Homeopathy is a system of medicine more than 200 years old and is based on the concept that “like cures like.” Homeopathic medicines consist of extremely small amounts of natural substances which act to stimulate the body’s self-healing mechanisms. Because the doses of the substances in them are so small, homeopathic medicines provide a very gentle way to treat illness without the side effects associated with many conventional prescription pharmaceutical drugs. The approach used in homeopathic medicine is quite different from that used in conventional medicine:  rather than focusing on treatment of disease symptoms, the philosophy is that if the person is brought back into proper balance, the symptoms they are experiencing (imbalance) will resolve accordingly. A homeopathic physician will look for a broad and unique picture of imbalance specific to each person, and then prescribe a homeopathic remedy suited to treat that specific constellation of symptoms or imbalance. There are some conditions for which conventional medicine has no effective treatments that will respond quite well to homeopathic remedies.