements that are consistent with a healthy metabolism.

In doing so though, he has a somewhat narrow focus, limiting his comments to the need to avoid gluten, cereals, sugar, carbohydrates, and dairy products, while extolling the virtues of the Paleo diet. As a book on nutrition, it is far from comprehensive. His commentary is peppered with references he uses to justify his points, but these are largely isolated studies rather than systematic reviews, and the strength of his arguments suffers somewhat as a result. Apart from the occasional references to rubrics and the inclusion of some small repertorisation tables, it is difficult to see what makes this book specifically relevant to homeopaths and it may not be unreasonable to have expected this book to enlarge on what Hahnemann said above about diet.

A reader who is expecting a well-organized academic text may be disappointed with the layout. It has two chapter indexes: one is fairly unhelpful, and the other seems incomplete. It has no publication date or publisher's location listed, no index at the back of the book, and several chapter headings start as a single line at the bottom of a page. There are several repertorisation tables used in the book, but their edges either seem to fall off the side of the page or disappear into the spine of the book.

That being said, I liked this book. It is written in an easy conversational style, the topics that it does cover are covered well, the author clearly has experience in this area as a practitioner, and it contains some useful dietary tips, such as the use of a coconut and rock salt-based replacement for sports drinks. Unlike many books on nutrition that simply advise the reader to instruct clients to make specific dietary changes, this book provides clear and practical advice on how to advise clients on making dietary changes easily without causing them too much distress. It reads far more like well-seasoned practical advice than a dry academic lecture, and is probably far more usable as a result.