Questions 1. What inspired you to transition from conventional medicine to homeopathy?

I think it was many things. And God answered my prayers. Because I practiced pediatric oncology before this shift. And during one season, I had a series of patients suffering from the toxic effects of chemotherapy. I feel so bad when they have side effects, guilty even. So I prayed, Lord, please teach me another way to cure cancer that will not have all these side effects. And he answered me after a few months, he gave me vitiligo. (this is an autoimmune disease where your body will attack your melanocytes, the cells that give your skin color ). I was so scared. I would see people in the mall who had this disease, and almost their entire body was white like an albino. I immediately went to the derma, and she said. “oh that’s easy, UVB will color that in again .” “But whats going to stop the spots from appearing, because I’m getting one a week!”. To my horror, she didn’t know. So I didn’t do UVB and I didn’t place the creams she gave (well actually I did but after a few days got a bad reaction to it so she told me to stop). I turned to Dr google. And there it was clear as daylight, it was my food making me sick. I was so fond of coke and cakes and pasta and bread. I had to stop all those. Even rice. I did that for 3 months. After 1 month, no more new spots appeared. After 3 months though, I got sad that I couldn’t eat rice, so I started eating rice again but only very little, and brown or red rice para di nakakatakam.

So I had no more new vitiligo lesions, but it still wasn’t coloring in. Then my sister-in-law told me to try to attend a homeopathy workshop given by Denise Celdran ( the daughter of a well-known pediatrician in MMC, Dr Mike Celdran). So I attended that for 3 nights and paid quite a sum for it. I came home after the last day, with a 50 remedy homeopathy kit, a headache and cynicism. I said, how can this work?!! It’s just water! Pero saying naman yun binayad ko, so I said, okay I’ll give this one chance. I’ll try it on my headache. And if this doesn’t work, I’ll just throw this kit. So with my limited knowledge then, I tried to pick the remedy that I thought would work for my headache and what do you know… I got goosebumps. Because within seconds of taking the drop, my headache disappeared. As in gone, not just decreased, but gone! And within seconds! What witchcraft is this? So I said, there is some truth to this. The next guineapigs were my children. And for their symptoms, I tried homeopathy on them. And same story, within seconds to minutes, symptoms gone. (as soon as I gave the right remedy; sometimes it would take me a few tries before getting to the right one) Then I tried it on my husband, my father , siblings and my patients. And it worked and worked again. Beyond an ounce of a doubt, homeopathy works! I then quickly enrolled in the school of health in the UK. And after 8 years of studying (4 year course but I was enjoying it so much I didn’t want it to end), I am now a homeopath.

*Can you share your experiences at the Philippine General Hospital and how they shaped your medical philosophy?*

I spent 26 years of my life at the PGH. I am thankful for the training and experience I got there with western medicine. I thought that that was the only way to heal people. So I wasn’t very happy with it because it came with a lot of expense and side effects. But I had to settle with it. Somehow though, my soul wasn’t at peace and it was spurring me to seek other things. At first, I learned about nutrition while I was there. And so I taught our patients what they should and shouldn’t eat. Our patients with cancer were eating instant noodles, Kollibee, junk food, sweets. How will they get well? Donors who came to feed them brought them fast foods! So when I was a consultant there, I required donors to bring home cooked food and a lot of vegetables. I also realized as I got deeper into natural medicine, that what I was doing in western medicine was a lot of suppression. We were always working against the body. If the patient had an infection, we give anti-bacterial/anti-viral. If a cough, an anti-tussive. If hypertension, then an anti-hypertensive. I learned in natural medicine/homeopathy, that the symptoms that our body presents us with is a reaction to the noxious things that we are exposed to. And it is there to bring us back to balance. So we shouldn’t fight it. For example, fever—fever is a friend. Fever is there to make the white blood cells move faster and dilate the blood vessels so that the infective agents can be neutralized faster. If we keep giving paracetamol when the fever comes, we are fighting the body’s efforts to heal. I saw it in my children, when I didn’t give anti-pyretics, the fever would go up for a few hours the go down naturally by itself. Then as the body healed, the spike wouldn’t be as high and not as prolonged and got less and less frequent. If we keep giving anti pyretics, we just prolong the illness.

*What are some key principles of homeopathy that resonate with you?*

The best one is that we should treat the body as a whole. This is what holistic means. In western medicine, we were taught, only physical symptoms and lab results matter. We were not told to inquire about the patients’ emotional traumas, fears, dreams, phobias, hobbies, their cravings etc. In homeopathy, these things are key to the right remedy. Our physical symptoms are but a manifestation of something deeper in our mental emotional state. Once we heal that deeper level, the physical symptoms just stop appearing. But if you just treat the physical symptoms, and suppress them, the dis-ease will go deeper into the being. Instead of having just skin symptoms, because those were suppressed…you will now have asthma. The worst thing that can happen is the physical symptoms are suppressed, and the patients develop emotional or mental symptoms instead. This means the disease went in the wrong direction. It went deeper. But let’s say a person has depression, and then you treat that with homeopathy and the patient develops diarrhea or a skin rash — this is great because this means the body is throwing out the emotional problem into the physical and soon the physical will heal too.

Can you share a memorable experience or case that influenced your decision to pursue homeopathy?

I think its in my answer in number 1. But I can share you my first few experiences that convinced me more and more that homeopathy was effective.

When my son was around 6 years old, we were walking in ATC and I was looking forward and he was looking back. We both didn’t notice the big post. So they had a clash – Post: 1point, David: 0. And the bump was so loud that I was sure there was going to be something wrong. At that point, he was going to start to give a big loud cry and attract everyone’s attention. I said, “wait, wait, I have arnica (homeopathy)”. So he gave me a chance and didn’t let out his loud bellow but he was still really frightened and stressed. As soon as I dropped one drop in his mouth, he almost instantly relaxed. And would you believe, there was not even a hematoma or a bukol. There was just a 2-inch red spot that also quickly went away after 2-3 hours.

Another is my husband who was a skeptic had diarrhea. He kept going to the bathroom every 30 minutes. He is also a doctor so he was trying to cure himself with his meds. Diatabs, immodium and antibiotics if I remember right. By afternoon, he was unsuccessful, he asked if I had any homeopathy for diarrhea. I said ya, Ars alb. He took one drop. After a few hours, I noticed he was not going to the bathroom anymore. I said , “O ars alb worked ?” He said, “ya, but I was probably getting better already.” Hay ! He was probably the hardest to convince, but now he is a “user” too!

I have so many more wonderful stories, 100 pages wouldn’t be enough. But try it. You’ll really never be convinced unless you try it. Get arnica from healthy options and try it for trauma, falls, bumps etc. Once it works for you, there is no turning back. I have made it my life mission to empower Filipino mothers with homeopathy.