Joette Calabrese Podcast

In this podcast, we cover:

03:30     Lyme disease, its origin and remedies

08:31     Joette shares her take on Lyme disease

17:37     Treating the symptoms like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, leaky gut

22:20     Symphytum and Rhus tox for joint pain

24:13     Coinfections, Lyme testing

29:19     Some more Q&A

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

Paola:  It’s Podcast 29 at joettecalabrese.com. Today, we’re going to talk about Lyme disease. For today’s podcast, we’ve taken a lot of questions that people have submitted to Joette about Lyme disease. So, before we get into the questions, we’re going to spend a little bit of time defining how Joette views Lyme disease — using her lens of homeopathy. So, we’re going to look at Lyme disease and how it’s affected the news and the media. We’re going to look at chronic Lyme disease versus acute Lyme disease. An interesting tidbit: we’re going to learn about where the word Lyme disease came from. Then we’re going to delve into your questions. I think this is going to be a great episode. So, here we go.

Hi! I’m here with Joette. I’m excited to do another podcast with you, Joette. Hi!

Joette:  Yes. I always look forward to these, Paola.

Paola:  Thank you, me too. Today’s topic is a really hot button topic especially this summer. Have you heard about kind of the frenzy around Lyme disease this summer?

Joette:  Oh yes, it’s everywhere.

Paola:  I think the media is saying that this is going to be one of the worst summers for Lyme disease.

Joette:  I have heard of that. But the news says Zika is going to kill every child; that SARS is going to make you cough your guts out; that Legionnaires’ is … I mean, they do this every year.

Paola:  Yes. When I was in high school, it was the bird flu.

Joette:  Swine flu, bird flu, Asian flu, we’re all doomed. We’re just doomed. So, I never paid much attention to that. I mean, it’s every single year there’s a scare. I think it happens for a couple of different reasons. We won’t go into that in this particular podcast. But I think there are reasons for all of that.

Paola:  Well, I feel like if anyone here is listening, they might feel like you were right on those other diseases. But they might feel like Lyme disease is a legitimate concern.

Joette:  All of them are legitimate concerns.

Paola:  Oh, okay.

Joette:  Do you know what I mean? When you think about it, SARS, that’s a legitimate concern. People were dying in Toronto, or so they said. We don’t really know. We never really got the end. I don’t mean to say that they’re lying. I’m not attaching myself to a conspiracy theory. But we don’t really know the end numbers to these kinds of things and what really occurred.

Paola:  Yes. They’re not well-reported.

Joette:  No matter what it is, it’s a threat. Lyme is generally not life-threatening, so, we can put that aside. It doesn’t kill people. I mean, could you die from Lyme? I suppose it’s possible. But, it doesn’t have a high mortality rate. It’s more a chronic condition.

Paola:  Yes, more of a life-altering condition.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  I have here a number of great questions that our social media team has been collecting in regards to Lyme disease. I want to go through some of these. But basically, I want to review your position on Lyme disease so that our listeners who might be new to you, Joette, can understand. What is your position on Lyme disease as far as treating it with homeopathy? Do we treat this broad, chronic Lyme disease?

Joette:  Here’s the thing: Is it Lyme because someone just got a bull’s-eye rash and they just pulled a tick off of their arm a few days ago? Or are we talking about this chronic Lyme that they’re discussing?

Paola:  Okay. Well, let’s talk about acute first.

Joette:  Okay, which is the Lyme that I’ve written about on my blog. I knew that there was such a thing as chronic Lyme, but it wasn’t as big as it has been in the news, et cetera, when I wrote that original blog some three years ago. So, the way I looked at Lyme generally (even though I knew it could go chronic — we understand that) is that Lyme is from a bacteria from a deer tick. And, I know that any kind of insect bite, pretty much, you use Ledum palustre. That’s what I wrote in my blog, Ledum palustre 200C. I would urge people to go to that blog because I’ve got the entire protocol laid out there. Now, I live in the country. We have 15 acres. We’re in New York State. The next state over is Connecticut. Lyme, Connecticut is where it got its name because it became so big in Lyme, Connecticut area.

Paola:  Oh Lyme, Connecticut is actually …

Joette:  A town in Connecticut.

Paola:  Interesting.

Joette:  So, my father-in-law had Lyme. They were in Connecticut when he got it some 30 years ago. I said it on a podcast recently, but when I think about it, it was probably closer to 45 years ago he got Lyme. It was not as prevailing as it is today. So, when we look at it as an acute: here’s a tick. Take it off. Collect it. Put it in a bottle. Put it in vodka (in the highest alcohol content vodka you can find). Label it: the date, who you found it on, which family member, where…

Paola:  Where on their body or where in the state?

Joette:  Where on their body. Well, listen if you’re in Allegheny at the time, then you might want to write Allegheny State Park or something like that and make it clear where you were. It helps you to remember what the incident was many months, if not years from now. You’re saving the deer tick to make it into a homeopathic medicine if you choose or even do some research on it.

Paola:  Like later down the line if they actually get an acute condition of Lyme.

Joette:  It turns into a chronic, you have the tick to prove one way or another. You got your evidence.

Paola:  So basically, you can turn that homeopathic remedy into a nosode. Do you have instructions on how to do that?

Joette:  I don’t know. I have it in my Survivalist Guide.

Paola:  Oh, that’s right. That’s right. You do teach us how to …

Joette:  It’s pretty clear there because you can do this with many kinds of insects, et cetera, that can cause trouble. You can learn how to make a homeopathic medicine. So, we won’t go into that now. We could probably do that in another blog. But, I just want you to know that that’s possible.

Then the first thing you do is you give Ledum palustre, 200. 200C is most commonly used these days, but if you only have 200X in your neck of the woods then you could use that. We use it every 3 to 6 hours, 3 to 12 hours. The reason I don’t give exact numbers is because through the years, my family — including our dog, we had goats, our three sons (who are now all adults), my husband, and neighbors, et cetera — have had so many ticks. No one’s ever gotten sick from any of these ticks. Perhaps I’ve gotten a little lackadaisical about it. I say, “Ah, well, twice a day.” But if you’re really worried and most people are very anxious about this, it’s because they’re reading all of the news reports, you could do it every 6 hours for a few days.

Paola:  Yes. My girlfriend Heather, her daughter got a tick. She did your protocol to a tee, every 3 hours. And that made her feel better.

Joette:  Yes. Some people are very comforted by that. You become less worried as you get more experience about certain things and more worried about other things that you know are concerning. Go to my blog and it will give you exactly how to do it.

Paola:  Yes. We’re even updating that blog. It’s June 2017. We’re coming out with an update to that blog to reworking it a little bit.

Joette:  And adding a little more, just building it so that there’s more information.

Paola:  So definitely go and look into that. It was a June 2017 blog. It will be coming out if it’s not out already. So, let’s shift in to kind of a chronic Lyme situation.

Joette:  Let me also step back and mention one more thing: We have deer on our property. We have a lot of deer on our property. We have a big pond. They come and take a little sip from the pond. They go down. They tromp through my tomatoes when I used to have my tomato garden. They go throughout my hostas; they eat them all down. We are part of the trail from the top end of the ski area all the way down to the bottom end of the ski area where we live. So, it’s not as though we are not exposed to this. We have deer everywhere. It’s a wonder they don’t knock on the door and ask what else we’ve got for dinner.

Paola:  Right, right.

Joette:  We have a lot of hunters around us. So, this is a plentiful area with deer. So, I don’t want anybody to think that well, we were just lucky. Our ticks are not from deer and et cetera, et cetera. No. It is prevalent here as it is anywhere else especially in New England and upstate New York area.

Paola:  Right, okay.

Joette:  Now, let’s say somebody got a tick. By the time they hear this, it was a year ago. If they’re not sick, there’s nothing to treat. I wouldn’t even give it a thought. But now, if they’re chronically ill, now, this is where everyone gets stuck.

Paola:  One of the things is, if all these people in your life have been bitten by this tick, it’s almost like it’s not necessarily the Lyme bacteria that are the concern, but it’s the terrain or the health of the person that’s a concern.

Joette:  Yes, I think it is. Look, I’m not an MD. I’m a lay homeopathic practitioner. I’m an educator. I’m a mother. But, I’ve been doing this long enough now and worked with homeopaths from all over the world. I have worked in India for many years, where we see very serious illnesses. I will tell you that in my experience, it seems to me that we’re going through a phase on the internet, on the news, et cetera — I might be completely wrong about this, but if you’re asking my opinion and that’s why you’re here is that you’re interested at least in hearing it — I think this is somewhat some hysteria involved.

Paola:  Or maybe it’s just … it’s a rabbit hole. People are overall sicker with chronic illness, and they’re trying to find the solution and a reason for it. It seems like — I don’t want to minimize it — but kind of the pendulum has swung in the direction of Lyme disease. We’re more and more and more attributing it to that. But Joette, people are getting labs and they’re seeing that they have the Lyme bacteria in them.

Joette:  Yes. I’m not surprised. I think we probably all have Lyme bacteria. I think if we dig around, we’ll find cancer in most people. If we dig around, we’ll find parasites. We’ll find heavy metals. We’ll find overgrowth of yeast. We’ll find everything that people are looking for. If you dig far enough, if you decided you’re going to be Vasco da Gama and start going on a discovery, you’re going to find everything! So, at some point, we have to make a decision and say, “Really? Do I really want to know absolutely every little thing that I’ve got in my body? Do I want to know that I’ve polyps in my colon and go for colonoscopy every year? Do I really want to go this far?”

Because what homeopathy allows us, is the ability to calm down. The reason it does that is because we don’t have to find every little disease, and then become crazy about it — because it does cause craziness, including myself. I was like that myself many years ago, because I started to dig around. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, it’s Epstein-Barr. Holy cow, it’s also cytomegalovirus. Oh, my goodness! It’s also …” And in those days when they were testing me, they didn’t find Lyme probably because they weren’t looking for it. I’ll bet it was there.

Paola:  Right, right. Yes.

Joette:  “Oh, my gosh. You’ve got herpes. Oh, my gosh.” It could go on and on. Of course, you’ve got herpes. I had chicken pox. Of course, it’s going to show up at least in the titers.

Paola:  What you’re saying is in the language of homeopathy, it’s not that these conditions don’t matter. If knowing that you have Lyme helped cure the person, you would be all for it. But in the language of homeopathy, it matters not if you have all these hidden little bacteria or whatever in your system. In homeopathy, we don’t care about the possible theorized root cause.

Joette:  The etiology. What is the cause? Oh, it must be the Lyme.

Paola:  The candida overgrowth.

Joette:  It must be the candida. Oh, it’s heavy metals.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  Because I get the people for whom those paradigms, I’m not saying it never works by going after it that way. But the way that I see it is I get all the people for whom those paradigms did not act, did not work. So, by doing that, I get the people who say, “Well, I was told I have heavy metals. I’ve been taking these chelated mineral supplements. I’ve been doing these cleanses. My heavy metals are coming down, but you know what? I’m still sick. I still have chronic fatigue. I still have fibromyalgia. I still suffer from brain fogs. So, darn it all, I guess it wasn’t those.”

“Let’s look at this! Oh, it must be the yeast. Oh, it’s yeast overgrowth. Okay, now, we do the yeast cleanse, no sugar and no dried fruit.”

I’ve been through all of these…

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  Personally myself and this is what I hear others describing. So, it comes down to we don’t know the cause of that chronic fatigue. Couldn’t it be perhaps menopause? Couldn’t it be 9-11 anxiety? Couldn’t it be that flu that really brought you down to your knees?

Paola:  Your divorce, those stresses?

Joette:  Couldn’t it be the pesticides that are sprayed around your house? Couldn’t it be the blood pressure drugs you’ve started taking? Couldn’t it be the psychotropic drugs that you take for sleep, Ativan, et cetera? Why couldn’t it be all of those? Certainly, it could be any of these. But, to try to pinpoint exactly which microorganism, exactly which input into the human system it was that triggered this? Oh my gosh — good luck. I don’t know how you could ever figure something like that out.

Paola:  I’ve said this before to some of my study group students. Especially in the language of homeopathy — if you want to understand how to use the language of homeopathy to get to your heath goal — it doesn’t matter. There is a podcast, Podcast Number 24. It’s called Subjects That Bear Repeating where you and I, Joette, talked about a conventional diagnosis and then the theorized diagnosis which are all these things you’re talking about: the candida, the Lyme. So, really, if you listen to this podcast and you’re kind of confused as to what Joette is saying, go to Podcast 24 and listen to that.

Joette:  Here’s the difference. In homeopathy — especially the method that I use, what I call practical homeopathy, much of it based on the Banerji Protocols — I like a conventional diagnosis, a conventional doctor. You go to the doctor and he says generally, “Yes, you’ve got fibromyalgia. Yep, you’ve got constipation. I’d call that chronic fatigue. Yes, yes, brain fog, there’s your diagnosis.” Those are the diagnostics.

So, you go to an alternative practitioner, and they theorize. “It must be …” And that’s what we’re all talking about. “It must be you have inflammation.” Really? Of course, you’ve got inflammation!

Paola:  I know. I had a girlfriend send me a text message once, “Paola, I think my diagnosis is inflammation.” I go, “For heaven’s sakes, every disease starts with inflammation.”

Joette:  That’s right.

Paola:  It’s what it is. I had to explain to her.

Joette:  Sometimes people come back from the doctor. They say the doctor says it’s stress. Uh, hello! That is the world! Of course, there’s stress. Everybody’s got some stress. When we try to distill it down to, “It must be …” and that’s the answer. It may not even be, to be honest, the message that the naturopath (or the clinical ecologist, the functional doctor, or the chiropractor, or even the conventional doctor) is giving. It might be the way the person is getting that information and saying, “I need to distill this down to one cause.” Then they hear, “It’s inflammation,” or they hear, “It’s Lyme.” Then everything else is blanketed out of the picture. There are blinders put on. All they can think of is — it’s Lyme.

Now, it’s different if you have malaria. Malaria is malaria. That is a conventional diagnosis. It’s different when you have chicken pox. Chicken pox is chicken pox. It’s not hunting. We don’t have to hunt around to find it. When the chicken pox is over, then the virus has receded, it’s calmed down, and the person lives their life. But, with this chronic Lyme, what I get are the people who’ve been on antibiotics for two years … six months … two years … seven years. I always ask, try to say this as gently as I can, “So how’s that treatment going for you?”

Paola:  Right. Well, here’s a little exercise. If you’re listening to this podcast, and you’ve been diagnosed with Lyme or candida, or one of these kind of theorized diagnoses, if the treatment for those problems has cured your symptoms that you’re suffering from …

Joette:  Then we’re done. They’re done. Don’t go any further. You’re done.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  Consider yourself lucky and go on with your life and become productive. I’m very happy for you. I think that there are people like that. I do think that that is very possible. I think that you can … I’m not throwing out the baby with the bath water. I believe it’s very possible that you could end up with a resolution by following some of these methods.

Paola:  BUT, if you are shaking your head, “No, it hasn’t helped. I’m actually worse off or more frustrated or poorer from all the treatments,” then listen on.

Joette:  Yes. Then we look at it from a different point of view. Had it been looked at from a homeopathic point of view in the first place, someone might not have suffered for as long as they had. Of course, nobody goes to homeopathy first. That’s just the way it is in North America. In Europe, South America, India, it might be different. Sometimes it’s not different there either. Sometimes in India, we see people going conventional medical doctors first because they have the big hospitals, et cetera, et cetera. They have a more ubiquitous presence. So, homeopathy is usually last. Most people don’t know what it is. So, they find out about it far down the game.

Paola:  So Joette, now that we’ve kind of established your perspective on Lyme as far as homeopathy goes, let me get to some of these questions that people are asking on social media.

Here’s a question Joette: “What do you do for established Lyme cases that are old, 10-plus years?” Just in a nutshell.

Joette:  We look at what’s presenting. What does it mean that you have Lyme? “Well, I’ve got fibromyalgia.” Okay. Then we use the homeopathic medicine for fibromyalgia. “I’ve got chronic fatigue.” Okay. Then we use the medicine for chronic fatigue. “I have leaky gut.” Okay. Then we use the medicine that’s also for leaky gut. Now, we’ve got three medicines going. We don’t approach it as giving the Lyme protocol — at least, that’s not the way I think it through. I might use the Lyme protocol if it’s a fresh case. Ten years old? I wouldn’t go there because, again, we don’t need to know what the etiology is; we just want to know how it’s presenting and what the diagnosis is — at this point.

You knew from a naturopath that your blood levels were showing Lyme, but then you went to a conventional doctor and you say, “Okay, give me a diagnosis here.” He’d say “Yes, you’ve got fibromyalgia, alright. Yes, you’ve got chronic fatigue.” So that’s the kind of diagnosis that I want. I don’t want to know which microorganism was the one microorganism that caused this.

Paola:  Right. And this does go back again, I’m going to repeat it, to Podcast 24 where we really picked apart what Joette means by a conventional diagnosis.

Joette:  Well, and also the other part of this picture is it would be easy for someone to misunderstand what I’m saying, and think that we’re treating fibromyalgia. We’re treating the symptoms of chronic fatigue. But we’re not. We’re using those symptoms to determine which homeopathic medicine is best chosen, and then the body corrects it by using it. So, we’re not treating or subduing symptoms. That’s a completely different modality. That is the modality of modern medicine. It’s not the modality of homeopathy. We use the symptoms to determine what medicine to choose. Then by choosing that, it uproots the condition.

Paola:  Interesting, okay.

Joette:  Not only interesting, fantastico! When you think about it. Really? You’re using my sufferings to determine which medicine is going to be the medicine that’s going to get rid of this? Now look, don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to tell you that we cure. I don’t talk about cure. I don’t use that word. The word that I use is uproot. Because, well, does this mean that the person will never have chronic fatigue again? Probably not. They’ll, probably have some chronic fatigue from time to time. Does this mean the person will never have a fibrous tissue in their body that will hurt again? No, it doesn’t mean that. It means that the body has been stimulated to correct as much as it can. That’s the goal. How far is that? It depends on the person; how old they are; how many drugs they’ve had, et cetera, et cetera.

Paola:  It is beautiful because it’s all that suffering, all those symptoms are not for naught.

Joette:  That’s right. They’re not for naught.

Paola:  Yes, thank you. So, it brings value to those symptoms that we can select the homeopathic remedy.

Joette:  Yes, they’re gifts then. Suddenly, our sufferings become information rather than something that we’re burdened with.

Paola:  It’s almost like disciplining a toddler who’s made a bad choice. You do love and logic. I’m the love and logic parent. If you do love and logic, they say when they misbehave, you need to high five yourself and celebrate because this is an opportunity to show them how to become a better person. It’s almost like the same idea with homeopathy. When you get sick and have symptoms, it’s like, “Yes, alright. This is an opportunity for me to have a better body.”

Joette:  Yes. In a way, I suppose that’s so.

Paola:  Here’s another question: “What do you do for specific symptoms such as — and I have a list — pain in hands, ALS symptoms, MS symptoms, numbness, joint pain?”

Joette:  Wait a minute. MS symptoms? Is it multiple sclerosis or is it just symptoms that are like multiple sclerosis? So, see, this is what this person is doing, this question that came in. Excuse me for interrupting, but what this person is doing is saying, “I have Lyme disease.” All these others are just symptoms of multiple sclerosis. That’s sounds cockeyed to me. Either you have multiple sclerosis, and we use that and we use the homeopathic medicine that’s specific for multiple sclerosis — or we have something else. So, it’s almost as though the acceptance of Lyme is greater than the acceptance of ALS or MS or whatever.

Paola:  Because this list of symptoms to me seems like they are attributed to Lyme disease. So, there’s muscle ache, headaches, Bell’s palsy, and hair loss. That was their list. So, I think you’re right.

Joette:  We’d consider each one of those worthy of correcting with homeopathy — regardless of what the microorganism was that may or may not have caused this.

Paola:  Okay. So Joette, can you give us a protocol for one of these symptoms that I listed?

Joette:  Yes, yes. How about the joint pain? Let’s talk about that.

Paola:  Okay.

Joette:  Also, you’ll find this on my blogs. So, if you don’t get this written down, in the little search bar on the website, just put in “joint pain” or you might write “arthritis”. (That’s what joint pain is arthritis.)

The method that we normally use at least what we start with for most people is Symphytum 200. It’s often mixed with Rhus tox 30. That’s taken twice daily. Now, that is a Banerji Protocol.

In some people, I find that Symphytum 200, all by itself, works even better. And then we use Rhus tox — maybe in a higher potency like a 200 — twice a day, as well. And we don’t mix them.

The Banerjis automatically mix them, and in many situations, it’s fabulous. But, in this situation, we might find that in one person’s situation, it might not work as well as in anothers. So, it’s taken twice a day and is taken for many weeks until you see some improvement. Once you see improvement, then you can start saying, “Oh, I see improvement. This is great.” So, you continue going until it’s done. It could take many months. But, for joint pain generally speaking, we do see a shift in about six weeks.

Paola:  Great. Yes, I find that this protocol you just gave is one of my favorite “conversion protocols,” to convert people to homeopathy because it works so well. It’s a really great one. Now, what if the pain is just in your hands, and not all-over joint pain, do we still use this protocol?

Joette:  Joint pain is joint pain. If it’s in the fingers, at the back, it’s in the shoulders, it doesn’t matter.

Paola:  Okay. So, it doesn’t have to be all over.

Joette:  Pretty much, pretty much. We can be more specific. Sometimes if it’s only in the knee, then we might use something that’s a little different.

Paola:  Okay, alright. So, let me get to another question here: “Can you address treatment for coinfections and associated illnesses like POTS, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Babesia? …”

Joette:  Yes, Babesia. It’s a coinfection.

Paola:  “… Bartonella, Herx, electric shocks/sparks to skin, foggy brain, sleeplessness, lethargy, forgetfulness.”

Joette:  Coinfections, we look at exactly the same way as what we’ve just said for the last 10 minutes …

Paola:  Right, the protocol.

Joette:  Yes, we’re not necessarily looking for what was the cause. Which little microorganism caused this or causes this. Homeopathy doesn’t kill bugs. We’re not trying to kill. When the child has a fever, a lot of times the pediatrician will give an antibiotic. Well, that’s like a pesticide or “napalm,” as I call it. We’re not there to kill bugs. We’re there to stimulate the body’s natural ability to bring itself to completion.

We all have a mechanism in us that will correct things when they’ve gone awry. If you eat bad chicken from a restaurant, the next day or that night, you’re vomiting. That’s a mechanism that is intended to correct. Get it out of the system. The next morning, you might have diarrhea, also very important. If you take a drug that forces the stopping of vomiting and diarrhea, you’re going to cause trouble because it’s intended to get it out of your system.

So, it’s the same thing with a fever. A fever is a very positive thing for a child when they’re sick. We like a nice, high fever. It means they’re mounting of defense against the illness. The heat from the fever cooks off the virus. So, we’re looking for that (or perhaps it’s bacteria, but it’s usually virus). So, let’s say it’s an ear infection, and it is a bacterial infection, and you give an antibiotic. What you’re doing is squelching the symptoms by killing the bugs. Well, you can never kill the bugs, because if you’re killing the bugs, you’re killing the person. You’ll never kill all the bugs because we’re made up of bacteria and viruses, parasites, et cetera.

So, it would be similar to organic gardening.

Paola:  Yes.

Joette:  There are three peach trees. Two of them are beautiful and healthy. The other one is limping along. The leaves are looking pretty sad. This gets insects on it. The insects are going to go after that tree because the terrain has been compromised. But, you could douse it with Sevin (S-E-V-I-N) the pesticide …

Paola:  Yes, Sevin dust.

Joette:  Or Monsanto … You could douse it all you want. Yes, it will kill the bugs. But, it won’t kill all the bugs, or it won’t kill the next generation of bugs that will come right back again because it sees how compromised that tree is. Instead, we are stimulating the tree’s ability to do it itself. We give it good compost. We make sure there’s enough water. There’s sunshine. We bring it back to health in its natural way.

Paola:  I have a trick. You also get a watering can and put a little bit of Silicea 6X into the watering can, and you water the tree with it. That has been studied in agrohomeopathy to help the tree uptake the nutrients a little bit better.

Joette:  Well, that’s interesting because I don’t know about that particular study, but I’ve always used cell salts for my plants and my trees. Silica 6X is one of the 12 cell salts. I’ve always found that that helps when I do it for my house plants. I do it for my vegetable garden. I try to incorporate it into anything that I feel needs to …

Paola:  So, you do Bioplasma?

Joette:  Bioplasma which has all 12 cell salts mixed together, the Hyland’s cell salts.

Paola:  But, I have noticed the Silica — a little word to the wise here. You can overdo it. So really like only once a month is kind of — at least for my plants — has been the sweet spot. When I plant them and then a maybe a month later …

Joette:  It’s interesting you say that as well, because when I do it, I’m not out there every morning doing that. I only think about it around that often, so, maybe it’s just kind of a natural response. Interesting, thanks for that.

Paola:  Cool. Let’s do a whole podcast on agrohomeopathy.

Joette:  Yes, it sounds good to me.

Paola:  So anyhow, going back to the discussion, and we’re looking at homeopathy. You’ve said this to me before — so I’m not going to take credit for this — but, you say, “Homeopathy is diplomatic, whereas these other ways of treating coinfections are like war.” So, one is killing the bacteria, whereas the other one is kind of encouraging the body to like, “Let’s get a little stronger and fight this bug.”

Joette:  But then, I must also say that it is not supplementing. People think, “Oh so we’re supplementing.” No, no, no, no. “We’re girding!” No, no, no. Specific medicines will correct specific conditions.

Paola:  Right. So, ready for another question?

Joette:  Sure.

Paola:  This one’s kind of obvious. I think the listeners should know by now. “What are your thoughts on Lyme testing?”

Joette:  If it’s fresh and brand new and the person has got the rash, et cetera, and it’s been a month now (it might be a little bit more than a month … usually, it shows up, I’m thinking, at about six weeks), and they’re really fatigued. I suppose, yes, you might want to do that. Then you would follow the protocol that’s on my website for Lyme. Now, that’s a little different. I don’t know that I would call that quite chronic Lyme. If they’re getting a condition of what a bacteria would show — such as fever and fatigue — now we’re talking about active Lyme. Now, that makes a bit of a difference. It’s when it turns into chronic, and now it’s turned into fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, that’s where I draw the line.

Paola:  Okay. So basically, the way I’m going to call it, by what you mean by “active” Lyme is acute, like an acute case of Lyme.

Joette:  Yes, it’s still acute. That’s right.

Paola:  Okay. Joette, I’m going to buzz through some of these questions quickly, and you tell me if I’m correct or if I’m not correct. This is kind of a quiz to the listener. If they’ve been listening, they should be able to answer some of these questions at this point. So, “Alternatives to antibiotics or doxycycline?”

Joette:  Doxycycline, yes.

Paola:  Okay. Thankfully, I don’t know how to pronounce that, right? The alternative is to look at the symptoms and select the proper homeopathic protocol, right?

Joette:  That’s right.

Paola:  Okay, good. So, one point for listeners. Then, “Why is there such a huge rise in the diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease?”

Joette:  I don’t know that I could tell you the reason why. I don’t know that it’s really as widespread as people make it out to be. I think there’s just a lot of attention. I think this happens every year. We get one disease or another. I think we touched on that earlier. That becomes the disease of the year or disease of the season. I can practically guarantee. Give it another year or two, we won’t hear about it anymore.

It’s like blueberries. “Blueberries are fabulous! Everybody should be eating blueberries, absolutely!” The next year: “Kiwi! Everyone should be eating kiwi!” “Vitamin C is the vitamin of all strong people!” “Wait a minute. Hold on. No, it’s Vitamin D is the big one. You got to have your vitamin D checked.” “Wait a minute. Hold it. Now, it’s calcium!” I mean really, I’ve been doing this long enough that after a while, it becomes trite.

Paola:  Well, I was thinking of the acai berry. That’s a big, super food berry.

Joette:  Yes, or blue-green algae. Oh, my gosh, 25 years ago, blue-green algae was the hottest thing around. There are many, many supplements in foods. There are many, many diseases, and things that haven’t been around for a while, come back round. There are a lot of blogs written about them. Then there are products miraculously attached to those blogs. It’s just the way the world runs.

Paola:  I also think that when you live a life without homeopathy, Joette, you kind of live in fear all the time of getting the flu, of getting all these things because you really don’t have something so wonderful to protect you. So then, people have their little ears open for the next big thing. Then it does become a little bit sensationalized. I really don’t want to minimize this for people who are suffering from Lyme disease …

Joette:  That’s an argument for learning as much as you can about homeopathy. Because of all the medicines out there, I believe it’s the best.

Paola:  Right. Okay. So, here’s a great question. “Alternatives to preventative techniques including DEET?” People don’t want to get — like just keep them away from me — the ticks.

Joette:  Oh, I would use essential oils. There are lots of products out there that are pre-made, or you can make yourself and learn a little. But, go online, what are the preventative essential oils that I can spray on myself and my children before we go out into the woods? You wear protective clothing. But, to be honest, after living in these 15 acres, my neighbor has another 20 next to me, and the other neighbor on the other side has another 10 or 20. So, I’m surrounded by green. I can’t even see houses from my house for most of the year. So, there’s plenty of opportunity to be eaten up. I never think to do that. I wear tall boots because it’s mushy outside in the back. I wear a jacket if it’s cold. If I don’t, I wear short sleeved shirt. I might wear shorts. If I find a tick, I take it off. Then I take a couple of doses of Ledum for a couple of days.

Paola:  Here’s another question: “Once treated homeopathically, does the Lyme no longer present in the body or does it remain lifelong?”

Joette:  If the symptoms are gone, then there’s no presentation.

Paola:  So what does it matter?

Joette:  That’s right. So, what does it matter?

Paola:  Okay.

Joette:  If you’re living a life and you’re healthy and you have the freedom that you would expect, then you just move on and forget about that chapter in your life. And you go on to doing the next thing.

Paola:  Because you’ve said this before in your class, the symptoms don’t lie.

Joette:  Right. They never lie unless you’re taking a drug. Then, what we’re reading instead of symptoms are side effects. I don’t call them side effects. I call them effects.

Paola:  Right, right, okay. Here’s another great question: “What is the connection between EBV, MTHFR gene mutation, and Lyme disease?”

Joette:  I don’t know. I don’t know why someone would go that far. Why would you need to go through all of that? If we go back to what we’re talking about in the beginning, it is that you use the symptoms — not only the symptoms — the name of the actual conventional diagnosis. You treat it correctly, and you forget all about all these connections.

Paola:  Right, okay, very good. “Does homeopathy offer remedies to boost immune system based on IgG, IgA, IgE?”

Joette:  No, it doesn’t boost. It corrects.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  That’s what I teach in my course, Allergies. Because it is all about correcting the disease, not supporting the immune system.

Paola:  So, do you ever care if their IgG, IgA, IgE numbers, do you care if those are off? Does that help inform you?

Joette:  No. Because why would the person go to the allergist in the first place? Because they have eczema, because they have food intolerances, because et cetera; they have allergies; they can’t breathe, et cetera, et cetera. If those symptoms are gone, we wouldn’t need any more information than that.

Paola:  Okay, very good. Here’s a really good question: “I’m currently using herbs which are working well to treat my Lyme disease. My naturopath suggested waiting until the healing is further along before switching to homeopathy. What do you think?”

Joette:  I don’t know. I’m all about speed. I don’t know why someone would wait other than it might confuse the naturopath as to what’s acting and what isn’t. But, naturopaths, generally speaking are more about supplements and vitamins and herbs. Homeopathy is more on the backburner for many of them, probably because homeopathy is considered to be too complex — although the method that I teach is really not that complex. So, I think that’s just that particular naturopath’s preference. I don’t see how that is necessarily a good or a bad idea.

Paola:  Alright, very interesting. Next question: “Could antibiotics be compounding symptoms or making them worse?”

Joette:  Here’s what’s interesting about this question is that this must be someone who’s kind of new to all of this, this way of thinking. Because antibiotics are napalm. I’m not going to tell you that you should never use antibiotics. They have been very useful in our society for 100 years or around that time. But, we have something so much better now without side effects. That’s of course homeopathy.

Antibiotics will absolutely compound the problem because they are killing bacteria. We start with this conversation by talking about how important bacteria is to the system and that it be in perfect harmony. It’s a symphony. If you kill one kind of bacteria, that allows the virus to do something else. That allows other aspects, parasites, et cetera, to overcome the system, and it throws a sabot into the works to say the least. (Sabot is the word for shoe. It’s an old French Revolution saying during the Industrial Revolution.)

Paola:  It throws a shoe into the works. How fancy. You’re so fancy, Joette! Here’s a good question but I think the listeners should be able to answer this one, too. “How can a homeopathic treatment plan for Lyme exist if each person’s backstory is different? The reason it manifests is different for each person. So how could a true homeopathic treatment be offered to everyone without considering the backstory of each individual?”

Joette:  Well, I think we’ve covered that.

Paola:  It’s a good question, but I think, yes, we’re looking at their symptoms and we do the protocols.

Joette:  Exactly. That’s why it’s individualized in that way because everyone is different.

Paola:  So, I really hoped that our listeners, if you’re concerned about Lyme, I hope that this podcast helped them understand the homeopathic perspective. Joette, thank you as always for opening up your brain to us.

Joette:  Yes, it’s always fun, Paola. We’ll probably follow up on this. Certainly, as you said earlier, we’ve got articles coming out. So, there’s written discussion on this as well. So that folks — if they don’t catch it the first time — they might catch the information they’re looking for the second time around.

Paola:  Very good.

Joette:  Yes. Thanks, Paola.

Paola:  Thank you.

You just listened to a podcast by joettecalabrese.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shared her passion for helping families stay healthy 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. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joette.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation with Joette herself.

Along the way, I learned to not just throw a homeopathic medicine at the condition.

Be smart. Keep tight notes. Assess properly.

Today’s podcast will give you some of my best tips on how to stay on point when treating allergies.

In this podcast, we cover:

02:32  Joette’s philosophy on allergies and allergy testing  

08:21  The two pronged method

16:51  Assessing after eight weeks     

27:52  Buster’s milk intolerance and Argentum nitricum

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

Paola:  It’s podcast 28 at joettecalabrese.com. We’ve got a great episode for you. Joette and I were really burning the midnight oil when we’ve recorded this podcast this week. Joette circles around two important topics tonight. She talks about allergies. The second topic, I’ve noticed from my interactions with her lately that it’s really been on her mind and she is really trying to get this message across to her students. The topic is patience and assessing a case. What Joette is helping me understand more and more is that if you don’t assess a case properly, you might miss out on the whole value and power of homeopathy. So, let’s take it from the top and hear what Joette has to say about this. Alright, so here we go.

Hi, Joette. We’ve had a really busy week here on allergies, allergies, allergies. How are you doing?

Joette:  I’m doing well. This is always great, Paola.

Paola:  Thank you. Yes, so we’re relaunching your wonderful course, Allergic. That means that the first time you did it, it was live. So, we have the live students. Now, what we’re releasing is the recording of that live course with all the students who had asked questions during that session and all the notes and everything.

Joette:  Right. We’ve got lots of feedback and that’s helped us a great deal.

Paola:  In what way do you mean?

Joette:  Well, it helped us. For one thing, we have time stamped it. I know that that is useful to students. That was a suggestion by one of the students. So, we made it available to those who already have the course but now, that’s how we’re representing it with those kinds of finishing touches to make it easier to reference.

Paola:  So, time stamping is like the index so you can go to the minute and the second that they talked about a given subject.

Joette:  Right.

Paola:  Good. I think that’s actually very great. We’re doing that actually to all the courses now, too but this will be one of the first ones that have it upfront. That is exciting. So, talk about allergies. I feel like this is something that you get a lot. The question of I’m allergic, so I need to find out what I’m allergic to, to then suppress it or avoid it or whatever. You have a very different philosophy when it comes to allergies.

Joette’s philosophy on allergies and allergy testing.    

Joette:  Yes, because I think that by and large, most people know what they’re allergic to. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. So, I don’t know that testing is always mandatory or even necessary because it’s actually sometimes even unneeded.

Let me give you an example. I went for testing. I’ve had allergies or I had allergies since I was six weeks old. So, I had lots of tests. It was pretty clear what I was allergic to back then. We’re talking about the early 50s. I was allergic to chocolate and milk and feathers and dusts, wool, dander, and animals, and fur, the usual milk, orange juice. So, it was pretty clear. My parents did not know at that time because I was so young. So, I suppose it was useful. In one way, it was useful and in another way, it just made my parents nuts because now what? She can’t even have wheat. What can she eat? There’s nothing left. Then I got lots of shots. Because of that information, I was given lots and lots of shots. So, it didn’t help me. It just made me scared and angry and I hated going to the doctors because I knew I was going to get 16 shots. It was always 16 in this tray. It was very scary. I have little, skinny arms. So, I went regularly. It never made any difference. I still had eczema everywhere.

So then, as an adult, I went back and got tested again for allergies thinking, “Well, maybe something new has come up.” I mean it has been 30 years. Maybe science has changed and they can help me and give me more information. So, when I was about 29 or 30, I had testing done again. I actually knew what I was allergic to then. I didn’t have problems with wool but I did have problems with dusts. That was around too much. But what I was really allergic to by then was chemicals. I couldn’t be around dryer pads and perfumes and new car smells and nail polish and cleaning fluids, and walking down the aisle of the grocery store that had all the soaps. I could not be around those things.

So, I went to the allergist and got tested. He brilliantly came up with the three substances that I was allergic to and said, declared, “This is what you’re allergic to.” He put this little sheet in front of me. It was three items. I’ll never forget it. This was back in 1980. I’ll never forget it. You’re allergic to bananas, horse hair, and turkey. The reason I remember that so vividly is because it’s so ridiculous. It said bananas. Okay, well I have a banana maybe once every couple of weeks, I suppose. Okay, I can stop bananas. But then horsehair, now I was not an aficionado of horses. I had no horse hair furniture in my house. So, that didn’t make any sense to me at all. So, then how can I be so sick if I had bananas only once every two weeks and not around horse hair. Then the third thing was turkey which I did eat every single Thanksgiving.

Paola:  I thought you were going to say every single day.

Joette:  Every single Thanksgiving, I ate it. I know I shouldn’t have but I did.

Paola:  So, it was ridiculous.

Joette:  It was ridiculous. So these tests are to say they’re inconclusive is laughable.

Paola:  Well, I went and did allergy testing myself. I was really concerned because the list of foods that I couldn’t eat was so large. I mean, you can relate. But I went with an alternative doctor. What was kind of deflating for me is I’m there to get help so that I can eat more food. He came with more ingredients that I apparently didn’t even know about that I shouldn’t be eating. So, I was like why am I even here? You’re like ruining my life a little bit more.

Joette:  Just away with happiness.

Paola:  I know. So, that was pretty frustrating. So, I don’t care. I ate the shrimp because I had to eat. Then Tina, if you listened to the most recent Moms with Moxie podcast, Tina’s doctor came in and told her she had to live on air and water, I think. He kind of said it, he was laughing.

Joette:  Flippantly.

Paola:  Yes. Tina was just, that was offensive to her because this is like a death sentence basically.

Joette:  Yes, yes, yes.

Paola:  So, it doesn’t matter what you’re allergic to.

Joette:  On one hand, maybe it matters because if it’s an anaphylactic reaction then you, of course, need to know that it is peanuts or it is almonds or it could be apples or whatever. Certainly, you need to know that. But to be honest, if you’ve had an anaphylactic-like symptom, you know what you’re allergic to. It’s not very difficult to figure out.

Paola:  I know.

Joette:  If it’s absolutely mandatory that you find out then of course, find out. But to be honest, most people will know. I find that those tests can be pretty archaic. Now, I’ve give mine was done is 1980 the last time I went. But I hear these stories all the time. What has brought to their attention really is not what is real in their life, that it really is more chemicals or it really is because he ate too much of a certain food. So, I just don’t find, I’m not impressed with allergy tests. So, we could start with that, I suppose.

The two pronged method

So, the point is that in homeopathy, we look at things, most everything in terms of health quite differently. One of them is that when we look at allergies, we use the two pronged method. One is that we have to uproot the condition with medicines that have been proven time again for most people across the board. Then we have to use the symptoms that are presenting (of course, they present differently in everyone) to determine which medicines are used for those particular symptoms. Now, for those who are accustomed to conventional medicine, they might be thinking, “Well, I could just suppress symptoms just by taking Allerest or something. But what we’re doing is different. We are not suppressing the symptoms. We’re using the symptoms because they represent what’s going on, on a deeper level. We’re using them to determine which medicines are best chosen. Some people sneeze. Some people have eczema. Some people have bloating. Some people have hair loss. Some people have food intolerances. There are all kinds of things that can come from allergies. Some people have asthma. Some people have hives. So, we’ve got to use the baseline medicines that are across the board for allergies in general and then in addition to that, the medicines that are specific to any one of those. Now, if it’s two of those, we’re using two protocols. So if it’s sneezing and eczema, we’re going to use the sneezing protocol and an eczema protocol as well as the baseline medicines.

Paola:  Which is usually like that food intolerance protocol because that’s what’s causing the eczema?

Joette:  If it’s pretty clear that that’s what it is then you can use the food intolerance protocol but we don’t want to just jump to that. We want to see some food intolerances. We want to see some diarrhea or constipation or bloating, or burping, not literally but we want to see that the person has got some gut issue that’s pretty formidable before we jump to, “This must be food intolerance.”

Paola:  Before we assume that the eczema is a food intolerance right away. Okay, I see. That kind of goes back to the example with our Mom with Moxie, Tina. She didn’t have these food allergies because hers are actually anaphylaxis allergies her whole life until they presented that day in her car while she was driving eating almonds. That poor woman and had to drive to the ambulance. So, the goal is to press the reset button with the appropriate protocol.

Joette:  Yes. Meanwhile, people would say, “Well, so can I eat foods that are offending until that time, while I’m taking these homeopathic medicines until it uproots it?” The answer is for Tina, no, she should not be eating almonds because it causes anaphylaxis. But if a little bit of wheat here and there causes a little itching in the flexors of your elbows with an eczema, this rash, it’s not a big deal for you. So, it’s not as severe for you. It depends on the severity.

Paola:  But that kind of goes against what naturopaths say because when I saw my naturopath, I didn’t have allergic reactions to food but I would have intolerance-type reactions. My naturopathic doctors would say, “Well, you have to avoid this completely for four years for your body to forget it, for your immune system to forget it. Then you can try and reintroduce that.” Well, I did that for three years, maybe pushing four. Then I remember, I bought wheat. I sprouted it. I cut the wheatgrass. I pressed the wheatgrass.

Joette:  I’ve done it. I know what you’re talking about.

Paola:  I got a little juice and within five minutes, I had my autoimmune type reaction. I think it was seconds, honestly. I was amazed. Oh my gosh. Four years down the drain of avoiding this, hoping my immune system would forget. So, that’s really difficult.

Joette:  Good luck with that system. I’ve used it because I’ve done this for so many years because the allergies were such a part of, really, it was my middle name. So, I’ve done all of that. The avoidance thing, I suppose works for some people. It never worked for me.

Paola:  Me neither.

Joette:  Nor does it work for the people who contacted me because if they’re cured by it, then I don’t hear about it. I get the people for whom it does not work or from the poor mother who’s got five kids and two of them are allergic to gluten. One is allergic to dairy. The third one is allergic to everything. The fourth one can eat anything. Now, what does she do? How does she feed a family like that? So, it behooves us to learn how to uproot the condition instead of avoiding because the more we avoid, often, not always but often, the more we avoid, the more we must avoid because it’s narrower, and narrower, and narrower until finally people tell me, “I think I’m allergic to water.” That’s the first time I heard that some 20 years ago. I was thinking, “Well, could it be the chlorine in her water.” Then I thought, you know what? I don’t think this is allergy to the substance. I think it’s not the raw materials going into the gut, into the factory. I think it’s the factory. It’s the gut. It’s the person’s body, the mechanisms have gotten cockeyed. That’s what needs to be corrected, not trying to make that food perfect.

Paola:  Right, that’s exactly right. I think that’s just very interesting. You have to have that mind shift that you’re body doesn’t need to forget the food that it’s intolerant to by avoiding like my naturopaths were saying. Instead, it’s allowing the factory to repair itself because really, I mean that’s the truth. If you’re going to avoid and the factory isn’t going to get better during that time then what’s the point?

Joette:  Well, how do you avoid pollen, and feathers, and dusts, and perfumes, and fumes? Now, you can avoid cigarette smoke but it was horrible for me. I’d smell a puff of cigarette smoke and I go right into asthma. How do you do that? Well, what I did is I lived in a bubble until I finally came across it.

Paola:  So, let’s say I have food intolerances which I’m a lot better from that. But if someone has food intolerances and they want to get better. So now, they’re going to get better in a week or two?  Is that how it works?

Joette:  Oh, wouldn’t that be great? Although I have heard it, it has happened but it’s not common. It’s more often that it takes using these medicines for very long periods of time especially the medicines that are used, the baselines: Bovista, Tuberculinum, Calc carb. These are the medicines that I’m saying them quickly because to be honest, there’s a whole protocol around them. So, just to give you an idea of what the names of the medicines are.

Paola:  Right. That’s the core part of your Allergic course.

Joette:  That’s the core. That’s the first prong. Then the second prong is if there’s sneezing then sometimes it can be resolved in very short order, yes, absolutely.

Paola:  Yes, those little symptoms go away. That’s true. I remember in one season, my seasonal allergies were significantly better which is pretty quick.

Joette:  Well, I always have had watery eyes, for years on and off through the seasons. I always thought there were these allergies. It’s allergies. It’s allergies. I have to uproot the allergies. Then one day, I took Argentum nitricum and it was gone. I hate when I say this because then I’m always sorry later because people say, “Well, it didn’t work that fast for me. It must be the wrong medicine or homeopathy doesn’t work for me or it works for you but not for these people.” But the reason I remember of course is because it was so stunning. I only took a dose and the next day, they were fine. I didn’t have runny eyes. Of course, it came back again about a week later and I took it again. Until finally, I took it enough times, it finally left, it aborted. But that’s the kind of the upper, kind of like the piccolo in the concert. We’re talking about the whole string section has to be corrected. Those are the baseline medicines.

Paola:  So, in your courses, you explained that we need to have hat patience. You talked about the eight weeks before we change protocols or something like that. So, talk to us about that, about that patience.

Assessing after eight weeks

Joette:  Well, what I find is that often, people are so eager to feel better that they are not honest with how many changes there have been or whether or not there have been even small changes. So, because of that eagerness to get well soon and because they’ve spent, we talked about this earlier, spent so much money trying to deal with this and seen so many doctors that they feel as though it’s within their right to expect the medicines, these medicines to work fast. They feel like homeopathy has to make up for all the previous mistakes I’ve made in my life, all the money I’ve spent, all the vitamins, all the supplements, all the doctors, all the shots, all have to be culminated again. Eight weeks, if I don’t see a change, well, I’m just going to toss it up. There we go. There was just another paradigm, another notch on my belt to prove that indeed, I’m not curable. But instead, if we look at it from a different point of view and we say, use the medicines accordingly, correctly. If you watch carefully and diligently, you will likely see a little shift at about eight weeks. If there’s no shift, absolutely no shift at all, I might say, push it a little further because these protocols are Banerji Protocols that have been used for the Banerjis for 150 years. Why not you? If it works for millions of others, why would not it work for you? So, we might push it a little bit longer but generally speaking, at about eight weeks, we stop and assess. That’s what I teach in this course, Allergic or in all my courses and on my blog that’s free. I always say stop at a certain point and especially for chronics and assess.

Paola:  So, you’re saying the eight weeks is really to kind of steady people to get comfortable because eight weeks is kind of a long time when you’re suffering. You’re trying to steady us to really give yourself the chance and the opportunity to assess and maybe even sneak past that a little bit.

Joette:  Yes. In the eight weeks, remember now is not for say the watery eyes or the lips that are swelling, absolutely not. We expect that too quickly because that’s an acute. So, I said that’s like a little piccolo.

Paola:  Like an acute presentation of the chronic.

Joette:  Of the chronic condition, absolutely. What we’re looking for in eight weeks is just an overall lifting, a little shift, a little less fatigue during allergy season, a little less bloated, a little bit less itchy. The skin is not quite as bad. If we could pick some patience out of people without them thinking about how much they’ve done before and what’s brought them here and look at this as a fresh, new paradigm, they will probably be happier with what they learn.

Paola:  Right. So, kind of going to the other extreme, do you worry that someone might use a protocol for too long?

Joette:  Yes, I do worry about that because I don’t know who I’m speaking to in these courses or even now for that matter. Are you an 80-year old man? Are you a young, 25-year old mother? Are you a mother with an infant who is sick? I know nothing about you. Are you in the US? Are you in India? Are you in New Zealand? I know nothing about you. So, I would rather be conservative and teach how to really pick it apart and observe at eight weeks than say, alright, green light, go for four months and see how you do. It really needs some overview.

This is why I’m probably one of the few homeopaths that I’m aware of who teaches this kind of stuff because I know why classical homeopaths and other homeopaths won’t teach this because they’re nervous. I don’t blame them. I’m nervous too. I’m worried people are going to make a mistake. I don’t want them to make mistakes. I want homeopathy to be hailed and not the focus of fury. So, I would rather see that we move slowly and judiciously than jump into something and say, “Okay, it can’t be that. Let’s go to the next one.”

Paola:  No, I agree with you because I do have a lot of friends come knocking on my door. They just want me, so tell me real quick, just tell me real quick. I was talking to someone about bladder issues, interstitial cystitis, this is what I had. So, I kind of know plenty about it. Is it okay if I just tried this protocol? My fear isn’t so much that the protocol will hurt you because it’s likely that that won’t happen. But my fear is that you won’t apply it for the appropriate amount of time and then you think it’s not working and then you abandon it. Then all has been lost when it could have been helping.

Joette:  Right.

Paola:  That’s such a huge loss if you think about it. It’s like in the movie when the main character is about to do something right and they don’t realize it and then they give up. You’re like, “God, no!”

Joette:  Right, right, exactly, exactly.

Paola:  It’s so frustrating.

Joette:  Well, I always get the question – I always get a little preface to the question. I have a quick question. Well yeah, the question might be quick but the answer is not so uncomplicated. The answer is pretty in-depth. You might say, “What I can use for tuberculosis?” You know what I mean?

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  So, it might seem so simple. Homeopathy is a very complex medicine. What I’ve tried to do here is I’ve stuck my neck out. To be honest, I really stick my neck out with this information. What I’m trying to do is distill it, make it simple so that families can use this. I don’t guarantee results. I can only tell you what happened for me. I can report what’s happened to others. I can report what I see in Kolkata at the Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation. I can tell you about the data that they’ve collected over the last 150 years. I think it’s pretty impressive.

Paola:  Right. I think the big issue here is when we talk about it theoretically like we are right now, it seems very logical. Okay well, I’ll just make sure to give it lots of time. But the problem is we’re dealing with humans who have emotions and feelings. It’s like you said a minute ago. Because we’ve suffered so much, sometimes we feel like we’re entitled to a quicker cure but it doesn’t matter.

Joette:  Well, I hear this all the time. I say, “Okay, so how are you doing?” They say, “Well, I’m about the same.” I’m going to be honest with you, not to be critical but people have said that to me. I don’t have anyone in mind but that’s lazy. It is really lazy. Come on.

Paola:  Don’t say that.

Joette:  Tell me what you were like before, although you don’t have to because I have it all written down when I’m working with you one on one. I have point by point, straight from the horse’s mouth. Now, tell me what has changed? Look. I don’t want to make people neurotic and have to write every single thing down but when you say, “Oh, it’s just about the same.” Now, it’s my turn actually to pick at that and say, “Okay.” So, I go back to the notes about those old headaches. This is what I usually hear. “Oh yeah, I know I don’t have those anymore.” Oh, there you go. So, I guess the medicines worked. Okay. “But I’m still pretty much the same.” Then I ask the next question. Okay, so how about the bloating? “Oh yeah, that’s gone.” So now, we’ve got two pegs there on the side of it must have been homeopathy, unless you just took steroids or something.

So, it’s important that we realize that in two-month period of time, those eight weeks, you kind of have to pay attention to where you were, not on a day to day basis but rather at that eight-month juncture. You’ve got to be able to look back. How do you look back if you’re treating yourself or your family? You better take copious notes and assign a number value. On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad was that eczema itching? Oh it was an 8, okay. And how often was it? Every night. Did it keep you up at night? It keeps me up every night. Now, eight weeks later; now tell me, how bad is that eczema itching? Oh, it’s a 6. We’ve gained two points. That’s great because it was 8 and now it’s 6. You don’t say anything yet. You wait. You wait. Okay, so every night, there is itching? No, it doesn’t itch so much anymore at night. It is just a little here and there but it doesn’t keep me up anymore. Now, we know the medicine is acting. When we know the medicine is acting, what do we do? We stay with it.

Paola:  But I have to play devil’s advocate here for a second, Joette. I’ve been in this situation where I’ve been frustrated because we can’t nail down the right remedy. So, I think what you’re saying is that you understand those frustrations but don’t short change homeopathy. And don’t stop observing and seeing what could be happening right now because of those frustrations.

Joette:  Listen. Maybe I’m a little harsh in saying that that’s lazy because I do know that people are suffering. When someone is sick, the last thing they’re thinking of is observational skills, being pragmatic, keeping notes, et cetera. But if you want to really get this, to be honest, you’re going to do this yourself, you have no other choice. Now, if you’re working with a homeopath, it’s different because then, the homeopath is writing everything you’ve said down. Now, we’re comparing notes to what you’re saying now. That’s okay that you’re a little bit lazy about it. But if you’re doing this yourself, for your child, your dog, yourself, whatever, you have to be sharp.

Paola:  Yes. I agree with that because I feel like I have seen people kind of dropped out of school of homeopathy so to speak, drop out before they really gave it a chance. I know they’re missing out on it because like it or not, I have gone so far with homeopathy. We get greedy. We want to be better and better and better.

Joette:  Yes, we do. We do.

Paola:  But for heaven’s sakes, I’ve come so far and you have to realize that this can take you very far.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Let’s go back to allergies. Tell me about a food intolerance story that you have.

Buster’s milk intolerance and Argentum nitricum

Joette:  Yes, I can tell you about Buster, my dog. He writes the blog every once in a while on my side. Buster for quite a while couldn’t drink milk. We would get this beautiful milk from our farmer down the road. It was fresh. It was raw. He would love it. If drink one day, it’d be okay. But by the second or third day, his eyes would get weepy and red. It looked really gross. It was bothersome for him too. At one point, they would get even a little bit raw and itchy. So, we stopped the milk, the symptoms would go away. Then we wait a little longer, we do it again. Milk again. He would drink it for a couple of days, same scenario repeated.

So, we could have just given Buster the life of milk abstinence. No more milk for you mister. This is just for everybody else. But I was getting all this great milk years ago. Sometimes my family didn’t drink at all. So, there are a lot of things I could have done with milk but it was awfully easy just to feed the dog and get his meal taken care of pretty much. I decided I’d just give him the medicine for it. So, I put this medicine, this homeopathic medicine in the milk.

Paola:  Specific. And you mean a homeopathic medicine for the eyes or specific for the food intolerance?

Joette:  No, specific for allergies, for food intolerances. I had started with that. That is our baseline. That’s the string section of the orchestra. Then the piccolo which was really presenting, I’m sure it’s a bigger picture than this. I bet if we continue with the milk, he’ll get probably itching elsewhere or he might get burping. He might get diarrhea, et cetera. But because it presented as his eyes becoming problematic, I gave him Argentum nitricum. I gave that to him specific. So, I gave him both, both the medicine that was specific for food intolerances and another specific for how it presents. There’s the string section and the piccolo. Then once that stopped, the eyes got better then we could reintroduce milk, not necessarily immediately. Sometimes it takes months. Not months of the Argentum nitricum because that usually went away in short order, in a week.

Paola:  Right. That’s what you’re saying.

Joette:  It better go away in a week because the piccolo doesn’t have a big part in the orchestra. It’s only got a couple of little lines here and there. But the string section is the baseline. That is the basis of all of orchestral music. So, we have to eventually correct that so there’s not a cacophony.

Paola:  So, the acute presentation of the chronic tends to go quickly?

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Then, we’re talking about that’s the eight weeks.

Joette:  Which is why it worked so well for Tina as she’ll describe in her Moms with Moxie podcast.

Paola:  Yes, exactly.

Joette:  So now, Buster drinks raw milk. It took a couple of years of using the baseline medicine. Every once in a while, I’d give him a little more Argentum nitricum. I don’t say when it comes back again, “Oh no. Homeopathy doesn’t work.” Wait a minute. He’s still been drinking. It is just not perfect yet. He just needs it a little bit longer.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  Stop chewing in the towel is what I say. Come on. We have to have tenacity here. You have to have persistence when it comes to something as important as uprooting a chronic condition such as allergies.

Paola:  Right. Yes, we tend to oversimplify things in our mind. We want this nice, tidy, uphill climb to feeling better.

Joette:  Well, we want it to be linear and it is not linear. It’s two steps forward and half a step back, four steps forward, three steps back.

Paola:  It’s funny. You’re talking about your dog with milk intolerances. We have a dog that we got this year. He was astray. We started giving him raw milk and he had diarrhea from it. So, I went to your blog. There’s the disasters, dysentery, and diarrhea, I think blog. I gave him the protocol for the diarrhea. I’m thinking now. I think I’m going to go ahead and give him the remedy for that food intolerance.

Joette:  Yes. And see if he can start drinking milk again or for the first time.

Paola:  Very good. So, one of the reasons you haven’t given a lot of specific protocols in this podcast is why, Joette?

Joette:  Well, because it really requires not just, “Here is the protocol, just take it.” Sometimes it can be that simple in homeopathy but not for chronic conditions such as allergies. Allergies are old. I mean in the person, they’re often old. Even for Tina. I mean I do know Tina quite well but I don’t remember whether or not she had no allergies ever at all in her life or if there were no allergies in her family. I suppose it’s possible. I do hear that from time to time. These chronic conditions arise out of a couple of things. One is inheritance. It has to be in the DNA on some level that this person is capable of even getting allergies. Then the second is a stimulation of the inheritance. So, all you need is a couple of rounds of antibiotics for some people. Sometimes it takes two or three years of antibiotics. Sometimes it takes just one little round. Birth control pills, steroids, those are the drugs, those are the catalysts that get the DNA a little wild up and start presenting this or that. Some people’s DNA will present allergies. Others will present heart disease. Others will present rheumatoid arthritis. Others will present all three.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  So, it takes time but it also takes courage. Aristotle said, “Courage is the greatest of all virtues because it makes all the other virtues possible.”

Paola:  Anyone who’s gone through chronic illness knows that to be patient takes courage. I think it does.

Joette:  I agree.

Paola:  Because it’s scary, it’s scary to kind of stick with it to allow yourself the time to see if it’s helping. But that’s where it is. You said it before to me and I’m sure in the classes that the hard part isn’t to select the remedy but it’s assessing the case. That’s the hard part.

Joette:  That is the hard part. It is. That’s right.

Paola:  Because of the lack of patience that’s in our human nature.

Joette:  That’s right. Well, as Voltaire said, not that I’m looking to quote every one of all but he said, “Tend your garden.” Don’t just expect that you pour seed on the ground and now you’re going to have all the vegetables for the rest of your season. No. You have to tend to that garden. You have to pay attention. You have to wait. There’ll be good days and there’ll be bad days. There’ll be bugs and there’ll be too much rain. There will be drying and there’ll be wetting. So, you have to know how to tend your garden. There’s no other garden more important than yours or your family’s.

Paola:  Yes. Well, thank you so much for your time, Joette. We’re actually recording this kind of late into the night. So, you’re so wonderful. Thank you. I hope you guys know. Joette wakes up early and works into the night on this. We’re so thankful to have you. You’re such a blessing to all of us.

Joette:  Oh Paola, thank you. Well, I feel the same way about you. It’s wonderful to have you running this that I can just hand it over to you. You just kind of pull it altogether for me. So, I have a lot to be thankful with you as well.

Paola:  Alright. Well, let’s go to bed. Thank you so much.

Joette:  Okay. Night all.

Paola:  Bye.

You just listened to a podcast by joettecalabrese.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shared her passion for helping families stay healthy 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. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

If you have allergies, remember that modern medicine has written you off. The CDC itself will tell you: “There is no cure for allergies.

Strict avoidance of the allergen is the only way to prevent a reaction.” I lived decades living in a bubble, dealing with my allergies. Things improved when I stopped taking prescription drugs and changed my diet, but I was not cured. 

So, I kept searching until I found the thing that changed my life forever: homeopathy. Want to learn the same homeopathic steps I took to clear myself of allergies?

Learn them today and use them tonight with my newest course: Allergic?!: http://allergies.joettecalabrese.com/allergic/ and download a free infographic, and start learning what remedies could help uproot your allergies.

In this podcast, we cover:

01:30  The anaphylaxis reaction

07:15  Meeting with Joette and starting homeopathy

13:38  Elevated liver enzymes

16:58  Chelidonium 6 and Carduus marianus (milk thistle) for damaged liver

21:22  Food allergies and Apis

35:35  Joette’s courses

37:53  Sharing homeopathy with others

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

Paola:  We have a great “Moms with Moxie” podcast. I’m here with the delightful, Tina Gill who has some wonderful experiences and stories to share with us. Hi, Tina.

Tina:  Hi.

Paola:  Alright, so here’s my first question. I like to ask all my Moms with Moxie, what do you love about homeopathy?

Tina:  Oh good God. What don’t I love is going to be easier to answer. What I love about homeopathy primarily is that it’s giving me my power back. I’ve always been a healthy and a productive, proactive woman and considered fit and healthy. All of a sudden, my body went haywire. I don’t know what to exactly point a finger at. It could have been menopause. But I experienced anaphylaxis that put me in the hospital three times in 90 days. It just threw me in a no man’s land where I thought I had lost my power. Through homeopathy, I’ve been given my power back, my health, and happiness, and joy, and hope.

Paola:  I remember you telling me that you were so scared because it felt like it came out of nowhere.

Tina:  Yes.

Paola:  I mean we know better. We know that everything we did leading up to it, the antibiotics or whatever was kind of setting the foundation for this to come. But you were waiting for death. You were so scared.

The anaphylaxis reaction

Tina:  Oh my goodness, yes, because I lived on almonds and was popping almonds in my mouth one morning like to the tune of 30 or 40 because it was going to hold me over to lunch. I was on a two-hour car ride to my daughter’s house. That was going to be my breakfast. All of a sudden, I started blowing up and itching and then having a hard time breathing. I looked in the mirror and realized I’m in anaphylaxis. The fear of dying alone in my car was overwhelming. So, I dialed 911. I get a gentleman that leads me to the nearest ambulance. I missed the road to the ambulance but I could see it on the other side of a cornfield and just drove my car through a cornfield to get to that ambulance. I jumped out of my car. I handed my keys and say, “I’m having an allergy reaction.” They just looked at me and said, “No kidding.”

Paola:  Oh my gosh.

Tina:  Yes, they threw me in the ambulance. They rushed me to the emergency room.

Paola:  Did they have like Epi stuff, whatever.

Tina:  Yes. Actually, I was really shocked. We had to have someone meet us halfway to the emergency room with Benadryl to shoot me to get me to the emergency room. It was that close and that scary.

Paola:  That’s crazy. 

Tina:  Yes.

Paola:  Don’t ambulance have like Tylenol, Advil, Benadryl? Isn’t that like standard?

Tina:  I guess not.

Paola:  Oh my gosh.

Tina:  Not in my situation, it wasn’t.

Paola:  Here’s the thing. I have always felt like before homeopathy, yes, I just have my 911. We live in this wonderful country of the United States. 911, I’m just one ambulance ride away and the ambulance will help us. But this goes to show that no, you need to be prepared and have an alternate plan at all times.

Tina:  That also leads me to my message. I want to convey that I used to live in fear to what if there was a natural, a national catastrophe. All of a sudden, you can’t get your medicine anymore because prior to homeopathy, I was living on synthetic drugs. I went through that path of two shots a week for three years, having to sit in the allergist’s office in case I had a reaction. I lived on Singulair and an inhaler and nose spray and Zyrtec and cortisone cream just to function, to be able to breathe. Before I got back on the care, I used to have to sit up and sleep because if I lay down, I couldn’t breathe. If I would laugh, I sounded like I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. It was horrible and embarrassing. It affects the quality of your life. But now, I have homeopathy and I have my own pills. I don’t have to buy them from a doctor or wait on a prescription. I don’t have to live with an EpiPen or take Singulair and go to my doctor every three months to get my new prescriptions. It’s so freeing. It’s empowering. I want the world to know that you don’t have to accept what modern medicine is telling you that there is no cure for food allergies. That there is and understood there is a cure. It is correctable. Don’t settle for what modern medicine is telling you and being a prisoner to six medicines a day just to exist.

Paola:  Well, you bring up a good point. The reason we have to get those drugs from doctors is because they’re highly toxic. It’s like this domino effect. You got to go to the doctor because the drugs are toxic, if you do it wrong. I mean, if you overdose or whatever, you need to hand that prescription, those instructions. So, you have to go to the doctor because they’re toxic. You take them. It won’t cure you. Then you have to keep going back and you have this codependent relationship with something that is just making you worse and worse and worse. So you’re right. You said from the beginning, it gave you your power back. There it is. You’re free from that relationship.

Tina:  I have a husband who went to travel to exotic islands. I was living in fear because I was afraid to get on an airplane. What if I can send something in the airport before we left that I didn’t know I was allergic to. I was waiting to blow up and die in front of my husband. That’s how paralyzing my life became. From being the healthy one and the caretaker in the family to crying and weeping because I had no control over my body anymore and it was a matter of time before I die.

Paola:  Yes. You sound like a hypochondriac almost.

Tina:  I did, most definitely. Never in my life did I understand hypochondria until I went through this.

Paola:  Yes, fear of any illness kind of popping up. Also, I experienced similar things with my body where it started popping crazy things out of nowhere then you feel like well, what else is around the corner.

Tina:  Yes, definitely. If this got me by the throat, what else is around the corner, exactly?

Paola:  So, how long have you been doing homeopathy?

Meeting with Joette and starting homeopathy

Tina:  Well, I’m on about 14 months down the road. I’ll never forget the first time I met Joette. She said this might take a year for your body to react. I can remember thinking, “Yeah. I need help now.” So I’m just in awe that I’m 14 months or 13 months down the road and I’m everything she said I could be. It went so quickly. But you got to get started or it’s never going to happen for you.

Paola:  Right. At the beginning of the journey, it feels like a year is forever. But then when you’re on the other side of it, you’re like, “No. That was worth it. It’s fine. Here I am.”

Tina:  Well and I took synthetic drugs for two decades. I was living by my doctor. To be able to function and to stay alive, I had to listen to everything he said. I was so codependent. Now, I’m free again. So, it is so worth it. Two decades on synthetics, one year on homeopathy, it’s a no-brainer.

Paola:  Right. How long before you were able to-? Did you stop your medications cold turkey? How did that go?

Tina:  No, I was afraid. What I did was I took homeopathy faithfully. I mean like clockwork. I would say I was 99% true to whatever I had to do. It wasn’t easy at first. Any change is difficult. Primarily, you can’t eat 15 minutes before the remedy or 15 minutes after. If you’re taking multiples, that’s a big chunk of the day in the morning and again at night. But again, well worth it, small price to pay for your life. But after being on homeopathy for six months, what I started to do was to wean off my synthetic drugs. Instead of taking a whole Singulair everyday, I would cut it in half and take a half a Singulair for a month. Instead of two puffs of my inhaler, I would take one. Then the next month, instead of taking a half everyday, I took a half every other day. So, I weaned myself off gradually. I started one month doing it half doses. The second month, I did every other day, half doses. Then the third month, I didn’t take any just to see how I would feel. I didn’t have any of the symptoms that wanted me to go back to the synthetic drugs. I’ve been synthetic-free for seven months now.

Paola:  That’s amazing. Usually, Joette wants you to and you probably were working with your doctor to wean off of those medications safely.

Tina:  Well, he kept writing out prescriptions because sadly in our society, our doctors, it is such a conflict of interest. These doctors get a kickback for the meds that they’re writing. So, this man knows how many meds he’s writing to me every month and how much money he can expect from those meds. So, he’s writing me prescriptions left and right and I’m not filling them. He’s a personal friend of the family’s. He was at my 50th birthday party. He doesn’t go away nor do I want him to. But he has his eyes on me. I have tried to express to him homeopathy and he doesn’t want anything to do with it. He won’t read it. He won’t discuss it with me. He won’t entertain it. So, I’m taking things into my own hands and doing things naturally because Paola, it got to the point where I would inhale my albuterol and it would hurt my lungs. I knew I didn’t want it in my body. It’s not the route I wanted to take. So, by getting rid of that and not having breathing problems, by taking my homeopathy, I thought I’m never going back to synthetic drugs unless I break an arm or get a car accident and it’s necessary.

Paola:  Lifesaving, heroic situations. So, how did your doctor feel about this?

Tina:  Well, he wouldn’t come right out and say he was upset with me. He decided to approach it like this. He said to me during one visit, normal doctor’s visit. Four times a year I go in. He said, “I got to tell you three reasons why doctors kick patients out of their practice.”

Paola:  Uh-oh.

Tina:  I’m thinking to myself, “Oh no, here it comes.”

Paola:  Right.

Tina:  Number one, they don’t take their prescriptions. Number two, they don’t do what the doctor tells them to do. Number three, they don’t attend their doctor’s appointments. I just flat out looked at him and said, “You know doctor, if you feel the need to kick me out of your practice, it’s okay.” He started backpedalling, “Oh no, no. I’m not talking about you.” So then we went on to another subject. Then he repeated it before I left. I assured him. If he felt the need to kick me out of his practice, the family would forgive him and it would be alright. He hasn’t done that yet but he is alluding to you’re not taking your meds. I know it. You know it. You need to start doing it.

Paola:  So, I have a question, Tina. Shouldn’t the conversation be like this? “Oh, I noticed you’re not taking your medications. Are you feeling better?” Shouldn’t that be how the conversation? I mean, I’ve gone to doctors, some really great doctors that I said, “I don’t want to take this or that anymore.” Actually, I can’t say that because I was never really on any chronic medications. I was able to diet or whatever was my crutch for a long time. But I have said to doctors, “If I can feel better, I don’t want to take this antibiotic or whatever.” They’re always like, “Great. Yes, if you can find -.” But that’s crazy.

Tina:  I know. You would think yes, because isn’t he there to heal me?

Paola:  Yes, yes.

Tina:  If I’m not taking almond, I’m still living and breathing and not hacking and wheezing, he would notice.

Paola:  Right, right, right.

Elevated liver enzymes

Tina:  We have proof. I have medical proof that this homeopathy has changed my health. I had elevated liver enzymes. I was always normal. He always considered me an athlete for two decades. He didn’t have anything to worry about with me. Now, all of a sudden, my liver enzymes are through the roof. He just hits the desk and says, “You can’t have any more alcohol.” I’m like, “Doctor, I rarely drink. What are you talking about?” He said, “Well, you can’t have any more.” I’m like, “Oh my goodness.” That can’t be the cause because I’m not a big consumer of any alcohol, never really have been, an occasional glass of wine, maybe two if I’m out at a wedding reception or something. He just said, “Zero sip.” So, I shared it with Joette. Joette gave me the protocol for healing my liver. So, I immediately went on that protocol. He then tested my liver and I was in the normal range. So, I go from, in September being elevated to rechecking it again in December and it’s through the roof. I consult with Joette. Now, we’re in April, three months later after homeopathy and now, I’m perfectly normal. You know what his response was? I told you, you can’t consume alcohol anymore. I never changed my alcohol consumption. I still have a periodic glass of wine here and there. The only thing I did change though was my commitment to this new protocol for homeopathy. I have blood work to show my levels, and those dates, and my protocol that came to me via email with Joette on the date that shows my activity and how it affected me.

Paola:  What happened. So, let’s talk about those liver symptoms too. I want to share the protocol that you were on as well. So, the liver enzymes were through the roof, right? Talk about the symptoms that you could see without labs.

Tina:  Okay. I had no clue that my liver enzymes were up. But I did know that I was having pain in my ribs, just underneath my breast. It was in the back, in my back, in the front. I didn’t realize at that time that’s where you’re liver is located. It’s a very large organ. So, I was having pain in my ribcage in my liver region. I was having unusually colored stool which is beige. So that always tells me something’s going on in my system. I pay attention to that because I know that it’s telling me things. So, when I expressed those symptoms to Joette, she confirmed. Yes, those are common for liver damage.

Paola:  Liver damage.

Tina:  Yes.

Paola:  Then before you started the homeopathy, is this correct? You said your blood tests, they were really high. Then three months later, they went even higher before the homeopathy?

Tina:  Yes. That was the liver blood enzymes.

Paola:  Okay. You said you were on the protocol for three months. Your levels went back to normal and your symptoms leveled out too?

Tina:  Correct.

Paola:  Okay, so would you mind sharing the protocol you’re on?

Chelidonium 6 and Carduus marianus (milk thistle) for damaged liver 

Tina:  I’m happy to. I want everybody to take constructive information to take home with them. So for the liver protocol, it was the Chelidonium 6, taking two a day and the milk thistle, 5 drops twice a day.

Paola:  Very good. Then for those of you who may not know. So milk thistle is the herbal tincture, right?

Tina:  Correct.

Paola:  Milk thistle is the common name for the herb but in homeopathy, we use the Latin name. Boy, I don’t even know if I’m going to pronounce this right. It’s Carduus marianus mother tincture is how we say it. So, if you ever need to buy a mother tincture, I just always Google the Latin name and I write common name then milk thistle pops up. Then you buy that and then do the protocol for it. So, it’s so funny about your doctor who says, “See, I told you.” He has to take credit no matter what.

Tina:  Yes, yes. I know, yes. I love him and respect him dearly. He used to be president Reagan’s doctor. The man has seven degrees. He’s 85 years old. He’s been practicing all his life, immense respect but it’s all about big pharma. It’s all synthetics.

Paola:  Right. I would be mad. Boy, if I went to medical school to heal people with all these altruistic, starry-eyed goals and then you realized that you have to get in bed with big pharma and there’s no way to divorce from that. Well, I’m sure there’s a way. There are plenty of doctors that find a way but it’s not easy. I’d be mad. I can understand he’s getting close probably to retiring. He’s set in his ways.

Tina:  Yes, he is. He said he’s not interested in learning anything new. In fact, when I addressed it with him, he said, “That’s a young man’s journey.”

Paola:  Right.

Tina:  We are 5% of the world’s population and we’re taking 80% of the world’s pharmaceuticals.

Paola:  Wow.

Tina:  That’s a big red flag. That’s not normal. That’s not healthy.

Paola:  Say that again.

Tina:  The American population is 5% of the world’s population, yet, the Americans take 80% of the world’s pharmaceuticals.

Paola:  Wow.

Tina:  Every other commercial one on TV is for synthetic drug.

Paola:  Well recently, they came out with the research that’s saying that we are not living as long as we used to.

Tina:  This is the first year ever that our lifespan is decreasing. I’m a firm believer it’s the quality or lack of quality of our food source and these vaccines. Many patients were living on all the side effects.

Paola:  I was thinking about your doctor, this old time doctor. Obviously, the reason he doesn’t want to change his ways is because it’s worked for him in his practice in all these years. But guess what? Generation after generation has been affected with this. The new doctors coming on the market, I don’t think they’re going to stick with this.

Tina:  No. When you know better, you do better.

Paola:  Right. When you see it not working over and over again and I think that’s why Joette’s mission is so important.

Tina:  This movement is a gift from God. It’s long overdue and it is critical because I help a lot with my grandchildren’s grade school. I go in and I do class with them for the seasons. I have to be very careful of what foods I bring in as treats because of all these food allergies. I used to find them to be annoying until I went through it. Now, I have the utmost respect for these food allergies. So, these kids are suffering. These moms and families are suffering. I believe that 80% of it can be corrected.

Paola:  I think you’re right.

Tina:  It’s maddening.

Paola:  It is. Well, speaking of food allergies, that’s your other big condition that you are just so ecstatic about. I’m so happy for you too. So, tell us about the food allergies. Now, that story about you driving to that cornfield, I mean that’s terrifying. I’m just glad you’re not allergic to corn as well.

Tina:  Yes, yes. Had I not found out the homeopathy, that would have been next.

Paola:  Oh, I bet you.

Food allergies and Apis

Tina:  Well, when I had the anaphylaxis to the almond, my doctor started a series of blood tests to see what else I was sensitive to. I am not kidding you. I became sensitive to everything to the point where my doctor said to me, “You’re going to have to live on air and water,” and laughed at me. I just started to weep because there were no answers for me. I was left to withdraw from society and just wait to die. During the blood testing, it shows that I am three times more sensitive to apples than I am to almonds. Almonds almost killed me three times.

Paola:  That’s interesting. I’ve seen that connection. People who can’t handle almonds can’t handle apples. You had this little test that you did with the apple. Tell us about that.

Tina:  I knew I was having a reaction to apples before I ever had the anaphylaxis to almonds because when I would go to put an apple to my lips to take a bite, my lips would automatically swell. It wasn’t normal. I didn’t like it. So, I put the apple down. About three weeks later, I tried it again and the same reaction.

Paola:  So just putting the skin of the apple to your lips caused it to swell up.

Tina:  Correct. I didn’t even have to bite into it or consume it, just coming in contact with it. So, when I got my blood results back that said I was three times more sensitive to apples than I ever was to the almonds, I wasn’t surprised. But then, he started testing me for tomatoes, to bananas, to everything that I was eating on a daily basis. I mean, when you can’t have tomatoes, you can’t have salsa, pizza, spaghetti, ketchup. I mean, it’s in everything in my diet anyway. So when I started homeopathy, I can’t even remember, it was three to four months down the road, he sent me in for a blood test. I asked if we could test the tomato and the apples again. He said yes. So, we did that. My results came down 2/3 on my sensitivity to the apples and cut in half to the sensitivity to tomatoes.

Paola:  So, you had been on homeopathy for three months and the sensitivity of the apples dropped by 2/3 and the tomatoes were cut in half. That’s amazing. 

Tina:  You know, he never even commented.

Paola:  Wow.

Tina:  He never even made notice that I was reversing it.

Paola:  Oh, I’d be so mad.

Tina:  But he told me he’s not interested. This is something I have to pursue with another professional.

Paola:  Yeah, that’s right.

Tina:  Thank God, it’s out there. Thank God for the internet. That’s how I found Joette. That’s how I’ve been able to pursue my education with homeopathy.

Paola:  Yes, absolutely. I agree. I Googled some term. I thank God to this day that the words came into my head and I typed it into my computer and out popped her Good Gut, Bad Gut class. I think I signed up for it like just a few days before it started. That was how it all started.

Tina:  I typed in food allergies. On the sidebar came joettecalabrese.com.

Paola:  Wow. That’s great.

Tina:  After reading, reading, reading in pages on the website, I didn’t like anything I was seeing or learning anything. It was all telling me that it was not understood and there was no cure for it. You just have to abstain. It wasn’t until I went to the right site and pursued Joette that I had hope again. I had fervor like no other.

Paola:  That’s amazing. So now, let’s talk about where you’re at right now, Tina. You’re 14 months into your homeopathy stuff. Tell us how you first initially cautiously tested your food allergies again.

Tina:  I was making a dish for my husband to take into the office for Christmas. I always put apples at this dish. It was a chicken salad. I took a cube of that apple. I stuck it underneath my lip, inside my lip and left it there for five minutes. Then I took it out and threw it away. I was extremely nervous and cautious in case my body had a reaction but how are you ever going to know if you never tested again. But my sense of confidence was so high that day. I had two EpiPens on the counter. I had my car keys with my full tank of gas in the garage. I live a couple of miles away from the emergency room. I was bold. I was healthy and alive and felt confident enough to try it and watched the clock for 20 minutes. I didn’t have any symptoms. I then got busy with something else. Before I knew it, it was an hour later and I’m standing, no symptoms. I don’t know that I’ll ever just go and get an apple and take a bite out of it again. But I know that if I accidentally eat apples, every now and then I will have a sip of a juice that has apple with it. I want to keep my body introduced to it, the same with bananas, all these highly sensitive foods that I was tested for.

But I have to tell you. I recently accidentally consumed almonds in a restaurant. I was with my in laws and my husband and another couple. I have proof that this happened to me and consumed these almonds and started taking Apis, 1M when I realized that I was consuming almonds. I even showed it to my mother in law. She ate it and looked at it and confirmed that it was almonds and didn’t have any symptoms. I was through the roof. I mean, the weight of the world just lifted from my shoulders. The fog had lifted. I was free again. It’s a miracle. I mean, for a week, I kept repeating myself to my husband. Can you believe I ate almonds? Can you believe I ate almonds? Well then, Paola, it happened again two weeks later. We’re at another restaurant. I ordered hot and spicy shrimp. Who would think that they would garnish it with almond slivers? I take a bite at the shrimp. I’m enjoying it. I looked down on the plate and I see almonds. I had swirled that shrimp all around that garnish. I wanted all that sweet and hot and spicy flavor. I’m looking at it and I realized, “Oh my gosh. Here I am again.” So, I consumed my Apis, 1M and no symptoms. So twice in the last 30 days, I consumed almonds and had no symptoms.

Paola:  So, you were taking the Apis 1M kind of prophylactically? You weren’t getting symptoms. You were just like, “Oh I need to be – maybe I need to take this.”

Tina:  Yes, as a proactive.

Paola:  That’s amazing.

Tina:  Yes, it is amazing.

Paola:  Whoa, listeners of Joette, Joette would caution you. She wants you to know that she’s not recommending, or Tina, or I aren’t recommending that you just test willy-nilly. Joette has said in her classes and in her podcasts that she’s been in situations where she’s been the hospital parking lot. Even clients of her when they have food allergies and they want to test it, they’ll sit in the emergency room parking lot with their remedy kit, a deck of cards. They’ll test or they’ll deal with what they’re dealing with if it was already happening and they had it and watched the homeopathy do its thing. If for whatever reason, you’re not selecting the right remedies or whatever, you’d have that fallback just in case.

Tina:  Right. We don’t ever want to live without our hospitals and our synthetic drugs to have in an emergency situation but it will never be my first choice. It is going to be my last resort.

Paola:  Right. That’s how it should be. That’s amazing. So, I want to know now. Now that you’ve done so much better, have you gone back and done any more labs on all your food allergies because you lit up like a Christmas tree, right?

Tina:  Yes, yes. That’s another infuriating aspect about today’s insurance involvement with the medical field. I have specifically asked my doctor if he would go through and do my blood test on all the foods that I am sensitive to. At last count, it was 22. He said no. I asked why. He said because the insurance company contacted him. He had to write up a complete report and send in all my paperwork to justify why I have cost them so much money in the last year. And that they would not spend any more money on me. So, he cannot order blood tests which infuriates me because he can order blood tests four times a year at a regular visit to check my triglycerides, my blood pressure, and everything else. But for me to specifically request for my food allergies, no, I’ve been denied.

Paola:  Well, that’s ridiculous because it’s almost like he could but he doesn’t want to do all the paperwork that comes with it. Personally, I have a great doctor who is – I mean, not that your doctor isn’t great. My doctor, if I tell him I need this and this and this and this is why. I’m not crazy. I have a logical reason. He says yes, I think you do need that. He goes and he does it. Thank you so much. That’s what I need you for.

Tina:  Yes.

Paola:  My friends have been telling me that there are these discounted labs that you can send in requisitions yourself, directlabs.com.

Tina:  I need to write this down.

Paola:  Yes, directlabs.com and any labs, I think you can just Google any labs. This is in the US. I don’t know if you’re out of the country, what the situation is but these are labs that you don’t need a doctor to send them the requisition, that you can order the requisition and then go to a local lab.

Tina:  Thank you so much. I am dying to know. I mean I know I’m dying to get it in writing because I have proof. When he first took my blood results and my levels are in writing from a lab dated. Then three months later, when we took it after the homeopathy and they had dropped by 2/3 and a half on just 2 of the 22 foods, I want to further this and to see where my almonds are now.

Paola:  Right. Yes, because clearly you’re not reacting to them. Now, I don’t know if these labs actually do all labs or if they do only some of them but it would be worth investigating to see if they do your allergies. That would be cool.

Also, there is one more thing I just thought you should know and Joette’s listeners should know is about alternative healthcare companies. It’s not exactly a healthcare company. They’re called health sharing. So, it’s basically finding a way to pay for your medical bills, should you need them. So, you’re sharing among other members the cost. It’s a totally different model. It exempts you from Obamacare if you signed up for them. There’s a big one called Good Samaritan Ministries, I think. But there are some that are kind of Christian related and there are some that are not so much. It’s just an interesting thing to look into especially if some people don’t even have health insurance. Anyway, I think it’s great for families who like us, who have means to address common illnesses and they’re not rushing to the doctor for every little thing. It’s just a really great backup.

Then also, sometimes I kind of fibbed to my doctor when I need to get some labs done that I’m worried that he or she may not want to do. This is before I have the doctor that I have now. But I remember when I had strep throat and I got really sick from it. Obviously, the first time the strep throat came back positive and it was my big experience with homeopathy. I wanted to know if the strep was really gone or if it was just asymptomatic. Like if my symptoms were better but the strep is still there. So, I went to my doctor. I knew. I knew that the doctor at that time would not do the labs for me. I said, “Oh, I’m having really painful sore throat,” which wasn’t true. “I had strep recently. Could you swab again?” Kind of a fib but it’s okay, right?

Tina:  Isn’t it terrible that they paint you in their corner that you have to do that?

Paola:  You got to do what you got to do.

Tina:  I know.

Paola:  I know, so it’s no fun. So tell us Tina, which courses have you taken of Joette’s?

Joette’s Courses

Tina:  Well, the Good Gut, Bad Gut course, Feminopathy, I’ve taken those courses. I buy absolutely every book and any journal or anything she recommends. But those are the two courses that I’ve taken so far.

Paola:  I called the Good Gut, Bad Gut course, Joette’s flagship course. It’s really a great introduction to chronic health issues in general. But you have not taken Allergic then.

Tina:  No, because sadly, it was in October, right? I have a daughter that has two toddlers who needed a knee replacement. I was caring for the kids and then the holidays and we were travelling. I wanted to so badly because there’s nothing like going through the course. It’s wonderful to have backup information or to be able to get online and read about it and engage in it later. But to do the one on one, you get so much more out of it. I missed that.

Paola:  Right. You mean the live one?

Tina:  Yes, the live one, yes. Anytime you get an opportunity to sit live with Joette Calabrese, drop everything and do it.

Paola:  You’re right. I couldn’t agree with you more. She knows.

Tina:  She’s a wealth of knowledge. What she had done to dedicate the last three decades or more into homeopathy and to be travelling to the other side of the world to educate herself further to bring back to us is immeasurable. I had incredible respect and I’m so proud of her.

Paola:  Yes, I agree. We are very lucky. What she has done for just America and the people that have access to her thing. So the internet, I agree, has been such a blessing. It changed a lot of lives for sure.

Tina:  Yes.

Paola:  So, we don’t have a lot of time left but I did want to ask you if you’ve had any success helping other people because that’s really what Moms with Moxie is about too is blessing the lives of those around you. Anyone who you mother or who you have access to nurturing and helping. So tell us about that.

Sharing homeopathy with others

Tina:  Well, I have a large family and a large group of friends. People are hearing me. I was in the hospital three times in three months and inquiring and asking questions. So now, all of a sudden, I have the attention of those around me that have medical issues. I have a grandson who’s nine years old that has been diagnosed with ADHD. The teachers are telling my daughter he needs to go on Ritalin or something to help him focus. My daughter desperately did not want him on Ritalin because she’s heard so many horror stories about these kids that lose their personalities and they’re like not engaged anymore. She just didn’t want that for her son. So, she asked what we could with homeopathy. Fortunately, we were able to get him in with Joette.

It was a really critical timing for him because he was in third grade at that time. You have to pass three state tests throughout the year to be able to go on to the fourth grade. He had flunked the first two and he was getting ready to take the third. So, all of a sudden, it’s very important for him to pass. We put him on the remedy for ADHD for focusing. He took the state exam. He passed that state exam. He was in the slow reading group in third grade. He passes the state exam. He goes on to fourth grade. He has a B in reading now.

Paola:  Wow. That’s amazing.

Tina:  His personality has blossomed. The teachers adore him. They say that he’s the sweetest thing, that he helps all the other students, that he’s not a zombie like those that are taking synthetic drugs. Now, they’re inquiring about it. What did you put this kid on? I have teachers that are saying, “My mom has this condition. My sister has that condition. What can you do for my family?” So now, they’re inquiring with me about this home study course.

Paola:  The study group class, good.

Tina:  I have a granddaughter who was three month’s old. My daughter called me crying out of control one night because she had labored breathing. She took her into the doctor’s office. The doctor said there’s nothing they can do for her. Go home. She’ll be fine. It got worse throughout the evening. So, with consulting with Joette, we found a breathing treatment for her. Within three months’ time, her conditions are all settled. She appears to be a normal, healthy baby again.

Paola:  So, you did a homeopathic protocol for her and no more late night calls from your daughter crying, freaking out because your granddaughter can’t breathe?

Tina:  Exactly.

Paola:  That’s amazing. Kids tend to respond a little bit, not always but they tend to respond a little quicker than adults. For your grandson with the ADHD, what was that situation like? How long?

Tina:  Immediate. I mean Joette nailed it. It was an immediate reaction. The child just became calmer and more focused within a week’s time.

Paola:  That’s amazing. That’s not always what happens but it happens.

Tina:  Yes, but it happens. She has said to me before that sometimes the most severe symptoms have the quickest correction.

Paola:  That’s true.

Tina:  If you nailed that remedy the first time. With him, we did. Now, he’s playing basketball. He’s into karate. It’s just he’s a different boy. He’s happy. He’s settled. It makes me want to cry.

Paola:  I know.

Tina:  To know that I had a positive impact in his DNA.

Paola:  Right, right.

Tina:  And the rest of his life.

Paola:  That is the legacy that we, moms with moxie, are hoping to have, that kind of a legacy for our family instead of being remembered for oh your grandma had really bad allergies. That’s where you get it from.

Tina:  Yes, and you just settle for it. I will say, it’s very frustrating at times because not everybody buys into it in the family. Some people think it’s a placebo. They just, “How can this little white pill have such a massive impact in such a short period of time.” So that can be quite frustrating sometimes.

Paola:  Yes, that is frustrating. You can’t blame them to some degree because sometimes it comes too easily to them, the struggle that you went through, the stress, the anxiety, the sorrow with your health. Joette has said, you need to get through the eye of the needle, basically gone through hell and back to figure out what you figured out. Now, you value it. Sometimes if it comes too easily, you just sometimes don’t appreciate it.

Tina:  Yes, you forget how serious it was when it’s corrected so easily. All I can tell people is I know what I’ve been through. I know that I used to be a healthy professional. I used to average six fights a week. I mean I was out in the world and I was making things happen. Now, all of a sudden, I’m shriveled up and I’m out of control and I’m waiting to die to being alive and healthy and in control again. That’s all I can tell you. I will never doubt for a moment that homeopathy did not correct, I don’t know if it’s correcting the flora in my gut. That’s what I suspect.

Paola:  Right. It’s very possible.

Tina:  It’s enabled me.

Paola:  We don’t know exactly but whatever it is.

Tina:  Yes.

Paola:  Then tell us about your granddaughter real quick. She had chronic illness all the time and had the breathing struggle. How long before she really turned around?

Tina:  She was just a baby. We didn’t know how much was a normal from her big sister brining home coughs and things from preschool. But within a three month period of time, she was not having the labored breathing issues that kept my daughter up at night calling me, crying, running her to the doctor, pleading for help. She hasn’t had that in well over a year now. Those days are gone, right about three months.

Paola:  Three months, very good, three months, very good, wonderful.

Tina:  My husband -.

Paola:  Yes, tell us about him.

Tina:  He has terrible food issues or had terrible food issues. We would have to come home directly after a meal in a restaurant because his stomach was so upset. Now, he knows immediately Nux vomica.

Paola:  Done.

Tina:  If he gets a headache, Belladonna; or if he gets the cracked skin in the winter months that are so painful and bleed on his fingernails, he knows Petroleum. When he gets poison ivy gardening out in the yard, he is a mentor to inner city kids. He does a lot of it through gardening and basketball. This is how he engages them. He teaches them work ethics and teamwork and commitment and dedication. We had a young guy that was working in the yard with my husband. He had terrible allergies to everything out in the yard. He came in the house and was covered in poison ivy, all up and down his forearms. I immediately gave him the Anacardium. He took that immediately and within 20 minutes, it was gone. I got to tell you. I used to get poison ivy so badly. I’d have it for eight weeks and it would literally drip from my arm. It was so bad. It was embarrassing. You couldn’t cover it up. You couldn’t go out in public. You couldn’t itch it. I mean it was horrible. This boy was relieved within 20 minutes of taking it. My husband, same thing. I’ll never know because I don’t get it anymore.

Paola:  That’s amazing.

Tina:  My homeopathy has eradicated that for me.

Paola:  Wow. Some people are sensitive to poison ivy and some people can touch it and they don’t get sick, a rash or whatever.

Tina:  Yes. Well, I’m here to tell you that this will take care of it within 20 minutes. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. So this boy’s mom is now calling me. What do you have for this thing? What do you have for that?

Paola:  I love it.

Tina:  Yes.

Paola:  That’s amazing. That’s what Joette says. You want people to know about this. You want to share it.

Tina:  Hey, I read articles in the newspaper. I read how these lovely people are out helping others, yet they can’t do it anymore because of these health issues. I want to get their name and their phone number and call them and say, “All you have to do is do this.” It’s really hard not to reach out to strangers and say, “You don’t have to be suffering. I’ve walked down that road. This is what improved my life.” I want to just yell it to the world.

Paola:  I know. I joke all the time. It’s like being a homeopathy missionary.

Tina:  Yes, definitely. I want that to be my legacy. I have bought every kit that Joette has offered and bought it for my children and left some to my grandkids.

Paola:  Oh my gosh.

Tina:  That’s really how – because I believe, I know that back in the 1940s, homeopathy was a normal practice in the United States. Big pharma had the funding stopped for homeopathy. That’s when it died in the United States. It is widely used around the world. The queen of England takes it. The pope takes it. I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to beat big pharma. So I’m just trying to scarf up as much of it as I can for those around me that are in desperate need.

Paola:  Yes, to be prepared. I own four kits, going on five and lots and lots of single remedies. You’re right.

Tina:  It doesn’t go bad. You can’t go wrong. You never know what life you’re going to be able to change with it. It’s all good.

Paola:  Exactly. So, in closing, I know you wanted me to ask you this question. How do you feel about Joette? What do you think of Joette?

Tina:  She’s an angel on earth. I recommend to any listener that any opportunity you get to listen to Joette Calabrese, you just stop what you’re doing and you pay attention. Anything that she posts on her website, any email that you’re fortunate enough to get from her staff, you print it out. You keep it. You share it. Be grateful and treat it with respect because she has a movement that is going across this nation that is going to free us from big pharma and solve these health issues that are life threatening, that we are told by mainstream that there is no cure. That’s not the truth. I’m living proof of it. I just hope to God that she continues to get the blessing of the internet so that we can get the word out. We can learn from one another under her umbrella and take it seriously. She really is a gift from God and the movement is real.

Paola:  That is a wonderful testimony. I don’t think Joette could get it from a better person. So you do, you make it sound like, you know what it is, so great. It’s like the emancipation of health, really. Well, thank you so much for being with us, Tina. You’re delightful. I love to hear your stories and your experiences. I’m so glad you found homeopathy and Joette.

Tina:  Well, I did. I couldn’t be more grateful. I couldn’t have more respect. I am delighted to share my story. I hope it helps.

Paola:  Thank you.

Tina:  Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

I have been where you are now. I’ve dieted, taken supplements, bioidentical hormones, essential oils, herbs – but nothing, nothing has ever come close to the reproducible, safe, and effective results I and my clients have achieved with homeopathy. To see the full syllabus for my Feminopathy course and read the testimonials of other women who have been helped by my Practical Homeopathy methods, click here.

In this podcast, we cover:

05:23 Facing fears through education

11:55 Sticking with the chosen remedies and respecting the protocols

20:40 Being organized, consistent, and having distance

25:47 Homeopathy is relatively safe

29:56 Classical training and combination remedies

36:10 A case of suppression

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

Paola: It’s podcast number 26 at joettecalabrese.com. Here is what we have coming up.

Hi, it’s Paola here. I’m really looking forward to Joette’s podcast today. We’re going to look at two important subjects. The first one looks at selecting a remedy and learning how to commit to that remedy. In other words, we’re trying to avoid running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Then the second subject we’re going to talk about is really important. It looks at whether or not Joette’s practical homeopathy, the Banerji Protocols and other protocols like that, whether or not they are safe when you compare them to classical homeopathy. This is an important subject because you really want to be confident and comfortable when you’re doing Joette’s style of homeopathy.

Okay, so here we go.

Hi. I’m excited to be here with Joette again. Hi, Joette. How are you?

Joette: Hi Paola, very well. How about you?

Paola: Good, good, and good. Alright, so we’ve got another podcast today for you guys, another homeopathy nugget that we’re going to learn and discuss today. Today’s subject is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I think it’s Lara that first coined that term in one of the classes.

Lara is the gal that Joette teaches the classes with. So, go ahead and jump into that, Joette. What does Lara mean by that?

Joette: Well, I think what she’s talking about, I think this is what we’ve all been subject to especially as mothers and grandmothers is that we try a homeopathic medicine, or we try a certain food, or we try whatever modality we’ve decided we’re going to start with and we don’t see instant relief.

Say it’s our child. Because we’re so closely connected to our children and grandchildren, we can’t help but want instant relief. It’s horrible to see our children suffer.

So, we want something to happen now. Instead of waiting the prescribed certain amount of time for a homeopathic medicine to act, we say, “Well, maybe it wasn’t that.” We second guess ourselves. “Maybe it really wasn’t Hepar sulph. What if I was wrong?

What if it really was Arsenicum album?” So then, we go to Arsenicum album. We never gave Hepar sulph a chance. Let’s talk about it as an acute situation. So, let’s say for sore throat. So, we automatically go to for example, Hepar sulph, which is a very good choice for many kinds of sore throats.

If we don’t see a reaction, we think, “Uh-oh, we’re doomed. We got to go to something else.” We say, “Okay, I can’t stand it. The child is crying.” Here’s what I urge mothers, grandmothers, parents to do. Take a chill pill. Calm down.

Paola: By chill pill, you mean probably an Ignatia, right?

Joette: Probably. I’m giving it to you rhetorically. Take a chill pill. Calm down. If the child is not dying, if they’re not hemorrhaging, you’re not rushing on the way to the hospital, and all it is is a sore throat or an ear pain or teething, or sleeplessness.

I realize how horrible these can be on a family when somebody in that family is not well or they’re out of sorts. But you have to learn how to assess what is really dangerous and what is not. I harken back to Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, his book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor. He was not a homeopath. He was a pediatrician. He died some couple of decades ago.

Buy his book. I repeat this book all the time because this is where you get your guts, spunk and moxie or another way of putting it, of calming down over every little thing the child has.

Let me bring it in from my counter perspective. Have more kids because if you only have one, every little thing is a catastrophe. I see it all the time. I know how it was for me when I had one child. The more kids I had, the more it rolled off the back of my back.

Because it was something that I’d seen enough times now, croup didn’t scare me anymore. Ear infection didn’t frighten me. Teething didn’t freak me. I got accustomed to it. But if you don’t have the advantages of having more than one child, then by all means, you want to read Robert Mendelsohn’s book. I don’t mean once. Keep it by your bedside. Read it time and time again.

Because if you are freaking and you’re acting like a chicken with its head cut off, you’re going to make poor decisions. Your decisions will be made out of fear. You will jump from remedy to remedy, modality to modality. In the end, you’ll have a mishmash. In Italian, it’s called a [0:05:00], a mess.

Paola: Right. Well, there’s a little quote here that I pulled up real quick by Eleanor Roosevelt. She said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. ‘”

Facing fears through education

Joette: Well and as Dr. Mendelsohn says, “The danger to children is not in childhood diseases.” Not anymore, we don’t have polio anymore in our world. We don’t have cholera anymore. We don’t have tuberculosis. I’m not saying we never have it at all ever. But I’m saying it’s not a looming threat.

What is a threat to most children’s wellbeing are accidents. So, it’s the accidents that cause the most devastating of all conditions that can happen during childhood.

So, if you understand and you read in advance what chicken pox looks like and what to expect, if you know what a cough looks like and you read in advance and you learn some of these methods, homeopathic methods, using good nutrition, taking soda pop out of their lives at an early age so that they’re not saturated with something that does them no good and can even do some harm sometimes.

So, you want to educate yourself. We have to do that. The only way to address fear face on is education.

Paola: You’re right. I mean, I think the thing that I read into the most when I’m helping friends with homeopathy is a huge, huge amount of fear with fevers. But if you read Dr. Mendelsohn’s book, he lays it out right there. Keep him hydrated, you’re going to be fine.

I mean, that’s what it comes down to. My daughter had a fever this week. I didn’t even give her homeopathy until later when I saw, oh, she’s kind of getting an ear infection. So then I gave her Pulsatilla which is actually a Banerji Protocol, Pulsatilla 30 for the ear infection, Chamomilla 30 every 30 minutes when there’s SOS, acute pain.

But her ear infection never got that bad. She was just kind of like I feel something in my ear. So we did the Pulsatilla.

Anyway, it’s that knowledge in keeping them hydrated and that’s all you got to know. I remember the first time my kid had a fever, my little middle child loves fevers of 105, Joette, 105. I had diarrhea. I was so stressed out about it. I was taking Ignatia. I even think I took Gelsemium because of the diarrhea, anxiety.

Now, after I’ve got through that first 105, the second one was a little scary but it was fine. I didn’t do Tylenol. I just kept him hydrated. I was reading Dr. Mendelsohn’s book like it was my bible. Now, I’m just like, “Oh cool, you have a fever. Just go drink some water and lie down.” I even gave him a remedy.

Joette: Yes, right, exactly, exactly. So, when we say read Dr. Mendelsohn’s book or read the blog that you get that from, from me or from whomever else it might be, don’t just read it and say, “Okay, well that’s the information.” And assume that it’s stuck in your brain. If you’re freaking, you better underline that in that book.

Now, put a paper clip or a little tab on that page in that book and go back to it and read it again and again and again.

Paola: I give that book at baby showers. If one’s having a baby, I give them Dr. Mendelsohn’s book. It’s used. I write them a little note in there, “You’re welcome.”

Joette: Yes. Great gift, Paola.

Paola: Thanks. Yes, I like that one.

Joette: I’ve written an article called Get Your Kids High. So if you want to just Google that, I talk about fevers and the importance of fevers being a curative aspect of being sick for children.

Paola: You’ve actually spoken a lot about fevers, not just in that Get Your Kids High. I think even before you started doing the Banerji Protocols. That was one of your biggest things. So, I remember my friend’s daughter had a fever. She actually went to medical school. Not complete, because she realized that it was basically selling drug school, not so much medical school. So, she quit.

But she inherently feared fevers. I think it was part of her education. I remember she was freaking out one night about her kid’s fever. I just sent her three articles written by Joette Calabrese on fevers, fevers, fevers. She said she read those articles over and over again that weekend.

It just helped calm her down. She got through it for the first time without any Tylenol. Now, she’s so much more comfortable with it.

Joette: Here’s the thing. I wonder if doctors, pediatricians believe that children should be given Tylenol for fevers nowadays because the American Academy of Pediatrics says -.

Paola: Finally.

Joette: Yes, finally. It’s taken a long time. They have declared, I think it was about two years ago, that fevers are curative or they can be curative.

Perhaps, they’re more careful about their verbiage. They have made it, I think, abundantly clear that it’s the mother who’s forcing the pediatrician to give something. Now, they’re blaming the mothers but I’m going to take the blame off the mothers. Even though I do believe that we, mothers need to get a grip and learn how to treat our children ourselves without running to the pediatrician for every little thing.

But I believe that the reason that mothers do that is because they’ve been trained by the pediatricians to go to them when their children have fevers. What do the doctors always give? Tylenol. What did they give in years past? Aspirin. So they’ve been training mothers and grandmothers and even older than that to go to the doctors.

As soon as there’s a problem, just go to your doctor. He’ll know what to do. That’s what was done. Yes, the mothers are asking for it now but it’s only because they’ve been well-trained.

Paola: Right, right. I think that’s what I like even about the Essential Oil’s Movement aside from the fact that they’re useful is because it’s finally given moms something to busy themselves with.

Joette: Yes.

Paola: Just let the people know.

Joette: Absolutely, absolutely.

Paola: Keep them hydrated. I feel like we’ve kind of gotten off on a tangent about fevers but it really does relate to running around like a chicken with the head cut off. So, if your kid is burning a fever, we’re talking about an acute illness right now. But this will apply to chronics in a minute.

You don’t give them, oh it’s a fever of 102, Belladonna, Belladonna. Oh wait, shoot, shoot, shoot, I shouldn’t have been using Belladonna. That’s not high enough of a fever for Belladonna. So, I’m going to go to Ferr phos, two doses of Ferr phos.

Oh, but she’s really, really clingy and whiny and whimpering and wants me to hold her. So, I’m going to switch to Pulsatilla now. It was like I’ve heard of people doing five remedies in one day, Joette, for an acute. I’m like, “No.”

Sticking with the chosen remedies and respecting the protocols

Joette: Stick with it. Make your decision and stick with it. At least give four doses when it’s an acute.

Paola: Yes, we say three to five in the study group classes. Yes, at least four doses. I think that’s important. People will come to me a lot of times. I’m sure you get this too. My kid is sick. I started them on Hepar sulph, whatever reasoning they came to Hepar sulph. I started them this morning on Hepar sulph. Do you think I’m right? Should I switch to

Do you think I’m right? Should I switch to Pulsatilla or whatever? My answer is always no. You started it. So now, we’re going to stick with it. We got to get to those three to five doses and see what happens. Is that right?

Joette: Generally speaking, I would say it’s right unless the child’s much, much worse. Every time you give the Hepar sulph, the child gets worse than ever then you might want to question it. But you want at least what was your rationale. Did it go away? Is the child different now or is your thinking different?

Paola: What if the child’s exactly the same? No better, no worse, they’re just the same?

Joette: Keep going. Keep going. Stay with it. Stay with it. You got to give that homeopathic a chance to act. It’s not like aspirin where you’ve taken aspirin for a headache and it goes away. It can be like that. I have seen it act like that. But if it doesn’t, give the homeopathic a chance to fully act. It could take several doses to do that.

Paola: Going back to the subject of fevers, I have to tell people, this remedy isn’t going to make the fever go away. So don’t expect that. Very new people to homeopathy, the child has a fever of 104 and they’ve given two doses of Belladonna. The fever is still here. Well, it’s not Tylenol. This is going to usher, assist the fever to complete the illness.

Joette: Yes, but it can abort the fever. It can do that. Yes, yes.

Paola: But that shouldn’t be the expectation?

Joette: That’s not the goal. We’re not trying to necessarily, for an acute childhood illness, we’re not necessarily trying to get rid of a fever. We’re trying to get the child well because the fever is just a symptom. It’s not the disease. We don’t say the child, actually, we do say that in our society.

Oh my gosh. He (I love this term) spiked a fever. You have to emphasize these words because it’s talk that emphasizes – the importance of the word spike. Spiking a fever is a very positive thing in most circumstances for childhood illness. We want that fever to cook it off.

Paola: We should say he bloomed a fever. I hate to cut that emotional -.

Joette: Yes, blossomed.

Paola: Right, blossomed a fever.

Joette: Yes, blossomed a curative symptom. Oh what symptom is that? Oh the fever. That is a part of the curative action.

Paola: If you think it’s just about the wording we’re using, that is really the problem because it ignites fear. So, connotation is the emotional undertones that are associated with the word. Slender is better than scrawny, right?

Joette: Yes, right.

Paola: I would prefer to be called slender, not scrawny. We need to think of fever -.

Joette: [0:15:09] as you’re obese.

Paola: Right. Voluptuous, right, exactly.

Joette: Voluptuous, right? Ample.

Paola: So, we just need to change our rhetoric. What did you say?

Joette: Ample.

Paola: Oh yes, very good. I like that.

Joette: We could keep going with this.

Paola: So, when we talk about normal childhood illness, change the way you think of it.

Joette: We do use common sense but the problem is common sense has been distorted. So we have to rearrange that thinking. We have to adjust our thinking. This is new for a lot of people. This is a different way of thinking. You can’t just say, “I think I’ll think differently.”

No, no, no, no, no. You have to educate yourself with this kind of thinking. You better read. You better study. You better learn. Start with Dr. Robert Mendelsohn and go from there. Read these blogs that I put out that are free. Take courses. Get more books.

Paola: As you pick your remedy, stick to it unless they’re worst.

Joette: On the full, three to five doses over the prescribed period of time.

Paola: Yes, exactly. Sometimes that takes a lot of fortitude to stick with it.

Joette: Oh, you have to be a cowgirl.

Paola: Yes.

Joette: You have to be able to buck the system. You’ve got to be able to lasso that cow and bring her down. You’ve got to have guts, spunk, and moxie back again.

Paola: In this case, cow is fear. The cow is your fear.

Joette: Yes, that’s right. That’s right.

Paola: Yes, and it is a wrestle school.

Joette: That’s kind of coyote medicine.

Paola: Right. I like it. It’s true. It does take guts. Oftentimes, people who I see that don’t follow through with protocols or succumb to the antibiotics, sometimes there’s a good reason for it.

Joette: Yes. I also want to make that clear too, Paola. That there are certainly are times in which we use conventional medicine. If you absolutely don’t know what to do and it looks dangerous, of course, you get yourself to a doctor. Let’s not be foolish here.

Paola: Right. If you want a full discussion on that, listen to the podcast on discernment that Joette and I had because we do want you to have that discernment. But basically we’re saying, I find that people that do what I thought maybe wasn’t so serious, it’s because they haven’t wrangled their fear and taken control over it.

Running around with a chicken with your head cut off is a fear-based, knee-jerk action trying to do it and you’re doing it wrong.

Joette: Well and I’ve also seen many parents and people for themselves as well go from doctor to doctor to doctor to doctor to doctor, modality to modality, naturopath, and chiropractor, and acupuncturist, and conventional doctor, and functional doctor, and homeopath.

They’re just going all over the place desperately looking for a method that’s going to cure them. I believe that if you stay in one modality, you’ll probably find some good answers.

They’re just going all over the place desperately looking for a method that’s going to cure them. I believe that if you stay in one modality, you’ll probably find some good answers.

Paola: Right. Okay, really what we’re talking about here by not jumping from one remedy to another remedy especially when you’re dealing with protocols for an illness is respecting the protocols.

Joette: I love that word. Yes. Because if you’re saying, if you have a little classical homeopathy training, “Well, but my child really seems more like Phosphorous because he’s sparkling. He’s got a twinkle in his eye. He’s artistic. I don’t think I want to use that protocol.

I’m just going to throw Phosphorous in there. I don’t think that my child can handle a 200 potency even though the Banerjis say to use a 200. I think I’m going to use a 30.” I would urge people not to do that.

When you say we should be respecting these Banerji Protocols, it’s based on knowledge of these doctors, the Banerjis and their colleagues seeing 100 patients per day. There are 12 of them that are working in this clinic. That means there are 1200 patients per day.

At the end of the week, they’ve seen over 7000 per week. They’ve been doing this approximately. They’ve been seeing this many for 150 years collectively.

Paola: Yes, six days a week, yes. Do you know what this reminds me of? I have always had this keen awareness when I was a young mom, pregnant with my first baby. I have this awesome mother in law. My mom is awesome too. My mother in law has had 10 children.

Boy, that’s like a weight. That’s like a knowledge and life experience that I know I don’t have. So when she would give me advice, I was really careful to listen to her advice because I knew where she was coming from. I knew that she had information.

But then I see some of my other friends dismiss the advice like, “Oh no. I know better.” I look at them. You just have like one kid. We have mother’s intuition. I respect that too. But look at all the knowledge.

Joette: The data, just the data.

Paola: Of our grandmothers that we’re dismissing here, of our mothers.

Joette: Yes, that’s 10 children everyday for all those years. Your mother in law, it sounds to me from what you’ve told me, had a lot of innate knowledge.

Paola: Yes, she did. I just think, “Don’t be naïve.” That’s embarrassing. 10 years from now, you’re going to be embarrassed. Don’t be naïve to not respect the protocols.

Joette: Right, right.

Being organized, consistent, and having distance

Paola: Then another aspect that’s important about this not avoiding, running around like you’re a chicken with the head cut off is being organized and consistent.

Joette: That requires writing down what you see, what you saw when it started. When your child started getting the fever, what time of the day was it? What remedy you chose, what you observed. It was a fever plus diarrhea. How frequently were the movements?

How severe was the diarrhea? Was it loose stool or was it explosive and watery? Those are things that you will forget especially if you see three children and they’re all getting sick. Who had what when? So you want to jot it down. Now, you don’t want to jot down absolutely every little thing but those that are noteworthy should be noted.

Paola: I tell people your magic markers podcast. We talk about the magic markers of improvement. We have intensity, duration, and frequency. If you don’t know what to write down, I think those are three things that you want to write down.

Joette: That’s right. I think in being organized and consistent is also having distance. That’s a part of this. When your child is hanging on you and saying, “Mom, mom, mom, I’m still not well. Mom, mom, I’m still coughing,” or your husband is saying, “What are you going to do about this?

Come on. Let’s do something,” you have to have enough staying power and being grounded enough to say it requires time, a tincture of time. It takes time for these medicines to act. Don’t expect me to just run my magic wand over them and correct everything within minutes.

It takes some distance. You almost have to shut off your emotions for a while until you can see what’s happening. So you can get enough. Because if you are helping a friend and you don’t have that child screaming in your lap or the father who is saying, “Come on, come one,” and you have enough distance, you have the wherewithal. That’s what you need in your own family sometimes.

Paola: So, it’s learning how to be objective and detached. I can’t tell you how many times. I’ve talked to friends all the time. No, do the remedy that you started with three to five doses. Report back. Take notes if you have to. When I’m in the middle of a crisis in my own home, this helps me tremendously. I have to tell myself, “Okay, what would I tell them if I were them?”

Yes, that really, really does help. Well, this is what I would say. Sometimes I’ll say if I’m freaking out and I’ll say I’m going to email Joette or call the office and see if she has a quick minute. But then I have to tell myself, “What is she going to tell me?”

I already know what she’s going to tell me. She’s going to tell me to stick with it or be patient. So then I’m like, “Okay, well then I don’t have to call her.” I don’t. I don’t call you all the time. But it’s this human instinct to help me. Fix me.

Joette: Help, help, someone, help, help. If you’re going to take this on and you want to learn how to cure your family yourself, then you have to have the guts to hold steady.

Paola: I think that’s exactly right.

Joette: Also know, let me mention again just to emphasize this, also know when it’s something that’s outside of your knowledge and when to get to a doctor or a hospital or a clinic. You also have to know that too.

Paola: Right. That goes back again to that discernment podcast which is so important. Then you gave us some rules when we’re treating chronic conditions, we’re going to touch into that just very briefly but allowing, we say in acute, three to five doses; well then in a chronic, you got to give those eight full weeks.

Joette: Six to eight weeks, that’s right, six to eight weeks.

Paola: And watch. Don’t watch the hourly changes of a chronic illness. Don’t let yourself do that. Distance yourself and allow those eight weeks.

Joette: That’s right. Well, people often tell me between appointments, “I just want to give you an update.” Well, no. The update is in six to eight weeks unless there’s a crisis. Now if there’s a crisis, by all means, we may have to make adjustments. What oftentimes people are saying, “Well now, the itching is not so severe. Does that mean the remedy’s not working?” Well, possibly.

Paola: I hope so.

Joette: Yes, it might be that the child wasn’t exposed to as much mold recently. So, we won’t know until we have that time so that we can observe from a distance.

Paola: Especially in the case of women, we have our hormone, our monthly cycle. That throws a rant into a lot of stuff. Well, part of the month you’re better and part of the month you’re worse. You don’t know until six weeks to eight weeks covers 1 ½ maybe even two cycles.

Joette: Right, exactly, exactly.

Paola: That’s important. Kind of shifting subjects a little bit, Joette. We have a little time and I want to jump into it. I have seen a lot of the discussion out there about classical homeopathy versus the protocols and saying and word of mouth that the protocols can actually suppress symptoms in the way that antibiotics suppress symptoms or drugs can suppress symptoms.

Let’s talk about that because that’s a really scary statement to think that our beloved homeopathy could be doing damage.

Homeopathy is relatively safe

Joette: Well, let’s start with this. Homeopathy is relatively safe. You can make a mess of things with homeopathy. There’s no doubt about it.

That’s why I’m so clear when I try to teach these protocols that you understand what you’re getting into and what you’re doing and how to use them and when to stop. So, I hope that I make it clear. I believe I am. People come back and ask me questions. I can see that they do understand. But if I have not, allow me to do so here.

It is very important that the protocols be followed precisely if you’re going to be using protocols. If someone takes a homeopathic medicine and it is incorrect, you’re taking it for eczema and what it really is, I don’t know, lupus.

You start taking these medicines and you take them and take them and take them and you insist that this must be eczema. Then the remedy may indeed cause what it was intended to correct. You may end up with eczema. So now, you have lupus and eczema or other conditions that could be brought out by using the incorrect medicine.

But that’s not, I believe, what the classicals who criticize the Banerji Protocols are saying. I believe what they’re saying -. Go ahead.

Paola: I just want to interject real quick. It goes back to something we talked about in our last podcast. That is the protocols are like recipes but you can still mess up a recipe if you read it wrong or someone tells you the recipe wrong.

So, that’s why I’m so adamant about telling people on Facebook who are sharing protocols, even in the Students of Joette Calabrese Facebook, you really want to take the courses yourself and know those protocols for yourself. Because you don’t want to get the protocol wrong or interpret the recipe wrong because homeopathy is relatively safe.

Joette: It’s medicine. It’s medicine. It’s not herbs. It’s not vitamins. It’s not supplements. It’s not essential oils. It is medicine. So, it has to be taken with a great more respect. So, what I’m hearing sometimes is that if you repeat a medicine daily that that can suppress. I couldn’t disagree more. That’s number one.

Paola: I think that’s great. That’s great news, yes.

Joette: I couldn’t disagree more because I see the outcome. The Banerjis have seen the outcomes of using them frequently. I also saw the outcome when I was a classical homeopath and I used homeopathic medicines.

I would give a dose and wait six weeks or give two doses in 24 hours or a third dose in 36 hours and then wait and wait and wait and wait. There were times when it was perfectly clear to me that it was important to repeat it. But my education told me not to repeat it.

So, what the Banerjis have done is given me permission. They’ve opened up my world and the world of many homeopaths, I believe throughout the world to yes, use it more frequently because it needs to be met with a condition more frequently.

Because if we wait too long, the condition starts to clear up for a little while and now, we wait week 4, week 5. It starts to come back again. Week 6, holy cow, here it comes back again. I got to wait until week 8, that’s classical. I got to wait until week 8 or even week 6.

Now, you can give it again. Holy cow, who’s going to wait that long? Who’s got that kind of time? We live in a fast paced world. People don’t want to wait for things to unfold. Indeed, it may work. It does work. Classical homeopathy is a beautiful medicine but it often takes too long and we have such a better method by using these homeopathics in greater frequency.

Classical training and combination remedies

Now, that also harkens back to companies such as Hyland’s Homeopathics or Boiron or Washington or Hahnemann Pharmacy, Helios, that manufacture combination remedies. I had been trained when I was trained classically many years ago, don’t ever use combination remedies.

Well, that’s great. But what that does is it keeps a huge segment of the population out of using homeopathy. I abhor that. It means that curing and the ability to correct disease then can only be in the hands of classical homeopaths. Well, good luck folks.

There aren’t very many, number one. Number two, they often don’t share the information. They don’t tell you what they’re giving you. They make it a kind of medicine that is only within the hands of a few. I don’t like that kind of thinking.

Paola: Well, it’s interesting. I have been to a classical homeopath before working with you, Joette. He’s a great homeopath. I think he’s done a lot of good in the world. But he wouldn’t tell me the remedy that he wanted to give me.

Joette: That’s very common in classical.

Paola: It kind of goes back, I think, to what you’re saying. Am I right?

Joette: Yes, that’s exactly what we’re talking about. It’s keeping it so close to the vest that no one learns it. Well, I hate to say it but I believe that there are classical homeopaths out there who don’t want people to learn it. They believe it’s dangerous.

I think in some instances, that’s an excuse because there is a lot that we can teach families how to use homeopathy. There’s a lot that we can get out there. If we keep it so close to the vest, it will never blossom the way it needs to blossom. I believe this belongs in the hands of the families.

Paola: Perhaps it also comes down to every homeopath might be a good homeopath but they’re not necessarily good teachers. That’s a burden too.

Joette: I’m a mother first. I was a mother first. Then I became a homeopath. I can’t wait until someday I become a grandmother because this is what needs to be in every single family. Every mother and grandmother needs to know what Arnica is used for.

They need to know how to use Hypericum. They need to know how to use Belladonna and Antimonium crud. If they don’t know how to do this then what normally happens is they go directly to the conventional doctor and get suppressive methods. If they happen to have a classical homeopath by their side, great, but what if they don’t?

Paola: Right. That’s most of us.

Joette: What if the homeopath chooses incorrectly. Yu got to wait six to eight weeks to find out. No, no, no, no, no. We need to know how to do this ourselves. So, what I like about the combination remedies that are available at Wal-Mart – hello, shouldn’t it be at Wal-Mart?

Why should it not be at Wal-Mart? What is this, esoteric? This is only for the upper echelon of education? Absolutely not. This is for everyone to use. So if a mother goes into Wal-Mart and says, “Gee, what can I use for my child’s teething or for sleeplessness or my husband’s leg cramp?”

There’s a product that says homeopathic leg cramps. What do you know? Why should we discourage her from using this? Because number one, it’s inexpensive.

Number two, it’s readily available. Number three and most importantly, slam dunk, it usually works. If we can give them a medicine that works instead of pain relievers for her husband’s leg cramps, we are 50 legs up on where they were before they started this. We need to give this message to the world.

Paola: It’s really about empowering families, I think.

Joette: Absolutely.

Paola: The point of this discussion is to let you know that while homeopathy is relatively safe, as you said, the statement that classical homeopathy does not suppress and the protocols suppress is really a sweeping statement that isn’t necessarily true.

Joette: Yes, that’s right because you can suppress with classical homeopathy too. They make mistakes too.

Paola: The risk is in both.

Joette: Yes, absolutely. When we’re buying, let’s go back to those combination remedies for leg cramps, or teething tablets, or fever, or colds and flus, or Coldcalm, there are so many wonderful combination remedies out there. I used to be against them. I’ll be honest with you.

You may even find something in which I’ve been recorded saying that a good 15, 20, 25 years ago. But I’ve mended my ways. Because I see how important it is that families have this at their fingertips. So, if only one of the medicines is acting in a combination remedy to help that father or that husband with leg cramps so that he can get a good night sleep, so he can get up and make a living for his family the next day, that’s good enough for me.

Just because there might be four others in that combination that are potentially superfluous doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

Paola: Well, I’ve actually had a friend whose daughter had a fever and was not feeling well. She was older. She wasn’t teething or anything. She had the teething tablets from -.

Joette: Hyland’s.

Paola: Yes, Hyland’s. But they don’t sell here anymore because of that controversy. Anyway, her older daughter, she just gave her the teething tablet because it happened to have Belladonna. She needed Belladonna. She didn’t have Belladonna. It worked.

Joette: Of course it worked, absolutely, because there’s the remedy right there, sitting right in there. The little label tells us.

Paola: Now, I wouldn’t recommend you to do that. That’s not what you do but in a pinch, alright, it worked.

Joette: Absolutely.

Paola: So Joette, just this is kind of the blazing question. All your years of experience and perhaps from what you’ve heard from your colleagues, have you heard of a case where you’ve seen homeopathy, classical or otherwise, suppress a symptom that is absolutely this is suppressed.

A case of suppression

Joette: I have seen a case. Years ago when I first started studying homeopathy, one of my friends who was far ahead of me in understanding of homeopathy was – we were all using only classical. She gave a homeopathic to someone. The person got sick. They got sick. Not with an acute, it was a chronic condition. I wish I remember the circumstances but it scared the wits out of us because we all believed that it must have been the homeopathic medicine that was incorrectly chosen. I don’t know.

We, still to this day, don’t know what it was. I’ve not gotten back to that person. I don’t know what the circumstances are or what came of that. But we were under the impression that the homeopathic medicine that our friend chose caused a chronic condition to blossom in this person. I hate to use the word blossom but to -.

Paola: Spike, Joette, spike.

Joette: Spike. So yes, it can happen. Absolutely, it can happen. But for my money, for my time, for my energy, I’ll take this medicine any day over medicines that we know have side effects, that must have side effects in order for them to even act.

Paola: And do suppress. If they worked, it means it suppressed.

Joette: That’s right. That’s right, absolutely. Now, there are times when we don’t mind suppressing. Suppression isn’t always a bad thing. When someone has to have surgery, you’re going to suppress the sensation of pain when they use that scalpel across the abdomen. Of course, it’s going to suppress.

There may be a downside to that. Of course, there’s a downside to it. The person can get sick later on. They can have vomiting from the general anesthesia. They can have nightmares from anesthesia. They can feel spacy from anesthesia. But hello, there are times when you have to do that.

You just weigh the advantages to the disadvantages. But if you’re using it without knowing, without understanding how serious side effects can be and how serious suppressions can be by using these drugs for long periods of time or even short ones, then you’re walking into the lions dead blindly.

You just weigh the advantages to the disadvantages. But if you’re using it without knowing, without understanding how serious side effects can be and how serious suppressions can be by using these drugs for long periods of time or even short ones, then you’re walking into the lions dead blindly.

Paola: So basically, what you’re saying is what other options do we have? If you’re going to sit in a corner, paralyzed by fear that maybe, possibly, there’s a small chance that homeopathy might suppress. You’re not going to do anything. Well then, you got drugs.

We know that. So, it’s like go with the safer option. We know this is much safer.

Joette: Yes, that’s right. So, I like those combination remedies from Boiron, Hyland’s, et cetera. I like those. I think that they are changing the way we, mothers, grandmothers, et cetera, treat our children and our families. It’s changing the world. That’s exactly what we want to do.

My goal is to reach 100,000 households by 2020. I have it written on this little rock here on my desk that I want to reach that many households. I hope I reach many more than that. But that was my original goal a few years ago. That’s my focus. I want people to know how to use this stuff.

Paola: Well, I can’t thank you enough, Joette. We have Moms with Moxie podcast coming out soon with Tina. She talks about that at the end about your goal and how thankful she is for it. I too, am thankful. So thank you for taking the time to talk to us today about not running around like a chicken with our head cut off. Kind of appreciating the difference between classical and the protocols and that it is relatively safe basically.

Joette: Yes, yes. Well, thank you for doing this, Paola. It’s always great.

Paola: You just listened to a podcast by joettecalabrese.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shared her passion for helping families stay healthy through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition. Joette’s podcasts are available on Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

In this podcast, we cover:

14:10 Joette’s influence with Kali carb for asthma

21:09 More Arnica experience: uterine fibroid

24:51 Using remedies on horses and tips on how to administer them

31:51 Childbirth and labor

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

Paola: It’s another podcast at joettecalabrese.com. Today, we’ve got a new episode for the Moms with Moxie miniseries.

Joette: All the way from my desk in New York, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. 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 and they’re glorious and powerful. I can’t keep your successes a secret any longer. So with help from my roving reporter, Paola, we bring you this mini podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” It’s actually grandmoms, too but it’s moms with Moxie. See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Paola: Hi. I’m excited to have another “Moms with Moxie” interview. Today, we have Barb Rigelhof, hailing from the state of Washington. Hi, Barb.

Barb: Hi. It’s nice to see you, Paola.

Paola: I know. I’m so glad to be chatting with you. I love doing these little interviews because I want others to see and Joette wants others to see that normal moms, if you study this, you can become pretty awesome. I’m excited to hear your stories. Tell us about how you came to find natural medicine and homeopathy.

Barb: Right. The natural medicines came about because I’m blessed and cursed at the same time that regular medicine doesn’t tend to work on me. I get side effects and no results. At some point, I started looking into natural medicine. I have a science background so I looked at herbs. I looked at sort of everything except homeopathy because homeopathy being energy medicine, so I was kind of woo-woo. And so, being a science snob, I was like, “Oh, that’s just perfect. Whatever.” So I didn’t look at that.

It was when a friend of mine who dragged me to a talk by a homeopath back in Montreal where I’m from, she took me to this talk and this homeopath just blew me away. She had been a nurse for 35 years, and also French-Canadian lady, awesome, awesome speaker. Just what she was talking about just blew me away. So, I started thinking, “Okay. Maybe I do need to look into this homeopathy stuff.” It was in my face all the time. I kept putting it aside. So, I did start working with that. When I started trying it out, it was first on my dog. There’s no placebo effect on animals. That’s one of the things they always talk about with homeopathy. Oh, it’s the full effect.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: Yes. Try telling that to a dog. I don’t think you can convince a dog that what you’re doing is going to help them. They just either get better or they don’t. I had some great results. So then I started using it for myself and this was before I had kids. By the time my kids came along, I was really starting to get much more proficient with it. So, my kids were raised largely with homeopathic remedies.

Paola: Oh, I’m so jealous. That is my dream story, that I found homeopathy before I have my kids, practiced on some animal, got comfortable with it.

Barb: That’s just because I’m older than you, Paola. I found it and then I had my kids. That’s all.

Paola: Well, that’s wonderful, I think. I meet moms even today that have just one tiny baby. I’m like, “Oh, you’re so lucky you met me and I get to share this with you.” So that’s great. I like that you had a science background. It is funny how we just dismiss homeopathy until we realize that maybe we don’t know it all.

Barb: Yes, exactly. Yes, it’s that science indoctrination. Really, we’re not even looking at evidence. We’re just going with what we’ve been told.

Paola: Right.

Barb: We just spoon feed it along and now at some point, you go, “Oh, wait a minute. Well, I actually don’t know anything about this. Maybe there’s something to it.

Paola: Right. I think that’s why people do the herbs and the essential oils first because in our heads, it makes more sense.

Barb: Most allopathic medicines come from herbs or plants or something. We know that. So, using the herbal form is less of the mind shift.

Paola: Right. I think the biggest thing that people need to grasp with homeopathy, just step one is understanding we’re not trying to kill the infection, which a lot of times garlic, herbs, and antibiotics -. I was kind of thinking along those lines. We’re thinking about changing the terrain so that your body can’t host the illness anymore.

Barb: Exactly. We’re not suppressing. We’re actually helping the body to rally its troops and deal with it.

Paola: Tell us what happened with your dog then.

Barb’s introduction to homeopathy and the Arnica basket

Barb: Oh, okay. Yes. So, this was a number of years ago. So my dog, within a space of six months, he had two surgeries. The first one, I didn’t know about homeopathy yet. So, he came back from that surgery. He was in quite a bit of pain. I gave him pain relief. You could see it in the eyes. I saw how he dealt with it. But the second surgery, I knew about homeopathy and I decided to give Arnica a try. So, I had dissolved some Arnica in a dropper bottle. I had that ready with me when I went to pick him up. When I went to pick him up, he was very excited to see me. He was having, it was debulking of a tumor that was on his jaw. So, he smacked his jaw when he saw me. He was so excited. It started bleeding. I could see the pain in his eyes. Blood was gushing everywhere. Fortunately, I had it already. I gave him the drops right away. Literally, within 30 seconds, his eyes cleared and the bleeding stopped. My pet went like, “Wow!” I kept giving him the Arnica and I didn’t have to give him any pain relief medicine. When you know your animal, I mean, I could just tell by his eyes especially having experienced a previous surgery, and just the way it kept everything under control and how quickly he recovered. It was a real eye-opener. That’s when I went, “Okay, this is something.”

Paola: That’s what’s so cool about treating animals and young children or babies is they’re so uninhibited. They will let you know if there’s improvement. You can observe and see that shift so clearly.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: I was teasing you. You are like the Arnica mom. You’ve really found a lot of great uses for Arnica.

Barb: I have. I even have another little story since we last talked. For Thanksgiving, we went to our neighbor’s house. There were few other families there. Everyone was sitting around the table. They went around and said, “Let everyone say what you’re thankful for and also what you’re known for.” So, when it was my turn, I said, “I’m known for BBs,” which I call them Barb’s bombs. It’s these little chocolate, homemade chocolate truffles that I make that I always brought to any of our events, right.

Paola: Oh, yummy!

Barb: So, I was known for those. Everyone was like, “No, you’re like the Arnica.” Anytime we’re injured, you’re on the doorstep with the Arnica and the instructions on what to do.”

Paola: Oh, I love that. You have like an Arnica basket.

Barb: There’d be other remedies too depending on the injury. But yes, I’m known as – and sometimes the kids would come to me and say like, “Barb, I hurt myself. My mom said I could come for some Arnica.”

Paola: Oh, that’s so awesome. They trust you. They know. That’s great. I love that. I know it’s so funny. I think sometimes when I’ve learned homeopathy even more, I get them all jumbled up in my head and sometimes the answer is so simple, Arnica or even Aconite and Arnica.

Barb: Those are certainly for an injury or an emergency because one of the things I love about Arnica is how good it is for shock. It’s amazing for shock or just getting your head straight. I mean, I took it one time when my daughter injured herself. I was fine. But I took it just because she cut the end of her finger and she was really young.

Paola: Oh, my gosh!

Barb: Yes. I’m not squeamish but when it’s your kid, it’s a whole different thing. So, I was feeling faint, just so like, “Oh, my God!” I said to my husband, “I actually took the Arnica before I gave it to her.” It’s a little of that airplane thing where you put the gas mask on first.

Paola: Yes, that’s exactly what I thought.

Barb: I was worried that I was going to be sick.

Paola: Right.

Barb: I got to keep it together so I can help her.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: Yes. It’s a life-saver for so many things.

Paola: That’s awesome. I love that. So, you have how many kids? Tell me what that was like raising them having known homeopathy from the beginning.

Barb: Right. So, I have two children. My oldest is 17. My youngest just turned 14. So, I’ve been doing this for a while.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: You can tell. I got more proficient as I went along. I didn’t have a lot of childhood illnesses. We didn’t have a lot of stuff. But I did have the crying baby and the fevers and all of that. My kids have never had a suppressed fever in their life. They’ve always had their fevers treated homeopathically. I’ve never had an elevated fever for more than 12 hours using homeopathics

Paola: Wow!

Barb: So, I’m not afraid of a fever. I mean, we’re so indoctrinated in this fear of fever. I mean, a fever is a wonderful thing. It’s your body burning up whatever is in its system that shouldn’t be there. So, it’s not something to be afraid of. But if you can help it along and help it do it more effectively and get through the disease more effectively, then great.

Paola: I think that’s such a big thing that Joette has talked about so much. But it seems that I still can’t get away from it no matter how much -. She has blogs and podcasts about fevers. Young moms are still so stressed out by it. I mean, I think it’s coming from three areas. I feel like part of that is because the doctors are, “So, you need to give them Tylenol. You need to give them Tylenol.” Then you fill in the blanks.

Barb: They’re burning up. They could get out of control.

Paola: Right. Then the second thing is I feel like our mothers and grandmothers aren’t passing down that knowledge for whatever reason. Maybe we’ve a lot of doctors who supersede and take over that role for us. Then it’s just that lack of experience. I guess what made you feel comfortable to never ever suppress a fever?

Barb: I think part of it was the gift of having children a bit later than I expected to. I think I watched all my friends go through it. I mean, I had one good friend who had a daughter who, this wasn’t a fever situation. I think she had strep throat or something. This poor little kid ended up on the couch for two months on various antibiotics after antibiotics after antibiotics. She was all of three or four years of age. When you see a listless kid on the couch for a couple of months at that age for something pretty normal, I mean, it’s just an infection, I was mortified. I just said, “This is not the way to treat kids.” You just see that it’s just more and more suppression, suppression, suppression.

I also had an incident myself where I worked at a bank and I got a paper cut on my finger that ended up with some funky herpes virus. So, I ended up with this funky infection on my finger that had to be lanced, opened. Anyway, I took antibiotics for that. Well, after that course of antibiotics, I ended up with a bladder infection. I was given antibiotics for that. Then I ended up with a kidney infection. At some point, I just went, “Okay, so I’m going from one infection to another because I’m going from one set of antibiotics to another.”

Paola: The merry-go-round.

Barb: A pattern. I saw that in myself. I saw it in people around me. I just went, “No, this doesn’t work.”

Paola: So, maybe the takeaway here is observe. Observe those around you that are doing everything that Joette is saying to be careful about.

Barb: Right. When you see people who are preaching all the other stuff, are they really healthy? How well are they doing? Are their kids truly healthy? Are they popping pills all the time?

Paola: Yes, are they propped up?

Barb: Yes, exactly. That’s one of the things that I’m good at. I see the big picture in things. Some people are very good at looking at specific things. I’m not so good at that. It’s hard for me to really focus in on things. I see everything. I’m pretty good at picking up patterns around me. I saw that pattern in so many people and just thought this is not how we go.

Paola: Which is very science-based, observation, kind of referring to your background, I think that’s great. Observation is incredibly powerful. It’s how we’ve come to know a lot of things.

Barb: It’s the first step to any valid science. If you’re not observing stuff, I mean, that’s how you start studying this, observation.

Paola: Back to raising your children with homeopathy, tell me more about that.

Barb: When I was looking at how to best raise my kids, I was so lucky to start it with dogs. It’s less stressful, honestly, when you’re looking at pets first as babies and everything. I learned a lot. This dog that I told you about with the two surgeries, he ended up having cancer. So I started really looking into what’s going on with cancer in dogs because those rates are going through the roof.

Paola: Yes, they are. I heard today, it’s one in every two dogs are going to die from cancer. That’s a lot.

Barb: It’s crazy. It’s crazy. I had a friend, a very good friend who was talking to me about how she was stopping to vaccinate her dogs. I was like, “Really? Why were you doing that?” She said, “Well, they’re showing a link between all these increases and all these medications and everything and all these diseases that are coming forth. There’s a concern that there might be a link between that and cancer or just what it does to the immune system and therefore, more diseases and everything.” I’m not trying to say that vaccines cause cancer but just vaccines will harm your immune system. So then, you’re just going to expect more things to come up, whatever.

Paola: It compromises the immune system.

Barb: Exactly. So I started looking at all of that. It just all came together in a picture for me. It’s not that I won’t do things allopathically but why would you for things that it doesn’t work well in?

Paola: Joette calls this being a consumer of medicine. Like if you’re going to go shopping and you’re a consumer for like an outfit, you’re super critical about how it fits, how it looks, how it feels, the price, everything, the risks, and how much money you’re going to spend, and going to debt or whatever for this if you’re putting it on the credit card. We don’t do that with allopathic medicine and that’s exactly what you did.

Barb: This is the indoctrination that we’ve been given. It’s amazing because when you look around, people are not getting healthier. Certainly, children are not getting healthier.

Paola: Right.

Barb: You want to question what’s going on. It’s not, I mean, the intentions are good but let’s open our eyes and look and decide what we think is best for us and our families.

Paola: Tell us how has Joette influenced your journey because that’s going to be more recent.

Joette’s influence with Kali carb for asthma

Barb: Yes. Well, because of course, when you’re trying to treat your own family, it’s really hard. It’s really hard with your kids. It’s hard, first of all, to really see the picture of what’s going on because you’re influenced by your perceptions. I mean, most doctors don’t treat their own family members either.

Paola: Right. Right. That’s true.

Barb: That’s difficult. It’s also hard too, sometimes when you’re dealing with something that’s a little more chronic to really have the patience to follow it through and know you’re going in the right direction without a fresh set of eyes and they’re saying, “Hey! Yes, this is the right thing.” So, I consulted Joette for my daughter. She had some exercised-induced asthma that was building up. She was playing soccer. She was quite young, just six or seven, probably about seven. She hadn’t been formally diagnosed but I could certainly see. Her color would just get – she’d get very pale and just have a hard time catching her breath. That was starting to get worse and worse. Then eventually, I did take her to my naturopath and she said, “Yes, it looks like she’s developing asthma.”

Paola: It’s just typical at that age. Usually, you don’t get it until about seven or eight. Did she have eczema before?

Barb: A little bit but not bad. I didn’t use cortisone and do all those nasty things that would have made it bad. She had a pretty bad cradle cap as a newborn. Yes, yes, that I remember quite well.

Paola: And Joette says that that can sometimes be food intolerance, a manifestation. Yes.

Barb: Yes, exactly. So we treated her for that. Within about six months, she was just pretty much – it was pretty much better. We just had to give her. Kali carb is the remedy for her which is the one for wheezing and all that kind of stuff.

Paola: What is it, Kali carb 200, every other day?

Barb: Yes.

Paola: Okay, because I know they’re going to want to know, the people, the folks listening.

Barb: Oh, my gosh! She was on a few others because she had a few other things going on. But that was the balm for the wheezing.

Paola: Okay.

Barb: Every now and then, when she’s had a chest cold since then, I’ll still give her a couple of doses because first of all, I mean, it helps clear up the chest cold and just because that seems to be her remedy for anything that goes to her chest. But my daughter does not have exercise-induced asthma. She has no issues now. She is a pretty heavy-duty equestrian right now. So, she trains hard and she has no breathing problems at all. There’s not an herb or a drug out there I think that can do that.

Paola: Wow! That’s amazing

Barb: Yes.

Paola: Oh, just to give her that freedom to live. Oh, that’s great.

Barb: That I could not have done on my own.

Paola: Right.

Barb: I do have some training, not just an independent training but I have a bit of formal training in homeopathy. I would not have been able to follow that through with my own child on my own because I was second guessing myself. I would be just like, “Oh, I don’t think it’s working or now, this has popped up, maybe I need to shift it.” You know, we wouldn’t have gotten there.

Paola: Yes. We are so lucky to be able to have consults with Joette.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: That’s a huge thing. Tell us about your training, your background education with homeopathy and then the shift into the Banerji Protocols because that’s a question that’s been coming up is comparing the difference between the two. So you have classical training. Go ahead.

Barb: Yes. I have a certificate from the British Institute of Homeopathy. I’m not a certified homeopath but I have a certificate in homeopathy. So it’s the first step. I was doing that classical training. That was my first exposure to homeopathy as well. It’s always the classical method. So, you’re looking at one remedy for the problem. You’re taking one dose. You wait a month. Then I had consultations with classical homeopaths. That was always the process is you figure out which is the best match. You take that dose. You go back in a month to see where you’re at, to see if you need to do things differently. It can be of course extremely effective. But if you’re not finding the right remedy, first of all, it’s very time-consuming, taking the case especially for someone like me. I’m an onion with many layers. So, it can be really hard to take the case for me because I have so much stuff. Then other people are a little more cut and dry. But I’ve found some frustration with that. I had some great successes. But I also found, again using it for my family, using it myself was really frustrating because I’m not going to sit down with my kid for an hour and a half and take the case the way a classical homeopath will.

Paola: Right.

Barb: So then, once I started consulting with Joette, she was just starting to get into these protocols. When she started using those, it was just like ding, ding, ding. The light went off. Just having things that are more, you have this situation, well then chances are this protocol will probably work. You don’t have to do this complicated case-taking.

Paola: Yes. It’s practical. It’s practical. Moms want straightforward and practical.

Barb: Especially with treating your own family.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: You need to know if your kid has this, this or this. Well, you know what? Start with this. When it doesn’t work, it’s going to be this and that’s probably going to do it.

Paola: Yes. I love that.

Barb: You don’t have this open book of well, it could be one of a hundred remedies. Let’s see. Do they feel better at night? You go through all of this. Oh, my gosh! It’s so – I hate it.

Paola: Exhausting.

Barb: Yes, exactly.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: I like it. I’m the Arnica lady, right? They tend to be more like Arnica. They’re a little more universal.

Paola: Right, because Arnica is a protocol that a lot of classical homeopaths, whether or not they appreciate it as a protocol, it’s the go-to. With Joette, she’s teaching us the Banerji Protocols and she’s expanding that same mindset.

Barb: Exactly. It also makes sense. I mean, the classical remedies, when homeopathy was first developed, I mean, that was what, 250 years ago now. It was a different world. Things were a lot less complex than they are now. Bodies responded in a different way than they do now. I think you need to modernize, just like medicine has had to be modernized. Any healing modality needs to be modernized as we develop.

Paola: Right and as our illnesses become modern.

Barb: Yes, because they’re more complex.

Paola: They are.

Barb: They’re different. If you get the flu now, it’s not the flu of 250 years ago.

Paola: Right or even out with syphilis, enter Crohn’s, fibromyalgia, colitis.

Barb: Exactly.

Paola: We can’t trick Mother Nature. She finds a way to make us sick. We’ve got to let our bodies evolve with healing.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: Very good. Let’s hear some stories. You’ve told me about your experience with your dog. That was your big introduction to homeopathy with Arnica. I love Arnica for that reason because it’s such a dramatic, it’s a great convert. You know, when someone’s hurt themselves like, “Oh here’s some Arnica.”

Barb: Yes. It works so quickly. It’s amazing.

Paola: Right. Tell us some more stories with Arnica, with homeopathy, whatever you think.

More Arnica experience: uterine fibroid

Barb: I can give you one of my best experiences with Arnica. It wasn’t a great experience but the Arnica really saved my butt, at least. I had a very large fibroid that I did not know about. It decided to prolapse which is basically the birth itself. So, it sort of showed up. I scuttled over to a doctor. We had arranged for surgery. Of course, it was a Friday when I got to the doctor.

Paola: This is a uterine fibroid?

Barb: Yes, uterine fibroid.

Paola: Okay.

Barb: The surgery was scheduled for Monday morning. Well, Sunday night, it decides to detach, 10 o’clock at night. It was like having an artery cut. I was bleeding. I’m sitting in the bathroom bleeding like an artery has been cut. I’m thinking, “Holy crap. What do I do?” Fortunately, my kids and my husband were still up. So I called my kids. My husband was upstairs. I said, “Get the kids to get me my Arnica.” I have, of course, a homeopathy kit that has a 1M Arnica in it. Usually, I keep 200C Arnica in my purse all the time. But I have the 1M and I told them to get me the 1M.

Paola: Right.

Barb: I took Arnica right away because I was worried that I might pass out or I didn’t know how long this bleeding was going to go on. They got my husband. I had to keep my wits about me. I had to call my doctor, all of these. So anyway, long story short, we booted over to the hospital. It was almost a 30-minute drive. But I have my Arnica with me. I kept taking it. By the time we got there, the bleeding had completely stopped.

Paola: Wow.

Barb: And it was amazing because that’s probably the most scared I have ever been personally for myself because I’ve never bled like that. It stopped it very quickly. Within a few minutes, it was under control and within a few more minutes, it was done.

Paola: That’s amazing.

Barb: Yes, it was amazing.

Paola: I can relate. I wrote on Joette’s blog about my miscarriage where I hemorrhaged.

Barb: Oh there you go, yes.

Paola: Arnica was part of that.

Barb: It can literally save your life.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: I was in the hospital still hemorrhaging and they didn’t even know. I guess they weren’t monitoring me. I just had a miscarriage, so I was kind of loopy and not sure. Oh wait. Maybe I shouldn’t be bleeding this much. I wasn’t in the car on the way anymore, so I had a dose behind the doctor’s backs. But, yes.

Barb: Yes, that’s what you do. You kind of sneak it.

Paola: Exactly.

Barb: So that you don’t have to explain. When your mind is messed up, the last thing you need to do is have to explain this to a doctor.

Paola: Defend yourself, right.

Barb: Yes. My husband was dosing me at the hospital when the doctor would leave the room as well.

Paola: You too, okay. Yes. We do that not because we want to lie. It’s because you want to protect the doctor and not get into it.

Barb: Exactly. I mean, how could I talk about it the next morning when I’m out of the danger zone and not feeling so exhausted by the whole process. But yes, that the time sometimes you just got to do what you got to do.

Paola: So, at that point with your fibroid, did you still have to have the surgery to get it removed?

Barb: Yes. But it was very simple surgery because when they prolapsed – I mean if they’re small, they just have to twist. You can just twist them right off. It’s just because it was so large that it had to be surgery in a hospital because of the potential for bleeding.

Paola: Right.

Barb: I have proven at this point that yes, it had a lot of potential for bleeding.

Paola: Right. So it had fully detached or it was just tearing?

Barb: It was tearing.

Paola: Okay, so you had finished it off.

Barb: Yes. They just finished it off. But oh my goodness, I recovered in record time even with having the general anesthetic and everything. I had the surgery on the Monday morning. The Tuesday, I rested. Wednesday, I was on my feet at a horse show with my daughter for the next five days.

Paola: Wow. That’s amazing. I love that story. I’m so glad you’re okay.

Barb: Yes, fine.

Paola: That’s awesome. So horses are kind of big part of your lives. Have you had a chance to use it with?

Using remedies on horses and tips on how to administer them

Barb: I do. Yes, I use it a lot with horses; again, Arnica of course. I’ve used Rhus tox. It’s been great for the aches and pains and that kind of thing because the horses are athletes. I’ve had a lot of success with one of our horses using that. I’ve sort of had to develop a method for administering the homeopathy to the horses because I kind of tried everything. Having always used the glass dropper bottles, that’s what I went to first. Then I switched at once to look for something a little more simple. So, I switched to little spray bottles. Most of the horses are okay with that. They have to get used to something being sprayed near their mouth and some are fine. Some are a little flighty with that. One time fairly recently, I was dosing one of our horses. I just had a dropper bottle with me. So, we’re at a horse show. I’m giving him this little dose.

Paola: Do you put it in his mouth with the dropper bottle?

Barb: Yes. I would put it just in his mouth. I pull the lip out a little bit.

Paola: Okay.

Barb: Sometimes they’re tossing their head around. I would basically just squirt it in there.

Paola: Right.

Barb: But the little devil, he bit the tip off the grass.

Paola: Oh no.

Barb: I just about died because I didn’t know if he swallowed it. I didn’t know if it was in his mouth. I didn’t know. I’m searching in the hay but I mean, needle in a haystack, right.

Paola: Oh my God.

Barb: It was just a little tip. I had visions of surgeries and internal bleeding. I just about died. It turned out he was fine. He must have spat it out. We never found it. He was fine or if he swallowed it, his body took care of it. Whatever happened, I don’t know but he was totally fine.

Paola: Right.

Barb: But that was the end of me with glass around horses and homeopathic remedies. I kind of had a little aha moment when I was drinking out of a water bottle. I thought, “Oh, those little, small water bottles that they have for kids that are about eight ounces instead of the bigger ones.” You just mix up the remedy in one of those. Shake it up. Let it dissolve. They can use a Sharpie to write on it, what it is. I just dose them like that. It’s plastic. If they bite the bottle, it doesn’t matter.

Paola: Then that bottle is permanently assigned to that remedy?

Barb: Yes, exactly. They are disposable. So if you’re at the horse shows or you’re travelling or whatever, I don’t have to worry about taking care of little glass bottles and wrapping them up and everything. I don’t use disposable water bottles as a rule. I try not to but it’s fantastic, I have to say.

Paola: That’s clever.

Barb: I put those in my car. Now, I don’t have to worry about running out of sterilized bottles for remedies and to keep my kit. If you’ve used them a few times then you go like, “Oh gosh, I got to sterilized the bottle or whatever.” I just keep those little water bottles with me and a Sharpie and my remedy kit. I can mix it up right there. Even with some horses when they’re eating, I’ll just toss it on their hay.

Paola: Oh, that’s clever.

Barb: Because you’re not supposed to have them around food. But I think with horses and some other animals, they have such a simple diet. Horses are eating all the time. So, it’s almost impossible to dose them away from food anyway. I think with their very simple diet, I’ve had great success. It seems to work just fine.

Paola: Interesting.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: So with our cow, they’re very different than horses. We are able to spray on her nose. It doesn’t bother her much. But we just have the one and then often what I do is when she’s in distention, I have access underneath her tail because I’ve milked or whatever. I can just lift up the tail and spray under her tail and that works.

Barb: Yes. I’m thinking with the horse, that could be an interesting experience.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: They vary a lot. Some horses are no problem at all. But others are going to hit the roof. You’re never going to get near them again with the spray bottles.

Paola: Yes, that’s probably true. Horses kick backwards, whereas cows don’t. They kick to the side. So, if you’re right behind her, you’re generally safe.

Barb: Yes. It’s just I wouldn’t want to go there with the horses.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: I think my method is I’ll stick to that one.

Paola: Yes, very good. I like that. Oh boy, I don’t want a horse. They’re huge. They’re scary to me.

Barb: Oh, they’re fabulous. But yes, it’s one of those things.

Paola: No, that’s very good tip. I know lot of people that use homeopathy and have horses especially around where we live in Texas. So that’s a very good tip. I like that.

Do you have a specific story of using homeopathy in one of your horses?

Barb: Yes. We have a retired pony that injured herself horribly. She cut her side on this bolt in our yard and ripped her side open down to the ribs. But she’s very stoic. We had no idea anything was wrong. My daughter and I just went to feed them in the evening and she’s standing there. We tossed her a hay, standing there chewing her hay. Then she turned and I see this huge, I mean it was probably at least 10 inches long.

Paola: Oh my gosh.

Barb: Fortunately, it wasn’t bleeding too much. It was still fairly fresh. So, you can imagine, both my daughter and I kind of went into shock. Anyway, I got up the Arnica, gave it to the pony right away. I gave it to us and called the vet. Of course, the vet is over an hour away, so we had to wait. So, I’m just giving her Arnica, Arnica, Arnica and the vet got there. It was several hours later because she was worried about the lung being punctured. It was that nasty a wound.

Paola: Wow.

Barb: So, she had to apply layers of stitching. Anyway, got her all stitched up. Well, that pony healed so quickly. This is an older pony. She’s 23. She healed so quickly and so perfectly from this wound. There was no infection. We didn’t have to do anything else. I mean, it was just amazing. Other than just keep it clean and keep our eye on it, it just healed up beautifully. That was a real saver because it was really extreme. It was a really horrible, horrible wound.

Paola: So, did she end up getting stitched up or having to take antibiotics or anything?

Barb: You know, this was a case where I actually did give her the antibiotics because the wound was fairly fresh but it was probably at least an hour too old. You don’t know what’s in there. I mean, there was some dirt in there. It had to be cleaned.

Paola: Well, it’s in a barn.

Barb: It’s in a barn and it was down to her ribs. This is where you weigh the pros and cons. Allopathic drugs save people’s lives.

Paola: Right, they do.

Barb: This to me was a time when I said, “Okay, you know what, I’m doing the antibiotics.” But I’m using all my homeopathic knowledge to support the healing. With that being so much faster and so much cleaner, I mean it was best case scenario.

Paola: Right. That’s good to know. You can use the homeopathy alongside. They don’t counteract.

Barb: Absolutely. I mean there are times for that. This is what I’ve seen time and time again is anytime we have an injury in our family, whether it’s a pet or a human or whatever, our rate of healing, we’re always sort of the best case scenario.

Paola: Right.

Barb: We heal so quickly and so efficiently.

Paola: That’s wonderful. You had also told me a good story, moving on from horses to humans, about child birth.

Childbirth and labor

Barb: Yes. Oh my goodness, yes. Hypericum is my very good friend. I wasn’t as knowledgeable about homeopathy when I had my first child as I became. But I had a very knowledgeable midwife who was wonderful. I damaged my coccyx quite a few times in my youth.

Paola: Is that your tailbone?

Barb: Yes, it’s the tailbone. That is what ended up causing me the biggest problems in my first labor. I had horrible pain in my tailbone. It was worse than the actual labor pains and I had fully natural labor. So the Hypericum was what actually really saved me in that case because that’s what allowed me to just be able to get through that pain. I would not have known what do. I was very fortunate to have a midwife who knew her remedies.

Paola: Oh how lucky.

Barb: It was Hypericum. It’s in 200C and she just kept dosing me. I was able to get through it. I was so pleased because I did not, I definitely didn’t want to end up going to any of the drugs. As someone who’s had a lot of back issues, my big concern with an epidural is then you end up (I mean, my theories) giving birth in positions you wouldn’t necessarily give birth in if you could feel it.

Paola: Right.

Barb: You end up doing some damage. So, I was really worried about. I didn’t want to mask any pain because of my back.

Paola: I never thought of that. That’s a very good point because you might get into a safer position.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: Wow. It can cause that problem, interesting. I never thought about. You see, I had epidurals with all three of my births. People always apologized to me like, “Oh well, I did an epidural.” Hey, listen. Homeopathy didn’t come until after I had all my three children.

Barb: The other thing too is if you don’t have someone who’s skilled supporting you. If you’ve got a doctor and you’re trying to do it naturally and your doctor only knows allopathic medicine and you’re having a hard time, you need support.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: One thing about childbirth, you need support. So when you have someone who’s really knowledgeable with the alternatives supporting you because you can’t and even if I knew what I knew now, I don’t think I could have done it for myself. It was extreme. I just wanted to run away from this pain. It was so painful. It wasn’t the labor pain. It was that different.

Paola: It’s the pressure on that bone.

Barb: Yes. It was excruciating. To have someone who could just really support me through that made all the difference and the right remedies. Women should never be hard on themselves about labor.

Paola: You did it. Good job.

Barb: You do what you got to do. That’s why you need to surround yourself with the right people.

Paola: Right. That’s very good. I love that.

Barb: It’s a support group. So, you need the right support people.

Paola: I like that very good takeaway. What about your husband? Has he used homeopathy? How does he feel about it?

Barb: Oh yes, especially, of course Arnica. He’s an avid cyclist. He was in a cycling accident one time. He was with a group of people and they all kind of went down. He ended up really kind of crushing his collarbone. It was just a nasty fracture. They actually ended up taking him away in an ambulance because they were worried about his neck. I don’t know what’s the problem with his neck but it was just such a nasty fracture. They just wanted to stabilize him. But I got the distress call as soon as the fall happened. They give me, “Come and pick me up and bring the Arnica!”

Paola: Oh I love it.

Barb: I would load him with Arnica. All the guys got the Arnica. He didn’t want to take any pain meds. He just wanted his Arnica. Actually, I had to force him to take one dose of pain meds because he was in so much pain.

Paola: Did they have to set the collarbone?

Barb: They didn’t set it. I’m trying to remember it. It’s a few years ago now. I’m not quite sure what they did with him but he did have to go see a surgeon, an orthopedic surgeon. He didn’t have to have surgery. It’s because of an old injury that he had where he had a really strong ligament that held his collarbone on so strong. That’s why it actually ended up being a worse fracture. It had been added to his old injury that had made his ligaments so strong. Anyway, I filled him up with all kinds of remedies and his supplements and everything. He made a supersonic recovery, yet again, but the Arnica got him through that point of dealing with all of that.

Paola: You really are the Arnica mom.

Barb: I am. Thanksgiving really brought it home when everyone was like, “No, you’re the Arnica.” I was like, “Oh, I am.”

Paola: For the chocolate, the chocolate balls.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: Do you just use Arnica?

Barb: No, no, no. I use all kinds of stuff. Well, I like another story of my son when he was young. He didn’t have a lot of fevers as a young kid which actually worried me because I was worried that his immune system wasn’t kicking in. He would get these low-grade sicknesses where he’d just be hot but it never got this big. Well, when he got his first really good fever, he was five. It was a Belladonna fever. I was so excited. He had the eyes. He had the flushed cheeks. I was like, “It’s a Belladonna fever.” I’m so excited. So, I treated him with this Belladonna. He got through it beautifully. I’ve got 150 remedies, at least, in my little drawers. I use all the kinds of stuff. But I guess it’s just the Arnica, when it’s an injury, it’s the first thing I go to.

Paola: Yes, easy.

Barb: So, you can figure out what else you need. Of course, as you’re healing, different remedies will support the healing process if it’s bone or you know.

Paola: I was thinking for your husband’s collar. You probably used Symphytum.

Barb: Oh, absolutely.

Paola: That’s a great one for healing bones that have been broken. But it’s really important that they’re set. You have to have the bone set first before you start that one.

Barb: Yes, because it’s going to start knitting together. So, if the bones are in the wrong spot, you’re going to start healing it all off.

Paola: Yes. Then they’ll have to re-break it and then set it again. Oh don’t even, that would be awful.

Barb: No, exactly.

Paola: Thank you Barb for chatting with me and telling me you Arnica stories and your horse stories and all of you thoughts. It’s so helpful to hear from a seasoned mom who’s been there and done that. You know Joette is not the only one. We can aspire to go out to be like you.

Barb: I don’t know. I think you probably have a lot more knowledge. You seem to have a lot more knowledge than I had at your age. You probably have a lot of knowledge in there. We all have our own leg paths and we learn about the stuff we learn about.

Paola: That’s exactly right. That’s thanks to Joette, thank you Joette.

Barb: Yes, Joette’s wonderful.

Paola: Thank you for joining me today.

Barb: Thank you so much, Paola. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat about homeopathy.

Paola: No problem. We hope to have another “Moms with Moxie” coming out soon. So stay tuned to Joette’s podcast. Thanks.

Joette: Are you or someone you know a Mom with Moxie? Well, we’re on the hunt for you. Of course, we don’t want to hear just from moms but from anyone who uses and loves homeopathy. Reach out to my podcast team and let us know why you’re a Mom with Moxie. For more information, contact [email protected].

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

Many of the homeopathic medicines referenced in this transcript can be found at https://shop.boironusa.com/. Enter the coupon code “joette” at checkout and you will receive a 20% discount on your purchase.

In this podcast, we cover:

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

Paola: It’s podcast 24 at joettecalabrese.com. Right from the get-go, we want you to know that Joette’s podcasts are now available on Google Play, Blubrry, Stitcher, and Tune-in Radio. We’ve got a great episode for you. Today, we’re going to look at some topics that Joette feels bear repeating. First topic looks at getting a conventional diagnosis and Joette gives us some good examples of what she means. Then the second topic is pretty closely related to the first where Joette is looking at what she calls these ‘hencers’. So I have foggy brain and low vitamin D, hence, I need to supplement with vitamin D. So she looks at that more carefully. Finally, the third topic is the concept of knowing when you can use a protocol and knowing when for a chronic condition or even I guess an acute, you should be seeking professional help from a homeopath. So she wants us to know what our limitations may or may not be.

Now, if you’ve heard these topics before, don’t assume that you already understand them. Today’s discussion came about because Joette has been receiving repeated questions in relation to these subjects. So you may think you get them but hopefully today’s episode will prove useful for you as you gain a deeper understanding of them. Okay, so here we go.

Hi, I’m here with Joette. How are you, Joette?

Joette: I’m well, Paola. Nice to be here with you.

Paola: We’ve just been brainstorming and planning today’s podcast and we’ve got a real great one for you guys today. It is going to be on things we’ve said before, topics that bear repeating that Joette has talked about over and over again. We think it is a great time to remind you guys about some important subjects. We have three that we’re thinking of.

Joette: Yes, sometimes things need bear repeating. As we learn, we think we understand and then a year later, we didn’t embody it fully. We have to go back and think it through again and commit it to our thinking structure.

Paola: Well, homeschooling classical world, we have grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. The grammar stage is when you’re first understanding the concept and you’re getting the vocabulary down and just the very basics. The dialectic is where you’re starting to ask questions about it and like you said starting to embody it. Then rhetoric is where you can really teach it and talk about it and have an authoritative position. I think the only way you get through those three levels is to repeat it and to hear it again and again.

Joette: Well repetition is the mother of knowledge. Really, that’s just what it boils down to.

Getting a conventional diagnosis

Paola: So here we go. We have three topics we want to cover. The first one is the topic of getting a conventional diagnosis for any condition that you were trying to use homeopathy with.

Joette: Yes. This is a hard and fast rule but there are always exceptions to every rule. So, if you get sore throats consistently and you’ve gone to the doctor many times and the doctor reports, “Yes, indeed, it’s strep,” do you need a diagnosis every single time you get a sore throat? Well, after a while, it’s pretty clear. It’s a strep throat. But if you’ve never had a sore throat and wondering if it’s strep, then it might be a good idea to get someone’s opinion who sees this consistently. Now, if you’ve seen it consistently, I would say you’re a pretty good measure. But if you haven’t then go to someone perhaps who has.

Paola: Right. We’ve talked about before, getting those rapid strep tests from Amazon. That might be a good try.

Joette: Love it, love it. Yes, yes, same thing with urinary tract infections. Those can be dangerous. So if you’ve never had one before, it might be a good idea to find out if indeed it is a urinary tract infection. Sometimes it’s just obvious as can be. So, I’ve gone without seeing conventional doctors for many years. I know what’s happening generally speaking but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I have no idea what’s going on. So I really do need someone who has more expertise than I do in that particular area. So you have to weigh it out.

Paola: I think a good example for me at least is skin conditions. I feel like sometimes red rashy skin looks like a red rashy skin. I don’t know is it rosacea. I mean, hives are pretty obvious, right? But is it rosacea? I mean, I was just helping a friend of mine. We’re doing a protocol for her eczema. Then suddenly, she got this terrible rash all over her. I thought, “Oh my gosh. What is it?” So I said, “Go to the doctor. Get a diagnosis.” I mean probably Antimonium crud but I just want to know. She came back and it was impetigo. That helped so much, giving a nice, firm diagnosis.

Joette: Right, right. Yes, it’s good to know that. Sometimes dermatologists and doctors in general don’t know what certain conditions are. Sometimes we give them a hard time for it but to be honest, it can be hard to determine what this or that is sometimes. That precludes, actually maybe that leads us into that section that you and I were talking about today and getting too much information.

Paola: Oh yes.

Joette: Sometimes too much information can bog us down. In using the Banerji Protocols, we forego all of the naturopathic ways of looking at health. Instead of assuming that the liver must be sluggish or it’s got to be this meridian or that meridian, no, no, no. I’m not saying that’s wrong but if you’re using the Banerji Protocols, generally speaking, we’re using conventional diagnostics. So from a doctor’s point of view, what is this called. Not from a naturopath, not from a clinical ecologist, not from a functional MD, they look at it much differently. Again, I’m going to say there’s nothing wrong with that necessarily but it will throw you into a different way of thinking. In a way, you have to choose which method you want. Which camp are you in, the homeopathic method, the naturopathic method, the conventional medicine method? It doesn’t mean you can’t cross over from time to time but you have to decide, identify yourself to a certain degree.

Paola: Okay, so let’s run through a couple of examples just to kind of yes, no, Joette. Is this a good diagnosis that you’re looking for or is this too deep of the diagnosis, so the MTHFR gene.

Joette: Too deep.

Paola: Too deep, okay.

Joette: Too deep. Why, because that’s not a diagnosis. That’s a theory as to why you have this inability to resolve toxins. It has to do with why you’re not methylating your B vitamins. That’s meaningless in homeopathy used in this method.

Paola: Basically if you suddenly have uptake better B vitamins, will your condition go away? We don’t know. For that purpose, it’s more of a theorizing and not a firm conventional diagnosis that we can case.

Joette: Yes, so if you’re not methylating your B vitamins properly and you’re not really seeing your toxins, so now what? What doctors who believe in this method of investigation will tell you is that you need more B vitamins but these are better methylating B vitamins. What homeopathy says is how do we even know that it’s only the B vitamins. It could be vitamin R that nobody’s discovered yet, in addition to the B vitamins. Why are we going down that rabbit hole? What are the symptoms? What’s the diagnosis and what are the symptoms? That’s what we hang our head on.

Paola: Yes. So it’s not necessarily that the B vitamins hold the cure. It’s perhaps just a side effect, let’s say, of this that you’re having.

Joette: It could be. Sure.

Paola: If we fix the disease, let’s say all that gets back to normal again like it used to be or whatever.

Joette: Right, right. Well, when somebody tells me they’re not methylating their B vitamins, they’re often bloated and they have constipation. They might have some skin condition. So symptoms never lie. Let’s start with that. Let’s actually make that our foundation. Symptoms never lie. The only time symptoms lie is when someone’s taking a medication. Then what we’re reading are not symptoms but rather side effects.

Paola: Side effects.

Joette: But you can still separate those two. Once you get better at this, you’ll be able to figure out what’s a side effect and what is a true genuine symptom.

Paola: If you’re dealing with side effects, the goal then is to address the illness that you’re taking the drugs for so that you can wean off the drugs and therefore eliminate the side effects.

Joette: Hopefully, hopefully, depending on the disease. If it’s a really serious disease and we’re talking about diabetes, we’re not going to tell somebody to get off their insulin. They may never get off of their insulin, for example.

Paola: Right. Typically, I would think that there are not a lot of diseases where you will say that.

Joette: It depends on who you are. I mean I work with a lot of people who have very serious illnesses.

Paola: Okay. Sometimes it’s okay.

Joette: And their age, it depends on their age. What if they’re 87 years old?

Paola: Right, right.

Joette: Do you say, “We got to get you off of these drugs.” Well, kind of late. I’m not saying it’s for everyone. It doesn’t mean we can’t ever get anyone off of their medications but something, let’s say blood pressure meds that they’ve been taking for the last 45 years, that’s going to take some effort and time. Do we have that much time?

Paola: Let’s go back to some examples of diagnosis. What about gluten intolerance?

Joette: Gluten intolerance, it only gives us one bit of information, that the person can’t tolerate gluten. It’s all it tells us. It doesn’t tell us how it’s presenting. How is it presenting? “Oh, you have colitis. Oh, okay.” Now, there’s a diagnosis.

Paola: There we go.

Joette: Where is the colitis from? Okay, the colitis is as a result of eating gluten. So, I don’t eat gluten because otherwise, I get colitis. There you go. Now, we use a homeopathic protocol, medicines specific for colitis.

Paola: Right.

Joette: That’s what we’re looking for. What is the name of the disease that comes from this gluten intolerance? I’ll tell you. I’ve worked with many, many people who say, “I’m gluten intolerant and I have colitis.” So if you eat gluten, the colitis gets really bad, yes. What if you don’t eat gluten? I still have colitis but it’s not so bad. So then, it’s not gluten intolerance that’s the cause, is it, because that would mean that by stopping the gluten, that’d be the end of it.

Paola: Like people with celiac disease.

Joette: That’s not the answer, is it? The answer is not what’s going in, it’s what’s happening once it goes in or once anything goes in because I meet with people. They’re gluten intolerant. They’re dairy intolerant. They’re shellfish intolerant. We go on and on, all the intolerances. I know because I’ve been there personally myself. They eliminate and eliminate and eliminate. As they get more and more narrow and go down this funnel, what occurs is they’re still sick but now they can’t figure out what food it is. Well, that’s because in my estimation, more often than not, it’s not actually the food. It’s not the raw materials going into the factory, it’s the factory.

Paola: Right.

Joette: It was just the bat in the works.

Paola: Right.

Joette: It’s the factory that needs to be corrected, not the food eliminated. If you think in terms of eliminating food and you call yourself gluten intolerant, dairy intolerant, et cetera, et cetera intolerant, then you’re going down a rabbit hole for which you will likely never come out of until you find, in my estimation, until you find homeopathy.

Paola: It’s not necessarily that we don’t address the gluten intolerance with perhaps Bovista or something like that. It’s that we also need to look at the underlying disease that is the factory basically, what is not working.

Joette: Bovista, it will help with the underlying condition that there is any intolerance in the first place.

Paola: Right.

Joette: But now we have to see, “What do you mean by that? Oh, colitis. Oh bloating. Okay, got it.” Now, we address it with the correct homeopathic protocols that are specific for how it presents because not everyone has gluten intolerance or dairy intolerance in the same way. So then it doesn’t tell us, not with anything.

Paola: You’re right. For a long time, I never even had digestive issues with gluten. My bladder would bleed. Some people have no digestive issues but they have fibromyalgia.

Joette: Exactly, or depression if they have gluten, or fatigue, or their hair falls, or their thyroid becomes hypothyroidism. Yes, it depends on the person. What is your weak link? Look back. It’s whatever your weakest link is in your family. That, more often than not, not always but more often than not will give you the indicator of what organ is going to break down when you use something, a substance that needs to be not eliminated but the action corrected around it.

Paola: The action corrected around it. That’s an interesting point because for me, for example with my bladder condition which is now pretty much cured, we never even did Bovista for my gluten intolerance until recently. We addressed all the factory problems first. You know what I mean? It wasn’t until recently that you and I decided, “Okay. Well, let’s go ahead and try this Bovista too to finish some things up.” I think that’s an interesting point. Be careful when you’re looking at gluten intolerance that you’re not ignoring (I like that analogy a lot) the factory itself, not just the input that’s going in.

We’ll here’s another example then, liver detox. I have a toxic liver versus elevated liver enzymes. There’s a difference.

Joette: There’s a difference, big difference.

Paola: Walk us through that.

Joette: There are practitioners out there and books that you can read that will tell you that you are toxic. In fact, more often than not, that is the spiel. You’re toxic. You’re toxic. You have parasites. You have heavy metals. You have yeast. That’s the mantra I hear all the time. Well, I know that intimately because I personally was told that. What I was reading back 35 or even longer than that, years ago that it must be that I’m toxic.

Now, what it does is two things. It again throws people down rabbit holes. But meanwhile, they’re freaking, absolutely freaking over the fact that they’re toxic, every little thing that happens. I’m sweating, so that must mean I’m getting the toxins out. I’m eating kale so that’s a good thing. Everything is myopic around the topic of toxins because it’s a scary “diagnosis.” I don’t believe that it is a diagnosis unless you can show that, unless your liver enzymes are elevated, unless you’ve had blood test and it shows that you have heavy metals, that you have lead. Even then, tell me what the symptoms are. If the liver is tender or the liver enzymes are elevated, now we have a conventional (and I’m going to say it again and again), a conventional diagnosis is what we’re looking for. Now, we know how to address that.

Paola: It’s not that the liver isn’t toxic. I mean, they may very well be true or it may very well be true that you have the MTHFR gene or heavy metals.

Joette: First of all, it’s subjective. Let me just interrupt for a second.

Paola: Okay.

Joette: It’s a very subjective statement. What do you mean it’s toxic? Show me a liver that isn’t toxic.

Paola: Right. That’s what they do, right?

Joette: Yes. And so, what is the level that you consider toxic because it changes from decade to decade, from modality to modality. Which one is toxic? If it is toxic, does that mean the person is sick? Sometimes people have so-called toxic livers and they’re not even sick.

Paola: They’re fine, yes.

Joette: Right.

Paola: What it comes down to is the language of Joette’s practical homeopathy is this: The difference between theorizing a toxic liver and having a conventional diagnosis where you have blood work that shows elevated liver enzymes, you have the beige stool, the pain in the liver right under your ribs, those are different from theorizing that you need to detox to your liver or any of the other subjects that we talked about.

Joette: That’s right, absolutely. I talked to so many people who have been on detoxing programs again and again and again and again. I say, “So, how is it working?” Some people swear by it. They say, “Yes, it’s helped me.” Other people say, “I never saw any change.”

Paola: Right, if it helped then great.

Joette: Yes, great. But if it’s not, you are going down a path that will lead you to be thinking, in my estimation, in the wrong way.

Paola: Well, it just comes down to if there’s an easier way that is possibly even safer because some of these detoxes are pretty intense. So if there’s an easier way that is possibly safer, why wouldn’t you do that first, I guess.

Joette: Right, right.

Hencing/theorizing: stop trying to answer the whys

Paola: Yes, alright. Let’s go on to our second topic here on our subject of topics that bear repeating. The next topic we’re calling hence. My skin is dry. Hence, I must not be drinking enough water. My stools are not frequent enough. Hence, I must be eating too much meat. Tell us about hence, Joette.

Joette: Well, I think that we, as humans are hencers.

Paola: Kind of a new word.

Joette: We have problems with hencing because we want answers. We’re all looking for an answer. “Why am I so sick?” That’s why I like timelines. I do like people to lay out a timeline of the conditions that they’ve experienced from the time they started to get sick (let’s say it’s a chronic condition or even an acute) and lay out what preceded that. “Oh, I had pneumonia.” Okay, so what did you do of the pneumonia? “Oh, I took antibiotics. Before that, I had impetigo.” What did you do for that? “I took antibiotics,” et cetera, et cetera. That will give us a clear picture, give you a clear picture of what’s going on in your system.

But when we make the assumption that it must be this because I’ve done that, it’s too simplified. I also talk to people who say, “Well, I drink a lot of water, so the hence doesn’t work. My skin is still dry.” What I love about homeopathy is if you’re going to be logical, be logical. Start out with that. Well, maybe if you’re not drinking any water, it might be a good idea. But don’t start pounding down a gallon a day. I think that’s irreverent of the body’s natural understanding of thirst. Instead, if the skin is truly itchy and dry and worse in winter, et cetera, et cetera, and cracking, why not just use a homeopathic medicine for it and correct it once and for all, which is Petroleum 200 for example.

Paola: Well, this hails back to the first subject, too. I mean, the reason we picked these three is they’re interconnected. It goes back to theorizing sometimes. I can’t focus. Hence, my doctor says that my vitamin D levels are low. Therefore, hence, I guess that’s where you put it in.

Joette: Right.

Paola: Hence I take vitamin D.

Joette: Hence I take vitamin D, synthetic vitamin D.

Paola: It goes back to that again.

Joette: Well then, my question is, “So, you’re not utilizing your vitamin D?” Are you eating meat? Are you eating liver? Do you take cod liver oil? Do you go out in the sun? Do you wear sunscreen? Those are important questions. Because if you are blocking the ability of your body to utilize those nutrients such as the sun or eating liver, et cetera, et cetera, from absorbing and utilizing vitamin D and making vitamin D, then yes, you might need vitamin D. But what if you’re already doing all of those? What if you’re already in the sun? What if you live in Florida and you don’t wear sunscreen, and you golf, and you take cod liver oil from time to time, and you eat liver, and you eat butter and lard and tallow, et cetera, where vitamin D is naturally found? Vitamin A and E is already in concert with vitamin D vitamins. Then how does that fit? If you take synthetic vitamin D, now you’re just getting a synthetic version of the vitamin. My question would be what are the symptoms? If the symptoms tell us what’s going on then we just use the homeopathic medicine that is specific for how it’s presenting, not why it’s presenting necessarily.

Paola: Well, something you said about this. There’s actually a danger with theorizing too much and saying hence too often. You said when we’re planning, not only does it make you neurotic, which isn’t good, you don’t want that added stress, you already have enough stress, you have your condition, but also these assumptions slowly solidify into facts. That’s not good.

Joette: No. They’d solidify into facts in our brains. They concretize. There’s no doubt about it.

Paola: When they’re not the facts that we’re looking for.

Joette: Right.

Paola: Yes. And so, you think about anything in our lives, in our world. If we believe that that’s the truth and you’re completely off base, wow, what a waste of time.

Joette: Yes, absolutely. What that means is that then you follow this thinking down a certain path that is erroneous. You have to be open for other ideas here. You may think that you’re not drinking enough water in spite of the fact that you’re drinking almost a gallon a day because you’re reading sites that say you should be drinking a gallon a day. I can’t seem to pound that down. I can’t get it all in. That’s got to be the reason. It’s me. I’ve done it wrong. I’m theorizing that I’m not drinking enough.

Paola: Right.

Joette: That’s a mistake.

Paola: Right. It’s just the solution is simply if you have X illness -.

Joette: If you have a condition and you’re surmising that it’s from not drinking enough water or whatever and you know the condition, why not just use the homeopathic medicine that corrects the condition once and for all? Then you drink water according to your thirst.

Paola: Right, exactly. Okay, to conclude the second point, Joette, you’re saying stop trying to answer the whys. You’ll never figure out the why and neither will your doctor. Let it go and just treat the condition that has been diagnosed conventionally.

Joette: Yes. I like that answer or that conclusion. But I will also say that I do believe in people asking why so that they can learn from their mistakes. “Oh, now I have eczema after having taken antibiotics.” What do you know? You can make some assumptions based on your timeline. But that still doesn’t give us necessarily a method for treatment because now we’re in the eczema stage. So we have to go with how to use these homeopathic medicines for the eczema.

Paola: Right. I mean, so it’s important to know what a high-quality diet is. It’s important to know how dangerous antibiotics and steroids and other medications are. So those whys are important but it doesn’t necessarily lead to the answer of how to fix it.

Joette: Yes.

Homeopathy and the concept of baking a cake

Paola: The third point. Let’s move on to the third point. That is homeopathy and the concept of cooking a recipe for dinner. Do tell us about that.

Joette: I would love to say that homeopathy is formulaic. This is the condition, this is the remedy. Many times we can and that’s what I try very hard to teach in my courses and on my blog and on these podcasts. If it’s a simple solution, I’m there to hand it out to you. I want you to have it. However, it’s not always like that especially for many chronic conditions. If we’re baking a cake and you’re winging it. You’ve never made a cake before and you say, “Well, I know there must be flour in here. I’m pretty sure there’s butter in cakes. I think there are eggs, too. Let’s say let’s just throw some sugar in there to make its taste sweet.” You throw it all together. You might end up with a decent cake, you might not.

With essential oils, it’s very formulaic. If you’ve got a cold, you use this. If you’ve got a cold, you use lavender or whatever. If you’ve got a dental issue, you use clove oil, et cetera. It’s pretty formulaic. It’s often pretty formulaic when it comes to herbs as well. That’s why I believe essential oils have made such in-roads in our world today, at least in the US. It’s that it’s super-easy. If I’ve got this, I use that. Homeopathy can do some of that with the Banerji protocols. But I will also tell you there are many, many, many conditions that humans suffer and animals suffer that are not necessarily readily available through my teachings and even through sometimes the Banerjis. Sometimes we have to revert to classical homeopathy. That is what the Banerji Protocols are based on in the first place. If you know anything about classical, they are classical homeopaths. They have just found certain protocols work exquisitely fast or exquisitely well with these specific protocols in large percentage of the population.

Paola: Right. They’ve studied a pattern with that protocol and that condition that makes it very scientific for them to rely on that protocol.

Joette: Because there’s data and plenty of it. Their data show that if you have itching, Antimonium crud is very likely to help with that. In approximately 80% of those who have itching, rashes, Antimonium crud is likely to help. Now, let’s say it doesn’t. Well, that means you go to the second protocol. That might cover another 10% or 15% of the population. But it may get to the point where you still have itching and you’ve used protocol 1, protocol 2. And if there’s a third protocol, that one as well. At that point, we do have to consider going to classical homeopathy.

Paola: Who gets to help you through that if it’s a chronic condition?

Joette: Many of our students are seasoned homeopaths. Many of them are moms who’ve been using homeopathy for 40 years and they have repertories. They own a repertory where they can actually crack open the book and start repertorizing, which is a process. It is a complex process. I hate to take it out of the hands of neophytes but it is a complex process that has to be studied and learned. For those who are new and you’re stumped, it’s best to see a homeopath.

Neophytes and the study of classical homeopathy

Paola: Let’s define who is new. Let’s talk about me. I love homeopathy. I live and breathe it. I own tons of books, I mean dozens of books. I have hundreds of remedies. I love it. I help people all the time with protocols. I’ve helped my friend. She no longer has ulcerative colitis. I’ve done eczema with people. I’ve done this and that. Do I get to go to my repertory? I have Kent’s repertory. Do I get to go to that and fix someone’s chronic disease using classical skills because none of the protocols work?

Joette: If you are educated in using a repertory.

Paola: I’m not.

Joette: Then you would not be able to necessarily count on it.

Paola: Educated meaning I went to homeopathy school.

Joette: Yes. Using a repertory is complex. Yes.

Paola: Not a one-hour lecture here and there.

Joette: That’s right. That’s right. Yes. You really do need to study it further.

Paola: I just think that’s such an important point to make because I hear people talking, “Well, I might use some Silica for my eczema.” No, you’re not allowed to do that. No. Walk away. Not allowed. You’re supposed to do the protocols.

Joette: Either use the protocol or really know classical homeopathy and have repertorized it. Really know it. Really know it.

Paola: Classical homeopathy is not a recipe like the Banerji Protocol.

Joette: No, it is not. It is not.

Paola: It’s very deep. I’m an English teacher. We were talking about how I get these questions from my students. This is probably why a lot of people hate English class because, “Okay, how long does my essay have to be?” You’re killing me. I can’t answer that question. “What is a good essay?” We’ve got diction. We’ve got voice. We have word choice. We have research. We have facts. We have organization.

Joette: Yes, who is it being submitted to? What are the needs of the publication? Do you know their requirements? Is it a publication or is it an English teacher in college?

Paola: Who is the audience? Right.

Joette: Who’s the audience? Who you’re speaking to? What rhetoric do you use for a specific audience? If you’re writing to children then you got to speak differently than if you’re writing to scientists.

Paola: Right, exactly. So, it’s like you can’t answer that question. I think homeopathy, classical homeopathy is very much the same way. “What potency do I use for this condition?” It’s like asking me, “What’s a good essay?”

Joette: Right.

Paola: It’s so deep. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Joette: Well, when we’re asking about what potency and how frequently, that is called the study of posology, P-O-S-O-L-O-G-Y. It is a study that I studied for a year. How do you know which potency and how frequently? First, you go into the repertory if you have learned how to use that. You find out which homeopathic medicine is most likely to fit this person and this person’s condition. Then you’re going to several rubrics. Well, the way I learned it, it was all jotted down. Now, there are programs. But I would write that all down. I would write it down on a legal pad. It would take a good, at least 40 minutes to write them all down, look them all up, my three-legged stool, my three most important conditions that needed to be considered. Then I would jot down the most valuable homeopathic medicines that I thought were most -. Again, it’s very subjective. Now, I have to go to the materia medica and study those, say five homeopathic medicines that kept coming to the fore. Once I’ve studied those and I’ve made a determination. Okay, it’s Phosphorous. I know it’s Phosphorous. Now, what potency? Oh well, let’s see. I’ve used 200 in the past or maybe also, it’s been helpful in a 30. Kent says to use it in a 200 or 1M, now what potency? Now, I decide on my potency. Okay, how frequently? That’s the study of posology. If you don’t have that, you better stick with the Banerji Protocols.

Paola: Right. I think it’s important for people to appreciate that’s a year of your life that you studied that subject.

Joette: Yes.

Paola: So you’re not going to figure it out. I mean, you might accidentally figure it out but that’s an accident. Good for you, if it is an accident. But this is what you are up against. Just a little example, I remember when I had a lot of my chronic bladder stuff, we would use at one point, only the Cantharis 200 would work for my chronic bladder pain. The 30 wouldn’t work. It was 200. Then later on as I had healed a lot and I no longer really had the chronic stuff but I got an acute bladder infection, only the Cantharis 30 would work. The 200 wouldn’t touch me. That’s just a wonderful example of how the potency really matters. We’re so lucky to have these protocols that the work is done for us.

Joette: That’s right. The cake recipe is all put out. It tells us exactly how many eggs, how much sugar, how much vanilla, how much flour.

Paola: The interesting thing is you can still mess up the recipe. How many times have you cooked something, Joette and you messed it up because you didn’t read the directions properly? That alone, reading the directions properly is hard enough. You got to slow down and pay attention. I know there are different Facebook groups on homeopathy. You have your students of Joette Calabrese. It’s really important that you just don’t take someone’s word for it when they give you a protocol. “Oh, yes. This is the protocol for that.” You got to make sure that – you’re assuming, they’ve read the recipe right and digesting it and giving it to you right, too. You got to go take the classes and know for yourself that you’re doing it right. I think that’s a big deal.

The importance of repetition

Joette: Yes, it is. Speaking of the importance of repetition, when folks use the blog or they take a course, I see questions that come in and it’s clear to me they have not read it. They’ve not read the blog thoroughly. It’s very clear. It’s all there. It’s as obvious as can be, yet they still ask questions. No, no, no, no. Go back and read it again. If you have to read it five times, read it again. If you’re taking one of our courses and you’re not sure what to do, go back and take the course again. It really takes that much effort. This is very concentrated tight information that I’m trying. I try to explain that in the beginning of these classes that these are very intense, very intense information.

So, I don’t expect you to just go to page 57 and say, “Okay. So what do I take now for this eczema?” No, no, no, no, no. You start from the beginning because now that you’ve taken it, now what do you do after you’ve been taking it for a few weeks and it’s partially gone? Those are the questions we often get. What do I do now? Well apparently, you didn’t study the course well enough because it tells you exactly what you have to do the second time. How do you observe? How do you interpret what you’re observing?

Paola: I really like the classical model of homeschooling. It hails back to that concept of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. If you review it and review it and review it, you move through those stages and you can’t fast forward. You can’t go from grammar to rhetoric. You can’t. You got to work through all these three stages.

Joette: Right. Well, it’s the same thing as we said earlier as playing the piano. Someone says, “Well, I really would like to be able to play a Tchaikovsky concerto.” Well, great. Do you know where middle C is?

Paola: Yes. Twinkle, twinkle little star, my friend. Here we go.

Joette: I know. Let’s see. You have to learn. You have to start when you’re four and study and study and study and repeat and repeat and practice two hours a day. Someday, you may be able to play a Tchaikovsky concerto.

Paola: This is not just advice for anyone that’s new to homeopathy. I think you, yourself, Joette, take this advice because I remember you said when you went to the Banerjis to study with them, you wouldn’t ask questions. You would sit and observe and study and listen and observe and study and listen. You even said now that you’ve gone back so many times. You’re starting to ask a few more questions. Is that similar to why you’re trying to grasp the information?

Joette: Yes. I’m trying to absorb. Here’s the reason. I know why they’re using specific remedies because the remedies that they’re using are medicines that I’ve used for exactly those same conditions. But for them, they have exact potency, exact frequency and it’s all laid out. What I would have done, I might have gone to the same homeopathic medicine as they did but I might not have used it in a 6X, twice a day or say, a month. If I would ask them, “Why do you use this remedy in a 6X, twice a day for a month?” Do you know what their answer would be?

Paola: It works?

Joette: Yes. That’s the answer. So, why would I ask them a question that I know the answer to already? Just keep quiet, Joette and just observe and record. I’ve got books and books and books of all my observations and recordings.

Paola: It’s cool because I think you can start seeing patterns.

Joette: Oh, absolutely.

Paola: As to like a Belladonna 6 is for pain. We have head pain. We have different pains but it’s always at lower potencies. Maybe a Belladonna in a higher potency does something else. So you can learn those patterns. But sometimes when you ask pointblank, it’s hard to answer. When you observe it and you see kind of the constellation appear to you, you start picking up on that pattern yourself and you internalize it.

Joette: Exactly.

Paola: Okay. Well, those are our three points, our three topics that bear repeating.

Joette: Good. I think we did it.

Paola: Yes, I think we did. I hope you guys liked it. I hope that this helps because sometimes you feel like you’re missing something and you’re not sure what you’re missing. Then you want to know what it is. Well, this is something that we pulled together between Lara and people in the office, in your social media.

Joette: The questions that we get on a regular basis. Yes.

Paola: Exactly. This is a big deal. Thank you so much, Joette for your time.

Joette: Oh, it’s my pleasure. It’s always fun, Paola.

Paola: Awesome. Thank you so much. Well, see you later.

Joette: Okay.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

02:00  Kate’s Favorite Remedies

08:08  How homeopathy cured her daughter from her illnesses

14:28  Sharing some amazing homeopathic experiences   

23:23  Kate’s accident and how Arnica and Hypericum helped a lot 

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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. 

Paola:  It’s another podcast at joettecalabrese.com. Today we’ve got a new episode for the Moms with Moxie miniseries.

Joette:  All the way from my desk in New York, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. 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 and they’re glorious and powerful. I can’t keep your successes a secret any longer. So with help from my roving reporter, Paola, we bring you this mini podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” It’s actually grandmoms, too but it’s moms with Moxie. See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Paola:  Alright. I’m here with Kate Bechard from Wisconsin. I’m very happy to have her. Kate has a lot of knowledge about homeopathy and some pretty extreme experiences with it which probably weren’t fun at the time but they’re fun to talk about now that everything turned out well. She is a mother of two children. One’s a teenager and one’s entering their teenage years. She loves horses. They do a lot of activities with their horses. They love music. Kate says that she is passionate about healing and learning. Welcome, Kate.

Kate:  Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Paola:  Yes. Joette and I both think you’re definitely a mom with moxie. Yes, it’s real good and we love moms with moxie because you guys are willing to do what it takes to learn and take on the challenges. Kate, we’ve been talking a lot about homeopathy leading up to this interview. Share with us. What are your favorite remedies and maybe tell us why.

Kate:  With homeopathy, I get super excited. I think it’s super hard to have just a few favorite remedies. Don’t you?

Paola:  Yes.

Kate’s Favorite Remedies   

Kate:  This is a challenge. But I will tell you just a couple. Of course, Arnica. Who could live without Arnica, right? You have kids. You have animals. You need Arnica.

Paola:  Right.

Kate:  So definitely, I have to have that with me at all times.

Paola:  A lot of people have Arnica and they don’t even know they’re using homeopathy. That’s how popular Arnica can be. Yes.

Kate:  It is. That’s why I hate to say it’s a favorite remedy but it’s so important for accidents. We’ll get into that a little bit later.

Paola:  Yes.

Kate:  So Arnica is one of my favorites. Arsenicum is another one of my favorites. My kids actually have not had the stomach flu in five years. I attribute it to God and Arsenicum because pretty much every time they tell me they have a tummy ache, I tell them to take some Arsenicum.

Paola:  Right, great for tummy aches and kind of gastrointestinal issues.

Kate:  Another favorite remedy that I have is Ledum. That is a remedy that I use quite often as well for bee stings, bug bites, tick infections, things like that. So, it’s definitely one of my go-to remedies.

Paola:  That’s awesome. I love it. I’m always surprised at how much Ledum helps, sometimes even more than Apis when it comes to bee stings which is kind of counter intuitive because Apis is from bee sting but often Ledum is the one that acts a little bit better.

Kate:  Right. Yes, I have found that to be true as well. Yes, definitely you consider Ledum if you got any sort of bite and inflammation from the bite.

Paola:  Okay, so it feels like you’ve been doing homeopathy for a long time, even maybe before you learned about joettecalabrese.com. So, tell us how long you’ve been doing homeopathy.

Kate:  I have been studying homeopathy for about six to seven years now. At first, when I learned about homeopathy, I learned about classical homeopathy which is where you would take and use one remedy at a time. You look at everything about a person’s psychological, emotional, physical. I remember being frustrated in the beginning because it takes so much time to figure out the right remedy because you have to look at every symptom and there are thousands of remedies to choose from. So, when my kids would have a cough, it would take me about 45 minutes to try and figure out what to give them for the cough.

Paola:  Wow!

Kate:  So, Joette has rocked my world. She has changed our lives. This morning, when I was thinking about our interview, I was even emotional because I was so thankful for how she has changed our lives with what she teaches. When I met Joette, I found her on the internet and then I actually had a consult with her for one of my children. Then I’ve been taking her courses. I think I’ve taken almost all of her courses. So about four years now, I’ve followed Joette and our lives have changed drastically. It’s so much easier to use homeopathy now. So, I just really encourage people to take a look at what she has to offer and the Banerji protocols.

Paola:  I just think that is just so inspirational. That’s why we’re doing this podcast series, Moms with Moxie, because we think that it’s just Joette that has all this success. But it’s true that if you dedicate yourself, you can really learn. I mean, do you agree? I do not live in abject fear of illness?

Kate:  Yes. That’s why I say she’s rocked my world because I used to be afraid. My daughter had pneumonia one time. She ended up in the hospital. That was actually when I was just starting to learn about homeopathy. It was the classical homeopathy. I tried different things. This is a funny story. So, I tried a couple of different things. She was so bad that she was passed out on the couch, you couldn’t have any light on, don’t talk around me, extremely high fever, couldn’t keep anything down. So I was thinking, I can do this, right? I can do this. I can find my homeopathic remedy. I don’t want to put her on antibiotics.

Paola:  Those were pretty loud symptoms. So you think that helps pick a remedy, right?

Kate:  Right. So, I went through a couple of different remedies. After so many hours, as a mom, you get worn out. You just think, “Oh, my gosh! Am I doing this right? I want to care for my daughter.” So, I finally tried a remedy. I don’t even remember what it was. I’d have to look. I keep a notebook with everything that I gave my kids throughout the years so I can remember what works for them. But anyway, I just decided I’ve had it. She’s sick and I’m tired and I want to do the right things. We took her to the emergency room. By the time that we got there, the remedy worked.

Paola:  No!

Kate:  So we were in there and she’s sitting up in the wheelchair. She’s telling them all the registration information. I’m like, “Are you kidding me?”

Paola:  No! So what did you do?

Kate:  I was just tired. They did treat her. They gave her an inhaler and some other things just to clear her lungs. But at the time, I was just exhausted and I just needed help. But she really was on the mend by the time that we got there. Using the protocols that Joette teaches, it’s so much easier.

Paola:  It helps kind of preserve your strength. You were right. We’re just talking about just for this interview how I had a sick farm animal, whatever, cows and I’m telling you, it wore me out to try and figure out the remedies with the protocols. I can’t imagine. I mean, he would have had antibiotics if I hadn’t even been able to narrow it down to a couple of protocols to pick from.

Kate:  Exactly. It is so amazing. I’m a big fan of Joette and the Banerji protocols.

Paola:  Yes, yes. You mentioned to me about your daughter. She had a couple of conditions that you felt like homeopathy had made it so they were gone permanently.

How homeopathy cured her daughter from her illnesses

Kate:  Yes. One of the first things that I did with Joette is we addressed my daughter’s eczema. We treated her. She had eczema when she was little which led me into the whole natural health world. First, I’ve tried using nutrition which is great. Nutrition is great. I found out she was allergic to a couple of things at the age of two. We stopped giving her those things and she got better. Then, it popped up again. I used herbs. I used essential oils. Then I feel like all those things are great but when you find homeopathy, wow! You’re just so excited because it works like nothing else does. Joette helped me and we treated her with Antimonium crud 200 combined with Arsenicum album 200, twice daily. I also gave her Calc carb 200, every other day. That did it. That got rid of her eczema permanently. Whereas before, it would go away and then it would come back and go away and come back. She hasn’t had it in, I think four years now.

Paola:  Oh, that’s beautiful. I love it. Oh, and Joette does talk about that protocol quite a bit. I think she talks about it in Good Gut, Bad Gut. Obviously, she talks about it in Skin. And on her blog, it’s there.

Kate:  Yes. It’s a fantastic protocol. My daughter also had asthma. We’ve been working with that over the years. We used Kali carb 200, twice daily for a while. It got rid of the asthma. But then, it came back. Now we’ve been using in the last, I’d say four months, we’ve been using Lachesis 200, every other day. In the four months or so that we’ve been using it, she hasn’t had severe asthma attacks. That’s been amazing. When she gets an asthma attack, it’s very short and very little. So I’m really confident that that’s going to take care of her asthma. The other thing is that when she does have an attack, she uses Kali iodatum. That helps her with the attack and she doesn’t need to use an inhaler.

Paola:  So she is that in the acute. That’s the magic markers Joette talks about where you look for an improvement, and frequency, intensity. There’s a whole podcast where she talks about how to look for improvement. So as she continues to improve, you can expect to wean her off of these remedies.

Kate:   Exactly. I think sometimes people get frustrated and think if it’s a chronic condition that, “Oh, it’s not working.” But they don’t look at the overall picture of like you’re saying, Paola, how often they have the issues and how intense they are. I think it’s good to really write those markers down, the symptoms, and really take a look month to month to see if it is changing because you have chronic conditions that have taken years to come about in your body. It’s not just over night that they disappear. So we need to have patience and stick with things for a while.

Paola:  Yes, patience is the big one. You definitely learn patience with homeopathy which is a good thing. I think it’s impatience that leads us to the drugs and the antibiotics because it’s so easy. It seems so easy and tempting.

Kate:  But then if you think about it and I know that you know this but you take antibiotics, say for whatever condition. What you’re doing is you’re just masking the symptoms. You might feel better but it’s going to drive that condition into maybe something else in your body. It’s going to come out in another way. So, you’re not really healing your body. You’re just getting over it for that time. Then it comes back again like asthma or a chronic cough, whatever it is, eczema like what happened with my daughter. So we really want to try to do something that’s going to empower our bodies to heal for good.

Paola:  Right. Okay. Another thing Kate that I was impressed with in your little family of homeopathy is that it sounds like your daughter who’s 15, right? She’s getting pretty good at homeopathy. I love to hear that because I want to pass this on to my children and my grandchildren. Tell me about that, how it’s been teaching your daughter and how do you do it.

Kate:  Well, I think the biggest way is just she sees me use it. She sees the success with it and then she builds up the confidence to use it as well. For myself and for my children, it’s repetition to really just doing it, seeing me help other people with it. Then that even gives them more confidence. One of the things that I do is I send them, wherever they go, if they go and stay at a friend’s house or on a trip or something, I give them a bag of homeopathy, a ziplock bag.

Paola:  I love it.

Kate:  I put a card in the bag. It tells them. So for a tummy ache, take this. For a headache, take this. For a fever, take this. For accident, take this. A cheat sheet so that they can know what to do because when I’m sick, I can’t think clearly.

Paola:  I love that. I teach a little study group class on homeopathics in Joette’s Curriculum, the Study Group Curriculum. I help people all the time. But sometimes when I’m sick, they’ll call or a friend will hear and come over or something and I’ll be sick. They’ll say, “Well, don’t you need to just take like Ignatia because you’re so stressed about your farm animal?” I’m the worst patient of myself. I can use it. So, it would be so nice. Because my husband, all he knows is Aconite and Hepar sulph so he’s of no help. I can’t wait until my kids could step up and help.

Kate:  Exactly. Also, my daughter is going to be taking some of Joette’s courses and so that’s exciting, too because I feel like she will learn more about the remedies and how to use them. She’s very good at using them right now. She’s pretty good. I would definitely ask her if I had an issue.

Paola:  That’s awesome. I love that. It’s so generational. This is so generational. I love that. You’re going to share with us a copy of that little cheat sheet you give your kids. We will put it on Joette’s blog under this podcast so you can visit the podcast and you can see a copy of that.

Kate:  Yes.

Paola:  Okay. Cool. Moving forward, I know we have a big culminating story. You want to share about an unfortunate accident you experienced. But before we get there, are there any experiences you wanted to share with us with homeopathy?

Sharing some amazing homeopathic experiences

Kate:  Sure, yes. There are so many stories. Oh, my goodness! That’s my favorite thing to talk about. One thing that I remember that happened last summer, my son went biking. He went with a friend of his. They just took off down these trails. There were a lot of hills. He had never ridden his friend’s bike. He jumped on his friend’s bike and they went over a big hill. His friend’s bike was different. It didn’t have the same braking system that he was used to. He was airborne. He landed and his bike hit first. His head hit the handle bar of the bike and then he flipped over backwards and landed on his back. They were way deep in the woods. I was waiting for them to come back. I didn’t know where they were or how to find them. So he came back, pushing his bike really kind of dazed.

The first thing I did, of course, was run and get the Arnica and I gave him Arnica. I thought that I had Aconite with me but I did not. Now, Aconite is a great remedy for shock. We were about 10 minutes away from town. The Arnica helped him but he was not talkative. He was very quiet. I knew that he was shocky. So I just put him in the van and I drove to town. I drove to our local health food store. I bought some Aconite 30 because they only have the 30 potencies. Otherwise, I would have used 200. I gave him some Aconite 30. Within five to ten minutes after giving him that, he was talkative and joking around and acting normal. I was like, “Should I take him to the emergency room or give him Aconite?” It was a serious accident. So, I just stayed in town a little while just to make sure that all these symptoms were going away. The Aconite did it for him. I just continued the Arnica 200 and Aconite, just alternating them for a little while. Then we ended up continuing with the Arnica 200 because he had huge bruises on his face and his eye. But yes, he was good. So, thank the Lord for Aconite and Arnica.

Paola:  I can just picture him joking about how cool the accident was. That’s what those boys do at that age, right?

Kate:  Exactly.

Paola:  Right.

Kate:  And also, he loves to snowboard. So, I send him all the time when he goes down the hill, I give him Arnica that he keeps in his pocket. The funny thing is that if he falls and hurts himself, he’ll just take some Arnica, wait a few minutes, and then he’s back up and going because the Arnica works so fast that they feel great afterwards. Then he’s back up and going. I guess that’s good at that, right?

Paola:  Right, exactly. And maybe, maybe he should take it easy.

Kate:  Yes, I know. His friend was with us one time and he vomited. I didn’t see it but he must have hit his head because he was sitting up. When I got to him, he’s kind of dazed. This is a really good thing to know that I learned from Joette and the Banerji’s is Cuprum metallicum is great for head injuries. So I tried Arnica with him once and didn’t seem to do much. I gave him the Cuprum and right away, within five minutes, he was feeling fine. He said, “I want to get up and go snowboarding again.” I was saying to him, “No, you need to rest. You fell hard.” He was saying that his head was hurting like an 8 out of 10. So it was pretty bad and so I made him rest for a while. But the Cuprum is really amazing. That’s a great one to know about for head injuries.

Paola:  Right. Very good, very, very good, especially moms with teenage boys. I have a friend here in Texas who has three teenage boys. When I had an accident myself where I cut my hand, I knew I could call her right away because she uses a lot of homeopathy because she’s got three teenage boys. I know she’s dealt with injuries before.

Kate:  Yes.

Paola:  So that’s great.

Kate:  Okay, do we have time for one more story?

Paola:  Yes, go ahead. Let’s hear another one.

Kate:  A tick disease is something I’m passionate about because the Ledum has helped me just so wonderfully with fighting tick disease.

Paola:  So real quick, in Wisconsin there’s a lot of ticks and they carry Lyme disease and other diseases, right? Not just Lyme.

Kate:  Yes. There are a number of tick diseases that you can have, some of them worse than others. But a lot of people suffer from that on the East Coast and in this area. They don’t realize that it gets misdiagnosed a lot as chronic inflammatory conditions like fibromyalgia or other things. I was not feeling well for a long time and finally went and was tested for tick disease. I found out that I had three different tick diseases. I chose to use Ledum instead of anything else. It worked amazing. Within, I don’t know, four or five hours, I was up doing things and feeling so much better. So I’ve used that for many months, almost a year probably. I feel so much better. I’ve seen it work amazingly. Our dog came down with tick disease. I woke up one morning and she wasn’t eating. She was lethargic, just laying around and limping when she got up.

Paola:  How would you know that was tick disease? I would think maybe they ate something weird.

Kate:  Because I’ve seen it so many times. We’ve had several pets that have had tick disease in horses, dogs, humans. I recognize it.

Paola:  Okay.

Kate:  Anyway, I gave her a dose of Ledum. I called the vet and I scheduled an appointment for the afternoon. By the time we got to the vet, she was totally fine.

Paola:  Wow!

Kate:  How amazing it works. When I got there, he said, “She seems fine.” I said, “No. She has a tick disease. Can you test her, please?” It turns out she had three tick diseases.

Paola:  Wow!

Kate:  Yes, exactly. But she was really fine after that first dose of Ledum. I think I just kept giving her Ledum. But I wanted to be sure. Actually before I knew about all this, we had a dog that passed away from a tick disease. It was pretty traumatic. I’ve seen it work with horses the same way. We had a friend’s horse that was not moving very well, would not run to her, would not turn, not very hungry. I said, “Give her a dose of the Ledum. It sounds like tick disease.” She did. She gave her the dose in the morning. She came home from work in the afternoon and her horse came running after her just fine.

Paola:  Wow!

Kate:  That is how amazing it is with tick diseases. Of course, if people have had tick diseases for a long period of time, it can be more difficult to see the results. But it’s an amazing remedy.

Paola:  Maybe it’s not even as often as simple as taking like Ledum or something once it’s been with you for a long time.

Kate:  Exactly. It can be more complex. But yes, I’ve seen it work like this many more times and even when I just said so.

Paola:  Do you have any recommendations? I know a lot of people will get a tick disease and they don’t even know they were ever bit by a tick. Do you know what I mean?

Kate:  Right.

Paola:  So you’re just kind of being aware of your body and how you’re feeling.

Kate:  Yes, rashes on your body because a rash that you see, a rash that is, you don’t know where it came from, that can be a tick bite that developed into a tick disease. Yes, if you’re feeling lethargic, if you feel like you can’t think, tired all the time, those are some of the symptoms that I dealt with personally.

Paola:  Right.

Kate:  Yes.

Paola:  Well, very good. Yes, I know that this is definitely a big issue with a lot of people. I’ve actually heard about some famous people that had tick diseases like I think Avril Lavigne did and Tommy Hilfiger’s daughter did. I think that awareness is growing and it’s important so people know what’s going on.

Kate:  Right. I would encourage people to look at Joette’s blog because she has a really good blog about tick disease and what to do for tick bites. Check that out because that has all the information on it.

Paola:  It’s like a protocol she developed. She says she has yet to see it fail once you get the tick bite.

Kate:  Yes, exactly. If you get a bite, definitely take some Ledum. Even if you don’t have a tick disease, take some Ledum. I give my horses and our dog Ledum about once a month just to prevent. I know we don’t encourage homeopathy as a preventative but you don’t know when an animal gets bit by a tick necessarily because they’re outside. You can’t see the bite marks.

Paola:  So you kind of do it prophylactically, so to speak.

Kate:  I do. Yes.

Paola:  But it seems well-justified because you’re in an area where it’s pretty heavy with ticks. You’re in the country, I assume, right?

Kate:  Yes.

Paola:  Yes, exactly. Okay. So Kate, I want to hear the big story. You just showed me your arm. There are stitches going the entire length of your forearm on two different sides. You had a terrible accident. The story is amazing so just go ahead and take it away and tell us what happened. I’m so sorry you got hurt.

Kate’s accident and how Arnica and Hypericum helped a lot

Kate:  Yes, it wasn’t fun having it happen but so many good things have come out of it. So, I’m still thankful. I’m thankful to be alive really. Here’s the story. I was at a horse show and we had a new young horse. I took her into a trail class and I rode her through. She was nervous about everything in the class. She doesn’t have a lot of show experience. At the end of the trail class, I got off of her and I thought, “Whew! We made it and I’m alive.”

Paola:  Right.

Kate:  Then I proceeded to walk her over a log so I had the rein in my hand and she flew. She ran me over and I ended up underneath her, holding on to her rein. She was kind of walking on top of me, like over the top of me. So she ended up stepping on my arm. I don’t remember it happening. I just remember being on the ground and thinking, “Curl up in a ball so she doesn’t step on you.” Then I got up and I remember my arm. This is kind of gross. I don’t know if it’s okay to say but my arm was hanging from skin and muscle.

Paola:  Ugh!

Kate:  So I said, “Serena, go get my homeopathy kit.”

Paola:  That’s your daughter?

Kate:  Yes, my daughter.

Paola:  Your budding homeopath.

Kate:  Yes. They were saying, “Somebody call an ambulance.” I said, “No. Don’t call an ambulance. Serena, go get my hom-.” And I was very emphatic about the homeopathy. I could see her. She was kind of standing there. She, of course, went to get it.

Paola:  I can see everybody standing, “Don’t get an ambulance. What the heck is a homeopathy kit?”

Kate:  Yes, you’re right. I wonder what they were thinking. And so, she got it. I didn’t realize this but I had an open end fracture. My brother was there, thankfully. He came up and he held my arm so that the bleeding would stop. Serena kept dosing me with the strongest Arnica and Hypericum that I have along with me which was Arnica 1M and Hypericum 1M.

Looking back, I wished that I would have had the 10Ms with me and I would have done that. So now, guess what I ordered? Arnica 10M and Hypericum 10M and I will not go anywhere without them. You can be sure of that. Anyway, they got me in the car, took me to the local hospital which was a very small hospital. I was in the ER. I just had Serena keep dosing me with Arnica and Hypericum every, I don’t know, 10 to 30 minutes at first. So it was every few minutes. Then it gradually got further and further apart. In the first ER, I was there for probably four hours or so. Serena just kept giving me that. They kept asking me, “Do you need pain meds?” I said, “No, I don’t need any pain medication. I’m fine.” I was in pain obviously.

Paola:  Right.

Kate:  But I wasn’t in enough pain that I felt like it wasn’t controlled.

Paola:  Right.

Kate:  So Arnica and Hypericum were amazing. They made it bearable. I did not have Aconite with me. I wish I would have because I would have taken that as well for shock.

Paola:  Right.

Kate:  They kept saying to me, “You’re going to go into shock. We need to get you to the hospital.” I said, “No, I’m fine.” The Arnica and Hypericum really took care of that, too which was amazing. Anyway, they ended up having to transport me for surgery about an hour and a half away. So I had a bumpy car ride with my arm in a makeshift brace. Then I had another about five hours until I had surgery.

Paola:  Because they had a hard time finding a surgeon who is qualified enough to deal with your injury.

Kate:  4th of July weekend and they called several hospitals who wouldn’t take me and they gave different reasons. But I think they just didn’t want to come in on the holiday weekend.

Paola:  Yes. I mean, if you’re listening to this podcast, you really need to see this photographs of her arm. I mean, you do not appreciate the magnitude of this injury until you see. I mean, it’s like Frankenstein arm all the way down with the stitches.

Kate:  Yes, it was crazy. Thankfully, we found a surgeon that would take me and do surgery. In the surgery, I had five fractures on my arm. He had to cut through two muscles to put two plates into my arm. I also had bruised ribs. I never had an x-ray of my ribs so I’m still not sure whether they’re broken or are they bruised. I don’t know. But they were extremely painful. I had my cheekbone that was also bruised because it was very sore. I didn’t really know those things as much when I was in the hospital because the Arnica and Hypericum really took away the pain on those things. My ribs hurt but not extreme. But by the time I got home, I realized those were very injured as well.

Long story short, I had surgery and I had a nerve block in my arm for the surgery. After the nerve block, I was in the hospital for another about 12 hours. They kept telling me to take pain medicine. They almost did not let me leave the hospital without taking pain meds. So finally, I agreed to take some Tylenol just because they were so adamant. They said, “You are going to need pain meds and we want to see how you respond.” They actually wanted me to take oxycodone. They wanted to see how I responded to it while I was still in the hospital.

Paola:  Like if you’re allergic or something.

Kate:  Right, right. I just said, “No, I don’t need that. I’m going to be fine.” They wouldn’t believe me. I asked them about homeopathy. They just said they’d have to check with the doctor. I said, “Okay, I won’t use it then.” (Wink, wink).

Paola:  Right. “This is off the tape. I was just kidding.”

Kate:  Yes.

Paola:  So your daughter had been dosing you kind of privately, secretly without them seeing.

Kate:  Yes, yes. In the first hospital, they were actually good about it. It was openly that they let her do it because one of the attendants, his wife was studying to be a naturopath and so he knew about it.

Paola:  Oh.

Kate:  They know it.

Paola:  Yes.

Kate:   The attending physician there, she didn’t know that I was doing it but the people who were actually with me, they knew and they didn’t care. So that was great. In the second hospital, not so much so. But that’s okay. Finally, I took a Tylenol so that they would let me go home. I’m like, “Oh, I feel so much better now.”

Paola:  “Thank you. So glad you guys have Tylenol.”

Kate:  I’m going to be fine with the Tylenol.

Paola:  That’s fun.

Kate:  Anyway, I went home and I just used homeopathy. Then I did have a consult with Joette and she put me on a protocol. I’m actually taking a lot of different remedies. I never really realized you could take so many remedies at a time. But I guess in an emergency acute situation and a traumatic thing that I went through, you can do those things for a short time. So I have a huge list of remedies that I’m taking right now. But I’m gradually able to come off of some of them as things change in my body and heal.

Paola:  Did you take The Survivalist Guide?

Kate:  I did. Okay, that is something that everyone needs to know about. I love the Survivalist Guide Book. That is a book that I cannot live without. That book has so many great things in it. I think everyone listening needs to take that course because it’s a life saver. It literally is in so many ways. It has every emergency situation that you can think of and how to handle it homeopathically.

Paola:  Yes. Not all of Joette’s courses come with a binder or book but this is one of them that does. And so, I’m sure a lot of the remedies she put you on for your injury are also discussed in that course. They’re listed in the book.

Kate:  Right. I will tell you on my follow up visits with my surgeon, I had one a couple of weeks ago and he said that the swelling in my hand and in my arm is greatly less than he would have expected it to be considering what I went through and the surgery and everything. I know that’s due to homeopathy for sure. That Lycopodium 30 is great for edema and that’s what Joette put me on for that. But then again, the Arnica is also great for that and I was taking that for quite a while as well.

Paola:  Interesting. We use Lycopodium 30 on my little cow out here because he had pretty bad edema. That was just one that Joette told me to do. I was like, “I didn’t know about Lycopodium. Okay.”  And I just did it. But now I’m piecing it together right now. That’s why she picked it.

Kate:  Yes. I didn’t know about that either so that’s definitely one thing that I’m going to remember.

Paola:  It breaks my heart that we don’t have homeopathy in the hospitals like we should because I mean, for heaven’s sakes, just in the emergency room. Please just put it in the emergency room.

Kate:  Right. 

Paola:  Such a big help. 

Kate:  Can you imagine having a horse step on your arm, what kind of bruising should I have had on my arm and my hand? Then having the trauma of having stitches on both sides of my arm all the way up my forearm? Okay, I had no bruising. I mean, there was no bruising.

Paola:  We can see the photos you’re sending us. We’re going to put the photos on this blog. But I mean it’s hard to believe, Kate.

Kate:  Yes, it is. It’s really hard to believe. I had some swelling. But yes, it was really amazing. You have to look at the pictures then you’ll be able to see the full scope of what homeopathy actually did and how it helped.

Paola:  Kate, you’re awesome. I loved hearing the story. I’m so glad you’re feeling better. I love homeopathy.

Kate:  Me too. 

Paola:  Joette is awesome. We love Joette.

Kate:  Hey, Joette.

Paola:  I know. So thank you so much for joining us and for being a Mom with Moxie and being willing to share your story and for helping out our listeners learn. Are you working in your community? Do you have study groups or anything like that or have you thought about starting one because you’re rocking it. You’ve got lots of information.

Kate:  Yes, I actually want to start a study group since then and I’m excited to do it. But we do help a lot of people with homeopathy and talk a lot about it. So there are a lot of people that have learned about it. It’s just fun to share and see people’s lives change with it.

Paola:  Yes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Kate. Thank you again.

Joette:  Are you or someone you know a Mom with Moxie? Well, we’re on the hunt for you. Of course, we don’t want to hear just from moms but from anyone who uses and loves homeopathy. Reach out to my podcast team and let us know why you’re a Mom with Moxie. For more information, contact [email protected].

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

P.S. If this is a subject that turns you on as much as it does me and you want to “get it” too, join me in my Survivalist Guide to Homeopathy to better understand how to endure both natural and man-made disasters. But don’t think that this guide is mandatory. Simply stay tuned to this blog because my plan is to give you years’ worth of free content right here every week.

In this podcast, we cover:

03:22  Writing down information and fine-tuning them

13:48  Homeopathy transcends other methods of medicine

18:50  Assessing the case  

27:05  How long before a remedy acts

34:59  Figuring out the conditions 

41:30  The importance of note taking to determine one’s improvement

Paola:  It’s podcast number 22 at joettecalabrese.com. Here’s what’s coming up.

Joette:   Dig around a little bit but if it doesn’t come up, don’t theorize. “Oh well, then it must be mercury. Oh well, you still have amalgams in your teeth. It’s got to be that.” Not really, it could be a gazillion thing and then you listen more. I have joint pain, all of those things you want to actually jot down but at the top of the page, you’re jotting down the ideas of the medicines that come to mind. The message is that homeopathy transcends the other methods of medicine.

Paola:  The goal of today’s podcast is to walk you through the case taking process for a chronic condition. At the time of this recording, Joette is in the middle of teaching the Allergic?! course and this podcast is turning out to be a homework assignment for the students taking that class. But this podcast really also benefits all of Joette’s listeners.

So, the steps we’ll explore begin with listening to the case and taking notes on the person’s ailments. She emphasizes that it’s important to even write some of the exact verbiage that the person uses to describe their ailments. Joette recommends that we write down to what degree the person is suffering like on a scale of 1 to 10. Then as you’re listening to the person express themselves, you may think of protocols that might fit their conditions. So, while you’re hearing them and while you’re taking notes on the case, in the corner of the page, you’re supposed to be writing down what protocols might apply to them. So this is a brainstorming process. Then after you’ve completed taking the case, you take some time to look at those potential protocols and edit them down to the most important ones that you want to prioritize. Finally, once you’ve set around four protocols for that person, you need to commit to them to them for six to eight weeks. So that’s the Reader’s Digest version of what we’re going to discuss in today’s podcast. Joette is going to really take some time to tease apart each of those steps so that we can understand them more deeply.

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

All right, here we go. Hi Joette. How are you?

Joette:  Hi Paola. I’m doing well.

Paola:  For those of us who signed up for your Allergic?! Course, we’re well into it, I think past the halfway point.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  It’s been a fascinating course. I have pages and pages of notes.

Joette:  Oh good girl, Paola.

Paola:  Yes, I love it. But you’ve been giving us some homework for that course, the last podcast’s homework and this podcast tonight is some homework for the students. But you were saying that this would apply to just anyone and the Allergic?! students as well.

Joette:  Yes. This is the fundamental information that’s so useful when dealing with a chronic case. We’re going to touch a little bit on acutes too but particularly chronic. So yes, this is for anyone who wants to go that far in homeopathy in dealing with chronic conditions.

Paola:  Yes. For those of you who’ve already taken her courses, I think it’s a really important reminder, if you’ve taken Good Gut, Bad Gut or others. The topic of this podcast is what you like to call editing down a case. So I’m an English major. I know what it’s like to edit an essay when you have all the information there. But what do you mean by editing down a case? This is chronic, right?

Writing down information and fine-tuning them

Joette:  Yes, yes. We’re talking about a chronic case. So that means something like for example, for this course that we’re doing right now on Allergic?!, when someone says, “Well, I have joint pains,” and if you know anything about homeopathy, the first thing you’re thinking of is oh my gosh. That must be or it could be Rhus tox. It could be Arnica. So you jot that down as soon as you hear it. Then you listen more.

I have joint pains that are worse on first movement. It’s better when I limber up. It’s rare that they say it quite like this but most people don’t give you the answer that clearly. But let’s say that’s what comes of it. Now, you can cross off Arnica because Arnica doesn’t have that. So while you’re taking the case, you’re jotting down not the whole sentence necessarily, although you’re taking the case in a full sentence as the person is giving it to you but you’re also at the top of the page. You’re writing down the names of the medicines that are coming to mind.

When you finish taking the case, now you find out that the person has terrible allergies and if they eat wheat, their joints ache. If they eat wheat, they have bloating. Oh bloating, wait, wait, wait. I know what bloating is. Hold on. You write down Lycopodium is bloating. So you write down Lycopodium. It’s Lycopodium that is often mixed with Arsenicum 3 which is a Banerji Protocol. So wow, maybe it’s Arsenicum. Let’s find out more. Oh there’s burning or there’s discharge or there’s et cetera, et cetera. We go into all the pictures of what LycoArs covers and you say I got it. I got it. It’s LycoArs.

Don’t assume that that’s set in stone. You’re writing down your ideas based on what is being presented. It doesn’t mean that you’re not writing down the full case because as the person’s telling you this, you’re jotting down I have bloating every time I eat wheat or even after I eat anything, it feels like there’s a beach ball in my belly. All of those things you want to actually jot down. But at the top of the page, you’re jotting down the ideas of the medicines that come to mind.

When the case is fully taken and you’re all done, you’re going to go back and you look at the top of the page. After you’ve taken all your notes, you look at the top of the page. You might have 15 medicines up there. That’s if you know enough materia medica, if you know enough. Now, you may not. If you’re brand new, you might only think of one or two which is alright. That’s alright. You’re still learning. It’s brand new to you. But let’s say you’re at the level where you come up with about 10 homeopathic medicines for this whole picture. Now, you have to fine-tune it.

Fine-tuning is like you said, like an English major. You go back and you find the most potent words to make the most sense of what you’re trying to convey. This is the same thing with homeopathy. You can also use the analogy of a painting. The Artist stands back and holds up his thumb and looks at the painting and says, “Is that right? Is there too much yellow? Should I put more violet in there?” They even wait until the next day and come back and look at the painting or the writer comes back and looks at his writings and determines, “Did I put too much emphasis on this or that.”

So for example, if the person has said I have joint pains if I eat wheat. But then they tell you, “But that hasn’t happened in years. It really doesn’t happen very often. It’s not really a big deal. I kind of noticed it a long time ago but it’s not a big deal.” You don’t want to give a homeopathic medicine specific for something that’s not in the hierarchy of importance. You want to figure out what is important and how can it best represent what you’re trying to do.

Paola:  So in the beginning, when you’re taking the case, you’re just gathering all the information.

Joette:  Right, just jot it down so you don’t lose your train of thought.

Paola:  And brainstorming protocols.

Joette:  Exactly.

Paola:  If you can’t remember the protocol, you can say, “Well, I know there’s a protocol for this like dysentery.”

Joette:  So you put dysentery and you go back and you look up dysentery and you find it.

Paola:  Then after you were thinking through the case, you’re going to say, “Okay, what is the biggest-?”

Joette:  What’s the big picture here?

Paola:  Yes.

Joette:  What’s keeping this person from being able to live their life?

Paola:  The biggest problem is the thesis, I guess.

Joette:  Right, exactly. Yes. What does this distill down to? If this is a grandma who can’t knit and all she wants to do is knit and maybe cook for her grandchildren and her family. She can’t because the arthritis is crippling her hands and the pain is horrible. That arthritis is keeping her from being who she is. If it’s a child who can’t eat and they’re supposed to be growing and they can’t eat this and they don’t like that. They’re really fussy and they bloat and they have distention and they have gas, et cetera. It is clear that the biggest issue has something to do with the gut on a deep level. So we have to go after what’s most important.

Now, it doesn’t mean we go after only one important aspect of the case but we create that as I say hierarchy. What’s the most important? What might be the most second important? What might be the most third important? We do down primary, secondary, tertiary until we can go to maybe the third or fourth most valuable aspects of this case.

Paola:  Then, is part of that trying to figure out the root problem? Like in Allergic?!, you talked about how some people have a lot of mucus all the time and then they also have a cough or something. Then as you’re talking to them, you realize, “Oh, this is happening because you’re drinking milk.” Does it help getting to the root problem and prioritizing that?

Joette:  It helps when you go at it from that point of view. What could be causing this? We don’t want to know the entire mechanism. We don’t need to know that the person doesn’t have the enzyme or was deficient in that enzyme in their family tree that kept them from being able to digest and can’t release the toxins, et cetera. No, no, no, way too far.

If it’s milk that causes the arthritis, if it’s milk ingestion that’s causing the bloating, that’s good enough. That’s plenty. That’s very good information. If it turns out that it’s more than milk and when it turns out that swell, it’s every time I have pizza. Well, pizza is more than dairy. It’s got more than cheese. It’s got red sauce. It’s got red. It’s got wheat. If you’re buying it from a store, it’s got MSG. So you have to think of that too or those kinds of anti-nutrients of sorts. But let’s say it’s homemade pizza. Every time the person has homemade pizza, this is what happens. They find that well I just won’t eat cheese on it next time. I’ll just have red sauce and some homemade pepperoni or something. I know it’s kind of depressing.

Paola:  I know.

Joette:  Well, actually my grandparents were Sicilian. My grandmother is used to make white pizza. It was pizza without red sauce and without cheese. You would just put spices and herbs and anchovy and you kind of stick it into the dough and let it bake like that. So it was a completely different kind of a pizza but it was pretty common in Sicily, I guess back in the turn of the last century.

Anyway, once you find out that wow, I can have pizza as long as I don’t have the cheese with it. Okay, so that might mean that you’re okay with wheat. Some people go and have the testing done and they find out that it’s wheat. But I have to tell you, I don’t really trust the test so much for foods that people might be allergic to or sensitive to. I really like real, live, life experiences that help us determine this. Sometimes we don’t have enough information. Sometimes it’s too complex or sometimes it shows up and other times it doesn’t but I think it’s more reliable than having tests done.

Paola:  When I say looking at the root of it, you don’t want to go as far as like you have too many heavy metals or you don’t methylate your B vitamins. We want verifiable root of the problem that is actually causing this. So when you have milk then it causes your joints to hurt, verified.

Joette:  That’s right.

Paola:  But how do we know that if you obviously started taking methylated B vitamins that that’s going to make the issues go away. That often isn’t verifiable. You want to know this -.

Joette:  Well, the heavy metal thing is not always verifiable too. I get all the people who come to me and say, “I was told I have heavy metals. Now, that I’ve been working on it for, I don’t’ know, eight years doing chelation and the supplements, and enemas, and sweating, and saunas. I’ve done everything I was told to do. My heavy metals don’t show so high and yet, I’m still sick. So theoretically, it was wrong.

Paola:  Yes, I went through that with candida. I did the candida diet for over a year. I did all the supplements. I did everything perfectly. Then in the end, I still was sick with my chronic stuff. I thought, “Okay, that’s it. Candida can’t be the issue. I need to stop chasing these rabbit holes.” So, yes.

Joette:  I’m not saying it’s always wrong but I get the people for whom it is often wrong. It was a theory that was a good guess as to why this is happening. It really matters not why. The point is it’s happening. When you drink milk, you get bloating.

Paola:  So I remember when I saw a lot of naturopaths. It was kind of a gamble. They’d say well let’s see if we clean you out for parasites if your autoimmune thing is going to go away. Then I didn’t have parasites, so you know what I mean? So they try and find something wrong but yes, in the end nothing helped. Even though maybe I have these issues, maybe it wasn’t necessarily uprooting the issue and we’re just guessing. So with this, when we’re trying to look at the root as we edit down a case, we try and find something that’s verifiable. We know that if you could get over your milk intolerance or your gluten intolerance, these symptoms would go away. So that’s as far as we go for the root of the problem.

Homeopathy transcends other methods of medicine

Joette:  It can’t be overstated enough and the message is that homeopathy transcends the other methods of medicine. I’m not saying they don’t have value. Please don’t get me wrong. Modern medicine absolutely has value, the diagnostics in modern medicine. We’ve talked about this before. Surgery can be a lifesaver in many situations. Naturopathy can be very useful. But I have to tell you homeopathy transcends it. Homeopathy goes 230 years ago. Right around the time the microscope was invented, so was homeopathy discovered by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann. It was before we thought, “Hmm, parasites,” although perhaps they thought of parasites. I’m sure they knew there were parasites then but not microorganisms that were so minute. Many of them probably didn’t even imagine that there were parasites that were so small, they were unseen by the naked eye or that there were heavy metals, et cetera. They simply used symptoms. Symptoms, and I can’t stress this enough, never lie. Symptoms don’t lie. Symptoms are a representation of what’s going on. I can’t eat milk. It causes bloating. I can’t eat grains. It causes arthritis. Hello, there it is. There’s the entire case.

Paola:  That’s the language of homeopathy.

Joette:  Yes. It’s simple. It’s elegant. It’s uncomplicated. It’s straightforward. It’s not politically correct. It is what it is. My favorite clients/students are the people who come to me like the old time farmer or the Amish folk who say I’ve got an ache in my hip. When does it happen? Well, it seems like I’ve milked these cows and I drink it all the time but it seems like I don’t know. I’m beginning to think it’s the milk. So I stopped for a while and I found it didn’t hurt so much. End of discussion. He’s not thinking about his B vitamins being methylated or that he can’t release his toxins or that he’s inherited -. No, forget that. He doesn’t go that far. He’s not intellectualizing. He’s being honest with you. This happens and it happens when I do this. Sometimes we don’t even know when it happens. I mean, I’m giving you the extra benefit of saying, “Well, it happens when I drink milk or eat grains or something.” It might not be that at all. Someone might say, “I’ve stopped all of that. It still doesn’t make a difference.” That’s important too.

Paola:  So it’s imperative to know that if you do have a simplified root of the problem like a farmer we described like we’re saying milk intolerance then that’s good to add to your notes. But if you don’t know what is causing your arthritis, it’s okay.

Joette:  Yes, drop it. Drop it. Drop it. It’s unimportant. Dig around a little bit but if it doesn’t come up, don’t theorize, “Oh well, then it must be mercury. Oh well you still have amalgams in your teeth. It’s got to be that.” Not really, it could be a gazillion thing. It could that you had strep. It could have been the antibiotics you took. It could be the gas leak at your basement. It could be the radon in your basement. It could be the change in weather. It could be your bad marriage. I mean the list goes on and on and on.

Paola:  It could be all of the above.

Joette:  Yes, yes. Well, conventional medicine often says, “Oh, it’s stress.” Not everything is stress for crying out loud. That’s such a blanket statement. But on one hand, they’re right, yes. But which stressor is it? To figure that out is like finding a needle in a haystack. Do you know what it feels like to me, Paola? It seems like an attempt to give answers to people who are desperate for answers. I understand because I’ve been that person who’s been desperate for answers.

Paola:  It seems like both parties might feel a little desperate.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Not that whoever really wants to help and they can’t figure it out.

Joette:  That’s right. That’s right. So let’s try this out. Let’s try this theory out and see how it goes but homeopathy transcends that and that’s really my message.

Paola:  The promise is that it’s expensive to try and check this out, check that out, $100 here, $100 there. It adds up quickly. So let’s review it. It’s brainstorming, listening to the case and throwing down.

Joette:  Jotting down the case too, you’re listening and jotting of course.

Paola:  You’re listening to the case and you’re jotting down the protocols that might apply.

Joette:  Jotting down the case, too. You want to write that down what the person is saying because I can guarantee, you won’t remember in eight weeks.

Paola:  Even sometimes, verbatim is really helpful.

Joette:  Absolutely, as per the person’s words.

Paola:  I know you like to put plus, plus, plus when something’s really, really bad or the greater sign is better from, the less than sign is worse from, yes exactly. So then, what’s the next step to edit down a case? We’ve kind of compiled all the information. It’s on our case-taking sheet. So then what?

Assessing the case

Joette:  Now, you’re assessing, like we just said. We’re looking at what is the impediment to this person’s life. They can’t ever eat out. They can’t ever go to someone else’s house. They can’t eat wheat and dairy because they have this terrible arthritis and bloating. Those two protocols are important then, the arthritic one and the gastrointestinal one. Now, let’s say the person is up all night, can’t sleep because of this bloating or because they’re thinking about the bloating or they’re worried the next day now what are they going to do. They don’t have anything to eat or they have to go to an event tomorrow and they have to be forced to eat certain foods. Now, they’re up all night, worry, worry, worry. The next day, they’re totally exhausted and beat up.

That means we have to use a medicine that’s specific for inability to shut the brain off. So we’re also jotting that down. Now, if you remember or if you know my blog because I write about all of these subjects on my blog, for example, Coffea 200C, twice daily is the medicine that we often use for people whose brains can’t shut down. So that might be something we use or if it’s worry, of course Coffea does have a lot of worry and anxiety associated with the use of that medicine. But let’s say it’s someone who overthinks, overthinks. It’s just not in bed at night. It’s not that they’re stepped up. They’re just worriers and anxiety, anxiety then we might think of Ignatia. We might use Ignatia 200C. If it sounds more like Coffea than Ignatia then you put Coffea up at the top as one of the other considerations that we’re going to add to this picture.

Paola:  We could put Coffea/Ignatia?

Joette:  Yes, yes, yes, right, right. Now, when we go back and look at it, now let’s say there was also some eczema and there was itching. It’s behind their knees and it’s bothersome. Then they also have hair loss. If we know the protocol for eczema, it’s usually the Banerji Protocol is Antimonium crud with Arsenicum album. You might jot that down. They also have hair loss and that’s the Banerji Protocol for that is Ustilago 200C and so we write all that down. Now, we look at the whole thing and we go, “You know? We’ve got a lot of remedies here.”

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  We don’t want to use all of them unless it’s absolutely necessary. So, how awful is that hair loss? You start asking those kinds of questions. Are you talking about where a woman lost so much hair that the scalp is now exposed? Are we talking about someone who’s had really thick hair and it’s not so thick as it used to be but no one else would notice? Now, we start backing off and saying, “Look, it’s not a life threatening consideration.” Some of it, you’re making a decision on your own to a certain degree and you’re also conferring with the person because you want to ask her. Sometimes women say, “Oh my gosh, it’s hair loss. It’s absolutely driving me out of my mind. I’m very frightened by it. I couldn’t care less about the eczema behind my knees.” So let’s focus on the hair loss, the bloating and anxiety, food intolerances. Now we’ve got a case. Now, we’ve got three to four homeopathic medicines that are within reason to use.

Paola:  So now that you’ve taken a case, you’ve brainstormed. You’ve written down all the protocols and then you’ve decided which ones take priority, which ones are going to be the topic sentence for each paragraph.

Joette:  Yes, right.

Paola:  We’ve decided that -. I like the metaphor. I’m going to keep going with it. Now, it’s time to commit really. This is really important especially if you’re taking your own case and you’re suffering yourself, it is really discouraging when you have setbacks which you will. As you progress, there are setbacks. So you really have to commit. So tell us about that, Joette.

Joette:  About commitment?

Paola:  How long does it take a remedy to act?

How long before a remedy acts

Joette:  Oh I see. I see what, okay. Now, you start. You start with the medicines. When it’s a chronic condition and that’s what we’re talking about here, you want to give it at least six weeks if possible. I even like eight weeks because this is chronic, remember. This person didn’t just suddenly get bloating, hair loss, eczema, food intolerances last Thursday like you would perhaps with a bee sting for an acute.

Paola:  It feels like it does sometimes Joette. Like one day, you’re going along and then the next day, your bladder is really hurting or your joints start hurting. It kind of creeps up on you and it does feel like it hits overnight. But we have to remember that it didn’t.

Joette:  Well, if it didn’t, it didn’t. But if it did, it did. We don’t want to put words into people’s mouth. You know what I mean? We don’t want to make an assumption. There is the line that I draw on the sand between homeopathy and other medical modalities. I want reproducible results. I want this to be scientific. In other words, I want this to be very clear. Don’t make assumptions. If it’s not there in the history, don’t assume that it was. If it only came a month ago, it only came a month ago. Let’s not make the assumption that well, it had to be from your parents. Oh really, did it? No. Let’s see where it started. We want to be honest upfront and very simplified. I don’t like theory. I like numbers, science, reproducible clarification because otherwise, it becomes for lack of a better word, crunchy.

Paola:  Crunchy?

Joette:  Yes and we don’t want. This is not about I get the feeling that perhaps -. No, no, no. It’s either this or it’s that. This is not intuition. I could go off on a whole tangent on that. You know that I’ve talked about this many times before. This has nothing to do with intuition, absolutely nothing. If you’re good at homeopathy, it’s not because you have intuition. It’s because you have experience because this is all science. I probably should not get started on that because it gets me into – teasy.

Paola:  I guess, why, why is intuition so bad? Because you want to really look at the person’s case and not impose your own prejudices into it?

Joette:  Well, that’s a big part of it, number one. Number two, it borders on that fuzzy area where people think that homeopathy is mind, body, spirit.

Paola:  Oh, like new age type medicine.

Joette:  This is not new age. This is not spiritual. This is medicine. It’s science. When I say reproducible, I mean when I teach this class and then these people who are in my class teach their children or their constituency, whoever that might be or their patients and their clients and their practices, I want it to be five people down the line are coming up with the same answers for bloating and food intolerances and eczema and hair loss and sleeplessness as what I taught. Not because I know all but because no one said, “Gee, I have the feeling that perhaps, it’s because of this, this, or that so I’m going to throw this medicine in there. No, no, no, no, no.

Paola:  It almost sounds like a palm reader or something like that.

Joette:  Yes, yes. I mean there’s nothing wrong with intuition but not when it comes to science and medicine. I’m sorry. It just doesn’t. When a lot of times people say, “Well the reason you know this is because you have good intuition,” I say, “No, I don’t.” I mean I might have intuition about my children, about life in general but not when it comes to my students, clients, homeopathy. No, I’m using hard, cold, evidence-based facts that I have learned and studied that are reproducible for the last 200 and some years.

Paola:  So then going back to the original topic.

Joette:  What were we talking about?

Paola:  It was how long does it take a remedy to act.

Joette:  Okay. So because it’s a chronic condition, let’s make the assumption. We’ll go with both scenarios. Let’s make the assumption that it’s new and that you’ve just gotten this. Suddenly, you’ve got eczema and sleeplessness and joint pain, et cetera. You might look at this as an acute because it just started. I’m assuming though with arthritis and eczema, and hair loss, those are generally not acute conditions. They’re more often chronic. But if you use these medicines that are specific for these conditions, it will likely finish up in very short order, say within weeks, sometimes even a few days in certain circumstances, weeks, months, and very short order.

Now, let’s say if it’s a long time condition. This food intolerance has been going on since this person was six years old and now they’re in their 40s. The hair loss is happening in the last three or four years. There’s eczema that’s come and gone through the years. There’s bloating and distention and gas and all of that that comes and goes. That’s chronic. So how long does it take to complete this? You want to see a shift, not necessarily completion but a shift within two months, eight weeks. We’ve talked about this in these podcasts in the past. We want to see those three magic markers being met. We want to see less intensity to the symptoms, lasting for a shorter period of time, and a larger space between each time they present within that two month period of time.

Now, we don’t want an update in a week. No, no, no. That’s too soon. It’s like walking on a painted floor, too soon. You got to allow that pain to cure before you can start walking at it. You might get away with it but it could end up with tacky foot marks, prints all over the floor. You want to wait for it to completely cure over a period of two months. Now, the information is useful because now we can see over a period of two full, almost two full months. For women, that’s particularly valuable because we want that 28-day period to pass at least once because of menses.

Paola:  That’s right. Yes, because hormones influence so much. It’s not that you’ll be completely cured in the two months.

Joette:  We want to see a shift.

Paola:  Yes, now you have enough information to determine if there has been a shift.

Joette:  Yes and so in what area? Oh my hair has stopped falling. So that was an important consideration last time. My hair stopped falling. I don’t see it growing back yet but it has stopped falling. Now, if the hair was not very thin to start with, it was simply just falling but it was freaking her out then we can stop Ustilago and  instead concentrate on other areas that are perhaps more important. If however, the hair had gotten very thin, we want Ustilago to thicken it up and not just stop its fall then we would stay with it. But now we have an indication that Ustilago is absolutely correct.

Paola:  But Ustilago is really for hair loss and not just wanting to thicken someone’s hair.

Joette:  It’s for thickening hair when there’s been hair loss. So in other words, there has to be a pathology first.

Paola:  Right. Not just I’ve always had thin hair and now I want thick.

Joette:  Yes, I’d like it to be thick.

Paola:  I think the problem you probably see and I experienced this when I was getting better from a lot of my chronic stuff is in those six weeks, you can get discouraged and you want to jump around and try a different route.

Joette:  I’m so glad you brought that up.

Paola:  Try a different modality. I’m going to start doing, I don’t know, like more herbs or more vitamins or more supplements on top of it. So what’s the problem with that?

Joette:  Well, I don’t have a problem with herbs. I think herbs are great. I would discourage someone from starting herbs while we’re waiting to find out how the homeopathics have acted because we don’t want any interference good or bad. Of course, we want the person to get well. No doubt about it. But at the end of the mark, at that two-month mark, if the person has improved and they started adding herbs, newly added herbs say at week 2 along with the homeopathics, now at the end of the eight weeks, what did it. Was it the herbs that were added in? Was it the supplements? Was it the new yoga class? Was it et cetera, et cetera? We want to know what did it so that we know what to do because if we don’t, we don’t have a pathway. We don’t know where to go.

Paola:  I tell people all the time. The reason you’re here with homeopathy is probably because nothing else has worked.

Joette:  Yes, we’re always the last resort, unfortunately.

Paola:  We are. It’s so true. I mean, one gal came by last week. Her daughter had strep throat and it had gone five days, five days of strep throat. You don’t want strep throat for five days. She was pretty sick. She’s like, “We’ve tried everything else.” I’m like, “I know. You didn’t even have to tell me that because you’re here. If you’re here, it means that you did try everything else because everyone goes to homeopathy last.” If you’re finally here, give it a chance. I tell people all the time. Yes, if you feel like you like putting coconut oil on your eczema or whatever it is, I don’t think that changes too much the pathology. But if you’re going to do something deeper that you think might help, you’ve got to give homeopathy a chance because the homeopathy will cure this too well.

Joette:  To be honest, it’s true for any modality. If you’ve been using supplements and you want to try an herb, to try the herb on top of the supplements, you have a baseline established so you can probably figure that out. But if you start supplements and herbs at the same time, which one is acting? How do you know?

Paola:  The other problem too is and I’ve done this one. This is a little confession was after a miscarriage, I was having so many hormonal fluctuations. I was desperate to get them under control. So I started taking this herbal tincture to prevent just that. I was taking it as directed but I totally overdosed on it, totally. It caused a worsening of symptoms. So then, I was thinking that the homeopathy wasn’t working.

Joette:  Right. You don’t know where you’re going with this.

Paola:  Right. So then when I stopped this herb, everything calmed down. I was like, “Oh shoot. I was messing it up. I was making it worse.”

Joette:  One modality at a time unless you’ve been using it all along. Now, what I mean by that is if you have a chiropractor and I love chiropractic, so please understand that I hold them in very high regard. If you have a chiropractor you’ve been seeing for a year and you see him or her once a week and you’re going to start homeopathy, stay with that chiropractor. Stay with that modality because that’s your baseline. You know what that’s done for you so far. The same thing with herbs; if you’ve been staying, stay with those herbs by all means or essential oils or whatever else you may be using. But don’t add a new modality in at the same time you’re starting with homeopathy, if you can, if you can.

Paola:  Right. Because you know what it feels like right now as is with all that you’re doing, with your diet, with everything. Just keep it all the same and then [0:34:34]. Yes, very good. So I have talked to people, Joette, who have a lot. Some people don’t have one chronic illness. They’ve hit the jackpot. They have it all. They have diabetes. They have lots and lots and lots of things. Then I ask them. So what is worse to you? They say to me, “All of it, all of it is the worst.” And you’re like, “Oh shoot.”

Figuring out the conditions

Joette:  Well, you have to pick it apart. You have to pick it apart and say, “Okay, so how’s your energy? Oh my gosh, the fatigue is horrible. It’s hard. I can barely get up in the morning. I’ve got three kids. I can’t be with them. I can’t help them. It’s awful. So you have to put an underline under that. You got to make sure that that’s noticeable, that that’s remarkable, I mean.

Paola:  So go through each condition that they’ve even narrated and based on how they share -.

Joette:  Then you go back and ask them because really, remember, this is their case not yours. This is their case. When it’s all said and done, you go back and say, “Okay, let’s try to boil it down to four main conditions.” More often than not, you can boil it down.

Paola:  You can figure it out.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Should we prioritize life threatening conditions?

Joette:  Oh definitely, holy cow, yes.

Paola:  Diabetes and then I guess it’s obvious.

Joette:  Well, not necessarily. No, now that you say that because if they’re on insulin, you’re not going to try to get them off of insulin. I’m not saying that it can’t be done homeopathically because I’ve seen it done or at least starting to minimize some of the insulin. I’ve seen it many times in India. But they’ve got a solution for that. They’re taking insulin. Leave that alone. Leave that alone so that’s been satisfied with conventional medicine. Now, let’s say they’re having insomnia and no matter how many drugs they take, it doesn’t help. That’s pretty important if the insomnia is horrible and it’s making them crazy. Serious insomnia can be life changing. It could really ruin a person’s life.

Paola:  That’s awful. Alright, what about thyroid then? I feel like thyroid is -.

Joette:  Now, let’s say they’re taking a [0:36:50 Nature-throid], something like that. They’re not talking Synthroid. You still have the hair loss, the bloating. They’re worse from milk and wheat and anxiety and insomnia and eczema and they’re taking Nature-throid, Nature-throid is not an answer. It’s a temporary solution is the way I see it. But it’s certainly better than Synthroid. Synthroid has side effects. I don’t see side effects with Nature-throid, at least not that I’m aware of. So they’ve got a solution for that. So you can eliminate some of these that you have to work on immediately. Go after those areas that conventional medicine and naturopathy have not helped. Make those the priority.

Then eventually, as you work with this person through the months and even over many months, even into a year. Now the eczema is gone. The hair has been restored. The bloating is not an issue unless they really overdo it. The anxiety is only occasional. The insomnia only happens once a month before the period. Now, let’s go after that thyroid. Now, let’s try to help work with the thyroid condition. Beautiful, that’s the way we shave away the aspects of the case that are the most trying all the way down to the hierarchy of discomforts and conditions.

Paola:  But what if you feel like if you treat the thyroid, all of those issues would have resolved, the insomnia, -?

Joette:  Well, you have to ask that. A lot of times, people will report that the Nature-throid has been miraculous. I mean, I’m not fatigued or in this particular case, we’re not using that example. But sometimes people report that their fatigue is gone, the hair loss doesn’t occur any longer, the skin is no longer dry. They’re not overweight. The Nature-throid has really fit the bill. So to go after it seems a little bit superfluous. Now, on the other hand if they’re taking the Nature-throid and those conditions nonetheless still exist even though they’ve been on it for six months, now it makes sense to go after that homeopathically.

Paola:  What if the person is just, “Fine, I get it. Nature Thyroid isn’t that bad for you.

Joette:  Right, it’s a supplement.

Paola:  What if you just want to be off of it? What if you just don’t want to have -?

Joette:  Oh sure, absolutely. I know a lot of people don’t want to take that. They want it corrected. I don’t want to say it’s the promise of homeopathy but it is often doable with homeopathy and so why not. But if there are other issues that are more sobering than the thyroid condition in general that’s being addressed by the Nature-throid then let’s put that aside for a while and work on what’s most sobering.

Paola:  So let me review here. Basically, if you have a condition that’s life threatening that needs to be addressed, you just prioritize that right away. But if it’s being managed safely like with Nature Thyroid or even like the insulin example under control. Look at the other stuff that you can deal with for now. But if the Band-Aid you’re using like the Nature Thyroid or the insulin or whatever is not working and it has a lot of pitfalls that are affecting you then maybe you do want to go in that direction. So I was just trying to organize.

Joette:  I also don’t want to give folks the idea that we’re going to try to cure life-threatening diseases here. We are working with allergic conditions here in this particular course and in other areas as well. That’s something for a true expert to go after. Not that you can’t. I’ve had many students come to me and tell me that their child was going into anaphylaxis from a bee sting. They’ve used the homeopathic even though they have their EpiPen right there, right at the ready. I always tell people. Don’t be foolish. You get that. You make sure you’ve got an EpiPen if you’ve got a child who’s got this condition. But they were able to and felt confident enough to be able to utilize the homeopathic medicine instead and indeed that was life threatening. But that’s an acute sitting on top of a chronic by the way. Parenthetically, let me add that in so that there’s some representation of that here.

Paola:  So what you’re saying is -.

Joette:  Be careful. Don’t think you’re going to be curing cancer in this course.

Paola:  Right, exactly. You don’t even really address diabetes in -.

Joette:  Right, that’s right.

Paola:  I was just giving that as an example. Let’s review here. When we talk about editing down a case, we’re talking about writing down the person’s words and how they’re expressing the illness. At the same time, you’re making a list of the protocols that may apply.

The importance of note taking to determine one’s improvement

Joette:  Let me just interject just for a second, Paola. Because the reason you’re writing down the words as the person is saying them is because in eight weeks, when you ask that person how they’re doing and they say, “Oh, I don’t know that I’m that much better.” You say, “Okay, let’s go back.” You go back to the notes and you say, “So how about that insomnia? How is that going? How is your sleep these days?

Paola:  Oh, ruining your life.

Joette:  Right, right, right. You don’t give them the words yet. You ask them to tell you. Just tell me how the sleep is now. How’s your sleep these days? “Oh sleep, yes, it’s been okay. Once in a while, I stay awake and it’s bothersome but it’s not a problem.” Any anxiety around that one? “No, no, really the anxiety is okay.” So now, even though they have declared that they are not improved, you read back to them precisely what they said. Oh my gosh, this anxiety and insomnia are going to drive me out of my mind. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. Now, they recognize that there’s been a shift. It’s not the people are stupid. It’s just human nature to not remember how serious or how horrible or how sobering those symptoms were two months earlier because they have no symptoms to remind them of it. So that is why we use their words because you’re not interpreting for them. She said it’s not good. When what she really said was holy cow, the sleep and anxiety is going to drive me nuts or lack of sleep. That’s important.

Paola:  Right. Because so much can be lost in how you interpreted what she said.

Joette:  Exactly, exactly. Your words don’t matter. It’s the person’s words that matter.

Paola:  Right. So then once you’ve written down all the possible protocols, you’re going to pick apart like you said what is the most important. And you go through and try and understand what is most affecting this person’s life that is impeding their ability to be a successful human basically, right?

Joette:  Right.

Paola:  Then, you narrow down these protocols. Then once you’ve selected the protocols, three or four, you are going to commit to that for a minimum of six weeks, preferably eight. Especially for women, they need to go through a whole cycle if possible, if they’re having a cycle. By sticking to that, we are able to measure improvement. Then when we go to measure improvement, we look back at the original notes and specifically at their words. You try not to feed it to them.

Joette:  Just ask them. So how are you sleeping these days?

Paola:  Let them present it back to you again, maybe just prod them. How’s the sleep and then do the protocols. Let’s just try like one more quick case here. Let’s say there is a little girl who complains about a tummy ache every time she drinks milk. She has eczema and bloating. Those are the three main issues.

Joette:  How about temper tantrums? Let’s throw that in because that’s really common with kids who have allergies, food intolerances.

Paola:  So then, you start jotting down possible -.

Joette:  Yes. Now, it’s a little girl so you don’t have as many complaints generally.

Paola:  That’s nice, why?

Joette:  Well, because they haven’t gathered through the years. You know what I mean? She doesn’t have hormonal problems. She didn’t take the pill for five years. She didn’t have miscarriage. She didn’t have all of that. She didn’t have all those life experiences or her mortgage. You know what I mean? Generally speaking in the western world, little girls have nice lives.

Paola:  Right, right. So then, as you take that case and you start jotting down possible protocols, we’ve thought for the milk problem, we think of Aethusa. For the bloating, we think of possibly LycoArs or just Lycopodium.

Joette:  Yes, ma’am. Yes, you got it.

Paola:  For the eczema, Antimonium crud mixed with Arsenicum.

Joette:  Arsenicum if it’s itchy, yes. These are all Banerji Protocols, beautiful, beautiful Banerji Protocols.

Paola:  Then for the temper tantrums, we think of Stramonium but that is one, two, three, four protocols. That’s not too many.

Joette:  No, it’s not. It’s gorgeous. It’s gorgeous. Now, let’s say this little girl gets bronchitis frequently. She’s always getting colds. She’s always getting sick. She’s getting bronchitis. It’s not a chronic condition but it happens frequently. Every winter, she gets three, four colds and it turns into bronchitis. Now, what we want to look at is the fact that she gets colds too frequently. We can also add in, particularly because she’s a child, we can add in Calc carb 200C for example, every other day or even 30, once a day for a child. Now, we’re dealing with the immunity and because she’s growing, we like Calc carb.

But when the bronchitis presents or the colds present, you might want something to use at that moment. So what do you do when she gets sick? Well, you might want to add an SOS, so to speak to save our ship. What do we do on top of that so that she’s got all of these baseline medicines? Now, we need something for as it occurs. Now, we might look at for example Aconitum and Bryonia that are really great medicines. That’s also a Banerji Protocol for when a cold or a cough comes on especially in the beginning. If you use that every six hours, sometimes every three hours if it’s severe enough, you can abort a cold or a forthcoming bronchitis  or whatever cough that’s coming on. So you might put that in the case but it’s only an SOS. She’s only going to use that should the bronchitis present. 

Now with all of these other medicines working to uproot the food intolerances and the allergic state and the immunity condition, she may not even get bronchitis this winter especially if you’re starting in spring. She’s got several months before it comes along. So she may not even need it or if she does need it, she may not get as sick. That’s the goal is to get her to the point where her immune system is so built and so corrected through all these protocols that even the acutes will not be needed as often.

Paola:  So it’s that Calc carb that you’ve introduced, that fifth protocol especially if she started in the spring and bronchitis doesn’t come until the winter. That might be able to make it [0:48:20] so that she’s going to be okay.

Joette:  Yes. It’s not a supplement. I’m going to remind you again. Everyone thinks oh well we’re supplement. No, no, no, no. We’re supporting. No, no, no, no, no. We’re correcting the fact that this even presents. This child should not get sick that often. Children are supposed to get sick. They’re supposed to get colds and flus and fever once in a while and an occasional ear infection and an occasional chicken pox. That’s all normal within the range of normal in the western world but not every month, maybe once in the winter. That’s pretty much the way it should present or once in the spring with chicken pox. But if it’s happening all the time, we want to correct that. That’s where not only will the whole picture that we’re doing correct it but particularly with Calc carb.

Paola:  And also, they’re supposed to be getting better within about a week, right, generally speaking?

Joette:  You mean if they get the cold? If they get cold then she should be better within a couple of days. She should see at least some improvement within a couple of days even a day, sometimes within a couple of hours.

Paola:  Wow, okay. And Calc carb because I’ve heard people get sick often and some people, they get sick but they’re sick for a long time. Is that something that Calc carb, if they’re that type of person who when they get sick, they’re really sick?

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  So for a child, it’s Calc carb 30, twice a day but if this is in an adult, it would have been 200.

Joette:  I would do it once, perhaps once a day, yes. For an adult or even a child, 200 every other day. There are two different ways to use it, again a Banerji Protocol.

Paola:  Right. So 200, every other day, Calc carb.

Joette:  Or 30, once a day for a child. I like that often. I often use that for a child but it depends.

Paola:  Right. Very good.

Joette:  We just built a whole case. We built two cases, the mother and the daughter so far.

Paola:  Very good.

Joette:  Yes, yes. So where do we go from here, that’s the question. What do we do now that we’re at the eighth week? We see that there’s improvement. There’s the bloating is almost gone. It only shows up if the child has two and three glasses of milk or maybe we’re not that lucky or that person. Excuse me. We’re not at the child. We’re talking about the adult again.

Now, let’s say the person has stayed away from this milk and wheat for years. We’re still going to use these concepts because they can’t have it. In spite of staying away from it, they still can’t have it. So now, they still have some of the symptoms. They still get some bloating. They still get some eczema. They still have some anxiety, et cetera. In two months, at the end of two months, we want to see some of that softened a bit like we said with the mitigation and the three magic markers. So once there is some improvement, generally we back off of the medicines. If the condition is gone, if the eczema is gone, there’s no reason to continue with those medicines. In fact, you should not.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  Remember this is not like supplements where you’re going to take them for the rest of your life. This is all about correcting and saying goodbye. Now, it could come back. That eczema could come back. No doubt about it. It could come back in six months. What do you then? You don’t say, “Oh no. My body’s falling apart again.” No, it means that you need to go back to the protocol for the eczema. It just means you’re not done.

Paola:  You’re pulsing it basically, pulsing it if needed.

Joette:  Yes, yes. You’re using as needed at that point. The same thing can be for the bloating. If the bloating is gone then you stop the medicine, if the bloating is only partially gone then you continue. I mean it’s just like anything. It only makes perfect sense.

Paola:  You don’t take an Advil until you need it.

Joette:  Right, exactly.

Paola:  Very good. I guess the fear here, Joette is that if you don’t know how to take a case properly and you don’t take the notes properly and you don’t select, brainstorm through the protocols and then prioritize the protocols and then if you don’t give it enough time for the remedies to act, the problem is in the end, you might accuse homeopathy of not working when it’s actually just the user.

Joette:  It’s pilot error.

Paola:  Yes, pilot error, exactly.

Joette:  Homeopathy works, end of discussion. Homeopathy works. If it’s not acting, it’s very likely, you’ve chosen the wrong medicines or you’ve misinterpreted what you’re treating or you haven’t used them in the right potencies. You haven’t used them in the right frequencies. You haven’t waited long enough. You’ve misinterpreted. That’s all about the pilot.

Paola:  You don’t want to blame the airplane or in this case homeopathy when it was running.

Joette:  It’s not the vehicle. It’s often pilot error that gets into the crash. It’s not the plane’s fault.

Paola:  Right, that’s true.

Joette:  So the more you learn, the better off you are.

Paola:  Right. I think, I really think it comes down to just getting yourself some practice and allowing yourself to have more kids or something so you can practice.

Joette:  Right. I’ve got a quote.

Paola:  Oh, let’s hear it.

Joette:  Yes, it is about practice. Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Paola:  Absolutely.

Joette:  Knowledge or acquisition of knowledge is all about repetition, over and over. The more children you have, the more livestock you have, the more friends you have, the more patients you have, the more clients you have, the faster you will learn this. It’s like anything else. It’s all about numbers.

Paola:  It is very true.

Joette:  Today, I was putting together some frames and some images for my family for their Christmas gifts. I was putting together, I think there were nine frames. I had to take them out of the paper. Pull out the backings and then put the little image in and then tape it to the matting and then lift off the little pieces. The first one, I got it upside down. I wasn’t sure how to do it and where to put the tape and everything. The second one, I learned from the first one so I got a little bit better at it. By the time I got to the fourth or fifth one, it was bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. It was like I had a factory going. I could do it so fast.

Paola:  An assembly line.

Joette:  It was. It was an assembly line but it took the repetition of about two to three good tries and figuring out which is the most expedient way to do this. I learned how to do it. That’s the same thing with homeopathy. Once you get this and once you get going and start using and using and using and using and using and using, that’s how you learn it.

Paola:  Right. That’s exactly right. So listen to this podcast more than once I think and be very clear on the steps of taking a case and how to execute and do it properly. I know I’ve learned a lot again. Some things I already knew but it’s really important to be reminded of those. Thanks, Joette.

Joette:  You’re very welcome. What we just need to remember to do is just get all these strands. Braid them together to form the perfect braid.

Paola:  Yes, I love it.

Joette:  That’s it.

Paola:  Awesome. Okay, until next time.

Joette:  Thanks, Paola.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

In this podcast, we cover:

Paola: It’s podcast number 21 at joettecalabrese.com, and here’s some upcoming highlights!

Joette: There’s a lot you can take care of on your own with your family. You know, yes, cancer; yes, AIDS; yes, rheumatoid arthritis but you have to know your stuff. You can’t go say, “Oh, I can treat this” and just go by a protocol. You have to be sure you know what it is you’re treating. There does come a point when you may need more expert opinion. There are times when the people who do not know enough homeopathy that they really do need to go to someone and get perhaps conventional care, just in case. It’s nice to have that second opinion.

Paola: What I like about this podcast is that it gives you another layer of self-empowerment. Those of you who have been reading Joettes blog for a while have come to know the Banerji Protocols which greatly simplify homeopathy. Basically if you have a diagnosis or a clear pathology, you meet it with a protocol to uproot that disease, but it’s important to remember that just because you have a protocol, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the skill or the tools that you need to progress through that illness.

So in this podcast, Joette gives us four key components to help us determine whether or not we are able to complete the healing at home ourselves, or if we should seek out conventional medical advice.

Joette also gives us some great suggestions on how to find a medical doctor, should you need one. So if you’re ever in a situation where you do want that conventional medical advice, how do you go about selecting the right doctor for you.

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

Alright, here we go.

Hi Joette, I’m excited to be talking with you again.

Joette: Hi Paola. I love this too.

Paola: I love this podcast. It really is like talking to my wise girlfriend.

Joette: Friends, yup.

Paola: Exactly. So today’s subject that we’re going to talk about is discernment and we’ll go into what we mean by that and also selecting a doctor, an allopathic traditional doctor, right?

Joette: Yes, yes.

Paola: So let’s get started. Tell us. What do we mean by discernment? What does that mean?

What is Discernment?

Joette: I think what you and I have tried to, what we want to convey today because you and I have talked about this in the past is that we want people to understand that there’s a lot you can take care of on your own with your family. You can take care of your children, yourself. You can take care of yourself, your husband, your pets, your livestock, et cetera. But there does come a point when you may need more expert opinions and even care. I always talk about how important it is to be self-empowered but let’s not be so foolish either. We have to know what we’re capable of. When we start learning homeopathy, it is a heady experience when you start curing your family. There’s no doubt about it.

Paola: What do you mean heavy like stressful?

Joette: No, heady, heady.

Paola: Heady.

Joette: Heady experience. Well, to speak in the 70s terms, it’s a rush. It’s a high. It’s a very exciting experience to be able to cure someone. No doubt about it. But we also have to know our limitations. So homeopathy has the ability to cure all diseases. This is an actual quote that Dr. Prasanta Banerji said to me once. He said, “Homeopathy can cure all diseases but it can’t cure all people. So it means that it can. Yes, cancer; yes AIDS; yes, rheumatoid arthritis but not all people with those conditions will be relieved of them completely. So it means that it also depends on the person. There are a lot of factors involved here.

I wish I could say that this medicine is linear and is super simple and it is. We have gotten a very complex medical paradigm, homeopathy and distilled it. By we, I mean the Banerjis have done this. I have some protocols of my own as well as most homeopaths have been in practice for any period of time. But we’ve distilled it down to some real simple protocols. But you have to be sure you know what it is you’re treating.

If you’ve got a urinary tract infection and we’re going to talk about that, if you’ve got a urinary tract infection and you’ve got some urgency and some burning and you’ve had this before, even if you haven’t, you can go right to the remedies that are specific for that: Cantharis 30, Medorrhinum 200, that kind of thing and start using them. You should see some improvement within, some people report improvement within a couple of hours of taking the remedy; some people, not until the end of the day; and others not for a day or so. But if it feels like it’s going to the kidneys, holy cow.

Paola: That’s usually in your mid to lower back.

Joette: Right, right, right, right. Not that homeopathy can’t uproot that, it certainly can but you many not know the protocols well enough. You may not have the confidence or the ability to know how often to use them. There are times when people who do not know enough homeopathy that they really do need to go to someone and get perhaps conventional care. Now, I always talk about how I didn’t take my kids to the doctors while they were growing up. They’re all adults now. But it was also because they never got very seriously ill. There was one time though. I shouldn’t say I never took them. That’s really not 100% true because my eldest son broke his nose. Literally, I mean his nose was off to the side of his face. It was not in the center of his face.

Paola: Oh no.

Joette: It went off to the side. I actually was not home that night. My husband called me and said, “Oh my God. You should see our son.” So my husband is a professional skier and has been taking professional skiing. He teaches professional skiing and as all of our children. He knows what to do about a broken nose. You just push it back in place and there it is. I know it sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But you push it back in place. My son was able to breathe and he was all right. The pain had come down. We had given him Aconitum and Arnica and things were pretty good.

But I said, “Are you comfortable with this?” I asked him. He was about I don’t know 17 at that time. He said, “Yeah, I’m comfortable. I feel like this is okay.” Using Arnica was something that I knew enough to use in case there was hematoma that was internal bleeding. Who knows what could happen? The nose is awfully close to the brain for goodness sakes. Pituitary gland is right behind there. I said, “Do you want to see someone?” He said, “Well, not really mom. I trust that you and dad know.” But then we said just in case.

So we went to an emergency room that’s not too far from us. Now, we live in Farm Country. So we went to this particular one where they see a lot of farm accidents. We walked in and I said to the nurse, “This is not serious. I think he’s fine but it would be really nice if we could just have someone take a quick look.” The doctor looked and said, Yeah. It’s fine.” Nothing was done. It was just a confirmation that yes, indeed, there wasn’t anything more that we needed to do. I mean, we looked and I looked. I looked up in there with a flashlight. My husband looked. He looked fine. But nonetheless, just in case, we did use another opinion. It’s nice to have that second opinion.

Paola: One of the things that I tell people. If you go into the hospital or the ER or the doctor’s office with a situation, you do need to steel yourself to some degree because obviously a broken nose wasn’t an emergency. But I was talking to my girlfriend in the Moms with Moxie podcast that her son had a febrile seizure. She’s like, I don’t know. It was like a coordinated effort. One nurse and another nurse, and one doctor and another doctor were all trying to push Tylenol on her son. She said, “I’m sorry but he doesn’t need Tylenol. She’s a tough cookie.” But if you go in there kind of loosey-goosey and you don’t steel yourself and bolden yourself to know, I want to understand what he needs and what he doesn’t need and she didn’t feel like he needed Tylenol because she felt like the fever was actually trying to kill off an infection.

Joette: She had confidence. The reason she had confidence is because she had been doing her reading. You have to read. You have to educate yourself. You have to know your stuff. You can’t go and say, “Oh, I can treat this and just go buy a protocol.” You better know your stuff. If your family suffers from, let’s say this child suffers from febrile seizures, you better know all about febrile seizures. Better read up on them. If you give Tylenol, are there any side effects? What will Tylenol do? Are we trying to reduce the fever? Are we curing the febrile seizures? You want to know what the goal here is. Is it to treat symptoms or is it to correct the condition? There is no doubt that all of this, the discernment comes in my estimation for finding that tipping point where when it’s intelligent to make decisions on your own for your family and yourself and when it’s foolish.

Paola: Right. In her case, she had read all the books that you recommended, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn. He does talk about febrile seizures. So the first time it happens, you don’t know it’s going to happen until it happens, right. But then she already knew and had done some homework. But going back to the benefit of going to a doctor, they told her, “Well, your son had strep throat.”

Joette: Yes, good information.

Paola: Great information, very helpful information especially because he was pretty little and he probably couldn’t articulate very well.

Joette: Right, right. He’s got a strep throat. Now this mother knows what it smells like because there is sometimes an odor to strep throat. Now that she’ll recognize that. Now she’ll say, “Okay, let’s see your throat.” She looks in there and she sees the redness with the white spots or she doesn’t see redness. Sometimes it doesn’t present that way. But if she can get that information down, now she’s learned something.

Paola: Right.

Joette: Something of true value not only for this child but perhaps the subsequent children that come along and have similar situation.

Paola: Guess what? Some of my students in my study group class, because I run a little study group class, they’re telling me that you can get rapid strep test on Amazon.

Joette: Yes, it’s a beautiful thing.

Paola: It’s really cool.

Joette: There you go. Now, if your child is prone to strep throat then you get those strep tests. Find out.

Paola: Right, I did.

Joette: Absolutely.

Paola: I have my box right here. That’s what this is. It just came in the mail because you’re all going to get it at some point.

Joette: It’s very likely, sure, sure.

Paola: So going back to that discernment, are there any guidelines we should have to know okay, this is okay for me to stay at home and wait it out. Obviously the anaphylaxis, those are very obvious that we need to go to the doctor now. But sometimes these illnesses creep up on us one day. Then you just wait a little longer and you wait a little longer and then you might be doing something foolish. So do you have some guidelines?

Have The Knowledge

Joette: Well first of all, one of the things you want to do and you just mentioned it a moment ago is make sure you’re doing your reading. You want to read Dr. Mendelsohn’s book, How to Raise A Healthy Child In spite of Your Doctor. Everyone, every mother who takes any of this seriously, who wants to do this themselves needs to buy that book. It’s a dollar on Amazon. Before you even get it in the mail from Amazon, go online and find Dr. Robert Mendelsohn and watch him on YouTube. He was an amazing man. Unfortunately he passed away a couple of decades ago. He was a pediatrician and he was a stalwart in the alternative pediatric community. Of course, he was a given a lot of heck for it. But his information is like gold.

When you finish reading that book, now, you underline the areas that are the most valuable to you and your family. Go back and look at it again and again and again. Meanwhile, he was not a homeopath. He was an MD but he did not know homeopathy. Now you figure out which homeopathic medicines can be used for that particular condition. Own them, that’s number one. Oh actually, it’s number two. To be able to discern whether or not you can do this is first of all, you have to have some knowledge and that’s what I’m talking about now. Not just homeopathic knowledge, although that’s invaluable but you need some knowledge from other people who’ve stepped outside of this proverbial box. If you haven’t done that and you haven’t done any reading like that then don’t step outside of the box. Then you still do need modern medicine because often, you got to do something, not always, not always.

Before I started learning homeopathy, I knew that there was nothing wrong with a fever. I knew that it’s okay if a child gets a cold. I didn’t have to treat them. I used essential oils here and there. I used herbs and that kind of thing and a little bit of homeopathy because I was just learning it. But I also knew you could do absolutely nothing for most childhood illnesses and they would be just fine, chicken pox and all.

Paola: I always talk about my mother in law, that her, she had the ten kids. Cumulatively I swear, they have probably, between all 10 children, taken a total of like six antibiotics while they lived with her. I don’t know what it’s been since they’ve grown up. She didn’t have homeopathy. She didn’t have essential oils. She did a little bit of garlic drops for ear infections but she just waited it out and let it go. Let the fever do its thing.

Joette: But you see, a big part of what you’re talking about here is 10 kids. In the old days, women had larger families. The families were just innately larger. So the mothers had a lot of experience. But in today’s world, if a woman has one child, she freaks over that one child. It is something that I see consistently in mothers who have one child. They cannot get over the fact that their child is sick. There’s nothing wrong with a cold. There’s nothing wrong with chicken pox. Actually there’s nothing wrong with measles. I wish my kids have gotten it. There’s nothing wrong mumps. I wished my kids have gotten. Can we get very, very, very sick with those? Of course, we can. A cold could kill you but that doesn’t mean you think it is. You just make sure that the person’s getting bone stocks and drinking properly, et cetera. There are some pretty simple common sense methods here.

Paola: Right. And just waiting it out can be -.

Joette: Yes, it can be valuable in and of itself. Now, when do you wait it out? If you’ve got a kidney infection, you don’t wait it out. That is not going to go away by itself. So you need to do something about a kidney infection for example or if it feels like it’s going into the kidneys. It’s one thing to have a urinary tract infection that’s in the bladder or the ureter or the urethra but not when it starts going into the kidneys. Now, does it mean that homeopathy can treat it? Of course, it can treat it. Of course it can uproot it. But if you don’t have that information, it can’t do it for you. So, you’ll have to have the knowledge.

Paola: I have to be honest with you. My bladder has been my struggle for many years before I met you, Joette. I talked to women who will say, “Oh, I’ve never had a bladder infection before.” My joke is always, “Well, God loved you more,” because it’s terrible. I also feel like if you’re a woman and you’re listening to this and especially if you have a daughter, count on it. Someone you know, your daughter, your sister, your cousin, someone close to you will have a UTI. So brush up on that. That’s something every woman should understand as something because our urethras are shorter so we’re going to get it easier.

Joette: Yup, yup, yup, there are a lot of yes. Certainly, honeymoon cystitis, when a woman first gets married and there’s a lot of activity sexually, that is often a time when that occurs. So we have to be prepared for that.

Paola: That was when I got my first one and boy do I wish. The remedy for that is Staphysagria.

Joette: That’s right.

Paola: Gorgeous. I’m just kicking myself that you bet you, when my daughter goes off to get married, she’s going to take Staphysagria with her.

Joette: On the honeymoon.

Paola: Yes.

Joette: A whole little kit, absolutely. So that’s the first rule in my experience.

Paola: The first two rules, knowledge and remedies.

Own The Remedies

Joette: The second rule with remedies is I often get people who call up and say my child has got this, this and this with a cold or something acute. I say well, I’ll tell you what the remedy is but if you don’t own it, what good is it or if you contact my office and it’s 5 o’clock on Saturday night and we close at a little bit after 5, Eastern Time and now what? The stores are closed. All day Sunday, your stores might be closed. And you’re certainly not going to get mail. Then you order it on Amazon or wherever from Boiron directly. It will be Tuesday when you get it.

Paola: I mean at least Wednesday I feel like.

Joette: Maybe even Wednesday.

Paola: Because they don’t even ship it out – they don’t prepare the package until Monday afternoon.

Joette: You’re lucky if you get it on Tuesday or Wednesday. That’s right. So you have to own a kit or two or three. I tell people they should own the top 100 remedies in which the potency is mostly 30s and we sell those in the office.

Paola: That’s the red kit.

Joette: The red kit, yes. Then own a 200 potency kit. That’s a little grey kit. There are 50 remedies in that. You should own every cell salt. We sell those kits too. You don’t have to buy them from me. You just have to own these remedies. We make it easy but you really need to own them. Then if there’s a remedy that’s not in those kits and of course there will be because there are 6000 remedies and we’re only talking about 150 here or 172 or something, 62, when you total all those three kits up, if you have a remedy that you know you’ll need, you better own it.

Paola: So going back to women, you’d have to have Medorrhinum. That is a big part of the protocol for bladder infections and that’s not in those kits.

Joette: That’s right, Medorrhinum 200 absolutely. It’s a beautiful remedy. It’s very important to own.

Paola: I’ll tell you what more that’s not in those kits that people often wish they had is Sanguinaria 200 for sinuses.

Joette: Yes. Camphor 200 is not in those kits too.

Paola: Those are the three that I run into the most that aren’t there.

Joette: Yes ma’am, absolutely. We need to have those. But there are plenty more. There’s Chelidonium 6 and there’s LycoArs. We can go on and on about the remedies that I use that are Banerji Protocols or even that are not Banerji Protocols that you absolutely must own, if you have proneness for one thing or another or you think someone in your family will. Here’s the problem. Most people say, “Well, I already own a lot.” You’ll never own a lot. You’ll never own enough.

When I say there are 6000 homeopathic medicines out there. I mean it. When we had to memorize materia medica when I was studying for the exams to become a professional homeopath, we had to study, we had to memorize 300, 350, something like that homeopathic medicines. We had to know them inside and out. We had to know our medicines. To not own them would be kind of goofy because then if I needed them, I certainly knew all about them. I knew what to do but I didn’t have it to use it. So that’s kind of a non sequitur. The point is that you want to own as many as you possibly can.

Here’s the thing. When people start saying that this is expensive, I want to just smack them. It’s not expensive. They’re not expensive. When you buy a kit that has 100 remedies in it and the cost is $257, that means each bottle costs $2.57. Can you find anything anywhere, essential oils, herbs, vitamins? God forbid, we’re talking about drugs. I mean EpiPens are now what, $600 or something and they are stale dated. With homeopathy, nothing is stale dated. They may put a date on it because the FDA requires it. But to be honest, I’ve got remedies here in my office that are from 1918 and they still work. I mean the bottle has stamp on it, 1918, Belladonna 30X. I have used it and it still works. So these remedies will be passed down to your great, great grandchildren. So it’s an investment.

Paola: Speaking of the FDA, the controversial with Hyland’s Teething Tablets, Hyland’s decided to remove the teething tablets from the US. Own your remedies.

Joette: Yeah, you better own them. That’s right.

Paola: You’ll never know.

Joette: That’s right.

Paola: You’ll never know what new controversy is on the horizon. Own your remedies.

Joette: That’s right. That’s right.

Paola: So let’s say, let’s go back to the UTI example. Let’s say I’m struggling with the UTI. I have the knowledge. I have the remedies and still struggling with it. What’s the next step in discernment?

Know What You’re Looking For

Joette: What you want to know is what you’re looking for. Once you’ve taken the medicine, you got to know what it is you’re looking for. If you think that it’s going to take four days for it to correct itself and you’ve got a urinary tract infection, you’re incorrect. That’s not the way it works. You should be able to take it about every, if it’s very severe, every hour even or maybe every three hours and then watch for improvement. It’s really better generally speaking to use it every about three to four hours.

But if it’s screaming horrendous, there’s a lot of pain, a lot of urgency then you take it every hour for a couple of hours or a couple of doses and then you open it up to every three to four hours. If you don’t see a change after a few doses, I mean, we’re looking even for a little bit of a change but if you don’t see a change, you know what, you may be wrong in the remedies that you’re choosing. If that’s the case, you might indeed need to get to a hospital or to a doctor because we don’t want to take a chance with an infection of that potential magnitude. Now, if it’s a cold, that’s something else. But when we’re talking about urinary tract, we don’t want it going into the kidneys.

Paola: Let me explain why I think some people don’t even realize that. When it gets to your kidneys, your kidneys are what filter your blood. So if your kidneys are infected with E. coli or whatever it is and your blood is going through those kidneys, your blood is picking up the infection and you’re going sepsis phase all over your body. Now, I’m not trying to scare people but you do need to know what we’re talking about.

Joette: Right, right. I will tell you. My next suggestion is you get your remedy kit. If you’re not sure what to do and you’re thinking, “I wonder if I should get to an emergency room, I’m really scared,” whether it’s UTI or going to the kidneys or your child or a head injury, whatever it might be, you grab your remedies. You get into the car with your child and you get to an emergency room. Oh you should bring a little bit more than that. Bring some water, maybe some playing cards, a bag of popcorn or something and you stand. You go to the emergency room but you don’t go in necessarily. I mean if you need to, of course. I mean if it’s really, really obvious, of course you’re going to go in. But park in the parking lot of the emergency room with a blanket, a deck of cards, and hang out and see how the remedies are acting. If the remedies start to act, you can go home and if you start seeing the things are moving along. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve done that with my father who thought he was having a heart attack and then in the end, turned out that he actually was not having a heart attack.

Paola: Like terrible gas.

Joette: Meanwhile, I’m in the car with him. We’ve got a blanket over his lap. He’s got his nice, warm water that he’s drinking with say Mag phos in it in a 6X and he’s sipping it. We’re talking and we’re playing classical music so we can calm down. I’m administering the remedies. I said, “Dad, at any time, we can go in but why don’t we just sit here and hang out.” He knows that he’s only 30 paces away from that emergency. How comforting is that. Now, you’ve got the best of both worlds.

Paola: It’s true.

Joette: The beauty of this is that you might be able to turn it around, go home, and he’ll never get all the drugs or she will never get all the drugs that are automatically given regardless of what’s happening, almost. You lose control in the emergency room. Sometimes you need to do that. We’re going to concede on that. Sometimes you need to do that. But too many times, it’s fear that brings you there.

Paola: Yes.

Joette: It’s not the logic. If you can see the remedy is starting to act and you’re only 20 paces away, you got the best of both worlds.

Paola: Well, I have to say -.

Joette: Park in the parking lot of the hospital.

Paola: The worst decisions I have made about my health were when I led with fear. Fear we know, it dilutes your thinking, your logic. So that’s why it goes back to step number 1, you have to have the knowledge because if you know that knowledge really well, it kicks in when you need it. It just hits. I know what to do. So the rule number three is basically following the rules of what you should expect as far as improvement goes, the length of time.

Joette: And know those, know those rules.

Paola: And know those rules. So for an acute condition, I can’t say this enough when I teach my Sunday group classes, for an acute condition, you should see some sort of shift within three to five-ish doses.

Joette: Doses, right, yes, absolutely.

Paola: That shouldn’t be spread out every 30 minutes unless you’re having some sort of anaphylactic.

Joette: Unless it’s very severe, unless the symptoms are extremely severe.

Paola: Life threatening.

Joette: Yeah, life threatening, if they’re not very severe and you’re doing, you’re administering this on the way to the hospital folks. I am not saying that you should ignore life threatening conditions and not go to the hospital. If you feel that you can’t do this then by all means, you get to the hospital. On the way, you’re administering. Maybe your husband is driving and you’re administering.

Paola: So you need to know when improvement should be, what it should look like, and how soon to come.

Joette: Right, right exactly.

Paola: What’s the fourth guideline?

Diagnosis

Joette: The fourth guideline is diagnosis because if you don’t know what it is and it can be very useful to know what it is obviously for many reasons. I mean, if it’s hemorrhaging, you need to know it. If it’s septic, the infection has gone septic, you need to know that. So a diagnosis is very valuable not only because it tells you, “Uh-oh, I need to get to an emergency room or a doctor or something.” But it also tells you if it’s not that severe and you feel as though you can handle it, what homeopathic medicines to use.

Paola: Right, right. It goes back to that story we were talking about the Moms with Moxie interview where her son had a fever seizure. When she realized it was strep throat, she was like oh. First of all, the fever seizure (and everybody agreed) wasn’t life threatening. It was just it happened. Now, I know how to take care of whatever illness this is. It’s strep. I got it. I’m going to go home. She took care of it.

Joette: Those febrile seizures are very, very scary. There’s no doubt about it. If a parent has never witnessed one, it can freak them out. So that is something to be reckoned with but really more from a psychological point of view for the parent because by the time you get to the hospital with a child with a febrile seizure, the seizures are gone. They only last a few minutes. Then when they get there, then all that is done is they just give him his Tylenol. Really, Tylenol? It’s a seizure. Well no. But the seizure’s over with.

A febrile seizure is only – if we’re talking about normal childhood illness now, we’re not talking about head injuries that causes seizure, that may cause a seizure, or a fever of 108 which is only from a head injury, or 107 that it could go that high because fever have their own level. They can’t go any higher than generally 105, 106 even for a normal childhood illness. That’s within reason to allow that to occur without treatment, without even homeopathic treatment for that matter.

I will refer you to go online and check out what American Academy of Pediatric says about fevers. They say finally, I might add, finally -. I mean the homeopaths have known this for 230 years that a fever is curative and that you should not treat the symptom which is the fever. You should allow the fever to cook off the disease, the bacteria, or the virus, so that the child can heal. But if you’re always given that Tylenol or acetaminophen every single time a child has something like this, they’re never going to be able to learn. The body’s never going to learn how to cook off a disease. You’re constantly suppressing it and not allowing it to occur.

Paola: For her, getting the diagnosis was actually helpful. He had a fever and it helped her understand the illness more fully to finish the illness. Of course the next morning, he was perfectly fine.

Joette: Yes, yes.

Paola: This reminds me of the time my son, this is like very embarrassing. He’s not going to listen to this podcast. He’s nine. He had a pain in one of his testicles, really bad pain. It just came out of nowhere. It was so extreme. He was even having to walk weird. So, I picked a remedy for him. I actually gave him Pulsatilla. It helped. We’re in the middle of getting ready to move and over I think five days, it had improved significantly but it wasn’t totally done.

I was just getting a little leery. I called the 800 that our insurance gives for the nurse line. She says it could be testicular torsion. You need to take him to the emergency room immediately because it can cut the blood supply off to the testicle and basically become gangrene. I was kind of aware that maybe this could be a big deal so I finally just said we’re going to go in. We’re just going to do an ultrasound and let’s just look. It was right before we moved. When I moved, I wouldn’t know where to go if it got serious, where to drive to. It was nice to kind of know it’s going to be fine. And they looked. She said whatever it is, his body’s working it out. I thought it was going to be torsion but it’s not based on the symptoms

Paola: It is.

Joette: Yes.

Paola: It doesn’t hurt to know a little more.

Joette: Right, right. So that’s what I like doctors for. It’s diagnostics or nurses. They’re very good at that. They don’t always get it right but they often do. They see a lot of the same cases over and over again. So I like that diagnostic. What I don’t like are some of the treatments. So we have to be careful of that.

Paola: That’s what I was saying. Steel yourself when you get in there. Embolden yourself. Know what you’re going to be okay with and what you’re not. So going to doctors, we’re saying that we are going to want a relationship with the doctor. How? Do you have any suggestions for selecting a doctor?

Joette: Yes. Get an old one.

Paola: Al old guy.

Selecting the Right Doctor

Joette: An old guy, no one under 60. Maybe I’m being a little facetious here but you want someone who doesn’t have a mortgage anymore. You want someone who doesn’t pay tuition anymore. You want someone who’s not pressured by his financial constraints in his own life and feeling overwhelmed that he has to make a decision that is in line with what the pharmaceutical rep is saying to him every couple of days in his office. You want a guy who is willing to step outside of the box. That comes not only from not being pressured financially to make decisions that are more about his state of being than yours but you also want someone who clinically speaking has seen these cases time and time again and will after a while say, “Febrile seizures, so we give the kid a Tylenol. I don’t know what good that does. That’s what I’m told to do. I learned that in medical school.” You give a Tylenol. You give acetaminophen. Then he starts asking himself what’s the point. Why am I doing this? The child’s not in pain. The seizure’s over with. He starts asking questions because he’s seen it so many times.

But a doctor fresh out of medical school is very impressed and I can guarantee here she is with his or her education. You know why they’re impressed because they spent a darn fortune on it. So when they get out of medical school in residency and internship, they have committed themselves to doing every single thing they’ve been taught because it cost so much. Now, they’re not saying it because it cost so much. They’re saying because what are you kidding me? I just spent all these money? He’s got to be right. I mean, that’s the way we all think. It’s like telling a guy who just bought a Ferrari, “No, you know? You shouldn’t have bought a Ferrari. You should have bought a Maserati.” He’s never going to say, “Oh my gosh. You’re right. I just spent $100,000 on this car and I should have bought another one.” No, it took him a long time to get to that car. He’s not going to give it up because somebody said there’s something else out there.

Paola: It’s like they’ve chosen to become indoctrinated which is funny, indoctrinated doctors.

Joette: Right, right. It is a choice. It absolutely is a choice. Look, I’m not saying medical school has no value because anatomy, physiology, pathology, all of that is very important information for a doctor. What I don’t like that they’re learning is the stuff that they get that is pharmaceutically based. That is what their professors are doing. They are teaching them the pharmacy directly from the pharmaceutical companies. That is what makes me nervous. So they think that there is a drug for every ill. They know nothing else except they do know diagnostics, pathology, as I said. So they’re good for that but what I don’t like generally speaking are the methods that they use to treat.

Paola: Actually, my friend went to school to be a doctor. She’s about my age. What am I, early 30s? She quit medical school. She went into it for a while and she said, “Paola, they give us one semester of pharmacology. So we are not taught to understand the drugs. It’s just one semester. Beyond that, it’s just here’s the drug that we use, here’s the drug that we use directly from the pharmaceutical reps.” Absolutely and she quit because she said this is ridiculous. This isn’t medicine. This is me just being a monkey.

Joette: Right. It’s very disappointing.

Paola: It is. It is.

Joette: Very, very disappointing stuff. As I said earlier, when I had to take my test to get my degrees, we had to memorize 300 some homeopathic medicines. We had to memorize them inside and out. I had to know my medicines. I had to know what they were capable of touching as much as I could possibly memorize. I don’t know the key notes and some of the lesser conditions that they would touch. Conventional doctors, I’m going to be honest with you don’t know their medicines. How come they don’t know them? Well because my medicines haven’t changed since 100, 230 years ago. Their medicines change every two years. Why? Because they’re yanked from the market. They’re yanked out and now they’ve got another one that they have to learn.

So they don’t learn them. It’s just the drug rep. I’m sorry to be so – I don’t mean to be condescending here but it is a paradigm that I know a great deal about from many different angles. But they know what drugs to use for one condition once they’re in practice because the cute drug rep with the short skirts bearing the donuts twice a week and giving the classes to the medical staff there is telling them what it’s used for. So what’s happening is that they’re learning from the industry instead of learning from their clinical experience. That’s the wrong paradigm.

Paola: You have said that before about the pharmaceutical rep being this cute person. I would always think deep down like, “Oh, maybe Joette’s a little outdated with that because now we’re so aware of sexism and all that stuff.”

Joette: Oh garbage, absolutely. Men love young, gorgeous girls.

Paola: I’m watching a TV show. Megan Fox is like the epitome of – she’s like the prettiest girl around. I’m watching her TV show. She comes in a short skirt. She’s a pharmaceutical rep. I fell off my chair. I was like Joette’s been right this entire time.

Joette: Let me tell you how I also know. Not only do I know because I was married to a doctor in my 20s, neurosurgeon but also because when I was about 30, I had been working in real estate in Washington DC. I had moved back to my hometown. I needed a job. I had been in sales. Yes, I did ma’am, absolutely.

Paola: You were a pharmaceutical rep?

Joette: No, I didn’t get the job. Let me tell you how this works out. I applied for a job for one of the major pharmaceutical companies. They were located in my area. I applied and I was the second runner up for the position. Now, I got to tell you. In college, I was an English major. The only discernable value I got out being an English major to be honest is to know how to spell discernable. But I never took a single biology, anatomy, physiology, pathology course in my entire life at that point. I had never even touched the course. I never even took biology because it was not required. I went to a very liberal college, I might add. There were no requirements like that. So for them to even be considering me was absolutely ridiculous.

Paola: That’s your key.

Joette: Yes. I was cute. I wore short skirts. I had sales experience. I had no understanding of medicine at that time in my life whatsoever. Now, the woman who got the job because I came back for two interviews, the woman who got the job was a nurse. She should have gotten the job. I should never have been considered. In a million years, I was absolutely the wrong profile in my mind. I was laughing all the way thinking, I can’t believe this. These people actually think I can do this. And I didn’t lie.

Paola: Right, right.

Joette: I told them what background. I said I was in real estate for crying out loud.

Paola: Well you dodged the bullet, lady.

Joette: Well, I don’t know. It might have been quite the experience. But that woman deserved that job, not me. I should never have even been considered.

Paola: Right. You should never have been -.

Joette: So, I know how the system works. I also have been in business and many businesses and many industries through the years. I’m in my 60s. I’ve done it all. I’ve been there and done it. I will tell you those young svelte girls who dress stylishly in high heels sell. That’s the way it works. That’s what sells. End of discussion and if anybody wants to think differently, well you’re welcome to do so. But that’s what sells to doctors especially when they’re exhausted and they’re just about had it and she comes in with the donuts or the chicken wings.

Paola: So you want the doctor that has been through it all, and is at the end of it, and can think critically, and doesn’t care. My neighbor is actually, he’s an older gentleman just like you’ve been describing. His children are put through school, financially independent. I’m sure he doesn’t have a mortgage anymore. He is a child psychologist. Do you know what he does? One of his first lines of attacks when he’s treating someone with ADHD or something, he says we start with the placebo. I sit the parents down. I say placebo is actually a real cure. Here’s a bottle. It’s a sugar pill. Give your kid this. Let’s see if placebo acts. If it cures them, it’s a cure. It’s a real cure. Why wouldn’t I do that? It works. I forgot the number he gave me but kind of a big enough number for him to want to do it.

Joette: Now, I wondered where he learned that. That’s a smart man.

Paola: Yeah.

Joette: You know what it is? It’s more than smart. That’s a wise man. That is a wise man. That’s the kind of doctors we need. We need those with wisdom, not the kind of smarts that got him into medical school because I’ll tell you, the kind of smarts that gets you into medical school is compliancy. You have to memorize this. You have to please the professor. You get to do that in undergrad. Now you get to medical school like a compliancy study. This is what you study, you idiot. And they’re really unkind to them. They really can be pretty mean in medical school. So this is what you read, idiot. This is what you study. This is how you do it. Study this. Memorize it and spew it back to us.

So what we’re getting out, what we’re educating them to become are compliant soldiers. I believe that that is where what we’re doing is that we’re training doctors to be compliant to an industry. They are just drug reps in the end. That’s what they’re doing. Just being the job is being passed on to the doctor. Then that is the training ground especially if we’re talking about pediatricians, the training ground for parents.

Paola: You just see the pattern, no one’s questioning. The drug rep isn’t questioning. The doctor isn’t questioning. That’s our job then. Then we need to question. Someone needs to break that pattern.

Joette: I hate mediocrity. I hate mediocre thinking. I think we should all excel at what we do. I love doctors who excel. There aren’t an awful lot of those that are out who are incredible like Dr. Robert Mendelsohn. There are others too that I have met throughout the country at conferences, et cetera and they do exist.

Paola: So how do we find them?

Finding the Good Doctors

Paola: Your natural store.

Joette: Yes, your natural stores and ask people. You want to hear the same name again and again and again. One of the words is, “Oh, he’s a young doctor.” Forget it. You don’t generally want a young doctor. As I said, they’re too impressed with what they’ve learned.

Paola: Well, I have to say one of the big things people say is, “Oh my doctor is great. He really listens to me.” It doesn’t matter if he listens to you. I mean it does matter. But to some degree, it doesn’t matter if he listens to you. What matters is what he’s telling you and if you guys are working together. I agree. You go to your local, especially the locally owned natural health food store. They have a lot of resources.

Joette: Yes, they have. The owners of those stores really have their hands on the pulse of what’s going on in the medical community.

Paola: In your local area.

Joette: Don’t expect that it’s going to be someone around the corner. You may have to travel an hour. So what? So what?

Paola: Another tip I’ve heard is you can also try and find the doctors that don’t force vaccinations. The government pays doctors some sort of a bonus check.

Joette: A stipend, right.

Paola: Right then, so if a certain percentage of their patients are vaccinated. So the doctors that opt out of that are the ones that aren’t going to compel parents and the ones that don’t compel parents to vaccinate. Now whether or not you vaccinate, that’s up to you. But I’m saying if you’re a doctor, it’s okay in bringing you into the conversation and having a relationship and a partnership over your child’s health. That’s probably a good doctor. So I say find the doctor who doesn’t push vaccines. It’s a good way.

Joette: Right, exactly. Now, that could be a naturopath, a doctor of naturopathy. It could be a good chiropractor.

Paola: Yeah, I like that.

Joette: It can be also, it can be a conventional doctor who’s thinking a little differently. Don’t assume that if it’s a woman that she’s going to be any more open than a man is. But if it is a woman, you want one that has a lot of kids because she’s already seen what’s happened.

Paola: She’s comfortable. She’s okay. She’s been there.

Joette: Yeah.

Paola: I like that about chiropractors. People take their kids to chiropractors for ear infections.

Joette: Yes.

Paola: I never knew you could do that. That’s great.

Joette: Yes, absolutely.

Paola: Chiropractors tend to be a little easier to find, I feel like.

Joette: Well, what I like about chiropractors too is they palpate. They actually touch you. They don’t send you for tests far in the distance way. Then you have to come back two weeks later. Then let’s analyze, et cetera. Not that we don’t like tests. Please don’t get me wrong. I really believe that there is a time for tests. No doubt about it. Diagnostics, having that in your hip pocket can be very, very valuable. Let me just give you a quick example. You got a lump around your breast and you don’t know what it is. It’s not something that’s getting larger and smaller every month or if you eat too much chocolate or something. You not it’s fibrous tissue. Something is off. You want to know. Is that an abscess? Is that a fibroid? Is it cancer?

Paola: So you do a thermal scan.

Joette: At some point, you do thermography and find out what it is. If they still can’t tell you with thermography, yes, you would go for a mammogram. Of course, you would go to the next step. You’re not foolish about this. On the other hand, to go straight to mammography just because you turned a certain age sounds to me like relining someone’s pockets.

Paola: I also tell people when they’re trying to find a good OBGYN, not everybody is comfortable doing home birth or birth with a midwife or sometimes it’s the husband. The husband is not comfortable with it. So you’re trying to find a compromise. I tell people, well find a great midwife and find out who her attending physician is.

Joette: Good idea.

Paola: Oftentimes, they have a good relationship.

Joette: Yeah, that’s a great idea, Paola. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Absolutely.

Paola: Then I have to say. My husband had a little skin thing. We weren’t sure if it’s a wart. It just popped up out of nowhere. I was worried it was like a mole. If it’s cancer, I don’t know. You told me, go find an old guy. Go find an old dermatologist. So, I sat at my computer. I was like how do I Google this?

Joette: Somebody’s who’s got his own warts.

Paola: I was like old guy, dermatologist. I was looking through pictures of local dermatologists. I was like this one looks old.

Joette: Find the guys without hair.

Paola: Right. So I did. I found this old guy.

Joette: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Paola: Of course, he’s not covered on our insurance. He’s out of network. I told my husband. You have an appointment with this guy on this day. Just so you know, it’s going to be out of pocket so you’re going to pay 100 bucks.

Joette: Right.

Paola: My husband is like, “What?” I was like, “Trust me on this. Just go.” Of course, he didn’t have to do a biopsy. He looked at it. He knew exactly what it was.

Joette: That’s what we want. We want somebody who’s seen a couple of thousands of those. They can say after a while, that’s what this is. Another thing I like about the old guys is they don’t fall into line with the political correctness of the AMA or the medical society in their area or the department of medicine in their state. So they don’t follow the rules quite as much. I’m going to be retired in another five to eight years. I’m going to do what I know is right, not what is required by some organization and some rule that tells me that I have to have everything biopsied.

Paola: Right, right. You’re right.

Joette: They’re not worried about the litigious nature of society. They’re ready to retire.

Paola: Right. They want to do what they think is best.

Joette: Right, right.

Paola: Don’t tell them what to do.

Joette: You may not get any alternative information from them but you may get something that’s a little more conservative. That’s what we’re looking for.

Paola: Right, you’re right. That’s it. So let’s review. When you’re trying to discern about whether or not you should stay home or you’ll see a doctor or go to the emergency room, you told us about the four steps. We need to have the knowledge.

Joette: Knowledge, yes.

Paola: About homeopathy, about the remedies about how to do it. You have to own the remedies. You’ve got to have them in your house. Then you need to follow the rules of what you should expect as far as improvement goes with homeopathy.

Joette: That’s right.

Paola: You must have three to five doses. I usually say if it’s not extreme, the three to five doses should take about a full day so like 12 hours.

Joette: Depending on the condition and of course, we’re talking about acutes here, not chronic.

Paola: Right, acutes. Thank you. Then finally, when in doubt or if it’s persisting, go for a diagnosis. Find out. Make sure it’s not any seriouser than you think it is or whatever. It’s not a real word but you know what I mean.

Joette: Yes.

Paola: Then when you do need to go to a doctor, have one in place that’s a good one, an old one.

Joette: An old one, an old one that takes it in his stride. Oh yeah, I have seen this 100 times or whatever. That’s what we want, clinical experience. It can’t be beat instead of oh boy, what’s the insurance company going to say. Oh I got to have this tested when he knows darn well, it doesn’t need to be tested because it’s just a [0:49:22] or something.

Paola: Right. [0:49:24]. Alright Joette, this is really great information. I think we need to put it on our study group curriculum and make people listen to it for homework because it is very helpful, very important to protect yourself and make sure you’re making wise choices as you go through.

Joette: Yes, it’s always fun Paola. I love it.

Paola: I know. Thank you, Joette.

Joette: We’re both so enthusiastic about this method that it’s just too much fun. We enjoy it every time.

Paola: Sorry, it’s so long now but it’s good information. We love it. Okay, thanks.

Joette: Thank you.

Paola: You just listened to a podcast by joettecalabrese.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author Joette Calabrese shared her passion for helping families stay healthy through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition.

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

In this podcast, we cover:

3:19   Why we love homeopathy

5:30   Gaylyn’s story

18:33  It’s a gift

20:15  Teaching it to our kids

23:06  Being homeopathy missionaries

25:16  Success stories

We’ve got another podcast for you here at joettecalabrese.com. We’re introducing a new miniseries called “Moms with Moxie.”

All the way from my desk in New York, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. 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 your successes a secret any longer.

So with help from my roving reporter, Paola, we bring you this mini podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” It’s actually grand moms too but it’s Moms with Moxie. See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Today’s podcast, we meet Gaylyn, a busy mom of seven. What I really like about Gaylyn is that she is very normal. She reminds me of myself before I got sick with chronic health issues. She really just set out to heal her body. I can really relate. She intermittently fell in love with this awesome form of medicine that we call homeopathy.

At the end of this podcast, Gaylyn shares some success stories she’s had with homeopathy and protocols she’s learned from my courses. We wanted to share some of the protocols she likely used! Here they are: 

Sinus Infection: Sanguinaria 200 mixed with Belladonna 6, also consider Kali Bichromium 30.  

Kidney stones– While there is a protocol for this condition, it may be easier to try this combination remedy first.  So, for kidney stones, some people swear by a homeopathic combination remedy called Renelix manufactured by Pekana Homeopathics. 

Snoring- Sanguinaria 200

Seasonal allergies- consider Bovista 200, taken for many months, and look for progress over a few years (as your ‘allergy season’ returns, assess improvement).

Gall Bladder- (Drs. said Gall bladder needs to be removed) Carduus marianus mother tincture—which is like an herbal tincture.

Anxiety- Ignatia 200

Fever Seizure- Since Gaylyn’s son’s fever was not high, Gaylyn likely used Cuprum met 6 and then later for Strep Throat: Hepar sulph 200. 

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.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.

Paola:  We’ve got another podcast for you here at joettecalabrese.com. We’re introducing a new miniseries called “Moms with Moxie.”

Joette:   All the way from my desk in New York, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. 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 your successes a secret any longer.

So with help from my roving reporter, Paola, we bring you this mini podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” It’s actually grand moms too but it’s Moms with Moxie. See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Paola:  Today’s podcast, we meet Gaylyn, a busy mom of seven. What I really like about Gaylyn is that she is very normal. She reminds me of myself before I got sick with chronic health issues. She really just set out to heal her body. I can really relate. She intermittently fell in love with this awesome form of medicine that we call homeopathy.

Also, towards the end of the podcast, Gaylyn gives a lot of success stories that she’s had in using homeopathy with her friends. If you go to Joette’s website under podcasts, you can find Gaylyn’s podcast and its transcription. So Joette has taken the time to write out some of the homeopathic protocols that Gaylyn likely used when she was helping some of her friends. So be sure to head to Joette’s website and find her reposted Gaylyn’s podcast to view the protocols that Joette added in.

Hi there. I’m here with Gaylyn Scholes from Texas. She is our first interviewee for our new series that we’re calling Moms with Moxie. Hi Gaylyn, welcome.

Gaylyn:  Well thank you. I appreciate you taking the time.

Paola:  Gaylyn, you’re a girl after my heart. We could chat all day. I love getting to know you and how you do the homeopathy in your life. So let’s just get started here. Tell me, do you love homeopathy?

Gaylyn:  Oh I do, I really do. As Joette would say, it just simply works and I love it. It’s empowering. It’s the essence of liberty. It’s the knowledge that keeps on giving. I love how I can send kids out to play and just feel confident that they’re going to be able to come back, and they always do with bruises and bumps, and I’ll know how to take care of them. I love how we can take of Texas fire ants [sugar bites 00:02:48]. I love that I have everything I need right here in my own house. I don’t have to go anywhere. I just have it ready to go. I love that the remedies can speak for years and years if we take care of them. I love that they don’t have to depend on the refrigerator to stay good. If you want to note them [00:03:04]. You’ll probably really enjoy that.

Paola:  Okay. It’s a book?

Why we love homeopathy

Gaylyn:  It’s a book. It’s one of those fun books that get you pumped to be prepared. I love that I have something to offer my friends and family when they’re suffering. I love that it takes the things of the earth and makes them our medicine. I love that it gives meaning and purpose to all those noxious and poisonous plants, those nasty insects and infestations even because they can be utilized for good. I love that I can keep my family from toxic drugs that will damage their immune systems.

Paola:  Yes.

Gaylyn:  Right? I love that it follows natural law. I love that it empowers individuals and families to take care of their own. Really, how can you not love all of that?

Paola:  I know you’re right. When you say how can you not, I feel like the people who don’t love homeopathy, it’s only because they don’t yet understand it.

Gaylyn:  Most definitely.

Paola:  That’s the only reason because once you get it, there’s nothing not to love.

Gaylyn:  Oh you can’t back. It is so wonderful.

Paola:  So something you said here that kind of caught my eye was you said here is the essence of liberty. What does that mean to you? Can you kind of explain that for a second because that caught my eye?

Gaylyn:  You know what? When can you start going down the path of liberty? You keep fighting more ways in which you want to delve into it more. The freedom to not have to go to the hospital, that’s freedom. I mean maybe we might need to at some point but we don’t have to. We know enough that we can stay home and we can take care of it. That is freedom and that’s liberty. The knowledge that homeopathy gives to us, it really is truly powerful. It’s powerful that you know what to do.

Paola:  Right.

Gaylyn:  It’s only when we don’t know what to do that we feel powerless and then thus, our liberty is diminished.

Paola:  When you know what to do, you have the power. So Gaylyn, tell us about how you found homeopathy because it really feels like you’ve been doing it for at least 10 years. How did you find it? How long ago was it when you embarked in your journey?

Gaylyn’s story

Gaylyn:  Okay, I’d love to tell you all about that. Let me give you the background for it. At about 38, I felt like I looked like the epitome of health. I was enjoying lifting weights as I always had throughout of my life. I was doing triathlons. I had done some marathons. I had also been following a no fat diet then for about 10 years thinking that I was doing a good thing, right. Health and fitness had always been my interest. In fact, when I went to college, that was my minor.

But anyway, I started throwing out my back about every four to six months and it would just take me down. I hated stopping work to heal up. But I had to do it sometimes. I always got back right into my workouts. But soon the ache in my back didn’t really go away. My hips and my spine then started to hurt more and more. Finally, I realized I had that arthritis thing. So I was like, “Oh my gosh. How was it even possible that I have arthritis being as active as I am?” So I went to an arthritis specialist to see what he could do, what I could do. He told me that it was osteoarthritis and that I could take pain meds. There really wasn’t anything to cure it.

Paola:  Modern medicine is so incredible. The way they can diagnose is really impressive. I mean, that impressive.

Gaylyn:  It is wonderful.

Paola:  But when you have something like arthritis and we talk about how amazing medicine is and they come with you like, “Well you can have painkillers.” I was like, “Really?”

Gaylyn:  That’s it?

Paola:  Yeah, where is the ivory tower of great modern medicine? That’s it?

Gaylyn:  Exactly, exactly. I was really kind of surprised because I hadn’t really looked in obviously to that, yet. Yeah, there was nothing to cure it. So I was like, “Surely someone has something for me. Someone’s got some answers.” So I went into another specialist and he said the exact, same thing. The pain meds were apparently the answer. I told them I’m too young to start taking pain meds. These aren’t even going to heal me. I plan to live another 40 years. 80 would be nice.

Paola:  Right. Your kidney and your liver won’t hold out having to go through all those drugs. 

Gaylyn:  Right. Right, exactly. I was like, “There’s got to be something else for me.” I just wasn’t satisfied. So anyway, I kind of left that out to the side and stood over it for another, almost a year. It was at this point that I went to a Christmas party, when I was walking around, chitchatting with all my friends and then the pain in my hips just jumped out and grabbed me and made me almost fall down. That really scared me. For me, it really was the last straw. I needed to figure out what was going on. I needed to figure out how to heal because I was getting worse.

Paola:  You were convinced that your doctors didn’t have it all. I remember you told me you asked him, “So I’m drinking soda, right?” You had a soda habit like a Big Gulp or whatever, a soda everyday.

Gaylyn:  Right. I even said, “Look. I’ve been drinking, I don’t know how many ounces, 32 probably for a long time.” Then I went down to like maybe just two sodas of diet sodas every day since I was about 14 or 15 except for when I was pregnant. Mind you, I have been pregnant eight times. Every time that I would get pregnant, for some reason, my body knew that I shouldn’t have that drink in me. But the rest of my whole life, I was like, “Oh, it’s probably bad for me.” But I didn’t really think about it too much. Well, I started getting sick.

I asked my doctor. I was like, “Do you think that habit has anything to do with me being sick with this arthritis?” He was like, “Ahh, no. It’s probably not the best thing but it’s not a big deal.” Then I really knew. I was like these guys, they don’t know what they’re talking about. At least in this level, they don’t know anything about nutrition. Even though I had studied a lot of it, it was the regular, conventional nutrition.

So I’ve come to find out, I really needed to look. In my little bits of looking here and there, I found some information on raw milk. I was like okay, I’m going to try this out, finally after this situation at this party. I was like, “I’m going to go see if it’s actually true that it has some anti-inflammatory factors that I heard about.” I heard about this information. I listened to a talk from this lady. She had mentioned a book called “Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon and found myself a raw milk farmer in our area. I was quite excited. At that point, I decided that I would kick my daily soda habit for real, for good. Mind you, I had quit about a thousand times. This one though was for real and I did, six years ago.

 Paola:  Well and the thing is you were talking about how you were educated with the traditional sense of nutrition. You were taught, I mean not directly but you infer that you can outrun that soda pop. You know what I mean?

Gaylyn:  Oh right.

Paola:  Burn off the calories or whatever, you’re fine. So you didn’t have that motivation?

Gaylyn:   I wouldn’t have done anything different had I not gotten sick. I would be doing the exact, same thing as I was doing had I not gotten arthritis. I’ll tell you that right now because that was not a motivation to change.

Paola:  Then, I’ll be so impressed with those people that are changing and they’re not sick because I can relate. I got sick and then I woke up. 

Gaylyn:  This is true. If you could be someone that’s not sick and then do these changes then you’re a rock star, so good for you.

Paola:  Yeah, good for you, not us. 

Gaylyn:  Yeah. But even in a couple of weeks, I thought, “You know what? I think, I feel a little, tiny bit better.” You know how you’re not totally sure but you’re just like I think I am feeling just a slight, little bit less pain. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining. But anyway, I just kept at it and I experimented with all the main points in that book. It really became a permanent fixture in my kitchen. I read dozens and dozens of other related books. I mean you name it, I was reading it.

Food was and I was convinced at this point that food could be my savior. I was so convinced that this was going to heal me. So I was just very, very motivated. I kept at it for a couple of years, really, not losing a beat until my big change which was my sinus infection. It came and got me and just threw me down. I tried every home remedy I could find on the internet and really nothing helped. In my studies, I had learned that I really needed to avoid antibiotics and steroids because those only weaken my immune system. I knew I wanted to stay away from that but my sinus pain got so bad, I really didn’t know what to do.

Paola:  It is true. When you change your diet, it takes so much energy out of your life that you really hope. Like, “Okay. Well at least, I’ll probably never get sick.” But the second you think that you’re like, “That’s not possible. I’m going to get sick someday.”

Gaylyn:  No. You really get sick. It is going to happen. And then what are you going to do? I mean that’s something that I was thinking. I’m going to be getting better, better, better, better. I was thinking, “Oh, I’ll be able to take care of it. I’m using home remedies.”

Paola:  Yeah, like herbs and stuff.

Gaylyn:  But no. It made me realize that I had a gap, a huge, huge gap. Fortunately, I had been a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation. I have been getting the Wise Tradition journals that the Weston A. Price Foundation puts out. Really, those come in the mail and I’m like just reading the whole thing. Nobody better disturb me right? But I did remember that in those journals, there was a lady named Joette Calabrese and that she was talking about the healing power of something called homeopathy. So gosh, I was desperate and so I called the number that I found. It turned out to be her son, of all things.

Paola:  I love it.

Gaylyn:  He assured me that he would give her the message to call me. Yeah. I mean, I was in a ton of pain. My ears were exploding. My sinuses were just killing me.

Anyway, so my sweet husband, he felt so bad for me. He couldn’t understand why I just didn’t go get a prescription and get better. We had several friends that are doctors and they’re like, “Just let us throw in a prescription for you. It’d be so easy.” Rob’s like, “Oh yeah. Go do that.” So he went ahead and picked me up whatever my friends thought that I needed. I was like, “No, I don’t want to. I’ve done all this work to get my gut where it’s in a good spot, where it’s in a good place. I don’t want to ruin it.” Anyway, after I got them, I was speaking with Joette. We’ve had a little 15-minute chitchat. I was just telling her my story. She was so kind and understanding but my husband really wanted me just to take the meds. He didn’t want to see me suffering. We didn’t have any experience yet with homeopathy.

Paola:  I tell people all the time, the worst time to get started with homeopathy is in the middle of a crisis.

 Gaylyn:  Oh definitely. I mean it’s good but it’s bad at the same time because you want to get pushed in, get started. But what I ended up doing is taking kind of a shortened version of the antibiotic but I did throw away the steroid. I was like, “No, I’m not doing that.” I was like, “This better work with a little bit antibiotic that I’m going to take.”

Paola:   Right, right. Well, sometimes it took the antibiotic. You could probably look forward to an opportunity to treat it with homeopathy pretty soon.

Gaylyn:  I did. Of course, I did. So, there were about four more episodes of that. By the time those came around, I knew what to do. That was what was so exciting.

Paola:  Four more sinus infections that you treated each one with homeopathy.

Gaylyn:  Exactly, exactly. That was the thing. So I kind of got started with Joette’s right after that. We set it up. She was helping with all my chronic issues and really, I just got so excited. I mean, it totally bit me. I loved it. I just couldn’t read enough. I couldn’t get enough of it. Every birthday and mother’s day, anniversary, Christmas, that was just for me an excuse to buy another one of Joette’s courses. I just loved it. I mean I was like, “Yeah, I have another birthday coming up. I get another course.” I can tell I was healing faster and faster all the time, so very motivating.

Paola:  Sure.

Gaylyn:  One day, I just remembered realizing that I didn’t need to waddle. You know how we get when we’re like towards the end of our pregnancies where you have that waddle. Well, when I had this arthritis, I was doing a lot of that waddling because everything hurt. One day, I realized I’m still waddling but I don’t really need to. I was like, “Oh. I think I could stand up straight. I can kind of walk in a nice, regular way.” I was like, “That is really funny.” It strikes me as really funny.

Paola:  That is funny. I can relate. I remember one time when my children were very young and I was always bouncing a baby at church. One day, I didn’t have the baby with me and I was bouncing. But you do. You get so used to compensating for an illness. Then you’re like, “Wait. I’m better. I don’t have the baby. I don’t have the arthritis.” 

Gaylyn:  I know. That is so funny. So yeah, I mean I got to the point where I was able to start running again. I was able to start lifting weights again because I had gotten to a point where I was like, “I guess that part of my life is over and done with.” It really made me sad because that was my emotional outlet. That’s how I dealt with stress. That was such a gift to be given that back to me.

Paola:  Yeah. 

Gaylyn:  Yes, most definitely.

Paola:  Very good, yeah, great. So I guess, I mean this question is kind of obvious at this point. But what do you think your life would be like now had you not found homeopathy?

Gaylyn:  That is a really great question. Let me start by saying what we wouldn’t be able to do. Well, we wouldn’t have been able to go buy our new bigger farm in the country. I’ll tell you why because I wouldn’t have had the health to do all the hard labor. Yeah, I know our husbands just go off to work all day. They’re doing such big stuff at work. So we’ll get to do the hard work. I wouldn’t have felt confident to be able to do that. I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking care of my animals or my garden. I use homeopathy with both. It’s so wonderful to have options for sickness. We don’t have to resort to the antibiotics and the regular, conventional drugs. I really just would not have felt as prepared. I would have felt more limited.

Paola:  I asked you this before. How long have you been doing homeopathy, Gaylyn? That’s like a long time when we look at the story in this journey. There is so much that has happened.

Gaylyn:  Right. But you know? Homeopathy and I have only been hanging out for about 3 ½ years.

Paola:  Wow. 

Gaylyn:  Yeah, 3 ½ years but it really does feel longer. It feels like a whole decade or two. I mean it feels like I’ve really been studying it for so long. But it’s just because it completely changes your paradigm.

Paola:  Yes, that’s exactly right. I’ve been doing it for about the same amount of time. Maybe a little bit less. I refer to it as my other life. Because people will talk to me and they’ll say, “Oh of course.” They’re apologetic. “Oh, I had a C-section or I had an epidural.” I’m like, “Oh girl, I had epidurals with all my children.” I have another life.

Gaylyn:  Right, exactly. Thank goodness I had all my children before all this.

Paola:  Right, right, props to Joette, props to Joette who talks about her course. So now that you have homeopathy, you’ve made a resolution for yourself. So tell us about that.

It’s a gift

Gaylyn:  Well, I just felt like I was given such a gift. To me, it felt like a mystery unveiled that changed my life forever. I love the study. Now, I make sure that that’s a big part of what I study personally. I also, as a homeschooling family, make it a huge part of what I study with my children in our homeschooling time. I do have seven children, six at home. I make sure until the day they leave my home, feeling confident in their homeopathy skills. That way, they could take care of themselves and others.

I have a lot of boys in our family, all involved with scouting which is kind rough and tough. I made homeopathy emergency kits to take with them on their scouting adventures. These kids can take care of most of these emergency situations. I write little simple instructions on each one of them, so that they know exactly what to do and how much. I make sure that everything’s at my house and I keep it all stuffed up, definitely.

Paola:  Don’t you have a son who recently has left home?

Gaylyn:  Yes, I have a son that is serving in a church mission. But I made sure I spent a whole night before he left getting his homeopathy arsenal ready in case of anything. I mean, I would say in anything. So I put those options after options in that kit. I wrote it all out. I don’t know how many pages of writing things out. It’s like if this happens, do this. If this happens, do this. Knowing that he’s going to be out there, eating just whatever foods and just given to him. My visions of him getting sick are like highly likely. I just felt like I needed to send him prepared.

Paola:  I love it. So I’m intrigued. My kids are a little young. My oldest is starting to kind of be intrigued by homeopathy. What do you do to teach your kids at home? What does your curriculum look like?

Teaching it to our kids

Gaylyn:  My curriculum is everybody gets sick every now and then. That’s our curriculum because that’s when you learn. If someone gets their head knocked, we all say out loud. What is it we’re going to go get? They’re going to run and grab it.

Paola:  Oh, you don’t tell them right away? You basically have them guess ahead of time? I love that, Gaylyn. You told me once that you actually read Dorothy Shepherd, the homeopath. Joette loves her books. You read them for bedtime.

Gaylyn:  We read Dorothy Shepherd and we’ve read two of her books so far. I’m planning on reading a whole bunch more because it’s awesome, really fun stories and lots of situations. I don’t know. It’s just really awesome. Then we use Joette’s courses too. We just go straight to the courses.

Paola:  I love it.

Gaylyn:  What else could be better? What other science, health, section could be better than that, really?

Paola:  I know it. It’s true. We actually have an animal out here on our farm that got sick. We checked him. He had a fever. My son was like, “Oh good.” I was like, “What do you mean good? He was like, “Mom, fevers are good.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh.”

Gaylyn:  Is that awesome.

Paola:  I’m like, “You’re right. You’re right. It is good but I would rather him just be healthy and not be sick at all.”

Gaylyn:  But it’s at those moments that we realize that what we’re trying to help them understand is sinking in.

Paola:  So when someone at your house gets sick, you don’t necessarily blurt out the right remedy. You turn to the kids and you say, “What should I give her or him?”

Gaylyn:  Yeah, definitely. Let’s figure it out. Maybe I do already know.

Paola:  Okay. So Gaylyn, tell me about homeopathy and you said it turns back time for you.

Gaylyn:  Yeah. Well, you know, I feel like I’ve been given a second chance. I’ve seen in my own life how my arthritic symptoms are slowly being resolved just as Joette taught me. The most recent symptom, this is one of the things that she teaches, that the most recent symptoms are the ones that go away the first. That’s what’s happening. I am solely working backwards to my very, very first symptoms that showed up that are now my chronics. I don’t know. I’m hoping that I may be on a five-year plan, six year plan. That eventually, I will be able to say goodbye to most of my arthritis situation. The thing that makes it really cool is when an acute shows up, when we know how to deal with those using homeopathy to actually accelerate our progress with our chronics because it’s boosting our immune system. Now our system knows more. Just the same thing, now our immune system has more power.

Paola:  I had a pretty bad case of strep throat once. It was bad. I stuck with it. It got bad because I didn’t have the remedies in the house. I am so glad I stuck with it because after that strep throat got better, all of sudden my chronic stuff was really moving out.

Gaylyn:  It really is how it happens. It’s amazing. 

Paola:  So you and I have kind of joked that we’re homeopathy missionaries. A lot of these moms with Moxie are. Man, they are little missionaries. So tell me about that.

Being homeopathy missionaries

Gaylyn:  Yeah. I mean, once you’ve seen the power of homeopathy, boy it carries you on. You cannot keep your mouth shut. You just want to tell everybody all about it. I’m really involved with my church. I had numerous opportunities to share what homeopathy has done for me and my family with people of my faith. I’m also very involved with a homeschool group that we put together that meets once a week. Likewise in that group setting, I’ve had lots of opportunities to sharing health. I’m also looking around. Everybody’s got something. Either it’s acute, chronics all over the place. Many don’t want to go to conventional meds but they just don’t know of any other options. So these are opportunities to share.

I share homeopathy with random people, too. Just the other day, a serviceman came to work on the tractor. He started telling me about his asthma. I was like, “Well oh, let’s talk about asthma.” So I got to take a moment and fantasy with him that there are other options than going back to his regular meds. So for a year and a half now, I’ve been able to gather my friends around me and do a homeopathy group at my house. We’ve been able to support each other in our quest for health. In my little meetings that we have here, I also tried to share demonstration of Sally Fallon’s “Nourishing Traditions” doing some nutrient-dense cooking in my kitchen for my friends. If you put those two things together, you just have a winning combination.

Paola:  You do. I tell people this. With homeopathy and a high quality diet, you can have pretty incredible health which means resources at your fingertips. It does go back to what you said at the beginning about liberty. You don’t know you have any other option. You really are bound by the mercy of if you have a smart doctor who tells you to take vitamin C or whatever.

Gaylyn:  Yeah, exactly.

Paola:  Or the drugs that they’re used to doling out. So let’s get to the fun stuff, Gaylyn. I want you to tell me some of your experiences. Think of some stories that our listeners might appreciate. You’re just a regular mom who has been doing this for just over three years. What kind of transformation have you been able to do with your own two hands?

Gaylyn:  I could go on and on and on but let’s see.

Success stories

I’ll tell you about a friend that came to me with kidney stone issues. She ended up in the ER. Her doctor found a 5-mm size of stone that was giving her lots of problems. For weeks, she had been suffering with pain and the need to urinate that result in only like a trickle. These symptoms would come and go. But the doctor offered a drug. In the same breath, he mentioned that it wasn’t even very effective. He ended up giving her the pain meds which she took when the pain was really bad. Then we were able to set her up with remedies for kidney stones and waited for it to just do its magic. It really didn’t take long.

Within three days from talking to me and giving those remedies, she felt that she felt this zing, kind of a sharp, quick, painful zing in her lower left abdominal area. Instantly, that constant urge to urinate was just gone. It was just completely gone. She hasn’t had any issues with that since.

Paola:  Wow, so where did it go? Who cares?

Gaylyn:  Who cares? Right, I know. It’s just gone. Without these symptoms then it’s gone.

Paola:  Right, symptoms don’t lie. That’s great. I love that.

Gaylyn:  There’s another friend that came to me with concerns that her daughter was snoring every night. She was worried that her daughter might also have apnea during her sleep. She had actually several things. She had chronic nose bleed. She had ear pain and motion sickness. She had taken her daughter to the doctor. After about 15 minutes of conversation, he offered to schedule her daughter for a tonsillectomy. I mean is that just kind of crazy?

Paola:  Yeah, you know what? Your tonsil is out, kid.

Gaylyn:  No.

Paola:  He has strep throat right now and I was like, “Well, your tonsils will swell up.” She was like, “Oh I don’t have those.” You don’t want that bacteria getting to your heart.

Gaylyn:  No, [00:27:06] for sure. Well, my friend, she knew. She didn’t want to have her daughter have that happen to her. Anyway, they did a sleep study and they found for sure that she did have sleep apnea going on. Then knowing that I was in the homeopathy, she came to me. I was able to use the knowledge I gained through Joette’s courses to choose remedies that worked. So after two weeks, there’s a big difference in the intensity of her snoring. It wasn’t gone yet but it had lessened. That cute girl, she forgot to take her remedies for a few days and the family noticed. So they told her, “Hey, you need to get back on the remedies.” A few months later, the snoring was just gone. She got to keep her tonsils.

Paola:  Oh, I love that. I’m thinking now. You have the sinus infection. I’m thinking about her with her sinus issues especially when you were telling me about. She had the dizziness and a lot of those other symptoms, the ear pain, the nosebleeds, the motion sickness, that all sounds kind of the sinus, fluid in the ear and the sinuses. So did her remedy involve Sanguinaria?

Gaylyn:  Sanguinaria was one of them. Yeah, I chose a couple of other ones too, to make sure we got it and whatever, it worked. It even surprises me even after seeing this over and over now that it worked so well. That is amazing.

Paola:  I love it.

Gaylyn:  There was another friend that just blew me out of the water, too. Actually it was her husband that came to me. He was just telling me all about his wife’s allergies and she had them for years. She was a daily Zyrtec taker and actually other meds just to be able to go to work and function. Her symptoms would get worse every fall and every spring. I started off how magical homeopathy was and how it’s worked in our family. He decided to try it out. So I set him up with just one remedy and how to take it and thought nothing of it for months. Well later, they come to me and he told me that her allergies were just gone, completely gone. That’s amazing. In a year and a half, they were gone. I don’t know if that’s normal in everybody’s situation. I don’t think it is. But for her, that one remedy was enough.

Paola:  That was the one and she did it for about a year and a half before it was completely gone.

Gaylyn:  A year and a half.

Paola:  I tell people, it’s not that she was miserable during that year and a half and then boom, she was better. You see all that improvement during that time. It’s just enough so that you can stay off the allergy meds as you kind of improve.

Gaylyn:  Right. And as Joette teaches, there are those three elements. There’s the intensity of it, there’s the duration, and the frequency. With those three and if you’ve seen any improvement in any of those situations, you know you’re on the right track.

Paola:  You stick with it. There is that podcast, the Magic Markers podcast.

Gaylyn:  Right, yeah, exactly. But just to have that result was just – it’s simply amazing.

Paola:  Tell us another one. I enjoy this storytelling.

Gaylyn:  Okay. Well, definitely. Since we moved on to our farm about six months ago, we also acquired a lovely Great Pyrenees livestock dog. He is just an awesome dog. Anyway, when we bought him, we bought him off of Craigslist of all place. He was just in this tiny little place. He had been covered in fleas. He had scratched up a huge section of his behind, all the hair and stuff. So he created a bunch of sores back there. Using homeopathy and specific remedies for him and eating some nice, raw food, and some nice raw bones and good quality nutrition for him also.

Paola:  Wasn’t it great for dogs.

Gaylyn:  It really is. He’s had like some nice, raw eggs from our chickens. Then he’s got bones from goats and yam. He’s great. He looks really great. He probably got rid of about 10 lbs. He was way overweight. They had just left the bag of feed there. So he might have eaten whenever he wanted. All I know is he’s gotten so much better. There are some hairs back on his behind and there aren’t any more sores. I can keep going on though. I’ve got a couple more.

Paola:  Yeah, tell me a couple more. Go ahead.

Gaylyn:  Okay. I have another friend. She was concerned about her gallbladder. It had been giving her problems for the last couple of years but she also was one that’s like, “I don’t want my gallbladder taken out.” Don’t take the gallbladder out.

Paola:  Right.

Gaylyn:  But in the last six months, she was having so many issues that she was like, “Is that my only option to have that taken out?” So anyway, about that time, I came to her basically because when you’re a homeopathy missionary, you’re just like, “Blah, blah, blah. I vomited all these wonderful information out there.” I told her definitely don’t get your gallbladder taken out. Let’s figure it out. So found the right remedies for and within a few weeks, she was having less and less issues with that gallbladder. Now, months later, she doesn’t have any issues. Her bladder lives to see another day. Her gallbladder is going to be okay. It just was sick. I could tell you, taking out the gallbladder, that’s pretty much bread and butter now. For some reason, everybody’s gallbladder is getting sick.

Paola:  It’s almost like when you start thinking like it’s not important but then I hear about people’s lives when their gallbladders are removed are difficult.

Gaylyn:  It’s not easy. It’s not a good place to be. Yeah, you need it. You need it, definitely.  I can go on. Here’s another one.

This was a friend of a friend that had heard that I was doing homeopathy stuff. Well this gal, she had a ton of issues. She had terrible allergies crippled in anxiety where she literally couldn’t function, chronic headaches, migraines. She would only have two periods a year. This was since she started on her menstrual cycle. We worked on her situation and just a few months of taking a remedy, she’s had huge, huge changes. This is kind of how it happens too. She almost forgot that she had them. I had to remind her that she had allergies. [00:32:54]. That’s right.

That goes back to, let’s make that clear, Joette always says take your notes. Take your notes like good notes. Make sure that you label them with numbers and intensity. That was a situation where it was a good thing that I did take good notes because she totally forgotten that she had allergies. This was another thing. Her anxiety, we started with her with a whopping 9 for her anxiety and we got down to about a 4. The headaches were coming less and less. This was a really big one, too. Within a month for four months like aligned with the stars and her body was able to start having a period every month. Her whole life, she had only like two a year. Then once we got the right remedy in there -.

Paola:  It probably affected her fertility too if she was -.

Gaylyn:  Well definitely. She had had one. She had had to plummet beforehand to even get pregnant with her other children. What a gift is that to somebody that’s been trying to have children. So it really was miraculous.

One of the things that was really interesting with this one was even at the end of our discussion, she’s like, “Well I still have anxiety.” I was like, “Yes. But you went from a 9 to a 4.” Sometimes that’s the way it is. I mean like even for me. Do I still have arthritis? I do. But I went from up here like I can’t remember what I started at but now I’m down to a 1 or a 2. So that’s a huge deal. So we cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater just because it’s still there.

Paola:  Joette says that. We get greedy.

Gaylyn:  We are. We definitely were so greedy.

Paola:  Yes.

Gaylyn:  I’m greedy.

Paola:  Yeah, me too. My chronics are so much better. Then I want this.

Gaylyn:  That’s right. I want it even more

Paola:  I want more. I want more.

Gaylyn:  I do. I do.

Paola:  Joette does say that in her classes. She’ll say, “You’re not going to get perfect health. Nobody has perfect, perfect health. You always are going to have some. But you can live a robust, busy life, good life. That’s what you want.”

Gaylyn:  Definitely, most definitely. Here’s one more. This was like the clincher.

Paola:  Yes, go for it.

Gaylyn:  So just this past week, we have kind of a scare. Like I had mentioned, I have seven children and my 17-year old calls me up. I was a half hour away at a meeting. He called just obviously upset and was telling me that our little one, Jam, who is 3 years old was having a seizure. I’m thinking of how I would have reacted four years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. I mean I really would have probably freaked out, right. But very calmly, I was able to say run over to such and such place and grab this. He ran and grabbed it and gave him the dose. Then I said, “Now, tell me what else is going on.” He was able to tell me and I was like, okay.

Paola:  Wow.

Gaylyn:  I knew one of the two remedies in my head but I had to send him to the books to get the other one for the seizure. I was like, “Run and go grab the book. Go find it. And you know where to find all the remedies.” So within about two minutes, he was able to find it, find the right remedies and give them to our three-year old son. Even though he was upset, he wasn’t freaky because he knew. He felt confident in himself and he felt confident in me, I think and the books that we have and the remedy. Everything was just there. If any of that wouldn’t have been set up just perfectly like that, we could have had a nice freak-out session.

Paola:  Yeah.

Gaylyn:  Seizures are kind of scary. We have never dealt with that before.

Paola:  So that was new. I keep ordering different kits. I have my 30C. I have my 200C. I just got my 1M. I keep getting them in different colors. Go get me my red box. Go get me my blue box. I need my green box. The kids were like, “Okay.” They all know where it is and they run.

Gaylyn:  You got to have it. That’s the thing is that it creates such a security to have those things right there. I keep telling people get it anyway because at certain times, you will always go to it. You just have to have it at your house. If it’s too far away, if you need to go to a vitamin shop, the local drug store, it’s just too far away.

Paola:  It goes back to liberty. It does. It gives you freedom of choice, freedom of option.

Gaylyn:  And you’re limited when you’re not prepared.

Paola:  You are.

Gaylyn:  You really, really are. So this is a part of this story with my son. My husband really, really wanted to take him to the hospital and get him checked out at the emergency room. Knowing the situation that we were going to be in, I was just a little bit leery. I was like, “Oh shoot. I don’t want to have to deal with this kind of stuff today. But I was like okay. We’ll go in and deal with conventional opinions and so we can figure out what’s going on with him. So we took him in.

Of course, I was the black sheep because I rejected right off the Motrin and the Tylenol. I had to do that multiple times, mind you, sending new people in all the time to see if they could convince this stubborn mother to sanity. Hey, just take it because we want to bring down his fever. I was like, “It’s okay. He’s all right. He’s going to be okay. I just want you to test him. See what’s going on.” So they tested him and found out that he had strep. For me, the light went on. I was like, “Oh yay. He’s got strep.”

Paola:  I can do that.

Gaylyn:  I can do that. So they probably thought that was kind of weird, too.

Paola:  That you smiled at them. Oh.

Gaylyn:  That you smiled and that you’re not afraid. You’re not any of that. But the light went on. I was like, “Oh, the strep run on a super-fast fever that didn’t cause the febrile seizure.” I was like, “Oh, now I can connect the dots.” To me, this was a relief because I knew exactly what to do for that. So those diagnosis, oh thank goodness we have those because I have the right remedy right there in my purse. I had brought my kit with me. As soon as they went out to go get my bill, I gave him a dose. $800 later, I had a diagnosis and I got to leave the ER followed by shaking heads and disapproving looks but me, fully confident in my wonderful friend, homeopathy. Really, one more dose that night and by morning, the fever was just a memory. He was back to his lively self by about 12 the next day.

Paola:  If you’re listening, Joette has a study group curriculum that is coming out. There is a large chunk in that. It’s in the first four weeks. I can’t remember which week. We ask you to read Dr. Mendelsohn’s chapter on fevers. He talks about febrile seizures and how they’re not dangerous but they are scary to witness.

Gaylyn:  Yeah, exactly.

Paola:  That knowledge is so empowering.

Gaylyn:  It really is. It really is. The thing that was so fun about this one is that the few times that the light went on, instead of feeling anxiety about the situation, I felt happiness. I felt exhilarated. I felt confident. So that is a huge gift right there.

Paola:  It is.

Gaylyn:  You can’t replace that.

Paola:  I tell people. Can you imagine what it feels like to generally speaking? I mean, maybe meningitis is going to really freak me out if someone has it. You know what I mean? That’s not common. But generally speaking, illness does not scare me. It’s opportunity.

Gaylyn:  It’s an opportunity for sure.

Paola:  Gaylyn, you are so cool. I want to move in next door to your -.

Gaylyn:  I know, right. Come on over.

Paola:  Oh, you’re awesome. I love these stories. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Gaylyn:  Oh thank you for having me. It’s been so much fun for me. Anytime that we get to talk about homeopathy and fun things like this, oh it’s certainly a pleasure.

Paola:  It’s a winning formula for success. Thank you so much.

Gaylyn:  Thank you.

Joette:  Are you or someone you know a mom with Moxie? Well, we’re on the hunt for you. Of course, we don’t want to hear just from moms but from anyone who uses and loves homeopathy. Reach out to my podcast team and let us know why you’re a mom with Moxie. For more information, contact [email protected].

Thank you for listening to this podcast with Joette Calabrese. If you liked it, please share it with your friends. To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit in your health strategy, visit joettecalabrese.com and schedule a free 15-minute conversation.