Complementary therapists are calling for yoga therapy and homeopathy to be included in the healthcare policies of local insurance companies.

Specialists Melanie Dupres and Joanne Wohlmuth are trying to persuade insurers to cover the therapies as part of their drive to promote an alternative healthcare system.

“What our society inappropriately terms a healthcare system is actually a disease management system and there is little that is widely accepted as being preventive medicine,” Ms Dupres said.

Only Colonial Insurance covers homeopathy by offering ten visits a year to an approved complementary medical practitioner, with $40 paid towards each visit.

They do not cover yoga therapy and neither homeopathy nor yoga therapy are covered by BF&M or Argus. They are not included in the Government Health Insurance Plan.

A spokeswoman for Argus said they did not provide coverage for medical professions that were not regulated by the Bermuda Health Council.

BF&M vice president Holly Flook said that while they had been offering benefits for some forms of holistic or integrative medicine services for many years — including acupressure, acupuncture and massage therapy — homeopathy was excluded because various publications questioned its effectiveness.

Ms Flook said that because there was no registration process in Bermuda for yoga therapists that assured or enforced a standard of practice, this was also excluded.

But, Ms Dupres and Ms Wohlmuth say there is a demand for yoga therapy and homeopathy in Bermuda.

“Yoga therapy is not just for skinny yoga bunnies wearing the latest yoga gear,” Ms Dupres said. “It is for everyone to reduce their stress levels and prevent illness.

“Homeopathy requires people to take an introspective view of their life, leads to an improved immune system and helps us to combat the negative effects of modern living.”

Homeopathy, a system of alternative medicine created by Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, is based on the use of highly diluted substances, which practitioners claim can cause the body to heal itself.

The effectiveness of homeopathy is highly debated, with a 2010 UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report concluding that “homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos, and that the principles on which homeopathy is based are ‘scientifically implausible’”.

Ms Dupres said: “I don’t follow the sceptics or the negative press about homeopathy because it is a form of medicine that has been around for over 200 years. I’ve read about it working, I’ve seen it work, I know it works.

“It has worked for me, it works for babies — it is not a placebo, as some people think.”

She said that randomised, controlled drug trials did not consider the individual in the way that homeopathy does. In homeopathy, they look at the cause of the condition, at why a disease may be affecting a person, and their history.

“If there is a trial on asthma medication, people with asthma come together, some are given the new drug and some the placebo,” she said. “Out of the people with the new drug, there will be a percentage who will react favourably to that drug. I don’t know exactly what the criteria is, but if that percentage fits the criteria — the drug will be approved.

“With homeopathy, if we were looking at a group with asthma, we look at the cause of the condition. What caused subject a’s asthma? What caused subject b’s asthma?

“All people in the group will have some common symptoms, because that’s the nature of the disease, but when you are looking beneath that, deeper at the big picture, you’re not just looking at the asthma, you are looking at the person and what might be causing it, but also the things that affect that person.”

Ms Wohlmuth said that with the rising cost of healthcare, people had to start thinking about other options.

“We are trying to get insurance companies to appreciate and respect that there is a place for us and that we meet a very specific need,” she said.

Ms Wohlmuth, who has been teaching yoga for more than 30 years, said that while standard yoga was mainly a preventive measure that encouraged overall wellness, yoga therapy could help patients with more serious complaints or who were recovering from acute illnesses.

“People still associate yoga with going to the gym, with some far-off religion — they’re not understanding it in the context of a healing modality,” she said. “Yoga therapy is the therapeutic application of yoga for total health and well-being of the body, mind and spirit. It focuses on an individual’s needs, something you may not get in a standard yoga class.”

Ms Wohlmuth said yoga therapy could help patients suffering from a range of conditions including depression, anxiety, spinal issues and coronary artery disease.

She said that women who had reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy, for example, often could not straighten up due to their abdominal muscles being extremely tight, and that yoga therapy could help them to regain movement.

Ms Wohlmuth and Ms Dupres recently founded the Bermuda Association of Yoga Therapists to help to raise awareness and respect for the scope and practice of yoga therapy. Both women say yoga therapy and homeopathy complement rather than replace standard medical practice.

Ms Dupres, who has been practising homeopathy for 20 years, said that and yoga therapy could help to manage and find solutions for chronic diseases.

“Tablets or steroids aren’t really a solution,” Ms Dupres said. “They are a Band-Aid to a huge wound.”