Carcinosin is a miasmatic homeopathic remedy. We will have a look at Carcinosin, and its homeopathy uses.
Miasms are inherited predispositions to disease or states present in our bodies and can become active at different points in our lives. Whether the disease is expressed from birth or becomes active later due to a trigger in our life.
Carcinosin is one of my favourite homeopathic remedies, and I often prescribe it. It has many uses and is very easy to spot.
However, I have often heard patients say they are concerned or scared about this homeopathic remedy. I feel this is because they associate this particular nosode with the original source.
However, there is nothing to fear when working with this remedy; this is a gentle and lovely remedy that is very valuable in the present times and helps with many symptoms, emotional as well as physical.
To understand more about this nosode and its uses, we need to understand its foundations and how it is framed from the physical to the emotional side of the remedy.
Carcinosin has a strong affinity for the immune system, which defends the body against viruses and bacteria. The immune system acts as a gatekeeper, identifying foreign substances and protecting the body from them. This remedy is centered around the concepts of boundaries and suppression.
When our bodies are out of balance and in need of this remedy, our immune systems struggle to distinguish between what belongs to us and what is foreign. As a result, it may mistakenly attack our bodies, leading to various chronic inflammations, fevers, autoimmune problems, allergies, viral infections, and even chronic skin conditions like Psoriasis.
IMMUNITY AND BOUNDARIES
One typical example we see in children is an imbalance in the internal thermostat when we encounter viral infections. A fever is a normal and healthy immune response from your body to infection. But when this system is out of balance, it either overreacts, developing constant high fevers, or underreacts, never producing a fever. What you encounter in practice are cases of children who get constantly ill with fevers or children who very rarely experience fevers, even before the age of seven, a time when the immune system matures.
Carcinosin 200, taken weekly or twice weekly, can help restore balance to these cases in conjunction with any other layers. For general fevers, check my acute fevers post.
The immune system will develop defences or immunity against viruses when they are exposed to them, but this process takes time. Our Immune system is not fully developed until the age of 7-8.
Children typically begin to experience colds around six months of age as the immunity passed on from their mother diminishes, requiring them to develop and mature their own immune systems. During this time, children will get many stomach viruses or colds, which often come accompanied by a fever.
Hence, before the age of 7, it is completely normal for children to have an average of 6 colds a year, most of which occur during the cold months. After that age, cold frequency and fevers tend to reduce by about 3-4 per year.
That is a typical healthy stage of childhood development. So, fevers are an important indicator of your immunity during the early years.
When the immune system is imbalanced, we observe an exaggerated response at either extreme of the spectrum: an excessive number of fevers or the absence of fevers.
Some signs of imbalance can be seen in children or adults throughout their lives:
– suffering with constant fevers
-children that have rarely had a fever
-children that never produce high fevers, only low-grade ones
-fevers that appear gradually and disappear suddenly
-intermittent or remittent fevers
-adults that have repeated childhood diseases like chicken pox twice in their life
-no history of childhood diseases
-adults or children with recurrent viral infections
-history of mononucleosis
-history of inflammatory illnesses
-history of swollen glands
Carcinosin is connected to our sense of self and uniqueness, similar to how our immune system signals confusion by indicating an imbalance between what is ours and what is foreign to us.
On the mental level, the Carcinosin patient is unable to develop clear boundaries that lead to a sense of healthy identity and self-esteem.
No wonder the Banerjies have found this remedy helpful at some point in most of their cancer cases and some other protocols to boost immunity. Learn more about the Banerji Protocols here.
Carcinosin is a remedy that lacks a definition of internal boundaries; therefore, it is very much affected by anything external coming in as an attack on the system. This can be in the form of an emotional external event such as grief or a physical attack such as any kind of toxicity in our body that affects our immunity and how our body handles the detoxification of those substances.
So this remedy is very helpful for issues arising from drug toxicity, such as hormones, excess vaccinations, or excess drugs. It is often used to boost the immune system to get rid of offending substances, and it is part of many detox protocols that have been used successfully in homeopathy.
The Banerjies use this remedy in arrested development, such as in the Autism protocol. As the rise in autism cases has been linked to the amount of toxic material loaded in a child’s organism, such as aluminium adjuvants which some argue could be contributing to systematic brain inflammation, this remedy in their protocol in one of their lines makes complete sense as one of the possible options to address one of the layers in that complex disease.
The Banerjies also use this remedy for PANDAS, which stands for Paediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder. Again, this remedy is used for autoimmune problems.
So what are the building blocks of Carcinosin from a more classical approach?
Let’s look at the most obvious themes and how they are represented on the repertory’s rubrics, which are the headings that point us to this remedy. By studying the rubrics, we can start to build a picture of their characteristics, giving us an idea of their behaviour.
THEMES WITH IN CARCINOSIN
INTERNAL CHAOS
Carcinosin has internal turmoil, chaos, disorganisation, and a sense of wildness. The Carcinosin person internally lacks self-control and is in a state of wildness. This is represented by the rubrics:
Mind: wildness
Mind: chaotic
Also, the unconscious comes to the dreams in the form of distress:
Dreams: devils
Dreams: frightful
Dreams: nightmares
The fear is directed at things that can act out of control and threaten them.
Mind: Fear of cancer
Mind: Fear of impending disease
Mind: Fear of cancer
Mind: Fear in a crowded street
Mind: Fear of impending disease
CONTROL
This internal state causes the individual to try to compensate externally by controlling everything.
Strong self-control emerges, and they also develop the need to control their environment leading to perfectionism.
This is represented by an obsession which may lean toward healthy eating, body image, exercise, cleanliness, tidiness, order, work, helping others, etc
Mind: fastidious
Mind: desire for harmony
Mind: occupation amel
Mind: order, desire for
Mind: rest, cannot rest when things are not in the proper place
Mind: industrious
Mind: self-control, increased
Mind: anger about his mistakes
However, perfectionism is an impossible task to be achieved and Carsinosin people feel that strain. Trying to be perfect is impossible and this is the task faced by people needing this remedy. The state encompasses the feeling of trying to achieve something impossible for humans.
Mind: delusions, superhuman control is under
Mind: delusions, influence one is under a powerful
The person has the feeling of performing a task that has never ended and can not be completed, but still, they insist on keeping up with it, which becomes a fixation.
Dreams: exhausting
Dreams: searching someone; for, failing to find him, and
Dreams: work, night, treats patients, whole
Mind: too much sense of duty
Mind: obstinate
Nevertheless, controlling the outside is no more than a projection of trying to maintain calm in a sea of turmoil. Internally, there is a strong need to be free, to be different from how you are acting and the need to break free in Carcinosin is expressed as:
Mind: change, desire for, life in
Mind: travelling desire for
ANXIETY
Carcinosin people are full of anticipatory anxiety because they know that the task they have set themselves is too high. That sense of striving for perfection is, in time, striving to achieve the unachievable and, as a result, affects their self-esteem.
Carcinosin and Arsenicum Album both share the common characteristic of being remedies for perfectionism and anxiety. Perfectionism involves constantly striving for excellence in order to feel complete, but it is an unattainable state for living organisms due to the constantly changing environment. This leads to constant anxiety about anticipating events that could disrupt the equilibrium.
Both of this remedies, Carcinosin and Arsenicum work very well together and they are complementary to eachother.
Any task has to be done to perfection, and they feel unsure if they can perform it or not if it will be good enough or not. This makes them sensitive to criticism from other people as that is a sign of imperfection.
Mind: anxiety, about his family and others, if a time is set
Mind: ailments from, anticipation
Mind: anxiety, future about
Mind: conscience, anxiety of
Dreams: danger, death of
Dreams: misfortune
SUPPRESSION
Their internal chaos is compensated with a state of control.
As they need to conform to others, they are constantly adapting. By adapting, you may have to compromise in leaving behind something you may like or need, creating feelings of sacrifice.
Mind: suppressing his desires
Mind: resignation
Mind: yielding disposition
Mind: will, weakness of
Mind: polite, too polite
Mind: delusions, small, body is smaller
Mind: delusions, martyr, of being a
REBELLION
In homeopathy, we often find polarities within the same remedy. They are both expressions of the same axis. The opposite of conforming is to rebel, which is a position that Carcinosin may display at some point.
This is somehow seen more in children than adults, and maybe because children are less compensated than adults. Adults have adapted and conformed to the rest of society as a way to blend in and integrate, although their inner feelings may be very different from how they are presented externally.
Children tend to act more freely as they have not yet developed the adult needs to be integrated into a wider group. The smaller the child, the less social integration is needed. In children up to 2 and ½ years of age, their main social group may be mother, father and siblings, which provides unconditional love, regardless of behaviour.
Children, in general, do not care if some behaviour is socially accepted or not, so rebellion to control can be more freely expressed.
Adults have conformed for too long, and the desire to break free has been suppressed for too long.
Mind: children, temper tantrums
Mind: anger, children in,
Mind: dictatorial
Mind: destructiveness
Mind: disobedience
ARTISTIC LOVE OF MUSIC AND DANCE
Many people talk about expressing themselves freely when painting, dancing or making a sculpture. For Carcinosin, art is a way of releasing part of what has been suppressed; it is an outlet. The love of music and dancing involves rhythm and coordinated movement.
In a wild estate, there is no coordination; chaos is an unformed, disorganised mass.
Art is an expression, the opposite of suppression.
Mind: dancing, love to
Mind: art, ability for
Mind: music, desire for
SENSITIVE
Carcinosin people are known to be very sensitive to animals and people. This is one of the biggest grief remedies in our Materia Medica. As the boundaries are not well adjusted, this gives rise to lots of permeability merging with others’ feelings and emotions and being greatly affected by others’ actions.
This part of the state arises as to the realisation that to be accepted, true nature must be suppressed, hence the love for animals that love us regardless of anything. Their inner love for themselves has also been suppressed and therefore is projected onto the external environment.
Animals give us unconditional love, the love and support that Carcinosin people may have missing.
The love for nature in this remedy could be explained as searching for harmony. Creation is organised opposite to their inner chaotic state.
Mind: cheerful when thunders and lighten
Mind: anxiety, health about, relatives of
Mind: sympathetic
Mind: nature, loves
Mind: animals, love of animals
REMEDY RELATIONSHIPS OF CARCINOSIN
It is quite amazing to see how the themes of this remedy merge from the physical to the emotional plane and how easy it is to recognise it. This remedy is very important as individuality and self-expression are becoming more infrequent in our society. We all must look and be the same to feel accepted or loved.
Carcinosin mimics a bit of everyone to blend in, and in the same way, this remedy can look like small incomplete aspects of other remedies in our materia medica which are complementary or related to this one like Natrum-mur, Arsenicum, Pulsatilla, Staphisagria, Lycopodium, Sepia or Thuja and the other nosodes, Tuberculinum, Psorinum, Medorrinum and Syphilinum.
Sometimes, it acts as an umbrella, holding the other remedies underneath. Again, it mimics a bit of each of these remedies in the same way the person adapts to their environment to fit in.
Our present society has moved from the Tubercular miasm characterised by self-expression and creativity into the Cancer miasm mainly fuelled by suppression. That is why Carcinosin and Tuberculinum are remedies that we often see one after another, and after prescribing Carcinosin, often some of the other related remedies come alive in the patient giving us an indication of the deeper workings of this remedy in action.
Below are three remedies complementary to Carcinosin ( but not the only ones!). Those are remedies that lack strong boundaries for different reasons, and as a result of life triggers or continued stress, they can jump into a Carcinosin state.
But this is one of the ways only! The opposite can also manifest. A strong miasmatic force already rooted in a person can mask any patient’s established state. So after prescribing Carcinosin, they become alive as in a cry for help, and you will see the other remedies coming through.
Thuja– lacks the identity to stand strong and form good boundaries.
Phosphorus– their permeability makes them subject to a diffuse protective layer, and as a result, they have problems regulating what stays in from the inside and what they let in from the outside.
Pulsatilla– largely malleable; they adjust and mould to fit in. They lack their sense of internal compass, which makes them yielding.
