From Dr. Kathy: Homeopathic remedies should be used under the advise of a knowledgeable veterinarian, who has examined your pet.

Explanation from Dr. Sonia Rappaport, MD:
When you use homeopathic remedies, you have to suspend your understanding of how medications work. Hippocrates (think Ancient Greece) wrote about two ways of coming to a cure: using dissimilars (i.e., allopathic medicine; we give anti-emetics to stop vomiting, anti-inflammatories to stop inflammation) and using similars (homeopathic medicine). Homeopathic remedies give their “essence”, rather than a weight-measured amount of a substance, and the more dilute the remedy, the more potent it is.

Here’s an example: everyone knows that too much coffee can cause diarrhea, headache, insomnia, irritability, fast heart rate, nervousness, high blood pressure. So if you have a viral illness that is causing these symptoms, you can take a homeopathically prepared version of coffee (caffe cruda) and it can stop the symptoms immediately. Your body is trying to get rid of the virus with these symptoms, and rather than stop the symptoms (which is what allopathic medicine does), the homeopathic remedy enhances your body’s reaction and helps it overcome the virus.

Remedies are made by a process called succussion in which a substance (i.e., in your case, the nut nux vomica)is first made into a tincture and then the tincture is diluted and succussed (shaken with impact). Each dilution makes the remedy more potent. If one part tincture is added to 9 parts water/alcohol
(diluting substance) and succussed, it is called a 1X potency (X as in Roman numeral 10). Then one part of this solution is mixed with 9 parts diluting substance and succussed. This is now a 2X potency.

From a classical homeopathy website: Common potencies used in homeopathic remedies usually begin around 6X. The dilution ratio of 6X is one part of the original mother tincture to one million parts of the diluting material. So, only one part of the original mother tincture is in every million parts of the diluting
material. This is what makes remedies extremely safe. 6X is already extremely dilute, but considered a low potency. More frequently used potencies are, 12X which is one part to 1,000,000,000,000 (whatever that number is), 30X which is one part to this astrological number: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Get the point?(!!!) These are infinitesimal doses. They can not toxicologically harm anyone. Yet they are effective, at times acting stronger and faster then common drugs. What is acting however, is not the remedy. It’s the persons immune system their energy and body
processes which are responding. A dilution that small can not push your body to do anything. It can only suggest, which gives your body the choice to change or not.

If one part tincture is added to 99 parts diluting substance and succussed, it’s called a 1C (C as in Roman numeral 100) potency. Most remedies are 6X, 30X, 6C, 30C, or 200C dilutions. There are also 1M (1 part to 999 parts dilution). Then one drop of the final dilution is put on a lactose pellet; most of the time 1-3 pellets are used. I typically use only one. The effect works or doesn’t so more is wasted. If I add a pellet to water, I let it dissolve and then tap the bottle with the water ten times hard on a table (a mini-succussion).

So if you were given a 30X remedy for Max, the little pellet probably doesn’t have any active nux vomica tincture ingredients by allopathic standards, certainly not more than you might find in water. Sounds hocus pocus, but during  the 1918 flu pandemic (back when 1 in 3 hospitals were homeopathic) the mortality rate among homeopathic physicians was 1% versus 30% of doctors who used allopathic medicine.

Homeopathics are safe, easy to take, and cheap. It’s the deciding which of the thousands of remedies is the right one that is the challenge. If you have a good homeopathic vet, I’d trust her/him. We’re planning to take Arya to one. And BTW, my two children with a genetic disorder have gone to a homeopath for
years, in addition to the allopathic treatments they get; he literally saved my son from being intubated on a respirator with one remedy. The effect wasn’t instantaneous, but it began working right away and six hours after giving him the remedy his breathing was normal. Nux vomica is a common remedy for nausea,
food poisoning, etc. I have used it often for my children.

Sonia and Arya,
11 w.o. GSD with congenital ME
Using procollar and vest-like harness,
liquified gruel, and elevation during meal times. I’ve posted a photo of