Exclusive Interview with Dr Muktinder Singh - homeopathy360

Exclusive Interview with Dr Muktinder Singh

Dr Muktinder Singh MD (Hom) from Baba Farid University ( Punjab ) is practicing since 24 years.  His specialty is Classical Homoeopathy especially dealing with paediatric cases and Behavioral Problems.
He is

  • Working as Professor HOD Repertory at Sri Guru Nanak Dev Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana
  • PG Guide in Guru Ravidas Ayurvedic University, Hoshiarpur
  • Internal examiner for MD exams at SGNDHMCH, Ludhiana since 3 years
  • Experience with dept. of Ayush in mother child project
  • As invitee in Arogya mela organized at Amritsar
  • As key speaker in TOT, by Dept of Homoeopathy in Mohali, Patiala, Bhatinda, Jallandhar, Kotkapura.

Experience as Speaker

  • National Congress IIHP – Hyderabad, Bhuvaneshwar
  • International Seminar in Disaster management in Air Force Auditorium, New Delhi by Pebble Hill university, Italy
  • Malaysia for 3 days to train a group of doctors for pediatrics.
  • Series of discussion recorded and broadcasted by Channel Punjab, Sony Entertainment network for weekly programme
  • Guest specialty speaker live show in doordarshan Jallandhar.
  • Routine columnist in Regional and national newspapers on health and lifestyle.
  • Main speaker in Punjab State level CME by IIHP Punjab.
  • Speaker at Kent Memorial Lectures 2016 sharing his experience on a Case of Spina Bifida.

Awards and Achievements

  • Lifetime achievement award by Delhi Board of Homoeopathy
  • Awarded as best motivational speaker by Falahi Sahib Trust
  • Director HomoeoCARE a chain of pediatric speciality having clinics all across India
  • Trustee Misssion Paigam e shabad Guru a nonprofit Organization

Dr Abha (ED): Tell us something about your journey from a graduate to being a homoeopathic child specialist.
Dr Muktinder Singh (MS): I have a friend Dr Praveen Jain of Mumbai. Usually in early 1989-1990, I used to visit Mumbai for attending workshop of Dr Sankaran and Dr Vijayakar. At that time, Dr Praveen Jain was one of the members of Predictive Homoeopathy. From there we had a very good association. We realized that other than prescribing acutes, like Cina for recurrency, Pulsatilla for weeping child etc, prescribing for chronic cases was difficult. Other than that, in acutes when our own child is sick and we are not getting result in traditional medicine, it becomes a panicky situation. We need to rush to an Allopath. Then, we thought that if we claim and earn our bread and butter from Homoeopathy, how come we need to carry our own children in the time of crisis to an Allopath. At that time, I thought either Homoeopathy is not good enough or we are not good enough. So, later on we thought that we are not good enough. Homoeopathy is quite competent. From there our journey into Paediatrics began. Our own kids were our teachers. So, when family pressure came, we were to perform, we had to give. So, we thought that yes rather than some traditional medicines, all our remedies had to be given some certain parameter or definition on which we can prescribe upon the children. Later, we evolved in our practice. We started observing our own children and started forming objective symptom totality.
Most of the Materia Medica is full of subjective symptoms. In Homoeopathy we have two kinds of symptoms: 1. Subjective and 2. Objective. Say, Stramonium is full of itching, or some remedies have crawling sensation, hammering sensation. All remedies are full of these kinds of symptoms. But, along with that we have so many objective symptoms in a remedy. In infants or toddlers or small age group child, we hardly get any subjective symptoms because they cannot talk, there is no verbal communication with the patient. In evolving our Materia Medica which was only based on objective totality, we applied that, we started getting results. From there on, we started building our own Materia Medica. From, there our journey into paediatrics started.
Now, we have under the name of Dr Praveen Jain two books, one is: “Essentials of Pediatrics” which has already been translated into many languages and the other is “Essence of Pediatric Materia Medica”. We were working with the chain of clinics called HomoeoCARE. Dr Nanda was also part of it from Chandigarh. We first converted our own clinic into Paediatric speciality clinic. Later on we developed from our cured cases. We started developing our won Materia Medica of Paediatrics. I have my own notes to which I refer whenever I needed. So, in this way we evolved other than following our classical literature.
The HomoeoCARE Clinic
In acutes, you still have some idea about prescribing remedies. The problem is more difficult when we see a child of wheat allergy, child of behavioral disorders or constitutional disorders because at that time patient is apparently in a stable clinical condition when they visit the clinic. Say, an asthmatic child is coming to you, most of the time when parents bring them to you; they are not in acute stage of illness. And you have to prescribe a constitutional remedy, at that time what to take and what not to take? All children seem to be alike. All the parents may give similar kind of information to you. Rather it is sometimes more ironical when the mother herself is so sensorious and critical! I remember of a case when, once a mother came to me and said, my child is dirty child, my child is disorganized child, my child is a messy child, never washes his hands, never keep things in place and blah, blah… Then, I thought this a classical case of Sulphur child. I prescribed Sulphur. Then later on, after three to four follow-ups, father came up. He told an entirely different story of the same child. He was telling the child is such that he is very fastidious, he will wash his hands, and he will keep his things in place. Later on, I realized that the child’s father is Sulphur, so child is Arsenic to him. And mother is Arsenic, so child is Sulphur to her. It was so ridiculous to me. So, the information of the parent is so biased. It is the information from their own viewpoint. It is not at all the information of the child. This is what they think of the child. Same child grandmother will give you different picture, father will give you a different picture and mother will give you a different picture. This gave a clue that let us not depend upon only description. Let us settle, and start prescribing only on observation. All our clinics have Child Activity Observation Room, where we leave the child. Let the child express. Because most of the time child is afraid in front of the doctors. So, let’s make them comfortable. Once they are comfortable, they will start showing their true colours. And, once they start showing their true colours, we have questionnaire for the parents to fill up. In the meantime, we keep observing the child.
What is his sociability? Sociability is how much time the child takes to mix up in the environment, how he behaves with the strangers, how he takes his new food, new environment. One child who is taking it very easily and in a very open way is an extrovert child; we call them an approaching child. The other child is very conservative, very fearful, very timid, withdrawing from everything, just clinging to parents, not mixing with other child, not mixing with the doctor; we call it a withdrawing child.
These are the two types of kids. So, we divide our Materia Medica into withdrawing and approaching child. And above that, some are true withdrawing and some are true approaching. But, there are grey areas in between. Sometimes, they are earlier withdrawing and later approaching. Sometime, they are earlier approaching and when we intend to examine them, they become withdrawing. So, we developed our Materia Medica on sociability. Say, Lachesis – initially they are timid, timid, timid. Later on, they are very approaching, have good eye contact and will mix up well.  Lachesis is very cautious. If he feels the environment is safe, it will start showing its colours. Later on he might become destructive. Tarentula – no inhibition, they will start showing their colour. On the other hand, there are remedies which are very approaching like Stramonium, but once you start to examine the child he becomes withdrawing. He will become fearful. Kali – they will be very comfortable initially. But, once they feel harmed they start showing their colour. This way we observe the behavior of the children. We confirm with the parents, cross-examine the patient and then we form totality and convert it into rubrics.
We also take note of Activity level that is physical and mental. We observe whether the child is hyperactive/ hypoactive or normo-active.
We also take note of Destructibility – what type of toy he/she is handling, whether they keep the toy from where they have picked up. How they behave with other children. So, all that makes the totality of the child. So, after clinical assessment topped up by the Homoeopathic knowledge we come to know what is normal and extract out the abnormal things.
ED: What do you think are the precipitating causes for behavioral disorders in children in the modern world?
MS:

  1. Drug abuse during pregnancy: Vaccination, over-medication during and after pregnancy. We defy natural immunity, and nature gives us defying disorders. This is give and take. We don’t respect the nature, so nature pushes us back.
  2. Environment at home: Families are nuclear. Kids are not given ample time. Either they are over-cared or they are under-cared. If over-cared, the child is a pampered child. If under-cared, cared by maids, by people not intimate, forsaken feeling develops. This also creates behavioral disorders.
  3. Genetic predisposition / suppression
  4. Stimulus from social media/T.V: kids copy more than their own behavior. Whatever they see in cartoons, elders, they just mimic that.
  5. Mother coming back from job: they are already irritable, already tired. Whenever they are at home, they become over-demanding from kids, pressure of studies. They love them but life is becoming so complex. The child doesn’t know how to behave into these circumstances. They develop either Attention seeking behavioral disorders, or they behave in order to escape from the situation or behave in order to prove themselves. This all leads to some abnormal kind of behavior.

ED: Recently, you presented a paper of an infant with Spina Bifida in Kent Memorial Lectures 2016 the theme of which was ‘Non Surgical Treatment of Surgical Conditions.’ Can you highlight the zist of the case?
MS:  The case was brought to me in a state when the child was already operated upon the fifth day of life. They were expecting that this child will not survive as the child was not moving his limbs. 
The history starts as: Mother got typhoid fever in the sixth month of her pregnancy and she was in Australia when she conceived and she was to come back to India because they were not permanent over there. They could not bear the medical expenses. So, mother was flown to India during typhoid. After typhoid, when she underwent Pre-natal scan, the gynaecologist detected that the child had spina bifida. So, she was forced to take decision of Medical termination of Pregnancy by everyone. As, her husband was not with her ( he was in Australia) and one of her earlier child got aborted, she took the decision otherwise. She said, she will bear the child. She will up bring the child and not abort the child. The child had meningomyelocele, with protrusion of spinal tissue, which was the worst prognosis.  The lady was cursed by the doctors. Why you are bringing a handicapped child? Why you are continuing your pregnancy? Technically, she was cursed by her doctors. Also, she was away from her husband. It was a complicated labor. Even during labor, the doctors were cursing her. Mother was under trauma. Global studies show that all the kids with spina bifida are not very much handicapped. Rather the trauma during the labor is causing more morbidity. Mother was brave and gave birth to the child. The child was operated on the fifth day and she was told that the child will undergo five more corrective surgeries. The child started developing hydrocephalus the very day after the surgery. And they said, this can be fatal. In this condition they brought this two month old child to me. He was just sucking; there was no physical development, no movement of the lower limbs. Child was not able to cry. Hydrocephalus was increasing. They were just giving the prognosis that the child will not survive. I took the case, although I was not sure what to take and what not to take. But later on, it flashed to my mind that Dr Hahnemann has given us directions on one-sided diseases. I took the case as one-sided with two-three symptoms:

  1. After switching off the fan, the child became uncomfortable. The child was hot.
  2. Warty cystic growth on the right ear. Child might be right sided.
  3. Distension of abdomen. Child passed a lot of wind while examining the abdomen.

So, the totality was flatulence, right sided, hot patient. So, I prescribed Lycopodium. It was a miracle.  On the very third day, flatulence was better. Child was active, taking more feed. Child was returning to life. That encouraged me a lot. That was an exciting journey for me to see the child developing. Now, the child is four years old, very intelligent. He just has right sided paralysis. Otherwise, he is a normal child. We are indebted to Dr Hahnemann in curing impossible cases. Later, I found that even the child’s constitution was Lycopodium. All these four years, I have prescribed the child Lycopodium for almost all his ailments including pneumonia.
ED: Many homoeopathic physicians believe that some homoeopathic medication during Antenatal period optimizes chances of behavioral and other disorders in children. Comment.
MS: I believe that, Homoeopathy is so powerful that a single dose can bring a lot of changes. So, I strongly believe that if you are a keen observer you can even see the behavior of the child in the womb, whether introvert/extrovert or hyper-active/under-active.  It starts reflecting in the behavior of the mother, sleep pattern of the mother, movement of child in the womb. So, if you can judge that you should prescribe on those. But, I don’t believe in prescribing Homoeopathic remedies as prophylactics in certain doses to every pregnant woman. It will be hit and try method. It might cause harm to the constitution of the child. Medication should be individualized and not generalized.
 

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