"Sugar" - such a loaded word these days! It's easy to forget that our bodies need it, in Paul Pitchford's eloquent phrase, "as fuel to feed the ongoing fire of life's process". However, while the sugars found in whole foods are balanced with other mineral nutrients, which help maintain our body in a healthy balance, it's when we eat too much sugar, especially that which has been refined and extracted, that problems tend to arise.

Homeopathy is a system of holistic medicine which uses minute amounts of substances from various plant, mineral or animal sources to help the body re-establish health by stimulating its innate healing potential. These natural remedies are prescribed to match as closely as possible each person's symptom picture. Symptoms are signs that the body is out of balance, and the body will try to regain balance in as many ways as it can, such as by shifting its response to temperature (eg: need to stick hot feet outside the blankets), climate (eg: unable to be in the sun), and food, where cravings, dislikes and aggravations may be quite pronounced. All of these are signs for a homeopath and will help lead to a remedy tailored specifically to your situation.

So, for example, if you have a craving for sugary sweet things, your homeopath will be very interested and will want to know far more, and will ask you to be quite specific about the craving - is it the sugariness itself or is it the sweetness of bananas, chocolate, ice cream, or pastries, etc, or is there a particular time of the month, and are there any other symptoms linked with the craving, because each of these, in conjunction with other symptoms, will indicate a different remedy. Thus there is no one particular remedy for someone who can't stop eating sugar, because no two people are alike.

For example, Calcarea, a remedy made from calcium, might be indicated when someone desires sweet things during a headache; Argentum nitricum, or silver nitrate, may be helpful where there is diarrhoea from anxiety and a craving for both sweets and salt; Sulphur, which is often prescribed for skin problems, craves sweets in the form of chocolate or ice cream; a strong desire for sweets, coupled with a bloated and rumbling abdomen, especially when linked with problems with self-esteem and lack of confidence, may suggest Lycopodium, derived from club moss, whereas bloating and gas combined with irritable touchiness and a fear of animals might lead to China, a homeopathic version of quinine.

The strong emotional component of these remedies suggests that the desire for sugar is more than a craving for sweetness alone, and indeed Elson Haas notes that traditional Chinese medicine equates a desire for sugar as a desire for the comfort and security of mother energy. So perhaps it's not surprising that sugary comfort is sought in this era of increasing stress in the home, school, workplace and global village, and so perhaps we should view ourselves with compassion rather than beating up on ourselves for our sugary needs.

Because sugar imbalance can be reflective of potentially serious underlying disease, such as diabetes, it is always vitally important to consult your family doctor if you have sugar cravings: it will still be safe to take homeopathic remedies as they will not react with any medication which your doctor may prescribe.

Bibliography

Pitchford, Paul, Healing with Whole Foods, 3rd ed, North Atlantic Books, 2002

Haas. Elson, Staying Healthy with Nutrition, Celestial Arts, 1992