Schuessler salts - Calcarea Phosphorica
Apr. 10th, 2019 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
homeopathic_meditationsRehashing what we discussed last week, the main traits of the Calcarea family are shyness, parsimony and hesitation. Since these are all mineral elements, the Calcium traits are to be compounded and given context by the other elements in the formula, but the basic pattern should hold.
In the case of Calcium Phosphate, this is a tricky question. There are actually a great number of salts which mix Calcium cations with (oxigenated) Phosphorus anions, and there may or may not be some extra hydroxiles thrown in there for good measure. To the best of my knowledge, the actual phospate used in both Schuessler's and Homeopathic remedies is a naturally occurring mineral called Hydroxyapatite, - formula Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2, - which constitutes somewhere between one-half ant two-thirds of the human bone mass (and an even larger percentage for dental enamel).
So how do this Phosphorus atoms fare into the mix? Well, it can be said that if the keyword "insecurity" was associated with Calcarea Fluorica, its sibling Calcarea Phosphorica should rather be labeled with "immaturity" instead. It is worth noting, - even if these are not mental traits on their own, - that Calc-p is prescribed for illnesses that have to do with poor nutrition and slow (or even arrested) development in children: Slow dentition (sometimes followed by diarrhea), growing pains in the limbs, famished children with bloated guts, etc. It is as if, instead of manifesting the slowness and shyness in your external behavior, your own body and mind have a tendency to take a sweet long time to grow into what you are meant to become.
That's maybe why in order to make sense of Calcarea Phosphorica's mental symptoms, we need to use the tools of neurology/psychology of development. The mind, along with its physical brain, takes decades to reach the full traits associated to adulthood. While high achieving teenagers are often comended as "mature", in reality they are merely meek, - they do not give trouble to the grown-ups, - but deep down they're just as challenged with the actual hard stuff as any of their peers would be, and will remain so until well into their twenties. Contrast that with Calc-f, whose mental symptoms are textbook examples of (fully adult) neurotic responses to external stressors.
In the intellectual sphere, Calc-p do show "difficulty or slowness to learn" and "confusion after mental efforts", - mental effort tend to worsen its other symptoms, - also "ideation deficit. poor memory, does not recall what he's just done", or "uses the wrong word when writing, or repeats the same word twice". Note how most of these are failures to execute complex mental processes. Talking is a natural ability, but writing has to be learned, and the further the written symbols stray away from the phonetics, it is harder to write. Difficulty to learn, can simply be another way of saying "poor memory", but if it's meant as "difficulty to comprehend" I will say that the neural circuitry to think in abstract patterns starts developing around puberty, but is not fully mature until the early 20s, and then capacity for reflection comes somewhat later after that. Most of these symptoms may well be understood as a yet-to-mature-brain trait.
The ones implying poor memory, lack of imagination, etc are more concerning. Healthy kids are really good at those from a young age, sometimes even better than adults. In this case we could talk about an "arrested development" syndrome. It is stuff that ought to have happened a long time ago, but conditions were not right back then and now the window of opportunity has closed. It is analogous as having bad teeth or frail bones.
Just as there are symptoms for underdeveloped intellect, there are those for volition as well. Calc-p feels a sort of uneasiness that compels him to be constantly on the move. On the positive side, this can be a motivator to go travel the world, to see around and learn about what's worth to learn. However, when not balanced this compulsion becomes aimless. The person will want to go somewhere (or get/achieve something, or be with someone) but once he's there, he will want to be elsewhere. Or it may be that he did not even got that far. Maybe the situation got a little harder than expected, and this anxiety will be the perfect excuse to leave the former goal behind and reach for anything else. Perseverance is a virtue that Calc-p will take some effort to master, but at the same time it's one of the things that will ground him and help him bloom.
Another part of volition is impulse control. In Vijnovsky we have, on top of the tendency to wander, a couple of apparently unrelated symptoms: "aversion to work [specially intellectual]", "Nymphomania". Octavio Deniz mentions a tendency to run away from problems. I see this situation more of a psicosocial disorder than a neurological one. While it is important to be able to perceive the consequences of your own actions in order to be responsible, the main mechanism I see for this is the interiorization of rules. Children moral is all about doing what your parents (or other authority figures) tell you. A little bit later, you are able to think in concrete rules, and further down in abstract principles that allow you to apply the rule within a context. It is all well and good, but the piece that is missing here is not the intellectual analysis of ethical calculi, but the capacity for fairness. To feel when you are not measuring up to expectations come relatively early, but it takes time to learn the wisdom on how to go around expectations that do not fit with our preferences or desires. On other words, it takes maturity to internalize rules instead of just following them, and you cannot expect to follow them blindly without running out of will power from time to time.
There are a number of minor symptoms also: Fear to darkness, irritability/crying worsened by comfort, sadness out of unrequited love, indignation, anger-triggered disorders, etc. These all have a vibe of immaturity on them (sometimes the image is that of a young child, sometimes an adolescent), but my model is stretched enough already. Please consider them on your own, and drop a line if you want to comment on those.
In the case of Calcium Phosphate, this is a tricky question. There are actually a great number of salts which mix Calcium cations with (oxigenated) Phosphorus anions, and there may or may not be some extra hydroxiles thrown in there for good measure. To the best of my knowledge, the actual phospate used in both Schuessler's and Homeopathic remedies is a naturally occurring mineral called Hydroxyapatite, - formula Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2, - which constitutes somewhere between one-half ant two-thirds of the human bone mass (and an even larger percentage for dental enamel).
So how do this Phosphorus atoms fare into the mix? Well, it can be said that if the keyword "insecurity" was associated with Calcarea Fluorica, its sibling Calcarea Phosphorica should rather be labeled with "immaturity" instead. It is worth noting, - even if these are not mental traits on their own, - that Calc-p is prescribed for illnesses that have to do with poor nutrition and slow (or even arrested) development in children: Slow dentition (sometimes followed by diarrhea), growing pains in the limbs, famished children with bloated guts, etc. It is as if, instead of manifesting the slowness and shyness in your external behavior, your own body and mind have a tendency to take a sweet long time to grow into what you are meant to become.
That's maybe why in order to make sense of Calcarea Phosphorica's mental symptoms, we need to use the tools of neurology/psychology of development. The mind, along with its physical brain, takes decades to reach the full traits associated to adulthood. While high achieving teenagers are often comended as "mature", in reality they are merely meek, - they do not give trouble to the grown-ups, - but deep down they're just as challenged with the actual hard stuff as any of their peers would be, and will remain so until well into their twenties. Contrast that with Calc-f, whose mental symptoms are textbook examples of (fully adult) neurotic responses to external stressors.
In the intellectual sphere, Calc-p do show "difficulty or slowness to learn" and "confusion after mental efforts", - mental effort tend to worsen its other symptoms, - also "ideation deficit. poor memory, does not recall what he's just done", or "uses the wrong word when writing, or repeats the same word twice". Note how most of these are failures to execute complex mental processes. Talking is a natural ability, but writing has to be learned, and the further the written symbols stray away from the phonetics, it is harder to write. Difficulty to learn, can simply be another way of saying "poor memory", but if it's meant as "difficulty to comprehend" I will say that the neural circuitry to think in abstract patterns starts developing around puberty, but is not fully mature until the early 20s, and then capacity for reflection comes somewhat later after that. Most of these symptoms may well be understood as a yet-to-mature-brain trait.
The ones implying poor memory, lack of imagination, etc are more concerning. Healthy kids are really good at those from a young age, sometimes even better than adults. In this case we could talk about an "arrested development" syndrome. It is stuff that ought to have happened a long time ago, but conditions were not right back then and now the window of opportunity has closed. It is analogous as having bad teeth or frail bones.
Just as there are symptoms for underdeveloped intellect, there are those for volition as well. Calc-p feels a sort of uneasiness that compels him to be constantly on the move. On the positive side, this can be a motivator to go travel the world, to see around and learn about what's worth to learn. However, when not balanced this compulsion becomes aimless. The person will want to go somewhere (or get/achieve something, or be with someone) but once he's there, he will want to be elsewhere. Or it may be that he did not even got that far. Maybe the situation got a little harder than expected, and this anxiety will be the perfect excuse to leave the former goal behind and reach for anything else. Perseverance is a virtue that Calc-p will take some effort to master, but at the same time it's one of the things that will ground him and help him bloom.
Another part of volition is impulse control. In Vijnovsky we have, on top of the tendency to wander, a couple of apparently unrelated symptoms: "aversion to work [specially intellectual]", "Nymphomania". Octavio Deniz mentions a tendency to run away from problems. I see this situation more of a psicosocial disorder than a neurological one. While it is important to be able to perceive the consequences of your own actions in order to be responsible, the main mechanism I see for this is the interiorization of rules. Children moral is all about doing what your parents (or other authority figures) tell you. A little bit later, you are able to think in concrete rules, and further down in abstract principles that allow you to apply the rule within a context. It is all well and good, but the piece that is missing here is not the intellectual analysis of ethical calculi, but the capacity for fairness. To feel when you are not measuring up to expectations come relatively early, but it takes time to learn the wisdom on how to go around expectations that do not fit with our preferences or desires. On other words, it takes maturity to internalize rules instead of just following them, and you cannot expect to follow them blindly without running out of will power from time to time.
There are a number of minor symptoms also: Fear to darkness, irritability/crying worsened by comfort, sadness out of unrequited love, indignation, anger-triggered disorders, etc. These all have a vibe of immaturity on them (sometimes the image is that of a young child, sometimes an adolescent), but my model is stretched enough already. Please consider them on your own, and drop a line if you want to comment on those.
