Part 1 of our Deep GUNA Research series, for practitioners.
This article is written for a practitioner audience and draws directly on GUNA's own published research, "From Homotoxicology to INET (Integrated Neuro Endocrine Therapy)" by Salvatore Matarese, M.D. It is educational in nature and does not replace clinical judgement or personalised medical advice. If you're looking for a plainer introduction to INET, see our Understanding INET series.
Homotoxicology was the first major innovation in homeopathy since Hahnemann — Hans-Heinrich Reckeweg's attempt to interpret Hahnemann's original principles through the medical culture of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the decades in which biochemistry and immunology became the protagonists of modern medicine. Where Classic Homeopathic Medicine has rules and modes of expression that relate directly to Hahnemann's doctrine, Homotoxicology was born out of that later medical culture, and while its roots stayed firmly in Classic Homeopathy, it drew widely on scientific medicine — in particular on Molecular Biology and Neuroendocrine Immunology. In short, Homotoxicology focussed on Physiopathology, returning to it at the diagnosis stage in order to make use, during therapy, of substances prepared according to the principles of the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia (the high-dilution, dynamisation process).
This article sets out the theoretical foundation that everything else in this series builds on: what a homotoxicological compound actually is, how PNEI research reframed the body's homeostatic systems, and the neuroendocrine-immune chain that INET is designed to work through.
What Makes a Compound Homotoxicological
Some GUNA products are structured as pharmacological compounds, and they can be recognised by two special characteristics that set them apart from the classic homeopathic system:
- The wide variety of remedies used — ranging from nosodes to Krebs Cycle catalysts, from Quinone to organotherapeutic Suis preparations, and from classic homeopathic remedies to homeopathised allopathic products.
- The association of remedies according to Burgi's Principle — synergism, complementarity and completeness, working together rather than a single active ingredient acting alone.
As a result of the commitment of the Associazione Italiana di Omotossicologia (AIOT — the Italian medical association of homotoxicology), in 1982 Homotoxicological Medicine, particularly in Italy, underwent profound changes similar to the advances then taking place in Physiopathology and Molecular Biology. In 1990, GUNA published the first study to introduce the theoretical concepts of Psycho-Neuro-Endocrino-Immunology (PNEI) into homotoxicology.
Why PNEI Changed the Picture
In 1991/92, the researcher J.E. Blalock proved that immune cells such as lymphocytes and macrophages were also neuroendocrine cells — "biological units" capable of both receiving and transmitting neurohormonal signals at the same time. Studies carried out in the following years in Neuroendocrinology brought to light the neuroendocrine activity of neurones and, as is already well-known, the presence of hormone receptors at both cell-membrane level and intracellular level.
This knowledge clarified that the homeostatic balance of cells requires two basic conditions:
- The functional integrity of the Neuroendocrine Axis.
- Neuroendocrine Homeostasis of the membrane and its receptors.
One of the enduring aims of basic research has been to understand how the three large homeostatic systems of the body — Endocrine, Immune and Nervous — interact. For some time, the medical world has gradually abandoned the organic theory of man's biological functions in favour of a unitary theory. Within this holistic interpretation, the Central Nervous System (CNS) holds the fundamental role of activating impulses which, when they reach the organs and peripheral systems, trigger biological changes which eventually return to the CNS itself as signals. Due to this unitary role of action and control, the brain can reasonably be defined as the first mediator.
At one time, practitioners would have referred to neurovegetative dystonia, cardiac neurosis and spastic colitis as pathologies of separate organs — the expression of an almost "symptomatic" state of the subject. Through increased knowledge of the neuroendocrine system, we now understand these as physiopathological problems that Molecular Biology helps us see as genuinely integrated systems.
The VNS and the Immune Network
Aside from the CNS, the Vegetative Nervous System (VNS) acts as a linking structure between the brain and the organs — the brain sends messages of a functional nature to the periphery via the VNS. The VNS connects the brain, organs and endocrine glands with the immune network; the immune network, in turn, modulates and activates the functions of the organs and the CNS. This interconnection between the CNS and the immune system provides clear biological and physiopathological checkpoints, as set out in Fig. 1 below.
Fig. 1: The neuroendocrine-immune network. Each gland in the chain signals bidirectionally with the immune cell network, which is itself linked to the spleen. Adapted from GUNA, From Homotoxicology to INET.
Fig. 1: The neuroendocrine-immune network, adapted from GUNA's "From Homotoxicology to INET." Each gland in the chain — from the cerebrum down to the adrenal glands — signals bidirectionally with the immune cell network, which is itself linked to the spleen.
Building the Case for a Combined Organotherapy
As the organotherapeutic neuroendocrine medicines used in Homotoxicology originate from pig tissue (Suis preparations), GUNA's researchers wondered whether therapeutic effects could be obtained by administering all the organ extracts of the Neuroendocrine Axis together — in homeopathic form and in graduated dilutions, as a single drug administered orally — to subjects suffering from a chronic pathology.
They began by administering the following pool of "suis" organotherapies to these patients:
- Cerebrum suis
- Glandula pinealis suis
- Hypophysis suis
- Hypothalamus suis
- Glandula thyreoidea suis
- Glandula thymi suis
- Pancreas suis
- Testis suis (or Ovarium suis)
- Corpus luteum suis
- Glandula suprarenalis suis
- Hepar suis
- Cor suis
- Pulmo suis
"The homeostatic balance of cells requires two basic conditions: the functional integrity of the Neuroendocrine Axis, and Neuroendocrine Homeostasis of the membrane and its receptors."
The results were significant enough that GUNA presented them at the Homotoxicology Convention in Milan in 1996, and they encouraged the researchers to continue refining what would become a precise therapeutic strategy — described at the time as entering a new phase in Homotoxicology: the homotoxicological treatment of receptors and cell membranes. This new approach would become known as Integrated Neuro Endocrine Therapy, or INET, which is the subject of the rest of this series.
The next article in this series looks at INET's pharmacology in detail: the two therapeutic methods GUNA considers vital to neuroendocrine reprogramming, and the full range of chronic conditions where GUNA reports encouraging clinical results.
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Related reading
- INET Pharmacology: The Two Therapeutic Methods and Full Clinical Indications
- K2F and K2M in Full: Composition and Rationale of the Primary INET Group
- GUNA's Clinical Case Reports: Male Infertility and Type 1 Diabetes
Source: GUNA, *From Homotoxicology to INET (Integrated Neuro Endocrine Therapy)*, by Salvatore Matarese, M.D.
Tags: Deep Guna Research, Guna Articles, Homotoxicology, PNEI, Neuroendocrine Axis