I am a classical homeopath. In the simplest terms, that means I recommend only one remedy at a time. That does not mean there is only one remedy you would ever take. There are acutes that arise due to illness and injury, as well as longer term conditions which may call for what we call an intercurrent. Your remedy is also likely to change over time, as you change and grow as a person.
Polypharmacy is the practice of using more than one remedy at a time. I have heard it described as something akin to aiming a shotgun full of buckshot at a target and hoping that one of the pellets hits it. You see this in combination remedies for teething, headache, etc. There may be Belladonna, Arnica, Bryonia, and Nux vomica all in the same remedy, just as an example. The person taking this combo hopes that one of those remedies will address the problem.
There are a number of issues with the second approach. The first is that, should the remedy work, we do not know which remedy was helpful. This impedes further prescribing efforts. We also are taking remedies which are not a good match for the symptoms, just because they are included in the combination remedy. These may cause aggravations or provings, but it's not possible to tell which remedy might be causing them. Additionally, we do not know how the remedies are interacting with each other, which confuses the symptom picture.
If one remedy is taken at a time, there is no question about which one is responsible for improvements and it is far easier to see when it is necessary to find a new one.
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