Joette Calabrese Podcast

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

04:21    Gut Issues, bronchitis, hormonal issues

09:24    A supportive family

13:20    All about dogs

21:00    Spreading homeopathy with Arnica, Ipecac, Aconite-Bryonia

24:20    Arsenicum album 200 & Antimonium crud 200 for bed bugs

28:08    “Catastrophilia”

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

The Weston A. Price Foundation

My articles in Weston A. Price’s quarterly journal, Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts 

A Materia Medica: Practical Homeopathy® for Busy Families

My blog, podcasts and Facebook Live events

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 79.

Joette:  Joette Calabrese here, folks. I’m happy that you’ve joined me for my podcast today. You’re in for a treat. From my virtual classroom, I’m privileged to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. Their successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep their triumphs a secret. I want you to hear the excitement my students experience, too. So, you can be inspired by their unique stories. With the help from Kate, my reporter, I bring you a podcast series I call, “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity” or “Teens with Tenacity.” See how regular mothers and others — average folks who love healing those around them — have gone from freaking to fabulous by simply applying what they’ve learned using what I call Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:  Hi! Welcome again to another Mom with Moxie podcast. Today, I am here with Sharon.

Sharon, welcome to the podcast!

Sharon:  Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity of talking with you.

Kate:  Well, I’m excited to learn more about what you’re doing with homeopathy. I know you have a unique family situation, and that you have a lot of pets that you use homeopathy with.

Sharon:  That’s true.

Kate:  So, you have a lot of stories about taking care of those pets and using homeopathy. So, I’m excited to hear about that.

Sharon:  Well, we live in a country situation. We have lots of strays — cats, dogs, we’ve had a goat or two, a horse. I’m not treating any of those, but we have taken in quite a few stray dogs and stray cats. And we have chickens! My husband was adamant about having chickens so that we could have eggs. I made him promise that we wouldn’t have to eat them.

The chickens have been very healthy overall. But when there has been a problem, it’s very easy to put a pellet in water for them to take. I know that they’re going to get an appropriate dose of what their needing to have for that particular thing that’s going on. So, I’ve given the chickens remedies.

Kate:  That’s awesome. Let’s start by getting to know you a little bit better. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Sharon:  I was born here in California. I am the oldest of five children. My dad, he went to medical school. We moved to Oregon, and he started a general practice. Then we moved several places after that because he wanted to do more education and ended up being a psychiatrist. So, we moved all over the place.

One of the things that I remember that relates to how I ended up becoming interested in homeopathy is that my mom and my sisters and I went to Germany to meet my dad who was already there. Before we went to Germany, we had to have … I don’t know how many … 15 different vaccines because of all the things that we might encounter as far as diseases were concerned.

We also had to use a military dentist. I remember I had so many cavities in my mouth. I don’t know if that was nutrition going on before we were there, but I had all these cavities in my mouth. I ended up with a lot of gut issues that I was having a hard time finding ways to deal with. I believe that it all went back to that period of time where I had so many vaccines in my body and so much mercury in my mouth that that kind of led eventually to me going on a path to become more healthy.

Kate:  So, that leads us into how you came to be interested in homeopathy. You talked a little bit about that. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about the specifics of you learning about homeopathy?

Sharon:  I had tried many things. I had gut issues. They basically had been there through a lot of my life, but I dealt with them. I didn’t know that there were any other ways to treat them. Especially being the child of a doctor — because there’s always a medical thing that you can do when your father is a doctor. So, all of those things were tried. I got to the point where I was in my, probably, late 20s, early 30s, and I kept getting recurrent bronchitis issues. Whenever I had a cold, it would go straight into my chest.

At one point in my life, I went to school to become a court reporter which is a stenographer kind of a thing where you sit in a courtroom or lawyer’s office. You take the back and forth questioning and the conversation down on a steno-type machine. So, that was my job. I had to be invisible unless somebody asked me a question and asked me to read something from the record. So, the coughing that went along with my frequent bronchitis was embarrassing. I’d have to leave the room sometimes because I was coughing so hard and gagging.

So, I wanted to resolve that, but it just kept continuing. I was having bronchial episodes almost every winter.

Then at the same time … this is in my 40s then … I started having hormonal issues, perimenopause. It was very difficult for me because I was having constant headaches, like 40 headaches a month.

Kate:  Wow!

Sharon:  I tried different ways of dealing with the symptoms that I was having which was uncontrollable anxiety, and not wanting to do medication to treat anxiety because I’m very sensitive to medication. I don’t like the way those things made me feel.

So, long story short, I ended up in a practice where there were alternative methods for dealing with menopause. I did go on hormones. It was a big improvement in terms of the anxiety, but I could not get enough appropriate hormones into my body through the transdermal method. So, I was exposed to a lot more hormones than I needed to.

But the one thing that I took away from that (I’m off of them all now), I was told that my respiratory issues were due to my gut being inflamed. That was the first time I had ever heard that concept. So, I was told to do an elimination diet, which I did. Everything improved. I no longer had to use inhalers and so forth to not have bronchitis anymore.

But I wanted to get off hormone replacement. Through Weston Price, I started following that diet pretty much. Everything just went away after I did that. I was looking for another alternative way that was not medical (and involved medications and pharmaceuticals) to treat my gut so that I could be healthy after I had gotten all of this stuff out of my system.

That led to finding Joette’s quarterly post in Weston Price’s magazine. I decided that I wanted to call her. I did and made an appointment with her and became a client.

Kate:  How many years has that been now?

Sharon:  I think we’re going on 2½ years, maybe 3.

Kate:  Since that time, I know you’ve taken some of Joette’s courses and done a lot of research and learning on your own as well. Tell us what you’ve studied with Joette.

Sharon:  I’ve purchased two of Joette’s courses. Whenever I have free time, which is not frequently these days, I sit down and listen to a portion of it. I read through her materia medica. I research her on her website a lot.

Through just doing that and then trying things in my home environment with my pets and my husband and myself, I have learned a lot about how it works, and what not to do, and how to tell when it’s not acting in the way that you would expect, how to choose a remedy and so forth. That’s purely from the copious information that Joette has on her website which is absolutely fantastic. I send people links all the time. When they have questions, “Go to Joette’s website because she’s got so much information that you can really get started and feel confident about what you’re doing for the most part.”

Kate:  Yeah, you can learn a lot from that. You had mentioned your husband. What’s interesting is he’s in the medical field, and I had asked you earlier if he’s supportive of you using homeopathy. Tell the listeners a little bit more about that.

Sharon:  He was initially skeptical. It’s not that he didn’t think homeopathy was legitimate or valid. He believed that it did help people, but he wasn’t that interested. It’s not that he was allopathically-oriented so that it was just like, “I don’t want to hear about that. It’s an alternative thing. I believe in allopathy.” And it wasn’t that at all.

Being a busy person, he did not have time to delve into it the way that I did. So, he said, “I trust you. Sure, I’d be happy to try anything.” Little by little, he’s gotten more and more convinced to the point … he’s not telling other people about it, but he is happy to take remedies and to try things that I think might help him when he gets a cold or …

He recently had a sinus infection that was pretty dramatic, and he had to work. So, I recommended (or I found one) that matched his symptoms, a remedy that happened to be a Banerji Protocol. So, I said, “Why don’t you try this?” And, within three or four days, it was, like, gone. He was just amazed.

Kate:  So, what’s also interesting is that your husband is also a client of Joette’s.

Sharon:  He is. Initially, I was kind of nagging him about it because I thought that it would be a good thing for him. He was, you know, “Not yet, not yet, not yet.” But after he had had a couple of successes with me giving him remedies, and it having a good effect on him, he was fine with seeing Joette.

He makes her laugh. He’s a real jokester. He likes to have fun with people and so forth.

Kate:  Well now, I want to meet him!

Sharon:  You should.

Kate:  I think we all do.

Sharon:  At the end, I’ll have him come in and say hi.

Kate:  Perfect.

Sharon:  He’s on board. His chemistry background and medical background has kind of intersected in a way that’s interesting. He is unlike many psychiatrists or even doctors. He does not believe in polypharmacy. Polypharmacy, for people who are listening, is where you give somebody a lot of different drugs to try to treat problems. If you give someone too many drugs, you don’t know which drug is doing what, and how they’re interacting.

So, he’s famous for starting people on one drug. Let’s see how the person responds to that. Then we’ll see if we need to add something or subtract something.

Sometimes with remedies, it’s so tempting to just start it. It doesn’t quite have an effect that you think you want, or it’s not acting fast enough, and so, you go and try a couple of different remedies. And it’s the same thing: you don’t know which one is doing what. He’s helped me a lot in that area to just be calm and choose your remedy. Do it carefully. Administer it and give it some time to act.

So, my granddaughter responds really well to Ipecac. I’ve given it to her for hiccups. I’ve given it to her for coughing. I’ve given it to her for nausea. So, it’s been her remedy.

An example with her … she’s seven … she’s not terribly coordinated yet. So, she tends to fall a lot, and she scrapes her knees a lot. And, she’s very dramatic. She fell and scraped her knees. I gave her an Aconite. I said to her mom, “Watch. It’s just going to be a minute or two, and she’ll be fine.”

Sure enough, she had been whimpering. I gave her the Aconite. Within, oh, it was less than a minute, the whimpering just was slowly, slowly, slowly going away, and the sniffing went away. Then she was just like sitting there, and I was able to take care of her knee, and she was fine. She went back out and played. So, it’s beautiful when that happens.

Kate:  That’s great.

Sharon:  So, that’s a remedy that I’ve told my stepdaughter that she should keep on hand for the girls.

Kate:  So, Sharon, tell us some other stories about how you’re using homeopathy. Let’s specifically talk about some of your animals because as you mentioned earlier in the podcast, you have quite a few animals. I want to hear some of those stories.

Sharon:  One of the most dramatic ones, Kate, was my neighbor up the road … they had a stray show up. This particular dog was quite dominant. One of her other dogs had used to be the dominant dog. And they got into a scrap. The stray dog just tore into my neighbor’s little just, like, a Westie kind of a dog.

I just happened to talk to her the next day. She told me what had happened. I said, “Oh my goodness!” (This is when I was brand new.) I said, “Well, I’ve heard about some remedies that might help with that situation,” because she was covered in bites especially on her abdomen. She was just in bad shape. Our neighbor, she doesn’t have a big income. So, taking her dog to the vet was not an option at that point.

I said, “Well, why don’t you try these two things. Please call me first thing in the morning and let me know how they worked for you.” She was afraid the dog was going to die through the night. I was hoping that I had chosen the right thing to give her. So, I waited.

The next morning, I actually called her, and I said, “How is Muffy doing?”

She said, “Oh my goodness. She’s so much better this morning. We’re able to dress her wounds. We didn’t think she was going to make it through the night. She just cried the whole night. But the things that you gave her calmed her down. So, we were able to pet her and put her in a more comfortable position. Then in the morning, we were able to clean her up. I’ll keep you posted.”

She just kept improving and improving and improving. So, she eventually recovered from that situation. The stray dog had to find another home, of course, because that wasn’t going to work

I was telling you about the lady who delivers the mails through our house. She has probably 12 or 13 dogs. One of the things that have come up a lot with her dogs is … she’s a “little dog” fan. So, all of her dogs are tiny ones. So, they get ear infections a lot. She was running to the vets to treat all of these issues. It was putting a strain on her pocketbook to be giving her dogs antibiotics all the time.

She came to me fairly recently with a situation where the dog’s ear was just not healing very well. One of the groomers had poured vinegar down it. I don’t know about using vinegar for ear infections. It’s not something I’ve ever tried. But I said, “You know, it could be it’s kind of boggy in there. Let me give you something else that you might try and see how that works for her.”

I ran into her in a couple of days. She told me that the dog was feeling so much better. She stopped scratching her ears. It wasn’t red. It was not sore and sensitive anymore. It was really on the way to being better. We’ve done that a couple of times, and she’s been very excited about homeopathy. She doesn’t have time to learn it, but she’s happy to ask me.

Kate:  So, do you have any dogs in the room with you right now while we’re recording the podcast?

Sharon:  I happen to have a dog in here. She was making a noise on the door, so I’ve let her in here. I don’t know if you can hear the panting, but she’s in the corner over there. That’s my beagle, Luna. Luna is 10 years old. She has been the busiest dog we’ve ever had. She was a stray.

The thing about beagles is that they are very allergy prone. Their noses take them everywhere that there’s food. We live in the middle of lemon orchards. There are no houses visible for half a mile where our house is. So, lots of orchard to explore. Periodically, the workers will prune or pick the lemons, and they always leave lunch bits and breakfast bits behind. So, Luna is so very good at cleaning up the orchards.

We’ve taken her to the vet numerous times with itchy skin — just to the point where she is biting on herself, and she can’t sleep at night. She’s panting so hard. She’s absolutely miserable; can’t lie still. We tried the vet route with different things. We thought it was food allergies. I don’t think it is food allergies anymore. I think she’s actually allergic to the saliva from the fleabite. It’s a histamine reaction.

So, we gave her a histamine blocking shot which I was totally opposed to because it’s a suppressive kind of thing. Those things tend to boomerang after a while. I told my husband we have got to find a way to treat her allergies so that she doesn’t have these episodes all the time because she was just raw in places.

So, I did consult with Joette, and I have done research on my own. We’ve come to some remedies that have done a very good job with addressing the acute symptoms. We have not had to repeat the histamine injection this time. I’m hoping that we can hold to that. But the homeopathic remedies have worked fabulously in the last two months.

Kate:  It seems that allergies for dogs, in particular, are on the rise. Don’t you feel that way?

Sharon:  Yes. One of the things I think is the diets that dogs are on. We stopped feeding our dogs dry food a long time ago. We give them a product called GreenTripe. It’s ground up cow’s stomach. It’s disgusting. But the dogs absolutely love it. They never get tired of it.

We had a Basset Hound. She had lipomas all over her body as she aged. When we put her on that diet, her lipomas shrunk to almost nothing. She had been a very fat dog, and she lost weight. She looked great. She really got reinvigorated in her old age. The diet made a real big difference with her.

Kate:  Interestingly, our dog, Lilly, she’s the sweetest Golden Doodle. She’s so cute. Everyone loves her.

Sharon:  Adorable.

Kate:  Yeah, she had terrible allergies. In fact, the vet was talking about maybe having to do some surgery on her ears because she would just itch them raw. We actually used only homeopathy to cure her of the allergies. She doesn’t get allergies anymore. We would use chronic remedies for the chronic condition. Then we would use remedies for the acute on top of it. So, the first year, we helped her, and she had some allergies. But then the second year, she only had maybe a couple of weeks of the allergic reactions.

Sharon:  That’s fantastic.

Kate:  Then this year, she’s had nothing so far! So …

Sharon:  See, I’m hoping we can get to that point with Luna. She’s much better. I mean, she’s herself again which is so fantastic because she’s a very active dog, actively looking for food out in the orchard, and she enjoys her walks. Recently, with the allergy situation resolving all of a sudden, she was not herself. We found out that she has bone spurs on her knees. Of course, rather than signing up for the ritual pill from the vet’s office, we are working with homeopathic remedies and have already seen some results.

Kate:  I know that you’ve been, as you mentioned earlier, talking with your stepdaughter and your grandchildren about homeopathy, and they’ve used some homeopathic remedies. I think it would be interesting to know about that dynamic and how you approached initially having her use homeopathy, and how open has she been, and how has that played out.

Sharon:  Well, I have a very close relationship with my stepdaughter. The girls come and visit us with their parents several times a year. Since this is a farming environment, there’s times when they fall. They were roller skating out in front. (We have a hill in the front of the house. That was a little bit scary.)

So, I think I started with Arnica gel. When one of the girls fell down, and I put some Arnica gel on her bruise. She stopped crying and felt better. I explained to my stepdaughter what homeopathy was and she said, “Oh, I’d be really open to trying it.” She had done some essential oil treatments and things like that. But I explained to her the difference between essential oils and homeopathy, and how they could be incompatible because of the strong odors and so forth.

I think it started with my oldest granddaughter getting a cold, just sniffing and coughing in the middle of the night and so forth. I got the Ipecac out for her, and it made a big difference. She stopped coughing.

So, I explained to both of the girls about the fact that the remedies weren’t candy. I just went through the whole safety thing with them. I explained it in front of their mom. I said, “You can’t take these things on your own. You need to always ask your mom or dad before you get into the bottle. You’d have to make sure that you don’t do this, this, and this with pellets and so forth,” just basically educating them with the little incidents that happened with them.

They’ve all been pretty simple. I haven’t recommended things … in fact, I don’t think they’d even had a pediatrician visit in over a year. So, it’s mainly just remedies for colds.

They love the Aconite–Bryonia remedy to cut a cold off. It’s worked several times. Just within a day, they’re absolutely fine. They aren’t missing school anymore. They’re not in the pediatrician’s office anymore either.

Kate:  So, that is a combination. It’s actually a Banerji Protocol. It’s Aconitum 200 mixed with Bryonia, either 30 or 200C. That is an amazing combined remedy for the beginning of a cold. If you don’t have that one in your stock pile, get it.

Sharon:  Absolutely. My husband travels with it. He travels once a month and then drives distances and overnight another time during the month. He’s been very prone to colds recently. So, Aconite–Bryonia is in his SOS kit that he takes with him.

He gets exposed to a lot of different people in his practice. He actually had someone cough right in his face, someone with a full-blown cold coughing right in his face. He whipped out the Aconite–Bryonia and took it and didn’t get sick!

Kate:  That’s wonderful. Wow!

Sharon:  I had a very interesting experience. It’s been about a year now where my granddaughters and my stepdaughter were visiting our house, and we decided to go out for Japanese food. I love Japanese food, and I love sushi. I ordered one that I have not ordered before. I won’t say the name of it because I don’t want to malign any types of fish. But within a day or two, I was just not feeling myself. I was very queasy. I had no appetite which is unusual for me. I just felt awful.

I consulted with Joette and explained the situation. I called it, “The Bad Fish Episode.” So, she suggested some remedies that I might try. Those helped with the queasiness. But I had to go to San Francisco for an appointment. It’s about 4 ½ hours away. I was still feeling so logy. So, I took all my remedies with me. We usually stay in this very nice hotel in downtown San Francisco. I came home, and I was much better from the bad fish episode.

But about 24 hours after I got home, I was awakened at night with intense itching on my side and on the underside of my left arm. I took my pajama top off, and I was horrified to see that I was covered with bites that went all the way down my left arm and about a six-inch swath along my chest wall on my left side. I had never experienced anything like that. I had no idea what it was. I thought we either got a huge bug infestation in our bedroom or what in the world did I get into. Then I started Googling it, and the pattern was bed bugs. It just made so much sense.

Well, I tried myself to find an itching remedy. It took it away for a little bit, but it would awaken me in the middle of the night with just off-the-charts itching. So, I consulted with Joette on an SOS basis. I sent her an email. I said, “I’m sorry it’s an emergency. I need to ask you how to deal with this.” I said, “It’s just unbearable!”

So, she suggested a combination remedy for me. That combination worked immediately. The itching went away in less than 10 minutes. It would wear off so I would take another dose. That went on for a couple of days, but you could just see the bed bug map on the arm and my chest.

Kate:  Oh no!

Sharon:  All the way down bit by bit. So, I was thrilled. I’ve used that same combination with my beagle. What it does is it makes … well, it made me sleepy. I was able to go to sleep with it plus have the itching go away. It does the same thing for Luna when she was in her frenzy. It’s just been a really good remedy for her. It’s her go-to when she does have itching.

Kate:  Okay. Now, I’m curious. You have to tell us what that remedy is.

Sharon:  Okay. It’s a Banerji Protocol, and it’s Arsenicum album 200 and Antimonium crud 200.

Kate:  Hmmm, the famous skin protocol!

Sharon:  Yes, yes. Oh, it was a miracle worker. I’m glad that I got home from San Francisco before that happened because I was miserable. It was absolutely hideous. I’ve never had anything like that. I mean I’ve been bit by spiders and fleas and whatnot, mosquitoes, but that was the worst itch experience I’ve ever had.

Kate:  Wow.

Sharon, you’ve had a lot of great stories to share with us about using homeopathy. It’s been fun getting to know you. Can you just share with us some final thoughts about homeopathy, and what you might say to those who are listening today?

Sharon:  I have the perfect word to describe the way that I used to be before homeopathy. My husband invented it for me and tells me that my whole family is infested with this malady. It’s called “catastrophilia.”

Kate:  “Catastrophilia,” I love that word!!

Sharon:  It’s for people who immediately press the panic button when something happens. I used to be one of those people. I have to say that I can be one of those people from time to time. But homeopathy has been the single best thing that I’ve gotten myself involved with of all the alternative paths that I’ve taken in my health journey to lessen my episodes of catastrophilia.

Having the remedies on hand — Joette is absolutely right — you can’t have too many. My closet is filled with remedies. But I feel confident because if something happens, I can do something. I can do something right away as soon as I can find the remedy that matches whatever is going on.

Aconite is my go-to. I do take it when things like that happen because you don’t always think straight.

My dachshund, Winnie, killed a chicken right in front of me. I tried to save the chicken from being eaten. I was unsuccessful. I was heartbroken. My husband was gone that weekend. I ran in the house. I took Aconite.

He bit me not because he was trying to bite me, but because he was trying to hang onto the chicken that he was killing. So, I had some bad wounds on my hand. And, I didn’t panic! I mean I was feeling panicky, but I was able to methodically think my way through it.

Aconite was the first thing that came to my mind, and then the next thing was something to treat the bites. I recovered beautifully from the episode.

Usually when my husband is gone, things tend to happen like that. So, I had homeopathy on hand so that I feel a lot more confident about dealing with the things that come up in a country living situation. So, I love it. I’m looking forward to learning more and more about it.

Kate:  Good. Well, it’s been fun getting to know you. I want to thank you for taking the time to share all this good information with us. Thank you, Sharon.

Sharon:  Thank you, Kate. It was really great to meet with you. I’m glad we had the opportunity to talk together. I just encourage everyone to follow your passion with it. It won’t disappoint you. Thank you.

Kate:  Exactly. Before we go, can we meet your husband, Michael?

Sharon:  Absolutely. He’d be interested to meet you too.

Michael:  Hi, Kate.

Kate:  Hey, Michael. It’s nice to meet you!

Michael:  Nice to meet you, too.

Kate:  I had to talk to you because your wife just told me that every time that you talk to Joette that you make her laugh. So, no pressure or anything, but you’re on a podcast, and we all want you to make us laugh.

Michael:  You want me to make you laugh?

Kate:  Yeah.

Michael:  You want me to tell you a joke or something?

Kate:  I don’t know. But you love homeopathy?

Michael:  My wife loves homeopathy, and homeopathy has done some really incredible things for me personally.

Kate:  Great! I’ve heard some pretty amazing things on how it’s helped you. So that’s really wonderful. Do you enjoy meeting with Joette?

Michael:  Of course!

Kate:  Yeah, she’s funny herself.

Michael:  Mother Theresa.

Kate:  You call her Mother Theresa?

Michael:  Yeah, I tease her. Yeah, of course.

Kate:  Yeah?

Michael:  Oh, yeah, sure.

Kate:  Oh, I bet she gets a kick out of that.

Michael:  Yeah. Well, I tell her stories and make her laugh about myself and the animals, my symptoms. My idiosyncratic behavior she thinks is funny.

Kate:  Probably the way you say it, she thinks is funny.

Michael:  Maybe.

Kate:  I’m glad that I got to meet you.

Michael:  Well, I’m glad I got to meet you, too. I’m really excited that you’re doing this thing with my wife because she really invests a lot of time and energy in it and has done really miraculous … You know, we’ve kept the dogs and the cats and everybody away from the vet which is really nice. It’s been great. It really has been great.

Kate:  Yeah, that’s wonderful. It’s an investment in time and resources, but it pays off in the long run in so many ways.

Michael:  Yeah.

Kate:  Well, it was great to meet you. Thanks for jumping on and saying hi to us.

Michael:  No problem at all. Nice to meet you, too. I’ll give you back to Sharon.

Kate:  Okay.

Sharon:  So, you got to meet the guy who invented “catastrophilia.”

Kate:  Yeah. I love that. That word is going to stick with me now.

Sharon:  Good, you can have it. It’s a great word.

Kate:  It is.

Sharon:  I was very offended at first about it but not anymore!

Kate:  Now it’s just funny.

Sharon:  Yeah.

Kate:  Well, Sharon, thank you so much. Give our thanks to Mike, too.

Sharon:  I will.

Joette:  As I hope you know by now, on my blog, podcasts and Facebook Live, I offer as many protocols for simple conditions as I can — for free, without affiliates or advertising. But let me be clear. When it comes to more complex conditions, it’s key that you learn how to use these medicines properly. I want you to be well-trained. So, I save discussions of the more involved methods for my courses in which I walk students through each method with step-by-step training.

In these podcasts, I focus on those students of mine who have already tunneled in and learned how to take care of themselves, family, friends, and pets, and even livestock using homeopathic medicine. Many of these students began their education by participating in one of my Gateway to Homeopathy study groups. And now, after taking one or more of my courses, they’re well-trained to use my specific brand of homeopathy. I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you to follow in their footsteps. With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn and iHeartRadio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit for your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

These Moms with Moxie podcasts are designed to be inspirational, not specifically educational. No Remedy Card is provided.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

04:37    Allopathy versus homeopathy

10:00    Joette’s elevator speech on homeopathy

15:20    How to get started

20:58    Conventional medicine as needed

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

My blog

Weston A. Price, the Wise Traditions (my articles)

Quick Start Guide (decide what steps to take next as you learn homeopathy)

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

My Free Community (links to research and articles about homeopathy)

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 78 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:  This is Joette Calabrese, and I’d like to welcome you to the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast. Women and men worldwide are taking back control of their families’ health and learning how to heal their bodies naturally, safely and effectively. So, if you’re hungry to learn more, you’ve come to the right place. Stay tuned as we give you the tools — and the inspiration you need — as I share my decades of experience and knowledge using this powerful medicine we call homeopathy.

Kate:  Joette, a few minutes ago, we were talking about what we did this weekend and last week. We both had occasions where we had to answer the question, “What is homeopathy?” I think this is a really good question that gets asked a lot by the people that I talk to and I’m sure your students, right?

Joette:  That’s right, all the time.

Kate:  So, you had an interesting conversation with someone. I want to hear how you answered that question with this person. So, tell us a little bit about what happened, and who you met, and how you answered that question.

Joette:  Well, the person that was asking me the question is a very seasoned businessman, very successful. I had to do a presentation in front of a group, and I was being critiqued on what it is we do in my work. So, it was very important to me that I made it super-clear what it was but without carrying on and on.

It is difficult when someone has been using homeopathy — even if it’s just for a short period of time or even a longer period of time — it’s easy to get caught up on how homeopathic medicines are made because they are made so differently from conventional medicines. Conventional medicines are just … they get a substance, they mimic it synthetically, and they manufacture it in a manufacturing pharmacy.

Homeopathy, of course, is much different than that. So, because of that, many of us — especially in the beginning when we first learn about homeopathy — get caught on that rung of the ladder. When instead, what people are looking for is, “What is this and how can it help me?” Or, “How did it help you, and then I can decide whether or not it could help me.”

Kate:  It’s almost like — when I’m listening to you talk — that it’s what we learn in sales. Right? I mean, we’re not trying to sell this person on something, but we can overcompensate.

Joette:  Oh, yes, we are! I’m trying to sell the world on homeopathy! I want this medicine out there. I think that humanity will be much improved if we can get rid of the dependency that we so deeply have on synthetic drugs. I believe homeopathy can do wonders for the structure of the family. I think it can do wonders for the elderly and for — here’s one of my big things — for independence, because we tend to get depressed. Excuse me for going off on this tangent, but I believe that we, as humans, get depressed when we’re dependent.

My mother is dependent on me. (I don’t think it depresses her. She has late stage Alzheimer’s.) But when she was going into it, it was her greatest concern. It was my father’s greatest concern: “I don’t want to be dependent on you.” That’s why I think it’s so bad for adult children to stay at home too long. I think it’s so bad for people to go on welfare for long periods of time. I understand if it’s needed, in a time of need for a short period of time, but if you want someone to be a fully active, vibrant human being, they have to be independent.

So, if I have not sold you on homeopathy, I have not done my job! I want you to be so sold on homeopathy — not you Kate because you already are — but I want you listeners to be so sold on homeopathy that you can now sell it to others. That’s what I try to do when I explain what homeopathy is.

So, this is what I said to this group of people. I said, “There were two kinds of medicines in North America. There were the conventional medical doctors (the AMA types that we all know today), and there were the homeopaths. Both went to medical school. The homeopaths went to homeopathic medical school — just as rigorous in those days as conventional medical school was back in those days (in the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, even long before then).

I’ve actually written a book on it! We had just over 100 homeopathic hospitals in the U.S. The conventional medical doctors had just under that … as I recall, it’s something like 96 conventional hospitals. All of the hospitals that the homeopaths built were big, stalwart hospitals. They were the mainstay of communities. They were big and beautiful and well-funded. Not well-funded by industry, well-funded by women’s auxiliary groups and patients who donated because they were so pleased with what occurred.

So, two factions: The first faction had aspirin, very strong drugs such as cocaine; they had surgery; and that was pretty much what … and mercury. And then they developed antibiotics during World War I (it didn’t get out into the market until just around World War II) and psychotropic drugs. So, with those two categories, the pharmaceutical industry that was backing them — that was right there along with them — flourished tremendously. So, with that, they felt empowered!

Meanwhile, the homeopaths had the same medicines we’ve had for 200 years. There was a competition. The conventional doctors got together and decided, “Now that we have this strength in these two considerable drugs …” (I might add they were quite considerable) “… then now we can get rid of the competition.”

It was that simple. So, they organized, put together a plan — a very well-funded (because the pharmaceutical industry was behind them), very intelligently orchestrated plan to eliminate the competition. And the homeopaths were the only competition at the time, pretty much.

So, the first medical association in the U.S. was a Homeopathic Medical Association. The second one was the American Medical Association. So, that medical association deemed that if any of their members sent one of their patients to a homeopath, they would be eliminated from the AMA. If any of them accepted a patient from a homeopath, they would have been eliminated; blackballed from the American Medical Association, if they played golf with a homeopath.

And yes, this was all written. It’s all stated. You can read about it. So, the homeopaths foolishly thought, “The cream will rise to the top!” People will understand how great homeopathy is, and that there are no side effects, and that it can be quite curative, and that it’s not synthetic, and it’s inexpensive to purchase, and it gives families an opportunity to treat their own, et cetera.

But that’s not what happened because the marketing from the other side was voluminous and stellar.

So, homeopathy died in the late 40s in the U.S. — well, North America, so Canada as well. It did not die in England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, South American countries. But it died in our country because of the strength of the advertising and the work that was done. Also, I might add, in conjunction with governmental bodies, the AMA worked very diligently and hard to get their medicine at the forefront.

We still see it today. Now, ask a conventional doctor about this, and they won’t know what you’re talking about because they don’t study the history of medicine. They’re studying “this” condition means “this” drug or “this” surgery.

So, when I finished saying what I just said to you now, one of the men in the group who I behold in very high regard said, “That’s it! Now, I get it. Now, I understand.”

He didn’t need to know that they were all little white pills. He didn’t need to know that they all come from nature. He didn’t need to know that they were inexpensive. (I mean, I led up to that slightly.) He didn’t need to know how they were made, that they were potentized and diluted, et cetera, and that they are not owned — there’s no patent on each one of them. He didn’t need to know any of that! But we get caught up in that when we’re learning homeopathy.

Now, even a shorter version of the same, what I might call my elevator speech, is:

“What is homeopathy?”  

“Homeopathy is the medicine we all thought we were getting, the one that was going to cure.”

I also say, “You know when you go to your doctor, and you have a sinus infection time and time again, or those urinary tract infections keep coming, or that eczema is now worse than ever? Now, you can’t have gluten, and you can’t have dairy. Well, this is the medicine that uproots that. This is the one we really were supposed to be getting all along.”

Now, you don’t have much time to explain any further than that because the door opens, and they exit on the seventh floor.

Kate:  Right. That’s very fast!

Joette:  Yes, especially when you started on the fifth!

Kate:  Now, you’ve piqued their curiosity.

Joette:  Right, right.

“Wow! What is this?”

“Well, you’re interested, you can go to my website, and I talk about it and give lots of information for free.”

So, that’s what it boils down to. Now, if someone wants to know more than that: “Well, so do you have a medicine for …?” (That’s usually the next question.) “Do you have a medicine for … ” (And then fill in the blank — you know, gout or arthritis or eczema, whatever.)

“Yes, yes, we have a medicine for that.”

“Are there double-blind tests?”

Most people, if they start digging around on the internet, they’re going to find information that leads people to believe that there is no scientific evidence and there is voluminous scientific evidence. In fact, the term double-blind is actually a homeopathic term.

Kate:  Really?

Joette:  Yeah, because that’s how provings are done. The provings began in the late 1700s. Dr. Samuel Hahnemann used double-blind strategy. That’s how we learn what our materia medica is made up of. How do we know what these medicines are capable of if we don’t prove them in a proving using double-blind methodology?

Kate:  So, when they are doing the provings, there’s actually a group who does not take the medicine, and then a group who does take the medicine, and they don’t know which is which and they write down?

Joette:  Yes. When I studied homeopathy in Toronto, I was part of a proving. There were actually three groups. One group took the medicine (not knowing what it was.) The second group administered the medicine (not knowing what it was). And the third group (because I was chicken) …

Kate:  Now, I thought you said you were pregnant.

Joette:  At one point I was pregnant, but it was a five-year class — five years’ worth of these provings. I was pregnant and chicken. So, I was part of the group that did the collating, organizing, and putting it all together. Then when it was all done … and there were hundreds of people in these groupings. There were 300 people in the class — 340 people, something like that. So, 100 people actually took the medicine. Then once it was collated and organized, then we spent countless hours listening to what came of it.

And there were unifying threads. Out of the 100 people, 20% experienced anxiety upon waking at 4:00 in the morning because they were proving it. They didn’t need the medicine, so they were being made uncomfortable by it. That’s how we learned what these medicines are capable of. That’s one way.

Another way is clinically. After a while if someone hits their head time and time again — not one person, if many people hit their heads — and there’s an astute practitioner noticing that, “Gee, every time someone hits their head, and we use Arnica, it works!”

Do we need a proving to show that?

No. Clinically speaking, that’s evidence in-and-of itself.

Kate:  So, getting back to that question — that second question that people asked after you give the elevator speech or the history of homeopathy — you talked a little bit about going to your blog. Then we talked about there is evidence and provings and studies. But if they ask specifically, “Well, okay, but do you have a remedy for asthma?” What do you say then?

Joette:  The answer is yes.

It depends on how much time I have with this person. If it’s someone who’s suffering an asthma attack right then and there, and I’ve actually done this in airports. I see someone suffering and we’ve got hours before we catch our next flight. I actually say, “Here’s a medicine. If you’re interested, you’re welcome to take it. You don’t have to take it. Here are some of my cards so you can see that I am not a “fly-by-night.” This is something that could be of use to you.”

But if it’s someone I only have a few minutes to talk to, then I’m going to tell them, “Yes, there is a medicine for that, and should you be interested, just Google my name and the name of that condition, “Joette Calabrese asthma,” “Joette Calabrese high fever.” Because although I’ve authored this blog for over 10 years, I’ve also populated other people’s blogs with my articles and other people’s newsletters (Weston A. Price, the Wise Traditions, a column that I have been writing for 10 years). I have a lot of information out there that’s absolutely free for the taking.

That’s where I like people to get started. If they find that they’re interested, then they can start thinking about, “Gee, I do want to learn more. I don’t want to just use this. I want to use this for my entire family. How do I learn more?”

Then they follow the guidelines on my site that teaches them how to … “Okay, what’s next? What should I consider? Should I start a study group? Should I join a study group, et cetera, so that I can learn more?” Once they start the study group … and that’s what I want them to do … I want people to get hooked just like I got hooked so that they can raise their families, or if their families are already raised, or they don’t have a family, they can utilize this medicine in place of the far-too-many synthetic drugs that we’re all swallowing on a regular basis.

Kate:  Joette, that’s the exact, same thing that I do when people ask me, “Is there a medicine for XYZ?” I refer them to your website, or I say Google “Joette Calabrese” plus the condition. That’s the exact, same thing that I say. We point them in the direction of your website. I also tell them that they can learn on your website what homeopathy is, specifically, if I don’t have time to explain things. Like you said, maybe we don’t even go into it. I probably go into it even too much rather than just giving them a very brief …

Joette:  Oh, yeah, because if you give them too much information, you can see their eyes glazing over. They have to make one step at a time.

“Oh, this is interesting. Yes, I would like a medicine that doesn’t have side effects. Yeah, I would like a medicine that’s not going to keep me from being able to eat foods for the next 30 years of my life because the antibiotics undid all my good bacteria and gut bacteria, et cetera.”

So, another area as I always say to people when they say, “Really? This is proven? I don’t know. I go to Wiki-paid-ia.” (Oh, excuse me. I mispronounced the word, “Wikipedia.”) “And it led me to believe that homeopathy was quackery.”

Well, I just hinted as to why I believe that is found on Wikipedia. Regardless of how many times many homeopaths have tried to correct that, within minutes, minutes, it’s put back again, and it’s eliminated. So, Wikipedia is not organic, folks. Just so you know. It’s not been organic, I think from its inception because this has been a problem not just with homeopathy but with other subjects as well. If they don’t want that information on there, it will not be on there.

So, I tell them go to my website. Click on resources, then on community. We have several pages of links. Hopefully, they’re still alive and well because we do check them, but we don’t check them as often as I wish we would — research and studies that have been done on homeopathy throughout the world. Many of them are done by PhDs, many by medical doctors, many of them by hospitals (not of course in the U.S. but elsewhere).

That will give you your basis so that you could say, “Okay, this is real. It’s not magical. It’s not New Age.”

It is not New Age. I cannot stress that enough.

Homeopathy is not New Age! It is medicine! It is regulated in our country by the FDA as a medicine because the FDA was begun with one of its great members who was a homeopathic physician. Dr. Copeland in New York State was his name … made sure that homeopathy was covered back when the FDA began. So, it’s not a supplement. It’s not vitamins. It’s not nutrients. It’s not essential oils. It does not mean holistic. It is a medicine in and of itself.

Kate:  When people ask you what is homeopathy, you don’t say what you just said? 

Joette:  I don’t go that far. It will just turn them off. In your exuberance, in my exuberance, I found in the past, it goes too far in the conversation. If you’re interested, and then I just drop it, and I just say, “Just go to my website.” Unless, you know, they have a lot of time on their hands; we’re at a family picnic or something, and someone new comes into the family and wants to know what this is. I don’t want to be the center of attention at a family picnic. I don’t want my message to be that. I want people interested, but I just want to pique it and then send them on their way and allow them to learn and discover at their own pace.

Kate:  I’m curious to know. This gentleman, he was interested? Or how did that conversation go afterwards?

Joette:  Interestingly, yes. He’s contacted the office and has scheduled an appointment. He’s very interested. He said, “I know what you mean. I’m tired of the drugs. I have a chronic condition, and I don’t want to take these drugs because they’re causing more conditions.”

That’s where we’ve all started out, wasn’t it? I mean no one comes to homeopathy skipping along in great health. They come crawling to homeopathy because they’ve been beaten by illness and the ill treatment of their illness, as far as I’m concerned.

Kate:  From what you said to me, he’s someone that could go anywhere in the world and get whatever type of help.

Joette:  No doubt. No doubt about it. He could go anywhere, and he has gone many places in the world to find help medically — which is so for many. Royal families have been using homeopathy for centuries. They could go anywhere. Rockefeller was a proponent of homeopathy, although on one hand he had a homeopath on his staff to take care of him, and then on the other hand, he spoke on the other side for conventional medicine.

Look, I’m not here to disparage all conventional medicine. There are many aspects of conventional medicine that we need; we all may need some time in our lives. Emergency care in a good emergency room could be lifesaving. Surgery when truly needed, not when, “Oh gee, the tonsils are enlarged. Let’s just cut them out.” No, no, I’m talking about surgery that’s truly needed with the skilled hands of a good, experienced surgeon — the guy who has the gray hair at his temples, that’s the guy you want. You don’t want a young guy. You want somebody older and plenty of experience. That’s the kind of medicine that we need.

Diagnostics! Very, very valuable. The diagnostics that are available today to the general public through conventional medicine can be lifesaving. If someone has a lump in the breast, unless we know that this happens every month when the woman eats chocolate, we can pretty much guess that that’s not going to be something that’s cancerous. But if there’s a suspicious lump, and you don’t know what it is, and your good, graying-around-the-temples doctor says, “I don’t know what this is. We really do need to look into it.” You bet, get that test done. Find out what it is.

You have rectal bleeding, and the blood is black, you bet. There is a time for a test. But to go for a test just because for a good old look-see, that’s where I draw the line.

So, modern medicine reined in is a very good thing. Modern medicine gone amok is what I believe we see a little bit too much of today.

Kate:  Well, that’s really interesting. So now, this gentleman will be a client of yours, and he’ll certainly then learn what homeopathy is — firsthand.

Joette:  Well, it’s interesting because the people … this is a man who is a very successful businessman. I believe that often in order to be a success in anything we do in life, we have to think outside of the box. We can’t act and be like everyone else. So, he’s not unaccustomed to thinking outside of the box. We get to a certain age, and we say, “Well, I did ABCD and E and followed the narrow road — or I should say the wide road …”

Kate:  Right, the wide road.

Joette:  … the wide road and it didn’t help me. I guess I have to follow a narrower road. So, those are the people who are the most likely to be interested because of their lifestyle, because of their experiences, because of their faith, because of their choices in life. You usually know what kind of people are going to be the ones who are interested in homeopathy. They are … let’s put it this way, they’re the curious ones. Because if we go through life not being curious, we will be led down that wide path. It’s curiosity that keeps us aware and constantly learning and interesting and interested.

That needs to be curated. I encourage folks to curate that daily, to educate yourself and not put so much emphasis on what you can learn in the wide road — at the end of the wide road such as the universities and the post-grad degrees. It doesn’t mean that doesn’t have some value in certain circumstances, but that’s not the narrow road. That’s the wide road.

Everybody goes to college now. I mean I don’t want to be facetious here, but it’s the way it was when I was in high school. Everybody went to high school. It has now become too mediocre, as far as I’m concerned, unless you have a goal specific, “Okay, I want to become a lawyer.” “I want to become an engineer.” Then I get it. Now that makes sense. But we need to be self-educated, and it needs to be a daily activity.

Kate:  So, there you have it, a really good explanation for “What is homeopathy?” If you need to go back and listen to this podcast over and over again so that you have that history memorized and you can help explain to people how the pathway of homeopathy was shifted so dramatically that most people have not heard of it.

Thanks, Joette for bringing clarity to that for us.

Joette:  My pleasure, Kate — as always.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Pandora, Stitcher, iHeart and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit for your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

04:19    Plantar Fasciitis

07:51    Symphytum 200 and Rhus tox 30

15:28    Celiac disease and Crohn’s disease

20:43    Detached retina

22:02    Blood poisoning

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

The Weston A. Price Foundation

A Materia Medica: Practical Homeopathy® for Busy Families

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

The Survivalist Guide to Homeopathy

Mindful Homeopathy:  Practical Protocols for Mental and Emotional Conditions 

Joette’s blog posts

Joette’s podcasts

Joette’s Facebook Live archive

Homeopathic Remedy Kits

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 77.

Joette:  Each day from my office, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe, and I want to share them with you. Some of my students have really caught my eye. Some of you have done all you can to learn how to cure those around you using homeopathic medicines, and your successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep these successes a secret any longer. So, with help from my roving reporters, we bring you a mini-podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity.” See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them, have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Kate:  Hi! This is Kate. I am here with another Mom with Moxie today. Her name is Holly. We’re getting to know each other a little bit, and she’s fantastic. I think you guys will love to hear from Holly and the things that she’s doing with homeopathy. So, Holly, welcome!

Holly:  Hi, Kate.

Kate:  Thank you for being here, taking time out of a busy family weekend to do this. So, thank you.

Holly:  Thank you so much for having me. This is exciting!

Kate:  I’m super-excited to get to know you. So, tell us a little bit about yourself, Holly.

Holly:  Well, I am a somewhat stay-at-home mom. I home school my 13-year old son. I do marketing and communications for our family business. I have been working with homeopathy off and on for about ten years but really only seriously the last few years — maybe three years.

Kate:  But you’ve known about homeopathy and used it for actually a very long time. You started to use it anyway, right?

Holly:  Yes. Yes, I did. Actually, I came across it … we had a tragedy in our family. We lost my stepdaughter to cancer when she was ten years old.

Kate:  Oh, my goodness!

Holly:  It led me on this discovery of alternative medicine, therapies, diet, nutrition. Jordan Rubin, his book, “The Maker’s Diet” … I read … mentioned the Weston A. Price organization, so, I started reading a lot of their information. That’s actually how I found Joette and some of her early information that she had. Again, this was about 12 years ago, I guess.

Then I purchased a homeopathy kit after reading some of Joette’s blog posts and articles that she had published with the Weston Price organization. I didn’t really know how to use it. At that time in my life, I was so busy and absorbed with a toddler. I would just read a little here and there, and I didn’t educate myself enough. So, I didn’t really know what I was doing, and so, I would just use it here and there.

Thankfully, my son was really healthy. We didn’t have a lot of occasion, I guess to use it. So, it kind of went off on a shelf, got dusty, and I forgot about it for a long time.

Kate:  You seriously forgot about it?

Holly:  Well, I knew it was there, but it almost overwhelmed me, I’ll be honest. Because he would get the flu or a couple of little things like that, but I would try it. And I really only understood the classical approach at that time — even that, I barely understood. So, when you see a list of 15 possible remedies, and you’re supposed to analyze your 2-year-old’s emotional state and all of these different things, it seemed impossible to me — or very daunting, I should say that. So, I didn’t have a great success with it and hadn’t really tried to use it a lot. Like I said, I just kind of set it aside, and it would just be in the back of my mind.

Kate:  I understand what you’re saying, Holly, because when kids are young, they can’t answer your questions. In classical homeopathy, you really have a lot of questions that you could ask them that would be helpful for you to choose the right remedy. So, when kids can’t answer those questions, it makes it a lot more difficult, I think.

Plantar Fasciitis

Holly:  Yes. That’s how I felt. So, I was just intimidated by it. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe that it worked. I just thought, “This is probably too much for me right now.”

I had already, at the same time, was delving into learning about nutrition and essential oils and herbal remedies and decided that maybe that was easier for me. So, I spent many years really using oils and making a lot of things from scratch, tinctures and salves, and focusing on that area.

Again, the homeopathy was in the back of my mind, but I just never really went back to it. Occasionally, I would get an article or a blog post from Joette and skim through it, but it didn’t quite resonate with me yet.

It wasn’t until I had plantar fasciitis. I had started working out. I am not an athlete. One of my friends dragged me to CrossFit one day. I said, “Okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to really give this my all.” Well, I got plantar fasciitis. So, here I am trying to get really fit, and I can’t do anything. I look even more pathetic. I mean it was really funny.

The trainers were awesome. They tried to help me. Then I was doing all these stretches and different therapies and wearing a special brace at night and this sock during the day and icing it. You name it, I was trying it … different supplements for inflammation. Nothing works. I would rest and not do anything for days and just think maybe that’s it. Nothing helped.

I broke down and even went and saw a podiatrist and got a steroid injection which at that time I knew was not an ideal thing, but I was desperate. I thought, “Okay, I’ll just do this once.” Well, it didn’t do anything, nothing, zero. Maybe it helps some people. It did nothing for me. So, I thought, “Oh, I can’t believe this.”

It just happened that in my email was a blog post from Joette about treating … I think it was actually tennis elbow was maybe the focus of the article she wrote … but she mentioned plantar fasciitis in it. So, I thought, “Oh, I need to try this. I’m going to get out my kit.” I didn’t even have the exact potency at the time that was recommended. But there were two. It was mixed or two remedies, and I didn’t have the exact potency of the one, but I thought, “Well, I’ll just use what I have here.” So, even using that, it was probably two, maybe three days, and it was completely gone. That was again three to four years ago, and I’ve never had it again.

Kate:  Two to three days is super-fast!

Holly:  I know. It actually spoiled me. I’m glad it happened that way because I’m someone that likes to see results. I mean, we all do, right? A lot of us don’t have the patience we need, myself included. I needed to see results, and I did. So, I really thank God for that because, you know, I’d been praying actually about it: “I want this to be taken care of so I can attend to my physical health.”

So, it was amazing. So, I recommended this combination to a lot of people, and I’ll say, “Okay, it may not happen that quickly for you. So, don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t.” But it did, and it was amazing! Honestly, for acute conditions, I have found homeopathy to be so fast acting most of the time. I mean, I know that it’s not always, but it’s amazing to me.

Kate:  I feel like when you get the right remedy, it’s generally pretty fast acting especially with acutes.

Holly:  That just built up my confidence in it then, and I was totally astounded! I shouldn’t have been. Again, I shouldn’t have been, but I was astounded.

Kate:  I know that there is a blog post that Joette did that’s called “Homeopathy for Plantar Fasciitis.” Did you use the remedies listed in that blog post; do you know?

Holly:  I did. It was Symphytum 200 and Rhus tox 30 mixed, and I took it twice a day.

Kate:  So, after your pain went away, after the plantar fasciitis went away, did you keep taking the remedy for a little bit yet, or did you stop right away?

Holly:  I took it probably for another day or two. I cannot recall now, but I stopped because I think Joette was pretty clear in the post. It’s like with anything. Once it’s healed, you stop taking it.

Kate:  Then you’ve never had that again?

Holly:  Never again, yeah. I must admit, I’m not doing CrossFit anymore.

Kate:  That was it. That ended your CrossFit career.

Holly:  Well, I kept going for a while after that, but I decided it wasn’t for me.

Kate:  Oh, gosh, that’s funny.

Holly:  So, Kate, that’s actually one of my favorite combinations. I feel like I’ve used that the most and recommended that to people the most, and they’ve had a lot of success with it: the Symphytum and the Rhus tox.

One really fascinating … at least to me … example is my husband hurt his knee. He had jumped out of the back of a truck and landed on concrete and just landed poorly on that knee. It had probably gone on for a couple of months that he had pain. So, he was going to a trade show. We were going to be doing some site seeing, and we knew we’d be doing a lot of walking. I said okay, “You’ve got to do something about this.”

I thought, “Maybe we should try this combination. It worked so well for me.” So, he started taking it, and he’s a pretty disciplined person. He was taking it twice a day. I didn’t think much of it. (This was about a week before we left.) We were walking around at an amusement park, and I looked at him, and I said, “How’s your knee?”

He said, “You know what? It doesn’t hurt!”

I said, “Okay, that’s awesome!” He’d had this for months, and it didn’t hurt anymore. I said, “Well, you can stop taking that. You don’t have to take it anymore.” It was that great. So, it was just completely healed.

Again, the thing that is just really interesting to me is that my husband had a compound fracture, a broken bone in his wrist when he was ten years old. As the years had gone by, he has felt more pain in that — you know, obviously arthritis of some kind. At night, he would just kind of rub it. He’d lie there in bed and just say, “Oh, you know, my wrist just hurts. It’s okay.”

I noticed this was happening with increasing regularity over the last few years. Nd a he took that remedy, I realized that he wasn’t rubbing his wrist anymore at night. Again, same kind of thing, I said, “Wait, does your wrist hurt anymore? I don’t notice you rubbing it at all.”

He said, “You know what? It doesn’t! I can’t remember the last time that it hurt.” That was all we had done — or he had done — you know, is take that. So, that was absolutely amazing! Basically, a 40-year old injury … I’m assuming it was arthritis.

Kate:  I bet he was pretty impressed as well.

Holly:  Yes. I mean, it was one of those things that honestly, I was so new to working with homeopathy, we weren’t even trying to address that. I don’t know that I would have thought you could at the time. It wasn’t even a goal to heal that pain there.

Kate:  Right. It seems like that happens to me a lot with homeopathy.

I’ve been taking a combination of Symphytum and Calc phos that Joette recommended for me to help strengthen my bones, and my jaw, my teeth because I’ve been having some issues with my teeth. Prior to starting that, I was having a lot of arm pain from some broken bones that I had in my arm. I just realized — actually in the last week — that that pain that I’ve had for a while now is gone. I think it’s those remedies because that’s the only thing that I’ve changed.

So, yeah, Symphytum is super-powerful.

Holly:  You know, it’s that same combination that helped another family member of mine who’s having a lot of issues with her hip. It caused a lot of pain when she was walking and such, and that helped her remarkably. I think Symphytum is actually the homeopathic form of comfrey which is known as “knitbone.” So, it’s very interesting then that it would work that way homeopathically.

Kate:  So, yeah, it makes sense. While we were talking, I pulled out Joette’s materia medica, and it says also that it’s the number one remedy for traumatic injuries to the eyes. I always forget that. It says, “It can be also beneficial to other areas of the body after having suffered from blows, bruises, or broken bones.” So, it’s for bones, sinews, tendons, joints, and eyes.

Holly:  I did not realize that about the eyes either.

Kate:  I love reading materia medicas because I always learn so much, and I read about remedies. But I have a hard time then remembering it. I don’t know about you.

Holly:  I know. I have to write it down. In fact, it’s funny. After I had a few of these successes, I thought, “Okay, this is really powerful stuff. This is more powerful than any of the essential oils I used, any of the herbal tinctures. I mean, I have to learn more.” So, I just spent every free minute I had reading and just digesting Joette’s blog posts and taking notes.

Okay, so, you’ve had some pretty amazing things that you figured out on your own that I want people to know about. Tell us a little bit about your stepson.

Holly:  Well, my stepson is 19 years old. Three years ago, he was diagnosed with Celiac and then Crohn’s disease. When he was first diagnosed, the treating physician said, “Listen, there is nothing that you can do — diet, supplement-wise, alternative medicine — to help this. There’s nothing. You just need to take these drugs,” which were … I believe the one was … it’s an immunosuppressant, potentially chemotherapy drug, a rheumatoid arthritis drug.

And, I said, “I know that’s not true. I know too many people who have been healed of these conditions or are managing them through diet, supplementation, alternative therapies. So, I think we need to at least explore those options.”

So, bless his heart, he was all for it. We were able to get his symptoms under control and turned around in a very short period of time. We were doing blood work. We were working with a practitioner. We were able to see drastic results in a six-week period of time. Through that, again, I was still relatively new to homeopathy. So, I did not introduce the Crohn’s protocol. I don’t think I probably even knew it existed. But I did give him things sporadically for different symptoms initially. So, of course, you have diarrhea, bleeding, stomach upset.

Then, probably his main thing that came back after we controlled all of those things originally was joint pain. He was in the marching band, and he was a drummer, and he would have a lot of pain — his hands, knees, ankles, elbows, wrists, everywhere. So, I put him on that combination remedy again: the Symphytum 200 and Rhus tox 30. He took Rhus tox 200, as needed, if it was really severe.

He was skeptical to say the least at first. What are these little, white pills that I’m going to be taking? He came back and he said, “This is amazing. I’m telling my friends about it.”

It worked!

I laughed because I said, “Okay, if this was placebo effect, I’ll take it! Whatever!” I didn’t think it was placebo effect, but you know what some people say about homeopathy.

But it’s great. This kid just didn’t want to be in pain anymore. So, he was very thankful, and he took that throughout that season, and then he was done. He actually hasn’t had joint pain since. That was just initially right after his diagnosis. Then, as I have learned more about homeopathy … I mean, he’s only had three flare ups in three years.

Kate:  Oh my gosh! Wow! So, what you’re doing is you’re just treating the acute symptoms?

Holly:  Well, that’s what I was doing initially. I wasn’t aware there was a Crohn’s protocol. I hadn’t really searched for it because we were managing individual symptoms. He was doing so well that it almost didn’t seem like there was any need to do anything else. Over those last few years then, I took Joette’s “Gateway to Homeopathy” course. I took her “Survivalist” course, and I took the “Mindful Homeopathy” course. So, I obviously learned, “Okay, there’s something we can do for this.”

Kate:  So now that you learned what the remedies were for Crohn’s disease, then you started implementing those?

Holly:  Yes. So, we added in those remedies, and Bovista to address the gluten intolerance, and a couple of others to uproot the Crohn’s. So, he’s doing very well. We’re excited to have him not have this be a lifelong issue.

Kate:  Yeah. Is he on diet restrictions right now?

Holly:  Well, he is. He doesn’t eat gluten. He eats what I would call just like a very clean diet. So low carb, low sugar. We try to make it nutrient-dense. So yes, he wants more freedom with what he eats. I think we still need to eat healthy, but we shouldn’t be in bondage to that.

Kate:  Right, right.

Holly:  He should be able to eat something not-so-clean every once in a while and feel okay. And he does, again, every once in a while. But we don’t want him to have any issues with it.

Kate:  Right, exactly.

Holly:  Freedom! That’s what homeopathy gives us. It’s so amazing.

Kate:  I hear that over and over again actually, when I do these interviews, that they have now freedom: whether it’s freedom from the bondage, like you said, of restrictions because you’re dealing with health issues, or the freedom of knowing that you can do something about whatever comes your way. You have some tools that you can use, and that are going to help you. So, you don’t have to have the fear, so that that gives you the freedom.

Holly:  Yes, this whole process has really empowered my family — every one of us because we all rely on homeopathy. So, that’s a wonderful thing.

Detached retina

Kate:  There is another example of where you’ve used homeopathy with your husband. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Holly:  You’re probably talking about his detached retina.

Kate:  Yeah, tell us about that.

Holly:  He had a detached retina and had to go into emergency surgery. After that, I was so thankful that I had prepared ahead of time and had what I consider like “emergency remedies” — some higher potencies of things. So, I was able to use that to completely control his pain post-surgery. He had a prescription for a narcotic, if needed, but we never filled it, and he never needed it.

Someone was joking with me and said, “Are you sure that he just wasn’t gritting his teeth and bear?

I said, “No. He absolutely would have said …”

In fact, he did a couple … and that’s how we knew. We went by his pain level to say, “Okay, you need another dose now.” It was amazing to see how that increased. The time between dosing increased. It was just exactly what Joette talks about all the time. It was kind of neat to see it happen almost predictably. So, it was really good, but it was amazing to see how powerful that is.

Blood poisoning

Kate:  Then there was an issue of blood poisoning. I don’t know the story, but I know you wrote it down.

Holly:  I did write it down. I have to say it wasn’t diagnosed as “blood poisoning” by anyone. However, it certainly presented like it was from my knowledge of it.

But my 13-year old is in karate. He got a rug burn, a mat burn or something like that, and didn’t tell me about it (on the top of his foot) and just kept putting a Band-Aid on it. So, you pick up all sorts of bacteria when you’re working on the mats barefoot.

So, one night around 9 o’clock at night, he comes into my room, and he’s getting ready for bed, and he said, “Mom, my foot really hurts.” I looked, and there is this huge wound at the bottom of his big toe. It’s red, throbbing, hot. You could tell it’s just pus-filled.

Kate:  Oh!

Holly:  His toe is swollen, and he could barely bend it. I said, “Oh, my goodness! Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

I go back, and I thought, “Okay, first thing to do, I need to clean this.” So, I go to get the things to take care of that. When I come back out, he’s sitting on my bed. I looked closer in the light, and it looks like there is a red line coming from the wound going halfway of his foot.

Kate:  Oh no!

Holly:  I kind of freaked out, and I said, “Wait. Did you just scratch your foot?” Because where he was standing before, I didn’t see a red line. “Did you do this? Did you just make this mark?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

So, I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is blood poisoning.” You know, I’m not going to mess around. Right? I’m thankful to have things to treat my family safely and effectively. But we will certainly go to the doctor or the ER, if necessary. But I had to make this debate at 9 o’clock at night: “Do I need to do this?”

I actually had these thoughts of, “Is this going to be the first time that he will have to be on antibiotics?” Because he’s never had to take an antibiotic his entire life, and I thought, “Oh my gosh!”

I remembered again another post that I had seen on Joette’s site about someone with kind of similar origin. They woke up with pain on their hands and had a red line. They put an ink mark at the end of where the red line was to see how it’s progressing. So, I was thankful to have that knowledge from that. I did the same thing. I put a little ink mark across where the line was, and I just started aggressively treating it with Pyrogenium. I didn’t have the 200 which is what the blog post mentioned, but I had 30. So, I did that, and I alternated it with Hepar sulph 200. Every couple of hours, poor kid, I kept waking him up because I wasn’t going to take any chances with this.

The next morning, he got up. It wasn’t worse. I couldn’t quite tell if it was a little better — possibly. He thought maybe the pain was a little less. Again, when you ask a 12-year old to tell you, you know, “Give me a number from 1-10,” it wasn’t very exact. But by early afternoon, which is kind of the amount of time that I gave myself to say whether or not I would go and do something else about this, the pain was drastically reduced. The swelling was down. The pus was coming out in a manner that looked like healing. He could bend his toe, and the line was going away.

Kate:  Wow!

Holly:  So again, I don’t know why I continue to be amazed because I know how amazing homeopathy is, but when you just see it right before your eyes like that, I thought, “Oh, my gosh!”

Again, you just feel so empowered. Five years before that, I would have been (if it was in the evenin) at a StatCare place or an emergency room, or certainly the next day at a physician’s office. But I didn’t have to do that!

Kate:  Isn’t that so exciting?

Holly:  Yeah, very exciting. I could tell you — my friends and family probably get sick of me telling me about it, but … I have a lot of them on the bandwagon, too, now. So, that’s fun.

Kate:  They’re, I’m sure, thankful that you know, because who did they call when they have a problem.

Holly:  Well, it’s true. I have been very intentional about keeping a diverse number of remedies and the potencies at my home. I do try to share them with people because, again, sometimes things happen, and if you’re not prepared, or you … it can be a decent investment to get such a broad array of remedies. So, I purposely have tried to keep that.

In fact, I have another dear friend who has gotten really interested in homeopathy. She’s taken a class of Joette’s and reads all of the blog posts and listens to the podcasts. She has the same things. So, we try to say, “Okay. Well, I may not have this, but you make sure you have it.” So, we know that we can rely on one another, if needed.

Kate:  Yeah, that’s really great. Good idea. I mean, it is a rather large investment. But if you think about what you would spend going to the doctor or just … not even the money but just the peace of mind and knowing that you can do it.

Like your son’s foot, he didn’t have to go through the antibiotics and then the gut issues that would follow from the antibiotics.

Holly:  Yes. I am very, very thankful that I have this resource. I would say we have a lot of tools at our disposal. So, I like to make sure that I have them with me. I have my toolkit built up in my house and ready to go in case of emergency.

Kate:  So, what advice would you give people who are listening to this podcast?

Holly:  I hear a lot of people say, “Oh, I can’t afford to take one of the study courses right now. I can’t do that.” While they’re extremely valuable, I would say there is so much free information that you can glean from the blog posts and the podcasts. I would say start with that, and again, do it in your spare time because it is worth it.

Kate:  And the Facebook Lives, too.

Holly:  Yes, the Facebook Lives.

And then buy a kit. Just buy a kit to be prepared because that’s actually the biggest thing that I hear. Someone will text me or call me and say, “What should I do in this situation?” Or, “What do you know about this? What have you read about this?”

Often, they don’t have the remedy that’s needed. So, I would just say, “Just get the kit.” There’s that 100-Remedy Kit that’s kind of that starter kit that Joette recommends. Just get that kit, and then you have a starting place. Even if you don’t have the exact potency or something, you have a starting place.

That was the best investment that I could have ever made. That was 12 years ago, and I’m still using that kit. I used it earlier today, in fact.

Kate:  Yeah. People ask quite often, “What kit do I get or what do I purchase?” That is a great starting point, that 100-Remedy Kit.

Well, good, thank you so much, Holly, for taking the time out to share with us your success stories with homeopathy. You’ve had some pretty incredible ones. So, thank you for encouraging us and taking the time to share.

Holly:  Thank you so much. You are a blessing. Joette is a blessing. I’m very grateful for the knowledge you share and for the time you all invest and giving us so much free information.

Kate:  Yeah, Joette is incredible with that. If you cannot take a course right now, just go through the blog posts, the Facebook Lives. There is so much information out there. Get the remedies, and then you can be prepared.

Holly:  Yes, be prepared! It’s a wonderful feeling!

Kate:  Yeah.

Holly:  Thank you, Kate. I had a great time talking with you.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit for your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

These Moms with Moxie podcasts are designed to be inspirational, not specifically educational. No Remedy Card is provided.

I wanted you to have this podcast as quickly as possible the transcript is below.

Warmly,

P.S. If you want to jump ahead, download Skinderella, my infographic and read more about Skin the Ugly Truth Course: Safe, Effective Treatment of Skin Ailments, Chronic or Acute, with Homeopathy –Click here and simply follow the prompts

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:02     Swimming and blepharitis

06:44     Skin allergy remedies

14: 25    The need for Sulphur

16:42     Suppression

23:20     Skin, The Ugly Truth

24:05     Getting sick is inevitable

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Facebook Live (referred to in this podcast regarding my eye)

Sulphur 200

Antimonium crud 6 and Arsenicum 200 (Banerji Protocol)

Skin, The Ugly Truth

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 76 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:  This is Joette Calabrese, and I’d like to welcome you to the Practical Homeopathy Podcast. Women and men worldwide are taking back control of their families’ health and learning how to heal their bodies naturally, safely and effectively. So, if you’re hungry to learn more, you’ve come to the right place. Stay tuned as we give you the tools — and the inspiration you need — as I share my decades of experience and knowledge using this powerful medicine we call homeopathy.

Kate:  It is summertime right now, and we are enjoying the weather outside. I know I am. I’m here with Joette.

Joette, you have a new hobby that you’ve been doing this summer. Tell us a little bit about what you’ve got going on.

Swimming and blepharitis

Joette:  Well, I’m now in Southeast Florida, and so it’s summer all the time here. Since I’ve moved here, I have found swimming again in my life because there is this pool right at my patio. I mean, literally, I open my gate from my patio out into the little common area, and I could dive into the pool right from there. There are only six units in our complex, and I’m the only one who uses this pool.

Kate:  It’s like your private pool.

Joette:  Oh, my gosh! It’s fantastic. Then I see my neighbors once in a while, and it’s really nice. I’ve been swimming in this pool 45 minutes a day, and it has really limbered me up, and I’m sleeping better, and everything is really great … but then something started to happen.

I started to break out, and my left eye got swollen. I had blepharitis. First, I thought it might have been conjunctivitis, you know, infection. But no, no, it didn’t feel like an infection. It was just, as I said in my Facebook Live, my eye looked like a puffer fish that was pregnant with octuplets and had just finished a meal that was highly inflammatory.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh!

Joette:  I mean, my eye, around my eye was so edematous and so swollen that it turned inside out. The lid turned inside out! I was looking at the inside of my lid as I looked in the mirror. It was so gross.

Kate:  I was trying to picture that, Joette, as I was listening to you on the Facebook Live. I mean, I don’t even know how that’s possible.

Joette:  I mean, I’m laughing now because I’m better. But it got so “fluffy” below and above, and the bridge of my nose widened. I mean I looked, really … I didn’t even look human anymore. Then it got so full and edematous that it just — “poop” — just popped open. Plus, it was cracking. Oh, my gosh, it was a mess! I was obviously in allergic reaction now.

I had an allergic reaction similar to this in seventh grade when my parents got a new car, and we drove down to Florida from Buffalo in this brand-new car. I remember feeling really sick and soporific (is the best way to describe it). I just couldn’t stay awake. I slept the whole time. I felt out of it, drugged even.

We realized later that it must have been the brand-new car. But when we got to Florida two-and-a-half days or three days later, this is exactly what happened to both my eyes. They got very swollen and puffy. My parents were beside themselves. They didn’t know what to do.

But it didn’t bother me that much. I was in seventh grade and life was fun. We were in Florida. It was our first vacation ever, and it was really fun.

Then I didn’t have it again until a few weeks ago.

So, I was in denial as I often go into — as we all do, but I do it a lot. I did not want to accept that it was the pool, that it’s the chlorine in the pool or something in the pool. I don’t know what it was, but I really was thinking pretty much it was the pool.

I stopped wearing all makeup. And, I don’t wear a lot of makeup. I wear a little bit of eyeliner pencil and some lipstick when I go out. That’s it.

So, I stopped that, so then I looked ugly on top of ugly. I looked unkempt on top of ugly!

Kate:  I’m sure you didn’t.

Joette:  Oh, my gosh, it was horrible!

Kate:  You just talk about it.

Joette:  So then, I went out with sunglasses. I wore sunglasses wherever I went because there were times when it looked so bad, people would stare at my eyeball. So, I wore sunglasses, and then I would wear a lip gloss. Actually, it was coconut oil, to make me look a little kept … or kempt I should say. (Not kept, I was not a kept woman! I was a groomed woman.)

You know, I’ve got this philosophy about grey hair. I’ve got a lot of grey hair. Now, my hair is mostly white. My philosophy is that it will make a woman look haggardly unless she wears earrings and puts a little makeup on. That’s what changes the whole thing! That’s it!

If you’re dressed nicely, and you have your nails look nice, and you have earrings on, you have a little makeup on, and you’ve done a little something with your hair — you don’t just let it hang there and look kind of like you did in the 60s, but if you do a little something — then that’s what makes grey hair look beautiful, as far as I’m concerned.

Kate:  I think that’s true. I mean, I know we’re going off on a little tangent here, but as you know, I’m in a nursing/rehab facility with my mom. These little, old ladies that are in their … there’s even a man here, 103. (I should sit down and interview him.)

Joette:  Yes!

Kate:  But the only change — the ones that look really sharp — are the ones that have a little bit of lipstick on and maybe a bandanna.

Joette:  Yes, a little something. You’ve got to just look like you’ve put something into yourself.

Kate:  Some effort.

Joette:  Yes, a little effort goes a long way.

So um, so, where were we in the story? I forgot.

Summer! We’re back to summer.

So, I’ve been swimming. And so, I was in denial, and I said, “I’ll be darned. I’m going to swim.”

Now, I don’t put my head in the water necessarily, although it does inadvertently go. But I’m doing the backstroke, and the sidestroke, and the breaststroke. So, water gets on my face, but that wasn’t the issue because it was affecting my skin all over my body. I had outbreaks of eczema that, again, I have not had since I was in seventh grade.

Now, let me just put this into perspective. Seventh grade was 1965 … just so you get an idea.

Kate:  That is a long time.

Joette:  Seventh grade was not 15 years ago!

Kate:  But you’re not old though!!

Joette:  No, not at all.

So, I did not want to stop, and I wanted to use homeopathics. But even in the beginning, I said, “Ohhhhh! It will just go away. I’m not even going to bother using anything. It’s just a little nothing.”

And it got worse and worse and worse, and then it kept me up at night. I was scratching, and the itching was maddening. So, I used Argentum nitricum, and I used Syphilinum, and I used Apis. I used, oh my gosh, I’ve used them all. then I used Sulphur 30.

Then two nights ago, although I was slightly improving … I was using Bovista and Calc carb for allergies …

Kate:  How about Antimonium crud?

Joette:  I used Antimonium crud. Arsenicum was helping for a while. Bovista seemed to be helping for a while. Even those were not just getting to it fast enough. It was helping a little. I have to admit that it wasn’t quite as severe. My eye didn’t look like a pufferfish any longer. Now, it looked like a pachyderm.

Kate:  You changed species.

Joette:  Different species, a land species now, in Africa, in dry dessert of Africa — after the elephant or the rhinoceros was in the muddy water and had been away from the muddy water and now in the dessert for the last 10 years. You can imagine all the cracking around their ankles and all … that’s the way my eye looked.

Kate:  Was it painful?

Joette:  At times it was. It was burning and prickly. Burning, burning, burning, and burning. The reason I say that it’s not that it was burning an awful lot, but I’m pointing that out because it is an aspect of the medicine that we’re going to talk about here.

Because the itching had now gotten way past my eye and my face, it was on my scalp; it was on my back; it was on the flexors of my elbows. I mean you name it, and I’m not going to. Any place in my body — that I’ve ever noted — is now a place of itch. Then I said, “I’m going to take Sulphur 200.”

Now, I had taken the 30. It had done nothing.

But I took Sulphur 200, one dose and it went — hold your ears — BAM!

Within an hour, not even an hour and a half, I was instantly better! The swelling in my eye went down. The itching was completely gone all over my whole body. I felt this peace come over me. I also felt energized and happy. I was kissing my husband and my son who’s in town. I was kissing. I was so happy. I felt so good. I said, “Okay, let’s make dinner, then lets’ go for a walk on the beach. Let’s devour life.”

Up until that time, I had been just kind of slogging along, just barely getting my jobs done. So, I knew I had hit it.

Now, I’ve taken it for a couple of days.

Last night and the night before — because this was actually two days ago — I had the most delicious dreams. They were so much fun; I didn’t want to get out of bed. They were such happy times. My parents were young, and my brother, and my friends, and our old neighborhood. And then we went to another chapter. You know how dreams can seep from one part of your life to the next, but they were all lighthearted, joyous dreams.

So, I know I’ve hit it. So now what I’m doing is I’m taking it twice a day.

Now, I had also taken — because I want to talk about this other remedy because I’m not going to tell people that they need to use Sulphur any time they have an eruption like this. But it was kind of screaming Sulphur all along. I had just thought, “Well, I’m going to try everything else first, and I’ll put Sulphur on the backburner.”

Let me also say, let me go back and say, parenthetically, I’ve always known that Sulphur would be a very good medicine for me at some point. Because the eruptions that I had had as a child had been suppressed for so long, because my family is Sicilian, and Sicily is known for Sulphur mines. I’m kind of drawing from all of that.

But I’ve seen a lot of Sulphur characteristics on both sides of my family — my mother’s and my father’s side of the family — that I believe many members of my family would have been benefitted by the use of Sulphur.

I was kind of waiting for a skin eruption to re-present, and it took all these years for it to re-present. Why didn’t I go to it sooner? Well, because I guess I was in denial because I wanted to swim. I guess that was part of it.

The other part of it was when I repertorized — and I did repertorize, and I also used protocols — Sulphur always shows up. When you repertorize, you go into any repertory, and you look up anything of the skin, you’re going to find Sulphur. Some say it’s over-represented in the repertory. So, you have to kind of put it aside and say, “Yes, we get it. Sulphur is in there somewhere possibly.” So, you put it aside and then try everything else and then when nothing else works, then you go to Sulphur. That was basically my philosophy.

Kate:  But Joette, you did use Sulphur in there during that time. Was it once or twice?

Joette:  I only used one dose, and that’s really not a good indicator. I did it half-baked — kind of half-baked effort. What I mean by that is I took Sulphur, and then I went ahead and took Antimonium crud and Arsenicum as well. So, I really would not have had much of an indicator of which ones were acting.

Kate:  As we’re talking about this, I want people to understand. You’re not just taking one dose of Arsenicum, one dose of Sulphur, half an hour later, a dose of …

Joette:  Thank you for saying that. No, no, no, you have to commit to it. When I was in a real acute state, I was taking these remedies approximately every three to four hours. As it backed off and wasn’t as severe and my eye was no longer flipped inside out (my eyelid), then I was able to open it up and take each one of them maybe twice a day.

Kate:  So, give us a more in-depth picture, Joette. Because maybe you took Arsenicum album, every three or four hours, and then you would switch to another remedy? Or did you take Arsenicum album and then Antimonium crud?

Joette:  I actually took Antimonium crud 6 and Arsenicum 200 simultaneously.

Kate:  Because that’s a protocol.

Joette:  It’s a protocol. I decided on Antimonium crud 6 because it has a unique aspect to it, and that is itching everywhere. Not because there’s a rash everywhere but it’s just here an itch, there an itch, everywhere an itch-itch.

Kate:  Now, that’s confusing to me because I thought the Antimonium crud was for the rash or the eczema (some skin condition), and then the Arsenicum album was to take care of the itching.

Joette:  That is so, except that Antimonium crud is also useful for itching and particularly when the itching is here, there, and everywhere. Those two, Antimonium crud and Arsenicum album are very interchangeable in many ways.

So, that’s what did it. I mean, now my eye looks a little funky, and the other one looks not so great. But I don’t look like there’s something wrong with me. I look aged by about eight years, before it was 15 or 20 years. Now, I’m in my 70s according to my eyes!

Kate:  So, when you say that’s what did it, it’s the Sulphur that did it.

Joette:  Oh, my gosh, the Sulphur did it. There’s no doubt about it.

Now, how long will this hold up? I don’t know. We’ll find out. I’m going to be using it for the next many days until this has completed. So, I’ll be taking Sulphur 200C, twice daily probably for another week or so.

I’ve not been swimming in my beloved pool. I’ve not swum much in the ocean because the ocean where I live right now is just loaded with seaweed. I mean not just a little bit; I mean you’re covered in it. You can’t swim in it very easily without it just covering you. So, I’ll wait until that passes, and then I’ll get back into the ocean. Then I’m going to try the pool again. I’ve got to find out whether or not it’s the pool.

The need for Sulphur

Kate:  So, Sulphur, to just recap, is a great medicine for skin …

Joette:  … eruptions, especially when you’ve tried many others, and nothing is acting. There’s itching everywhere — and especially if you can rationalize it with a history of the need for Sulphur all along. In other words, the skin issue is likely presenting from a history of suppressed eruptions.

I’ll go back and explain that I had eczema from the time I was 6 weeks old until I was about 13. I didn’t have just a little patch here or there; I was literally blanketed in it for the most part. We used steroid ointments. You name it, we used all the drugs that were available at the time in the ‘50s and ‘60s. There were plenty of drugs to use.

So, when we see that kind of a picture, then we, again, put Sulphur in the backburner because it is so ubiquitous when we look up skin conditions in the repertory. We keep it kind of at bay, unless it’s screaming. If I had been super-hot — these are characteristics of Sulphur, of the need for the remedy Sulphur — if I had been super-hot which I wasn’t; if I had been sloppy.

My desk is kind of sloppy lately, but I mean really sloppy. I keep a very tidy house. Sulphur is usually messy. They have a sloppiness. They are very intellectual. (I don’t think I’m that intellectual. I think I’m more involved with people than I am with the intellect.) But if you see a lot of that, then you move a little more towards that. Diarrhea can also be present, that kind of thing.

Kate:  And maybe an odor?

Joette:  Yes, if there were odors. Now, no one in my family reported anything like that, so I’m going to assume that I was okay in that department.

Or there can be odors that are detected by someone who needs Sulphur. In other words, they are someone who is sensitive to smell, sensitive to chemicals and perfumes, and bad odors — the odors of a dirty dog or garbage dump or something. And I do have that. There’s no doubt about it. I am sensitive to odors. Nothing like I used to be, but I still have that. So, that did fit as well.

Kate:  Someone might say to you, “Joette, you’ve been taking all of these remedies. You’ve tried all these different remedies for the skin condition. Well, now, what is going to be suppressed because of the different medicines that you’ve used?” I think you’ve mentioned that to me recently that you’ve heard people talking about medicines can be suppressive.

Joette:  I say to that, ‘Oh, pshaw.”

I’ve heard a couple of people talk about that recently, and I’ve heard it of course through the decades. In my estimation, it is a classical homeopathic way of looking at using homeopathic medicines. I fear that there is something behind that when classical homeopaths instill in their clients, and/or patients, or students that they should not be using these homeopathic medicines on their own, and that they are instilling a weariness that is uncalled for.

We need to be able to treat ourselves.

Now, let me say, I’m going to put that juxtapositioned to the other side of the story that is: you don’t want to just willy-nilly take remedies, one after another, after another, after another. It may have sounded like that to you when I’ve described this to you earlier. That’s not how I did it, and I suppose I could go into a little more detail, but …

Kate:  And this has been over weeks that you’ve done this.

Joette:  Yes, yes.

We don’t want to be sloppy. We don’t want to choose our medicines from fear and from angst saying, “I got to do something! I got to do something. I’ll do this. I’ll do this. Okay, no, then I’ll do that. Oh wait, maybe this is it. Maybe that’s it.” I discourage that greatly. That’s what I teach against — that behavior — in my courses and on my blog, too. (I hope I come across that way on my blog as well.)

But on the other side of it, we do need to learn how to use these medicines. What I mean by that is, how do you learn to use them if you don’t use them? You’ve got to. So, by my using the wrong “homeopathic medicine” does not mean that I will strip myself of the ability to get well because it was wrong. It is not, I believe, suppressive. I believe that it will, in fact — as you take the incorrect medicine, and you find out that you have — now you’ve got something more to read.

Of course, we’re always reading symptoms. So, what we’re reading now is the next set of symptoms that may have come as a result of having taken the previous incorrect medicine. So now, what’s presenting more than ever?

Well, now more than ever, after taking Arsenicum and Antimonium crud for example, and I also took Petroleum earlier on, I found that the itching was worse than ever. I’d had the itching around my eyes, but now the itching was en masse because my entire body was itching. So, that’s what then led me to the idea that I should consider the remedy that was sitting on the backburner — and that was Sulphur.

Kate:  Let’s talk about that fear, too. We were talking earlier about “don’t just jump from one remedy to the other out of concern for the situation or the person.” We want to be thoughtful in our remedy choice. But also, you’ve talked many times about if you take an incorrect remedy, taking the correct remedy will antidote the incorrect remedy.

Joette:  That’s right. That’s absolutely right.

Kate:  I think we need to know that you did — I think I remember you saying in your Facebook Live — you did take Camphora 200 one time in this process?

Joette:  Yes, I did. I don’t remember what was happening, but I felt worse. But in the beginning when my eye was as swollen as I described it, Apis seemed to make a lot of sense. After taking Apis, some of the edema went down, but then under my eyes started to crack. I was forming fissures under my eye and above my eye. There was darkness all around it. It was starting to occur in the other eye as well. It was exuding liquid.

I said, “Oh, my gosh! This is the remedy Petroleum.” We were going to talk about Petroleum today. The indication for the use of Petroleum is when we see cracks, especially if there happens to be some oozing of clear fluid. So, that came next, and so, I took Petroleum. Petroleum got rid of the fissures.

I still wasn’t finished with what was going on with my eye. Apis took down the extreme edema. Petroleum took away the cracking fissures. Antimonium crud 6 and Arsenicum 200 helped a little bit with the itching but then caused greater itching all over.

I know I’m missing a couple of remedies in there, but that’s the crux of it. It was around that time that I realized I really did need to take Sulphur 200. Which brings me, Kate, to a very important aspect of this, and that is knowing the potency. Potency matters.

Sulphur 30 would not have done it. I took one dose; I saw no change. I took one dose of the 200, and it was life-changing. I was brought back to myself after, I don’t know, three weeks of this business.

I believe that this would have carried on, Kate. Because although it was acting like an acute situation, it was actually an old symptom that I’d had as a child. So that it was a chronic, underlying, bubbling-under situation that all I needed was a little impetus, a little stimulus caused by perhaps — I still don’t know for sure — but perhaps the chemicals in the pool that I was swimming in daily that brought it out.

So, I think this would have gone on for a long, long time. If I had gone back in the pool, it would have started all over again. Well, that’s yet to be found.

Kate:  So, you’ve been staying out of the pool now?

Joette:  I have. I look at it lustfully.

Kate:  That’s sad.

Joette:  Wistfully … just look at it from my patio.

Kate:  So, now you have to find a new form of exercise again.

Joette:  Oh, yes. I got a bicycle, but it’s hot. You know, when it’s 95 degrees, I don’t care how early in the morning it is … you don’t want to be riding a bicycle. I don’t know.

The thing is what I love about swimming is that I’m gaining skills. It’s more than just exercise and pleasure. I’m gaining skills. I’m tightening up my strokes. I’m becoming more efficient. So, it just feels like fun to gain some greater ability, but I’ll find another way.

Kate:  So, all this talk about the skin … people are dealing with skin issues in the summer oftentimes. So, if you want to know more about the skin issues, Joette, you have a course. It’s called Skin, The Ugly Truth. People can look below this podcast in the notes, and we’ll give you information if you want to learn more about skin conditions and how to help them with homeopathy.

Joette:  Really, there are very few people on earth who don’t end up with some skin condition at some point in their lives. What better time to clear that up than in the summer when you’re wearing sleeveless and bathing suits, and everybody sees everything?

Kate:  Yes. Then you can tell if it’s working or not because in the winter if you don’t have those issues, you can’t tell if the remedies are doing anything necessarily.

Joette:  Right.

Kate:  So, we’ve covered a lot today Joette. We talked all about the skin. Is there anything else that you want to cover in the podcast today?

Joette:  Well, the only thing I want to say is that I want to point out that we’ll all get sick. We will all have injuries. Homeopaths get sick. Everyone gets sick.

People have said to me, “You get sick? I thought you were a homeopath.” That has nothing to do with it. I’m still on this earth. I’m still susceptible. I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and it all comes back at you at some point to a certain degree. So, we’re all going to get sick.

But the way to engineer yourself out of it is to learn homeopathy and to step aside from that mediocre — excuse me for being so derogatory — from the mediocre medicine of just slapping on an ointment made of steroids that just forces the body to react in a way … it doesn’t know really how to react properly. It throws that condition often to the future which is precisely why this has happened to me now, in my estimation. This is one of the understandings of homeopathy is that when you suppress symptoms of old, they will come back in the future, perhaps in a more sobering way. Thankfully, it’s not more sobering for me. It’s simply eczema again, and blepharitis, and et cetera, but it did not turn into red skin syndrome, for example, which is a very scary condition.

So, in spite of the fact that we all will suffer, I mean that is part of the human condition, that’s what it’s all about being on this earth. In spite of that, we have the tools to be able to get ourselves out of — not every situation, not perfectly — but we do have the tools to engineer ourselves right out of a lot of what we’ve already done, or what we’ve got ourselves into, or what life has handed to us.

It is an upper, actually, to think of it that way. So, instead of using something that suppresses symptoms, we can use something that corrects them on a much deeper level, so that when I go back into that pool — and we don’t know what’s going to happen — but when I go back in that pool, I will, hopefully, have a medicine that I can use so that I can, and I will not suffer from it.

Kate:  All right, there we have it. Thank you, Joette, for sharing your story with us and giving us more tools that we can use to deal with our skin issues.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

02:24    An undiagnosed illness

05:53    Joette’s truth bombs

10:57    How homeopathy worked

15:48    Supplements

20:45    A tooth story

26:16    Some dog stories

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Joette’s blog, podcasts, and on Facebook

Fizzy Lizzy CD

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Good Gut, Bad Gut course

Purchasing a homeopathy kit

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 75.

Joette:  Each day from my office, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe, and I want to share them with you. Some of my students have really caught my eye. Some of you have done all you can to learn how to cure those around you using homeopathic medicines, and your successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep these successes a secret any longer. So, with help from my roving reporters, we bring you a mini-podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity.” See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them, have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Kate:  Hi, this is Kate. Today, I’m here with a very special Mom with Moxie. She has some amazing stories that she’s going to share with us. It will have you in tears by the end of this podcast. I’m sure of it. But not sad tears, they’ll be happy tears! So, I’m excited for you all to get to meet Jennifer.

Hi, Jennifer!

Jennifer:  Hi, Kate. Thanks for having me.

Kate:  Oh, of course! We are looking forward to hearing how you’re using homeopathy. Because, really, in your family, you’ve seen some pretty drastic, life-altering changes with homeopathy. So, I’m really excited to have you with us and to share your story.

Jennifer:  Thank you.

Kate:  So, before we get too far, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jennifer:  So, we used to live in New York, and we moved a few years ago to Tennessee. We have animals — chickens, dogs, cats. I raise my three boys. We homeschool, we’ve been homeschooling for 13 or 14 years now. And, that’s about it.

Kate:  One of the things that we’re going to talk about today, Jennifer, has to do with something that happened before you moved from New York. Why don’t you tell us a little about what happened while you were in New York and one of the reasons that you got into homeopathy?

An undiagnosed illness

Jennifer:  Well, a few years ago, my son started exhibiting just signs of fatigue and just tiredness, headaches, things like that. So, we took him to the doctor a few times, different doctors. We weren’t getting any answers or results. And, there’s another doctor (and some friends) who suggested possibly considering Lyme disease and asked if he’d ever been bitten by a tick.

And we said, “Well, yes, actually he has. And that little tick had been on there a couple of days before he was ever even noticed by my son.”

So, he started to continue to develop more signs of illness, but we couldn’t get any positive Lyme disease test results. So, we just kept looking for answers and moving along in that direction — the path of Lyme disease — just trying to find some connections because he was exhibiting all the typical signs that you would see in someone with Lyme disease.

So, we ended up moving here a couple of years after that. He continued to get sicker and sicker. He was exhibiting signs of insomnia, dizziness. He was having heart trouble, headaches, chronic headaches daily, chronic fatigue. He was unable to run anymore — went from not being able to run to not being able to walk. He just didn’t have the strength. He had the headaches. He was just so exhausted. Walking was a chore. Walking made him dizzy.

Any movement made him dizzy, chemical sensitivities and food sensitivities, motion sensitivities, had difficulty walking up the stairs — that was a big one. Walking up the stairs was hard for him to do, and I’m talking about 12 or 13 stairs. By the time he would get to the top, he would just have to either sit on the ground and catch his breath or wait for the dizziness to pass. So, that was difficult for him. He had so many symptoms. I can’t quite think of them all. Oh, the sore joints and bones — that was a big one. He had very sore joints and bones.

Kate:  So, this was life-altering. This wasn’t, oh, some mild illness. He had trouble getting out of bed every day, had trouble just functioning, right?

Jennifer:  Yes, every day was a challenge just for him to get out of bed, just so he could get to the couch. Just so he could make it to be around everybody else in the family and try to just engage in some type of daily activity with us. But he didn’t have any energy to do anything. And this just progressively got worse over the last few years. We just kept searching for answers through all that time just visiting different doctors, different types of doctors.

The thing is they really didn’t give him a diagnosis. Most of the doctors were like, “Well, we don’t know what it is. And how about trying gluten-free?”

“Well, we’re already doing that. So, what’s next?”

We just kept looking because we didn’t want to go down any path of unnecessary treatment and to put him through any more stressful situations just because it was hard for him to get in the car and drive with all the motion, and being a lab rat — a pin cushion really — for all of his blood work that he was getting done.

Kate:  I can’t imagine watching your son suffer like that and not having any answers. That must have been horrible.

Jennifer:  It was tough. It was tough. We did a lot of worrying, a lot of praying. I did a lot of crying. There were a lot of sleepless nights for me and for him. It was hard for me to sleep when I knew he was having trouble sleeping. So, that was tough.

Kate:  So, tell us what happened next.

Joette’s “truth bombs”

Jennifer:  Well, I’m very thankful for the way the Lord just brought Joette into our life, and it was unexpected. I was not searching for homeopathy. I had only heard the word “homeopathy” once in my whole life and never connected any dots. But I had a girlfriend of mine forward a Lyme disease summit that was taking place in June of 2017. I decided that I was going to listen to the whole week’s worth of doctors and professionals in the Lyme disease area.

So, I sat down. I had my little notebook that I was taking notes on everything that everybody had to say because I was really just hoping for an answer through one of these people. Everyone was wonderful.

Then we got to Joette! Joette was extremely bold and very forward! I just remember the thing that grabbed my attention the most was when she said, “It doesn’t matter if you have Lyme disease.”

I was like, “What? How can she say something like that? What is she talking about? How could you imagine saying, ‘It doesn’t matter if you have Lyme disease’?”

So, I was really intrigued by that because I’ve never heard of anything like that before. Everything that I was immersing myself in was, “Oh, this is going to be such a struggle. This is going to be so hard on your body … the recuperation time and maybe there will be no recuperation,” and you know, on and on it goes with that.

But she was just very bold, and I just loved that. So, I was very interested at what she had to say as to why it didn’t matter, and what is this homeopathy she’s talking about. So, that’s when I really dug in and called her office right away.

Kate:  You said you used a term for Joette.

Jennifer:  Oh, yeah! She drops these big “truth bombs” on you!

Kate:  That’s right. “Truth bombs!” I love that.

Jennifer:  That’s what it was! When I first heard her say that, I literally could have fallen out of my chair if there hadn’t been arms on it. I would have dropped right over.

But I was like, “What is this thing that she’s talking about! How could it not matter?”

She gave the example of the iceman from 5000 years ago, I think she said. So, she backed up everything she said. I’ll be honest. At first, I was a little offended because here we are with our daily grind of suffering, and “How do we get out of this place that we’re in because my child is getting older and older. He’s got to graduate. He’s got a life to live. We can’t get past the front door.”

So, I was a little offended at first, but that’s what I needed. We need to hear truth and sometimes truth is a little shocking. Maybe it hurts a little bit, but it gets you to move.

Kate:  I’m interested to know, what was it like when you actually consulted with Joette? How did that go?

Jennifer:  Well, it was great. I was able to get an appointment with her. It took us a little while because I had to talk to my husband and, you know, try to explain to him what homeopathy was even though I really didn’t have any idea. But I was just trying to learn as much as I could from Joette’s blog, and listening to these Moms with Moxie podcasts, and listening to her on Facebook when she does her live talks and things. Any recordings I could find, I was just trying to gather information so I could relay that to my husband. We listened to her Fizzy Lizzy CD together, and that was really helpful. So, he said go for it. I made an appointment with her in August.

We decided that we would stop supplements and vitamins and anything else (essential oils, herbs, teas. We were doing everything). We were very naturally-minded to begin with. So, we were doing everything that we could nutritionally being gluten-free, dairy-free because those were all things that he was very sensitive to. So, we had eliminated those things. We lived on a farm in New York. We were raising our own meat, and our own vegetables, and things like that. So, we were not guzzling soda and potato chips and the sad American diet or whatever they call … “standard” American … It is sad, but it’s standard American diet.

Kate:  You actually let him eat whatever he wanted to at that point as well, right?

Jennifer:  Yes, yes. We said, “You are free to eat whatever you can handle at this time.” Because obviously, he was sensitive, and he was already fatigued. And then if he ate something he was sensitive to, he would get lethargic and blurred vision. He would just go down even worse … and stomach upset, and the whole rigmarole of all that.

So, we just said, “It’s up to you.”

Joette said, “We’re not going to know if these remedies are working if you’re completely avoiding all these foods.” He wasn’t allergic to them. He was just intolerant to them. So, it’s a different story there. So, he could have a glass of milk and see, “Gee, how do I feel? Is this getting better or worse or whatever?”

So, yeah, we decided to stop all the other extras because we wanted to see exactly what homeopathy could do and if we were putting our money in the right answers for him.

Kate:  So, fast-forward now.

How homeopathy worked

Jennifer:  So, fast-forward of a few months, and it was probably October — from August to October. We went out to an indoor waterpark (which was huge that he was even able to go with us to that). He went up these stairs which were, you know … waterslide, the stairs are huge. He just went up this humongous flight of stairs, and I wished I knew how many steps there was. But I just remember thinking, “Oh my word! I have got to take a picture of this and send this to Joette,” because I was floored! I was just absolutely shocked, and a picture is worth a thousand words.

And I am holding back tears. I had to snap a shot of that for myself — and my husband because I wanted to show him. But I was just thrilled that he could climb those stairs, and spend the day with his friends, and enjoy what he’d been missing out on so many years. So, I just love having that picture as proof that we were just moving in the right direction.

Kate:  You know, it’s funny because we talked earlier, and we both were crying when you were telling that story. Well, this time I’m not going to cry. I just had to struggle to hold back the tears because what an amazing thing that is to watch your child who couldn’t climb stairs, climb all the way up!

And that visual! Joette showed us actually, in staff meeting, the picture that you sent to her, and we all were just so thrilled for you. We’re just so happy that homeopathy been such an amazing thing for your family.

Jennifer:  Yes, it was just shocking, because it felt like 12 or 13 steps to get up to upstairs in our house. And for him to not even be able to do that, and then to be able to go up (and then down) the slides, to be in the water with all the chemicals that they dump in … I mean, you walk in there, it’s an indoor pool! It’s an indoor park. So, you get hit in the face with the chlorine as soon as you walk in. For him to be able to do that in such … I think three months is a short amount of time for someone who has lived with chronic illness for a few years.

So, I just can hardly ever tell that story without crying — and all the other ones like it. But it is just miraculous to see.

Kate:  That’s so great. I’m so happy for you, guys. So now, you’ve said he’s even working, and he runs.

Jennifer:  Yes! He runs. He can run a mile in under seven minutes. He works 30 hours a week. He’s involved in leadership training. I don’t even know what the number is — hours of community service that he’s done. He went and assisted during hurricane Florence for a whole week and was there passing out food and water and tarps and just helping people in need.

I’m going to start crying again. I have to pause. Oh, my gosh!

Kate:  Oh, my gosh! Probably everyone else who is listening is crying, too, at this point.

Jennifer:  I’m getting bleary-eyed. Bleary-eyed. I can’t see.

Kate:  So, you were so sold on homeopathy that I think the next thing you did was you started a Gateway group, didn’t you?

Jennifer:  I did. That November. I mustered up, not knowing many people here because we had just moved here. I was able to muster up a couple of girls. I started the Gateway group because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t have to rely on any over-the-counter meds, any antibiotics, or anything like that. I wanted to make sure that he could just keep moving in this direction of progression. One of the things that Joette had said in the first meeting that we had back in August was she wasn’t going to tackle it from a Lyme disease point of view. She suggested that it was a gut issue that we were potentially dealing with. So, we went at it from a gut point of view, and that is working beautifully.

Kate:  Well, the way that you guys went about it was obviously very effective and has helped him to regain his life which is nothing short of miraculous. (I mean, not when we know about homeopathy and how it works.) But just to see his life change like that is great. I imagine you shouting from the rooftops about homeopathy now and how excited you are.

Jennifer:  Yes, yes.

I do want to say another one of those “truth bombs” that she dropped on me which will just lead into what I’m going to say next. When we were again in that first meeting, the reason why she had gone with the gut issue is because we didn’t have a definitive diagnosis that it was indeed truly Lyme disease. So, one of the things she did say to me, though, about the supplements … We were talking about supplements, and she said, “So, why are you supporting your problem?”

I was, like, “Ahhh, uhmm, hmm. I don’t know.”

Kate:  So, explain a little bit more about what she meant by that.

Supplements

Jennifer:  The supplements weren’t correcting the problem. We were on them to try to alleviate some of the discomfort, the tiredness, maybe some of the sore joints. It wasn’t doing much of anything, honestly, but I didn’t have any other answers to go on, so we just continued to use them. So, she was really just bringing that to light, as to “Why do you continue to go in this direction if nothing is being accomplished?”

Kate:  I think that’s really good because we have to think about whatever it is that we are doing. Is it really correcting the problem, and what direction are we moving in? Is our body being healed, or are we just sort of getting by every day, and nothing is significantly changing? I think that’s what you’re saying if I’m hearing this correctly. That supplements were fine, and maybe they’d help some. But if you went off the supplements, then there was no change really. You just went right back to the same situation.

Jennifer:  Right. We were just basically treading water. We were just sitting there, treading water. We weren’t moving in any direction.

Kate:  That was another “truth bomb,” right?

Jennifer:  That was another “truth bomb.”

I literally sat there, and I was like, “Uhhhhhhhmmmmmmm. I don’t know the answer to that question. Do I have to have an answer?”

Because we really weren’t seeing anything really come of taking all those vitamins and supplements and herbs and all these things we were doing. But I felt like I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. It just was making us feel a little bit better that something was being accomplished because we weren’t getting answers anywhere else. So, it was nice to hear the truth.

Kate:  Yeah. So, tell us what your cupboards look like now if someone came over and needed something.

Jennifer:  Well now, my cupboards are strictly homeopathy. I do have some essential oils still in there.

After I took Joette’s Gateway course, I felt very confident with being able to tackle illnesses that arose whether they were acute or chronic. So, I decided to get out my garbage can and make my way through my cupboards to my pantry and my drawers. I dumped over-the-counter meds, and Tylenols, and Advils, and cold and flu, and things like that. Even though we didn’t really use them that often, because I did try to go the herbal and essential oil route and things like that, I still had them as my crutch in case I couldn’t tackle the illness on my own.

We were able to see the beauty of homeopathy by eliminating migraines from our lives and headaches and diarrhea and indigestion heart burn. What is there? Pinkeye, there were so many things that we were using homeopathy for that would just pop up into our daily lives unexpectedly. I had not reached for any of those things. I hadn’t even reached for my herbs, my tinctures, which is what I essentially always reached for 99 percent of the time before I had homeopathy because I didn’t have anything else to go on except for those things.

But I still love herbs, and I still love essential oils, but I don’t use them for tackling illness now. If someone looks like they’re coming down with an ear infection; we just go to the appropriate remedy. Someone’s getting a sore throat; we go to the appropriate remedy. Pinkeye? Not a problem. I laugh in the face of pinkeye! I don’t worry about that anymore. But before I would be like, “Oh, I hope I can cure it early,” or whatever. But I just, “Oh, you got a little pinkeye? Take the right remedy. You’re good!”

You know?

Kate:  I don’t know if you feel like I do, but when I hear of people investing in huge essential oil kits, I want to tell them, “No!” Not that essential oils are bad but get a homeopathy kit because it can save you!

Jennifer:  Yes, yes. That’s exactly it. Like I said, I still have my oils because number one, I love them, and I spent a lot of money on them. But I use them for just enjoyment purposes.

Kate:  So, after the Gateway I study group, did you take another course from Joette?

Jennifer:  I did. I ended up taking the Good Gut, Bad Gut course because I felt like I was ready to take my training wheels off and venture out on my own. So, that’s what we did. I took the Good Gut, Bad Gut, and I absolutely loved it. It really just gave me a ton more confidence. So, I just loved that course. I really enjoyed it.

Kate:  Now, you’ve been using homeopathy for a couple of years, and I imagine that you have a lot of other things that homeopathy has helped your family with. I know there’s one story in particular that you talked to me about. I know so many of the listeners would like to hear about it, and that is your tooth story. So, tell us about that.

A tooth story

Jennifer:  Yes, the tooth story. Well, it started last March. Yeah, I think it was last March. I went into the dentist, and I had a cavity starting in between my molars. I had one starting in my front tooth which is horrifying to hear. She told me that my X-ray showed that I was losing bone in my jaw. I had some bone loss. I was … in the same section, I had receding gums starting. Also, from a previous filling that I had had in that same section, I don’t know if you’d call it tooth sensitivity? After I had had a filling done there, I had a very hard time chewing or eating anything on that side. It would just shoot like electric pains through my jaw. So, I was very cautious to avoid eating on that side of my mouth. So, these are all these problems going on.

I was already gluten-free. I was trying all these things naturally to try. It didn’t dawn on me yet to try homeopathy. You know, you always put your kids first above yourself. You’re like, “I’ll get to myself later.” But still, I was like, “It’s time to do something here.”

So, when I got that information at last year’s dentist appointment, and I had the X-rays, and they were showing that I had those problems, first I scheduled for my filling. I went home and panicked because I hate drilling, filling, cleaning, anything. I hate it all. So, I called, and I cancelled.

I decided that I was going to do this. I was going to figure out how to reverse my tooth decay essentially. I went on Joette’s blog. I read as much as I could whenever she talked about cavities. I went on the Weston A. Price website and read about the teeth on there. I had also had the privilege of listening to Joette talk a lot about the benefits of raw milk and what it can do for your bones and your health and all that. So, I was able to talk with her a little bit more when we had one of our meetings together.

So, fast-forward a year, and I’ve been doing Calc phos, Calc fluor, and Silica (or Silicea), and I’ve been taking those twice daily. I went to the dentist this early April, and I had X-rays done. I was super excited to get my X-rays — which in all of our charts says, “No X-rays unless absolutely necessary!”

But I was like, “Oh, is it X-ray day? I’m so excited to get my X-ray! I really, really want to see what …”

Maybe I didn’t really want to see. I was like, “At least if it’s halted, I’m happy.” But I would have loved to hear that it had been reversed.

So, I had my X-rays done, and the dentist came in, and he did his thing. He checked my mouth and everything. She pointed out the cavity between my molars — because that was of concern because I was supposed to have it filled and cancelled that appointment. He said, “Huh. There’s nothing really there. No, you don’t have to worry about that.”

So, I was so excited. I’m just trying to act nonchalant. I really wanted to jump out of my chair and be like, “What? Are you kidding me?”

So, I just was like, “Oh, okay, that’s great.”

So then when he left the room, I was like, “Can you show me the before and after pictures? Can you pull out last year’s X-rays? I have got to see this for myself. I want to see last year’s X-rays compared to this year’s.”

So, she was really gracious. She did that for me, and she showed me where the cavity was last year. Then there was just teeny, teeny, little speck of a little spot that she’s like, “No. There’s essentially nothing there.”

I was like, “Okay!” I knew that I had to keep going with my remedies because I’m not fully, fully there. But I was so excited that I left the office forgetting to ask her about all the other issues that had been mentioned in last year’s appointment.

So, I had to give her a call back. I asked her about the bone loss and the receding gums. I already know that my tooth sensitivity is virtually gone, unless of course I would chew on a popcorn kernel or something like that. She said my bone loss had stopped. My receding gums have stopped. Not improved, not reversed, but had halted which I was still very, very thrilled with.

And I said, “What about that front tooth cavity? Did you see anything there?”

She was like, “No, you’re good.”

I was like, “Good, as in it ‘stopped’ or good, as in ‘you don’t see anything’?” Because that means something to me. I want to know exactly what we’re looking at.

She said, “Oh no, there’s nothing to see.”

I was like, “Hallelujah!” Because I don’t even know what that would be like to have your front tooth drilled. I can’t even imagine.

So, I don’t have to worry about my front tooth cavity. My molar cavity is essentially almost non-existent. So, I’m just going to keep guzzling my raw milk because I have that every day. I’ve been doing that for a year. I’m just going to continue with taking those three cell salts twice a day until probably next …

Well, I don’t know how long I’ll go but I’ll definitely want confirmation in my next year’s appointment in my X-rays to make sure it is completely invisible.

Kate:  Well, I think that is fantastic, Jennifer. This is why I wanted everyone to hear this because I wanted to know that this was possible. You hear of people reversing their cavities, but to talk to you face-to-face and know someone that personally had their cavities reversed is, I think, super-encouraging. So, that’s great. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for sharing that with us.

You also have some stories about your dog. So, share with us just briefly about what happened with your dog.

Some dog stories

Jennifer:  So, I love the animal stories because it always irks me when people are like, “Oh, it’s placebo. It’s just a little sugar pill.” I just love the animal stories because they’re just flies in the face of that.

But my dog, she had a severe bite not that long ago, a few weeks ago. She had had a little tussle in the woods with some type of animal. So, it bit her back leg, left two gaping holes on her back leg. We treated those strictly with homeopathy. We used the Ledum, Hypericum, Arnica, and even Staphysagria because we just wanted to make sure we were hitting it with all the infection-fighting ones because we couldn’t treat her with anything else like washing it with soap and water. That just was not going to be a possibility. She was not going to allow us to do that. So, that’s one of the other things that I love about homeopathy.

She was healed and good to go in a week. She was all closed up. She healed beautifully. It was effortless on our part. We just had to administer the little pills, and she never got an infection. There was never even a sign, and it was a really deep gash.

One more story about our dog. Last year, she had a bladder infection. I noticed she had puddles every time she got up and moved, and she was very uncomfortable. So, I realized that she had a bladder infection. So, to deal with that, I chose a couple of different remedies, Aconite being the main one that I used due to the fact that she had been out swimming in the hot and then coming in to the cold air conditioning — doing that over and over. So initially, she’s probably experiencing a shock to the body.

That was really amazing to see how after the first dose, the puddling had stopped. She just continued to improve after that, and there was no more sign of that. But I did continue for a couple of days, just to make sure that we didn’t have to worry about the puddling anymore for her, and that she was happy and content.

Kate:  So, as we wrap this all up, just share with us some of your wisdom today about using homeopathy.

Jennifer:  I would think that one of the main things for me that really helped me to take off and feel confident was not only taking the Gateway course, but definitely purchasing a kit — as you learn in the Gateway course how important a kit is. I would say that that’s absolutely correct. Because without the kit, you can’t accomplish these things as quickly as you should be able to because you wouldn’t have the proper medicine on hand. So, it’s nice to just be able to reach for my kit. I do have a lot of remedies, but I don’t have all of the remedies. So, I know that I have my kit there to buy me some time, so to speak.

As our dog got the bladder infection, I did not have every single remedy that I needed for that. So, I was able to use my kit to buy me some time, to go online, to purchase the remedy. By the time it came three days later, I didn’t need to give her anything anymore. But I had enough there for me to go on to do what I needed to do for her. So, without the kit, I would have ended up in the vet’s office. Who knows what else I would have had to spend? So, the kit pays for itself time and time again. That is huge for me — was the kit, just making sure that I have everything I need at my fingertips to take care of business.

Kate:  I totally agree. I talk to people all the time and they ask me about using remedies. Then when we figure out a remedy, so often if they’re new to homeopathy, they don’t have a kit, and then they’re stuck. They can’t try those remedies. So, yeah, I think that’s really important.

Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing your passion for homeopathy with us and all of your amazing ways that you’ve used homeopathy. I’m super-encouraged, and I know those listening today are also encouraged. So, thank you for taking the time with us today, Jennifer.

Jennifer:  Thanks so much, Kate. I had a lot of fun.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

These Moms with Moxie podcasts are designed to be inspirational, not specifically educational. No Remedy Card is provided.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:30    A study group for teenagers

09:02    Apis for bug bites

10:51    Arnica for gymnastics injuries

14:48    The importance of a teen study group

16:10    Some uses of Apis and Arsenicum album

20:22    What will the teen study group look like?

22:50    Closing thoughts from me (Joette)

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Gateway to Homeopathy 1 study group

Top 100 Remedy Kit

Zoom (online virtual meeting software)

Podcast 56 ­– Moms with Moxie: From Learning to Leading

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 74.

Joette:  Each day from my office, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe, and I want to share them with you. Some of my students have really caught my eye. Some of you have done all you can to learn how to cure those around you using homeopathic medicines, and your successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep these successes a secret any longer. So, with help from my roving reporters, we bring you a mini-podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity.” See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them, have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Kate:  Parents dream that they can pass on things to their children that are important to them. Homeopathy is something that we would all love to see our children embrace as they grow and have families of their own.

Today I’d like you to meet a mother/daughter duo that is doing just that … learning homeopathy together and sharing it with their family, friends and now, sharing their passion for homeopathy through study groups. Sheena has passed her love of homeopathy on to her daughter, Lucy, and the rest of her family. Even Sheena’s husband, a practicing physician trained in conventional medicine, is supportive of her family using homeopathy.

Lucy is going to share something very special she is doing in just a bit, but first, I’d like you to hear from Sheena, Lucy’s mom. Sheena, tell us what Lucy is doing, and why you think it’s important.

Sheena:  Lucy is going to lead her own Gateway to Homeopathy study group, and it’s going to be just for teens. No parents are going to be invited.

Kate:  They’re not allowed!

Sheena:  We’re not allowed. The reason is because teens are different, and their needs and their conversations will be different.

But I think it’s really important for that age group to learn homeopathy … for a couple of reasons. One is that we really are experimenting with our children’s immune systems right now. We’ve never had so many generations where kids have not had childhood illnesses. We don’t know what that’s going to do because our immune systems haven’t been trained the way they have in the past. So, I think these kids are really going to need a medicine to deal with what their bodies will have to be dealing with.

The other reason is teens like to do their own thing. They don’t necessarily want to do what their parents want them to do. They like to find their own way. They should know how to use homeopathy and decide for themselves if it’s the right choice to use it. I think they’ll be more empowered if they do that.

The other thing I’ve really seen with the teenagers is the fear-mongering that adults get, I think, is exponential for the teens: the fear of illness … just the fears of everything. And fear basically forces us or pushes us to make very bad decisions in a rush based on fear, instead of making a choice based on knowledge. If you make it based on fear, such as the fear of fevers, can lead to bad choices.   

Kate:  Yes, it can almost debilitate us from thinking clearly because we’re scared to think that we can’t handle them ourselves. So yes, homeopathy is very empowering in that way.

Sheena:  I have a lot of Lucy’s friends and my other daughter’s friends who I’ve given homeopathy to — with their parents’ permission — and the kids come back to me for more. Not the parents, but the kids come back for more because they feel it in their bodies, and they see that it’s very curative, and they feel better. Especially, muscular skeletal injuries of the athletes … I find it really interesting that it’s the kids who want more and, in some cases, ask their parents to learn so that they can use homeopathy on them.

Kate:  Yes, thank you, Sheena.

We’re going to switch over now. We’re going to meet Lucy, her daughter, who is stepping out, and she wants to share homeopathy with other teenagers. She’s going to start a Gateway to Homeopathy 1 study group. She is looking for other teenagers who might be interested in joining her.

So, I’m excited for you all to get to meet Lucy and to hear about what she’s got going on.

Hi Lucy.

Lucy:  Hi.

Kate:  I’m super-glad to have you here with us today.

Lucy:  Thank you for having me.

Kate:  You are welcome. Lucy, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that you’re a teenager, and you live in sunny Florida. That’s great.

Lucy:  It’s so much fun.

Kate:  If you guys could see Lucy right now, she’s super-cute. She has this really fuzzy chair that she’s sitting in with her little headset. She’s adorable. It looks super comfortable.

Lucy:  It is. It’s very comfortable.

Kate:  Okay. So, Lucy, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Lucy:  I live in Florida. I have a younger sister, and we have a small family. We live on the water. I do gymnastics. I do a lot of martial arts, and I really like to read.

Kate:  And so, when you say live on the water, do you live on the ocean or is it a lake?

Lucy:  It’s an inlet.

Kate:  Ah, okay. So, what is your favorite hobby?

Lucy:  I would probably say gymnastics.

Kate:  I think your mom was telling me that you compete at a pretty high level. Is that right?

Lucy:  I used to do competition, but now I’m actually on a show team. So, we do shows at Disney and such.

Kate:  Really? I’ve never heard of a gymnastics show team. I didn’t know that was a thing.

Lucy:  It’s very fun. We do some stunts, too. It’s a little bit like cheerleading except with much less dancing, much more tumbling, and no talking.

Kate:  Okay. So, what’s the hardest thing that you do in your show?

Lucy:  Probably, a round-off back layout which is a round-off and then basically a backflip except your body is completely straight.

Kate:  Yes. You have to get pretty good height for that, don’t you?

Lucy:  Yes.

Kate:  That’s sounds terrifying, Lucy. Oh, my gosh! Did you ever have any injuries from gymnastics?

Lucy:  Oh, yes, many!

Kate:  I bet you used homeopathy?

Lucy:  Definitely, for sure.

Kate:  Is that how you learned about homeopathy, from your mom using homeopathy when you got in accidents?

Lucy:  No. Actually, I originally started learning about homeopathy a couple of years ago. My mom did a Gateway 1 study group, and I joined her rather than doing some of my science for school. It was kind of like my science curriculum for that year. It was very interesting. You know, I question things a lot. I like to know every detail, every fact. So, I was a bit wary going in, and I did a lot of research. But then I realized that it worked pretty well.

Kate:  So, is that what convinced you … is when you saw it working?

Lucy:  Yeah. There have been a couple of times when we used it on animals or friends. Well, the animals obviously can’t talk, but my friends would be like, “Wow! That actually works. That’s impressive!”

Kate:  Yeah! So, then you thought to yourself, “Yeah, it does work!” That’s great.

So, you went into this Gateway to Homeopathy study group kind of not really knowing what you thought of homeopathy for sure, but you thought, “I’m going to study it. I’m going to dig in, and I’m going to see what there is to this medicine.”

Lucy:  Right. Yeah. Originally, it was just something that my mom was very interested in, and she kind of intrigued me a little bit. It was an excuse to get out of a couple of weeks of science lessons. So, I was like, “All right! Let’s go for it.”

Kate:  But then, as you start to study it, then what?

Lucy:  Then I got very interested in it because I learned lot of good ideas behind it and the legitimacy of the actual theory behind it.

Kate:  Yeah. So, you thought that was a really good curriculum, and it helped you to understand more about how homeopathy works and how it’s used?

Lucy:  Yeah, and even how the human body heals itself.

Kate:  That’s such a foreign concept to people these days. I think they’re used to taking a medicine and saying they’re going to rely upon the medicine — as opposed to helping the body to heal itself.

Lucy:  Yes, absolutely. For most of my life, my mom had us on very good diet, and we used that as a medicine. But in some cases, like obviously because we live in Florida, there are a lot of weird bugs. My sister would get bitten by a bug and have an allergic reaction, and you can’t heal with that with bone broth. We needed something else.

Kate:  Yeah. Okay, so, now you got my curiosity piqued. When you say, “Weird bugs,” I guess I haven’t seen weird bugs in Florida. So, tell me.

Lucy:  Just like crazy, mean ants or strange beetles. We have unusually aggressive mosquitos — especially where we live.

Kate:  Wow! So, you’re getting bit a lot?

Lucy:  Well, they don’t like me too much. But my sister and mom, they love.

Kate:  Oh wow! Okay. This is maybe a good time to share your favorite remedy to use for those bug bites. Why don’t you tell us what you guys use?

Lucy:  We use usually Apis 200C, sometimes 30C. That seems to be the most effective for my sister especially.

Kate:  I’ve used Apis 6, too, when there’s been a bite, and it’s not been severe.

Lucy:  My mom uses that a lot.

Kate:  She uses that a lot for her bug bites?

Lucy:  Uh-mmm.

Kate:  I used that once for my daughter who got stung by a bee, and it worked really well.

Lucy:  Luckily, we haven’t used it on bee stings, yet. Fingers crossed: I haven’t been stung by a bee in a while. I stay away from them. I’m very scared of them. But it’s nice to know that if I do get stung, I have that.

Kate:  Yeah, exactly.

All right, so let’s talk a little bit more about gymnastics, and how you’ve used homeopathy with the different things that have happened to your body doing gymnastics.

Lucy:  There have been quite a few incidents where I’ve needed to use homeopathy because of gymnastics. Not only are we tumbling, but our routines … there’s many people in them, so very often there’ll be collisions or other sorts of things.

There was actually one incident where there was a difficulty with timing. I think someone hadn’t been there the day before, and I went on cue, but they didn’t. I couldn’t see what was going on around me. So, I ended up kicking my friend in the eye. It was very, very bad. We had a show the next day, and we were so concerned because we were, like, “We’re going to show up at the show, and she’s going to be looking like she just got in a fight.”

So, I went over to her mom, and I gave them Arnica 1M. I said, “You can give this to her. I think it will help with the bruising.” She had no black eye the next day — like, there was no sign of it.

Kate:  Wow! That’s awesome! So, you were brave enough to go over and tell them that, and you don’t worry about what people are going to say. You just say, “Hey, I have this medicine, and it could help.”

Lucy:  Right. I mean Arnica is definitely one of the ones I’m more comfortable with. Usually, I am cautious with offering people things. I don’t want to seem strange offering them strange, unfamiliar medicine.

Kate:  Yeah. I know it can be nerve-wracking. Because you have this medicine; you know it can help them, but you’re hesitant because then they’ll ask you, “What is this that you’re offering, and how does it work?” And then you have to explain it all.

Lucy:  Yes, exactly.

Kate:  It can be uncomfortable. That’s for sure.

Lucy:  But I was pretty confident that the Arnica would work on this. It seemed like a pretty textbook case where a high dose of Arnica would be good. It worked very, very well.

Kate:  Tell us some more examples about injuries with gymnastics.

Lucy:  Actually, one of my best friends was on the team a few years ago, and she ended up kneeing me in the face. Again, I think we had a show in a few days, and I had to fix it. So, I took Arnica … and nothing.

Kate:  I bet you have that on hand at all times in your gymnastics.

Lucy:  Yeah, absolutely. I get hit quite a lot.

Kate:  Have you ever had a concussion?

Lucy:  No. Luckily, I have not. I’ve fallen out of the sky a few times and nearly broken my neck, but …

Kate:  I think if I was your mom watching you do all that, I would be a nervous wreck. I would have to take homeopathy for myself.

Lucy:  Right!

Kate:  Let’s talk a little bit about your vision for a study group. Lucy, you said that you are planning to start a Gateway to Homeopathy study group for other teenagers. You want to teach them about this medicine. Why are you interested in doing this?

Lucy:  Well, I think it would be a really unique thing to do. It would be a good experience because I think it’s good for teenagers to have an alternative to popping a bunch of Advil or whatever whenever they’re in any kind of pain. I think it’s good for us to have a natural way to heal our bodies. Because the world we live in today is pumping us full of all these crazy drugs, that I think it’s just good to have ways to minimize that as much as possible and try to heal ourselves more naturally.

Kate:  So, you have learned about this medicine, and you just want to share it with others?

Lucy:  Yeah.

Kate:  So, how are you going about advertising for this study group?

Lucy:  My mom is very involved in many homeopathy groups. So, she’s contacting those people, posting on Facebook about it. I’ve asked a few people I know whether or not they will be interested. We’re doing a couple of different things.

Kate:  I think this will be a podcast that will be great to share with your homeschool groups or on your Facebook page so that other people might see this — or hear this, I should say. Then they could contact the office if they want to know how they can get involved in your study group.

Lucy, talk to those teenagers who are listening to this podcast today. Tell them why they should be interested in taking the study group.

Lucy:  Not only is it good for your body, but I think it’s also very good for your mental well-being. To know that if you get punched or if you have a bad allergic reaction or something like that, that you have a way to help yourself and avoid just having to pump yourself full of drugs that may not even work the way that you need them to. I think that’s very powerful, for especially the crazy world we’re in today, to have a good way to heal yourself and be confident in your ability to use these medicines.

Kate:  So, it gives you independence. It helps a person, like you said, to feel confident that they have some tools that they can use to heal their bodies rather than having to rely upon a doctor in all circumstances. Because obviously, there are times when we may need a doctor. If we’re in a severe accident, and we have a broken bone or something like that, we’re going to need to go to the emergency room and be seen. But homeopathy is so empowering. And, if you learn that early on like you are, just think of how it can really change the world.

Lucy:  Yeah, absolutely.

Some uses of Apis and Arsenicum album

Kate:  Give us some more examples about how you have used homeopathy yourself.

Lucy:  I’m actually, lately, allergic to carrots and apples. Whenever I eat them, my throat gets itchy. My tongue gets itchy. The carrots, I don’t care about so much. But I love apples, and I want to eat them. So, what I do is I’ll just have an apple. My throat and mouth will start to itch like crazy. I’ll just take Apis 200C, and it will go away within a minute. So, it allows me to eat one of my favorite foods and still feel fine.

Kate:  So, you don’t care. You just take the Apis. How long does it take for your throat and your mouth to feel better after you’ve eaten the apple and taken Apis?

Lucy:  Probably about a minute. It’s very, very quick. Apis is one of the remedies that I found to be extremely effective.

Kate:  Lucy, when you’ve eaten an apple and taken the Apis time and time again, do you find that you react less to the apple?

Lucy:  Yeah, absolutely. Actually, my allergy has been getting better and better, which is also very nice.

Kate:  So, you, using this methodology — and I will not recommend to anyone out there if you have an anaphylactic reaction that you do this because, obviously …

Lucy:  Oh, yeah, no!

Kate:  You need to take precautions. But homeopathy doesn’t just stop the symptoms; it actually helps your body to heal. Because I found this in our family as well: that when we’ve had allergic reactions to things, and you take the homeopathic medicine, then the next time it’s not as severe, and the next time it’s even less severe … And so, you’re actually helping your body to heal from whatever it’s allergic to — which is fantastic.

Lucy:  Yeah, absolutely. I’m lucky it’s not too severe because then I can eat the apples and do this healing process without putting myself in any danger.

Kate:  Right. What is another way that you’ve used homeopathy?

Lucy:  As I mentioned before, I have a younger sister. Once in a while my parents will leave us at home alone and have me babysit her. There was one time when they went out, and she started feeling very, very sick. She was incredibly nauseous. We couldn’t figure out what it was from. So, I gave her Arsenicum 200, and I gave her I think two doses. She just laid down and went to sleep and was totally fine the next morning.

Kate:  Wow! Arsenicum album. I think that is quite possibly the one remedy … if I could only choose one remedy to take on an island, that may be the remedy that I would choose to take because it works so amazing for food poisoning, upset stomach.

Lucy:  Yes.

Kate:  And a lot of other things, nausea, so many things. You knew what to do? You didn’t have to call your mom and ask her what to give your sister?

Lucy:  No.

Kate:  No, because you’ve seen this work over and over again, and you’ve taken the study group?

Lucy:  Right.

Kate:  How many remedies would you say that you are familiar with, if you had to take a guess?

Lucy:  I’m familiar with quite a few. If you give me like a list of them, I will be able to know this one, this one, this one, this one.

Kate:  So, if you looked at that Top 100 Remedy Kit, you know the red kit from Washington Homeopathic?

Lucy:  Yeah, probably half.

Kate:  Yeah, good!  So, what are your plans to continue learning about homeopathy in the future?

Lucy:  Well, I think that going back and reviewing the basics again with this study group will be good because, you know, it’s always good to get a deeper understanding. My mom has a few books she’d like me to read. Obviously, I’ll continue using it. I think with more and more experience, more chances to experiment with how different remedies work on myself and others, I’ll just continue to learn.

Kate:  So, is this something that you’re interested in maybe pursuing in the future, or is it just something that you want to have as knowledge just to heal yourself and someday maybe your family?

Lucy:  I think more the latter. But I think I’d definitely like to do another class or two sometime in the future just to get better and better at it, because it really is an empowering thing. It really is helpful to know.

What will the teen study group look like?

Kate:  Right. So, if you’re a mom listening today, and you have a teenager who might be interested in this group — or maybe you’re a teenager — and you want to know exactly what does the study group look like. Give us a little information, Lucy, about what does the study group session look like. What do you do? Is this going to be online, I assume?

Lucy:  Yes, we’re most likely going to do it over Zoom. It is an eight-week course, but I would want to do an introductory week. So, it would be nine weeks, because the first week we’d all get together, introduce ourselves, talk about why we’re doing this class, what our goals are for the class. The sessions would be about an hour and a half to two hours long.

Kate:  Lucy, what does a typical study group session look like?

Lucy:  We will all get together, talk about the material that we learned that week. There’s a few question and answers in the study guide that we would go through, kind of methodically talk about everything, any personal questions that we might have, and just kind of review the material.

Kate:  And there are some videos that you would watch together as well, right?

Lucy:  Yes, correct.

Kate:  It’s very exciting because you have all these people that are meeting together. They’re getting to know one another. You become friends after the study group, I think.

Lucy:  Yeah, absolutely. I think it will be fun, too, as well as educational.

Kate:  Yeah, you’ll get to meet some other kids your age around the country who are wanting to learn this as well.

Lucy:  Yeah.

Kate:  I think you’re going to have lots of fun with this study group, Lucy.

If you are listening right now, and you know someone who might be interested in joining Lucy’s group, or maybe you want to start a study group of your own, contact Joette’s office, and they will put you in touch with Lucy or give you the information that you need to get started with your own study group. Lucy, thank you so much for being here. You are a very well-spoken young lady, and I’m sure your study group will be a success.

Lucy:  Thank you so much.

Closing message from me (Joette)

Joette:  Okay, folks. It’s Joette again, and I just had to add this to this wonderful interview that Kate did with Lucy. And that is that Lucy’s mom was interviewed a while ago on Podcast Number 56, and I urge you to listen to that because it’s kind of fun. But she was talking about the family’s pet bearded dragon, and how the little dragon had over-eaten crickets. She’d overindulged and had thrown them all up! (So, I mean, I don’t know how something like that would look like. I don’t even want to imagine it.)

As a result of that, she was not eating; she wasn’t feeling very well. So, I believe it was Lucy who administered Nux vomica to her pet. And it calmed the bearded dragon right down, and she was able to get back to her normal intake of meals made up of kale and crickets.

So, I thought I’d mention that because I think it’s valuable that if you have a teenager or a young adult or even a pre-teen (an adolescent) who has pets, and they are responsible for them — which, of course, they should be — this should be part of their responsibility in taking care of them when they get ill. So, I urge you to bring in your family, your neighbors — those who might be interested in a class — with these children can learn how to take care of not just themselves (but, of course, that’s the ultimate answer for all of this), but for their pets.

This is a great opportunity to learn that because, remember folks, it does not matter whether it’s a bearded dragon that overate their crickets, or it’s your husband who overate cheeseburgers: the remedy for overeating and getting nauseous and vomiting is usually Nux vomica. The potency remains the same; the remedy remains the same; the frequency remains the same.

So, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an amphibian or a fish or a mammal or what it might be, or the size of the animal or human (whether it’s an 800-pound steer or an 8-pound baby). The remedies are the same based on the condition. The potency is the same, and the frequency is the same.

So, here’s an opportunity to really move your family along and get them involved in a class. So, I urge you to bring in your family — your young ones — and get them started and join in with Lucy.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

These Moms with Moxie podcasts are designed to be inspirational, not specifically educational. No Remedy Card is provided.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:58    Learning about the Banerjis and their background

08:32    The case-taking process

16:45    Conditions encountered at the clinic

21:18    Meeting and working with the Banerjis

36:06    A beneficial insight from Dr. Prasanta Banerji

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 73 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:  This is Joette Calabrese, and I’d like to welcome you to the Practical Homeopathy Podcast. Women and men worldwide are taking back control of their families’ health and learning how to heal their bodies naturally, safely and effectively. So, if you’re hungry to learn more, you’ve come to the right place. Stay tuned as we give you the tools — and the inspiration you need — as I share my decades of experience and knowledge using this powerful medicine we call homeopathy.

Kate:  Good morning, Joette.

Joette:  Hi Kate, always good to see you.

Kate:  Another podcast, super-excited because we’re going to talk about the Banerjis today! I want people to know — I want to know — more about your time at the Banerji clinic, and how you came to meet them. Maybe you’ll sneak in some protocols that you learned there that we haven’t heard a lot about. So, I’m excited for the podcast today.

Joette:  Okay, great. This is podcast what, number 70 or 71 or something?

Kate:  I think it will be, like, 73 … something like that. You have done a lot of podcasts! There is so much to learn; I feel like we could go on forever.

Joette:  Oh, that’s my goal — into eternity.

Kate:  You can never retire. I know a lot of people are wondering. They’re worried that someday you might retire, and then what? We’ll be stuck.

Joette:  Yeah, I don’t know that I’ll retire. I might slow down a bit, but I can’t imagine stopping this altogether. It’s in my blood now.

Kate:  Yeah, I can’t imagine you not doing it either.

Okay, so let’s talk about the Banerjis. Tell me, Joette, a little about how did you come to find out about the Banerjis and then start your discussions with them.

Joette:  Well, if you’re in the homeopathic community, you couldn’t help but hear about them. So, some 20-some years ago, I heard at one of our national conferences, “You know, there are these … this father and son team in India who each sees a hundred patients per day.”

I thought to myself, “That’s impossible. How could that possibly be?” Because I only knew classical homeopathy which requires that you take a case that lasts at least an hour, more often an hour and a half. Then you’ve got hours’ worth of work after it often. So, I was incredulous.

Then about a year or so later, I went to another conference, and someone else said exactly the same thing, “You know, there is this father and son team in India who each sees a hundred patients per day.”

I said, “I just, I don’t get it.”

So, I had always known that if I really wanted to learn homeopathy in great depth that I had to work alongside a homeopath that was seeing many patients per day and had not had any interruptions in his education and the generation before him or the generation before him.

Kate:  So, I have a question. Let me stop you right there for a second. When they were talking about these Banerjis seeing a hundred patients a day, were they talking about them in a negative way or just sort of matter-of-fact way? How were they portrayed?

Joette:  No, it was just matter of fact. It was of interest because we were all heavily burdened and mired down with these heavy classical methodologies that require that it took us an hour and a half to take a case. It’s not that we were complaining because we didn’t know any other way. But it was certainly something that was so juxtapositioned that it pricked up my ears.

Kate:  Maybe we’re jumping ahead of ourselves here, but that leads me to think about the Banerjis and how they originally started. They must have used the classical method of practicing homeopathy, is that their background as well?

Joette:  Well, it had been passed down through their families. Each of them had studied homeopathy. So, they had all gone to homeopathy school, but in India, that’s medical school. So, they were medical homeopathic physicians. They had gone through many years of study and had put their time in so that they could be in practice and understand. I mean, obviously if you’re in medical school, you’ve got anatomy, physiology, pathology, et cetera. That’s a very important basis of being in practice. So yes, they did have traditional homeopathy as their background.

But when your patients are lining up in front of your clinic — your research center — the night before, and they’re bussing them in from small villages, and as they open the doors of the bus — and I’ve watched this daily when I worked there — and the doors would open, the bulging bus would empty out, I don’t know, 80 people, 100 people? I don’t know. Maybe I’m exaggerating but at least 80 people. Then they would just line up and sit on the sidewalk with their blankets and wait until the next day to see them!

Kate:  Oh, my gosh!

Joette:  After a while, when you’re seeing the same condition over and over and over, and then another condition over and over and over, by the sheer numbers, after a while it narrows down to, “It’s most likely this remedy.” If you see — just like we know in classical homeopathy for acutes — if you see someone with a hematoma, the first thing we think of generally speaking is Arnica. Now, we can also use Hamamelis. We can also use Bellis perennis. We have other choices, but we have all learned in day one of homeopathy school, Arnica montana for hematomas or ecchymosis.

Kate:  So, isn’t that in essence a practical protocol?

Joette:  Yes! It absolutely is a practical protocol. When I was practicing classical homeopathy, I wanted more protocols. I had some; that was one of them. I knew that strep throat was met with Belladonna. I mean, everybody knows that. We can also use Hepar sulph. We can certainly use Mercurius. There are other remedies that we can consider. But we generally start out with an extremely painful strep throat, it’s generally speaking Belladonna.

Now, how did we come to that? Well, after a while, you’d have to be, as we say in Italian, “Testa dura,” which means hardhead, to not pick up on the fact that this works time and time again for most people — not everyone but for most people.

So, when they came up with these protocols, it was out of sheer need to be able to fulfill the requirements of meeting with a thousand people a day. Because, of course, they weren’t the only doctors treating. They had, when I was there — the last seven, eight years that I was there — there were twelve senior doctors and correspondingly junior doctors to take the cases (start opening the cases for each of those senior doctors). With twelve of them all seeing a hundred patients per day, do the math: that’s 1,200 patients in a day. That means at the end of one week, it is 7,200 people.

Kate:  Right. I often wonder — and we were talking about this earlier — that if Boericke or Kent or Hahnemann had that many people at their doorstep everyday, if they too wouldn’t have come up with these protocols.

Joette:  They would have had more protocols. They would have been forced to come up with answers more quickly so they can get to the next person who was being carried in in a sling or with his family carrying him in a …

We used to meet the ambulances in the back of the homeopathic research foundation. The ambulance would drive in. We would walk outside because the person could not be carried in. I mean, the facilities were much different than the facilities that we’re accustomed to. So, the family had put the person in the ambulance. Now, we went out and met with the family and the patient. We would take that case. When we finish with it, went right back into the office again, and the next 75 people were waiting in line to get their turn in. We did not leave until every person was taken care of.

Kate:  They have quite the staff, too. So, there’s a big process as far as people receiving the information. It’s not just one doctor alone seeing those hundred people.

Joette:  No, there’s a senior doctor and a junior doctor. Then there’s a junior-junior doctor. Then there are the pharmacists, and then there are those who do the processing and the accounting. Then when that’s all finished, and the case has all been taken, there’s the junior doctor (who was on the case with the senior doctor) goes up to the second floor and hands it to the person who inputs it into a computer. So now, we’ve got a record of it. The second floor is just as humming as the first floor.

Kate:  So, what typically happens? So, say, I’m a person outside the Banerji clinic. I’m waiting in line. Now, it’s my turn. What happens?

Joette:  The first thing they do is they stand in line. When they get in to their time to meet up with someone, there’s a little window like a bank window — almost like a bank teller. They get their name. They get a little bit of information, and they said, “Okay, we’ll call you in a little while.”

Then they have a loud speaker, and they call out the name of the person an hour later … who knows how long it is … 10 minutes? I don’t really know that logistics of that. But when they’re called in, then they’re sat down in a large room where the junior doctor starts taking the case. “Let me see your X-rays that you’ve brought in. Let’s see the blood labs, whatever you’ve got.” Some people don’t bring those. Some do have them with them. “Give me your age, your name,” et cetera, et cetera. They get all the statistics and all that information. Then what is the chief complaint? What are the satellite concerns, et cetera? And it’s all written down. But it’s written down in a very concise way.

By the way, it’s all handwritten! Kind of interesting. It must be required, absolute, in perfect penmanship. It’s gorgeous. What they hand to the senior doctor is perfection. If Pratip Banerji saw one little mistake, he’d give it back to the doctor (the younger doctor) and say, “Do it right! I don’t want any misspelled words. I don’t want any scribbling. Use white-out. Clean it up. If you have to do it over again, do it again.” The penmanship had to be perfect. They were real sticklers for protocol.

Kate:  Wow. Hmm. Okay. So now, what happens next?

Joette:  Then usually the case is taken. I imagine that they’re told to sit back down again until they’re called again — now to meet with the senior doctor. That’s when they’re brought in by the junior doctor into the consultation chambers as they call it. The person is led in by the junior doctor. The junior doctor then sits next to the senior doctor. I was, of course, privileged to sit between them, which was wonderful because I was privy to everything that was going on and could observe the case that was taken and what was now going to be considered — what medicines were going to be used.

So, the patient is sitting in front of us at the desk. If Pratip deemed that it was necessary that he palpated, then there was an examining room, and the person was instructed to get on the examining table. If it was something more personal, then the person was brought into a separate little side room. Pratip would observe what needed to be looked at. And then the person would get dressed again, come back and sit down.

If none of that was required, he might check their pulse. He might listen to their heart. I shouldn’t say, “might.” He often did it for the most part; he would use these methods. If they brought their X-rays, he’d turn on the little X-ray light and put the X-rays up so we could all see. He would look at that and look at the CT scans. Anything that they brought in was observed. Even though the junior doctor had already done that, Pratip would always look again to make sure that everything was tight and orderly and organized.

Then the patient would explain to him what was going on. Pratip spoke many languages, so did Dr. Prasanta Banerji and so did most of the doctors because they’re educated people. Many of them had been educated in England. So, they came with English plus many of the dialects. I don’t know if they could speak all of them, but they certainly understood the dialects of India, and there are a myriad of them.

So, by that time, that’s when Pratip then starts speaking to this junior doctor, and he is directing him as to what the medicines are. The junior doctor is writing it down. The junior doctors that had been around for a long period of time knew exactly what he was going to say because they are protocols. Knowing what the condition is, they’ve already written half of the case up already in anticipation of what Dr. Pratip or Prasanta was about to say. They were usually right.

Kate:  Okay. So, if they were certain or had an idea, they would write that down, and then …

Joette:  In advance, just to move things along faster.

After that was completed, then the junior doctor would hand the form … it was a small form with all of this gorgeous penmanship on it. There was no English; it was all in Sanskrit and in Latin because that’s what the homeopathic medicines are, of course. They’re all Latin. That’s all that was there. Nothing was in English. He would hand it to the senior doctor, Dr. Pratip or Dr. Prasanta Banerji, or any other senior doctor who was taking the case, and they would sign off. Now, that sign off meant that was done.

Hand it to the junior doctor. The junior doctor would guide the patient back to the large room where they would then direct them to go to, now, the pharmacy which is all connected. It’s all part of the compound. They would take their form with them. Then the pharmacist knew exactly what to do from there.

Kate:  Now, I’m curious. If you were sitting in between them, and they were speaking another language, how are you able to write down what their protocols were? Did they talk in English much?

Joette:  The doctors would speak in English. The patients would speak in their tongue.

Kate:  Oh!

Joette:  But the doctors understood what the patients were saying, but the conversation between the two doctors was always in English.

Kate:  Oh, that’s nice. Okay. Because I’m imagining, you know, “How are you translating this Joette?”

Joette:  Right. Well, the first year, I was lost. I had watched many Indian movies before we got there so that I could kind of get up to snuff … so I could understand their English because, of course, it is different than ours. I listened to hours and watched hours of Indian movies, good and bad ones. Bollywood, which is mostly dancing, you’re not really learning much of the language. But you get the idea of the culture, that’s for sure.

So, the first year was very difficult for me. I was really lost in what they were saying, especially because I was working with Dr. Prasanta Banerji, Pratip’s father. He was a little more difficult for me to understand. He did not have the English that I understood as well as I did Pratip’s.

But nonetheless, I knew what the condition was, and they would also discuss the condition. You know, I’m going to take that back. Was there anything written on this form that said in English what the condition was? No, there wasn’t. Not that I recall, there wasn’t. I can’t believe I can’t remember that. I was there for … I figured out cumulatively, I was there for just over a year and a half.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh! Really?

Joette:  Yeah. That’s how long I spent there. I would go every year. I’d have to come back to the US because I mean, I had to work! Nobody was paying me to do this. I had to work. I had a family. My children were all adults, but, nonetheless. Actually, the first year I was there, my youngest son was in high school. My parents were around so that he was with them a lot. But I did have a life, so I had to go back home again and then recover! The amount of hours and work was phenomenal.

Kate:  And you were always sick.

Joette:  I was always getting sick when I went there: amoebic dysentery; I got whooping cough one year; I got “unknown microorganism.’

Kate:  Well, you were exposed to the gamut while you were in there. What were some of the conditions that you saw?

Joette:  I saw everything. I saw leprosy, active tuberculosis, AIDS, cancer that was not hidden on the inside — cancer that had now gone to the outside of the body so that it was 100% visible and large and extensive, a lot of mouth cancer, a lot of that. Because some people in India chew betel nut, and it’s not just the betel nut that they’re chewing. It’s got tobacco mixed in it. It’s got lots of unsavory properties. It becomes a habit for many people. Not just men, believe it or not, even some women. And, it eats away at the inside of the mouth and causes cancer or abscesses. I saw a lot of mouth cancers and mouth abscesses. We saw hydrocephalus time and time and time again. We saw extreme skin infections because of being exposed to the streets.

Kate:  Bacteria.

Joette:  Bacteria, that’s right, staph infections that had gone rampant. A lot of cellulitis, so a lot of acute issues, but we also saw colitis and food intolerances and allergies and menstrual conditions and multiple sclerosis. You name it; we saw it all. When you’re seeing a hundred patients per day, you’ve got a lot of choices from which to see.

Kate:  When you say, “saw,” you talk about how you would walk through the clinic. You were shoulder to shoulder with these people and diseases, too.

Joette:  Yes, yes. It’s interesting. My observation was as sick as these people often were, and as humble a beginning that they came from, or humble of a setting that they came from (in the small villages or on the streets of Kolkata), when they came to the clinic, the women had freshly clean saris. Their hair was beautifully oiled and braided back. They were clean. Their nails were clean. They came with dignity. It was a beautiful thing to behold. No one came in cargo pants. No one came …

Kate:  Leggings.

Joette:  Well, there was that, too.

Kate:  Underneath.

Joette:  And not everyone was in the traditional garb. The younger people don’t often wear saris. It’s usually the older women who wore the saris, and the younger people who came maybe from the small villages. But if they were city people in Kolkata, they often were wearing Western clothes. So, we saw the whole gamut from the top of society to the bottom of society. It was really very, very fascinating.

When we walked through the halls, my friend, Dr. Vivekta Sharma — and we became very dear friends; we’re still in touch — would hold my hand to draw me through the crowds in the building. We’re still in the building! The only way I could keep up with her was she would hold my hand and pull me through — like we were playing a childhood game — to get me through the swarms. Meanwhile, I was being held back by the sheer crowds of people in the building waiting their turn.

Kate:  Wow! And outside, too, probably.

Joette:  Outside was just as bad and sometimes worse than that because on the street, there were all the vendors in front of the clinic, the research foundation. That’s where people would perhaps buy their meals. The whole street was lined with the lunches and dinners that were being made, with flames right on the street — with brick all around and a little flame. Sometimes the vendors would be sitting cross-legged, frying up these delicious, little cakes that are fried in deep mustard seed oil with vegetables and spices inside of them. Smelled wonderful, and that’s what usually those who came in from the towns would eat.

So, you’re negotiating the sidewalk with everything, plus, not to mention Calcasian dogs. I believe that’s the way it’s pronounced because it’s named after Calcutta. They are roaming street dogs that all look alike. There are hordes of them everywhere. They’re really friendly dogs. Some of them have names. Some of them don’t. They’re just everywhere. They’re waiting for the garbage to be tossed or to be put in a pile, and they go after it. So, it’s quite a street scene, very exciting.

Kate:  Yeah!

Kate:  Okay, I want to take a step back for just a minute and talk about how you came to speak with the Banerjis and to be able to actually go and sit and observe them.

Joette:  I had a colleague who contacted me. He was Indian. He works in my region when I used to live in Buffalo, New York area. He had met the Banerjis previously, years before. He contacted me, shot me an email and said, “Joette, you know, Drs. Pratip and Prasanta Banerji, I’m bringing them into town. I’m going to have them speak at Daemen College.”

Now, he knew that I would be interested not only because I’m a homeopath, and we were good acquaintances, but also, I had been teaching homeopathy at Daemen College years prior to that. He thought, “Well, since you were a teacher there and …” et cetera, et cetera, “Perhaps you’d be interested in coming to this engagement where I’m engaging them to speak for about …” I think it was about six hours, seven hours. Because they were going to be speaking at …

Kate:  MD Anderson?

Joette:  No, they’ve gone to MD Anderson, and then they were to come to Roswell Park, the cancer institution in Buffalo, New York. Since they were there, he thought, “Well, let’s see if we can get them to speak to a large group of people.”

And I said, “Sure!”

He said, “Look, you don’t have to pay the fee.”

I said, “No, no, no. Let me explain the way I feel about this. I’m happy to pay the fee. I’m happy to make a donation. Just please make sure that I’m seated next to them during lunch.”

Kate:  Oh, wow!

Joette:  He said, “Oh, all right.”

So, he did that; he arranged for that. So for a full day, they spoke. When we had lunch and then we had breaks, we actually went to a separate room. I had lunch with my colleague and the woman who arranged all of this at Daemen College. And the two Drs. Banerji and I had lunch together — a private lunch which was fantastic because I got a chance to speak to them and ask if I could observe their work.

Now, I don’t know if we made it clear earlier, Kate, but I have always known that if I was going to really learn homeopathy, I had to go to India. Had to. Because that’s where it’s been practiced uninterruptedly for the last 200 years and that would have given me insight.

I had tried to go to India and work with Dr. Ramakrishnan years prior to that. I had studied with him for five years in Toronto some 10 years prior to all of this. He had a program that was shutting down at the time. He was not taking any new homeopaths that could observe in his program. So, it was a big disappointment to me, but now I had another opportunity.

When Pratip Banerji said to me, “Certainly! Just contact us. We know all about you.” They’d done their homework on me. They had looked me up online to make sure that I was legitimate … what I had been doing. Once he knew that, then I suppose he felt comfortable to invite me to work with them.

Now, that was easier said than done because the communications between the US and India — technical communications — is often very difficult. I wrote to them, and there was no response. (I didn’t write to him exactly. I wrote to their director.) I didn’t get a response. Then I wrote again, I didn’t get a response. And wrote again, and I was just tenacious about it. I just stayed on it for, I’m going to say, a good year. It took almost a year for me to actually communicate with them and then set up a date, find out when they were going to be in town. Because of course I’d like to work with their senior doctors as well — and I did many times — but I really wanted to sit with them.

Finally, we got it all set up. And even to the last week, we had our tickets for Kolkata which are nothing to sneeze at — it’s pretty darn expensive to do this — and I still wasn’t sure that the date was an absolute.

Kate:  You’re kidding!

Joette:  We just took a chance. I said this is worth a chance. If it turns out that they’re not there, that they’re on a speaking tour (which is what they do regularly), we’ll just make it into, I guess, a vacation in India!

Kate:  Wow!

Joette:  So, this is not an easy process, but it was a fun process. I got to know them very well. The first year I got in there, they were renovating their offices. So, we were working in somewhat of a makeshift setting, still very lovely. I was able to work mostly with Dr. Prasanta Banerji, for which I’m very grateful. I would say the full 13 weeks, pretty much, I worked only with him. And maybe a few days here and there, I worked with Dr. Pratip, his son.

Kate:  Wow! That’s so awesome that you got to do that.

Joette:  Well, and during the day, we would work from approximately 10:00. I would get there around 10:00 in the morning. Dr. Prasanta or Dr. Pratip Banerji didn’t get in until a little bit later because they went on house calls to the people’s homes. They would often get in at around noon. Meanwhile, I had been working with the senior doctors. I sat with them, the other doctors, and observed and recorded all of their cases as well. Then Dr. Prasanta and Pratip would end at around, oh, sometimes 8, 9 o’clock, but I would then go with the group of doctors which would include Dr. Vivekta Sharma, my friend.

We would go to the other clinic that they had. That was in another part of town. We would pile in; it was such a blast.

Mostly the doctors are a good deal younger than I am by about 20 years. So, I was like the old mother. They would stuff me into this car. Everybody was sitting on everybody else’s laps. We’d go rumbling through the town and through Kolkata. Oh my gosh! It’s crazy. That in itself is just an experience.

We’d get there, and then we’d go through this old building and up to the top floor and sit up there. It was so hot. It was so hot. The doors were closed, and we’d all have our dinner. Now, most of the dinners were brought in by the doctors, their wives, or they made it themselves, or sometimes they’d only go to certain street vendors. They wouldn’t just buy from anyone. They would buy us a dinner. We’d all have these fantastic dinners together. I was turned on to the masala tea that they were accustomed to drinking. To this day, I still drink masala tea every day because of how they turned me onto that.

Then once we finished eating, everything was cleared up, open the doors, and people would throng in. I’ve got pictures of it: Long, long table. On one side, the women would line up, and on the other side, the men would line up. And all across the whole table were all the doctors. It was fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

Kate:  So you mean, they were all listening to cases at the same time?

Joette:  No, each doctor was taking a different case.

Kate:  Yes, that’s what I meant.

Joette:  So, there may be ten doctors? Each one was seeing a different case. We would see … I’m going to say there were another 200 people, 300 people that come on that night. Split by 10, each one had seen 30 cases within a couple of hours. By the time I got back to the hotel, I was … how do I say … hooped! I had put in a 12-hour day and intensely writing.

Kate:  And in the heat.

Joette:  In the heat. The heat was at times pretty extreme even though I was there in January which was the most comfortable. I was there usually January, February and part of March every year.

So, I would get back to the hotel, and my husband would always greet me at the hotel door which was great. As I got out of the car, he would meet me right at the door. He’s such a gentleman. Give me a big kiss. Tell me I was doing a great job. (I was half-dead.) Walk me to the elevator. Up we would go to our room, and I would shower down. I would take a couple of cases myself — my own clients who needed help. They knew that I was out of town, but certain people still needed help. So, I would still work with folks back home and work on those cases.

Kate:  I remember one time I had a consult with you when you were in India. Do you remember that?

Joette:  I do.

Kate:  Imagine how tired you were trying to listen to my … probably after just seeing all those diseases, you’re like, “Oh! That’s nothing, Honey.”

Joette:  It does put life in perspective. There’s no doubt about it.

But you know, we also saw the mundane, as well. We often saw people with just some acne. The middle class complained about that. There’s an emerging strong, educated class there.

I shouldn’t say that it’s emerging … emerging. It’s just growing more rapidly lately in the last, I don’t know, 50 years or so. There have always been the educated. There have always been those who are well-travelled, and who are learned. But it’s growing faster — more than ever — because of technology, and because it’s now a free market there. We’re seeing more and more entrepreneurial businesses start-up which is a beautiful thing to behold.

Kate:  So, how many times have you gone to India now? It’s quite a few.

Joette:  It was a number of times, and I actually lost count. I want to say it was nine times. Each time was anywhere between 3 weeks and 13 weeks. When I totaled it up cumulatively, I would say that it was just over a year and a half of time spent there.

I recorded over 7,000 cases. Then of course, they didn’t come in order according to a repertory. So when I got home, I had months of work to organize all of these protocols and information and translating them from cases to protocols. So that just because the case that came in first in the morning was a menopausal case, and the next one was a colitis case doesn’t mean it’s going to automatically fall into my notebook that way! I had to now transcribe, “Okay, this is the female section. Put that case in here, and what the protocol is. This is the GI section. Okay, put that colitis into that section.” So, I had a lot of work to do.

To this day even years later, I’m still organizing my notes so that I can find them more quickly when I need them. But for the most part, I’ve memorized the most commonly used (the ones that I use on a day-to-day basis) that I don’t even have to think about them any longer — not unlike the Banerjis.

You know what’s fascinating? I didn’t say this, but I described it. But they don’t allow their underlings, their junior doctors or senior doctors to take notes — not on the patient but on the case. So in other words, they did not say, “Okay, we’re going to use Carbo animalis for hormonal conditions in a woman going through menopause.” They were not allowed to write that down. You memorize it! That’s how you learn it. After those junior doctors had been there at least a year, they had them all memorized. (They allowed me to do it because I was observing.)

Kate:  Were there other homeopaths there doing this right alongside you?

Joette:  Every once in a while, a homeopath would come from Switzerland. Usually they were medical doctors who were practicing homeopathy or from Germany or where they had seen the Banerjis speak and were curious and wanted to know what they were doing and observe. But they usually were there for about a week. Some of them were from Madrid. There were a couple of doctors and endocrinologists who I got to know the first and second year. She would stay right along with me and do exactly what I was doing, which was writing down absolutely every single case. But it surprised me to see that they would come and observe but not write down the protocols.

Kate:  What!?

Joette:  That was the gold!

Kate:  Yes!

Joette:  So it always flabbergasted me. Then years later, after going year, after year, after year, and getting to know Dr. Pratip and his lovely wife, we became friends. His wife and my husband and I went on a vacation together. We spent a lot of time together over meals. She told me that they were so excited about having me there because I was the only person ever — I was really surprised to hear this — ever, who would ever come for a 13-week spin and then come the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year to learn these protocols. They had never seen anyone do that before.

So, for that reason alone, they gave us — and me — extra privileges which was quite an honor.

Kate:  So, you’re likely the holder of the most information of the Banerji Protocols other than the people at their clinic.

Joette:  Well, I am one of them. There’s one other person that I know of who I got to know, lovely person who helps them write and does research for them. She’s a PhD in nursing in California. I’m sure she did this to the degree that I did as well. But she brought it back to teach nurses and to teach professionals. Then there was another woman that I learned about who was from Japan who came several times as well. But according to what I have been told, I was the only one who had done it so many times and for so long a period of time — other than those who had been working for the Banerjis.

Kate:  I knew there was a reason we love you so much, Joette.

Joette:  It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculously tenacious. I mean, when I chomp onto something I can’t let go. My mother always used to say, “No matter what you do, you do it up to your eyeballs.” And she was right.

Kate:  Yeah. I’ve heard you talk about a number of areas in your life where you didn’t give up. You just kept pursuing that until you got where you wanted to be or got the answer that you wanted.

Joette:  I actually think that came from being in sales because I used to sell real estate. I used to sell airtime with NBC. As a little girl, I sold vacuum cleaner bags from door to door. Because my father was an entrepreneur, and he sold, and so I believe that on some level I was trained — or maybe it’s innate (it’s probably a combination of both) — that when someone says, “No,” then you just have to ask ten more people. Then you’ll get that yes.

Kate:  Or you ask them several times.

Joette:  Yeah, you just keep going. “No,” doesn’t mean “NO!” Don’t be ridiculous! It just means, “Okay, on you go. Next step.”

Kate:  That’s awesome. All right, so let’s wrap this up and just give us a summary as to maybe your greatest insights from being with the Banerjis all those times.

Joette:  One of the cadences that I got from Dr. Prasanta Banerji … and I used to call them “Prasanta-isms” and “Pratip-isms.” So, when they would say something wise, I would write it down. It was so fascinating.

But the one that I so much use, not only in my day-to-day life, but I teach others to consider, is he used to tell the patients all the time — especially those who were of the upper middle class and could go to many doctors — he would tell them (not to those who are suffering terribly, but for those who wanted to be proactive), instead of using the word “proactive” or to tell them to calm down with that concept, he would say, “Stop hunting for disease.” I love that statement.

Now, that does not apply to people who are really suffering from serious illnesses. But if you’re well, stop looking to see whether or not you’ve got this gene or that gene that might trigger. Stop looking for whether or not you might have the potential of an illness and test after test after test. That only provokes anxiety.

So, if someone is ill, obviously we have to do our research. They have to be tested to determine what the condition is so that we know what to springboard from.

But when someone is not really unwell, just enjoy life. You know you’ve been handed a pearl called life. Take it, run with it, and enjoy it. Learn how to treat others and become the healer for those who are truly suffering. Stop looking for the potential that, “You know, I’m 40. Maybe I should go get that mammogram every year. Or now, you’re 50, you should have a colonoscopy — every year.” Really? I question all of that. So, I urge folks to stop looking around and just live life. If something comes up, okay, now you look into it.

Kate:  Joette, thank you so much for sharing about the Banerjis and sharing their wisdom with us. I think we should do another segment on this so that we can learn more about what your conversations were and maybe some more protocols. So, I’m excited. I think this has been a great podcast.

Joette:  Yeah. Thanks, Kate. It’s always fun.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

06:48    Homeopathy’s role in an air traffic controller’s life

09:06    Car accident

12:06    Childbirth story, cell salts, & Arnica

18:43    Keep learning, keep sharing and keep a remedy kit

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Allergic!?

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Gateway to Homeopathy II:  Only available for purchase through your resource page, after having taken the prerequisite Gateway to Homeopathy I (referenced above)

Homeopathy Kits

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 72.

Joette:  Each day from my office, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe, and I want to share them with you. Some of my students have really caught my eye. Some of you have done all you can to learn how to cure those around you using homeopathic medicines, and your successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep these successes a secret any longer. So, with help from my roving reporters, we bring you a mini-podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity.” See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them, have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Kate:  Hi! This is Kate, and I’m here today with Mary. I’m looking forward to some of the things that Mary is going to be sharing with us. So welcome, Mary, to the podcast.

Mary:  Thanks, Kate. Great to be here!

Kate:  Great to have you. All right, let’s get to know you a little bit. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Mary:  I’m a retired air traffic controller, and also, I’m a private pilot. Well, I’m a commercial pilot — that’s a different rating. So, I used to tell the pilots what to do and fly for fun.

Kate:  Oh my gosh! How exciting is that? Have you done this your whole life?

Mary:  Yes, since I was 26.

Kate:  Was it like a childhood dream?

Mary:  No, it was divine intervention.

Kate:  Okay! Well, tell us.

Mary:  I got out of high school. I was going to get married and have kids. I didn’t get married and have kids, so, I went to work. Then the steel mills went under because of foreign imports. Then I took a job with my husband’s credit union. I wanted to run for the board of directors. They told me if I run for the board of directors, they would fire me. In the meantime, they gave the air traffic controller’s test out. But you had to die in order to get a job. So then, I went to work, and then the strike came, and I got hired — divine intervention.

Kate:  Wow! I think it sounds super-fascinating. So, you said you have your commercial license, as well. Did you fly as a pilot then for an airline?

Mary:  No, you have different ratings. So, you have a private pilot’s license, and then you have an instrument rating, and then you have a commercial pilot’s license. It’s just a rating.

Kate: Oh, okay, I see. I bet you have some pretty interesting stories from your days as an air traffic controller.

Mary:  Oh, I do. Now, they have this thing called ATC live where you can listen. Back in my day, they didn’t. So, I could say whatever I wanted and not get caught.

Kate:  So, anybody can listen to air traffic controllers, is that what you’re saying?

Mary:  Yes! Yes!

Kate:  What? I didn’t know this.

Mary:  See? You don’t even have to be in an airplane.

Kate:  Oh, my goodness! That’s amazing. So how do you do that?

Mary:  Download the app, I guess, ATC Live.

Kate:  ATC Live.

Mary:  Or Live ATC … it’s one of the two.

Kate:  Okay, wow! So, you’re a pilot. You’re an air traffic controller. What else?

Mary:  I’m a homeopath. So, I mean, talk about oxymorons. I mean, that is yin and yang. They’re two different brains.

Kate:  How did that happen?

Mary:  Well, my husband retired when he was 50, and he wanted a dog. I said I didn’t want a dog. But my girlfriend had this Dalmatian, and she had two little boys, and Dalmatians are very high energy. She gave the dog up, and she was the sweetest dog. I said, “I cannot believe you gave that dog up.”

She said, “I can’t believe you wanted her.”

So, she got the dog back, and we adopted her dog after six months. She was six months old when we got her.

So, she had these terrible allergies. I took her to the special vet. They shaved her hind legs, stuck with 57 needles, told me I had to feed her kangaroo or moose, gave me two vials to give her a needle twice a day. Six months later and a thousand dollars, she was just as bad if not worse. They said, “Well, it’s not an exact science.”

Kate:  I think that’s a pretty common story, what you’re saying. Our dog had allergies, kind of the similar thing. So, I think you’re speaking to the masses here.

Mary:  Exactly. Which is why Joette’s course on allergies is fabulous, and as long as somebody’s going to practice, it might as well be you.

Kate:  Yeah. So, that’s how you originally got into homeopathy?

Mary:  I did. There’s a vet called Dr. Khalsa who is brilliant that came from New England. I took my dog to her, and that’s how I started it. Then I found this study group in ’93, and it went on from there.

Kate:  When you say, “this study group,” was there a group of local people studying homeopathy together? Is that what you mean?

Mary:  Yes. So, like Joette, we had a teacher. We would go to her house, and we’d take cases and study remedies. It was amazing.

Kate:  So, you started studying with this group of people and learning classical homeopathy.

Mary:  Correct. Then somewhere along the line, we found Joette. I think one of our study group members brought in the thing for Gateway I, and I was a study group leader. Then we took Gateway I, and then we took Gateway II.

Kate:  Oh, so you were completing Gateway I, and then Gateway II came out right after that?

Mary:  Yes, yes.

Kate:  Did you find, as someone who had studied homeopathy for quite some time, that it was too basic, or did you still learn quite a bit?

Mary:  In homeopathy, you’re always learning. We learned every remedy part she puts out. Like the insomnia — the Arnica 200 for insomnia — who knew? I’ve been studying for 25 years or so, I’ve never known that. And the protocol for fleas? Nobody knows that either. It’s always interesting.

Kate:  Yes, she has so many free things on her website that you really could just study that and learn a ton without even taking a course.

Mary:  Right. So now, we do our own study group, but then we do Joette’s study group. We’ll do a Zoom class just like we’re doing now. We’d take some of her podcasts, and we’ll pick them apart.

Kate:  So, you guys are just going through some of the podcasts or blogs and talking about the different things that you’re learning there and just having discussions around those then?

Mary:  Yes, there’s just so much information that you miss some of it. So, by having a study group, and everybody bringing something to the table, then what you might have missed, somebody might say.

Kate:  I find every time I go through the Gateway book, I learn something or I remember something. It’s always super useful. So, you can never read things too many times. We just did another podcast with another woman who said she read Dorothy Shepherd’s book over … I think it was … eight times or something like that. Then on the eighth time is when she caught something that she had never seen before.

So, Mary, when we were talking earlier, you were saying about being an air traffic controller, and why homeopathy is so important to you. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Mary:  Whether you’re an air traffic controller or you’re a pilot (whether it is as a commercial pilot for the airlines or a private pilot that just flies around for fun), you have to take a flight physical once a year. The important things for that is that as an air traffic controller, if you can’t pass a physical, you don’t have a job. As a pilot, if you don’t pass the physical, you don’t have a job. So, for instance, back in the day before I knew homeopathy, I would take Flexeril for lower back pain. You cannot work for a week after you take that Flexeril. You have to stay home.

Kate:  Really?

Mary:  Really. And if you take DayQuil for a cold, I think it’s three days — you can’t fly for three days after you take DayQuil.

Kate:  So, that tells you how long that stays in your body, right?

Mary:  It just tells you: you don’t want to be taking it.

Kate:  That’s right. You don’t want to be taking it.

Mary:  You don’t want to be taking it. I mean, they’re just a few examples. Your best thing is to just be well, and homeopathy helps you do that.

Kate:  Exactly. So, give us some other examples of some of the ways that you’ve used homeopathy over the years.

Mary:  Back in the beginning before I had learned homeopathy myself, I had a godchild. She was born five pounds, nine ounces. A month later, this child is five pounds, nine ounces. So, you know that’s not good, right?

Kate:  Right.

Mary:  So, the allopathic people took her off the breast milk, put her on rice. Anyway, we took her to this homeopathic doctor. He gave her one dose of Nux vomica, and in one day, she gained FOUR ounces! How do you explain that?

Kate:  Wow! That’s incredible!

Mary:  I know. You want to see her now. She’s 18 years old. She’s beautiful.

Kate:  That makes me wonder why they gave her Nux vomica. Yeah, very interesting. So that got you really intrigued then.

Mary:  Absolutely. So, I took my girlfriend to the same doctor. She couldn’t even breathe to get up the stairs. I think he gave her Crataegus, and it was like a light bulb went off. She was, like, so light after that. You could just tell in her face that it just changed something.

Mary:  So, I have to tell you about my car accident.

Kate:  Oh! That doesn’t sound good.

Mary:  It wasn’t. December 8th, we were coming home from a Christmas party. I was driving down a dry road, and this 19-year-old T-boned me doing 40 miles an hour. Now, I had my tonsils out when I was 22 (before homeopathy). I wouldn’t have done it now. But at 22 was the last time I was in the hospital. So, at 65, I took my first ambulance ride.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh!

Mary:  They used the Jaws of Life® to get me out. I broke my wrist in two places. I called my sister at 10:30 at night and I said …

(All my siblings have homeopathic kits. We can talk about that because there’s nothing more frustrating than somebody to call you for their advice, and you tell them what to take, and they don’t have it. So, I agree with Joette. Everybody needs a homeopathic kit.)

So anyway, I was looking for Arnica.

Now, they’re going to do a CT scan — which I’m not fond of. They’re going to put an IV in me — which I’m not fond of. So, I take the Aconite, and within seconds, I was calm enough for them to work on me.

Then I took the Arnica. I would go into, like, shock, and I would take the Arnica, and then it would go away. So, it’s just amazing! I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have my sister and my kit after this accident.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh! I feel like you are very blessed to be alive after that accident. I’m sure there was a lot of bruising, but the only broken bones were your wrist?

Mary:  Well, I think I had my left hand on my thigh because that was the only thing that was bruised, probably ribs and my thigh. I think the armrest got me. So, he T-boned me, and the armrest got me, and that’s how I broke my wrist.

Kate:  Wow! That’s so scary. So, Arnica and Aconite for accidents. Oh, you just never want to be without them!

Mary:  Never, never! Well, that’s what Joette said, “Put the Aconite in your handbag.” That’s the first remedy she talked about because we just talked about this in our study group: Aconite 200 in your handbag — always.

Kate:  Exactly.

Mary:  But, I have to tell you another funny story. My sister was expecting her first grandchild. Now, she’s in Pennsylvania, and her son and his wife are in Texas. So, she makes an airplane reservation for Friday, and this is Wednesday. The doctor says there’s no action here. So, the daughter-in-law calls my sister and says, “Can you change your reservation because the baby won’t be here by the time you get here?”

So, I called my friends in Texas, and I said, “Do you have health food stores?”

And they said, “Mary, of course. Texas is, like, the epicenter of alternative medicine.”

I called the food store, and I wanted Caulophyllum 30C. I took a picture of it. I sent it to my niece. I told her, “You walk in the store. It’s on aisle 4A on the third shelf.” I sent her the picture.

Well, do you know by the time my sister got there, the baby was there?

Kate:  Wow!

Mary:  So yes, I mean just exciting stuff.

Mary:  My girlfriend’s daughter was having her fifth child. They sent the husband home, and my girlfriend went in, and she said, “Are you going to have this baby, or aren’t you?” (I don’t remember what we gave her. It might have been the Caulophyllum.) She said, “Yes,” but for whatever reason she was afraid this time. (I mean, your fifth child, you would figure you wouldn’t be afraid.) I don’t remember what we gave her, but we gave her a remedy.

Ten minutes … they delivered that baby in the bed.

So much fun!

Kate:  Oh, my gosh! That’s great. Things went really well?

Mary:  Absolutely!

Kate:  Oh, my goodness, yeah, ten minutes.

So, jumping back a little bit to the Gateway II study group that you did, I know you said you enjoyed some particular sections of that study guide. So, tell me a little bit more about that.

Mary:  Well, we probably did that a couple of months ago. But what we found very interesting is that they just resonated with those cell salts. Everybody went out and bought it: cell salt travel kit [No longer available.] Everybody found a different use for them just like me with my homeopathic kit. So many people went and bought their children the cell salt kits because Joette just puts such a different spin on it that we don’t really even think about cell salts so much. But my broken wrist, I still have a lot of edema in my fingers, and so I use the Nat sulph for the edema on that. That seems to be helpful.

Kate:  So, Nat sulph 6X, then?

Mary:  Yes, correct.

Kate:  Yeah, there is a ton of information in that cell salt section. I know it’s a lot to get through in one study group session even, but there are so many things that you could pick out of there that apply to your life. I always talk about when we were going through that whole section now, “Don’t think you have to take every cell salt. Because you’re going to find something, as we’re talking about each of the cell salts, that you feel like applies to you.” Did you guys find that also?

Mary:  Absolutely.

Kate:  Yeah. So, are there other things that you found, are there other examples maybe from that, that you wanted to talk about?

Mary:  I remember my cousin. He was like four years old, ran into the corner of a table. I had the birthing kit with me. It had Arnica 200 in it. This child screamed at the top of his lungs. I took out that Arnica and popped it in his mouth. I mean, seriously it’s a wonderful thing.

So, there was a guy that fell here. The dog tripped him, and he had this goose egg. You would not believe how big his goose egg was. I gave him Arnica 200. He ended up with nothing.

Kate:  I’ve watched that happen too. My son fell backwards when he was young. He was standing on a chair, and he fell backwards, and there’s concrete. He hit his head on that concrete. He had a goose egg on his head. He felt dizzy. I gave him Arnica 200 a couple of times, and I watched that goose egg go down. It just went away.

Mary:  And it works great for animals, too. I started talking about the dog, but I had this horse that was a champion. He whacked his head on the barn door. So, his head was tilted. His owner brought me over to see him, and we gave him Nat sulph. He got so much better. I mean, he was like normal after that.

The amazing thing about animals … I don’t know whether you ever did this or not … but my girlfriend’s dog needed Ignatia. Everybody had left her, and she was feeling lonely or some. So, we put it in a bowl.

Do you know they know when to go re-dose themselves?

Kate:  No, I haven’t thought about that.

Mary:  Yeah, if you put down their water bowl and a homeopathic bowl with remedy in it, they’ll take it when they need it. They do.

Kate:  Wow! I’ve always just thought about putting it in a bowl of water, but that is a great tip. Give them their bowl of water and then another bowl with the remedy that they need. They have such innate senses that we can’t even begin to understand probably. They know what they need.

Mary:  Exactly. And the children, they’re pretty intuitive too. I have friends’ children that they will just ask for a remedy. They won’t even ask for an antibiotic or any kind of allopathic medicine.

Kate:  That’s awesome.

Mary:  My girlfriend’s grandchildren, they’ll just go over, and they’ll pick which one they need.

Kate:  This is such a fascinating journey to be on with homeopathy. There is so much to learn.

Mary:  Well, you’re a lot younger than me, and your children are young. So, I mean, how cool is it that they learn homeopathy? No, seriously!

Kate:  Yeah. I think of all those that are younger than myself. They’re starting out their kids, and they’ve never had a drug. That’s such a good thing. I didn’t know about homeopathy until my kids were … I think definitely under ten. We had used antibiotics. But you can’t be too hard on yourself for what has happened in the past. You just have to move on.

Mary:  Yes, keep learning, keep reading and buy a homeopathic kit so you’re prepared.

Kate:  Right.

Mary:  I told you about my accident. Last week, we took a ride and my brother-in-law was driving. He was not going fast enough to get through this intersection. I guess I had a flashback of the fear from the accident. So, I slept 24 hours, I was so sick.

Kate:  Oh, no!

Mary:  I thought I just had a cold. Yeah, well see, this is what happened. You have a cold, so you go through the cold remedies. Now, you’re trying to figure it out.

But once I slept for 24 hours, it dawned on me that that came after the fright. You know? So, I took Aconite 200, and I got better. Just like that. I mean, it’s amazing!

Kate:  Oh, wow! So, you had taken a bunch of the remedies for cold, but until you took the Aconite, that’s when it really just kicked it.

Mary:  Oh, yeah, I took Allium cepa. I took a combination, you know. I had whatever I had here in Florida and figured out the Aconite. It just turned it around. I was better in like a nanosecond. It’s amazing.

Kate:  That has happened to me before when I’ve not gotten enough sleep or one of my kids … You know how you’re on a vacation or maybe they go to a camp or something like that, and then they get sick following that event? You have to think always with homeopathy about what led up to you getting sick because there might be some tips, just like you said. After you thought about it a little bit more, you came down with that after that frightful experience.

Just like my kids got sick after staying up all night at camp. So then, I would always be sure to give them the Nux vomica. Because Nux vomica is great for overdoing it: not enough sleep; you’re overdoing things just pushing too hard. I feel like I’m living on Nux vomica right now honestly. Actually, I pondered this this morning. If I keep pushing my body and not getting enough sleep and take Nux vomica everyday, how long can I go before my body is just going to be, like, “Okay, you know what, this is too much.”?

All right, so Mary, in conclusion, give us some words of wisdom.

Mary:  I’m not going to do the math, but I’ve been studying homeopathy since ’93. So, it’s a pretty long time. Even after all these years, we can always learn something. So, my first advice is to always keep learning and share with other people and have a homeopathic kit.

When we were talking earlier, you were talking about your mom, and you said you had picked all these remedies for your mom. Then you got verification from somebody that was more experienced than you, and you had picked all the right remedies. You just needed that verification that you’re okay, and what you picked was okay.

So, that’s all the new people need … is for somebody else like you and me to say, “That’s a great choice. If it doesn’t work, call me back, and we’ll find something else.” That’s how we’re going to spread homeopathy and keep everybody well and not at the doctors’ offices.

Kate:  Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you, Mary. It’s been a pleasure meeting you and hearing about your stories. I think I could talk to you for hours probably about all the different things that you could share after having used homeopathy for so many years — and your air traffic controller stories. I’m sure you have more fun stories there.

But thank you for spending the time with us today and sharing with the listeners from your experience.

Mary:  Thank you, Kate.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

These Moms with Moxie podcasts are designed to be inspirational, not specifically educational. No Remedy Card is provided.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

02:41    Warts and Thuja 30

08:37    Joette’s column and thyroid nodules

14:42    Asthma

20:42    Dr. Dorothy Shepherd

25:11    Cold and flu stories

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

“Dr. Hahnemann and Dr. Price: A Combined Approach to Resolving Thyroid Problems,” Joette Calabrese, Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Winter 2017.

Practical Homeopathy® courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Joette Calabrese’s Blog

JoetteCalabrese.com

Joette Calabrese’s Podcasts

Facebook Live

            Generally held most Monday nights at 8 pm Eastern

            Replays available here

More Magic of the Minimum Dose by Dr. Dorothy Shepherd

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 71.

Joette:  Each day from my office, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe, and I want to share them with you. Some of my students have really caught my eye. Some of you have done all you can to learn how to cure those around you using homeopathic medicines, and your successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep these successes a secret any longer. So, with help from my roving reporters, we bring you a mini-podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity.” See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them, have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Kate:  Hi, Sara! Welcome to the podcast today.

Sara:  Hi, Kate. I’m so glad to be here — really excited!

Kate:  We’re excited to have you. I know that you’ve been studying homeopathy for a little while now, but you dove in head first and tried to discover how to heal your family. So, I know that there are some things that our listeners can learn from the way that you are studying homeopathy. So, I’m excited to hear about what you’re doing, and how you’re working with your family to help their bodies heal.

Sara:  I’m really excited to share. Even if it’s helpful to one person, I’m just elated to be here to do that.

Kate:  Right. We often feel inadequate. I know that I don’t feel like I should be doing this, but I think that we all have things to share. I know Joette was really excited about a couple of things in particular that you are doing and that she wanted her listeners to hear. But before we get into that, Sara, let’s hear a little bit about you and your family.

Sara:  Okay. Well, I live in the Denver area, and I am a mom of four. We have chronic issues with some of my kids, then myself also, which led me to stumbling into homeopathy.

Kate:  So, had you done other natural methods of healing before homeopathy? Or what were you doing to address your family’s health needs up until this point?

Sara:  Well, allopathic measures and food supplements, changing food diet, things like that. But never homeopathy until a year ago or so.

Kate:  So, how did you learn about homeopathy?

Sara:  Well, I learned about it because my daughter had probably a nickel-sized wart on her knee that just kept growing and growing. She had a lot of other things going on with her body, but I didn’t even know how to begin to address them. But I thought, “Well, let’s focus on the wart.” So, I went to the natural groceries locally and was looking at the containers made from Boiron and found one that they had labeled for warts. I got that, started giving it to my daughter, and over about a few months, the wart was completely gone.

Kate:  So, you probably thought, “What is this stuff that I just gave my daughter and that healed her?”

Sara:  Oh, I did definitely. And I saw a bunch of the other problems I knew that she had go away at the same time — that I didn’t know would even have been linked with that remedy.

Kate:  Wow! That’s pretty incredible! So then, what did you do next?

Sara:  I gave her this homeopathic remedy with the intentions of just removing her wart. But she was also biting her fingernails down to the quick. She had frequent UTIs — like, every couple of weeks. She frequently cried of pain in her double-jointed knees. She was tearful and sobbing multiple times a day (very fragile) and getting hot or sweating really caused a lot of distress with her.

Over that same amount of period of time in which I was giving her these remedies, all of those things subsided or went away. She hasn’t had any UTIs, no pain in her double-jointed knees. Her fingernails are long; we have to use clippers now to clip her nails.

Kate:  Oh, wow! That’s great.

Sara:  All of that with one remedy … which were all of the other things that I knew were disturbing her that needed to be worked on, but I didn’t even know how to approach.

Kate:  So, what remedy did you use from Boiron?

Sara:  Thuja 30.

Kate:  How often did you give it to her?

Sara:  Once a day. I started off giving her Thuja 6, twice a day. And I thought, “Well, let’s just try Thuja 30.” So, we just stuck with that.

Kate:  Okay. This is so great! You were at the grocery store looking for how to help your daughter with warts. You came across this homeopathy section, and it said, “Warts,” on the side of the bottle — the Boiron bottle — and you thought, “Well, I’m going to give it a try.” You just did what it said on the bottle.

Sara:  Yes, I did. I thought, “Well, I guess I’ll just give it to her until the wart goes away. It says it makes warts go away. So, I’m just going to give it to her until the wart goes away.” And I took a picture at the beginning just to see if it was a figment of my imagination if it was going away or not. So, I just stopped giving it to her once the wart went away.

Kate:  How long did it take, Sara?

Sara:  Three to four months.

Kate:  In that time, she was making enough progress that you thought, “I’ll keep using this.”

Sara:  Yes. It seems like at first, I didn’t notice anything in the size of the wart. Then I feel like at some point, we reached such “momentum,” perhaps, with the remedy that it felt like within a couple of weeks it was drastic changes. Somewhere after maybe like six weeks of taking it, it seemed like it just started disappearing, and it only took another six weeks.

Kate:  Sara, this is really helpful, I think. Because so many times, we can become impatient when we’re treating chronic things like that, and you stuck with it. I think that’s key, because what if you had quit after the first week?

Sara:  Yes, and I have another great example of that dealing with my son’s asthma which I’m happy to share later on.

Kate:  Oh, yeah, I would love to hear. First, I would like to know at what point did you decide to switch to 30. Can you tell us a little bit more information about that?

Sara:  Yeah. I just went back to the store and was kind of browsing and looking at the options that Boiron offered and thought, “Well, maybe 30 means ‘stronger.’”

Kate:  That’s so awesome!

Sara:  I’m thought, “Well, let’s get the ball rolling.” Maybe that’s why in the beginning, it didn’t feel like progress was really happening. Maybe it was the 6, or maybe it was slower progress than I wanted to see. So, I thought, “Well, let’s just move it to 30.” I thought, “If it doesn’t seem to be going in the direction I want it to go, then we’ll go back to 6, or we’ll just try something all-new together.”

But at that point, I had no other options. So, I was willing to give it a really good try.

Kate:  Okay. That’s so great. I love that story. So, patience. We have to have patience. Also, it’s good to — like you did — take a picture because we can think that something isn’t changing, and it might be. But it just might be in very small increments, and we don’t notice it. So, yeah, just documenting, having patience, that’s great. I love it.

So, your daughter … with all of her other symptoms besides the wart that went away, did they go away permanently or did you at some point have to give the Thuja again? What did you see with those satellite conditions?

Sara:  I saw them go away just as I did the warts. I did question whether they were starting to come back. First of all, her UTIs have not come back. She still doesn’t bite her fingernails, and it’s been like nine months since … I guess it was a year ago or so that I started giving her the Thuja remedy. But she hasn’t had UTIs since then. She’s only cried about knee joint pains one time. She has not gone back to biting her fingernails at all. The tearful and sobbing comes and goes, but the getting distressed over getting hot or sweating has not returned at all either.

So, I would say maybe just the tearful and sobbing has been maybe the only symptom that has come back to a degree. But it’s not even close to the degree in which it was before.

Kate:  Okay, good. So, they just went away and have, for the most part, stayed away. That’s really good.

Sara:  Yes.

Kate:  Okay, so let’s backtrack just a little bit. I would love to hear a little bit more about your journey since the grocery store (you know, seeing these random homeopathic medicines) and how your progression of learning about homeopathy happened.

Sara: … I don’t know how I never discovered her columns in there before. But on this oYeah. So, I have hypothyroid and thyroid nodule and Hashimoto’s. I subscribe to the Weston A. Price journal called Wise Traditions. Joette writes a homeopathic article in there. In the winter of 2017ne, it really stuck out to me because she talked about how she had a client who had nine thyroid nodules, and they had all gone away after the use of some homeopathic remedies. So, when I saw that — that someone’s thyroid nodules went away after the use of homeopathy — I thought, “Who is the author of this column, and she has to be on my team.” So, that’s when I started consulting with Joette.

Kate:  So, you contacted her office, and did you take any of her classes or study groups or anything?

Sara:  I have taken one of her classes, but that’s more recent. I have been consulting with her for a while now. I read her blog, all of her information over and over again and can’t get enough of it.

Kate:  Yeah, there is so much information for free on her website and podcasts and Facebook Lives. Do you watch her Facebook Lives?

Sara:  Oh, I do, yes. Yes. Even if I can’t be there live, I go back and watch them.

Kate:  Right yeah, we can watch them at any time after she records them. So yeah, it’s great. I love them as well.

Okay, so, you found Joette. And you’re learning; you’re reading; you’re studying, I would imagine, all kinds of homeopathic information. What other issues have you worked with homeopathically?

Sara:  Let me talk about myself first. When I started about a year ago, I had really bad arthritis in my hands and my hips. I had multiple chemical sensitivities where I would have to cover my face to into Target and breathe into a shirt or jacket.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh, Sara! That’s major!

Sara:  It was debilitating! It was debilitating … anxiety that was crippling, insomnia, and Hashimoto’s, hypothyroid, very low energy, and a thyroid nodule. Currently, today after using homeopathy, I have no arthritis in my hands. It’s 95% gone in my hips. I used to limp from hip pain. My multiple chemical sensitivities are mostly gone. I’d say 95% gone but it’s livable. I don’t have to avoid places.

Kate:  Within one year, Sara?

Sara:  Yes, within one year.

Kate:  Wow!

Sara:  Yeah. My insomnia is mostly a thing of the past. I do still have some bouts of sleeplessness, but overall, I mean, this past year I’ve had more sleep than probably in the last decade.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh! That must feel great!

Sara:  Yes, it does! Yes, I recommend sleep to everybody.

Kate:  Highly recommended to sleep.

Sara:  My energy is a lot better. I am off my thyroid medication. While I have not been back to check on my thyroid nodule or my thyroid numbers, but my energy is good, and I’m off my thyroid medications.

Kate:  Sara, this is amazing! I mean, I can’t even imagine how thrilled you must be.

Sara:  Oh, I am really thrilled, yes! I mean there are some still lingering things that I need to work on like hair loss and red, itchy scalp. But overall, I mean, I’ve come leaps and bounds in one year.

Kate:  Yeah. I mean, it’s only been a year. Imagine where you’ll be two, three, four years from now.

Sara:  Exactly, exactly.

Kate:  Do you help other people? Do you bring this up to your friends or family? Do you talk about what’s happened to you?

Sara:  You know, I don’t yet because I feel very focused right now on my son’s chronic problems that I feel like I just have to keep reading and learning and sinking it all in. That’s been my focus really, more than sharing. I would like to get to the point of sharing.

Kate:  Yeah. Well, you have an amazing story to share. I mean I just can see the future where you’re sharing all about how you are healing your family and helping other people as well with those issues. So, that’s the great thing about when something happens to us — when we go through circumstances — then we can take that, and we can turn it around for good in other people’s lives and help them with those things and the information that we’ve learned. So, I’m excited to see.

Sara:  I did recently try to start one. So, we’re supposed to be getting started in the next month or so.

Kate:  Yay! That’s fantastic!

Sara:  I have the materials all ready to go.

Kate:  Oh, good! I’m going to talk about that for just a moment before we move on to your son. How are you going about finding people to join your group?

Sara:  Well, I tend to be very introverted. So, I just kind of keep my ears open if anybody seems to be interested in more natural approaches to healthcare or helping navigate motherhood without being on a leash at the doctor’s office. If somebody has already expressed interest, that’s how I invite. It’s not, like, an open … you know.

Kate:  Okay, yeah, you’re not advertising it anywhere.

Sara:  No.

Kate:  Nice. So, you’re going to have a group of local women.

Sara:  Yes, local, yeah.

Kate:  It’s great because you sit around the table. You get to know these women, and then that becomes your support group, and you guys help each other. So, that’s exciting! I can’t wait for you to …

Sara:  Yes, I’m very excited.

Kate:  Let’s talk about what you’re going through with your son, and how you’re handling that.

Sara:  My son has severe asthma and is on and off of inhaled steroids, and occasionally oral steroids, and often the nebulizer, if needed. If he’s not on that, then he will need his rescue inhaler frequently throughout the day.

One thing that I realized reading Dr. Dorothy Shepherd’s book over and over again (regarding respiratory diseases) is that some remedies are to abort an existing asthma attack, whereas some are more longer-term to prevent them from happening in the first place.

So, recently my son caught the flu, and his asthma started tanking fast. I knew this was going to be really bad news, and he was going to go down hard. So, I consulted with Joette. My goal was to … at this point, he was requiring the nebulizer every 10 to 15 minutes. Which if you have a child with asthma, you have it “under control” if it’s every three hours.

Kate:  Wow, okay.

Sara:  At this point, it was every 10 to 15 minutes. So, I started administering these remedies for his asthma every 10 minutes. We were able to push off his nebulizer for one hour.

I mean, we went from 10 to 15 minutes to one hour!

So, I continued to do that, and the space between in which I’d give him the remedies continued to grow. I even considered 12 minutes growth (from 10 minutes). It’s like micro measurements here.

Kate:  So, were you using a couple of different remedies or just one?

Sara:  Yes, I was using two remedies.

Had Joette not urged me to push past the idea that “only 10 is enough,” I’m pretty sure I would have given up and resorted to other options.

Kate:  So, over that 48 hours, you were able to use the nebulizer less and less?

Sara:  Yes. Basically, I went from using the nebulizer for about 10 minutes every 15 minutes, to once an hour about four minutes, to eventually three hours for only a couple of minutes, over the time of the 48 hours. Yes.

Kate:  Wow, okay. So, some people might not think that’s a win. They might say, “Well, you’re still using the nebulizer!” But you know what could have happened, and where you could have been. Like, it could have gone into pneumonia, ended up in the hospital … right?

Sara:  Well, first of all, he was already experiencing side effects of the nebulizer. They were giving him the jitters. His heart was racing. It makes his head pound. There’s a lot of side effects of using the nebulizer. Those side effects were subsiding as we were having to use the nebulizer less. So, on top of his asthma already being bad, now he’s experiencing less and less side effects on top of his asthma. So, that to me was worth it alone. Giving him these remedies so that he wasn’t going to experience side effects from his allopathic medicines was enough for me to keep going.

Kate:  I know other people who have dealt with this kind of a situation, Sara. So, that is why I am really digging in to find out how you did it, and how you didn’t give up hope. Because a lot of people like I said before, they would think, “Oh well, it’s not working,” or they didn’t see enough progress to keep going. But you pushed past that, and you did see the positive benefits of it — even though you still used the nebulizer, but it was on a less frequent basis with less side effects.

Sara:  I did continue using allopathic medicine side-by-side. It was just less frequency, less intensity, fewer side effects.

Kate:  Okay.

I was going to ask you this question later, but I think I’ll ask you now. So many people ask, “What do you recommend as far as deciding between the courses that Joette offers and consulting with Joette?”

Sara:  I felt with the degree of my own health problems and the degree of my son’s health problems, I thought, “I don’t think I can expand my homeopathic knowledge fast enough to accommodate those needs.” That’s why I started consulting with Joette versus taking her courses.

So, I’ve been consulting with Joette for about nine months. But I just bought my first course from her within the last month — because I don’t feel like we’re on a complete downwards spiral. I don’t feel like we’re in total emergency mode with my health. I feel like I have the time and capacity to expand my knowledge enough to deal with … just through using a course.

Kate:  That makes sense. So, you feel like you needed to get a grasp on these situations right away. Now, once you’re feeling better, you can take the time to learn.

Sara:  Yes, exactly.

Kate:  Okay. Sorry, we can get back to your son. Was there more?

Sara:  No, the virus ran its course through his body, and his asthma naturally subsided with that. So, he carries his remedies with him to school and takes them when he has an asthma attack.

Kate:  Oh, that’s great that you were able to get that under control, and that your son knows what to do when he has an asthma attack.

Kate:  You were talking about Dorothy Shepherd’s book and how that’s really helped you to know how to handle your son’s asthma. Joette really appreciated how many times you actually read through her book. And so, I know that there’s something that you can share with us about just digging in and finding information. So, talk about reading her book a little bit.

Sara:  I read Dr. Dorothy Shepherd’s books over and over again. She offers so many cases and insight into her experience. It’s just a wealth of knowledge. She has a particular section on respiratory diseases which affects my son. So, I have probably read that portion of it eight to nine times.

And on the eighth time, I thought, “How did I not see this the first seven times I read it?”

I think reading it over and over again helped with a couple of things:

One is I was able to realize that there are remedies for stopping an asthma attack, and there are remedies that you take longer-term to prevent the asthma attack from even happening or even needing the remedies for an asthma attack.

The other one is that the more I read about her cases, the more comfortable I felt with the different doses that she was giving, and the strength of doses, and how she was identifying what it was that she was giving, and why she was giving it. I think reading it over and over and over again helps cement into my head how to better care for my son’s asthma.

Kate:  Okay. So, which book are you reading? We never talked about the title.

Sara:  I have all of her books, but the one I’m specifically talking about is called More Magic of the Minimum Dose.

Kate:  For those people who don’t know about Dorothy Shepherd, she actually grew up in a family that used homeopathic medicine. Then she decided she wanted to go to school for allopathic medicine, and she did, and she became a physician. She was a surgeon, actually. She spent a lot of time doing surgery. And then she remembered about her childhood and the books that she read. So, she decided to really look into homeopathy again. She’s written a number of books.

They’re all really good, aren’t they?

Sara:  Very good, so much wisdom.

Kate:  So, she’s an interesting story for sure.

Sara:  Yes.

Kate:  Well then, she spent the rest of her life using homeopathic medicines after that.

Sara:  Yes, yes, for good reason.

Kate:  Right. We all are on a journey. It seems like our path isn’t just a straight line; it’s a lot of twists and turns. Then so many people talk about homeopathy and that road that we’re on. We find homeopathy and can’t believe that we haven’t gotten here sooner. But that is life. Right?

Sara:  Yes.

Kate:  I think the point that Joette was excited about is that you took your time, and you kept reading and going through this material over and over again. Finally, you gleaned some information. Well, I shouldn’t say, “Finally,” because you, I’m sure, learned a lot the first seven times you read it. But the point is that you didn’t stop. You kept reading it and letting that soak in. Even if you didn’t learn something new, it was still solidifying in your mind.

Sara:  Well, according to studies, every time you read something, you only retain about 10% of what you read. So technically, you should read something ten times over, right?

Kate:  There you go!

Sara:  Yes.

Kate:  Well, that’s fascinating. I did not know that statistic. That’s great. So, do you do that same thing with Joette’s blogs and her information?

Sara:  Oh, my gosh! Yes. Every time my kid gets a cold or a flu, I’m looking at her chart again. So, that’s at least 25 times. Yes, I go and Google the same stuff on her blog every time thinking, “Why can’t I remember this simple thing?” But yes, I read her information all the time.

Kate:  Yeah, there is so much information now on the internet and Joette’s website for free that you can learn just a lot without having to spend a lot of money.

Sara:  Oh, so much. You can learn so much. I’ve employed some of her recommendations on the website.

Kate:  All right, so Sara, tell us more.

Sara: I have a couple more that I’ll share with you. One is about my son. He’s a kindergartner. He was coming down with a cold. So, I started giving him a remedy that Joette had recommended off of her blog. He seemed to be improving.

He woke up in the morning, and it was still lingering. So, I gave him another dose. And I thought, “Well, I’m going to try sending him off to school with an extra dose at lunch time.”

So, this is my kindergartner. I just put pellets in a little Ziploc bag.

Kate:  Oh!

Sara:  I gave it to him. (He knows how to take it.) And I said, “You take this at lunch.”

He said, “Okay.”

I thought, “Well, if it doesn’t work and if it’s not enough, and they call me because he’s sick, then I’ll just go pick him up. No big deal.”

Kate:  Yeah. Yeah.

Sara:  But the whole school day goes by, and I go pick him up at the end of the day. I said, “Did you take your remedies at lunch?”

He said, “I did mom. I put it under the table so nobody could see me.”

I said, “Oh, you can just act like they’re little candies. You know?”

But it was just the five pellets, and he took it. But yeah, the cold was gone. He had no symptoms or anything.

Kate:  My fear is always that the school is going to think they’re drugs or something.

Sara:  Well, it looked like little sugar balls, the ones that I have for him.

Kate:  That’s awesome. What a cutie! Oh, my gosh!

Sara:  Yeah. Yeah.

Then another one was after my other son got the flu; I was coming down with it. We were about to go to my husband’s birthday party, and I could feel like the fever coming on and over me and everything. I did not feel well at all. We ended up canceling my husband’s birthday party and staying home. I took what Joette recommends on her blog which is the Aconite/Bryonia.

Kate:  So, that’s Aconitum 200 mixed with Bryonia … 200 did you do? Or 30?

Sara:  30.

Kate:  Okay, so taken together.

Sara:  Yes, I took them together at the same time. Within two hours, I was laughing and joking around with my husband. And he goes, “I thought you were getting sick!”

I stopped and thought, “I was!”

Then I waited for the three hours after the first time I took it, and I thought, “Well, this is going in the right direction. I’m just going to do at least one more dose to make sure we’ve put this away for good.” So, I took one more dose — after the last dose I took three hours previously — just to make sure that we were really nipping it in the bud. I woke up the next day and had no signs of flu or fever or achiness or anything.

Kate:  Is your husband on board with the homeopathy?

Sara:  He is.

Kate:  Oh, that’s good.

Sara:  Yes, I can’t say he’s always been there, but he is now.

Kate:  Okay. At first, he thought you were a little crazy … or what?

Sara:  He thought I was a little crazy for some time now, yeah.

Kate:  Well, he’s come around to know that it’s helping your family, so that’s good.

Sara:  For sure, yeah.

Kate:  Good. So, Sara, as we come to an end of this podcast, share with the listeners any words of wisdom that you might have to help us on our homeopathy journey.

Sara:  I think it’s easy to become “unfocused” in just reading everything that homeopathy has to offer. If it becomes overwhelming, I would just recommend focusing on one thing. Like I started with my daughter’s warts and just focused only on that. Then that opened up a whole new world.

Kate:  Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences and your knowledge with us, Sara.

Sara:  Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a delight.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.

These Moms with Moxie podcasts are designed to be inspirational, not specifically educational. No Remedy Card is provided.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:11    Joette’s new course

05:05    Healing Paradigms

09:00    MTHFR gene, unhappy liver

13:26    Detoxing after vaccines, dental work

16:18  Toxic lungs

19:14    Detoxing from chemotherapy

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

NEW COURSE: “Rethinking Detox with Practical Homeopathy®: How to Stop Stressing About Toxins and Fearlessly Achieve Health the Simple Way.”

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 70 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:  This is Joette Calabrese, and I’d like to welcome you to the Practical Homeopathy Podcast. Women and men worldwide are taking back control of their families’ health and learning how to heal their bodies naturally, safely and effectively. So, if you’re hungry to learn more, you’ve come to the right place. Stay tuned as we give you the tools — and the inspiration you need — as I share my decades of experience and knowledge using this powerful medicine we call homeopathy.

Kate:  Good evening, Joette.

Joette: Hi, Kate! Normally, we do this in the morning, but now we’re doing it in the evening.

Kate:  Right! It’s kind of a change for us.

Joette:  Yes, it is.

Kate:  So, we want to get into a different subject tonight. You are getting ready to teach another course … on toxins! Tell us a little bit more about this course that you have in the works.

Joette:  Well, the title of the course — and this is a real mouthful — is “Rethinking Detox with Practical Homeopathy®: How to Stop Stressing About Toxins and Fearlessly Achieve Health the Simple Way.”

(Okay, see if you can repeat that now. It’s a long one!)

So, we’re going to be talking about rethinking detoxification — being toxic. We’re going to rethink that. I’m going to address it from the homeopathic perspective, and from the practical homeopathic perspective which is even more different than classical homeopathy, more different from naturopathy, from functional medicine, from conventional medicine, from chiropractic.

This is a completely different way of viewing things.

Up until about ten years ago, I didn’t hear much from clients and students about toxicity. It became more prevalent in their conversations with me in the last … I would say … last decade. I believe that’s because more and more folks are going to alternative practitioners, and alternative practitioners are where these ideas often emanate.

But a big part of this, especially now that I’ve heard this so many times with so many clients and students, is it harkens back to when I suffered from toxic thinking. It really did affect my thinking. I actually became obsessed with avoiding toxins. I had been declared as “toxic” by a functional medical doctor at Yale University. So, I became obsessed with trying to detox my body. Let me tell you. I got pretty neurotic about it.

This was in the 80s. So, I had plenty of time to mull this over and think it through, but what gave me my comfort and my cadence was homeopathy. It actually offered me my way out of that paranoia. I lived with it for a long time because I had been not well for many years — and I had a little break in my 20s and maybe until about 32 — but other than those few years, I had been suffering from allergies and chemical sensitivities and asthma, et cetera.

Kate:  You tried a lot of things, Joette, before you came to homeopathy to heal your body.

Joette:  Yes, I did. I used functional medicine. I used chiropractic, essential oils, years of supplements — years of all of these! This was not, “Let’s try this this month and try that the next month,” … vitamin therapy, herbalism.

I still hold to herbalism. I think it’s an excellent method. I think that chiropractic can be also very valuable. I don’t discount the other methods as well, but homeopathy and botanicals and chiropractic is pretty much where I landed. I landed more steadily on a firm ground as far as I’m concerned with homeopathy.

Kate:  Joette, did you see a naturopath in this journey while you were trying to figure out how to heal your body?

Joette:  Yes, I did see a naturopath. I saw a couple of naturopaths.

Kate:  I know that naturopaths and functional medicine doctors are really popular right now. So, talk a little bit about that for a moment, how we can figure out what path to take for healing.

Joette:  Well, one of the problems with naturopathy, functional MD, is that it’s completely different than homeopathy. That might not be a problem for those who are seeking naturopathy. But it is pretty much the opposite in many ways to homeopathy.

Most people figure, “Well, more knowledge is better.”

Well, too much knowledge can be very confusing.

“Well, why don’t I just get all these tests and find out?”

Well, because there is a different way of interpreting these tests. So, we have to be careful not to straddle too many worlds.

We almost have to make a decision. I’m either Republican, or I’m a Democrat. I’m a Christian, or I’m an atheist. I mean, really, I hate to be so sweeping in my examples. But in a way, we kind of have to make a decision where we want to land.

One of the reasons I decided that I wanted to land squarely in the world of homeopathy is because it wasn’t scary. Homeopathy didn’t talk about toxins. It didn’t declare that my liver was limping along. It didn’t declare that I had high lead levels, and that I needed to use enemas daily (coffee enemas) and take baggies full of supplements and vitamins and herbs and enzymes and … (What were some of the others? I’m trying to think of all the stuff that I’ve done!) Saunas, I mean and not that those aren’t … I mean there is some value in some of these. There’s no doubt about it. But it became my avocation. It became my lifestyle because I wanted to get well so badly.

I often ask folks … I just met someone the other day, and she was telling me that she has this health problem. I asked her if she’s taking medications for it. She said, “Yes.”

I said, “For how long?”

“About 10 years.”

I said, “But you still have the health problem.”

“Yes.”

“So, the drugs have not helped.”

She had to pause for a second. “No, I guess they haven’t helped. In the beginning, they helped a little bit.”

So that’s a good measure because after all the years of my going through these all-so-strict diets and water cure and et cetera, et cetera, I came to the conclusion that I was only a modicum better. It wasn’t enough! For all the effort I was putting into it, it just wasn’t enough value.

That’s when I said there still has to be even another better way. As you keep asking that question, for those who seek and who have not been helped by these methods … and some people are. So, if you have been, then, of course, you’re not listening to this most likely. But if you have not been helped, you might be listening to this for that exact reason. But homeopathy offered me a psychological, physical, financial and intellectual cadence.

Kate:  I totally agree with what you’re saying, Joette. That is also why I came to homeopathy: is not only does it work, and it works quickly and well, but also it takes you from the paradigm of fear-based to fearless.

Joette:  Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Not only do you become more fearless because you know that you can handle this or that because you’ve seen it happen so many times. But the paradigm is a very positive one. I no longer look at the world as toxic. It doesn’t look like a toxic world to me anymore. The world I live in now looks like a beautiful world, a nourishing world, a safe world, a healing world.

Kate:  So, it’s kind of funny that you’re doing a course that talks about toxins, and then we’re talking about how we’re not afraid of the toxins anymore.

Joette:  That is a big part of the course, and then I give my examples of how we can use this homeopathic protocol or that homeopathic protocol for conditions that may indeed arise out of toxic exposures.

Kate:  Okay, good.

Let’s talk about some of the questions that were sent in when you asked people to give you some things that they would be looking for in a course about toxins. Let’s just go through some of those right now and give us a little more information about the course in relation to these questions.

So, here are just a few examples of some of the questions you received. One person wrote in and said, “I’m a poor detoxer.” I’m not sure what they meant exactly by that, but they said, “All my life, I’ve had an unhappy liver. I’ve had MTHFR and COMT mutations, genetic propensities for …”

What would that be, “genetic propensity?”

Joette:  Well, it would be from not being able to release toxins readily. So, they get sick. They have chemical sensitivities, et cetera, often.

Kate:  I hear that acronym come up a lot, the MTHFR gene. What might you have to offer to someone who talks about that?

Joette:  Well, the MTHFR gene was just recently become the center stage in the world of naturopathy, functional MD, medical world, et cetera. I see it as the tubercular miasm for those who are familiar with classical homeopathy and know what I’m talking about. For those who don’t, it’s not important that you know this, but I see it as a miasm that’s coming through the family bloodline. And, yeah, there are a lot of people with that MTHFR gene. In fact, just about everyone I meet with who has seen a naturopath comes out of the office with this information. “I have the MTHFR gene.”

Kate:  But that may not mean anything if they’re not symptomatic, right?

Joette:  That’s right. I believe it is pretty meaningless — at least at this point in time it is. Now, can it determine what will happen to this person in the future? Perhaps. But instead of “I have an unhappy liver,” that is kind of meaningless. That is not a diagnosis. I need to know: What is the diagnosis?

If having that gene and unhappy liver means this person can’t digest fats, and because of that they get bloating and nausea every time they eat meat, now we got something we can sink our teeth into. Now, we can say, “Oh, we have a gut problem here. And the person gets bloating every time they eat fats.” Now, we use the homeopathic medicine that is specific to the true diagnosis.

Perhaps it’s colitis, that they not only get bloating, but they have diarrhea as a result of this. So, colitis would be the diagnosis, and how it presents would be the bloating and nausea. So, we would use a homeopathic protocol that’s specific for colitis — regardless of the cause — whether the cause is from happy liver, an unhappy liver, the MTHFR gene or the lack of the MTHFR gene.

It matters not what is being assigned to that condition. I think for our purposes, it’s actually too much information. What we really need is to look at what is obvious: the diagnosis and what the symptoms are.

Kate:  So, we would never give a homeopathic remedy based solely on knowing that you have that gene mutation if there are no symptoms.

Joette:  That’s right. If there’s no disease, what are we treating?

So, you see, naturopathy, functional MD, medical doctors are looking for what’s behind the curtain. We’re looking at what’s the most obvious — what is happening now.

We also want to know what’s happened in the past to a certain degree because that gives us the idea of what the propensity for this or that might be. But we’re looking at always: what is happening now. “Oh, you have indigestion every time you eat, got it.” That’s indigestion. That’s reflux.

So, a conventional doctor would diagnose that as reflux. A gastroenterologist … that’s what he would call it.

So, if the person has reflux, now how does that present? “Oh, it’s only after you eat, and oh, there’s indigestion that erupts and comes from the stomach and into the throat.”

Now, we’ve got something.

Kate:  Okay, so the next question is about detoxing after vaccines and dental work. This person wanted to know, “How much do we treat the symptoms versus the underlying cause?” (I assumed that they mean the vaccines or the dental work versus what they’re experiencing after those things.)

Joette:  Well, in a way, it’s too speculative. How do you know that those vaccines or that dental work have caused this or that? So, without knowing absolutely — and there are circumstances in which we do know that something has caused a condition. But if we don’t know, and the vaccines were 40 years ago, and now you’re sick, and you’ve made the assumption that it must be from a vaccine — we’re standing on shaky ground.

So instead, we put that information aside and say, “Interesting. But to be honest, if you live in this world, you’ve had plenty of vaccines. Everyone has had them.”

So, we want to know exactly what’s going on. Again, what is the name of the condition that leads you to even wonder about cleaning up old vaccines? “Oh, you have asthma. Oh, and you’re thinking that the asthma must have been promulgated by a vaccine when you were ten. Well, when you had the vaccine when you were ten, did you go right into asthma at that moment?”

“No.”

“Okay, did it come on a week later, two weeks later, a month later?”

“No. I just always know that these vaccines are not good for me, so I’m making the assumption …”

No. We do not base homeopathic medical choices on supposition. We want hard, cold facts.

Now, if someone has just had surgery, and they were not coming out of the anesthesia very well, and ever since that anesthesia, they’ve had a headache — now we can blame something. Now, we can say, “Oh, this is likely from the anesthesia.”

It could also be from other aspects of the surgery, too. Mind you, anesthesia is not the only thing that’s used. It could have been the antibiotics. It could have been the position the person was put in, in order to carry out the surgery. There could be others, too.

But if it is a very obvious type of condition that has happened time and again to many people after having used this particular anesthetic, then now we’ve got an etiology. Now, we’ve got a true cause.

Kate:  That’s a big thing in homeopathy — “not well since,” or …

Joette:  “Never well since,” Right, “Never well since.” It can be very valuable if you truly know what that cause was … what that etiology was.

Kate:  But regardless of the cause, if it’s asthma, we still look at how…

Joette:  We’re still going to use the remedy that’s specific for asthma or remedies specific for asthma. That’s right.

Kate:  So, another question is from someone who asked, “What if you have toxic lungs from inhaling dusts when you’ve been cutting tiles or bricks?”

Joette:  Well, that’s a little more specific. If you could say it’s someone who’s a stone cutter essentially, there’ve been stone cutters for millenniums, so we know homeopathically what medicine to use specifically for stone cutting diseases. That is very clear. If the person is, let’s say, a professional stone cutter or is a professional tile cutter, someone who works in a quarry, and they’re coughing — same thing with black lung disease, for example — we know what the cause is. Now, we use a specific medicine that is used for the accumulation of that kind of a dust in the lungs, and the bronchioles, and the trachea, et cetera.

And we use how it’s presenting. How is it presenting? What is the disease? Oh, they’re coughing. Oh, they have episodes of gagging, coughing. Okay, now we use a remedy that’s specific for gagging cough, in addition to the remedy that is specific to uproot or to help the body cope with the accumulation of stone dust.

Kate:  I love this about homeopathy. There is a remedy for everything! With so many remedy choices, it is so exciting that we don’t have to, again, have that fear. Because whether we live in a toxic world, whether we’ve been exposed to this or that, we have solutions to help our bodies heal from those things.

Joette:  Well, when you think about the body of works of homeopathy across all of Europe, North America, South America — and this has been used since the late 1700s in the grandest universities and the most important hospitals in our history (in American and European history, and as I said, South American history) — then we start recognizing that, my gosh, this is voluminous! There’s a lot of good information regarding homeopathy and how to use it through the centuries.

Kate:  But way more information than the allopathic drugs that are new, and now we’re finding out that the side effects can sometimes be very serious for those. So, there’s a lot more history with homeopathy.

Joette:  Well, a lot of times, we give it 20 years with a conventional drug, and we’ll find out what the effects are. Now, it seems to be much faster than that. We find out a little bit sooner. But I still don’t believe that it has gotten out to the general public how dangerous antibiotics can be; steroids can be; use of birth control pill.

I also don’t want anyone to believe that I think those drugs should never be used. I just think that they’re grossly overused, and they’re depended upon far too much and used too readily, too early in a condition before we even can do anything to uproot the condition rather than just suppress it.

Kate:  Here is another question. What about detoxing from chemotherapy since cancer is so rampant?

Joette:  Oh, there are homeopathic medicines that are specific for detoxing from chemotherapy. Many people use it while they’re taking the chemotherapy to help them not lose their hair, to help them not become as nauseous, the same thing with radiation treatment. We can use homeopathic medicines that will allow them to continue with the method that they’ve chosen that’s allopathic and yet still use homeopathy in conjunction.

Kate:  So, is this something that you’re going to cover in the course, Joette?

Joette:  I believe we will be covering that in the course, yes.

Kate:  Okay, so someone else writes, “If I get worse when I’m taking homeopathic medicines, am I perhaps really seeing toxins?”

Joette:  No. I don’t think that that’s necessarily so … or it could be. I don’t know how we would know that. Can it be tested? Can the perspiration or the stool or the urine be tested? Perhaps, but I don’t know that we need to go that far.

I think what happens with folks, when they’re asking this kind of a question, is because they’re so afraid of being toxic that all they want to know is that, yes, they’re getting the toxins out. “I’ll do whatever it takes. If it means suffering ever more so by using the wrong homeopathic medicine perhaps or seeing my body react in such a negative way that perhaps this means something good, and it gives me some hope.”

But the real hope is much bigger than that. The real hope is that I don’t know that toxins are as big of a concern as we have been led to believe.

Kate:  Okay. So, here’s another question. “After my husband works out, he says he sometimes smells nicotine or some other detoxing smell,” (whatever that might be).

Joette:  Yeah, I don’t know if that means it’s detoxing. I mean if he smoked cigarettes for a long period of time or chewed tobacco, then I suppose that you might call it that, but again it’s speculating. What it is, is that he has a strange odor when he works out. That is a rubric. That is what we use to determine whether or not we choose this remedy or that.

However, I don’t see that as an illness. It’s not a pathology. It’s an interesting quirk. It’s an interesting aside that can help us choose the homeopathic medicine in the end. But for example, Sulphur has that. They smell things that are not there. They’re smelling perfume when it’s not there. They smell smoke when it’s not there. So, it helps lead us perhaps to the medicine, but it still doesn’t tell us necessarily that we’re detoxing. It’s just one of those symptoms.

So, we take it out of the realm of everything is toxic and put it in the realm of, “Oh, that’s interesting. We could use that in our determination of which homeopathic medicine to choose perhaps.”

Kate:  So, someone else writes, “If every little toxic exposure brings my health to a crisis, can your body become resilient through homeopathy, or do you just apply the homeopathic medicines after each exposure?”

Joette:  Oh, that’s such a great question because it’s what I used to suffer. No, we use a double-pronged method. One is we use one medicine specifically for those people who are sensitive to chemicals and every sniff of perfume. That’s the way I used to be. If I smelled perfume, it would make me sick or I would get asthma. If I ate the wrong foods, it would cause terrible fatigue, et cetera, et cetera. So, I felt very vulnerable. Once I learned how to do this, I learned how to take a homeopathic medicine.

Now for me, it was Arsenicum album that helped time and again, but there are many other homeopathic medicines depending on what kind of exposure.

But meanwhile, the baseline is we’re using a homeopathic medicine that is specific to the fact that this person is overly sensitive, that they get sick from every exposure. So, we’re using that as the baseline, and then we use those other medicines specific to how it’s presenting as needed as an SOS.

Kate:  So, you’re going to be talking more specifically.

Joette:  Oh, my gosh! We’re going to go through that exactly. That is a good mainstay of what I’m going to be teaching. I can’t wait to do it because it so harkens back to my previous life.

Kate:  You will be speaking from your experience and from your education.

Joette:  Yes, yes.

Kate:  Will you be covering the different medicines that you will use if you suffer from a reaction to say chemicals versus cigarette smoke versus …

Joette:  Perfumes versus pesticides — yes — versus bad food at a restaurant, versus drugs that you’ve just taken. Absolutely, we will be covering that, yes.

Kate:  So, what about the different supplemental approaches to detoxification, say enemas, juice detox, castor oil packing, those kinds of things? Will you be talking a little bit about the stance that you take about those supplemental detoxification modalities?

Joette:  Yes, yes, we will be talking about that because there’s a lot of information out there that tells us that much of that is not what we had hoped it would be. Sometimes it’s a matter of the method that’s used. Sometimes it’s a matter of the testing that is interpreted. So, we will be touching on that pretty heavily in this course.

Kate:  So, this is an example of some of the questions and information that will be covered in this course on toxins. So, if you want more information on this course, check out the information below.

Kate:  You just listened to a podcast from PracticalHomeopathy.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shares her passion for helping families stay strong through homeopathy. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.