Joette Calabrese Podcast

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:19    Dilution Misconception

03:51    Storage, X-rays, and heat

12:47    More pellets, higher dose

20:00    One medicine only

27:16    Dosage

33:01    Antidoting

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

How homeopathy pellets are made

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy Podcast, Episode Number 59 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:  Today, we have a fun podcast for you. We’re going to do something a little bit different. Right, Joette?

Joette:  Myth Busters!!!!

Kate:  Myth … Myth … Myth Busters!

So hopefully, you guys got it (that are listening). We’re doing a podcast entitled, “Myth Busters.” And we’re going to bust those myths wide open.

Joette:  All those myths around homeopathy, of course.

Kate:  Yes!

Joette:  So those urban legends, those … that information that’s outdated that needs to be updated, and how homeopathy is used in today’s world. So yeah, let’s go for it. This is going to be fun.

Kate:  Yeah! Okay, so right off the top of my head, one of the biggest misconceptions, I think, is that people think the higher the dilution, the weaker that it must be. So, what do you have to say about that?

Joette:  Well, it’s the opposite in homeopathy. Often, the higher the dilution (if we go from a 6C to a 30C to a 200C), it is diluted more greatly. But it’s going in the opposite direction, and it actually becomes a more powerful medicine.

But, when we compare the way I teach homeopathy — which is based on protocols (mostly the Banerji Protocols and other protocols, for that matter) — we don’t have to worry too much about that, which is called posology: P-O-S-O-L-O-G-Y, which means the study of (or the science of) concentration of a medicine and frequency of a medicine.

So, we don’t need to be as concerned about it as you would if you were using classical homeopathy when you don’t have a specific potency to use, and you have to determine, “Should I use a 6; should I use a 30; should I use a 200?” With the protocols that I teach — especially those that are all free on the website, on the blog — it’s very clear. If it says Bryonia 30, it means Bryonia 30! Don’t bother using it in another potency — unless you have no choice; you have nothing else at the moment. But, you don’t need to think about it to such a degree.

So, even though that is the truth — that the more it is diluted at a certain point, it becomes more intense in its medical ability as a medicine — it’s kind of irrelevant when we use protocols.

Kate:  Yeah, I think of it like it comes into greater focus. Someone described it to me once — or I must have read it somewhere — that think of it like a projector. That when you have a projector up close and then you back it up, and you’re getting further and further away, you’re actually getting a clearer, focused picture than when you’re up close with that projector to the screen. So, you back it up. You’re farther away but now it’s coming into focus, and you can see the picture clearly. I don’t know if that’s helpful for anyone. But …

Joette:  Well, we could get into the science of it all. But to be honest, I find that it’s not as interesting as the fact is that you will notice that if you use a higher potency, you’ll get a different reaction than if you use a lower potency — in many situations.

Kate:  Okay, so one of the myths that I think about is when we’re traveling. A lot of people are concerned about storing their remedies in their purse with their cell phone or going through the X-ray as they go through the airports. What do you think about all that?

Joette:  Well, there was a time, before there was such a thing as X-rays at airports, when there was a concern that homeopathy — homeopathic medicines — could be ruined having gone through an X-ray machine. So, people were getting their homeopathic medicines and putting them in little carry-on bags that were made of lead … as though we don’t have enough to carry.

Kate:  That makes your purse really heavy.

Joette:  Yeah, let’s just put lead in our purses with the remedies inside. And I was very cautious for a long time myself. When I’ve traveled, I’ve asked that my homeopathic medicines not go through the X-rays. I explained that this is homeopathy, and it can’t go through. I suppose sometimes I’m still a little bit cautious about it.

But to be honest, I’ve had so many of my medicines inadvertently go through because, “Oh, I forgot I put in that Rhus tox. It was in my makeup bag. I put it in there months ago, and it went through the X-ray.” And then inadvertently, I go to use it, and it works perfectly!

So, I found in my experience — and I’ve done a lot of travel through a lot of X-rays — that they still act, and they act just as well. Now, I haven’t done a double-blind study on this. If someone has any information on that, I certainly would be interested in reading it. But, this is my personal experience. Additionally, when you live in Kolkata as we have, every time you go into a shopping mall, you must put your purse through an X-ray.

Kate:  Wow!

Joette:  That’s just the way it is in large cities in India. So, you don’t go into stores without putting your purse through. There are guards there that are dressed like police, and they have weapons and all. They’ve had to live with terrorism for a long time. So again, inadvertently, my homeopathics go right through, and there’s no trouble. I’ve gone through with some of the doctors who also have remedies in their purses, and the same thing — there’s no concern. So, that’s been my experience in the last, say, eight years or ten years or so.

Kate:  So Joette, though, if you are traveling, and say you have a remedy kit or several because you’re going to be gone for a long time, you would probably play it safe? Yes or no?

Joette:  I have played it safe, but I’m becoming more and more nonchalant to be honest because I’m noticing that it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

Kate:  Yeah.

Joette:  And then there’s also the heat. People talk about, well, extreme heat. I’ve said that, too. “Be careful. Don’t keep your remedies in a hot car that’s going to be closed up — you know, in Atlanta — in the hot sun for a few hours. If the heat is too extreme — such as too extreme for a human to be in the car — then your remedies might be tainted.”

Well, I’ve had enough experience with that. I suppose all of this happens, that all of these ideas come to me after having had lots of different experiences through the years.

My sons used to ski almost every day in the winter. We lived on a ski hill in New York. So, I always had them carry Arnica montana 200 or 1M in their parkas. So that, if one of the others of their brothers was injured, they knew exactly what to do. They’d just get it out of their pocket and just deposit it into their brother’s mouth.

So, inadvertently every spring when it was time to wash the parkas, I’d say, “Okay, empty your pockets and put your parkas into the washer.”

And you think they’d listen to me?

Kate:  Of course! Of course, they did!

Joette:  No! Right, exactly. They didn’t. So, in would go the Kleenex with the parka and the Arnica 1M and Arnica 200 and of course, inadvertently, chocolate bars and all kinds of things — raisins full of dust and stuff in their pockets. They would go through the wash, and then I would not notice that the remedy had gone through the wash until it was in the dryer because I’d hear, “Ka-chink, ka-dlink, ka-chink.”

I’d say, “Uh-oh. What is that in the dryer that’s clicking around in there?” More often than not, it wasn’t for a good 40 minutes later that I notice the sound … thinking perhaps that it might have been just the zipper clicking. But after a while, you start realizing. And I’d opened up the dryer, the parka would be fully dried and so would the remedy.

So, what I would do is get that remedy and label it, “In the dryer.” (Because Peter didn’t take his remedy out of his pocket!!!) “In the dryer.” And then I’d put it back in the kit. When Arnica was needed next time in my family, I always used that first — unless of course, it was a super-serious situation. But, I would use that remedy first, and it still acted! After having been in the wash — now it was cool water. But the dryer wasn’t cool! It was pretty hot!

Then it also dawned on me, after spending a good amount of time in Kolkata, that that is a very hot country. Most homes don’t have air conditioning. And yet, these homeopathic medicines still survive in little cabinets and little corners and hot places, and they still act. So, in my experience — and my deduction — I would say that I don’t believe the heat makes a difference. I think these homeopathic medicines are more capable and robust than we give them credit for.

Kate:  Joette, I had the same experience. I had some homeopathic remedies, and they were sitting in a case in my car in the summertime. And it gets very hot in the summertime in vehicles if you have your windows rolled up. So, I came out of a meeting, and the sun was blaring down on my homeopathic remedies and its plastic case. And the remedies were actually hot to the touch!

Joette:  Yes, right.

Kate:  So, I labeled them on the top, “Sun.” And, I used them. Actually, when my daughter had asthma, and I gave her the one, the Kali iodatum that was labeled, “Sun,” and it still acted. So, I had the same experience. They’re hardier than we think.

Joette:  Yes. I think that when homeopathy came back into the mainstream of thinking — and it’s still not what I’d call “mainstream” — but once it started to have greater recognition, there were a lot of rules around it. And, there was not enough experience to set those rules aside and say, “Well, perhaps it’s a possibility, but it doesn’t look as though that is the norm that these remedies will be ruined after having been exposed to high heat or even X-rays for that matter.”

Which then brings us to cell phones, same idea. Be careful. It’s electromagnetic fields and those kinds of things. We have to be so careful. We can’t keep our remedies in our purse, because that’s where the cell phone is. I have not found that to be — not only for myself, but it’s been reported by many of my clients who keep their cell phones on in their purses, and the remedy is half-an-inch away. And they still act!

So, these are hardy little medicines. In fact, they’re so hardy — I wish we could see the visual here — but up here above my bookshelf, I have a shadow box with remedies from 1918. They were given to me by a client of mine who was in his late 80s when he used to meet with me. And that was about 25 years ago … so, he would be well into a hundred or so. And it was his mother’s homeopathic medicines; she was a homeopathic physician in the 1920s. So, he brought them to me as a gift and said, “I thought you might be interested in seeing these.”

So, in this shadow box, I have — I’m going to take a quick guess — about 15 medicines. They’re all in glass bottles with cork tops. (That’s how they actually sell them in India as well.) But, they’ve got old-time typeset on them, and you can see the date and, of course, the name of the medicines. And I’ve used them to test them out — from 1918, and they work.

Kate:  Right, and who knows where they’ve been.

Joette:  Exactly, exactly. So, they have longevity. They have robustness. They have efficacy. They’re kind of the perfect medicine, as far as I’m concerned.

Kate:  All right, so let’s move on to another myth, Joette, the myth that more pellets equals a higher dose. I hear that one a lot. “Well, how many pellets should I take?”

Joette:  I get that question on my blog regularly, and I tell them just to read the instructions that are printed on the side of the bottle. Because some of the pharmacies — the homeopathic pharmacies that are indeed regulated by the FDA, by the way, and other regulatory bodies — make the pills in a larger size and some in a smaller size. So, they will tell you how many pills comprise a dose. If it says five pills equal one dose, and you’re supposed to take it twice daily, that means you take five pills twice daily — because it says five pills is a dose. If it says take two pills, then it means two pills comprise a dose, and you take two pills twice daily.

Now can you get away with less? Often you can. But, it depends on how determined you are to get rid of this condition — how trying the condition is. And if someone is hemorrhaging, and you need to get that hemorrhage aborted ASAP, I wouldn’t play with the number of pills! If it says five, I would use five!

If, however, you’re trying to abort hair loss, then you might want to use maybe only three pills and see how it goes. So, it depends on how severe it is, how important it is that you get it exactly right.

But you could take 500 pills, and it’s still a dose.

So, we get these calls from moms or emails. I used to get calls in my office. We don’t have an office like that; everything is virtual for us now. But, we get these emails from moms saying, “Oh my gosh! My child got into my kit and ate five bottles of five different remedies. Should I take him to poison control?” No, it just means that your child got five remedies, and it was one dose of each — because the child opened his mouth and poured it in, and that’s a dose!

So, it’s not like taking Tylenol or aspirin or getting into a psychotropic drug. That’s not the way homeopathy works. It’s like lighting a match. It takes one match, or it could take 500 matches: you still get one flame. And so, what you’re looking for is a gentle stimulus of the mechanism that will encourage the body to correct itself. Do you need 500 pills? No, you may need only five, but it it’s still just one dose. So, there are no worries.

Kate:  And the only reason we’re making sure that we take enough of those pills is because the medicines are sprayed on top of a carrier pellet or ball made of something like lactose…

Joette:  Lactose or sucrose or a combination of both.

Kate:  So, we’re just making sure that we actually get the medicine. That’s why you want to take several.

Joette:  That’s right. That’s right. It’s a matter of understanding what you’re dealing with. Once you understand it, everything becomes much clearer, and it opens the way.

I was just thinking about the story — I was telling someone the story today — about my husband who is from New England. He moved from New England to Buffalo, New York, where we met some 35, 36 years ago. And he was a sailor, and he has been a sailor all of his life. His father owned boats. His grandfather … his great-grandfather owned ships. He sailed his entire life, and he’s actually a world-class sailor. He sailed in the Bermuda Race, et cetera.

So, his whole world has been surrounded by being on the ocean, being in ports, being on the water, sailing through dangerous waters, and navigating and understanding weather. So, when we got married, every Sunday night pretty much, he would call his parents and ask them how they were.

And instead of saying something like an Italian family would say — I mean in my family, we say, “Okay, so how did that cannoli recipe turn out? And you didn’t call me after you made the lasagna, because I wanted to know if my recipe was better than my sister-in-law’s recipe. I just got to know … how did it turn out, and did the family like it?” We all talk about food!

His family talked only about the weather. “So, how’s the weather?” You know, his parents were in Cape Cod. “How is the weather?” And I’d say, “What? You’re asking your parents how the weather is like. Aren’t you going to ask your father about how his sleep is because he was having difficulty sleeping, or how your mother’s arthritis was … or whatever.” And I kept thinking, “That is so boring!”

I just didn’t get it.

Then about ten years into our marriage — actually, I used to love to go to garage sales and estate sales — I came across this book at an estate sale. (In fact, I’ve looked for it online, and I have not been able to find it again, and I’ve somehow lost it! I’m so sorry I lost it!) It was a book titled something like, “How New Englanders Think” or “Why New Englanders Think the Way They Do.” And I said, “Wow! This might give me some insight about my husband and my in-laws because I don’t get how they think.” (You know, they’re all engineers, and they’re all very left-brained, and that’s not really my background.) And on the back cover, it gave a little vignette of what was to be found in the rest of the book. And it talked about how New Englanders talk about the weather. They talk about the weather only. That’s all they talk about.

Kate:  All they talk about …

Joette:  It gave me such insight, and I read that book with such gusto. I devoured it because it gave me a real window into my husband’s personality and my husband’s family’s personalities. And from that time forward, instead of thinking that was a boring discussion, it became kind of pleasurable to overhear his discussion with his parents. And then I saw the benefits of knowing the truth and understanding the nuances of him, his life, his surroundings, what he grew up in, what his parents were about, his great-grandparents, et cetera, et cetera.

So, to this day, we live in Florida on the water. We have a cottage in Canada on the Great Lakes. Everything about our lives is about being on the water. My husband is the ultimate weatherman. He gets it. Everyone else says it’s going to rain. He says, “No, it’s not.” Everyone else says the wind is going to be blowing out of South, he says, “No, it isn’t.” He says, “You see those clouds there, you see that pattern? That means …” And then he goes on to explain why and how that works.

So, having that knowledge — finally, I got the knowledge — that he had knowledge instead of just a stupid little idiosyncrasy! And it opened up my world into his world.

So that’s what we’re hoping to do today with these little myth busters. I want to open up your world into understanding that homeopathy is easier than you thought it was. It’s not as hemmed in as you thought. There are not as many rules as you might think.

Another rule that we have to talk about — and that is if you listeners are coming from a background of having studied or learned a little bit about classical homeopathy — the idea is that you use one medicine, and one medicine only, at a time.

Kate:  Right. That’s a common philosophy. Classical homeopathy teaches that.

Joette:  One medicine and one medicine only. The way I teach this is: No, we use three, four, five, sometimes even as many as seven. I try not to use as many as seven. I try to keep it around four or five homeopathic medicines that are taken simultaneously — not at the same moment (we separate them by about five to ten minutes or so, as we put them into the mouth). But, they are taken in the same schedule for the same amount of time, often.

So classically-trained people will often say something like … and this is what I used to say too. So, I beg your pardon for those who have followed me for so long that they actually knew what I used to say classically speaking. I’ve erred, and I’ve changed my ways in the last many years, probably about eight or nine years now. And what I have come to realize is that one medicine often doesn’t do it. It can do it, but often it doesn’t.

Kate:  So Joette, give me an example. What do you mean one remedy versus several?

Joette:  What I mean is that if someone has eczema, for example, and they also have food intolerances, you might find one medicine that will act for both conditions. Sulphur, for example, might be an example of that, or Hepar sulph, or something like that.

But if that person also has gallbladder pain, and they have just had a grief (they’ve lost their dog), and in addition to that, on the way to the appointment meeting with you, they were in a car accident, and now they have a wry neck, and then they had a panic attack — I’m sorry; one medicine is not likely going to cover all of these conditions.

Kate:  Right.

Joette:  While this person is waiting in the waiting room, there is a big, bad bee that stings them. And now, they’ve got a swollen lip, and their tongue is swelling up. One medicine is not going to take care of all of those.

Kate:  Right. So, you can’t do anything about that bee sting because you’re taking something for a chronic condition? I mean is that what would normally happen?

Joette:  Classically, we would look at the bee sting first because we’re always looking at the hierarchy: what is the most trying concern. So, we start with that issue that is the most bothersome, the most dangerous. Of course, we would probably start with the remedy for the bee sting because that could cause anaphylaxis if that person’s tongue is, of course, swelling or their lips are swelling. So, we would start with that.

But, what happened to me years ago was that I would take a case, and it would be many conditions, not unlike what I just described. And I would use one medicine for the constitutional and another medicine for the acute as an SOS. Then I would say, “Well, we got to get after that deep issue that the constitutional is not going to go after, so I’ll use a nosode. And then maybe I’ll throw in a cell salt because I can see that the hair is thin, and the nails are poor, et cetera.” So, I would have about four homeopathic medicines that I put together, and I would feel so guilty because it wasn’t the classical method. I had been trained to not do it this way. But, I kept doing it because the more I did it, the better my results.

Kate:  Okay. Then you went to study with the Banerjis, and you found them to be doing the same thing, right?

Joette:  It was a little more circuitous than that because before I found the Banerjis, I was in classes studying with Dr. Ramakrishnan in Toronto, and I would ask my fellow students who were all seasoned homeopaths (we all had to be in order to get into these classes). I would ask them. (They’re from all over the world. There’s a doctor from Pakistan and another one from Ireland, another one from Holland, et cetera.) I would ask, “Do you ever use more than one remedy?” And every single one of them said the same thing, “Yes, I do.” “You mean in the same schedule?” “Yes, I do.” Meanwhile, I was being told time and again — not by Dr. Ramakrishnan, but by other courses I was taking — “Use one remedy at a time.” That’s exactly what all the books were telling us. It was pokey to say the least. And I like speed! I want to see someone get better quickly.

Kate:  And we’re all used to that, right? We want it to happen now. That’s the kind of world we live in today.

Joette:  Yes. But even if we didn’t, even if we came from two centuries ago, if someone is suffering, we need to help them and help them on many levels.

Not to mention that we have to compete! Our biggest competition is conventional medicine where if you’ve got a headache, BAM! Tylenol! If you’ve got eczema, BAM! Steroids, ointments! If you’ve got this … they will suppress those symptoms at almost any cost. Of course, you’re kicking the can down the road, and there’ll be more problems later. But, who cares? Right now, you want results. And, there is something to be said for that. But what we’re looking for is speed and clarity as to what’s coming down the road — and making sure that the road is paved for uprooting the condition, not worsening it.

Kate:  So, it’s very interesting to me, Joette, because I feel like it’s a secret. Right? That’s not very talked about. You spoke with these other homeopaths, and they were doing the same things But yet, it’s on the down low. It’s hush, hush. No one talks about it.

Joette:  Yeah. It was like a dirty little secret.

Kate:  Right, exactly.

Joette:  Because that’s not what the books said. That’s not what the classical teachers were teaching. And many people come to me and say, “I want to become a homeopath, And so, how do I do it the way that you’re doing it?” I tell them, “If you’re going to become a homeopath, you really must study classical homeopathy first.” You must go to a reputable, high quality, rigorous homeopathy school that’s classically founded. But just know that when you get out, you throw some of that out, and you use protocols.

Take my classes. Learn how to use these protocols. Study what has been used for the last century-and-a-half by the Banerjis — and other homeopathic teachers — who have been using protocols and using more than one remedy at a time. So, I say “protocols” because generally when we use a protocol, it is more frequently used. The remedy is repeated more frequently. And, it can be used in conjunction with other protocols for other conditions that may or may not be related.

Kate:  Okay, so let’s move on to another myth. That would be the myth that you would use a different dosage for animals versus small children versus adults versus the elderly. That is a question that gets asked often, I see — whether it’s in classes or on your Facebook groups.

Joette:  If you’re treating a cow (and I have), or a llama (I’ve done that, too), versus a chick (a little, tiny chicken) …

Kate:  Versus a horse.

Joette:  Versus a horse … When you’re treating large mammals — let’s put it that way — versus a tiny fowl, you would use probably a few more pellets. That’s at least the way I’ve done it, because those large mammals are often chewing their cud. We want to make sure that the medicine gets into the mucosa of the mouth. It’s not about swallowing it and getting it into the stomach and allowing it to get into the bloodstream. Instead, homeopathy acts on the mucosal lining, so between the gums and the teeth, or on the tongue, or under the tongue. That’s where it’s absorbed and utilized. So, we want to be sure that we’re getting enough in there — not just because it’s a large animal, but really more to do with the fact that they’re often eating.

Now, a chick eats all day long, too. But because it’s such a tiny, little thing, and the beak is so small, and the mucosa lining is so tiny, I don’t think it needs as many pellets. So, I have treated both, and I’ve used approximately the same dose — the same number of pills. So, if it said five pills on the outside of the bottle, I would give a cow maybe five or six or seven pills. I would give a chick maybe two or three. That’s just an average. And I don’t have any studies on it. That’s just my personal clinical experience that it works in the same way.

Kate:  So, just to clarify, that doesn’t mean that the horse requires a bigger dose. You’re just trying to get the medicine into the horse’s mouth …

Joette:  To ensure that the horse got it.

Kate:  Right.

Joette:  That’s right, that’s right. If it’s a child, a lot of times it will say on the outside of the bottle, “Two pills for a child and five pills for an adult.” In my estimation, that child could get five pills, and it would still be the same. The reason I think they say that is because why waste it? Just put the pills in the mouth of the child. It’s a smaller mouth. They are a slightly smaller body, so not as much volume needs to be covered in the mouth of the homeopathic medicine being absorbed through the mucosal lining. I’ve used both. I’ve gone both ways. I’ve used five, “Oops, poured too many in my hand? In it goes.”

Kate:  Honestly, I feel — this is my own opinion — but I feel like it’s just because that’s what we as consumers are used to, and that’s why.

Joette:  I believe that’s very likely as well. I think that’s very possible, yes.

Kate:  What about the elderly?

Joette:  Same thing with the elderly. A dose is a dose is a dose pretty much across the board.

I just said something that I’m sure is going to prick up some ears — that if I put five pills into my hand — that is going to cause trouble. Now, I teach in my Gateway to Homeopathy course that you pour the pills into the cap. Count them out. Pour back and forth until you get approximately the right number. And then toss the pills directly into the mouth of the person who is supposed to be receiving them.

But, sometimes it’s not that easy. My mother is very difficult to give pills to. So, I pour them into my hand. And I actually am getting a little bit of that medicine, and I’m not worried about it. I don’t think it’s going to cause me any trouble. But, I do put them in my hand and then pour them into her mouth. Because otherwise, if I don’t place them in with my fingers, she will sometimes not get them all. But, the reason that we’ve been warned not to put them in our hands is because if you’ve just gassed up your car, or you’ve just used an antibacterial soap …

Kate:  Or just chopped an onion.

Joette:  Just chopped an onion, or you just used Clorox to scrub a basement or something, and you’ve got something on your hand, it has the potential of rendering the medicine not as valuable. So, it’s cleaner, easier to pour it into the cap and just toss that into someone’s mouth.

Kate:  So, just to get back to the animal example for a second, I have used generally two pellets. And I put it directly into my horse’s mouth or my dog’s mouth or our kitten’s mouth. So, I’ve not used five or six in my horses, and I found them to be effective.

Joette:  And it still works! Yes, yes, yes. I’m glad you pointed that out because that’s just what I’ve done in the past, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done with just a couple of pellets. I know some people who put the pellets in water and allow the whole herd to drink from that water. And when my chickens were struck by fowl cholera, that’s exactly what I did. I put Cuprum metallicum in the water that all the chickens were drinking from so that they all got it — and they were all protected because fowl cholera is extremely contagious. They would have all died had they not had that. So, we already know that 50% of the flock would have likely died.

Kate:  Wow! That’s very interesting, cholera for fowls. I hadn’t thought of that, but I suppose that is a thing.

Joette:  Yeah, it is. It is. It usually comes from wild birds that have it and come into the coop and die. And then the chickens and the ducks around that dead bird now start contracting fowl cholera.

Kate:  Let’s wrap this up with one more myth. What about the myth of we can’t use, say, mint (like chewing gum or toothpaste). I guess I don’t want to call that myth yet because I’m asking you, Joette. What do you think about that?

Joette:  Well, mint can antidote. It doesn’t mean it will antidote. So, some people insist on using mint toothpaste. I don’t find mint toothpaste to be important in my life, so I don’t use it. I make my own toothpaste. I use baking soda, that kind of thing. But, if you have a condition that is quite trying, and you take the medicine twice daily, then it might be worth your while not to use very, very strong mint toothpaste. If the condition you’ve got is not so trying, then you can take a chance and say, “Well, I might be antidoted. This medicine might be antidoted, or it might not be antidoted.” It depends on the person — how sensitive they are. It depends on how much mint is in the toothpaste. It depends on when and how close you take the mint to the remedy.

I think there are so many unknowns that I just urge people, don’t bother using it. Use something else. Not to mention that parenthetically, that the reason I don’t use mint toothpaste, for the most part, is because I don’t know what ingredients are in these toothpastes. They’re not required in the U.S. — or anywhere else that I know of — to list the ingredients because toothpaste is not a food. So, they can put anything in there, and you don’t know about it. So, I would rather use something that I know exactly what the ingredients are and does just as well a job. Having said that, when I’m taking homeopathic medicines, I drink mint tea. I put fresh mint leaves in water, and muddle it and grind it down, and make it into a refreshing, cold iced tea drink, and I have no trouble with it.

Kate:  Okay.

Joette:  I’ve always considered myself a sensitive person. But I’ve been able to get past that, and I think most people can.

Now, if you want to antidote a homeopathic medicine — the action of a medicine — I believe that it takes more than just a mint to do that. I think it means opening up a bottle of essential oil of mint, holding the bottle up to one nostril, closing the other nostril and taking a good, deep inhalation of that mint. And then closing that nostril and inhaling in the other nostril and getting a good, deep inhalation of mint. For most people, that will stop the action of the medicine. That’s about as strong as it needs to be for most folks for it to antidote.

Kate:  Okay, so what about garlic because a lot of people ask about that as well? Say, they want to have some garlic, and they’re taking remedies twice a day, and they eat some raw garlic during the day. Do you feel like that antidotes remedies?

Joette:  Well, are they eating a whole bulb of garlic?

Kate:  Well, if it was me, yes.

Joette:  Yeah! Or a little clove? Or is it cooked? Is it raw? I mean, if it’s raw — you said raw.

Kate:  Raw.

Joette:  I’ve never found that to be a problem. I’ve eaten lots of raw garlic in my life. I make tabbouleh and hummus. I just love raw garlic. I put it on a cracker with butter sometimes. I’ve not found that to be a problem. So, it’s a good thing to kind of work around that and see whether or not it affects you or it doesn’t. Most likely, it will not affect you.

Kate:  Okay, well that’s good to know. A lot of people ask about that. So, thank you. Getting back to the mint for just a second, I was remembering having a conversation with some people saying, “Well, if you want to brush with mint toothpaste — if you insist upon doing that — maybe brush your teeth first then wait half an hour and make sure you’re drinking some water.

Joette:  I would say yes, and I’ve urged people to do that for those who insist on using the mint toothpaste. Yes. I mean, some people really don’t feel as though their teeth are clean unless they taste that “minty freshness.”

Kate:  Right. Well, I think we’ve cleared up some myths and learned some things, so I want to continue this. Let’s do another podcast and talk about some more myths again. So, those of you who are listening, be on the lookout for another Myth Buster podcast!

Joette:  Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Let’s do it, Kate.

Kate:  Okay. Thanks, Joette.

Joette:  Bye now.

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.

Don’t take this lightly. Homeopathy is being targeted by the FDA, and it is up to each and every one of us to ensure we retain the freedom to practice our chosen form of medicine continues in this country.

This is about choice.

This is about freedom.

Paola Brown certainly has had my full support as her organization, Americans for Homeopathy Choice, has fought on Capitol Hill to prevent the FDA from acting against the current availability of homeopathic medicines.

In fact, Paola recently did a seven-day Facebook summit in which she interviewed seven different influencers related to the field. Naturally, I agreed to contribute my time to be one of those interviewed.

In addition, as an enticement for listeners to financially support her organization, I contributed —free of charge — a digital copy of my two-CD set, Cells Salts: The Easy Homeopathy, to everyone who donated that day.

I was humbled to learn my interviewed garnered an incredible amount of monetary donation for Americans for Homeopathy Choice, and I emailed 297 contributors a personal link to download the CD set. (I appreciate so much the “thank you” emails I have received from those of you who downloaded the CDs.)

I will continue to do all I can to make sure Paola has the support she needs, but right now she needs more than just me. She needs YOU! She needs each and every one of my readers to sign her Citizen Petition to stop the FDA from acting against homeopathy without accountability.

If anyone can do this, it’s Paola — together with you. You are all Moms with Moxie and Dads with Audacity. There is nothing we can’t accomplish together.

So, please listen to this very special podcast and follow the critical steps Paola details. As she says, it will probably only take 25 minutes of your time yet could mean all the difference in this fight. Join me in protecting our right to freedom of choice and access to homeopathy.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

02:47   Paola Brown   

04:19   Citizen Petition    

16:25   How can we show support

20:48   Send those letters in

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Podcast 44: Americans for Homeopathy Choice (Paola interviewed by Joette)

HomeopathyChoice.org: Citizen’s Petition to the FDA — please participate

Americans for Homeopathy Choice Facebook page

Donate: http://homeopathychoice.org/recurring-donations/

Volunteer: https://homeopathychoice.org/volunteer/

Kate:  You are listening to Podcast Number 58 with Joette Calabrese at PracticalHomeopathy.com. We have a special podcast episode for you today. Paola with Americans for Homeopathy Choice joins us again and will share how key it is to act now in support of their Citizen’s Petition and write your representatives.

Thanks for joining us today for a special podcast. I’m Kate, and I’d like to welcome Paola Brown with Americans for Homeopathy Choice to give us an update on the work that she and so many other volunteers have been doing to retain our rights to homeopathy. So, Paola, welcome!

Paola:  Thank you! I’m so happy to be here. This is like coming home in many ways. So, I love being on Joette’s show, and I love being here with you. So, thanks for having us.

Kate:  Oh! Of course! Paola, you are the President for Americans for Homeopathy Choice.

Paola:  Yup, that’s right. That’s why I said, “us,” because I feel like it’s never me. It’s this giant, incredible movement of mothers and others through Americans for Homeopathy Choice … so, yeah.

Kate:  Yeah, you have gathered a lot of great people to rally together and support homeopathy. Paola, you and I go back a ways, and I consider you a friend. I’m just … I’m so thrilled for what you’re doing. It’s such an important thing — that we as mothers need to be able to take care of our children, right? And that’s why you’re fighting for this.

Paola:  Absolutely. That’s exactly right. I keep using this word, “birthright.” And, I really believe that in many ways when you become a mother, you’re inheriting this birthright to protect your children, to care for their health — their spiritual, their temporal (with your husband or whatever your situation is) and their physical health. In many ways, we see today our health freedom is being taken away from us. In many ways, I see that as our birthright being taken away from us.

We have a birthright to health. We, as mothers, have a birthright to care for our children. You know, I just feel like too many things lined up for me not to walk this path. I really see what Joette has done as a huge part of this movement because she, in many ways I think, primed the pump full of these mothers who are now passionate about homeopathy, passionate about regaining their health — regaining that ground. So, I just said, “You know, I will walk the path that has been laid before me.” And so many mothers are doing the same and joining and supporting us.

Kate:  Yeah, I see a lot of things in your life lined up to bring you to this point. So, you are the perfect person to lead this charge, I think, Paola. You have a lot of spunk and guts. And you have no problems taking charge and just really putting yourself out there, and I admire you for that. So, way to go Paola — and so many of you listening that are taking part in this, joining together and helping to fight for this freedom!

Let’s step back for just a second, and I’m just wondering how you do this. Okay, you teach your children. You try to feed them as well as you can making things from scratch, and you recently moved. That in itself is a huge thing. And you kept up on all those Facebook Lives that you did every night during this move. I mean how is that even possible?

Paola:  I know … right from the hotel room. You know, I have to say it. I’m a person of faith, and I really think that when you are asked to do something by our Father in Heaven, He provides the strength that you need to do it. And so, I’ve really learned about myself and about how to take baby steps — not get overwhelmed. You can’t eat an elephant whole, but you can eat a whole elephant in small bites! And so, I’ve really had to focus on, “Okay, all I need to do today is take this bite, and that’s it.” I’ll be honest with you. We have had a really big move here. I just kind of let some things go and probably packed some things that I need to get rid of when they come out on this end. But, I will deal with it.

Kate:  Okay, so let’s dig into the meat of this podcast, and let’s talk about where the work for Americans for Homeopathy Choice is right now. What’s going on? Walk us through some of the action steps that you guys are taking together as an organization. For those of you listening, if you have not already listened to Podcast 44 — which is the first podcast where Joette interviewed Paola, and they talked about how this all got started — go right now and listen to that podcast. And then jump into this one, and you’ll have a better grasp of what’s going on. So, Paola, where do things stand right now? What is going on?

Paola:  So, we need your help. I need you to stop what you’re doing. You know, I’m a podcast girl. I like to listen to my podcasts while I’m folding laundry or doing the dishes and multitasking. I need you to stop what you’re doing. Dry your hands. Put down the underwear that you’re folding. Go to your computer and go to HomeopathyChoice.org. Right there on our homepage, there is a banner, and it says, “Support our Citizen’s Petition.” If all of Joette’s listeners who would listen to just this podcast alone, took this action, we would reach the thousands of comments in the petition docket.

Now, don’t get confused. Earlier this year, we had everyone submit their comments to the FDA docket on the draft guidance, and this is totally different. We have submitted a brand-new document that defends homeopathy. It’s called a “Citizen Petition.” It is our right to do this under law. And what I mean by that is when we do something under law, that forces the FDA to respond. It’s not some informal letter that they can just ignore or take administrative maneuvers to kind of avoid. There is a law behind this document that they have to deal with. And so, getting many, many, many comments in support of that is very important.

So, you go to HomeopathyChoice.org right now. Type it in. Click on that banner, you know, “Support our Petition.” You’ll be taken to our petition page. You can read the petition if you want to. You don’t have to, but you can if you want to. And then we need you to send three quick letters.

Okay, the first one goes straight to the FDA. We have provided an outline for you to kind of quickly write your own, a quick paragraph. The FDA, if they get a ton of copy-and-pasted letters, they count all of those as one comment. So, it’s better to kind of write your own unique comment because then they value your very own comment.

Then you’re going to take that letter that you sent the FDA that we gave you the quick little outline for, and you’re going to copy it, and you’re going to send it to all your representatives. So, that’s your congressman and two senators. Okay? And we have that on our website there, too. You’re going to say, “Look, this homeopathy thing is not going away. It’s an ongoing issue. I want you to stay aware of this. I emailed you about this earlier this year. I’m emailing you about it now. Here is the copy of the letter I just sent the FDA.” Okay, so that’s the second letter, right?

Then the third letter you’re going to send is … you’re going to go on our website; you’re going to copy and paste another letter to send to your representatives. So, we’re technically double-dipping with the representative. We’re sending them one letter about, “This is what I submitted to the FDA,” and then you’re sending them a second letter that says, “Here is the issue at hand.” And that’s what you’re going to copy and paste off our website.

So, what’s that going to take you, 25 minutes? I’ve timed myself doing all of that: 25 minutes! Because what I’m doing right now is I’m trying to reach to your representatives, and I’m trying to make appointments with them. If you don’t make a lot of noise and send those letters in, I’m not going to be able to get that appointment, and I need that appointment. We don’t have enough money to hire a lobbyist. And so, it’s really what you can do to pave the way for Americans for Homeopathy Choice to get those appointments. I’m getting appointments, but we need more of those. So, that’s why we’re kind of trying to build that relationship with Congress.

Kate:  I think a lot of times, people think, “Oh! What’s one more letter going to do?” Right? But it is valuable, because if everybody thought that, there would be no letters sent!

Paola:  Yes, that’s exactly right.

Kate:  So, go right now. I just did it as we were talking. I clicked the banner which says, “ACTION ALERT! Act Now! SUPPORT OUR FDA PETITION.” You just click on that banner. And then the second thing — like Paola said, just to reiterate — is to click on that red button that says, “Contact Congress.” And that’s where you will find all the information to write the letters to your representatives and send those in.

Paola:  Yeah, exactly. So, just so you know, the only thing you’re going to have to write is the quick paragraph to the FDA. Everything else is just copy and pasting and sending your representative the copy of your FDA letter, and then sending them a second message with a copy of our letter that we’ve prewritten for you. So, it’s really not much writing. It’s just a few sentences that you’re going to send to the FDA. And then you’re going to kind of duplicate that to your congressperson, and then you’re going to send them in. So again, this is different. Earlier this year when we were submitting comments, we were totally on the defensive. We were trying to defend ourselves from the draft guidance on homeopathy. This is different. This is offensive. We initiated something that now the FDA has to deal with, and they have to respond to.

Kate:  Isn’t it better to be on the offense than the defense?

Paola:  Yes, totally, absolutely.

Kate:  Good, okay. So, you’ve come up with the Citizen’s Petition, and now that has already been submitted. When did you guys submit that?

Paola:  So, we submitted it — boy, it’s like a blur — we submitted it right before we moved. That would have been August. Now, it’s September, and we really, really need as many comments as possible to go into that docket for that Citizen Petition.

Kate:  Paola, help me understand, why is this Citizen’s Petition so important?

Paola:  Okay, so … okay, this is crazy. Listen to this. I had a phone call this week with Congressman Costello’s office over on Capitol Hill. Congressman Costello wrote a letter to the FDA. He sponsored a letter, and so he got a lot of other congressmen to sign that letter. That’s where we spent all our time earlier this year dealing with. We visited all these congressional offices back in February. We asked them, “Please sign onto Congressman Costello’s letter.” And he did; he got some support. They sent this letter to the FDA, and they said, “Look. We don’t like this draft guidance. You cannot do this. You cannot make homeopathic remedies technically illegal unless they go through a new drug application, without talking to us first.” So, they sent this letter out there.

So, I talked to him this week. I said, “Did the FDA respond to your letter?” And he said, “Yes, they did.” His staffer said, “Yes, they did.” I said, “Can I get a copy of that letter?” Kate, that letter says in black and white — now, I can’t post the whole thing on our website, but we’re going to post an updated summary — that letter says that the FDA fully intends to finalize the draft guidance.

So basically, all those comments that we submitted earlier this year, the FDA is maneuvering around them. I’m not saying they’re disregarding them because the FDA legally can’t. But they’re maneuvering around them, and they fully intend to apply the risk-based approach. That means that homeopathy … whatever remedy they pull off the market, it can only reenter the market IF it goes through a new drug application which would cost millions of dollars. We all know they’re targeting first the nosodes, the remedies they think are concerning. Belladonna, Nux vomica were specifically mentioned in their press release, so some of our key polychrests. So, they said, “We will do this,” basically.

Kate:  All the work that you guys have done, and now they’re basically saying, “Well, we’re moving ahead anyway.” So, if you don’t think that there is a real threat, there is! They fully intended to move ahead regardless of the things that you’ve done. And so, what you’re doing now is super-important. They have to stop. They have to address this petition.

Paola:  Okay, let me give you that quote. It says, “As a result of the agency’s evaluation including consideration of the public input the agency has received on this issue, FDA [this is it], FDA has determined that it is in the best interest of public health to issue a draft guidance that proposes a risk-based enforcement approach.” So, this is here in black and white, that they are going to move forward with that. What this Citizen Petition does is it basically is like a stay of execution. They cannot — they should not — finalize the draft guidance when this petition is in place because in our petition, we said, “Do not finalize the draft guidance.”

You know, a draft guidance is basically like a guidance that helps the FDA police enforce homeopathy, but they don’t understand the law very well. So, they make this draft guidance to help them know exactly what you’re supposed to do. (When a homeopathic remedy says 30C, this is what that means, and this is how it should work, right?) So, they have that guidance. And so, they can remove that guidance and replace it with any other guidance anytime they want.

So, if we keep the Compliance Policy Guide 400.400 right now, ten years from now we can be in the same exact situation we’re in right now where they’re trying to remove it. Then we have to start all over from scratch. So, what we’re asking is first, you need to delete the draft guidance. We don’t like it. Two, we want you to reaffirm the Compliance Policy Guide 400.400. Three, we want you to turn it into a regulation, so it’s fixed, and it stays, and you can’t remove it very easily.

The last point we mentioned in the Citizen Petition is that we want there to be an advisory committee on homeopathy. This advisory committee would be made up of homeopathic professionals, consumer representatives (like a mom could be on that committee). It can’t just be anyone. There’s a law and regulation that guides exactly who can be on these advisory committees, right? So, the FDA can’t just pick one group — one homeopathic organization. It has to be varied. They have advisory committees on hundreds of other subjects. I think it’s very appropriate for homeopathy to have an advisory committee.

Kate:  Let’s just talk for a minute. For those of you who haven’t heard, the Compliance Guide 400.400 is the regulation that has been in place.

Paola:  It’s not a regulation. It’s technically a “guidance.” It guides, kind of, the rules — which is different. It’s like a step down from a regulation. That’s the key. That’s why they can remove it and replace it with something so bad.

Kate:  So, you’re asking them to make it a regulation?

Paola:  Yes, we’re trying to kind of upgrade it now. It’s been in place for 30 years. It’s worked. It’s been great. Now, let’s upgrade it to something that you guys can’t mess with next time you guys get tired of homeopathy or whatever.

Kate:  So, for those of you wanting to know more information about the Citizen Petition and what it includes, go to the website, HomeopathyChoice.org, and you can read the Citizen’s Petition right there. I spent some time going through that, and it’s very interesting. There are some key points that they are presenting through this petition that the FDA has to address, and it’s very important.

Paola:  So, what this petition is doing is, it’s a legal document that the FDA has to respond to before they just proceed. And they know that. If they do finalize the draft guidance, we’ve said in our petition — this was our last request — we said, “If you don’t comply with our request in this petition, we would like to have a hearing.”

Now, a hearing is not just any meeting. It is a formal meeting, and it’s not one that they can easily maneuver. And our attorneys are telling us that the FDA does not like to have hearings — especially when the law is so clear in protecting homeopathy. They will not want to do that. So, it puts them in a tough spot: “If we respond to this petition, and we say, ‘Okay, we listened to you but we’re not going to do this,’” then they have to do a hearing. I mean the Administrative Procedures Act says a Citizen Petition is something that the FDA has to follow procedure in responding to. If they disregard it or maneuver in the wrong way, they’re breaking the law. I mean this is a hefty move that we’ve made.

Kate:  Right. This is not cheap to do this, right? These are difficult things to write and you have to have help and support from a legal team, and you have to have financial backings.

Paola:  That’s absolutely right. I mean, most of what we’ve done so far with our attorney up until this month really, he has been helping us pro bono — which is just amazing because he loves homeopathy. I mean, he, himself, likes to say that he’s been under the care of a homeopath, a classical homeopath, since the 70s. I think that we are just so blessed to have him. But we did a major fundraising effort on our Facebook page, Americans for Homeopathy Choice. If you type it in the search bar on Facebook, that’s us. And we did this awesome summit, interviewed amazing people. I mean it was just in the peak of my move, and I just knew that we had to do this! Our goal was to get 400 mama bears to join the Bear Pack. (And you know, it really is any person. It doesn’t have to be a woman or a mother. It can be a dad or a male.)

Kate:  A papa bear.

Paola:  Yes, exactly, a papa bear, a brother bear, any bear, right? So, it’s the Bear Pack! And so, that’s anyone who’s donating $25 a month becomes a member of our Bear Pack. Right now, we have just over 150 people who are donating. I mean, I have to say, I honor those people who are donating, and I’m so thankful for them because they are literally carrying this movement on their back! We would not be able to take another step forward without them. Their donations came at a critical time. Those of you who’ve done a one-time donation, we are so incredibly thankful for you, too.

But you’re right, it does cost money. I have to say, you know, people say all the time like, “Oh, but you know, we would never be able to fund raise the amount of money that big pharma has, right?” And Jim said a very interesting thing on our Save Homeopathy Summit that we had earlier.

Kate:  And Jim is your attorney?

Paola:  Jim is our attorney, yes, right. Sorry, he’s our attorney. He says the reason that big pharma has to have that kind of money is because they don’t have people. He says for you to have a political movement, you either need people, and then if you don’t have people, then you need a ton of money to kind of replace the energy that people put in.

I feel so strongly that the homeopathy movement has some big energy because we have some amazing, committed, dedicated people to homeopathy. So, when you have people in a homeopathy movement donating money, that money goes larger, farther, and is stronger than a dollar coming from a pharmaceutical industry that is just a naked buck — without that powerful energy coming from mothers and others who are caring about their health.

Kate:  And there’s other ways to support this effort rather than a financial donation, too. If you can’t donate money, there’s time, right? You guys need people.

Paola:  Yeah, absolutely. We have a volunteer form on our website. We have a Facebook page where people can request and join. We’re always kind of trying to think of ways for people to help. Yeah, if you don’t have the time then, of course, do the donation. Here’s the thing, to join the Bear Pack, that’s less than a dollar a day — $25 a month. That’s less than a dollar a day! We’re trying to kind of create some “thank you” benefits where we have a member’s area right now. If you’re a Bear Pack member, you can log in to your member’s area, and you can see the entire Save Homeopathy Webinar series, which is no longer on Facebook (we just have a few snippets there). So, we’re trying to kind of create like a “thank you” VIP area for those of you who are members of the Bear Pack — you know, donating $25 a month. We plan to have quarterly visits from really cool homeopaths to talk about some education on homeopathy. And you know who I already have at the top of my list to be one of those!

Kate:  Are her initials J.C.?

Paola:  Yes, that’s right, and we’re not talking about Jesus this time. So, that’s just kind of our thank you. That’s our goal is to kind of keep those members of the Bear Pack. And they also get like a special newsletter that has some insider information that we don’t necessarily share publicly quite yet, until it’s fully right.

Kate:  If you think about it, homeopathy is not expensive. So, let’s spend some of this money to help this organization to help this cause, so that we can defend our rights to use homeopathy, because we do save a lot of money when we use homeopathy versus conventional medications. You’re spending money on homeopathy, yes. But look at all the money that I’m saving! So, let’s put some of that money that we’re saving into this organization to help support them.

Paola:  I couldn’t have put it better myself. That’s right.

Kate:  So, let’s take some time and look ahead now. What do you have planned for the future?

Paola:  So, this Citizen Petition, it is most definitely like a “block.” Like I said, it puts us on the offensive, but it’s not the end-all, be-all. Listen, I hope that the FDA will comply with our petition. So, hope for the best, but you got to prepare for the worst. And quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if our prepare-for-the-worst plan ends up being the plan. So, that’s really the larger, broader, legislative strategy that we’re starting to develop now as we’re realizing this isn’t going to go away. It means that we need support from people on Capitol Hill — which is why we need you guys to send those letters in. We can’t show up to Congress and ask them for their support on homeopathy out of the blue. We need to develop relationships now. That’s why we’re not just asking you to submit your comments to the FDA about the petition. We’re saying send it to the FDA and then send two letters to your representatives — your senators (both of them) and your congressman — so that we can develop a relationship so that when that broader legislative strategy is ripe and ready to go, we have relationships. And that’s the goal.

Kate:  Nice. So, it is very important that we take the time to write those letters. And you’re having meetings scheduled soon with representatives?

Paola:  I have like, you know, meetings next week. I had one today. And it’s not with representatives directly; they’re usually very busy. You’re talking to their staffer from their office, and then they’re communicating out with the congressman or senator.

Kate:  So, time is of the essence. Get those letters in! What else can we do, Paola?

Paola:  I really believe in the power of prayer. If you can support us financially joining the Bear Pack or doing a one-time donation, we’re so incredibly thankful. Next, if you’ve submitted your letters, you kind of put word to action, right? You’ve submitted your letters to the FDA and your representatives. And if you can volunteer, messaging us, we have a volunteer button on our website, homeopathychoice.org. There’s all these little things that we’ve prepared for you guys to kind of help us out. And then pray; pray for our country; pray for homeopathy. I know we can do this. I believe in this movement. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think we could. We can.

Kate:  When we were talking earlier, you were so passionate. It was just fun to listen to your passion about how we’re going to save homeopathy. You said, “We are going to do it, Kate!”

Paola:  Yeah, we are; we are. I said before and I’ll say it again. I really believe that generations are going to look back at this time — this critical time — and look back on those moms that stepped up. This is your chance to put your stake in the ground and say, “I was part of that movement. I stepped up, and I did what I could.” That’s why I’m saying, leave the dishes! Let your kids play in the mud — whatever they’re up to, let them do it — and spend a little bit of time to send that comment. And get your husband to send it and get your neighbor to send it. Email your five friends; beg them to do that. We really got to do it.

Kate:  The groups that you’re a part of, get this information out there. Put it on your Facebook page. You can connect with your organization, Americans for Homeopathy Choice. Just look them up on Facebook. Paola is doing Facebook Lives and so you can keep abreast of what’s going on through that Facebook page as well.

Paola:  That’s right. We do a weekly update, Friday or Saturday night. Sometimes it runs on Monday night, but we’ll do one every week.

Kate:  Okay, so we’ll keep an eye on that. Well, Paola, thank you so much for giving us some update. I’m very hopeful for the future of homeopathy. We’re just thankful that you are leading the charge, and that so many of you are donating and giving of your times. I know that Joette supports this organization and the work that you’re doing. So, thank you so much.

Paola:  Yes, thank you and a special thanks to Joette. Anytime I call her, and I ask her for something, she finds a way to do it, and they make it happen. That’s just because they know how important this is. At the end of the day, she has been a huge backbone for this — kind of the grgroundwork activating a group of moms who love homeopathy. And so, I’m just so, so grateful for everything that Joette has done. So, thank you so much for having me on the show.

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:

01:50    Dirty little secret

08:08    Protecting our family

11:51    Fibromyalgia

15:45    Not to take no for an answer

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

How I Cured my Fibromyalgia with One Simple Medicine

Rhus Tox 30 or 200

(Symphytum 200 mixed with the Rhus Tox is the Banerji Protocol that I teach now — see Remedy Card below)

Sepia 200 – for motherhood fatigue

Joette:  I have to tell everyone what my dirty secret is?! Okay, well, I think everyone has a little bit of this, but maybe mine is worse.

Kate: You are listening to Podcast Number 57 with Joette Calabrese at practicalhomeopathy.com. Thank you for joining us on today’s podcast as Joette shares her experiences and insights into healing our families with homeopathy. As you just heard in the intro to this podcast, Joette is going to let us in on a little secret. Those of you who know Joette or follow her posts or podcasts might be a little surprised at what she has to share with us today.

If you enjoy these podcasts, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a note on our Facebook page or post a screenshot of this podcast on your social media platform using the hashtag #JoetteCalabresePodcast. Your encouragement and willingness to help spread the message of homeopathy is central to our mission. And, we may just feature your review on one of the upcoming podcasts.

Kate:  So, Joette, you and I are here together today, and we’ve been hashing through some ideas for the podcasts, and what people might want to hear. As we’ve talked, I always have a lot of questions for you, Joette. I could go on and on. But, the thing that intrigued me was — as we were talking — you told me that you have a dirty little secret.

Joette:  Are you going to bring that up today? I have to tell everyone what my dirty secret is?

Kate:  Yes, Joette, you have to tell the world.

Joette:  Okay, well, I think everyone has a little bit of this, but maybe mine is worse. I have to admit — I have a temper. Maybe it’s because I’m Sicilian. Sometimes it’s good, but sometimes it’s bad. But I will tell you, it really drives me.

Kate:  I have to interrupt you for a second Joette because I have known you for five years now. (Can you believe that? We’ve known each other for five years.) I have never seen you get upset in the least. I mean I know you’re spunky, but I’ve never seen that side of you. So, this is interesting to me. You know, you got to share more.

Joette:  Well, it’s really all related around my family. You’ve never hurt my family. When it comes to them, I become super protective. I have anger skeletons in my closet. In fact, I have so many of them that they talk to each other and party at night!

Kate:  I’m imagining them dancing around.

Joette:  Yeah, they’re dancing, and the problem is they’re all Sicilian. I think that’s the problem is that this anger comes from this deep-seated desire to take care of the family. I mean, you know all about families in Sicily. But, it has been a problem from time to time. But that’s what’s driven me! It has driven me to such resentment and anger when someone makes a medical mistake or declares something medically regarding one of my family members, and it really gets to my core.

Kate:  That’s understandable. Everyone has that component to their being.

Joette:  Well, yeah, but I’ve actually attacked doctors.

Kate:  Well, what do you mean “attacked,” Joette?

Joette:  Well, not physically. But, I could tell by the look on my father’s face — when I’ve had to practically attack them when my father was around — that he was worried that I might just lunge at them.

Kate:  He was giving you that look like, “Joette …”

Joette:  “Joette, calm down, Honey. Calm down.” I remember one time when my father was in the hospital, and I always stayed with him when he went in. The doctor came, and he said, “We’re going to give you the flu vaccine.” And I said, “No, no, no. My father is not going to get the flu vaccine.” He said, “No, no, it’s our policy to do that.”

I said, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. We have a policy. We have a family policy. My father does not get flu vaccines. End of discussion. Now, if you have a problem with that, I’ll get a cousin who’s an attorney to make it clear to you.” Because they’ve always got these policies and as soon as someone hears policy, they think, “Oh well, maybe I should back off.” No, no, no. You come back — or I’ve always come back — with, “No, I’ve got my own policy. My policy is bigger than your policy.”

Kate:  Yeah, I was going to say …

Joette:  “I hired you pal.”

Kate:  … my policy supersedes your policy.

Joette:  That’s right, that’s right. There was another one. Another doctor came in once and told us about this study that my father could become a part of. He was just trying to get himself published. I know what he was trying to do. He turned to my father. (I could tell that he was a little worried about me. Maybe I had said something before that I didn’t remember, or he could tell by the look on my face and my arms that were folded, and the scowl on my face.) “But he said, “I would like you to be part of this study. Wouldn’t that be a great thing for you to do essentially?”

Before my father could even open his mouth, take a breath, and say anything, I said, “My father is not a lab rat. He will not be part of your study.” And, he backed off. He backed off. He went on to tell us about how important this … “No. He will not be participating in your study.”

So, we have to be like that sometimes. Now, had I thought that my father was going to have to go back to this doctor again and again, I maybe would have softened a little bit. But, I knew he wasn’t going to be seeing this cardiologist again. Because we do have to be careful, they have an awful lot of power — especially if it’s over your children. That’s when you don’t argue, and I’ve talked about this many times before.

So, I’m making it sound like my dirty little secret of having this anger is only mine, but I think that everyone can develop this. I think it’s a good thing to develop. Because if we don’t have a wound that’s rubbed raw, then we won’t come back fighting to protect the rest of the body (or the rest of the person). So, the deeper the wound is rubbed, the more equal on the other end is the anger and resentment and frustration — and even frustration is not a good enough word, as far as I’m concerned — anger and resentment that we have to exert in ourselves in order to come up with the correct solutions.

Kate:  So, if we don’t have that deep “why” within us, then we’re not ready to take those steps that we need to, to be bold, to be protective of our families.

Joette:  Yeah. Had my life been filled with medical successes, had my eczema not been suppressed with steroids, had my asthma not been a result of taking decades of steroids — I mean we could go on and on — had all of those events not occurred in my life, and they were saying this, then I would say, “Wow! Dad, a study! You could be on the leading edge of a study.”

But, I’ve had a lot of experience seeing the medical foibles that were foisted upon my father and myself and my child and my mother, and it goes on and on and on. And I had connected the dots years prior, so that when another dot was being presented to us, I said, “Nuh-uh-uh-uh, no more, no more. We’re done.”

Originally, it was driven by curiosity. “Gee, I wonder if there’s another way to do this?” It goes hand in hand with irreverence. That’s what I’m expressing now is irreverence. Because with irreverence, it fosters an open search for ideas, and then a reverence and respect for life.

So, in a way, you have to build your imagination. Everybody’s got this. You just have to flex it. Imagination is part of the human spirit. It’s the dynamism of the human spirit. So, if you’re trying to build your imagination, you want to imagine that you can take care of many of your family’s ills — maybe not all of them, but how about trying for 50%?

Kate:  So, this is almost like a workout regimen. I mean is that what you’re alluding to?

Joette:  Yes, you’re flexing your muscles. You know, years ago, I worked with this FBI agent. I found it so fascinating because he taught me about muscle memory. He said that when he went to bed at night, he put his pistol — honest to goodness (I think it was a pistol; I imagine that’s what it was) — that he had on his leg that he wore all day, and he would put it by his bedside in exactly the same place and exactly the same position every single day for years. He was trained to do that so if something happened, all he had to do was reach over and grab it, and his finger went right into the placement, and his hand was holding it in exactly the posture it needed to be held. He said, “It was muscle memory. I just had to do it over and over and over again. After a while, I felt confident that if something came along in my family, if something was a threat because of what I was working on in the FBI, I was able to protect my family.”

Well, you’ve got to have a pistol, first, of your own, so that you can protect your family. After a while when you build that muscle memory, “I can do this,” and then you do it, and then you do it again. It’s not unlike the first time I cured my son of sniffles, I felt alive! “Wow! Look what I just did!” Within two hours — after knowing that a pediatrician would have given an antibiotic that would have kicked the can down the road and cause more trouble later on — I did it in a couple of hours. Holy cow!

Then I cured his strep throat. Oh my gosh! I know what a pediatrician would have said about strep throat. “You got to use antibiotics and the big guns,” so to speak. I don’t mean this to be such a bellicose conversation today about all the anger, pistols.

Kate:  Are you hungry or something today? You’re kind of worked up.

Joette:  Yeah, I think I am. No, I am hungry, as a matter of fact. That’s why I’m talking like this probably. But at any rate, we almost have to stir our anger so that we can get that alpha mother out and onto this theatre, this stage of our lives. Without controversy, as humans, we have no interest in moving forward and examining options.

So, people who live a charmed life and don’t have illness — which is pretty much nonexistent — but if they have mild illnesses, and they trust that the doctor has got the answer, and they take the Tylenol, and the headache goes away. And they have a cyst, and they have it extracted, and then another cyst comes out, now four cysts come up. And then they have not put together all of the strands of understanding that you remove one cyst, and others will pop up later. Or that you treat an illness that’s met with an antibiotic, and you find that there’s another one that shows up shortly after that. If they don’t make that connection, then they just fall for the methods that are handed to everyone.

But, once you realize and make that connection, you sort of can’t help yourself. I urge people to read the book, “Medical Nemesis.” I’m pretty sure it was written by Robert Mendelsohn. We almost have to have drama, we humans, to fan our hostilities and resentments. So, we can say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What just happened? I can’t believe this happened.” And then we dig and look for the answers. So then, once we start digging and looking for the answers, and we start coming up with a few — maybe just a handful — then that starts to determine our identity.

I mean how do we identify ourselves? Are we someone who’s acquiescent? Who’s passive, and who says, “Yes, Doc. Okay, Doc. Whatever you say,” and believes all that the doctors have to offer? Listen. I’m not saying you throw your doctor off of the ten-story building. I’m saying that you need your doctor to identify conditions. But, don’t for a second believe that that’s the only solution. There are thousands of solutions.

Kate:  Or that he has all the answers, because they can’t possibly.

Joette:  It would be impossible.

Just the other day, there was someone who commented on my blog post. She had commented about the fact that I had cured myself of fibromyalgia. And I had! It was pretty severe. I mean, I was chronic fatigued, and joints were all aching. You’re just touching my tendons, just touching my arm, you push, “Ow. Ow. Ow.” Everything hurt! It was achy. I felt very out of sorts; slept too much. I used Rhus tox. Now, I can’t remember what potency it was. I wrote about it in one of my blog posts. Maybe it was a 200. Maybe it was a 1M. It was long enough ago that I don’t remember.

That is key, mind you. It was long enough ago that I don’t remember. I cured myself of fibromyalgia. And I did it for my aunt. I’ve taught many, many people, and they’ve reported back to me that it has worked.

So, this person wrote and said, “You shouldn’t talk like that. You shouldn’t say on your blog post — and give people false hope — that you cured your fibromyalgia. It must have been some other reason. Maybe you helped some of your symptoms. , fibromyalgia is incurable.”

I thought to myself, “Really? How do you know that? Because what? Somebody told you that or because you haven’t been cured yet?” I would have believed fibromyalgia was incurable because I was told the same thing. But I said, “I’m not going to believe that. I’m going to look further.” And so, I did.

So, I wonder why the person just doesn’t take the Rhus tox. That just confounds me! Oh well, if you’ve had it for all these years and you’ve been told it’s incurable, well, I guess — okay. So that’s what I said on the blog, “Oh, all right. So, I guess you just have to live with your fibromyalgia then. Don’t look anywhere else. Just listen to what you’ve been told and accept it.”

Kate:  Well, the other thing is that some people may think they tried it. It’s not working exactly to the extent that they thought it would, or that it did for you. But you have to remember, there are so many variables: how often are they taking it, what potency? There are so many things that you need to look at. So, you can’t make a blatant statement like that, and say, “It doesn’t work because I did this one thing.”

Joette:  Well, yes and no. Because when we use protocols as I teach them on the blog and in my courses (but I try to give as many away as I can for free on the blog), if you follow the protocols — the right potency, the right frequency — and you have the condition named properly — it is fibromyalgia, right? It’s not a broken arm; it is fibromyalgia — then you will likely have success. It’s when the diagnosis is incorrect — not from your doctor, but that perhaps maybe you have misdiagnosed it. And you didn’t realize that, indeed, it was a broken arm, and it turned out that you were calling it “fibromyalgia” all this time.

Kate:  Or it could be the doctor because that’s one of those things.

Joette:  Could be.

Kate:  I don’t know that they can …

Joette:  Yeah, it’s subjective. No, they can’t. It’s very subjective. Listen. As I’ve said before, my mechanic can’t figure out what’s wrong with my car! He can’t diagnose my car’s problems. How was it that we expect another human being to always understand exactly everything that’s going on in the human body? So, you try, and if it doesn’t act, you try something else. Give it a good shot and try something else if that doesn’t act.

So, I find that very frustrating. But all I can say is as I said on the blog, “Oh, okay.” I don’t even know what to say to someone like that. Really, you don’t get that you should be trying and looking further? Just not sitting back and saying, “Well, I’ve been told …” So, as long as there’s an opportunity to make alternations, and we throw up our hands and we say, “There’s no way,” then we’re never going to get ahead. There’s always a way. Always. Not just in health but in every single concern or problem on earth.

Kate:  I was just listening to someone who was talking about why she was so successful. And she said, “It’s because I learned not to take ‘no’ for an answer. Someone else hears the word ‘no,’ and that’s where they stop. I say, ‘I’m not going to accept that as an answer. Don’t tell me you’re not going to do this or whatever it is,’” and she pursued it. She dove in. She had moxie!

Joette:  Right. Everyone needs to have had a job in sales. If you haven’t ever had one then you ought to get one, because sales is all about hearing, “No, no, no.” And you keep saying it, “No, no.” And you keep explaining why your product is so great. “No, no, I don’t want it. I’m not interested.”

Then bam! Someone says, “Yes.” Oh, you just made a sale. No one knows about all the “no’s” you had to hear, but you become callous to it after a while. You don’t even hear the word “no.” In fact, if you hear the word “no,” it should get your cockles up and get you thinking, “Oh yeah? I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer!” You don’t have to say that to him, but you think, “That person thinks I can’t do this. I’m going to do it. I’m going to show them and myself — they may never hear from me again — but I know that I can do this.” And it takes that.

Kate:  So Joette, do you think this is something that’s innate in us, or something that we need to learn?

Joette:  Well, I do believe it’s the heartbeat of being a mother. Every quiver of our heart is dedicated to our families. But, I don’t know that everyone recognizes that by going to “the expert” that we can still fight that off — that information that we got. Because it’s only an opinion that this pediatrician or this doctor is giving us. You go to ten more doctors, and I’ll bet you get different answers. But when we are a mother or a grandmother, to be honest, we have no choice. Look to the animal kingdom — minus the animals that eat their young — but besides those … (We’ve all had those days, right?)

But aside from that, if you don’t feel as though you have enough to fight, if you don’t feel as though you’re an alpha mom enough, you probably need a couple of doses of Sepia 200 because you’ve been exhausted by the hormones changing, and too many babies, or too many years of birth control — not too many babies — I mean, having many babies all one after another, or just having had a baby, or having had years of birth control pills. Take a couple of rounds of Sepia 200 for a few weeks. That really gets things up and running again.

Kate:  Right. So, most likely, you get caught in this web of busy-ness and life and kids and stress, and you can’t see clearly.

Joette:  Right. So yeah, you can’t get caught up in the web. You have to parse it out. Think about all the things that we worry about all the time over the last year. Just think about that. Actually, do this: just jot down all the worries that you’ve had and really write them down. I’ll wager that no more than about 2% or 3% were really realized.

If we don’t try, we won’t succeed. It’s important that we realize that a lot of the worrying we mothers engage in is superfluous and never really comes to fruition. So, it’s important to put those aside and start focusing on learning how to take care of your family.

In case you haven’t noticed folks, this is not just about being able to take care of your family’s ills but your mothering style. Our mothering style almost becomes a political statement or more importantly, a human rights movement. It’s about the fundamental dignity of the family.

So maybe my feistiness today has to do with that book by Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals.” Because we can learn even from scoundrels, and he was. His goal was to overturn the American government back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and is still going on today in his political camp. He’s no longer alive, but that is what his goal was. But by learning what radicals do and how they change the political scene, and more importantly, what he taught in his book was how to change your thinking so that you can become a radical.

And in a way, we have to be that way inside of us. We don’t want to go out and picket and hate doctors and modern medicine. We need them to a certain degree from time to time. What we don’t want is a ruling over us in terms of what we can and cannot take care of ourselves, and how we can take over many, many of the ills that come along in our families’ lives on a day-to-day basis.

Kate:  So, be strong, be brave.

Joette:  Yeah, have guts, spunk, and moxie — and pluck. I love that word, “pluck.” And then in the end, it’s all about being radical, baby. Radical!

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:

02:33    Journey to homeopathy

06:55    Accepting homeopathy

12:24    Setting up for success

16:14    Treating diarrhea

21:54    Success stories

24:42    Kidney stones   

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Wise Traditions journal

Good Gut, Bad Gut course

Joette’s Quick Start Guide

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

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:  You are listening to Podcast Number 56 at PracticalHomeopathy.com.

Hi everyone. I’m excited to be here today with another fabulous Mom with Moxie. I’m Kate, and today, I’m here with Sheena. She has a great story to tell and some amazing tips for us. So, get ready to take some notes. And if you have a husband or another family member that’s not onboard with homeopathy, you’ll want to stay tuned because Sheena has some great insight for you. So, Sheena, welcome!

Sheena:  Thank you.

Kate:  As we begin, I like to ask our moms to share with us a little bit about their lives. So, I want to ask you to do that as well. Tell us about your family and yourself.

Sheena:  So, we live in Jupiter, Florida. I have two daughters, 14 and 10. My older daughter is a gymnast and my younger daughter is a dancer. So, they’re athletes. My husband is a doctor. I pretty much spend my time geeking out on food and homeopathy — which are my passions.

Kate:  Those are great passions to have. But I tell you, when you said you live in Jupiter, Florida, I’m still trying to get over that. Because when someone asks you, “Where do you live,” I imagine if you say, “Jupiter,” they look at you like you’re crazy, right?

Sheena:  Yes, it was really fun when we moved. We sent out a cute note that says, “We’re moving to Jupiter!”

Kate:  I have never heard of Jupiter, Florida. So, I guess we’re all learning something today.

So, tell us, Sheena, a little bit about your journey to learning about homeopathy.

Sheena:  So, I have been into traditional foods based on the work of Weston A. Price (which is a foundation) for about 14 years since my first child was born — and I realized that I had to learn how to cook, and I had to feed this child. That was great for many years. But in the last — I would say — five years, I realized that as a chapter leader for the Weston A. Price foundation, that people were too sick for food to be their medicine. In addition, people really don’t want to be restrictive with their food. They don’t want to not go to dinner. That they want to go hang out at coffee shops, and they want to let their children indulge in the foods at school and such. So, it became very difficult to help people with food.

I would read the Wise Traditions journal which Joette authors a column in. To be honest, I was a skeptic. I kind of glanced at them like, “Huh, that’s interesting.” But I never really dug into it. Then my younger daughter crushed her fingers in the door, and I had nothing. I didn’t know what to do. I did manage to keep her out of the ER, but I really was scared. I was like, “What do I do? This child who has never had antibiotics or drugs before, I’m going to have to take her in, and stuff is going to happen.”

Kate:  Because you can’t give her bone broth for a crushed finger, right?

Sheena:  Right. It’s not going to do it. I really had no tools in my mommy-tool-chest for that. And then the same child — I think maybe a year later — got some sort of bug bite on her eye, and it swelled up huge. And for a week, I was trying everything. It was getting to a point where my husband was like, “It’s time for her to go to the hospital.” Fortunately, I actually did resolve that, but it was tense. So, I realized I did not have the tools I needed, especially for these acutes. So, I really was looking for something for acutes.

So, then I thought maybe this essential oil thing is the thing for me. So, I tried that. I learned about it, spent a ton of money and realized that, “Hmm, there are some benefits, but it’s not what I need.” So, then I told my husband, I said, “You know, I’m going to dig into this homeopathy.” He was like, “Yeah, whatever.” He’s a scientist, and so he did not believe that it would do anything. But, he also didn’t feel that it would do any harm, so he was like, “Fine. Check it out.”

So, I remembered seeing Joette’s articles in the Wise Traditions magazine and went on her website and decided to take her Good Gut, Bad Gut course. I don’t know — maybe two hours into the video, I’m like, “Hmmm, this looks very interesting.” Then I started trying it, and I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that this medicine existed, and that it took me so long to find it. Now, I think I’ve taken every one of Joette’s classes except for one. I mean, I can’t wait for the next webinar or whatever that she’s got to put out. I’m soaking it up. It’s amazing.

Kate:  I went through a similar journey. It seems to be a common thread among moms. You have children and then you think to yourself, “Uh-oh, I got to figure out how to take care of this child.” So, I — like you — started with food, learned about herbs and essential oils. That was all great. But like you said, it doesn’t take care of everything. So, it’s nice to hear that other moms are on a similar journey, and how they came to homeopathy.

You talked about your husband, and you mentioned that your husband was a doctor. I know you mentioned that at first, he wasn’t a believer. How did that transition take place from him not believing to — I think — now he’s a supporter, right?

Sheena:  Yes, he is! So, a lot of my women in my study groups have difficulty because they want their husband to be onboard (or their spouse). I’ve only had one man in my study group, so it is mostly moms. What I tell them is it’s reasonable for your husband to be skeptical. So, the thing to do is to demonstrate competency to your husband starting with the little things — with the acutes, with the sprains, and the bumps and the bruises. Most people are not going to object to Arnica. It’s really effective. Your kids bump into something, and you would expect a bruise. Or your husband falls off a ladder or whatever, you give him some Arnica. It’s amazing! So, I just demonstrated to my husband. I learned, and I treated people every opportunity I had.

We have a bearded dragon which is a lizard. She is about 8 inches long. She overindulged in kale. And she was throwing up all her crickets.

Kate:  Oh no!

Sheena:  So, this was really early on. So, we thought, “Okay, over-indulging, that’s Nux vomica.” So, we made a little solution of Nux vomica with water and got it in her mouth, and it was crazy. Within minutes, she stopped throwing up the crickets.

Kate:  It’s such a funny story. She was throwing up crickets, and the Nux vomica helped her to stop throwing up the crickets. It’s a great story!

Sheena:  Yeah, it was amazing! So, my husband witnessed that. He’s witnessed me treat my kids’ bumps and bruises and anxiety and stomach bugs. So, my younger daughter would get a stomach bug. One day — we have a pretty long hallway — she was literally running to the bathroom, and I chased her with Arsenicum and popped it into her mouth. And then she’s — maybe this is too graphic — she’s leaning over the toilet. She was like, “Okay, I’m good.”

Kate:  So, she didn’t throw up?

Sheena:  She didn’t throw up.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh, that’s fast!

Sheena:  Yeah.

Kate:  And then what happened after that?

Sheena:  She was done! That was done.

Kate:  Really?

Sheena:  Yeah, my family — me and my kids — we get stomach bugs, and it’s bad. I’ve been like down-and-out. Once I start throwing up, it’s game over. But, since I have discovered Arsenicum, if I catch it fast enough, it’s done. The illness is over.

Kate:  And you don’t get to the throwing up stage, right?

Sheena:  Correct. So then, you don’t have to go through the dehydration stage and the recovery from that stage.

Kate:  I have found the same thing with Arsenicum album. Actually, I’ve gone as far now as putting it in my kids’ bedrooms so they each have an Arsenicum album there. So, if they were to wake up in the middle of the night, they just pop an Arsenicum album in, and they’re good. In fact, they have not thrown up in over five or six years. So, I just think Arsenicum album is one of those remedies I cannot live without. I think we were talking about that earlier, right? You feel the same way.

Sheena:  Yeah. I mean I have a hard time deciding between whether I couldn’t live without Arsenicum or Hypericum. So maybe HyperArs is the remedy I can’t live without!

Kate:  Right. And if you could take two to some remote location, that would be the ideal, because then you could have Arsenicum, Hypericum, and then you could combine them for infections.

Sheena:  Yeah. I would be very sad if I couldn’t have those remedies.

Kate:  Yeah. So, your husband has witnessed this all along, and he’s seen the changes in your family and your kids and you. Right?

Sheena:  Yes. So that and I think seeing that I’ve been taking classes, that I listen to all of Joette’s podcasts, that I’m reading, I’m researching, I’m thinking about it. I’m not just trying things willy-nilly and shown him that I’m making myself competent to use this medicine — and seeing that it’s working. I’ve been studying homeopathy now for just over two years. About a month or two ago, my older daughter at the dining room table said, “Dad, do you think homeopathy works?” And he said, “Of course.”

Kate:  Oh! That’s a long way to come from, “Yeah, just try that thing that doesn’t have any effect.”

Sheena:  Yeah. So, you have to demonstrate that it works — I think — and not just want people to believe you.

Kate:  You have some advice for people as they’re starting out using homeopathy: how to go about it in a way to set them up for success. So, why don’t you share that with us?

Sheena:  My biggest failure was a young woman who had — and probably still has — chronic diarrhea. I had done Good Gut, Bad Gut, so I knew all the protocols. But, I hadn’t tried homeopathy enough. I hadn’t used it enough for such a serious case. I also didn’t present it to this woman as, “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I think this might work. You want to give it a try?”

Kate:  So, you said you didn’t present it that way. How did you present it to her?

Sheena:  This is the other thing. Her mother wanted her to try homeopathy. So, I told the mom that, “Here’s the protocol, this should work. This stuff is amazing! It’s going to work,” and so on. And so, when the first remedy didn’t work, she was done. That was it. The young woman did not want to try the next remedy which I have been using successfully for someone else. So, I’m sad that that happened. But I think had I either waited and not taken her case yet, or presented it to her a little differently, that perhaps maybe she would have tried other remedies. Because you’re not always right the first time, which is why Joette says you try a remedy for eight weeks. And if there is no improvement, you move on to the next remedy.

Kate:  The other thing that seems like it was hard in that situation was it wasn’t her that was wanting to try the remedies, it was her mother.

Sheena:  Yes. I learned that I needed to communicate directly with the person. Especially for something chronic, I needed to make sure they understood what the process would be, and that the correct remedy might not be selected right away. In fact, now, I ask — if someone’s not in a study group or something with me and they want to try homeopathy, and they have a chronic condition — I say, “Look at these and then let me know if you want to try it.”

Kate:  So, you refer them to Joette’s website. If you go on to her main page, you’ll see on the right-hand side, it says, “New to Homeopathy.” And then if you click on that little brown go-button, it will take you to the next page which is a Quick Start Guide. Then if you scroll down, you’ll see under “Read,” the links to “What to Expect When Using Homeopathy Part 1, 2 and 3.” On the right-hand side, under “Listen,” there is also some great information for people who are newer to homeopathy. So, you’re right, that is a great place to refer people.

Sheena:  Yes, because it’s too much to explain. And, for chronic cases, you want people to be a little bit invested.

Kate:  That’s a good point. They have to know because otherwise if they’re just taking this, and they have no idea what it is or how it’s used, then they are less likely to continue. Especially like you said, if it’s something chronic, it’s good that they be invested in it as well. So, very good point.

Sheena:  Most people now that I have helped are in one of my study groups that I’ve led or somebody they’re helping. That’s only for chronics. If it’s an acute, I will help. I just ordered my third set of 50 little containers that I use to put samples in, if you will, of homeopathy — which means I’ve given away 150 little jars of homeopathic remedies.

Kate:  Oh wow! Well, what do you use?

Sheena:  They’re tiny, little amber-colored glass bottles that I purchased on Amazon. They come in packs of 50.

Kate:  Okay, great!

Sheena:  I learned, very early on, don’t give your bottle away. Because the minute you do, you’ll need it!

Kate:  Right.

Sheena:  So, I put the remedies in those, and I give them to people.

Subsequently, I searched out for someone who was willing to let me practice on them. I found a woman who had horrible, chronic diarrhea and ten-plus bad bowel movements a day. She would have to fast, and she could get it down to about four, literally eating nothing but broth. So, I explained to this woman that I hadn’t worked with someone successfully with diarrhea. She had quite a few issues: asthma; she got pneumonia often; celiac disease; colitis. So, there was a lot going on. I knew this was going to be really challenging.

Right up front, she committed to giving it a try, and I committed to giving it my best shot to help her. So, I made a spreadsheet, a table, and we could talk about that later. But, I listed out all her issues, and we listed out all the possible remedies and found that the remedy for acute diarrhea also happens to be a celiac remedy. So, that made it pretty easy to choose that remedy. And, it worked in about two months. She was able to be diarrhea-free — not permanently. We’ve had some ups and downs. But, she was actually able to eat food and not have diarrhea at all — zero.

Kate:  Wow! That’s life-changing for her!

Sheena:  Yes, life-changing. I mean it’s significant. She had really tried everything — food and all the best advice as far as natural medicine.

Kate:  Wow, that’s great! So, when we were talking earlier, you told me something kind of interesting about her journey to that remedy, and a little mishap that happened. (I guess you could call it that, right, Sheena?)

Sheena:  Right, yes. So, the diarrhea was gone. That was October of 2017. Then in March, it came back. So, I said, “Okay, go back on the remedy. We know what worked. Go back on it.” She had been adding more foods. I knew from Joette’s teaching that things come back, and then you just treat them again. The idea would be that it would last less time and come back less frequently and less severe.

So, it came back, and we struggled a little bit to get it under control. The remedies weren’t working as well. It would kind of go away, and it would kind of come back. But it didn’t go away like it did the first time. Well, about three weeks ago, she sent me an email and said, “Don’t cry. But, I’ve been taking the wrong remedy for the last nine bottles.” So, she had ten bottles. The first bottle was the correct remedy; the other nine empty bottles were not quite right.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh! It was just a little bit off. It was a combination remedy — right Sheena?

Sheena:  Yes. So, it was Ipecac 30 mixed with Merc sol 6. It was what she was supposed to be taking, and what she took initially which cleared it up. And then she maybe was in a rush. Anyway, she bought the Ipecac 30 mixed with Merc salts. And I don’t even know what that remedy does, mixed.

Kate:  Oh, wow!

Sheena:  So, it was very close.

Kate:  Nine bottles of the wrong remedy.

Sheena:  Correct. She kept reordering somehow the wrong remedy. But, we had taken her whole case. So, she was still treating the colitis, and she was still treating the celiac. She just didn’t have the right diarrhea remedy.

Kate:  So, she was taking other remedies for those other things.

Sheena:  Right. I think that’s why she was still kind of making progress, but not like she did initially. We even went to the second line diarrhea remedy, and that didn’t help at all. So, then we went back to the first line — which was still the wrong medicine.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh!

Sheena:  But once she got the correct medicine, I think about three weeks ago, she’s been fine. No diarrhea for the last two weeks!

Kate:  So, for all of you listening today who are worried about provings, aggravations, not getting it correct, so that ought to put your mind at ease — that this woman is alive! Right?

Sheena:  That’s right.

Kate:  It just didn’t work like it should have, and that was the only consequence. It’s not like she developed any new symptoms, right?

Sheena:  No, she didn’t. She did, we think, prove Calc carb which she was taking for something else. We antidoted that within 24 hours. She had a hoarse voice with no pain, just kind of out of the blue. She sniffed some peppermint. It was gone. We removed the Calc carb, and that’s gone.

Kate:  So, we’re not saying that a proving can’t happen if you’re taking the wrong remedy, but I think sometimes people get really nervous about something major happening. But if something changes, a new symptom appears, then like you said, what – she just sniffed some peppermint, and she was better, and it antidoted that Calc carb.

Sheena:  Yup, it was no problem. I’ve proved remedies. I mean it was really so inconsequential to how beneficial it is to try the remedies. At least in my group, we just don’t even worry about it.

Kate:  Okay, good. Are there any other cases that you think might be useful to someone listening or had an amazing experience that you want to encourage someone else with?

Sheena:  Sure. Treating people’s acutes is just a great way to get people to be like, “Wow! What is this?” and learn more. One of my daughters is a dancer. There have been several instances where one of the other dancers was not well. I’ve been able to give them a remedy and thankfully — or maybe just because the medicine is so amazing — it has pretty much almost always worked. Nux vomica for teenagers with unknown stomach pain — amazing! I’ve used that three times successfully — and zero times unsuccessfully.

Kate:  So, when you use that, do you use it in a 200 or a 30?

Sheena:  200. The first time, I kind of did it by accident. This girl, her stomach was just really hurting her, and I was pretty new to it. I knew Nux vomica, but I thought 30 would be better, but I only had 200. So, I gave her 200, and it worked within minutes. Her mom went on to get some more remedies and use homeopathy. So, that’s just a great one. I’m sitting in my daughter’s bedroom because it has better audio, and she’s got her Nux vomica on her bedside.

Kate:  Good visual! Too bad we can’t see this on the podcast.

Sheena:  So, that’s just a great one. A story that is one of my favorite stories to share is — I think it was my second study group — one of the moms came to me after the first or second class and said can I help her with her daughter. Her eight-year-old daughter was afraid of bowel movements. She wasn’t constipated. She just was terrified of having one. So, you can imagine for an eight-year-old how difficult that would be. She would hold it until she had an accident.

Kate:  Wow!

Sheena:  And this had been going on since she was out of diapers. So, it was a problem, obviously, for the whole family. So, I worked with the mom. We thought about it. She put her on Ignatia. It resolved it! The wonderful part of it is her daughter told her mom, “Mom, you’re the best doctor!”

Kate:  Ohh!

Sheena:  Just the high of being able to heal your kids because sometimes you can’t go get an allopathic solution to something. People just run out of options. It’s like you have to live with this. So that’s one of my favorite stories.

Sheena:  Another great homeopathy success story is kidney stones. I have found that the more painful it is, the faster homeopathy works sometimes.

Sheena:  Wow! I went again to my daughter’s dance, and the woman working there was in agony — clearly in agony. I asked her what was going on. She said she had a kidney stone. I said, “I’ll be right back!” So, I zoomed home, got out my Banerji book, looked up kidney stones (which I didn’t find), and I finally figured out it was renal stones.

Kate:  Oh!

Sheena:  And realized I didn’t have any of the remedies. So then, I went on to Joette’s Facebook group for the students who have taken her courses and looked it up and found that someone had posted a protocol there using cell salts and Belladonna — which I had. So, I grabbed those remedies, went back, gave this woman the Belladonna to take. And I had thrown the cells salts into a water bottle and said, “Here, sip this.” Within 20 minutes, she was standing up and basically, nearly pain-free except for some low back pain.

Kate:  Wow!

Sheena:  She continued the remedies and passed the stones in little pieces, and that was that!

Kate:  So, she didn’t have any more of that extreme pain?

Sheena:  No. She managed it with the Belladonna and the cells salts.

Recently, another woman at dance was talking about her husband who was really sick because he had terrible kidney stones. My daughter was like, “Mom, don’t you have something for that?” Sometimes, I don’t always say something — I try and just, like, bite my tongue. I was like, “Well, okay, yes.” I mentioned, and she was like, “Really?”

Well, I happen to have those cells salts and Belladonna with me because I carry such things everywhere. So, I gave them to her. Actually, I didn’t have Belladonna. I have the cells salts. I told her, I said, “You really should get Belladonna for the pain, but these cells salts should help break it up.” So, she started giving those to her husband, and he was like, “You got to learn about this stuff. What is this?” And, she got the Belladonna. I think like a week later, he went into the doctor’s office to have them help him with the stones. He went in, and he peed out the stone, went back to the front desk and said, “Here is the stone. Can I have my co-pay back, please?”

Kate:  Oh my gosh! “Can I have my co-pay back? I don’t need you anymore.”

Sheena:  “I don’t need you! Stone’s out!”

Kate:  Oh, funny! That’s funny. So, you’re talking about a lot of people that you’ve helped. I know that you’ve led a number of Gateway groups, haven’t you?

Sheena:  Yes, I’ve led four Gateway groups.

Kate:  Local or virtual?

Sheena:  So, three were local, and one was virtual. I really — I can’t recommend it enough to either get part of a group or lead a group, because now I have this great community of women. We communicate all the time. We meet in person. We meet over Zoom. If anybody has a problem, we have a Facebook group that’s secret — just for us. So, we share all kinds of information, and not only are we helping each other with homeopathy, we have all these new friends.

Kate:  I love the Gateway groups. We help one another out. We share remedies if one of us doesn’t have one. Someone is going to have the remedy.

Sheena:  Yes. So, having a local group is really nice, especially for that.

Kate:  Yeah, I agree.

Sheena:  Getting together and building a community is just so wonderful. So, I keep my groups small — 10 people, each one. So, I have about 40 women and one man in my group. We collaborate, and then they’re helping people. Some of them have five people that they’ve been helping, so it gets exponential.

Kate:  Yeah, okay. We have the Gateway II coming out soon, so that’s exciting. If you haven’t already taken the Gateway I, you might want to consider taking that. So then, you can just jump right into Gateway II together.

Sheena:  Yes. Our whole group is waiting for Gateway II.

Kate:  Yay! Me too, I’m excited. So, thank you, Sheena, for taking the time to be with us today. You’ve given us a lot of information, some new tools, and so I thank you for your willingness to share.

Sheena:  You’re welcome. Thank 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. 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 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.

04:00    Laying out a case

12:48    Starting with chronic conditions

21:17    You can’t mess up homeopathy

27:21    Remedy has to be repeated

28:02    Writing down the most important issues only

36:33    Figuring homeopathy as our focus

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Ooh! Ooh! Cardoons!

Ignatia for anxiety

You are listening to a podcast from practicalhomeopathy.com where nationally certified American homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese, shares her passion for helping families stay healthy through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition.

Joette:  So, the satellite conditions that you hadn’t necessarily thought of as important could be critical in determining whether or not the remedy acted in the first place, and secondarily, if it should be repeated and started up again.

Kate:  You are listening to Podcast Number 55 at practicalhomeopathy.com. On today’s podcast, Joette describes how to write out an acute case. And she will share with us some great tips on how to know when it’s time to stop taking a remedy. So, let’s get started.

Hi. I’m Kate, and I’m here today again with Joette. We’re excited to bring you another great podcast packed with information. So Joette, welcome, nice to see you again.

Joette:  You see, we see each other, but people who listen in or read don’t know that we’re looking at each other. So, we can make funny faces at each other. It’s really fun.

Kate:  So, Joette, it’s summertime there, and I see lots of things blooming. Are you doing anything fun with the garden … or what’s going on outside?

Joette:  Well, this is the first spring that I’ve lived in this little cottage that my husband and I just got, and we’re really enjoying it. So, I’m totally into my garden. I’ve planted a couple of rhubarb plants and some asparagus so that sometime in the future, I’ll be able to harvest those. But, I’ve planted a lot of ground cover because I am not making a commitment to weeding every day — although I’m actually out there doing it every day. I go out for about an hour, and I water, and I weed, and I pull up this, and I move that. It really is fun. And then in the evening, I do the same thing. So, it’s a blast.

But one of the things that I’m sad about in my garden is that I’ve moved from my property — that had 15 acres — to a little plot, and I can’t find cardoons. Do you know what cardoons are?

Kate:  It sounds familiar, but I don’t know.

Joette:  Well, cardoons are burdock, and they are eaten by Italians and French. You can buy them at some upscale grocery stores, but they never taste the same. And so, I’m accustomed to harvesting my own cardoons every spring just as the lilacs blossom, just a little later, just as they’re kind of dying off then the cardoons come up, and they’re at their prime. And I go with my kids every year … we’ve just gone and gone to the back end of our property and dug them up and washed them and cooked them up and fried them, and they’re absolutely delicious. I actually have a blog on it … I wrote a long time ago about cardoons. So, I don’t have any here. So, as I drive through the countryside in Canada, I drive very slowly looking to see if I can find a wild patch somewhere, and I say, “Where are the Canadian cardoons?” I don’t get it. I don’t understand where they are. But I’m sure to find … one of these days, if I keep my eyes peeled … I’ll find them somewhere.

Kate:  I imagine you going to your neighbor’s property and digging around.

Joette:  Well, I’ve asked people. We’ve got a fellow who comes and helps me do some of the heavy lifting here in the garden, and I said, “Okay, do you see this plant? Do you ever see this anywhere?” He said, “What is that?” I said, “It’s a burdock. It’s the burrs that get in your dog’s fur … that’s what this is.” He said, “No, I can’t say I really noticed them.” So, he’s not looking, in the same way, I’m looking. I’ve got my eyes directly on the ground looking under disturbed soil and places like that. Maybe next year when we do another podcast, I will be able to say, “I found them, yay!”

Kate:  Or maybe they just don’t grow there like they grow in …

Joette:  No, they do. I did find one on my property, and I told my husband. Under penalty of the law, he will not weed-whack that cardoon. You leave that cardoon. It’s one sole, little, struggling cardoon that I’m hoping is going to invite others to join it.

Kate:  Let’s talk about some homeopathy. We thought that it would be helpful to our listeners to talk about laying out a case. How can we make this practical for our families? So, grab some paper, grab a pen and get ready to take some notes as we talk about laying out a case and making this practical for your family: How to get started. How to know when to stop. So, Joette, walk us through as we determine how to use homeopathy with our families.

Joette:  Sure. So, when you have a family of … let’s say you have two boys and two girls. You get a file folder for each of them. So, the two boys get blue folders — maybe a light blue for the younger one and a dark blue for the older one (file folder). And the girls might get a dark pink folder, and then the younger one gets a light pink folder. That’s so that you can find these folders lickety-split. Your husband gets — I don’t know — a dark green or something like that so that you can differentiate. And if the dog happens to be a white dog, like Buster, then you get a white folder — so you can find them super-fast.

Don’t bother buying a book. I’ve said this before. For those of you who have followed me, this might seem trite. But, don’t bother buying a book for each member of the family. It’s a waste of time because I guarantee you will not keep that book with you when you’re traveling or when you’re at grandma’s house and someone gets sick. You’re not going to say, “Uh-oh, I can’t do anything because I don’t have my book.” Instead, you jot down what’s going on, on a sheet of paper.

So, this is what you write down on your little sheet of paper when someone gets sick. You write down the date, of course, and you write down the CC (Chief Complaint) on the upper left corner. This is the way I’ve done it for years. So, I’m just going to pass this along. You can do it any way you like, but this is my method. And then, you write down what’s happening on a margin all along the left. So, on the left, you want to categorize it. So, if the person is freaking out, you want to put down … not “Freaking out,” that’s too many words (you want it just along the left margin) … you write “Mind” or “Mental,” (so, what’s happening in the mind or the mental condition).

And then, to the right of that margin, you’ve got the second column, and you write next to that “Freaking out, anxiety over exams,” for example.

Then, what else is happening? Oh, the person has stomach problem. So then, you go down further in the left column in that margin, and you write “GI.” Don’t write “Stomach aches” because that’s too much information because what you are going to be doing is looking at this in a year from now perhaps, or even a month, or five years from now. You might need this information, and you don’t want to be reading voluminous words. You want to have a simple method of scanning down the left-side column, along the margin, so that you can find what you’re looking for.

Okay, now let’s say there’s a stomach ache that’s associated with this person’s suffering. So, you write “GI” in the left margin. And then, the next column over to the right of that, you’re going to describe that. “Oh, there’s pain, with gas. So, it was worse before bowel movement. There’s burping. The person finds that it’s always worse after eating ice cream, et cetera.”

Now, what else is happening? Oh, by the way, this child is tugging at his ear. So, you go further down in the left margin, and you write “Ear.” And then in the column next to that, you’re writing what’s happening, “Tugging at the ear.” Don’t assume it’s an ear infection. You don’t know that it’s an ear infection. Never leap over the logical, most obvious condition (or the obvious situation) and make an assumption. Assumptions are not scientific. They can be useful if we’re at a loss.

But the first things we always use are obvious — tugging at the ear. Or nausea — they look green and they’re burping, and they vomit. Okay, you’re going to just write down what you’ve seen or what they’ve actually reported. Don’t assume. From that stomach, don’t you dare assume, “Oh, it must mean that this person has got leaky gut.” That’s a big, fat erroneous assumption! Or that they’ve got yeast, or they’ve got — I don’t know — gastroenteritis. Don’t leap! Just go with what you’ve got.

Now, if they’ve had ear infections many times in the past, and the child is tugging at his ear in the same fashion as every ear infection has ensued, then of course, now you can make that assumption. But don’t go any further than that — at least not at this point. We want to use only what’s obvious. You want to look at the hierarchy. What is the most trying aspect? The child is freaking out. The child is absolutely so terribly anxious. If the anxiety is greater than the tugging at the ear and greater than the stomach touching or nausea, burping or whatever, but the anxiety is really maddening, and those other areas are just satellite conditions, you want a remedy that’s specific for the mind, for the mentals, for the condition that is presenting most readily. Those others are secondary and tertiary conditions.

So, the first thing you think of is, “What’s a good remedy for anxiety?” And now, let’s say you choose Ignatia, and you’re going to write at the top of the page, “I chose Ignatia.” (Don’t write, “I chose,” just “Ignatia.”) What potency? Usually, we use Ignatia in a 200. Very rarely do we use it in anything else. “How often do you think I’m going to give this? Well, I’ll give it now, and then we’ll see what happens.” So, you write “Ignatia 200,” and you administer the remedy to the child. Now, three hours later, the child — let’s say even an hour later — the child is much improved, calmed down, still tugging at the ear a little bit, still a little tummy going on, but the anxiety is gone. Now, you can go back to your paperwork and say “VMB,” very much better. We’re always looking for abbreviations because remember, you’re going to be using this as a reference someday in the future.

The reason I tell you that you’re going to be using it as a reference is because when a remedy acts for one of your family members, don’t try to figure it out again in three years from now. Three years from now, your child gets anxious. If you don’t remember that Ignatia helped, you’re going to go back to the file. Now, you’ve written it on a sheet of paper. When the child is very much better, you’re going to toss that paper into the file. Open it up. Put it right on top. That’s the most recent condition. And there’ll be other conditions. This child will skin his knee. This child will hit his head. This child will get an ear infection or whatever. And those will go on top. Each one of those will be represented in a different sheet of paper.

This is what I teach in my courses. I’m very, very specific on how to do this. The reason that I’m so committed to this method is because it’s worked for me for over 30 years, and it was taught to me by other homeopaths who have used it for decades as well. I think it works beautifully. So, now let’s say it’s five years from now, and this child is obviously much more verbal. Now, he’s, let’s say, nine years old, and he gets anxiety, and he’s freaking out — not very unlike the way it was five years previous. You open up the file, and you look. “Have I ever used anything for his anxiety in the past?” And you go through the pages of all the conditions that he’s had. “Lookie here! Back in July of 2018, he had anxiety, and I gave him Ignatia. I wrote there that it took two hours for it to abate [or one hour, whatever]. That’s what I’m going to use.” So, we never tinker with what has been successful. If it’s worked once, we have to make the assumption it will likely work again.

Now, someone just asked me today, “Well, what if the circumstances are different? What if the first time, he had anxiety about — I don’t know — people coming over to visit. And the next time, he had anxiety because he had a test forthcoming.” Those are two different kinds of anxiety; there’s no doubt about it. But if it’s presenting in the same way, meaning he’s acting in the same fashion, I would first consider the remedy that worked most readily last time. You can always change it should you need to — that now it’s anticipatory anxiety rather than social anxiety. So, you could parse that out if you had to, but I would start with Ignatia first because we know it acted in the past.

Kate:  So Joette, you’re talking right now about acute cases for our family members. Let’s step back just for a minute, and let’s talk about starting out. We want to address chronic conditions, as well, with our family members. How do we get that overall picture or even know where to begin with homeopathy?

Joette:  Well, interestingly, the case I just described to you of the anxiety can be a chronic condition. This child might have had anxiety since he was six weeks old, and nothing was done about it because the parent didn’t know what to do. And so, now that the parent finally learns what to do and starts using Ignatia — and it looks perhaps like it’s an acute because it’s just gotten to a pitch — but this child might have been suffering all along. And just by using Ignatia 200, twice a day for some time, that can easily uproot the condition that was lifelong — even a short little life (because it’s a child). So, it actually works in the same fashion.

Now, just because the child was tugging at the ear does not necessarily mean that it’s otitis media. It could mean that the child had otitis media a year before and was given antibiotics and now has a chronic ear condition that renders the child with a discomforted ear that is maybe a feeling of stuffiness or fullness. I hear this a lot from folks who have had previous ear infections that were, of course, met by antibiotics and rendered a sensation that stayed with them for a lifetime of hearing loss, or distorted hearing, or sensation of plugged-up ears, or itching in the ear, or a fullness in the ear. That could be what that child’s complaining about by just tugging at the ear.

So, we could call this an acute case, but it might even indeed be a chronic case. Do we really, absolutely need to know? To answer that, in some situations, it would be useful to know. But a lot of times, an acute is simply a chronic that’s come to the fore for a period of time. And if left to its own ways, it would dissipate eventually and go back down to its chronic level, meaning it’s still there, but it’s not horrible. It’s not a screaming five or six or an eight in the pain or discomfort scale. It’s just a quiet one or two or three.

Kate:  What’s interesting is, I think, sometimes people get so used to things that they don’t even realize that they have that discomfort in their ear. And then when it bubbles its ugly head, then they acknowledge it. But otherwise, they don’t realize it, right?

Joette:  Not only that — I think you’re right about that — but not only is that something that muddies the waters, but also people often say, “Oh, he tugs at his ears, but his father has always done that, too. Oh well, let’s just forget that then.” No, no, no, no, no. Just because his father does it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a condition. It’s probably that his father has the same condition, and that the child has inherited it because after all, we are only DNA. That’s all we really are, plus a soul. That’s the way I see it.

Let’s say this child is suffering on a chronic level with anxiety and worries, then I would call it more of a chronic condition. And then, I’ve had people ask me, “So, how long do you give Ignatia for? Does this mean they have to have it the rest of their life?” Well, one of the best parts about homeopathy is that generally, it’s not so. So, no, we use it until we no longer need it.

So, how do you know that? Well, if it’s a chronic condition, I generally use a remedy that’s for a chronic condition for about six to thirteen weeks, depending on the severity of the condition and the degree of shift after having taken the remedy. You can always test the remedy out and say, “Okay. I think maybe we’ve had enough. We’ve done it twice a day for five days. Let’s try doing without.” More often than not, people don’t do it that way. They go on vacation or they go away for the weekend, and they forget to bring the remedies.

Kate:  Right.

Joette:  And then Friday rolls around, and they’re on the road. Saturday, they’ve gotten to their destination. Sunday, they’re enjoying their vacation, and they realize, “Uh-oh, we forgot the Ignatia.” Monday, they’re driving back. Tuesday, they stop. They don’t get home until Wednesday, and the child’s doing pretty well. Then you know, Ignatia is no longer necessary. It would be superfluous to go back to it again if the child no longer needs it. How do you know? Because the anxiety is gone — beautiful!

So, now let’s say on Monday, they’re driving home, and they’re going to stop on one more day on their trip home, and the child starts to get anxious. He gets just a little anxious. It only lasts 15 minutes, whereas before, this anxiety would be perpetual and would be low-level — almost like MUZAK or background music all day long — and then would get pitched when this or that happened. But now the child has a little anxiety, but it goes away on its own. It’s like he handled it. He was capable of subduing it on his own and moved on, and it washed over him. He no longer needs Ignatia on a day-to-day basis, at least at this point. So, when you get home, he does not need another dose. Just because Monday, he had a little bit and had some problems doesn’t mean that we start it up twice a day, every day.

If, however — here’s the third scenario —now you’re on your way home; he’s not had it for three days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Monday, he starts getting anxious. He’s bouncing in the backseat, and he’s worried and, “When are we getting home? And Dad, you’re driving too fast. And Mom, what would happen if something happened to you? And what about that test I have to take on Thursday,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It keeps going and going and going. Ignatia is needed again. He was not able to correct it within himself. He was not able to just let it wash away. So, when you get back on Tuesday, what do you do? You start Ignatia 200, twice a day, every day. You give it another week or so — or two weeks, or three, or four, or six weeks — depending on what you’re seeing.

It’s not unlike, in many ways, conventional drugs. We stop using, let’s say, Tylenol once the headache is gone. We ensue using it again when the headache returns — kind of the same idea. This is not a supplement, obviously. Homeopathy is not about supplements or herbs or vitamins that you take forevermore, and you take just “because” that perhaps maybe you’re low in calcium, or maybe you need some extra synthetic Vitamin D. (I’m being a little facetious here as you can tell by my sarcastic method of saying it.) But instead, this is called a “correction.” It changes the person in a very gentle, polite way. It does not slam us into submission. It gently stimulates, so that it knows its manners. Homeopathy knows its table manners. It knows how to be polite. And it gently nudges. When we need it again, we bring it out again.

Kate:  Okay. So, this brings up a really good point. You were talking about when we go away some place, and we forget to take the medicines for chronic for two or three days, how many times can you do that before you’re really messing yourself up? Do you know what I’m saying?

Joette:  I don’t think you’ll mess yourself up, period. I really don’t. That’s what I mean about being polite. It’s forgiving. Homeopathy is forgiving. It would just gently stimulate again and get you going where you left off. And if you mess up again; you mess up again. But, I can guarantee that you’re not going to mess up. If that child is all over you with anxiety, you will never, ever forget that. Ignatia again then before you leave on a weekend. It’s true for any symptom. If you husband has got a lot of pain in his knees, and he’s driving, and he’s talking about the pain, he will not forget it next time. The reason we always forget remedies is because the suffering is not severe enough. So, if the suffering is severe enough, those are the reminders. Pain and anxiety and worry and insomnia and stiffness and constipation are really powerful reminders.

Kate:  That’s so true, so true. This scenario that you’re discussing happened recently to someone that I know. She was taking Ignatia twice a day, and she stopped taking it because we weren’t sure if she needed it anymore. And so, time passed, and I wasn’t thinking about it. And then, we were trying to figure out why she’s having such a horrible time. And then we realized, “Hey, wait a minute. You stopped taking that Ignatia.” She started taking it again and guess what happens?

Joette:  Exactly.

Kate:  Yes. She was good again, and she thought, “Wow! Now I know that that was working.”

Joette:  That’s how you find out. That’s a great way of knowing. A lot of times, I work with folks, and they’re feeling as though there’s not much change in their case. I say, “Okay, look. Let’s do this. Don’t take any remedies anymore. Let’s not schedule any more appointments for a while. If you start feeling like things are coming back (that you hadn’t recognized were actually resolved), then start up again, and you’ll know.” It’s a great way to test it out. A lot of times people just can’t get their remedies. The pharmacy that we work with sends remedies all over the world. Saudi Arabia — very difficult to get remedies to Saudi Arabia. Very difficult to get remedies to Egypt and certain parts of South America — although homeopathy is pretty big in certain countries there. But nonetheless, if you can’t get your remedies, and you expected them to come in, you’ll know! Because what you thought was no improvement really was an improvement — because you didn’t realize there were a lot of satellite conditions that also fell to the wayside.

So, let’s go back to this boy again. For example, Ignatia is not only great for anxiety, it’s incredible for sleep! The parents hadn’t really been thinking about his sleep because they figured, “Well, he’s a busy boy, and he doesn’t fall asleep. So, it takes an hour. Yeah, it’s no big deal. What the real big deal is this anxiety that he experiences all the time.” So, meanwhile while he’s taking the Ignatia, sleep is restored. He can actually fall asleep within a few minutes. That’s within the range of normal. Now, he stops taking the Ignatia, and perhaps the anxiety is gone, but the sleep problem has returned. That’s reason enough to start on Ignatia again. So, the satellite conditions that you hadn’t necessarily thought of as important could be critical in determining whether or not the remedy acted in the first place, and secondarily, if it should be repeated and started up again.

Kate:  Joette, isn’t sleep often an excellent indicator? If you do sleep deeply, soundly, you wake up feeling rested — then you know that remedy is really acting.

Joette:  That is so true, Kate. What I have found time and again is that when a child … and I use them as an example because they’re so easy to comprehend particularly because children get more acutes, and we can see it so readily with an acute (but you can also see this in a chronic). But, let’s use an acute example: Child has a sore throat — strep throat for example — and you use Belladonna or Hepar sulph or Mercurius sol, Mercurius cyn, and you use any one of those medicines that act for strep throat so beautifully. Not all of them, you use. Choose one based on the symptoms, if possible. Then, you give that remedy, and the child falls asleep.

Sometimes people say, “Well, of course he fell asleep. He’s sick!” No, no, no. You’re rationalizing. The child was not asleep for several hours until you gave that medicine. The fact that the child fell asleep tells us something. You’re watching. Remember, homeopathy hones our observational skills. We have to pay attention. That’s why it’s so valuable for mothers because it’s the watchful eye of the mother that knows what’s going on with the children. It’s not that the dads don’t care, they just don’t have that fine-tuned aspect to them the way mothers do.

Kate:  Right.

Joette:  So, a mother will notice. “Wait a minute. Yes, he fell asleep. But, he hasn’t been sleeping for 15 hours! It only just happened after the remedy — within 20 minutes, or 5 minutes, or even 30, 50 minutes.” While the child is sleeping, he’s healing. One of the best places to heal is sleep. So, the child is healing. Now the child wakes up, screaming, let’s say, with the sore throat again. It’s really painful. The first thing an inexperienced mother would say is, “Oh, I guess the remedy didn’t work because look, here’s the pain again.” No, no, no. It means that’s the time to give it again. The child was doing quite well until the remedy wore off. It’s got to be repeated. These medicines need to be repeated. We’re talking about an acute here. So, it has to be repeated pretty frequently. So, he wakes up. He’s crying again. “Oh, my gosh! This is horrible.” Give him the remedy. Bam! Asleep again.

Now, in the morning, the child is a little bit better. The mother’s thinking, “Well, it’s a little better. But, why isn’t this remedy curing this?” Well, because it’s not one dose that does it — although I do report stories about that because I love telling these stories, and they’re so interesting. But more often than not, depending on the condition, let’s say whooping cough, it could take two weeks — but better than 100 days!

So, we’re always looking at relativity. How long will it take for this disease to be corrected with conventional methods or by doing nothing? Well, whooping cough, they call it 100-day cough. So, it could take 100 days. With homeopathy, we cut that back by large, large number of days, months. Or strep throat — instead of it lasting for two weeks (or even 10 days with an antibiotic), we can uproot strep throat in two, three days, but being mindful that the remedy is going to be repeated again and again until the condition is completed.

Kate:  So, let’s get back to that overall family picture. So, what we would do, Joette, you’re saying is make a folder for each family member. Maybe in that folder, we could start with a piece of paper that lists out their chronic conditions as well as something that they commonly have — if they frequently get ear infections — and start to study the remedies that are needed in those situations, right? Is that what you were saying?

Joette:  Well, that’s a little different. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s different than what I am saying. What you’re saying is, “Let’s figure out what it is my family suffers from, and own those remedies, and then know how to treat them.” That’s something different. That’s your study sheet. What I am saying is what we’re doing is taking notes. We’re writing up essentially a medical chart of sorts. We’re keeping notes on what the condition is that we’re going to be treating right now, not all the others that are also occurring. What is right now presenting? What is the biggest issue? Anxiety? Okay, then that’s what we’re going to write about. Is the other biggest issue strep throat? Okay, that’s what we’re going to write about. What if both are happening at the same time? Then they both are written about in that same sheet of paper. And then, we approach the remedy specific to those two major hierarchal conditions.

What I mean by hierarchal is that the child may also have insomnia, but we didn’t note that. Remember, the mother didn’t really notice that so much because the other two issues were so big. So, once the anxiety is complete — and the strep throat is no longer repetitive, and it’s gone — I would imagine the sleep has been restored as well because we used a remedy that was also useful for sleep. Now, we can look at the fact that the child bites his nail so deeply that it’s causing bleeding. But interestingly, Ignatia is used for that, as well. Most likely, that will somewhat abate. The mother may not notice it even though she’s watching. She may notice that there is no more anxiety and may sort of notice that he’s sleeping better and then notice, “Look. He’s not biting his nails to the nub any longer.” She’ll think, “Well, that’s because the anxiety is gone.” Maybe, I would think it’s because the Ignatia acted — because Ignatia is specific for that as well.

Kate:  So, what you’re saying, just so I can get this straight in my mind, is if there’s a situation with a family member, write it down. Just take the case, like you’re saying. Write the body part on the left-hand side (or mind, gut, whatever). And then, on the right-hand side, write down the symptoms. And then, you’re going to look at the overall picture, acutes and chronics, everything. You’re going to list on that one sheet of paper, right? Is that what you’re saying?

Joette:  Right. Well, you would only be writing down those issues that are the most important at that moment because if you start writing everything down, you’ll have page after page.

Kate:   See, that’s what I’m thinking, page after page.

Joette:  Yes. I wouldn’t go that far. I have a lot of times people tell me, “Well, 20 years ago, I broke my wrist. And I’m not really interested in that unless that wrist is a problem today. I’m not interested unless that wrist was broken, and it caused osteomyelitis or osteoarthritis that remains today. Otherwise, that’s kind of inconsequential. Now, if that person broke a wrist 20 years ago … and then 18 years ago they broke their ankle … and 17 years ago they had a concussion … and 16 years ago … and it’s injury after injury after injury, now that becomes reportable, or that’s something that is noteworthy. Why is this person having so many accidents?

So then, the first thing I start thinking — I don’t ask it yet, I wait until the person tells me more — “Is there a balance problem? Is this person uncoordinated? Is this person a daredevil? Is it because he loves to jump off of cliffs that this is happening?” I’m wondering why this is happening. Is this person a daredevil skier? Okay, well then, if it’s someone who loves to ski and does extreme skiing, then okay! I understand. But if this is just someone who’s a secretary and is walking to work, and this is happening all the time, that tells me either she’s clumsy, or she’s got a bone problem. There could be something going on with her bones. Is she vegan? Is she not absorbing her nutrients, so she’s not getting the right nutrients so that her bones are too frail? So, you have to start thinking of all those. You don’t start asking those questions, but you listen, and you pay attention. Always listening and paying attention.

So, sometimes details are superfluous, and other times they can be very telling and lead us in the right direction — old symptoms, old history. So, what I often put in that left margin is I write the word, “History” and then what part of the body it’s related to: “History: ankle broken; History: wrist broken.” Also, under that category, that cell — if you were to break this down into, say, a word, it would be a “cell” on the left or margin on the left — I would write down, “Concussion.” Then, if there was more to say about it, then I would obviously take note of that.

I mean, I worked with folks who have had a broken ankle just by tripping on a sidewalk. I mean, a mild trip — almost nothing. And then, a couple of years later, a tooth was loose, and this person is only 25. My first question is, “So, when was the last time you had milk? Do you eat yogurt? Do you drink kefir?” “Oh, no. I’m vegan.” “For how long have you been vegan?” “Oh, since I was 10.” “Why are you vegan? Do you have trouble with milk?” I mean, so you want to know these things. “Do you have a belly that distends? Do you have eczema that comes forth? Why are you not drinking and eating dairy products?” “I can’t stand the thought of what they do to cows.” So now, we’re talking about a person who has a problem with great empathy, and now they have a bone problem that needs to be rectified. That’s when I always have a discussion about how important it is to just buy good dairy from farmers who are responsible and take care of their cows.

Kate:  Yes. There are a lot of things to think about.

Joette:  Some of it just comes from experience. That’s why I always tell folks, “Treat everyone you can get your hands on. Have a lot of kids.” I’m not being facetious here. I mean it. Have children! If I’m speaking to a young married woman — have children! Have as many as you can possibly have. I’m serious about this. On many levels, it is very important that we grow our families. If that’s not possible, you’re in your 50s now, and you’ve only had x-number of children — I wish I had had more — then treat your pets. Own livestock. Treat your mother-in-law, your sister-in-law, your neighbor, your church mates, your homeschool friends. Join our study groups.

Look, I’m not here to try to promote my study groups — maybe I am. Okay, I am. I do want to promote it because I think they’re great. I really do. They’re very inexpensive, and it’s an opportunity to really learn. Because you’re not going to be subjected to just your family’s conditions, you’re going to hear everyone else’s family’s conditions. Guess what’s going to happen? You’re going to learn. It’s like being in private practice and listening and learning and growing your understanding, and your experience will grow exponentially.

Kate:  I agree. The more you use it, the more it’s going to stick in your brain. And then, when you need that information, it’s going to be there. Boom! You won’t have to dig out your materia medica, your repertory, all your course materials. You’ll know it! And in an emergency, that is so important.

Joette:  Well, it’s remembered more readily via story. As you hear someone’s story, and you hear about a husband who — like that blog that was written by my student several months ago about her husband being handed a glass of wine in South America at a vineyard where they were wine-tasting. As it was handed to him, it shattered in his hand and severed his hand. You will never forget that story! Once you hear it; once you read it; it will be memorable to you. Maybe you won’t ever forget it, but it’s more likely to stick. And then, you’ll remember the remedies that were used, and what she did and how she used those medicines to help her husband. I can guarantee she will never forget nor will her husband ever forget nor will the taxi driver who drove as fast as he could to the emergency room hours away from where the accident had occurred. So, it’s one of those things that if we can learn through other’s sufferings, it’s the best way to learn.

Kate:  So Joette, we could spend our entire days just studying this day and night. What’s your recommendation for how much time we should put into this?

Joette:  Well, it depends on what you want to get out of it. Of course, that’s true of any subject for that matter. But Joan Rivers once said … I actually like Joan Rivers. I think she was kooky and funny and irreverent. But anyway, she once said, “If there’s no door in the room, blow a hole in the wall.” That is so profound to me. It’s so simple. But it means, if you don’t think you know the way to do it, make it bigger than ever to find it out. Make it your life’s focus to figure it out. That will give you your pathway, by blowing a hole in the wall that will open up your world. And say, “I am not going to sit back any longer and take drugs as an answer. I am not going to sit back any longer and allow someone else to make the decisions about my children and myself and my husband. I am going to take the bird in the hand, and I’m going to run with this — right through that blown-in-the-wall hole.”

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:

03:59    Homeopathy started with the cat

05:55    Knowing Joette

07:06    Back pain

08:18    Using homeopathy with animals

09:20    Bleeding remedies

11:53    Pregnancy cell salts, tick bites, and scared dogs

14:47    Homeopathy with people

20:40    We are all aging

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Joette’s pregnancy cell salts program

Joette’s “Gatorade” alternative

Gina:  It had its fallouts, and I wasn’t happy with what I was seeing in my own pets and then also in pets that we were caring for.

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:  You are listening to Podcast Number 54 at practicalhomeopathy.com.

Hi! This is Kate. I’m here with Gina. I’m excited to have Gina on the podcast today because Gina brings a different perspective to homeopathy. She’s going to share with us today some interesting information that she has about using homeopathy with animals. So, Gina, welcome to the podcast.

Gina:  Thank you so much, Kate.

Kate:  It’s great to have you, and I look forward to hearing all of your wisdom because I see your name quite a bit on Joette’s Student Facebook page. I see how you jump in, and you’re always willing to help other people out and give suggestions. I so appreciate that about you, Gina. Thank you so much for your willingness to take that time out of your busy schedule and to help so many people.

Gina:  Oh! No problem. It seems like I’ve always wanted to do things like that. So, Facebook actually is good for that. It’s a good hobby.

Kate:  It could be worse, right?

Gina:  That’s right. My addiction is a healthy one.

Kate:  Exactly! That’s what I always tell my family. I collect remedies. It could be other things that aren’t as useful that I could collect.

Gina:  Yes! That’s so true, so true.

Kate:  So, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself?

Gina:  Well, I am a licensed vet tech. So, I graduated college in 1989 from the University of Maine. From there, I moved right into a local practice in my hometown. I absolutely loved everybody I worked with. The practice was super busy. So, I worked there for the first 15 years of my career. I did mostly anesthesia and surgery and care. We were a full-service clinic. So, we did everything from neutering to emergencies to any type of surgery, so super busy. But, I could see where the regular conventional medicine was falling through. It has its fallouts, and I wasn’t happy with what I was seeing in my own pets and then also in pets that we were caring for. So, I decided that I had to probably move on. At that point, I move to a holistic clinic that I work for now — which has been about 16 years.

Kate:  Wow! That’s great that you found a holistic clinic. I don’t hear of too many holistic vet clinics.

Gina:  No. No. There aren’t. So yeah, that was a lucky find. I happened to go to a conference and the veterinarian from there was speaking. My sister nudged me and said, “Hey! You should work for this person.” I said, “Oh! I doubt they need anybody.” And she said, “Hey, you got to go up and ask.” She had me ask, and she hired me basically almost on the spot.

Kate:  Wow!

Gina:  Yes, it was fate.

Kate:  Yeah. So, tell me how you got into homeopathy.

Gina:  How I got into homeopathy is kind of why I became less enamored with the medicine I was doing. So, what happened is I had my own personal cat, who I loved and adored, and he just happened to be not feeling really great. He was a young cat. He’s six years old. So, I did some lab work on him. I was quite surprised to find kidney failure. Kidney failure can be pretty common in cats, but certainly, even today, it’s not common in a six-year-old. So, I kind of went head-spinning and crazy — because at that point, again, I was just working conventional medicine. I was trying to figure out, “Why is this happening?” So, I went to a specialty clinic, and they ended up doing a bunch of tests and basically gave me the prognosis that he had two weeks to two months to live.

Kate: Oh, wow!

Gina:  Yes. So obviously, just like any pet owner (or any mom or dad), you find this out, and your head is spinning. You just don’t know what to do and can’t believe it. But, I put my nose down and said, “No, he’s not going to die in two weeks!” So, I just started doing a whole bunch of homework. This is back in the late 90s. So, we didn’t have a lot of internet access at all in personal homes (in Maine anyway). So, it was a lot of library trips, a lot of ordering books. I hadn’t heard about homeopathy at that point.

So, I was going to the health food store which was about 50-60 miles from my house. I walked in and the owner there, Jane — I’ll never forget her name — she said, “Why don’t you consult somebody about homeopathy on your cat?” I was just there to pick up some herbs to help with his blood and et cetera. So, I said, “Well, I don’t even know what that is!” So, she gave me her homeopathic veterinarian’s card, and I called him — he did phone consults. And, with his constant care over the phone, that particular kitty ended up getting two years of excellent, quality life. So, from two weeks to two months then we got two years. So, I was happy.

Kate:  Oh, that’s so great. So, let’s talk about how you came to know Joette.

Gina:  Okay. Obviously, I had seen homeopathics work with animals — because then at that point, of course, that cat was the start of it all. But I had other animals that obviously I’d played around with and did homeopathy and also consulted that same vet and had great success. So, years later, after I had relocated to the holistic clinic, I was experiencing some chronic fatigue and a lot of muscular pain. And all the normal diagnosis starts coming in: “Well, maybe it’s fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome.” I do have Hashimoto’s. I knew that for years. So anyway, I went to a lot of different local homeopaths, and I just wasn’t having any success. But at the clinic I work for now, we get Homeopathy Today, the magazine. So, I was flipping through that, and I found Joette’s name. I don’t even remember the article specifically, but I read that article by her and I thought, “She really resonates with me. I really like her approach.” So, I said, “I am going to call her and see if she’ll take my case.” And so, the rest is history.

I went from … I honestly could not stand upright. I was having a lot of back pain at that point. I had to stay bent over a lot which isn’t so good if you’re an animal nurse because you need to pick up things. You need to bend over. You need to move. She had me moving. It was pretty quick. Within a couple of weeks, we were seeing some major improvements. Then I pretty much stayed her client for about two and a half years. All that time, she was teaching me how to care for myself. So anyway, it’s been years since I’ve had to consult with her because she did such a good job!

Kate:  Well, that’s good!

Gina:  Yes! Yes! It wasn’t long after that we actually met at a conference. It was so good to get to meet her in person. Her hugs are the best.

Kate:  Oh! Oh! That’s sweet. Joette, we all want a homeopathy hug.

Gina:  Yeah!

Kate:  So, Gina, give us some tips about using homeopathy with animals since this is an area that you have expertise in.

Gina:  Sure! The biggest thing is keep your eyes wide open because unfortunately — or fortunately maybe — animals don’t talk. They also don’t lie! So, if a remedy doesn’t work, you’ll know it. And if it does work, you’ll know it. But obviously, it’s your observations that make the remedy choice successful. Don’t make excuses for a particular symptom like, “Well, he’s itching today because he went swimming in the ocean, and the salt …” You know, if you rinsed him off … just don’t make excuses for the symptoms you’re seeing. Just write them down. Repertorize them. They’re not your enemy. Symptoms are actually your friends, especially in animals because it’s going to be subtle. So, that’s the biggest thing is really be observant with animals and don’t make excuses about their symptoms. It is what it is. Use them. They’re very important to making them well.

One of the things that I was going to mention is that even conventional medicine — or the wrong remedy — can give me quite a bit of information like a breadcrumb leading me down my path. For example, a dog the other day we were doing a dental on had to have anesthesia for the dental because he had extractions that had to happen. The dog ended up with the extractions, a lot of bleeding. Of course, we give Arnica during this process, and Arnica was not working. The bleeding was quite profuse, and it wasn’t stopping. Despite Arnica in different potencies, we weren’t getting anywhere.

So, this was a great example of where a symptom and the wrong remedy can lead you to the right remedy because the symptom was bleeding. The wrong remedy was Arnica (because it wasn’t working). And our next choice was Phosphorus which immediately stopped the bleeding. So, sometimes when people give wrong remedies (or even in conventional treatment), they end up with a new symptom or a symptom that’s not clearing up, and then they become discouraged with the treatment or the remedy when actually it’s just eye-opening! Like, “If Arnica isn’t working, and this bleeding is happening, I need to move on.” And my next choice, in this case, was Phosphorus. It worked lovely.

Kate:  I think that’s beautiful. I just had a conversation with a friend of mine the other day, and she’s newer to homeopathy. She’s been trying some things. I mentioned to her as well … I said, “Don’t get discouraged because I know there’s something that will help. You just have to figure out what’s the right remedy. Because there are over 6,000 homeopathic medications, so, that’s a lot to choose from. Don’t get discouraged. Just keep researching and trying to figure it out and trying things. Something will work!”

Gina:  Yes! Exactly, exactly, “Something will work.” That’s what I always say. It’s just a matter of if you can find it. Sometimes you can never find it. I mean, I understand that, like you say … 6,000? Sometimes you can never find it. Or maybe there’s a problem that’s occurring that you don’t even understand. Like let’s say, if somebody is truly allergic to a particular food, and you don’t know that, and you’re continuing to feed it … simply omitting a food then makes your remedy choice clear everything up nicely. So yeah, we step back sometimes, look at the whole picture again, but there’s always a remedy that could help.

Kate:  Yes, I so agree. Okay, so what else do you have for us, Gina?

Gina:  I actually use Joette’s pregnancy cell salts program — that she has for women — for pregnant dogs. So, that was kind of fun to see that work really well through the gestation of a dog.

Kate:  How can you tell that they’re making a difference with the puppies?

Gina:  It’s hard to absolutely say that’s what made the difference, but the puppies that I have used it on have grown very nicely. The mom had absolutely no troubles in the whelp. And the puppies nursed well right away. The mom had lots of milk to give. They grew nicely. It learns well, very intelligent, not hyperactive, just even puppies. Yes, you absolutely could get that without using cell salts. But I believe, in my experience, that it’s helped give them a leg-up to being healthy right from the start.

Kate:  Oh good! That’s a great tip. Thank you. So, Gina, is there anything that you like to use when you have animals that get bitten by a tick?

Gina:  I do; Ledum, I’ll give. But honestly, I find it’s about 50-50. So, if the bite isn’t responding to it … because all I can go by is how the bite looks. Because the dog, honestly, often doesn’t act different — unless later they get sick with the disease. So, if I go by how the bite looks, I’m using Ledum initially. And if the bite isn’t responding — if it looks still red, inflamed and hot — I’ll switch to Apis. And the animals that I’ve seen that didn’t seem to be responding to Ledum respond quite nicely to Apis.

Kate:  Okay, thanks for sharing your experience with tick bites with us because I know that it’s pretty prevalent, and a lot of people ask about that. So, when we were talking earlier, you were telling me about some remedies that you have for dogs that get scared easily or scared during thunderstorms. Tell us about that.

Gina:  Yes, yes. How many dogs are scared to death of thunder?

Kate:  Probably a lot.

Gina:  Yeah, a lot unfortunately. There’s a lot of reasons why that can occur which is deeper. Most popular remedy was Phosphorus and then the cells salts: Kali phos and Nat phos. Which, I would say, Kali phos is amazing, I’ve found, in dogs for just a general tonic for nerves. I really had a lot of success with that cell salt.

Then of course, conditions to be aware of when you think it’s just thunder or just anxiety from noises: You may think that, but sometimes when animals don’t feel well, they become more reactive to noises. So, it’s not the noise per se, but it’s that they don’t feel well. Medication reactions can cause these behaviors, or anxiety and, of course, physical issues. And also, we can’t forget good training. Desensitization training is obviously needed if it is truly sound sensitivity. So, I will say — just like homeopathy in people — that what works for one doesn’t work for everybody.

Kate:  Right. So, we’ve talked a lot about using homeopathy with animals. Let’s switch gears now and talk about using homeopathy with people. Tell us some of your stories.

Gina:  Well, my friends got me a t-shirt that says, “That’s a symptom,” because that’s all that comes out of my mouth. I’m a lot of fun at parties. They start sneezing after drinking wine, and I tell them, “That’s a symptom.”

Kate:  That’s amazing.

Gina:  Oh! But, I know I’m annoying because I’m always trying to make people and things better and more well. I know that’s an annoying part of me.

Kate:  Oh well, I don’t think it’s annoying. I think that’s great!

Gina:  Oh, you don’t live with me. So, I’m always hounding, “Did you take your remedy today? Did you take this? Did you take that?” So, I’m honored that anybody would come to me and ask me for advice and think that I could help make them well. I always want to try to make people better and feel as good as I do. So, I obviously recommend Joette, but sometimes people aren’t onboard with homeopathy that much to consult with somebody, or financially maybe they’re not at the point where they want to make that commitment. But I tell them, “If we don’t have our health, we don’t have anything else.” So, to me, my health is right at the top of where I’m going to spend my money.

So yeah, my friends, they come to me; I tell them all the time to make sure that they don’t make excuses for their symptoms. A lot of people think symptoms are bad or negative. Symptoms are just symptoms. The more unique they are, the more special you should feel because they’re easier to find in your repertory!

Kate:  Oh, yes! That’s for sure. Yeah.

Gina:  And that’s my biggest advice to anybody getting into this is I learned on my own mostly until the internet came along, and obviously, once I started seeing Joette. But, I just read, and I read, and I read a page out of the materia medica or I read two or three pages out of the repertory. I wasn’t trying to put any one thing together. I was just reading it — because I think it’s fascinating. So, there are little bites that will stick in your head by reading a remedy in a materia medica. Then all of a sudden, you’ll meet somebody, and that will come up. You’ll go, “That person’s … I don’t know, Gelsemium. What he just said. What he’s doing.” So, there’s no shortcuts, I don’t think, in learning it. It’s just reading. Just like the old ways: studying.

Kate:  And then like Joette said, the more people that you think about what remedies will be helpful, the more kids that you have, the more experience that you have, you see that over and over again. That Gelsemium is great for this, and then you use it over and over again. You remember it, and then it becomes second nature.

Gina:  Yes, absolutely. You forget how second nature it is because somebody will be talking to you, “Hey, I’ve got this. What do I take?” “Oh! Just take this.” I mean, it just comes out of your mouth. You know.

Kate:  Yeah. It’s interesting. As I look at homeopathy kits — and now I read through the list of medicines in a homeopathy kit — and I think, “Okay. This is what you use this one for typically. This is what you use this one for.” And now, in a kit of 100 remedies, I can (most of them) say the top symptoms that you would use each of those medicines for. Whereas when I first started, it was only a few! I find that exciting!

Gina:  Yes, it’s an amazing medicine!

Kate:  So, the other thing that we were chatting a little bit earlier about is how people have a tendency to forget how homeopathy has helped them. Why don’t you talk about that a little bit?

Gina:  Like we were talking earlier, for some reason, when it comes to a natural medicine, they don’t like to keep taking it. I haven’t quite figured out why that is because people will take their blood pressure medication every day — almost right to the hour. But if you tell them that they have to do this remedy for maintenance for a chronic condition they have, for some reason, they just don’t like that. I try to explain to people, my family members or whatever, “Your house needs to be maintained. Your car needs to be maintained. Your health has to be maintained. Then if it can be maintained with something as natural as homeopathy, why wouldn’t you just maintain it with that?”

I guess people tend to get discouraged. You know, they get a bad knee, and they have to keep taking the Rhus tox, and they have to keep taking it, and keep taking it, and keep taking it. It works — but they have to keep taking it. Well, their knee is a real mess. So, their knee is never going to be brand new again. So, if it comes down to having to regularly take a remedy, that’s not a bad option. People, like you mentioned, sometimes they forget that the last thing they took made them well, and then they got well. And now it’s reoccurring, and now they’re discouraged. I often have to remind them, “Well, when you had this before, you took this remedy, and it made you much better. Remember? We just need to go back and use it again.”

Kate:  Yeah, that’s when those notes come in handy. We can look and see, “Yes! Last time I had that UTI, this is what I did, and it helped. Okay. Now, I’ll go back to that.”

Gina:  Yes, yes, exactly. Like Joette tells us, “Write it down, write it down.”

Kate:  You talked about writing things down because you can then remind people, too. When they come to you, “Oh, I have another UTI” (or whatever it might), you can say, “Well, last time this helped. Remember?” And then you can remind them.

Gina:  Yes. I do it for my family and my close friends. Luckily, I do have a really good memory, and, hopefully, it stays that way.

Kate:  Yeah! I think we all hope that. So, something else that you talked about earlier is that we forget that we are all aging. Talk a little bit about that.

Gina:  Yeah, we are all aging. That was one of the reasons why I actually reached out to Joette. Because again, it seemed like the homeopaths I was going to … they definitely wanted to help me, but they were giving me like one remedy and having me wait 30 days. And I wasn’t seeing anything whatsoever. I was becoming frustrated with my own body, my own self — feeling like a failure. Like, “Why isn’t my body healing?” When supposedly, I knew homeopathy worked because I was using it in animals. So, it got to the point where once I saw Joette’s articles, I realized she was using remedies more frequently. And, that’s what really resonated with me. Because, I thought, our bodies are all aging — we’re not getting newer every day; we’re getting older every day.

Kate:  So yes, we’re never going to arrive at this place where we never have any problems again. There are always going to be things that come up. I’m thankful that we have tools to address those things, and we’re not stuck just having to go to a doctor and get a medication that’s then going to bring on other symptoms that we need to fix. So, I’m thankful for what Joette teaches, and the tools that we have.

Gina:  Oh, absolutely. Homeopathy is probably 99.9% of what I use on my immediate family and my pets. For example, my boyfriend did his very first Ironman last year, and he never even took so much as one aspirin. He was powered completely by Joette and homeopathy.

Kate:  Nice!

Gina:  He was. Her “Gatorade” — her natural “Gatorade” that she makes with the cell salts in it — that’s what he drank. I mean he trains 8, 9, 10 hours a day. It took him a year of training to get to this Ironman in Canada that he did last year. Everybody else was walking around there all bandaged up. They’re popping the Advil, and he’s popping he Arnica and not one injury. He came away from that event without an injury and without a drug.

Kate:  That’s incredible! Wow!

Gina:  Yeah. He is incredible. He does what I tell him, and it proves it works. He’s quite an athlete.

Kate:  Wow! Well, thank you for sharing. I think if you don’t know about Joette’s “Gatorade” recipe, you should look it up. I think we’ll include a link here with this podcast, but it’s a great thing to have if you are out in the heat or doing something like that — like a triathlon — or just working outside a lot.

Gina:  Yes.

Kate:  So yeah, check that out. Well, Gina, thank you so much for sharing your stories with us, for encouraging us, and for all those great tips on using homeopathy with our animals. We appreciate you, what you do in helping so many people on the Student Facebook page every day. So, thank you for being with us and sharing your knowledge.

Gina:  Thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Joette. Thank you, Kate. And just my motto: Be more stubborn than the disease you have.

Kate:  I love it!

Gina:  That’s great!

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.

01:00    Traveling with remedies

03:54    Do X-rays affect homeopathic remedies

07:37    Traveling by car

11:48    Having the information at hand

15:04    Books to carry

18:21    Remedies to bring when traveling

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Homeopathy Kits available through Joette Calabrese

The top three single remedies you should travel with:

Related travel blog posts:

Joette:  Before you travel to a country that has diseases that are much different than your own, you might want to get this book. It’s super easy to carry around …

 Kate:  You are listening to Podcast Number 53 with Joette Calabrese at practicalhomeopathy.com. On today’s podcast, Joette shares her homeopathy travel tips and some of the most important remedies to have on hand while away from home. Now, let’s hear from Joette.

Hi! I’m Kate. I’m here with Joette today, and we are talking about travel. Travel is fun, right?

Joette:  Yeah. It’s fun, but it can also be cumbersome. So, let’s try to make it as easy as we possibly can.

Kate:  Exactly. So, let’s talk about how you travel with your remedies, and what remedies you might consider bringing and things like that.

Joette:  Sure. Well, there are lots of different kinds of remedy kits. The manufacturing pharmacies — these homeopathic pharmacies that produce these kits — have a very good handle on what you will need. Besides remedies that are obvious to you or to most people such as Arnica, and Arsenicum, and Nux vomica, they know that in a household, most people will need “this, this, and this,” as well. So, they do the thinking in advance which is one of the reasons why I love kits.

By a kit, I mean, usually it’s a plastic box. Sometimes they come in pretty hardened cardboard boxes, but more often, they’re plastic boxes. They usually have 50 remedies. My first kit had 29 remedies, and they were larger bottles. But they have 50 remedies or 100 remedies, and they’re the top, most frequently used for most households. So, what I love about them is that you’ve got exactly what you need, pretty much. I mean it’s not going to be perfect. You can’t have 6,000 homeopathic medicines, but you’ll have 100 — the top 100. Those are the remedies that you need to know how to use once you really start learning homeopathy.

But you needn’t know how to use every single one of them while you’re just traveling. That’s just the goal that you should have for the eventuality of learning more. So, at any rate, what I like about them is the bottles are small. Some people complain, and they say, “Those bottles are too small.” I say, “No, no, no. You don’t understand.” If you get sick, and you’re traveling — or if you’re home, and you get sick or someone in your family falls ill — you need to have the choices of the medicines. Then once you know that Arsenicum album, for example, is acting for this terrible, relentless diarrhea and vomiting, then you get out, and you buy a bigger bottle. But at least it carries you until you can get to a place, or you can have it sent to you directly from OHM or Amazon or Boiron or something like that. So, you’ve got them on hand.

So, for travel, you don’t know where you’ll be in terms of finding a homeopathic pharmacy. Now, throughout the world, they’re very plentiful. In South America and Europe, you’ll find homeopathic pharmacies on many corners of big cities and even smaller villages, but you don’t know that for sure. So, it’s nice to be able to carry that with you. We carry some of the kits in our office so that folks have that available to them, and we have special packaging for them. If you buy two different kits — then one is a 200 potency, the other is the 30th potency — then you get a special break. We also have produced a lot of information so that you don’t have to count on your memory or even my blog necessarily. But, there’s a lot of information that accompanies it. That makes it a little bit more valuable. So, that’s a great way to travel.

Let me mention that there is the belief that homeopathic medicines will be ruined by going through X-rays and electromagnetic fields. I’ve not put together a scientific study on this, but in my experience — and I’ve done a lot of traveling — I don’t find that that is a problem. I still — when I travel — I get my kit, and when I’m in the checkout area of the airport, I tell them that these are homeopathic medicines and that I’d like them not to go through the X-rays. They usually oblige me, and there’s no problem. It takes an extra five minutes or so.

But, through the years inadvertently, I have left some remedies behind. One of them might have been in my makeup bag or inside of my purse, and it goes through anyway. Then I go to use it — two days later, a week, a month later — and it still works. I’ve labeled them so that I remember. It’s just happened so many times that it’s becoming clear to me that it really is not a problem. So, I still ask them not to put these remedies through the X-ray because there are 100 remedies in one of the kits that I carry and 50 in another. They’re very small kits so they’re really very portable. But just in case, I guess I still am being a little extra wary about it, and I ask them not to. But, I have not had any bad luck with it so far.

Kate:  Yeah. I haven’t either. I’ve flown with huge gallons of black bags full of these — much to the dismay of my family who has to roll their eyes when I’m standing there and getting hand-checked. Oh, my goodness!

Joette:  Pat-down. It’s a pat-down.

Kate:  You know, not always do you get patted down just because you ask them to hand-check. So, those of you who are wondering — once in a while, they do require a pat-down when you ask them to hand check, but not always.

Joette:  I was saying earlier to you that I believe that a lot of times the pat-downs and the extra scrutiny is because the medicines are in liquid. When they’re in liquid, I find that is more often when they go the extra mile.

Kate:  However, I have had times with liquids where they haven’t done the pat-down.

Joette:  Oh, for goodness’ sake. So, yeah, nothing’s completely consistent.

Kate:  Right. Hey, I think we should do a “myth buster” segment where we talk about all the myths of homeopathy, like you can’t put it through X-ray, can’t be in heat …

Joette:  Oh, I love the idea of a myth buster program! That sounds great. Yes, lots of myths around homeopathy.

Kate:  Yeah! We should do that sometime. So, there are lots of myths about homeopathy, and one of those is about X-rays. You’re saying that you haven’t found that …

Joette:  … X-rays dilute the value of the medicine — I found that it does not do that. So far. And as I said, I’m not willing to take a chance with 150 remedies in one felled swoop, but so far, I’ve had no trouble.

Kate:  So Joette, what do you feel about the liquid homeopathic medicines? Do you feel like they’re a little bit more fragile than the pellets?

Joette:  No, I don’t think so. Some of my liquids have gone through, and they still act.

Kate:  Okay. Well, that’s good to know. Yeah.

Joette:  Yeah.

Kate:  I think also, it’s a good idea to label your box, your kit, your bag — whatever you are bringing the homeopathic remedies in. So that if they’re really busy in the TSA or if you’re traveling and you accidentally leave them somewhere, that people know how to get a hold of you. Because it’s happened to me where I’ve actually shipped remedies, and they have gotten lost in shipping, and they are gone. I do not have them.

Joette:  Prudent.

Kate:  Yeah. I think it’s a good idea to label them.

So Joette, what if you’re not traveling on a plane? Let’s say, you and your family are going on a camping trip or traveling across the states or in another country, you know, country-to-country? What advice do you have for traveling in a car?

Joette:  Well, it doesn’t change much. You just keep them inside the car itself. I mean, we used to do a lot of traveling to Chicago at Christmastime. There’ve been times when we were stuck in snowstorms. If I’d kept the kit in the trunk and somebody was not feeling well, we’d have to stop the car, open the door, shovel our way to the backend of the car, open the trunk, and get the remedies. So, you want to keep them on hand.

So, when my children were little — and even now with just my husband and I traveling alone — I keep the remedies right behind him, in the seat behind him so that I can reach over quickly. Which reminds me of a time in which we were traveling to Vermont, and my husband suddenly had tremendous kidney pain. He’d never had anything like that before. It was excruciating and abrupt. It was so painful that he didn’t know whether or not he could even pull off the thruway very quickly. He was perspiring heavily from the pain. He said, “It’s got to be kidneys.” He could barely speak. The pain was so horrible.

Kate:  Wow!

Joette:  It could have been a stone. It could have been just kidney colic that was extreme. Who knows? So, I grabbed the remedies that were right behind him, pulled up Berberis and Belladonna and started administering it to him immediately — we were on the thruway right on the side of the road with the trucks zooming by us. It took about … I’m going to say 15 minutes maybe? It’s hard to remember; it was years ago. He was better in, really, in about 15 minutes! It was over with! It didn’t come back again until perhaps a few months later. It came again but not as severely.

That’s not uncommon that we find with homeopathy. When you find the correct medicine for a condition, and you use it at that moment, the next time it presents, it’s often not nearly as severe. We used it again that time. We were not traveling the second time it occurred. It was the middle of the night. That was the last time that he ever had that pain and that sensation again — and it’s been years. So, it was good that I had it right there. Now, being on the thruway, if I had to get out, if the traffic was heavy, or we were in an inclement weather, it could have posed a little difficulty. So, I always try to keep them close by. I keep them in my bag.

Now, I don’t travel to the grocery store with my remedies. When I used to go to my parents’ house, they had their own remedies there. So, I knew that they had what I would need. But certainly, when I’m going to go someplace where I’ll be gone for somewhat of an extended period of time — a few days — then I take my kits. I take two kits. One has 100 remedies in it — very small kit, very, very tiny. We sell them at my office. Another kit has 50 remedies in it, and those are the 200 potencies. Then I also carry anything that my husband or I inadvertently need, have been needing from time-to-time that are not perhaps in the kit. Then I have a little ziplock bag for those. But generally, I just travel with these two kits.

Kate:  A good idea when you’re traveling is to do some investigation of the area where you’re going and find out what stores they have there that might carry homeopathic medicines — and more and more are carrying them now — because that can save you some packing room as well, if you can just go locally and get them.

Joette:  Well, also depending on where you’re traveling, homeopathy is ubiquitous all over Europe and South America. You’ll find plenty of pharmacies and stores, mostly they’re pharmacies. They’re on many street corners in large cities in South America, Europe, India. You see them everywhere. But in the US, you don’t know where you’ll find them.

Kate:  But quite often, you find them in surprising places, like grocery stores.

Joette:  Yes! Oh yeah! Wegmans carries them, and certainly Whole Foods, and Wal-Mart carries homeopathic medicines. It’s great!

Kate:  Yeah, Vitamin Shoppes.

Joette:  Right.

Kate:  So, let’s talk about another aspect of traveling and being prepared homeopathically. That is: having the information that you need at your fingertips. Because you may have the remedies, have those kits, but if someone gets sick — like your husband and you mentioned that kidney attack —how do you get the information that you might need to know? What remedy to use on the spur of the moment like that? I have a couple of things that I do. I know that you have lots of tips as far as keeping that information at your fingertips. What would you say?

Joette:  Well, I’ve been directing people just to go to my blog. But, a lot of folks are telling me, a lot of my students are saying, “Well, sometimes I don’t even go to your blog, Joette. I just write the name ‘Joette Calabrese’ and the name of the condition.” I think they’ve got a valid point. Not only because my website is not as sturdy as I’d like it to be — we’re in the process of updating it grandly. But until that time, there aren’t a lot of synonyms to use. So, if you think of “ear infection,” and the article was written about “otitis media,” then you might not find it. So instead, they just put my name in there, and they find it not only from my blog, but they’ll find articles that I’ve written for other blogs as well as articles that I’ve had published and speaking engagements that I’ve had online. So, you’ll find lots more information. Obviously, everything there is free. So, that’s a great way to find a solution to many of the conditions that most families would suffer from.

Kate:  What I do, also in addition to that, because I’ve done the same thing. We all have smartphones now, right? We can type in “Joette Calabrese, ear infection,” and come up with all kinds of ideas. But a couple of things that come to my mind are, one: those study groups because I’ve developed a close group of women who I’ve studied with over the years. These women, I know that I can call any number of them, and they are going to be there to answer my questions and to help me out. If I don’t have access to the information, they are willing to go in and look up the information for me. So, the study groups really give you that core group of people that are really going to be your support group and help you through those situations like that.

Joette:  Yeah, that camaraderie which is so important when you’re studying or learning something that is a little outside the norm because it’s not your average information. So, it also makes for people who are more excited about the subject and more passionate about knowing how to use this or that and willing to share information. It’s a great resource. Those study groups are wonderful. And not only with the Gateway study groups, but also in the courses — on Facebook, those folks who have taken those courses all have gotten to know each other. Many of them actually meet. One group is meeting in Florida. They’re coming from all areas around Florida and Southern US. They plan on meeting to actually meet each other physically after having been friends for so long on Facebook through these courses. It’s a very exciting movement that we’re involved in.

Kate:  The other thing that I want to do every time I travel is I want to take all my binders of the information from your courses, Joette. I want to bring them all with me, but I can’t put them all in my suitcase (or my family would really think that I’m crazy). So, I have made a compilation of all the protocols that are listed in your courses. I just carry those sheets of paper with me when I travel, so that I have that information at my fingertips, and I don’t have to bring all those binders.

Joette:  Well, I have a book that I bought many years ago that’s a desktop guide materia medica. It’s written by Gibson. What I like about this book (it’s not very thick; it’s hardbound), and what I like about my own materia medica for the same reasons, is that there’s not an enormous amount of information in each of the entries. So, what I’ve done has I filled it all in with my own experiences and information and studies and what I’ve learned from some of my teachers and my clinical experience and what I’ve observed in India. It’s all filled in. So, if I’m going to travel with any book, that’s the book I travel with. So basically, it’s a materia medica that I have filled in with my own notes.

Now, I’ve encouraged folks that when they purchase my materia medica that they do exactly the same thing. The materia medica that I’ve authored is not hugely extensive. Each remedy is maybe half a page or a page — at most two pages long. Whereas if you were to purchase the “Concordant Materia Medica,” you might find that, for example, Sulphur could be eight pages long. It’s almost too much information. It doesn’t leave you much room physically on the page to fill in the blanks for those areas that you have found valuable for your family or clinically. That’s one way that I would travel in the old days. Now, I don’t travel so much like that. I have them mostly memorized. I know what protocols to use, and it falls more readily at my fingertips.

But, I want to mention something else, Kate — and this is someone else’s book. It’s called The World Travellers’ Manual of Homoeopathy. I love this book by Dr. Colin Lessell, L-E-S-S-E-L-L. The last time I looked this up, it was on Amazon for a dollar.

Kate:  Wow!

Joette:  It’s the best book I have found that’s small that is laminated — so, it can maybe fall in the ocean a couple of times (the cover). It’s super easy to carry around. I don’t know that I would necessarily carry it. But before you travel to a country that has diseases that are much different than your own, you might want to get this book and look it up. So, if you have someone who’s going on a mission to Africa or other parts of the world where the diseases are different than what our bodies are accustomed, then you might want to get this book and learn exactly which medicines you should have on hand for yourself or your family and in exactly that potency. And then you could certainly do what you said and keep a file card on it, so that the person knows exactly what to do should they encounter that condition once they leave the US.

Kate:  Yeah, great idea. Okay, so we’ve covered bringing our remedies. We’ve covered how to find the information on how to use the remedies. Now, let’s talk about maybe some top remedies that we just do not want to be without when we travel.

Joette:  Let’s see if I can come up with as few as possible, just to really tighten this up as much as I can. The top remedy — especially if you’re traveling to someplace like Mexico, or the Caribbean, or a place where the food is going to be different, the water is going to be different, and you’re worried about dysentery or something like that — I can’t imagine traveling without Arsenicum album or Veratrum album. So, think of it this way. It’s the two albums, Arsenicum album or Veratrum album. I would use them in a 6 or a 30 for dysentery, for Montezuma’s Revenge, for Delhi Belly, for all the different names that are attached to this gut problem that people have by being exposed to water that’s different than what they’re accustomed to (or foods). So, I’m going to count that as one. Even though those are two separate remedies, Arsenicum album and Veratrum album, I put them somewhat in the same category because they work so similarly.

The next one that I can’t imagine leaving home without is Nux vomica. Because when we’re traveling, Nux vomica is one of those medicines that help with the jet lag, and eating restaurant foods, and not getting enough sleep, and over-the-top, and different weather conditions, and changing atmospheres, et cetera. Nux vomica is excellent. So, I can’t imagine leaving without that in a 30 or a 200 potency — perhaps both.

Then the third one that I can’t imagine living without is Hepar sulph or Hepar sulphuricum calcarea. It’s not two different remedies. It’s the same remedy. The second version is just the abbreviated name and the first one is the full name: Hepar sulphuricum calcarea. I would use that in a 30 or a 200 potency, probably more likely a 200 potency. It’s great for infections, ear infections, throat infections, eye infections. I’ve written about it on my blog and in other places. It’s what I call the homeopathic antibiotic. So, I love that one as well. That can also help with ears that get plugged up on travel — we talked about that in a blog just recently. It’s not the only one; we have others that could be just as useful. Pulsatilla could be helpful, et cetera. But, Hepar sulph is a great one because it covers so many conditions. So, there are three. I could go on, Kate.

Kate:  Right? Yeah, because I have, remember, that gallon-sized bag full of homeopathic remedies when I travel, so we could talk about everyone. So, let’s go back to Nux vomica for a minute. Let’s talk about how to use Nux vomica when you are traveling, and you’re not getting much sleep. How do you recommend to use it? Like for instance, how many times would you take it throughout the night that you’re traveling and not maybe getting sleep or in the days to follow?

Joette:  Well, today, I had these chocolate things: chocolate-covered pretzels. I can’t resist them. So, I bought these chocolate-covered pretzels. I thought, “Oh! How nice. I’ll just buy …  and I’ll have a few of them, and then I’ll give them to my son (because he’s here working with us for the next several days) and my husband. Everyone will enjoy them.” But that’s not what happened.

Kate:  What!?

Joette:  I have eaten so many of those stupid little chocolate-covered pretzel things that I actually feel very uncomfortable right now. It’s late afternoon for me. I started early this morning eating those darn things. I know that if I try to go to sleep tonight, I probably won’t sleep. Now, if I were traveling on top of it, that would really put me over the top.

So, why do I bring up the chocolate idea? It’s because when you’re traveling, you eat foods that are not usual to you. If you’re careful about how you eat generally, and then you can’t keep that up when you’re traveling, Nux vomica is a great remedy for if you start feeling uncomfortable. That’s exactly how I feel right now. I really should have taken Nux vomica before we started this podcast tonight! But I know that tonight, I probably won’t sleep unless I take a dose. So, I would take a dose of Nux vomica 200, probably about an hour before it’s time to go to bed. It would just bring me down from the chocolate, settle my stomach, allow me to sleep properly. I would not take it every day. I use it as an SOS from time-to-time when I’m stupid like this. “SOS” means Sorry that you did something wrong and feeling really Stupid about it — so SOS!

Kate:  I like that.

Joette:  But I’m never sorry enough to stop! Because then a few weeks from now, it will start all over again — like I haven’t remembered a single thing about it.

Kate:  Which brings us right back to that Nux vomica. So, when I travel overnight or don’t get much sleep, I’ll take some that night. And then I’ll take some again maybe a couple of times during the next day, and then maybe once or twice the following day — depending on how lacking I am in sleep and just how off schedule I am.

Joette:  Yes, because while traveling to get clear across the earth, it can take two days — sometimes two and a half days — and you’re sleeping at odd hours, et cetera. In that case, I wouldn’t just take one dose. I would probably take it every 12 hours for several days until my sleep was restored properly. Because once I get to India, every year I crash when I get there. I don’t take it generally while I’m flying because I don’t feel ill — although I probably should, prophylactically. But, I wait until I feel like I ate chocolate pretzels. And then I take it, and it does help. It makes a big difference.

Kate:  Okay, so I think we’ve covered our travel bases. We’re ready to take off in the car or on a plane now. We can travel knowing that we are prepared. There’s also a couple of blogs for those of you who want to follow up and know more about remedies to use while you’re traveling. You have one called, “Holiday Travel? Call AAA!” and that’s about anxiety for travel.

Joette:  Yes, for flying.

Kate:  You also have a blog titled, “No Jet Lag on My Trip to India.” So, for those of you who want more information on traveling and remedies for that, go to Joette’s blogs and look those up.

Joette:  So, having an interest in homeopathy is one thing but actually taking it on is another. So, if you plan on traveling or even if you’re just staying at home, but wherever you are in any part of the world, if you want to count on homeopathy, it is very important that you own the medicines — as many as you possibly can. So, birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Mother’s Day — ask for remedies. Buy as many as you can possibly afford, because it’s no good to say, “Oh, oh, I know the remedy for that. I know exactly what to use.” And then you go to your little kit, and you don’t have it. So, to be prepared, not only with knowledge but with the material acquisition of the medicines are both key.

Kate:  Okay. Well, thank you Joette for taking the time to share with us your travel tips.

Joette:  It was fun, 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.

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

06:12    Studying Classical Homeopathy

09:25    Fixing the dog

10:48    Curing the chickens; fixing the husband’s migraine

12:46    Allergy and the children’s take on homeopathy

16:15    Eczema

16:47    Sinus tooth pain

19:16    Homeopathy is life changing

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Belladonna and Similasan ear drops: for ear infection pain

Mercurius solubilis 200C: for yeast infection See blog post: Vaginal Yeast Gone with Homeopathy

Good Gut, Bad Gut course

Antimonium crud:  for dog’s skin condition

Ignatia: for dog’s PTSD

Arsenicum album: for chickens’ diarrhea (mixed with rice and bone broth)

Symphytum: for chicken’s bad leg

Coldcalm®: for colds

Symphytum/Rhus: mixed together for aching joints

SymphytumandArnica: an alternative mixed together for aching joints

Camphor: to antidote

Antimonium crud and some Arsenicum album: for eczema

Calc carb: for sinus pain and issues

Hypericum: for numbing, tingling nerve pain

 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. Your successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful. 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:  You are listening to Podcast Number 52 at practicalhomeopathy.com. Welcome to another Moms with Moxie podcast. I’m Kate and I have a lovely guest with me here today who is passionate about learning homeopathy. Welcome, Julia.

Julia:  Hi!

Kate:  I know we have other moms who are listening today to this podcast who are similar to you, Julia, in that they can’t get enough of learning about homeopathy. I know that you’ve immersed yourself in learning homeopathy, and you’ve been studying it with Joette for quite a while, I think. So, I look forward to hearing all about your experience. But first Julia, tell us a little bit about yourself and your family.

Julia:  I’m a mom of three boys, and I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My youngest, who is 12, wanted me to be certain to mention him.

Kate:  That’s great. Let’s start with how you first heard about homeopathy or got into learning about it. Can you give us a little bit of a background?

Julia:  I had a couple experiences with it—good experiences with it. My MD is also a homeopath. So, he helped me tremendously with some migraines many, many, many years ago. Then—what was it, seven years ago—I woke up one day with a terrible earache, ear infection. It was a Sunday afternoon. The only phone number I had for some reason was my Doctor of Oriental Medicine. I don’t know why I had it, but I’m glad I did. She said to send somebody to Whole Foods and get me some Belladonna and some Similasan ear drops. Within a few minutes, I could lift my head up off the pillow after being stuck there all day. It came back again, so I repeated again. I think it was just two doses and I was done. That was like mind-blowing. It was shocking! That was the first time that I was like, “There’s something here!” That was amazing. You know I could have chalked up the migraines to any sort of change of diet or hormones or anything that helped the migraines, but the ear infection was such a direct cause-and-effect. There was no denying it.

Kate:  Yeah! So even though your MD was also a homeopath, you hadn’t had that much experience with homeopathy, or you worked with him in the classical way?

Julia:  No. I worked with him classically for the migraines, and then when I would see him beyond that, he was very open to anything. Whichever route I wanted to go was how he would do it. But, he’s big into supplements and that sort of thing. I think maybe he asked me once if I wanted to go the allopathic route or the homeopathic route. And I chose allopathic, and maybe he just wrote it down the chart and never asked again. I don’t know why we didn’t do any more.

I went in one time. I had cellulitis on my ear. I don’t know how I got it. It hurt like the bejesus and he said, “Do you want to treat this homeopathically or allopathically?” I said, “Give me the antibiotics!” I regret that now. But, I didn’t know about Joette and all the beautiful things.

Kate:  Yeah! Well, we’ve all been there. We all had to start some place…so. After that point then what?

Julia:  Then I would buy some Boiron tubes and not know what to do with them. I even bought a couple of books, and I still wouldn’t know what to do with them. It all seemed really scary and overwhelming. Then one day, despite as near a perfect a diet as you could get, I had a yeast infection that would not go away. I had so little sugar in my life that I even had to cut out balsamic vinegar to remove the last of the sugar. And I could not kick this thing! That’s when I found Joette’s blog. I took whatever it was she recommended on there—Merc sol, I think—and took it away, never to return, no questions asked. Then I started following Joette’s blog. Let’s see, in January of 2016, I think it was, I was fed up of chasing the health hamster wheel and called her up.

Kate:  So, when you say you called her up, what does that mean?

Julia:  For a consult.

Kate:  Oh, okay! So, you consulted with her, and then you also have taken her courses as well, correct?

Julia:  I have; it was funny. The first time I consulted with her and she said, “So, would you be interested in taking any of these classes that I offer?” And I said, “No, no, no. If I had any extra time, I’d be taking art classes!” She very kindly said, “I understand.” I have to say it was less than two weeks later, there was such a dramatic shift in my health that I signed up for Good Gut, Bad Gut. Within a few months, I had plowed through everything she had to offer.

Kate:  Oh, my goodness! What a shift from wanting to take art classes to then diving into all of those homeopathy classes.

Julia:  It was amazing! It was life-changing, transformational, life-altering! It was fantastic!

Kate:  Yeah. Oh, isn’t that great? So, you’ve also taken this whole thing one step further, and you’re actually going to school for classical homeopathy?

Julia:  I am.

Kate:  Some of the people listening to this podcast often wondered that same thing, should I go to school for homeopathy. How can I get more of this? Because they have taken all of Joette’s courses and read all the blogs and the podcasts and the Facebook Lives. So, they just want even more. They want that foundation. I know Joette has talked about this that she says if you ever want to go into practice, you do need to go to school for homeopathy. So, give us a little bit of information about where you’re going, and would you recommend it?

Julia:  If I recommend it, that’s a tough question. No, I do because I can’t get enough of it, and it’s the only way to get more—other than just reading, which is great. I am looking at all my books sitting in front of me. I have quite a collection of homeopathy books. But, the classes take it that next step. Then learning to do the cases takes it that next step. And, getting feedback classically is that next step. So, it’s one thing to read it and learn it. It’s another thing to do it under supervision.

Kate:  You did mention to me though that there are pros and cons to that. If you go to school and you’re studying classical, but yet, you’re using the protocols that you’re kind of in two different worlds.

Julia:  It’s terrible being in two different worlds. It is such a mind switch. When I first signed up for the classes, and I thought, “I’m just going to take it just so I can get some more knowledge for me and leave it at that.” But then I really got hooked. In the middle of that first six months of the classes, Joette did another webinar. So, I signed up for that. I took that. I’m like, “Why am I going to school? This is the information that I need, and I want.” But, I was hooked so I kept going. It is very difficult to switch your brain back and forth between classical and practical.

Kate:  You’ve actually been able to share some of the protocols with some of the students in your classes.

Julia:  I have, yes—a couple of people I’ve reached out to who have been very open to it. One of them actually had worked with Joette prior. Then she joined the school. Another one is in the school, but she also worked with Joette. We talk sometimes on the Facebook page. And then a third one that I was paired up with to do some case taking, and she can’t wait to learn more of Joette’s stuff. But, she reached out to Joette, and Joette said, “I suggest you finish the schooling before you start watching the webinars,” which I think is really good advice.

Kate:  So, she’s not too confused, right?

Julia:  Right, exactly.

Kate:  What is the school that you’re going to in case some of our listeners want to know?

Julia:  I’m enrolled in the Homeopathy School International. I chose that one at first because they say after the first year, you get these friends and family certificate where you have enough knowledge to treat your friends and family. I thought that worked beautifully with what Joette did.

Kate:  Good! All right! Well, let’s dig into some of your experience using homeopathy. I know you have lots of stories from friends and family members to even pets, and dogs, chickens, all sorts of things. So, why don’t you tell us some of your experience using homeopathy?

Julia:  My first really big “aha” experience was with our rescue dog. We got him on a whim. He was “sicker than a dog,” to use that phrase. I was just going about this. It was really our first dog as adults. I have lots of dogs as a kid. But I went to the pet store and bought the bag of pet food and just did it in a normal way of being a pet keeper. Then a light bulb went off, and Joette’s voice was like, “You got this! You have the knowledge to fix this dog, to help this dog.” And so, I did. I got out the bone broth, I jettisoned all that crap food in the bag and got him good food. And then started tackling his skin condition with some Antimonium crud. He had some yeast issues on his paws that I took care of. We used homeopathy with him all the time — a little Ignatia for his PTST, the poor fellow.

Kate:  Oh!

Julia:  It’s a beautiful thing.

Kate:  So, that was your moment when you knew you could do it, right?

Julia:  It really was!

Kate:  Yeah.

Julia:  It really was.

Kate:  And then it’s so exciting when you see that change and that shift, and then you think, “I can do this. It’s attainable.”

Julia:  Absolutely. Joette describes it as a heady experience, and I think she’s right.

Kate:  Okay. So, tell us about some other issues that you’ve tackled with homeopathy.

Julia:  Well, in addition to the dog, I would treat our chickens. If they had some diarrhea, I would put a little Arsenicum album mixed in with some rice and again some bone broth, and then that would make sure that they would eat it all up, and the diarrhea would stop. I had another one with that bad leg. It wouldn’t leave the roost. So, I brought in again some rice and broth and some Symphytum this time. By that night, she got off her roost. The next day she was walking fine. In addition to that, my husband’s migraines — he will reluctantly admit that I have fixed him.

Kate:  Speaking of “reluctantly admit,” your husband, is he on board with homeopathy?

Julia:  He is but he isn’t. He is a healthy skeptic. He is a scientist by training and a lawyer by trade. Once upon a time, years ago before all of this, I was talking to him about homeopathy and he said, “Well, you know, if somebody told me there was some poop in some water, and they diluted it 200 times, I wouldn’t want to drink it.” So, I think something must be left in there.

Kate:  I’ve never heard it described that way before.

Julia:  That’s how his brain works. It’s great! But, he will take it. He calls it my “hocus-pocus,” but he’s coming around.

Kate:  Well, the more he sees it working, the more he will become a believer.

Julia:  Absolutely. He’s a big fan of Coldcalm®.

Kate:  Oh!

Julia:  But, that’s not my hocus-pocus. That came from a shop.

Kate:  Oh, so then it’s okay, right?

Julia:  Right. It comes in a package with its name on it telling you what it does.

Kate:  That’s funny. I think that’s how a lot of people are. It’s somehow okay when it’s in a package from the store, and it says right on it for sinuses or congestion. Oh well, that’s another whole discussion.

Julia:  That’s right.

Julia:  My almost 18-year-old son was the biggest skeptic in the house. He refers to this as my “placebo.” He has terrible allergies. I said, “Did you take your Claritin?” because I’m not pushing it. This is him. This is what he wants to do.

Kate:  Right.

Julia:  He said, “I did take the Claritin, but it’s not helping.” And I said, “Would you like to try some of the homeopathy?” He said, “Okay.” He tried it. And then, I was leaving the house, and he called me back in just about 15 minutes later, and he said, “Oh, Mom, your placebo is working.” He is going on a school trip to Bhutan and Japan and wants to take a kit—the remedies—with him. That is the biggest coup I could ever imagine.

Kate:  Oh! That is so exciting! Oh! Wonderful! Then your other children, are they on board with it as well?

Julia:  Completely.

Kate:  Good! That’s wonderful. Okay, so tell us, Julia, about some other people and how you’ve helped them because I know you have a lot of stories.

Julia:  I have a lot of stories. My Pilates instructor, about ten days ago or two weeks ago, she said, “My joints are really aching.” So, I gave her some Symphytum/Rhus and she actually immediately proved Rhus but realized it and put it all together. So then, we swapped her to Symphytum and Arnica, and she said that her joint issues are 50 percent better. Which I’d say—such a big issue like that in less than two weeks’ time to get 50 percent—I’ll take it.

Kate:  Yeah. Having your joints that are constantly aching be 50 percent better, that’s huge. That means that she can teach those classes without the pain that she was in, right?

Julia:  Absolutely.

Kate:  Now, let’s just talk for a minute about you said that she proved Rhus, because I know provings can be a scary thing for some people—they are concerned about that. But tell us how did you know that it was Rhus tox that she was proving?

Julia:  Well, whenever I give anybody remedies, I tell them to be on the lookout for anything that new develops. If so, stop the remedy and take some Camphor, or sniff some mint, whatever. She wasn’t concerned about it, and she liked the joint relief more than she cared about the sore throat. But I said, “No, no, no. We don’t want to do that.” So that’s when we stopped it. But, she just knew that the sore throat was not supposed to be there.

Julia:  Okay. And it wasn’t a scary thing for her?

Kate:  No, not at all.

Julia:  So, I’m not afraid of provings. As a matter of fact, right now, I’m taking Symphytum and Rhus mixture. And, I’ve proven Rhus a couple of times. But, I go back to it because it’s helpful. Now, I’m finding that if I just lower the potency, I can take it, and get the good benefits that I need without the itchy skin that comes along with my proving.

Kate:  So, when that happens, you get itchy skin, do you stop and take mint or Camphor or anything, or do you just lower the potency and then move on?

Julia:  The first time, I stopped and took Camphor. Then…I think I’ve actually proved Rhus maybe three times. Now, I just lower the potency.

Kate:  By doing so, those symptoms that were irritating—the itchy skin—they went away?

Julia:  Completely.

Kate:  How long did that take?

Julia:  The next day.

Kate:  Okay, so it was quick.

Julia:  As Joette says, “The best antidote is the right remedy.”

Kate:  Right.

Julia:  My husband’s good friend’s wife has struggled with eczema all her life, literally. She was willing to give this a go. And a little Antimonium crud and some Arsenicum album and her hands are not bleeding; they are not cracked. She has pretty much normal hands for the first time in her adult life.

Kate:  Wow! Can you imagine that? Having bleeding cracked hands your whole life?

Julia:  They looked so painful.

Kate:  I bet she’s a believer in homeopathy now.

Julia:  She is, yes.

Kate:  So, there was a friend, I think you said, that had some sinus/tooth pain. That is a really interesting story. Why don’t you share that with the listeners.

Julia:  She called me up; she was having terrible pain. The doctor has recommended surgery for her sinus. So, it’s a sinus issue. She feels the pain in her tooth. And she said, “What can I take? What can I do?” I knew what she had in terms of remedies. So, I flipped through my books and I said, “Try the Calc carb. See if it helps.” It did help. Eventually, she went to Calc carb 200 and the pain is gone. I believe she is no longer needing the surgery.

Kate:  You also said that at the time, you were going to school, and you were trying to also look at the case classically. Tell us what happened there.

Julia:  I did. I took her case classically for one of the casework that you have to do in school. I thought it can’t be Calc carb because that kind of came to me from listening to Joette all this time. I worked really hard to disprove the Calc carb remedy, but in fact, that was what she needed.

Kate:  Great how that worked out!

Julia:  It did, and I just had that again the other day. I had to take an acute case. My sister had broken her wrist and had numbing, tingling going up her arm. I said, “Well, take some Hypericum. We know from Joette the shooting pains are Hypericum, and tingling would be nerves and Hypericum.” I needed another acute case for school, so I took her case. Once again, classically speaking, Hypericum was the answer.

Kate:  That’s so great to know that it’s confirmed over and over again when you look at it both ways. But, you get to it quicker with the practical protocols.

Julia:  Absolutely. Oh my gosh, so much quicker. It’s crazy, the time it takes. It’s very frustrating. I’m listening to the classes, and I just want to pull my hair out and say, “Well, she needs Ignatia.” I would have to take a half-hour case and spend an hour repertorizing. And she needs Ignatia!

Kate:  That’s funny. It must be hard staying quiet in your classes.

Julia:  Actually, no, that’s not hard because they’re all done on DVDs. I think the DVDs were probably—it’s filmed—recorded 10-15 years ago. So, I’m talking to myself when I’m saying this.

Kate:  So, you can shout out, “She needs Ignatia!” That’s funny.

Julia:  I do.

Kate:  So, something that you have said to me over and over again is that you just cannot get enough of homeopathy, and how it has changed your life. Why don’t you give us a little summary about homeopathy, and how you feel about it—because you have a really good saying.

Julia:  I can’t get enough of homeopathy. It has changed my life. It has altered my life course. I never dreamed that I would be going back to school, number one—and number two, even considering becoming a homeopath. And here I am, well on my way!

Kate:  I am so excited for you, and I can’t wait to see how you use homeopathy in the future. So, thank you for taking the time to share with us today. We look forward to hearing from you again, Julia.

Julia:  Thank you very much. I couldn’t have done this interview before homeopathy. My anxiety was thick. And thanks to homeopathy, I can lead an easier life in my very busy brain.

Kate:  Thanks again for sharing with us. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Julia.

Julia:  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:

06:16    Unnecessary medicines

08:04    ER Episode

09:34    Choosing your doctor

12:38    The strategy of imposing fear

17:00    Taking care of the elderly

24:45    Top aging remedies

30:25    Modern medicine

40:25    New course: Mindful Homeopathy

41:13    Joette’s goal

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Ignatia 200 — for anxiety

Coffea 200 — for insomnia

Arthritis blogs

Darvocet banned

Hypericum or Arnica (or both) or Bryonia — for pain

Weston A. Price Foundation — nutrition and health

Practical Homeopathy® course page

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Free resources from Joette Calabrese:

            Podcasts

            Blogs

Most important remedies to own (remember to use the code “Joette” to receive 20% off your Boiron purchase):

Arnica montana 200C

Aconitum

Rhus tox

Kali phos

Symphytum

Hepar sulph

Joette:  You don’t live a charmed life in this world. Nobody gets away scot-free. There’s no such thing! The fate of your family is in your hands. 

Kate:  You are listening to Podcast Number 51 with Joette Calabrese at practicalhomeopathy.com. On today’s podcast, Joette shares her strategies for staying healthy now and as we age. We will learn about the top homeopathic medicines for anxiety and insomnia. And, stay tuned at the end of this podcast for an exciting announcement!

Hi, I’m Kate. I’m here with Joette. Today, we’re going to talk about growing old. As I think of growing old, all these negative images come to mind like wrinkles and gray hair and forgetting things. So, tell me Joette, what do we have to look forward to besides that? Not that you’re old, but you work with a lot …

Joette:  Yeah, because I have experience now that I’m as old as I am. You know, what’s really funny? I just had a birthday. I thought I was turning 67. I was certain I was turning 67. My son said, “Mom, you’re turning 66.” So, I added a year!

Kate:  Oh, my gosh!

Joette:  I’ve been adding a year for a long time. I’ve been thinking I was going to be 67 soon. It turned out that I was 65, and I just turned 66!

Kate:  Oh!

Joette:  So, I just lost a whole year. So, I have much less confidence in what I can offer today now.

Kate:  But, you’re much younger. Because you have your mother living with you, and so, you are very familiar with the aging process.

Joette:  Yes!

Kate:  You’ve walked through this with your parents.

Joette:  I do think that. As they say, “Stuff happens.” I suppose there are ways to slow it down. In fact, I think it’s almost empirically verifiable that you could slow things down. I think that a lot of it has to do with looking around you and looking at those who are not in good health — and then doing the opposite.

Kate:  Yeah, right?

Joette:  I actually told my kids that when they were little. Whatever everyone else is doing around you, do the opposite, and then you’ll be pretty safe — in general.

I wrote an article quite a while ago called, “My Dad and the Dead Cardiologists.” My father remarked how was it that he was doing so well. I mean he had his problems. There’s no doubt about it. But, why is it that all of his cardiologists were dying? They were like falling like flies on a windowsill? It was amazing! I think in the article, my father and I had accounted for seven, and then after the article was published, we counted two more that had died. None of these doctors was older than my father. They were all his age or younger. He outlived them, sometimes by as much as 25 years and in many cases, 10 years.

So, why is it? Did my father have fabulous genes? No. He had a lot of brothers, and they all died quite young. His parents died young. His mother died in her sixties. His father died in his … I’m going to say it was also in his sixties. He had brothers that died in their sixties. He had sisters that died in their sixties. One sister — now, my father was one of 14 — one sister lived to 99. But, she was the only one who had longevity — and my father, who lived to 90 (just over 90).

So, you wonder what’s the difference? I think that the difference has to do with how often you go to the doctor. I think the more we go to the doctor — the more drugs and procedures we submit ourselves to — the sicker we become. Then more drugs on top of that to deal with the side effects of the first drug, the second drug, the third, the fourth. I mean, I have folks who come to me who have a page-long of drugs.

Kate:  Oh, my goodness!

Joette:  It takes that many drugs. I do the best I can to help them, but it is a sad state of affairs. You know, my grandparents on both sides of my family were very poor — especially my father’s side — very, very poor when they came to this country. They were Sicilians. They were laborers. My mother’s side of the family also came with no money. They were also Sicilian on both sides.

Then my husband’s side of the family was very well-to-do. They did very well in the 1930s, which was unusual. They weren’t hurt by the depression. My husband and I have often marveled at how often his grandparents went to the doctor. They went frequently because it was considered the educated thing to do. It was an upscale thing to do. So, they did it! They thought they were being responsible to themselves and to their families by subjecting themselves to test after test after test. And then, hence, drug after drug.

People do have to make that connection: Test equals treatment. Just know that! A test is not there to prove to you that you’re great or that you’re healthy. That test is there to prove to you that you’re not well, and you need this drug. It’s that simple. So, they submitted themselves to lots of tests, hence drugs. And they didn’t live much longer than my side of the family — certainly, not his grandfather and his grandmother on the other side. One grandmother did have some good longevity, but she was anti-doctor! That’s what I think saved her.

So, when my grandparents got sick, my grandmother went in the backyard and picked dandelions and bark from the local herbalist and made tinctures and made teas and gave the family those kinds of things. When my grandmother gave birth, she gave birth at home — all of them. All 14 of them were born at home.

Kate:  14!

Joette:  14 kids. So, she knew her stuff! I think the more children we have, the more we learn, of course. We have to! We become less dependent on others.

Kate:  Here’s an interesting story. I recently went with my grandmother to the emergency room because she was having some severe pain in her back and in her abdomen. They were going to run some tests, but first, they came into her room with some medication for her to take. They came in and I said, “What is this medication for?” And, they said, “For nausea.” And I said, “Wait a minute. She’s not nauseous.” “Well, yeah, but she mentioned once that sometime today, she felt a little nauseous — one time.”

Joette:  Oh, for goodness’ sakes!

Kate:  I thought, “Are you kidding me?”

Joette:  Jump at it! Jump on that! You just move fast on that!

Kate:  Right! If I hadn’t been there questioning what they were doing, why they were giving that? And then you know one medication … like you said, the nausea medication, and then that might have caused some other symptoms and then that medication …

Joette:  Well, it would have. It has to! Conventional drugs must cause side effects. They are toxins. Now, it doesn’t mean they can’t do some good because sometimes the side effect of that toxin can be loss of consciousness — which is important if you’re going to go undergo surgery. But remember, it is a toxin! The liver has a hard time processing all that. It’s a very different way of looking at it when you realize that the side effect might be that you can get rid of headaches, but the real effect is that it destroys your liver.

Kate:  Right. Choices! You have to weigh that out. How badly do you want to get rid of that headache, and what are my alternatives rather than those drugs?

Joette:  Well, and the promise is specious. Even those who are promoting these drugs don’t even realize that these drugs are as bad as they are. They just listen to the drug reps.

Kate:  Thinking back to the emergency room episode with my grandmother, she had some stomach and back pain. It was under her ribs. I thought about this whole experience afterwards. If you’re going to take elderly parents in (or grandparents), be there! Ask lots of questions about what are they doing, why are they doing this. Because looking back, afterwards … she wanted to go. She was in some pain. We didn’t know why. They never figured it out. But, they did a CT scan of her abdomen. They put this radioactive dye through her veins. Right?

Joette:  Yeah, the contrasting dye.

Kate:  So now, her body has to process that. First, they had to give her fluids, so that her body could process those toxins and get them out quickly. But, she underwent that test and a couple of others. And, we look back afterwards, and I think the reason she was having the pain is because she was coughing really hard from some cold or something that she had. And I think she pulled some muscles! That’s what was causing the pain. They did give her a couple of different medications for acid reflux and something else (I can’t remember what it was now). So, she went home with two new prescriptions.

Joette:  Yeah, on top of the ones she’s already taking for her high blood pressure, the baby aspirin, the statin drugs, the leg cramp anti-spasmodic, the insomnia drug. Oh, yeah!

Dr. William Osler who was one of the founding directors of the Johns Hopkins University once said, “The person who takes medicine must recover twice: once from the disease and once from the medicine.”

Kate:  It would be interesting to know when he said that — at the end of his career?

Joette:  It’s hard to say, but let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about beginning and ending of doctors’ careers because that really matters in this discussion today. I love that you brought that up, because I don’t think that doctors come to wisdom early on. Who comes to wisdom when you’re, you know, 25? It’s pretty rare. You want a doctor who’s in his sixties. There are a couple of reasons for that.

The first is that there’s lots of clinical experience behind him. He has been in practice a good 40 years — maybe 35 years — and he’s seen it time and again.

You also want someone who thinks outside of the box, not just because of his clinical experience, but because he doesn’t care about the American Medical Association anymore or the board breathing down his neck. He’s in his sixties. He’s almost done! He’s going to retire in a few years. So, he’s willing to question the standard of care. So, that “standard of care” means they use this method because everybody else is. Yikes! That’s not a consensus. This is not about everybody agreeing on something. That’s not the way science works. Science is not based on consensus.

Also, he’s playing golf now on Thursdays. So, he’s relaxed. When he goes to work, he enjoys it better. He is more present with his patients. I don’t mean to make doctors sound as though they’re greedy because I don’t believe that they are. I do believe that most doctors go into medicine for lofty reasons, but they’re human. When they’re young and they’re not making any money (because they’ve just finished a four-year residency after medical school of three or four years, and before that, it was college), and all they’ve done is borrow and borrow and borrow money to go to the next level of their education.

It’s the same as your attorney. It’s the same as anyone who’s in a profession where it costs a lot of money to get to the top, and then they have great expenses. So, you want someone who’s not focused on his woes. He’s now gotten to the point in his life where he can really be who he is, and that is someone who cares about other human beings.

Kate:  You’re talking about choosing a doctor. Say, you’re working with your elderly parents. They want to have that medical care because that’s what they trust, right? So, how do you work with that?

Joette:  If you’re talking about that situation, that’s pretty rough to do. I take care of my mother; I am her sole provider right now. My brother shares it with me from time to time. But, he was taking care of her for a while; now, I’ve got her full-time. So, I have full control, and he’s on the same page as I am with her care. But, when my father was alive, that was a different story — not only for my mother but also for my father.

Now, my father trusted me. But, this is one of the techniques that you have to be aware of. He was a veteran. The VA Hospital, as well as the other doctors he was going to, called regularly to make sure that he showed up for his appointments. If they hadn’t set an appointment, they’d set it then. “You’ve got to come in.” “Well, no,” he’d say. My father did not want to go in because he knew what was up. My father figured it out a long time ago that every time he went in, he got more drugs — and also, they scared the bejeebers out of him. But, they convinced him almost every time until the last couple of years. But they convinced him, “Look, you have to come.” “Why?” he would say. Now, they know exactly what to say, exactly what to say to bring you in.

They scare folks. “Well, because if you don’t take this drug, if you don’t get this medication reinstated, you could die!” They actually say those things. The insinuation is you have to do this because this is for your health. You don’t want to go to the point where you could be very, very sick from not taking this drug or from doing this or that. So, it scares people.

When I was in television sales — I used to sell airtime for a small, independent television station. Then, I sold airtime for an affiliate of NBC in Buffalo — we were trained to deal with the objections. So, when the person said, “I can’t afford it,” you gave them the answer that was predetermined — that was canned of sorts — to explain why they could afford it. And then even break it down for them and show them how they could. If they said, “I don’t like your television station,” you gave them an example of how this television station was superior to the others (if you were dealing with competition). No matter what they said, we had the objection memorized. We knew exactly what they were going to say. There was nothing new. It was all the same kinds of objections, and we had all the answers. That’s how it works in sales.

I also used to sell real estate in Washington D.C., and it was the same thing in real estate. It was the same thing when I was on the board of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. That you knew exactly what to say when someone didn’t want to sponsor you because you’ve heard them so many times. Now, the person you’re talking to, though, has never been in this situation before. They’re brand new. They’re walking in like little lambs. So, they say, “What, really? That could happen to me?”

Kate:  When it comes to your health, people are worried in general, anyway.

Joette:  They’re already in a difficult state. Listen, I’m also culpable. I fell for all of this stuff myself — for years and years and years. I decided by the time I started to have my children that I wanted to have home births. But, it took a long time for me to get to that point. Because leading up to that, had I not gone circuitously all around trying to find the answers through modern medicine for my ill health, trying to find the answers through alternative medicine for my ill health, trying to find the answers doing nothing for my ill health, I finally came to the point where I said, “Guess what, Joette? It’s in your hands.” I’m a walking refutation. I can refute every one of these practically.

Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should never go to the doctor. I’m just saying, cut back — way too many appointments, way too many … you know, well-baby checkups, well-child checkups, OB/GYN checkups. This test has got to be performed. What about your colonoscopy? What about your mammography?

But, we don’t get to that point until we’ve been (like I have) beaten up, brought to our knees with conventional medicine, with drugs and procedures, and still found no answers — and then found something that actually worked. It’s not until you go that far do you realize that.

Getting back to your question, when you’re dealing with an elderly parent, it is very hard because they’ve grown up believing that modern medicine is a panacea. We’ve just found out after a whole generation-and-a-half or two, that it really is not a panacea. They’ve made a lot of mistakes. A lot of drugs have been put out there as perfectly safe: birth control pills, steroids, antibiotics (antibiotics are the big one), vaccines. We could go on and on about everything that they assured us was safe while they had a compliant audience. Because back in the day when my parents were young, there was no such thing as an educated consumer. We didn’t become educated consumers until recently. Up until that time, everyone believed what they were told, pretty much. Pretty much.

At least in our society, that’s the way it’s been. They just believed. People were not educated. I mean in college, not that you learn in college about any of this stuff … don’t get me wrong. But because they had not finished high school — my grandparents didn’t even finish grade school. My father just barely finished high school. So, because they saw that there were other people who were way ahead of them in education, they made the consequential and incorrect assumption that those people must know more, so, we must bow to that knowledge.

Now that we are all educated with degrees coming out of our Eustachian tubes, we have now realized degrees don’t tell you anything about self-reliance and about true health. In fact, if anything, the more educated the person is, the more pigeonholed they are into believing that modern medicine is the bee’s knees.

Kate:  So, how do we work with that? In our family, we have older parents. You have a parent that’s living with you. I know many of our listeners are dealing with aging parents. What can we do?

Joette:  Well, what I’m doing with my mother is super easy. I just use homeopathy. I mean there’s just no question about it. There’s no need to get a diagnosis for my mother. We know what the diagnosis is. We’re already there. When my mother gets constipation, I treat her. When my mother has indigestion, I treat her. When she’s got a rash or hives, I treat it. I just do what I know to do.

For my father, it was a little different, but, I learned as much as I could. So, if I knew my father was prone to palpitations, I knew my homeopathic palpitation remedies — because I knew it was forthcoming. It would be foolish for me not to know them. I knew my father could be prone to cardiac arrest. So, I knew my homeopathic cardiac arrest remedies. I knew my father could be prone to anxiety attacks, so I knew my homeopathic anxiety remedies. And I owned them!

And, I not only owned them — because I didn’t live in the same house, I lived about 40, 50 minutes away — so, I kept them at my house, and I had another box of them in his house, and they were labeled. Any time my father got sick with anything, he always called me first. So, I had an opportunity to make things right. I didn’t get it every single time, but I sure got it plenty of times.

I talked to my father on the phone twice a day every single day for the last decade. First in the morning, “Dad, how was your night? Tell me how you’re feeling.” Then that night, “Okay, Dad, ready to go to bed? How did you do?” I tried not to make it always about his health. I would share with him something that one of my kids did or asked him how Mom was or how did it look on the lake because they lived on the lake. “How does the lake look today?” So, you try to make chitchat and inevitably, they start sharing with you if they’re suffering.

Kate:  So Joette, do you think that is key to getting them to open up and share issues that they’re having health-wise? Is that open communication — so much communication?

Joette:  Yes. It’s a commitment. You better be prepared for it. If it’s not a mother or father, and someone’s the next step away … I had the same relationship with my aunt and uncle. I called her at least two to three times a week. Then when she passed away, I called my uncle pretty regularly because he was suffering so badly from grief. So, I called him everyday. So, it’s a commitment. Once you start, it’s like feeding the birds. You can’t just feed the birds and then winter comes …  “Aww, I’m going to Florida!” No, you got to be there. If you’re going to start this, you got to take it all the way.

I also urge folks to think this way: Just because you know homeopathy, do not tell your loved one, “Oh, oh, oh, I got the remedy! I know what to do! This will work! This will help you!” Never say that. Never ever, ever say that. Just say, “Here you go.” Because if you get it wrong — and you will get it wrong from time to time especially in the beginning — even seasoned homeopaths get it wrong. It’s not a perfect recipe. It’s not a perfect blueprint. It’s close, but it’s not perfect. So, you don’t want to lose their confidence in you. Instead, you just say, “Here, let’s do this.” “What’s it supposed to do?” “Well, let’s see. Come on just take it.”

Years ago, I had a friend who had a parrot, and it was the cutest thing. It was called Papagaio, and they called him Poppie for short. When they would travel, I would take care of Poppie. So, every time I would take the food into Poppie, into his cage, I’d say, “Here you go, Poppie. Here you go.” He’d come right over, and he’d knew that he was going to be fed. So, it’s kind of the same thing. “Here you go.” That’s all. I wouldn’t even say anything more. “Here you go.” “What is this?” “It’s homeopathy, and it’s helped me and my family.” Well, they want to know more. “There are no side effects. It’s regulated by the FDA. It’s medicine. It tastes good.” So, once you’ve gotten past all of that, and now they’re comfortable with that aspect of it, you go, “Here you go.” Don’t give any more information — because you can’t promise anything anyway.

Kate:  Okay. But, here is another thing, too. I recently had a conversation with someone I’m related to. They were struggling; they were in pain. I said, “What about trying this homeopathy?” And they said, “But, I don’t know what’s in that.” I said, “You don’t know what’s in the medications that you take! You’re concerned about homeopathy, but you’re not concerned about the side effects of the medications that you’re taking, and you don’t know everything about those anyway.”

Joette:  Well, that’s right. Well, they can just Google the medication. They can look that up. The problem is, now, the pharmaceutical industry and their minions have figured out that that’s what people do. So, on the first page, if you say, “side effects of acetaminophen,” all of them are titled, “side effects of acetaminophen.” You open it up, and it doesn’t say anything about side effects. “Oh, go to the next one. Oh that, that doesn’t say anything about it, either.” It’s the title of the link, but it doesn’t say anything about it. They are directing you to the wrong place, so that eventually you just give up.

Kate:  Yeah. So, you just get tired of looking, and you stop.

Joette:  Yeah. But, another way to do it is (there are sites that you can go to, and I don’t know them off the top of my head), just open up the little insert that the pharmacist gives you. You’re going to have to get a magnifying glass because there are so many side effects that they would have to put it in a book form, so they use tiny, tiny print.

Kate:  So, let’s talk about a couple of top remedies for people who are aging.

Joette:  Well, many elderly people have anxiety. I think one of the top remedies for that is Ignatia 200, twice daily. But, if they have insomnia — Ignatia can help with insomnia too, there’s no doubt about it — but it kind of depends on what kind of insomnia they have. Then we can also look at Coffea 200 because that has busy, busy, busy mind —  planning this, planning that and not being able to sleep, heart palpitations, the heart is racing, super anxious. It can be Coffea 200, twice daily as well — not in addition to — but it’s also a remedy that can be useful.

Kate:  Right.

Joette:  So, that can calm things down just to give them a little bit of relief, no side effects, very gentle. When the remedy acts — let’s say it’s taken twice a day everyday for a week or so — now the person says, “Oh, I’m feeling pretty well.” And then, we urge them to stop because we’re always looking for that sweet spot. Where is the place where we stop? So, they’re doing a little bit better, a little better. That’s the thing that you’re talking to your grandmother about. You’re asking these questions. Mostly, you’re listening more than asking. We’re always listening and observing and listening and observing. Just like if it were a child who couldn’t give you good information — because you don’t want to direct them. You want to just listen and know what to do from there. So, after about a week, if they’re feeling better, then have them stop. If it starts coming back again four days later, now you know! Approximately every four days, they might need it twice daily.

Kate:  Okay, so Coffea for not being able to sleep, anxious mind.

Joette:  Heart pounding like crazy, feeling like (oddly enough), like you’ve had too much coffee.

Kate: Too much caffeine.

Joette:  Right. I take Coffea sometimes when I eat chocolate too late at night.

So, arthritis is a pretty awful thing. I won’t go through the remedies that are specific for arthritis because they’re on my blog. So, just go to my blog and look up arthritis, and there it is. It’s super easy.

Digestion is a big problem. There’s a lot of bloating, indigestion, gas. Constipation is a big problem — that’s a really big one. Why is constipation such a big problem? Because it is … and so is sleep, by the way … because those are major side effects of most drugs.

So, let me tell you a story. I’ve told this story before about my aunt who was my godmother. I was very close to her; it was my mother’s sister. I gave her a homeopathy kit so that she could have … two kits actually, a 30th potency and a 200 potency … so she could have it whenever she needed it. As I said, I used to talk to her two, three times a week generally. She slipped and fell and sprained her ankle. And I didn’t know. I didn’t call her that day. So, my uncle took her to the hospital. (I think she didn’t call me because she was always saying she was worried that I was too busy — which was ridiculous. I’m never too busy for someone like that in my family.)

So, the doctor of course prescribed a drug. It was Darvocet. So, she took the Darvocet. She must have been in a lot of pain. My uncle said that she was weepy because of the pain. And, she had a heart attack that night, cardiac arrest and died. Now, my aunt had just reported to me a week before that she had gone to the doctor and had a cardiac test, and her heart was fine. No one in that side of the family had ever had a cardiac arrest. She had no history of any cardiological problems. But, she died of cardiac arrest. I was suspicious that it was the Darvocet. In fact, I was pretty darn sure it was the Darvocet. It turns out, not more than three years later, Darvocet was taken off the market. Why? Because it causes cardiac arrest in people who have no history of cardiac disease.

Kate:  Wow!

Joette:  Now, Darvocet has been on the market, I don’t remember, I want to say it was something like the early 60s, late 50s, it’s been on the market. So, it’s not like it was a new drug, and no one had figured this out yet. It’s not like, you know, when they say, “Oh penicillin. No worries.” That’s been on the market a long time. It’s an old drug. Everybody thinks, “Oh, well, ‘old’ means like ‘elder.’” No, it doesn’t. Old drugs can do just as much damage as new drugs. What is odd about this is she died in her bedroom. Not more than maybe 10 paces away from her homeopathy kit. That had she taken Hypericum or Arnica or both or Bryonia, or called me, and I would have told her to take those medicines — who knows, she might still be with us today.

Kate:  Oh. It’s so sad.

Joette:  But, that’s just one story. I’ve got hundreds! And I’m sure you have, too. Everyone does! You just ask around and anyone who’s got their thinking cap on has kind of noticed that when you take statin drugs, you get leg cramps that are often unbearable and relentless. When you take aspirin, you get hematomas and blood shows up in your stool. You can’t play around with Mother Nature.

Now, let’s put this aside because I’m really bashing modern medicine here. But, I always try to make this clear. There is a place for modern medicine. I do believe that tests can be valuable — not tests that require that you go just because you’re over 40 or 50 or 60. That’s ridiculous! You have your mammogram because you’re a certain age. You get a colonoscopy because they said so. I don’t think so!

But, if you have rectal bleeding, and you know it’s not from hemorrhoids, and you’ve tried other methods for a short period of time (homeopathy, in particular), and you’re not seeing a change, and you don’t wait too long (I would urge you not to wait too long), then you find out what it is! Get a colonoscopy! Find out what’s going on! It could be quite valuable to know what that is. If you have a lump at the axillary, under your arm, and you haven’t had that before — okay, now it’s time to have somebody check that out and find out. Is this a lymph node? Is this cancerous lump? What is this? Is it because I’m eating too much chocolate? A lot of people get that! So, tests can be very valuable. And we can see inside the body now like we’ve never been able to see. But, I would save those tests for when they’re needed, not just to fill someone’s schedule.

The second thing that I like about modern medicine is that if someone’s in an accident — in an automobile accident — you don’t pick them up and take them to a chiropractor or to a homeopath. Of course, you go to the emergency room! Those people know what they’re doing. There are things that they do that I’m not crazy about. But, on the way to the hospital, you’re administering the homeopathic medicine if you know it — and you ought to if you’re going to take this to heart. Then you put them into the hands of those who deal with this everyday all-day long. There’s no doubt about it.

The third reason that I like modern medicine — and there are probably others, too, but these are my main reasons — is that when you have to have surgery, truly have to have surgery, it can be a lifesaver. It can be a life changer. It can be a needle mover. There’s no doubt about it. Surgery can be very, very valuable. The drugs that accompany surgery can be valuable because when I had my tooth extracted, I thought about it. I seriously thought about not using a local anesthetic. I talked to my dentist about it pretty thoroughly. He had done it without a local anesthetic.

Kate:  Oooh!

Joette:  Yeah, he had his friend do it. He did it. I said, “So, tell me about this.” He said, “Well, it was pretty painful.” So, I am a chicken. So, I didn’t do it. I did get a local anesthetic. But I thought about it! So, the drugs that they use before surgery, of course! Hello! That’s where modern medicine shines. It’s in the chronic conditions and these drugs that are used just to suppress symptoms that I find it lacking.

So, this is about self-directed life. I don’t believe I’m speaking just to those who have elderly parents and grandparents. I’m hoping I’m speaking to the elderly parents and grandparents. I’m hoping they’re listening, too, and they start questioning — or continue questioning if they’ve been on this road for a long time. I work with a lot of elderly people who do not use drugs. So, they seek me out.

Kate:  So, for those who are wondering if this is possible, it is possible!

Joette:  Well, so far so good for me! I mean I had to have a tooth extracted because it cracked, and there was no integrity remaining. So far, my husband, too! So far, my children — of course, they’re young; they’re in their twenties and thirties. I’ve an old dog. Buster’s old. He’s 13. So, so far, we’ve been able to do it.

Kate:  And, your mother.

Joette:  And my mother, that’s right! And my mother. Someone told me the other day, “Well, the reason that you didn’t have to worry about taking your children to a pediatrician is because you were lucky.” Luck! Really? You don’t think my kids got chicken pox and ear infections and bronchitis and strep throat and conjunctivitis and injuries and broken bones? Really? No lacerations, never bitten by an animal? Really? Did you really think that? Stepping on a nail, croup, birth? Really? You thought that I just lived a graced life?

Kate:  And skiing, how about those skiing accidents?

Joette:  Skiing injuries, head injuries, concussions, we’ve had it all. Falling from trees, being bitten by animals, my gosh, we’ve seen it all. We’ve seen it all! You don’t live a charmed life in this world. Nobody gets away scot-free. There’s no such thing. And, the more children you have, the more you see of it. The more rambunctious and outdoorsy they are, the more likely it’s going to happen.

Kate:  Right! And you had all boys!

Joette:  Right. We had food poisonings. We had — oh, my gosh — eczema, parasites, constipation, diarrhea. You name it; we’ve had it all. So, the fate of your family is in your hands. It shouldn’t be in the doctor’s hands. This is up to us. It’s always been up to us. That’s why I never got relief from the doctors. It wasn’t because they were scoundrels. It’s because it wasn’t their life, it was my life. When they finished with me, they went on to the next patient. It’s my job to figure this out, and so I did.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to elevate myself by saying that I did it, and others haven’t. But, the only reason I can say that is because I was sick for so long from the time I was six weeks old. My mother and I were on a path. First, it was my mother alone, and then it was my mother and I were on a path to try to figure these allergies and food intolerances, et cetera, out — this chronic fatigue and everything else that was plaguing me.

So, it took me a long time. In fact, in Italian, there’s a term — I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing it properly — it’s called “testa dura” which means “hard head.” It took me until I was 30 to figure it out. What the heck! Why did it take 30 years? I should have figured it out when I was 20! I would get a urinary tract infection. I’d take an antibiotic, and I get another urinary tract infection. Then I wouldn’t be able to drink milk anymore! Then I get another urinary tract infection and take another antibiotic. What the heck was wrong with me?

And birth control pills, how stupid could I have been? Now, we’ve all been stupid. As I said earlier, I’m culpable just like anybody else. But finally, I figured it out. When I was 30-31, I decided, “That’s it. I’m done with the drugs. I’ve had it.” So, I just stopped everything. Then I slowly started to learn a little bit about vitamins which was vacuous as far as I’m concerned — vitamins, supplements. I learned about herbs which I thought was great, and I still think is good. I started to learn about essential oils which have their place, and nutrition — but I started off all wrong. I started with macrobiotics! My poor husband. “My God,” he said, “Kale again? No cheese even? Not even any butter with the stupid kale.”

Kate:  He was very tolerant.

Joette:  Oh! He was tolerant. He’s great. Then it was veganism. That was another several years. And, then I found Weston Price. I always loved cooking. So, it was a joy to learn some of these things, but they were very myopic — really narrowed down my choices. And then along the way, I found homeopathy. That turned my life around. It turned my world around. That’s what I hoped to do for others is to just help you turn your world around, too.

Kate:  Joette, I hear that so often as I’m doing these interviews for the podcast. I hear people say, “When I found homeopathy, that’s when it all changed. That was a turning point in my life.” And, it’s so exciting!

Joette:  Well, each one of those paradigms that I just described gave me a little bit of something. So, I thought I had little aha moments, but it wasn’t until I got to homeopathy, and then it was the tsunami of information and credibility and data and capability. It came at me with such a rush. It was a wind that came at me and just filled my sails, and I’ve been sailing ever since. I want to share that with others.

I don’t want to make it sound like Kumbaya here. What I’m saying is that if you knew the answer to world peace, shouldn’t you share it with people? If you know the answer to how to deal with health — not all illnesses — we can’t do everything. We can’t cure everyone. “Yes, all illnesses have been treated with homeopathy successfully, but not all people have,” said Dr. Prasanta Banerji to me once. But, if you knew that there was a way that that child did not have to have antibiotics for that croup or a breathing treatment for that asthma, don’t you think you should tell people about it? That’s what I’m here to do — to tell people about it.

Yes, I have classes. I have courses, and the courses are very much in-depth. They’re not inexpensive. But they’re very, very in-depth. We do have our Gateway classes which are very inexpensive and a great way to meet with other people and to study homeopathy together. But, if you can’t afford anything but to listen to me on these podcasts, do just that.

Kate:  Read your blogs, too.

Joette:  And read the blogs.

Kate:  Okay, before we leave today, I want to share some exciting news about a new course that we have coming up.

Joette:  Yeah, it’s called Mindful Homeopathy, and it’s about psychological problems, mental problems, emotional problems such as sleeplessness, anxiety, worry, fear, attention deficit disorder — all those things that fall into a different category than the general conditions that I’ve been teaching so far. Sometimes they overlap. Attention deficit disorder can often be related to gut. So then, I harken back to the gut course, as well. Anger — violence even — we can work with that with homeopathy.

Kate:  Addictions.

Joette:  Addictions, yes, thank you.

Kate:  Yeah, it’s going to be exciting. I can’t wait!

Joette:  Yeah, I think so, too! I think so, too.

My goal — one of my goals, I have many goals in life — but, one of my goals that could affect others is that I hope to reach 100,000 families by the year 2020. I actually think we’re really darn close to that. We’ve got two years left. So, I’m going to have to up that goal.

I want to see, if nothing else, Arnica montana 200C in every medicine cabinet in this world if that were possible. Aconitum — those are all important remedies — Rhus tox (very, very important), Kali phos (really important), Symphytum, Hepar sulph! Read about that on my blog. It’s free! Just read about Hepar sulphuricum calcarea, a very important remedy to have on hand for your family.

So, the fate of your family is in your hands, whether we’re talking about your family’s education, their well-being, the structure of the home, the wellness of their prayer work, the wellness of their health. It’s not up to the government. It’s not up to the doctor. It’s up to you. So, I leave you with that heaviness. But, there’s also a great deal of joy in accomplishing this mission.

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:

01:53    Advocate for one’s health

04:02   The true parameters

11:00    Treating rashes through homeopathy

16:35    Learning about Joette

22:33    Pregnancy journey

40:45    Using remedies during and after surgery

42:38    Dealing with pain

44:48    Newborn remedies and some success stories

49:17    Annie and the Aconite; some diagnostic tools

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

abbyloopers.org – Support group for transabdominal cerclage

Sepia — for “Monster Mom” moodiness and fertility

Mag phos — for post-surgical heartburn

Nux vomica — for post-surgical nausea

Argentum nitricum — for post-surgical anxiety

Joette’s blogs on Surgery Prep — “Answering Your Questions: Surgery”

            “Anticipating Surgery? Homeopathy Can Help”

Aconite 200 — for newborn entry after C-section and for shock after accidents

Chelidonium 6X — for newborn’s jaundice

Arnica — for injury (in pets as well as humans)

You are listening to a podcast from practicalhomeopathy.com where nationally certified American homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese, shares her passion for helping families stay healthy through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition.

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. Your successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful. 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:  You are listening to Podcast Number 50 at practicalhomeopathy.com.

Hi, this is Kate. I am here with Kathryn today. Kathryn is a brave, strong woman. You will be amazed at the stories she has to tell. I know that you will learn something today from her. So, Kathryn, welcome to the podcast.

Kathryn:  Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Kate:  I’m excited to learn from you, Kathryn, because I’ve heard some pretty amazing stories about the things that you’ve gone through, and how you’ve used homeopathy in amazing ways. So, why don’t we get started by learning a little bit more about you. Give us some information about where you live and your family.

Kathryn:  Sure. I’m from Texas. I’ve been married to my husband, Nam, for 14 years. We have twin, five-year-old daughters, Charlotte and Esther, and a newborn daughter, Rosemary

Kate:  As Kathryn and I have been talking, preparing for this podcast, I think that Kathryn is brave. That’s the word that comes to my mind when I think about Kathryn because she is one tough cookie. Let’s just put it that way. So, Kathryn, you say that you are a proponent of people advocating for themselves and that’s what you do. You are an advocate for yourself, for your children, for your family. So just give us a little bit of a background in how you came to be such a strong advocate for your health.

Kathryn:  So, my background … I really didn’t have a particular interest in anything medical or advocacy for myself until 2010. Then I was pregnant with twin boys and sadly, I delivered them very early during my second trimester. Isaac and Samuel both passed away very shortly after birth. That was horrible, and all the doctors that I met with — yeah — they all said, “Well that was a fluke. Well, that was a twin thing.” And I had lots of frozen embryos because we had done IVF. I assumed correctly that I would have twins again, and I couldn’t go with just a “fluke” or a “twin thing.” So, I really had to dig in and research and find out what had happened and what I could do to prevent it again.

That put me in contact with lots of other women who were courageous and brave and had gone through similar things and had a better outcome. It took me out of state and definitely out of my comfort zone. But, as my husband and I explored and researched that area, we really learned about advocacy. We had learned about understanding the true parameters of a situation. Just because somebody tells you what something is, that doesn’t mean that’s actually true. Sometimes it might be. But, we really learned how to identify correct parameters with our sons’ (Isaac and Samuel) passing. So, that’s where advocacy started.

Kate:  Kathryn, I can’t even imagine what you went through. I’m so sorry that that happened.

Kate:   So, Kathryn, can you give us a little bit more of an understanding what you mean when you say, “find out what the true parameters are.”

Kathryn:  Sure. So, when something happens, you go to the doctor that you have a relationship with or who has been with you through something. And, you ask for his expertise, and he gives them to you as if it’s fact. And, that may not always be the case. So, for me with my sons, Isaac and Samuel, I was told, “That’s it. It was a fluke. It’s a twin thing. We don’t know. It probably won’t happen again.”

I went to the next doctor, a specialist. I met with him. He said, “It’s just a fluke. We don’t know why. It probably won’t happen again.”

But then, I went to an out-of-state doctor who happens to be the world’s foremost expert, in my opinion, on cervical insufficiency. He said, “No, it’s not a fluke. This is a classic incompetent cervix. And here are your options and here is what I think is best and here is why.”

So, if I had just stuck with what those other doctors said as fact — fact: it’s a fluke; fact: it probably won’t happen again — then in all likelihood, I would have lost more children. So, because I really wanted to make sure that those boundaries were in fact true — they were correct — I found out that they weren’t! I was able to get other information and other insights.

Kate:  You didn’t take “no” for an answer, right? You just kept digging in and researching and kept looking for what you thought was the sufficient answer, and you really wanted to know the truth.

Kathryn:  I did. I remember sitting in the second doctor’s office that I consulted with. I said to him, “I feel like I’m fighting for my future children’s lives.” He kind of smirked and laughed and said, “Well, you’re not really in that camp yet.” But, I think he’s wrong. I was in that camp. I had frozen embryos that I felt it was my obligation to protect and to give a chance at life. I really was fighting for them.

Kate:  That boggles my mind. How could he even say that? Oh my gosh! So, you actually took a trip out-of-state to see this other doctor. You found him … do you mind me asking who this doctor was that you found because maybe some other listeners want to know who this is.

Kathryn:  Yes, Dr. Arthur Haney is at the University of Chicago. He is well-known for his work with cervical insufficient patients. He performs a particular surgery called a transabdominal cerclage which is a permanent cerclage placed through surgery. It is very different than a traditional vaginal cerclage that many women are familiar with. So, I was able to do a free phone consult with him and free email with him because he just has a heart to want to help moms who have gone through this.

He gave me the information. My husband and I prayed on it. We met with several older couples that we really trusted to kind of run through the information to make sure we were understanding it and thinking through it correctly. You got to have your people around you that you trust so that you can run information by them.

And, we ended up traveling out-of-state. He is in Chicago, and I had surgery there — which on the front end of it, going out-of-state for surgery and then staying in a hotel after being cut open, that sounded really scary to me. But it was fantastic! There’s a group of women who advocate for this particular procedure called the TAC. And they really helped to prepare me. It’s just a great sisterhood to be a part of, and Dr. Haney is a saint for helping all of us.

Kate:  So, when you say TAC, is that an acronym? What does that stand for?

Kathryn:  Yeah, TAC, T-A-C stands for transabdominal cerclage.

Kate:  Okay. So, there’s a Facebook group?

Kathryn:  Probably the best group to get information about that procedure is called Abbyloopers, and their website is abbyloopers.org, A-B-B-Y-L-O-O-P-E-R-S.org.

Kate:  Great! Thank you for sharing that information. So, then you healed from that, and everything went okay after that?

Kathryn:  Not quite. I thought that we would be able to jump right back into fertility and do a frozen embryo transfer. Unfortunately, I noticed that my vision changed. So, I went to the doctor because why wasn’t I seeing? After lots of trial and error and looking into different things, it turned out that I had a very small, benign tumor on my optic nerve. And, I didn’t know enough back then to know of alternative methods. I did ask the oncologist, “Are there alternatives to radiation for this?” He said, “No.” There were not. I don’t know what happened to my advocacy-self, but I think I was just scared because my vision had changed, and I couldn’t see.

Kate:  I’m thinking through this as you’re saying it. And, I think it’s so important if you can’t advocate for yourself, to have someone else who can advocate for you. If you are in the hospital, have someone there the entire time!

Kathryn:  Yes, absolutely. My mother and my husband were champions for me. But, we were still inside of a conventional paradigm. That’s kind of where … I don’t know that I failed. I mean that’s where I was at that time. But, I advocated for myself within that conventional paradigm.

So, I did end up having radiation for that tumor. Then after that, I had a wait period. Then, we were able to pursue fertility, and I did, in fact, then have my twin daughters.

Kate:  Wow! How exciting to have twins!

Kathryn:  It was very exciting.

Kate:  Okay. So, let’s talk a little bit about where in that period of time you learned about homeopathy.

Kathryn:  Sure. So just like Joette says, new mom really wants to make sure she’s doing the right thing for her children. Certainly, I had fought very hard to have these girls. I wanted to do the best by them. So, when my daughters were about a year old, one of them developed this really horrible diaper rash. It wasn’t minor. It was down her legs and up her backside and really painful for her. I tried lots and lots of naturopathic things. After a month and a half or so, it just was not gone, and it was getting worse. So, I loaded her up, and we drove an hour away to our pediatrician (because I can’t just have a pediatrician close by, of course, in particular).

The nurse practitioner looked at it and she said, “Well, have you done this? And I said, “Yes.” “Have you done this?” And I said, “Yes.” She went through this list of naturopathic things. I had done all of them. She said, “Well, you’ve done everything I would recommend. So, at this point, we really need to go ahead and give her a steroid cream.”

I know I hear everybody gasping, but I didn’t know and my child was in pain! So, I took the prescription for the steroid cream. We went home, and it was the tiniest little tube. (I look back and that was such a blessing.) But, I applied the cream and sure enough, that rash started improving. It did not go away by any means, but it started improving. Just when I thought we might be over a hump of it going away, the tube of cream ran out! So, in the time that I had to wait for the doctor’s office to call in to refill — and the pharmacy — the rash came back with a vengeance. Kate, I think it was literally a one-day delay. But it came back horribly! I went ahead and applied the second tube, and we went through it, and it never made a dent in the rash. It just remained really terrible. I’m so thankful for that, but I didn’t know that then.

So, I thought, “Well, if I take her back to the pediatrician, she already told me the next step would be giving her an oral antifungal.” I thought, “I don’t want to give her this oral antifungal. She’s a baby!” So, I really wasn’t sure what to do, but my child was still in pain. My husband said, “Look, take her to the doctor tomorrow and take her to a real doctor,” which is pretty funny because he knows that I would have gone through a naturopathic doctor or the chiropractor or, if I could have found it, a witch doctor — anybody besides back to the pediatrician because I did not want to give that oral antifungal.

Kate:  Yeah.

Kathryn:  So, I had my marching orders. Take her to a real doctor. Then I remembered, “Hey, there’s a real doctor who’s not very far. (Real meaning he’s an MD.) He practiced something called “homeopathy.” I don’t really know a ton about that, but it’s not going to be a prescription for the oral antifungal. And, it meets my husband’s criteria of a real doctor.” So, off we went.

Kate:  Did your husband know that you were taking her to an MD homeopath?

Kathryn:  No! No, I didn’t tell him. I did say, “Guess I’ll go to a real doctor.” So, we went. I took her to the real doctor, this homeopath. He asked a few questions. Well, actually pretty in-depth questions, and they were difficult to answer because she was 14 months old — and he’s a classical homeopath. So, it was pretty hard to answer those questions about my 14-month-old’s preferences. Anyhow, he asked questions. Then he did do an overall exam, listening to her and looking at her. Then he went over to his cabinet. And he opened a little bottle of something. (I think they were like Number 10 pillules — they were so small.) He put a few on a piece of paper and made it like a funnel, and he opened her mouth; put them in, and he said, “Okay, there you go.” I thought, “What do you mean, ‘There you go’?” I said, “Okay, so do I give this to her twice a day or a few times a day?” He said, “No. That’s it.” I said, “What do you mean that’s it?” He said, “That’s it. That should take care of it. If you need me, you can email me next week.”

Kate:  Meanwhile, are you thinking in your head, “My husband is going to say, ‘What in the world?’”

Kathryn:  Yes! We went and checked out, and I paid. So yeah, I drove home, and I thought, “My husband is going to be so angry with me. What have I done? I just got taken for a ride.” Because I didn’t really have experience with homeopathy, I didn’t really know what it was. I just knew I was trying to avoid that prescription medication. So, got home … I had to admit to my husband what I’d done. He wasn’t very happy with me, but it was bedtime, so we all went to bed. So, we woke up the next morning and I eagerly went in there and took her diaper off. Holy cow! That rash that had persisted horribly for over two months was 50% diminished.

Kate:  Wow!

Kathryn:  I could not believe it. I called my husband in there, and we just kind of stared in disbelief. That was on a Tuesday. By Thursday, it was totally gone!

Kate:  Oh, my goodness!

Kathryn:  I was floored. I was astounded. I thought I have got to know what that was. I couldn’t believe it.

Kate:  Right. So, did you call him?

Kathryn:  No. I dashed off an email to him saying, “You won’t believe this!” But of course, he did.

Kate:  Yeah.

Kathryn:  I had a friend at church who I knew used homeopathy. She and I started talking about it and looking at things. That was really over my head. There was so much minutia involved. I got a couple of books that were for moms and things to help with infants and children. I could kind of navigate through, but I didn’t have a ton of success. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I certainly didn’t have anything as grand as that rash that disappeared in four days, but then this friend came across Joette. So, she said, “I’ve got to show you this stuff.” So, she introduced me to Joette’s website and to the Banerji stuff. Wow! I could do that. I could learn that stuff. It really was distilled in a way that I could understand, and I could start using right away. But, it wasn’t really just homeopathy that Joette taught me. I think what Joette did was she came in line of a lot of other people who had prepared me, and Joette really gave me this message of freedom. I can be in charge of myself, truly. I really could do it. I really could take care of my family myself. That was huge!

Kate:  Yeah, that’s what you had been looking for all along. Talking about advocating for yourself — this is the ultimate!

Kathryn:  Absolutely. Absolutely, it is. There are times when — going back to that idea of parameters — you know, have to know what our situation is. Then within that, what are our choices?

Kate:  Which leads us right back to what you were saying in the beginning which is freedom.

Kathryn:  Absolutely. When my friend introduced me to Joette’s website, I actually went all-in. I joined a study group. I purchased several of her courses. And, I started working with her one-on-one to learn more about homeopathy.

Kate:  That is all-in!

Kathryn:  It is. I don’t think that’s typical. But, that was perfect for me because doing each one of those things sharpened what I was doing in the other areas. So, I could hear something in a study group and talk to other experienced moms. And then I could listen and learn in the course I was taking, and then have a one-on-one conversation with Joette and say, “Now wait a second. What did you mean by this or what about in this situation?” So, I was just learning a ton.

Kate:  So, let me ask you a question here because a lot of moms ask me, so should I take a course? Should I join a study group? Should I consult with Joette? They’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to go about this. What do you recommend?

Kathryn:  I think it probably depends on where everybody is individually, where they’re at. The reason that I started consulting with Joette was because I was desperate. I had something I like to call “Monster Mom.” I think other women can relate, but mine was really, really bad. I mean I had done five rounds of IVF at that point. Those are heavy duty drugs, lots of hormones, injections, I mean all sorts of things. My daily life really reflected that.

I had these precious daughters that I wanted and treasured. Yet, I would find myself screaming and just being ridiculous, throwing things across the room and saying mean things. It’s totally not me. I mean, I am a Christian woman and I love the Lord, and that is not how I act or how I conduct myself. Yet, it was happening all the time with more and more frequency. I was overwhelmed with life, and I just couldn’t get it together. So, I had tried all the naturopathic things. I had done all the fancy testing. I had done all the supplements and all the natural hormones. I had done prescription hormones. I had success with all of that stuff for about a month. Each new thing would be about a month. Then Monster Mom would come back and throw her head back and laugh and say “Nope!” She’s still there, and she’s still in charge.

So, I was really desperate. My family was desperate. We needed something. Monster Mom needed to be slayed. That actually is why I said I don’t have time to learn this fast enough — because I think I could have learned it, particularly with the Feminopathy course. I could have learned it. But we were desperate, and I needed to work with Joette to get a grip on it right away. She did in fact teach me what I needed to know. Not only was Monster Mom slain, but then this is pretty funny, Kate. A few months later, I realized, “My goodness, I haven’t had a period in quite a while. Huh, I wonder why not?” But we’ve never had a natural pregnancy, so I just didn’t really track my cycles. So, I didn’t think much of it. But then another week went by and another week went by, and I thought, “My goodness, where is my cycle?” I kind of worked myself into a frenzy. I thought, “This is it. My body has given up on me at 37.”

Kate:  Oh no!

Kathryn: “I must be full-blown diabetic.” Because I had been trying to uproot some insulin resistance in me, and I had decided, “Well, forget it! The homeopathy I was using didn’t act, and I’m full blown diabetic, and my body just isn’t having periods anymore.” I realized finally, “I need to go talk to my doctor — because if I really am diabetic, I need to do something. But before I go, I know the first stuff will be taking a pregnancy test. So, let me get that out of the way.”

I woke my husband up at two in the morning because I was frantic. I said, “You have to go to the 24-hour store right now and get a test.” He said, “No. It’s two in the morning.” I said, “You have to go! I’m freaking out!” So, he is such a great husband. He got up and he went at two in the morning.

Kate:  Wow! Wow!

Kathryn:  You know what? He came home, Kate, and I was asleep.

Kate:  Oh no! Oh my gosh! Oh, my goodness.

Kathryn:  So anyway, I woke up the next morning, and I took that test. I could not believe it. It was positive. I was pregnant. We had been married at that point 13 years. It was the first natural conception that we have had without IVF. I wasn’t working on fertility, but that happened. It was great!

Kate:  What a testimony to the fact that when you take the right remedies, it just fixes things that you’re not even intending to work on. But, it really works on your whole body.

Kathryn:  Yeah. So, the remedy that I had used was Sepia. I think a lot of people know that’s my all-time favorite remedy because it did slay Monster Mom in me. But then I got this little baby, my little Sepia baby.

Kate:  Awwww!

Kathryn:  You know, Kate? That threw me into, “Okay, what am I going to do now? Because I’m pregnant, and I do have that permanent transabdominal cerclage. That means that I absolutely have to have a C-section. There’s no other option.” I knew that when I had that placed, but that was okay with me because live babies were better than babies who passed away.

Kate:  Right.

Kathryn:  But, that meant I need a lot of interventions. I couldn’t have a home birth. I couldn’t go to a birthing center. I couldn’t even just have a vaginal birth at the hospital. I had to have a C-section. So, I was pregnant with this surprise Sepia baby, and I was overjoyed. But at the same time, I was really nervous. This was my tenth pregnancy. So, in all of my previous pregnancies, I had had hyperemesis gravidarum, — which I think a lot of moms know, that’s not just a little bit of morning sickness. That’s really, really severe vomiting and losing fluids. I would always end up in the ER and even hospitalized because I had it so terribly in all my previous pregnancies. So, while I was excited about this little surprise Sepia baby, I was pretty nervous about that. I had decided previously that in future pregnancies, my plan would be to get weekly IV fluids to help prevent dehydration. I would take whatever drugs they were giving for nausea and vomiting because I was trying to avoid ER and hospital. I was even thinking, “You know, I guess I’ll just get a port. So that I can have these medicines given to me very easily because I know I need them all the time.”

Kate:  Wow!

Kathryn:  I mean that’s how severe it was. But, I had a consult with Joette. I told her my fear. She said, “Why don’t you consider looking at these remedies?” The first one, it didn’t work for me. The second one didn’t work for me. I thought, “Oh no! This isn’t going to work. I’m going to have to use drugs.” And the third one — oh my gosh! It just stopped! I was done. I was done throwing up. I felt totally fine. I couldn’t believe it. That lasted for four days. Then the hyperemesis came back.

Kate:  Okay, so now what?

Kathryn:  Yeah, then what? So, I tried another remedy, and that was it. I took it twice a day for a few weeks. Then I didn’t even need it anymore.

Kate:  And that was it? You were done?

Kathryn:  That was it!

Kate:  Oh, my goodness.

Kathryn:  It was night and day. I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe it, because that was such a serious concern in all my previous pregnancies.

Kate:  Right.

Kathryn:  So, I did; I had this drug-free pregnancy. I only used homeopathy and nutrient-dense food. It was fantastic. So, I knew I would need a C-section. But, I still wanted to be in charge of how my care went — even with the C-section. So, I started really researching what needed to happen, and what I wanted, and what standard procedures were, and was that okay with me. Was that what I wanted?

Kate:  By this time, you’re gaining confidence in using homeopathy, right, because you’ve seen it work so many times.

Kathryn:  Yes, absolutely, because in addition to chronic stuff that I had been able to uproot, I still had these little girls and husband and at that time two dogs. I was helping take care of their needs left and right with homeopathy. I really, I was able to abandon all other modalities that I had been using because homeopathy took care of it. I just didn’t need anything else anymore.

Kate:  Yep.

Kathryn:  So, one of the first things that I realized was what a blessing it was that my husband and I decided to not carry medical insurance. So, we didn’t have limitations and boundaries that insurance companies often place over which doctors or which facilities or how procedures have to go. We are part of a healthcare ministry where we share costs. But, that puts us in the driver’s seat. So, that was a huge blessing that we had already made that decision a couple of years prior. And then I was able to choose the physician I wanted. So, I chose the physician who has decades of experience. He’s closer to the end of his career than the beginning. He’s at the top of his field. There’s nowhere else for him to climb. So, he doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. The other thing that was important to me was that he has lots of years of experience to remember when things used to be done a little bit differently.

One example is, currently if somebody goes in for a surgical procedure at a hospital, every surgical patient gets prophylactic antibiotics. Period. The end. That’s the story. That’s true for C-sections, as well. There actually can be good reason for that. But, I have a really unique situation in that I’m not allowed to go into labor because of my transabdominal cerclage. My cervix won’t change — and, and, and, and. So, there are other things that are really particular to me that I was able to research and realized — in my opinion, for myself — I don’t want those antibiotics. And because my surgeon didn’t have anything to prove, and he could remember when that wasn’t the standard procedure, he was fine with me signing a declination form for no antibiotics. So, that was one aspect.

Another aspect was I really had to know the actual surgical procedure. They use chlorhexidine to do an incision site preparation now. Well, that’s an antibiotic. I didn’t want that! So instead, I was able to say, “Hey, remember when they used to do the old Betadine preps? I want an old Betadine prep. Then when you close, just close the fascia and then give me a Betadine bath for two or three minutes. Then close the skin this way.” But, I had to learn all of that, Kate.

Kate:  Oh, my goodness! Wow!

Kathryn:  I had to do a lot of research. I had to talk to lots of medical people. Fortunately, because of my mother, I have access to lots of older nurses and old L&D people who remember how things used to be. But, you really have to learn what’s going on. Just because something is a standard procedure now, it doesn’t mean that that’s the best thing for you and your situation. So, you’ve got to be willing to dig in and look at that.

Another aspect of my pregnancy was, well, I had to deal with the hospital. They have consent forms. Have you ever read any of those consent forms?

Kate:  Oh yes! Actually, because whether it’s a dentist or any medical professional, they want you to sign lots of forms, right?

Kathryn:  Absolutely. So, I had to jump through hoops to get a copy of the consent prior to my surgery day. Can you believe that? They said, “Well, what do you need these for?” I said, “Well, it’s 23 pages. I can’t read that the morning of my surgery.” So, I got them a couple of months ahead of time, and I read through them, and they’re shocking! There are shocking things in those consent forms.

Kate:  Kathryn, you are amazing!

Kathryn:  Well, thank you. I don’t think the hospital felt that way.

Kate:  I know. It’s as if when you question, and you say, “I want to read these,” they’re shocked first of all. And then they act as if, “Why would you want to read these?” as if you’re crazy for questioning them and just not signing — which I do not understand.

Kathryn:  Well, I’ll tell you, later on when I did go (the day of (to sign them), I said to the ladies in the room, “Hey, do you know it says this?” And they were shocked. They work there! It’s their job to get the consent signed, and they didn’t know that that’s what it said. One of the things it says is it’s at the hospital’s discretion what they do with any body fluid, tissue or body parts from surgery. They can dispose of it. They can do research on it. Or they can bank it — which frankly it means they’re going to sell it and make money on it. No, thank you! Not with my body parts! That was all throughout the consent forms. Not just the one you sign, but it’s all throughout the booklet.

Kate:  So, did you cross things off of the consent form?

Kathryn:  No. I contacted the Hospital Advocacy department. They assigned me my own personal advocate because I called so frequently. And, we worked with the hospital’s legal department, and they drew up personalized consent forms for me.

Kate:  Oh! So, no one would think of this, right, that that’s even an option? You just think, “I don’t have an option. I have to do what they’re telling me.” But, that is amazing, Kathryn.

Kathryn:  So, that goes back to what I said at the beginning: knowing the true parameters. If I had just read it and said, “Oh well, this is what it is,” I would never have known. Kudos to the hospital because they did work with me; they really were great. Other things in the consent forms that might be concerning to people who listen to Joette’s podcast: the consent forms will say that they’re allowed to have a vendor, a medical vendor in the operating room. No, thank you.

Kate:  What is that? What is a medical vendor?

Kathryn:  I think, probably, if there is a material used in the surgery, and it’s sold by a particular company that a rep from that company can be in the OR. Something else in the consents was that you can send to the procedure being photographed or videotaped. I asked, “Well, what is the purpose of that. Is it for training purposes? Do you de-identify me? What body parts would be shown?” And they didn’t know. I said, “Well, no thank you, just no videotaping or photography.”

There’s a pretty blanket statement that says I consent to standard protocols that hospitals employ being enacted. I don’t know what that means. Does that mean they automatically give a vitamin K injection? They automatically give erythromycin eye ointment? They automatically give a Hep B? I wanted to have control and choice over each of those things. So, having that general statement of standard procedure was concerning to me. Then the last thing that was pretty funny to me that I had taken out of my consents was saying that I consented to having creditors text message my cell phone. I said, “First off, I’m already paid up — because I paid cash and I paid ahead of time. So, that won’t be an issue. But, no thank you, they cannot send me texts.”

Kate:  Oh, my goodness.

Kathryn:  You have to read those consent forms and know what’s in them. I don’t know that every hospital or facility would be cooperative. But, it doesn’t hurt to ask — and ask more than once. Ask more than one department and go up the chain.

Kate:  Right, if you don’t get the answers that you’re looking for, yep.

Kathryn:  Another thing that I really had to battle with in my pregnancy was the newborn screen. You guys are probably familiar with that. They do a heel prick and test the baby for a set of genetic disorders. Every state handles that newborn screen differently. Some states test for 73 genetic disorders. Some states test for only 22 disorders. What are they testing for? Is that necessary? Then most importantly to me, what did they do with that blood sample?

And so, probably a lot of people just don’t do the newborn screening. I actually, as I researched it decided, yes, I did want to do that. Again, it’s about choice. So, it’s about me having the education and doing the research, doing a cost benefit analysis. I decided yes, I did want the newborn screen. However, what they do is they take a newborn blood sample, and they put it on a blood spot card. I had to find out what they did with that. I really had to dig. I spent a lot of hours talking to my state health department, getting different answers and varying answers that didn’t seem to all jive. So, I spent a lot of hours digging into that.

I found out that they send the blood spot cards to a research facility. They do the genetic screening and send the results out. Then they keep that blood spot card for 25 years, and they do research on it. They can do experimental research, or they can do control research — just to make sure that they’re sticking with good procedures. They even trade those blood samples with other states and other labs. I thought, “No way!”

So, what’s the alternative? If I don’t want my state to have my child’s blood sample for 25 years, what else can I do? Well, in Texas, you can opt out of that. However, that’s all they tell you. They don’t tell you that if you sign the opt-out form, they still keep it, and test it for two years.

Kate:  It’s like a false statement that you can opt out. It’s not really opting out.

Kathryn:  That’s absolutely correct. I then said to the state, “Okay, well if someone opts out, when you do destroy it, what are you destroying?” They said they destroy the blood spot card. I said, “What about results from any testing?” They said, “No.” They don’t destroy the results from any testing. It was unclear whether they de-identify any results that they got from that blood spot card. So, I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me for the state to keep my child’s blood. You could go into a million what-ifs. But at the end of the day, if they don’t have the blood, there is no what-ifs. Kate, I come back to, I wanted that newborn screen. So, what could I do? Well, what I could do is I could do it privately.

Kate:  Yes.

Kathryn:  I found an organization, actually, that was responsible in my state for increasing the number of genetic tests that are run because they had had a son who had passed away from poor screening. So, I was able to purchase, very inexpensively, a private newborn screen kit that is superior to the number of tests that my state runs. I took that thing to the hospital, and they would not use it. It was a disaster because they didn’t know what forms to have me sign. They wanted me to sign a religious declination form that I had religious reasons I was refusing the newborn screen. I said I’m not refusing the newborn screen. We are, in fact, doing the newborn screen. They didn’t know what to do with me. Honestly, I don’t know what happened. I think they probably just wrote patient refuses to sign and put it in my folder. But anyway, they didn’t get my baby’s blood. So, then I went off the next week to our pediatrician. She pulled the blood sample, and I got to use my private newborn kit.

Kate:  This is all so fascinating. I am so proud of you that you stuck to what you believed in, and you didn’t just go with what they said. But I’m sure there’s more, right?

Kathryn:  There’s the actual C-section.

Kate:  Okay, tell us about that.

Kathryn:  So, I went in. I had again done research. I had actually spoken to several hospital pharmacists at my delivering hospital — several times — to have discussions about pharmacology, and the drugs that were typically used with the C-section. I had to meet with anesthesia ahead of time, too. So, I had this list of all these drugs that they typically use. There are a lot of drugs, Kate, that are just thrown at people when they go in for a C-section. I thought, “No, no, no, no, no, and no,” to a lot of them.

In particular, with my previous C-section when they do the spinal, they include a drug called Duramorph which is basically what keeps you pain free after the numbing wears off. But, I had a terrible allergic reaction to it. When I had my twins, I was hallucinating, and I was so itchy, and I couldn’t stop vomiting. I didn’t actually get to see my babies the first 24 hours because I was so sick. So, I knew in this C-section, I did not want to experience that. They couldn’t come up with an alternative for me. I said, “Well, then I’m just not having any. I guess it will really be just homeopathy.”

So, I went for my C-section. I had a special form that my surgeon (who’s wonderful) signed allowing me to use homeopathy in the OR. So, I did have bupivacaine which numbed me, so I wouldn’t feel the incision. They typically give a blood pressure medicine when they do that because the body automatically usually drops blood pressure. But the anesthesiologist was fine with me saying, “Let’s wait until I feel like I need it.” I will tell you that when I was on the table, I said to him, “How is my blood pressure?” He said, “Fine.” I said, “I don’t think so. You need to push that,” because I could tell I was crashing. Sure enough, by the time he got it, he said, “Oh yeah, you were dropping.” So, I did have those two drugs. Then at the end of my C-section, after the baby was taken out of me, I did have oxytocin — which I went back and forth about whether I should get or not. But because of my particular situation with my permanent cerclage, I did do a lot of research. I ended up deciding, yes, that was a good move for me. So, I had those three drugs.

So, during the surgery when I was on the table, I would have various symptoms that I needed homeopathy for. For example, I had terrible heartburn, and my husband would get out the

 and give me a pellet. If I felt nauseous, he would give me Nux vomica. When I was anxious, for me, I like Argentum nitricum. So, he had all of these in his pocket. He was just dosing me. Again, I wasn’t doing it on the sly. That was very important to me to be upfront with everyone. So, I did have that permission form that my doctor had signed, so that the hospital was comfortable with me using these medicines.

I had a doula in the OR. She was another set of eyes and ears for me. She knew everything I wanted including how to prep me and how to close me. She had remedies in her pocket, too, in case my daughter needed remedies when she was born. She didn’t, but we were prepared. Some people thought I was way overprepared for my C-section. But you know, Kate, I disagree because I made this flowchart in my head of, “It could go this way or this way or this way or this way or this way, and if so then what?” So, I was prepared for any situation. I had a ton of remedies with me at the hospital. I had fleshed out all sorts of things. Even if I needed blood products, I wanted to have my husband’s blood. So, we looked into a directive donation. There were reasons that that ended up not working out. But, I mean really, I was prepared for whatever might happen. I had it covered.

Kate:  And, can you really be over prepared? I don’t think so.

Kathryn:  No, absolutely not. My husband likes to say, “We’re only going three hours from home. You don’t need to pack our whole house. We’re not going to a third world country.” I say, “Yeah, but the grocery store there doesn’t have this.”

So, that was my C-section, and it went great. The OR was great; the staff was incredible. I had this little baby that was a surprise baby! When the numbing agent wore off when I was in recovery, Kate, that was really bad. I had gone ahead before it wore off, and I had taken some of the remedies Joette suggests on her blog for surgery prep [and here]. I fully expected those to act. Maybe they did, but I was in a world of hurt. So, for about four hours, I would say my pain level was between a 9 and a 10. It was not improving at all with the various remedies that I was trying. You know, I think it’s really important to note that at that moment, I didn’t have time to get on the computer and ask other moms for help. I didn’t have time to get a book out. I needed some relief because I knew I could sit at a 5 or a 6 of pain, but I could not sit at a 9 or a 10. I didn’t want to. I had a new baby. I wanted to nurse and introduce to my other daughters and just enjoy my family. So, I did ask for my surgeon to come back, and we came up with a drug to help with pain. Then that was it. That took care of the pain I was experiencing. I was able to use homeopathy for other symptoms and other things that came up for me and the baby. In less than 48 hours, I was out of there. I said to the surgeon, “Hey, I didn’t have antibiotics. I got to get out of this hospital.” He said, “Yeah, go home!”

Kate:  That’s funny.

Kathryn:  I want to emphasize, Kate, that I didn’t just go rogue during my pregnancy and C-section. I did work with my doctor to have a plan. I wasn’t going to not address pain from being cut open or the potential for an infection there. I just had a different plan than what the conventional medical community was offering. When my doctor was unfamiliar with using homeopathy in that realm, he was so respectful. He even asked me for my specific remedies and plan to make sure I had one.

Kate:  That’s great. It sounds like you had a fantastic doctor. I wish we could all have doctors that worked with us like that.

Kathryn:  He really is one in a million.

So, for my newborn, as soon as we got to recovery, I gave her a dose of Aconite 200 just to clear her from anything that she may have experienced. I knew that the bupivacaine was injected into me while I was still pregnant with her. So that was her first drug she ever received was that bupivacaine. Also, she was pretty jaundiced. They measured her, and whatever they measured, she wasn’t at a level where she needed further intervention — because I was ready for that fight, too. But instead, I said, “Well, I’ve got this Chelidonium 6X right here.” It was ready to go. I just administered that twice daily, and her jaundice cleared. It did take probably 10 days to clear it. But, it was pretty significant jaundice. I didn’t have to do anything else besides that Chelidonium 6X. It acted beautifully.

Kate:  You have done an incredible job of preparing yourself. You must have done so much research. I know what it’s like to have the remedies on hand for every possible situation. That must have taken you so much time to prepare that, and to know all the what-ifs, and then here’s what I’m going to do if that situation arises.

Kathryn:  It did. It took a lot of research. I had to go to the conventional medical world and say, “What happens if this; what happens if that; what typically occurs here; what typically occurs there?” because I was going to be in that world. I needed to know what I could do.

Kate:  Yeah. I think if you’re going to be in that world, you do — you need to know what to expect because then you can be prepared. If you don’t know what to expect, how can you be prepared?

Kathryn:  Right. And, you know, that’s true even outside of a hospital. Any birth, things are going to happen. So, be ready. We don’t have to be afraid of it, but we can be prepared.

Kate:  Okay, so not only have you used homeopathy with your birth. Can you give us a list of the things that you’ve used homeopathy successfully for in your family?

Kathryn:  Oh! That list is so long, Kate. We would need several podcasts to go over all my success stories. But, I can highlight a few. After my twins were born, I had de Quervain’s syndrome — which is a tendonitis or sometimes it’s called “Mommy’s Thumb — in both my wrists. I ended up having — this was years ago — I had steroid injections that didn’t work on one hand. I ended up having surgery on that hand, which is a terrible surgery. But, I didn’t have any other alternatives at the time. Sure enough, after I delivered Rosemary a few months ago, that de Quervain’s syndrome (tendonitis) showed up in the wrist that I had not had surgery on. But this time, I had homeopathy. So, instead of steroid injections and instead of surgery, I went right to my homeopathy kit, and I got the remedy I knew. I think it was three doses, and then it was done. It was taken care of. So, that was huge.

Another success recently, my mom was really sick. She finally went to the doctor. They diagnosed her with pneumonia and bronchitis and gave her a litany of prescriptions. She promptly put those away and called me and said, “Okay, what can I take?” I knew right what to give her for pneumonia and bronchitis. So, I took the remedies over to her. Within, I think, three days, she was all better and back at work. So, that was pretty big.

Kate:  Amazing!

Kathryn:  Also, I think just last month, my dad actually fell, and he hit his head and his eye on our driveway. And it was really severe, and he had a really awful gash. So, he had to go to the emergency room to get stitched up. While he was in the emergency room, my mom called and said, “Here’s what happened. I’m sending your brother to get homeopathy. Give him something.” So, I saw a picture of my dad’s eye. It was just so swollen closed. I mean it was like a grapefruit sitting on his face. It was terrible. I chose a combo remedy, and my brother picked it up and took it to the hospital. Within four hours, my dad’s eye was opened. The swelling was decreased. His eye was open. Within four days, it was almost totally gone. It was amazing. Looking at the pictures, it was spectacular. So, he needed to go to the hospital to get stitches, but we were still able to employ homeopathy in a helpful manner.

Kate:  And not only for humans have you used homeopathy, but with animals too.

Kathryn:  Yes, absolutely. One time, our beloved little Annie, she’s about a 20-pound dog. Somehow, she got out of the house and ran into the street. All I heard was my husband yelling, “Annie’s been hit!” My heart stopped. He ran outside and then ran back in carrying our dog. She’s been hit by a car. I could not think what to do. I was so overwhelmed. So, automatically, that muscle memory kicked in. I grabbed the Aconite. I took a dose, and I gave the dog a dose of Aconite. Then I was able to be calm and think through. “Okay, what do I need to do?”

So, my husband and I did do an exam on her because we are well-equipped with diagnostic tools in our home. So, I did that immediately and then at 10 minutes. And then I went ahead, and I did call the vet. I was able to report to the vet, “Hey, I did these assessments. This is what I’m seeing. Do we need to come in?” The vet was completely comfortable with the assessment I had done and saying no. I did monitor her. Of course, I was giving her Arnica, but she was totally fine. Now, she may be could not have been if she had been hit differently. But, I was able to take care of her in that situation with homeopathy.

Kate:  When you talk about diagnostic tools, what do you recommend to have on hand?

Kathryn:  Certainly, have a stethoscope and know how to use it on people and animals. You would want to have something to look at pupil dilation quickly — not just the flashlight you have to go dig around for, so I like the eye light. Certainly, an otoscope is important, a blood pressure cuff. Then you want things like tongue depressors and urine dipsticks and rapid strep tests, a glucometer. Those are all the things that I think are necessary just for a basic home diagnostic tool kit.

Kate:  There’s a lot of ways to learn how to use those things nowadays with the internet. There are a lot of classes that you can take online or even just YouTube.

Kathryn:  Absolutely.

Kate:  So, Kathryn, I feel like we could go on and on and on. I just want to sit here and listen to you and learn more. But, let’s wrap today’s conversation up by just talking again about that freedom. Just give our listeners one final thought about the freedom that you have with the knowledge that you have gained.

Kathryn:  The overarching theme that homeopathy has brought my family is definitely freedom — freedom to research, freedom to decide which course of action is best for us. I recently heard a doctor tell somebody that with the medications he was taking, even one drop of alcohol would become toxic. I know that the patient heard that doctor say that and thought, “Oh wow, definitely no more alcohol for him ever again.” But what I thought was, “Are you kidding? What kind of drugs is that man putting in his body everyday that makes a normal beverage toxic to him?” So, I think that we really have to be willing to have that paradigm switch. We have to be willing to think about things differently, and ask, “How can we get freedom?” Are we truly living on our terms the way that we want to? So, we have to question and examine from different paradigms. With homeopathy, I don’t have to be a slave to any one paradigm at all. I’m in charge.

Kate:  Kathryn, thank you so much for sharing all of this information with us. I learned so much tonight. I feel like we could go on and on and even have a part two podcast. Maybe we will someday. I don’t know. But thank you again.

Kathryn:  Thank you so much for having me and thank you to this community and for Joette educating us and giving us this freedom. It’s a huge blessing!

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, 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.