Joette Calabrese Podcast

In this podcast, we cover:

1:58 A   Allergic, Joette’s new course

6:50 B   How the allergies started 

20:42 C  Miasms or inherited taint

36:54 D  Who should take the course and why

46:36 E  Kali bichromium for allergies

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 great podcast for you at joettecalabrese.com and here’s what’s coming up.

Joette:  Then they test you for it. I don’t know of any conventional allergist that tests you for nail polish, or cigarette smoke, or fumes in the truck ahead of you in the traffic. I’ll be honest with you. I think this is more insidious, this pharmaceutical industry because it gets you when you’re down. You’re already sick and scared and you say, “Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?” And now it’s telling you, not now, it’s been in the last decade, they’ve been encouraging people to go to the doctor and pressure their doctor. They don’t use the word pressure but that’s what it is. About every two weeks, I would go for these shots. As a small child with a skinny, little arm and they were giving me 16 shots, I mean I used to freak when I saw that.

Paola:  In this podcast, Joette is going to talk a lot about allergies. Be sure to stick around to the end of the podcast when she gives a great remedy for sinus problems. It’s funny how this comes full circle because we recorded this on a Monday and now it’s a Friday and I have just suffered from a terrible sinus infection. You can tell from my voice I’m still a little under the weather. Lo and behold, the remedy that she talks about in this podcast just a few days ago is the remedy that cleared out that sinus infection for me.

So here we go. Hi Joette, I’m excited to be doing another podcast with you.

Joette:  I know. I love it too, Paola.

Paola:  We’ve got a really great topic coming up because it has to do with the course that you’re going to launch pretty soon here.

Joette:  Yeah.

Paola:  The course is called Allergic with a question mark and an exclamation point. So why is it called Allergic? Why isn’t it called allergies? 

Allergic, Joette’s new course

 Joette:  Yeah, good distinction. When we first brought that word up, we weren’t really sure how to put it but I think that it makes it different. The two are different because most people think of allergies as something that they have seasonally, seasonal allergies or animal allergies, or food allergies. But allergic seems more encompassing. It’s a broader umbrella. So it incorporates not just allergies to the conventional ideas of what allergies are but also to having chemical sensitivities: food intolerances, allergic to perfumes, allergic to tobacco smoke, or even the change of weather, the change of seasons, barometric pressure changes. So I think it’s a broader term. We wanted to make sure the people understood that we get that, that I get that that it’s s broader term that people are suffering from these days.

Paola:  Yeah, that’s absolutely right. It’s true that the conventional side just really sees kind of anaphylaxis than your allergic or histamine issues.

Joette:  Right and they test you for it. I don’t know of any conventional allergist that tests you for nail polish, or cigarette smoke, or fumes in the truck ahead of you in the traffic. I knew years ago that that’s what I had. I could feel it instantly. I knew right away when somebody sprayed pesticide. I stopped wearing nail polish, those kinds of things. I didn’t need to be tested. It was pretty clear.

Paola:  Right, right, exactly, which leads actually to my next question. You have a history of allergies. Isn’t that why you started homeopathy in the first place?

Joette:  Yeah. I would say it goes even further back than that, further back from homeopathy. Rarely does the person come from illness directly into homeopathy unless you live in Europe, South America, or India. But in North America, people have to travel down this long, circuitous path from I don’t feel well to conventional medicine and all the drugs to gee, I don’t think I like these drugs anymore. They’re making me sicker in a new way to the health food store, vegan, macrobiotic, vitamin therapy, synthetic vitamins. Oh maybe synthetic is not a good idea, okay, now we go to natural vitamins and supplements. Oh my gosh, by the time people get to homeopathy, they’ve spent a good decade.

Paola:  And they’re pretty desperate. You are right though, I’m from Brazil. When my parents moved us as little immigrants to the United States, she brought her homeopathy kit. I told her, “So you understand [00:4:50].” Like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. When you got sick, I just looked it up in my little book and I gave you the remedy.” I thought that was great. But listen, so then we’re here for 10 years. My mom throws away her kit.

Joette:  Oh no! Oh, she Americanized in the wrong way.

Paola:  Yes!

Joette:  I know about being Americanized but I got to tell you, that was the wrong way to go.

Paola:  It was and it goes exactly to what you just said. It’s like she got influenced in doctors and so she threw.

Joette:  Culture, the culture shifts you.

Paola:  Yes, it did. So you’re absolutely right.

Joette:  Yes, yes, yes. Culture is huge. There’s no doubt about it. When you look at a women’s magazine, you can see who’s paying for all the advertising of the magazine. It’s all the pharmaceutical industry. Then you go on television. Oh my gosh, there it is again. Oh my gosh, it’s in the news. Oh, I can’t get away from this stuff. It’s ubiquitous. Every billboard and magazine and newspaper and radio, it’s the way it used to be with the tobacco and the alcohol industry. That was made illegal. They actually got after those two industries.

I’ll be honest with you, I think this is more insidious, this pharmaceutical industry because it gets you when you’re down. You’re already sick and scared and you say, “Oh my gosh. What am I going to do?” And now it’s telling me, not now, it’s been in the last decade, they’ve been encouraging people to go to the doctor and pressure their doctor. They don’t use the word pressure but that’s what it is. Pressure their doctor, “Why don’t you find out if this is right for you?” So it’s not even up to the doctor anymore. It used to be just the doctors of journals that would have all these advertisements. They got smart. They got sleek. They now advertise to the general public.

Paola:  Well and they’re so good at it.

Joette:  Oh they’re brilliant.

Paola:  I mean case and point, look at the GARDASIL vaccine.

Joette:  Oh my gosh, it’s brilliant.

Paola:  And how they’re marketing.

Joette:  Absolutely.

Paola:  It’s on MTV. It’s on all that age group. It’s everywhere. Back to allergies, tell me, you had it as a kid, right?

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Your whole life, you say it was your middle name?

Joette:  Right, yeah, my middle name used to be allergies. But now, it isn’t anymore. I’m just back to Josephine. That’s actually my middle name, Joette Josephine. I know. I know. They just had to make sure that they got their Jo in there.

How the allergies started

I wasn’t a kid, I was an infant. I was six weeks old when my mother stopped nursing me. We’re talking early 50s, folks. I mean, I’m not a young woman. I got a vaccine. I reacted to this vaccine. I believe it was polio because I don’t know that there was anything more than polio, maybe small pox in those days. I do have my records but I forgot which one it was. Shortly after that, I got an ear infection. Of course, antibiotics were used. Shortly after the antibiotics, up came eczema. It started out on my cheeks. It was pretty rough and raw. Then another ear infection came along and you know the story. This is everybody’s story, another round of antibiotics. In those days, it was an injection of penicillin which does the same.

So then that second otitis media was met with antibiotics. Then lo and behold, eczema that was at every flexor, behind my knees, inside my elbows, on my neck, behind my ears and then I was plagued. So I was plagued with it. Every time I got another ear infection, this is the way my mother remembered it, it seemed to be the ear infection, what she was thinking. That’s what of course what the doctor was saying because the doctor is not going to say, “Oh, it’s got to be the drugs I used on you or on her.” They’re not going to say that. They’re going to say, “Oh, it must be these ear infections.” Then they go, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, that old inheritance.” They’re not saying that but that’s the implication, there’s something wrong with your inheritance. This is a newborn for goodness’ sakes.

Paola:  It’s not his fault or her fault.

Joette:  No, absolutely. So it was my mother’s fault, of course, my father’s fault.

Paola:  All your ancestors.

Joette:  My ancestors all the way back who had never had, by the way, never had antibiotics. I was the first, pretty much the first generation. My father had had a couple of antibiotics by my mother never did. My parents were born at home. They were of that generation where the families couldn’t afford going to a doctor. They mistrusted them. They didn’t believe that the doctors would be helpful to them. They thought they would be – well, they were immigrants – they didn’t trust. So they stayed away. Instead, they used their herbs and their home methods.

Well anyway, then I became a child that was not just one with eczema, I was blanketed in eczema. I mean, there were very few parts of my body that didn’t have it. I didn’t have it on the bottoms of my feet or the palms of my hands. I didn’t have it in my scalp. I didn’t have it in my ears. I had it behind my ears, in front of my ears, down my neck, across my face. It was everywhere. I didn’t have it on my shoulders and my chest but my stomach, my legs, big, huge patches, very uncomfortable, unsightly, embarrassing, and I was always told to stop scratching. So that’s like, for those of you who are out there and have babies, that’s like when the doctors says don’t push in labor. Don’t push. Are you kidding me? Do you think I’m like Herculean or something? 

Paola:  What?

Joette:  When you’re in transition or when you’re past transition, you’re pushing. I’m sorry, doc. There’s no way. I’m pushing.

Paola:  My girlfriend, she had her baby in the car on accident obviously on the way to the birthing center, whatever. And her husband kept yelling, “Stop pushing.”

Joette:  I know. Yeah, right.

Paola:  She’s like, “I’m not doing it. It’s the body’s doing it.”

Joette:  This is a conscious effort, folks. So, to stop scratching was ridiculous. We got steroid creams and they were just coming out at that time. All the miracle drugs were coming out in the early 50s. So we were told to use it sparingly because it would cause trouble later in life. So we used it only when I was in a horrendous flare and my mother was very careful about it. One jar lasted many years because she was very afraid of – my cousin was our doctor – what my cousin warned her about regards to the detriments of using the steroid creams.

Paola:  Tell us. How does this relate to allergies then? Someone might be new to this. They may not realize the connection.

Joette:  One of the things that was found out by my mother taking to an allergist and getting my 16 shots. I’ll never forget it. I’ve actually written about it on my blog. I remember getting the shots. I’m sorry going off in this tangents but I think it makes it more interesting when you hear stories about how this happens to people. I remember seeing the tray that would come in and I knew what was in that tray. It was covered with a cloth but I started to recognize it because I would go about every two weeks, I would go for these shots. As a small child with skinny, little arm and they were giving you 16 shots, I mean I used to freak when I saw that.

Paola:  The steroid shots?

Joette:  These were shots to determine what I was allergic to. What is causing this, they were asking themselves. So was it orange juice? Was it feathers? Was it chocolate? Was it dogs? Was it eggs and milk? So they determined it was yes, all of the above. It was all of that. It was all of that. So, no matter what it was they tested me for, it was that. So basically I was allergic to everything. The more antibiotics I got, I became more and more allergic. But nobody ever tested me interestingly for antibiotics, the stuff that they were doing. That was the invidious for all of this, the etiology. So I don’t know if it would have shown up that way to be honest because it wasn’t that I was allergic to it. It was that it had changed my gut essentially. It changed the architecture of my molecular makeup, so to speak.

So I lived my life not being able to have chocolate and dairy and eggs and no feather pillows and no wool. In those days in the 50s, there were no such, I mean we lived in New York State so we had to wear wool coats. No wool for me. It was very hard to find something that didn’t have down or wool. My mother went crazy trying to find all these things. They were allergies. Even as abstinent as my mother and later I was from these substances, it didn’t make any difference. It might have caught back on a flare but it would not have kept me from being allergic consistently all the time. 

Paola:  That’s what makes your message so unique is that you say fine, if abstinence helps a little bit to it. But that is not a goal.

Joette:  It’s not the goal. That’s not a life. That’s not a lifestyle. To abstain from all those things, I mean and the list was longer than that. I mean, it was pretty long because if you can’t have eggs then you really shouldn’t have chicken in many cases. If you can’t have dairy then you shouldn’t have beef. It’s the same species. I’m not saying that’s so for everyone but it depends on the depth and breadth. It’s a little different for everyone but when you have sensitivity to one thing generally, more come down the pike. There’s nothing in conventional medicine that I’m aware of that corrects that. So I went through my life feeling really ugly and homely. People looking at my legs and my arms, I know I was horrible, horrible.

Paola:  You’re the bubble girl.

Joette:  Yeah, I was the bubble girl. I wore long sleeves in the summer and pants in the summer so nobody could see my legs and my arms and all that. Then I hit puberty which was pretty interesting because then it was a big shift. It kind of dissolved. It went away. The eczema went completely away when I was about 12, maybe more like 13. I had one big, bad experience at 12 years old because my father bought a new car and we travelled down to Florida on a trip. It was the one vacation we ever had in our whole lives. I got really sick because it was a brand new car. It was loaded with chemicals. I got very, very, very sick. It took weeks to get over that.

But after that, about a year later, that was the end of it. I never got it again. Then instead, what I had was gut problems. The gut problems were I have lots of pain after I ate. I had a very low appetite. I was really thin. I had lots and lots of stomachaches. So those stomachaches were a problem because they kept me from living my life. I missed school. I missed social events and those kinds of things. I kind of [00:15:43]. Then in my 20s, it was like a grace period. Then I got hit hard again in my 30s. Doctors often say, “Oh, they’ll grow out of it.” No, no, no, you don’t grow out of these things, not if they’ve been treated with medications.

Paola:  It’s almost like it retreats and creates a new plan and then attacks again with a new way.

Joette:  Right, right. Speaking of this course, I just want to say that when we talk about these things deeply in homeopathy, we talk about the direction of disease and then the direction of cure. That is something we’re going to be covering in this course that you’re talking about. I know that some people might worry, “Is this going to be an overlap with the gut courses that I’ve given?”

Paola:  Exactly. That’s exactly what I was thinking. If someone buys the Allergy course and they already own the Good Gut, Bad Gut course, would they want to buy this course?

Joette:  There will be overlap. But thank God we have overlap because if there is an overlap, really, you’ll never get this whole picture of homeopathy because there are homeopathic medicines that work in many different ways and also need to be repeated so that you can understand it with a different set of circumstances, with a different kind of case. Here is how we make this fresh. Now, look at it from this point of view instead of that point of view. Whereas in the gut course, we taught it strictly from a gastrointestinal point of view, in the skin course (we have a skin course too), we talk about it strictly from a skin course. But with this Allergic course, we’re talking about kind of my whole picture because first, it was eczema and ear infections and also, I might add susceptibility to strep throat. Then my tonsils were extracted, I mean we go on and on about how this is all related. It’s very related. So, I want to spend or I am spending a lot of time working on trying to make this new course as in depth and as fresh as possible but there has to be overlap.

Paola:  Well, I think the perfect example of this is just a single homeopathic remedy, how it can be used for many different things like you’re just saying. Here’s a quick example, Ipecac, when you look at it from a female perspective, you think of it maybe during morning sickness.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  We’ve got Ipecac again and if you look at it from a food poisoning perspective or a gastrointestinal, you think of Ipecac that way. Then you can also think of Ipecac with diarrhea and dysentery, from that kind of a perspective.

Joette:  And a cough. Ipecac’s great for coughs.

Paola:  You’re right, right. I remember one time we met and you said, “Oh Paola, take some Ipecac.” So it’s just approaching the same remedies but from different directions as we get a complete world view -.

Joette:  Yeah, we’ll be still using some of the same protocols because it’s kind of foolish not to use it just because I mentioned it in another course. It got to be repeating. There’s no doubt about it.

Paola:  But definitely you’re saying even though it’s coming from a different perspective and there may be some repeated protocols, there’s going to be plenty of new information.

Joette:  Yes, ma’am.

Paola:  Okay.

Joette:  Absolutely.

Paola:  I love that. So you really do have to let go of the allopathic model when you use homeopathy. When you think of one remedy treating one thing, no, it treats many things.

Joette:  Yes. You know how you learn this, Paola? You go online. Let’s say you look up Ipecac. You go online and write Ipecac homeopathic materia medica. Look it up on a materia medica. It’s usually Boericke, Dr. Boericke’s material medica who died decades ago or Dr. James Tyler Kent. He died decades ago, half a century ago. Those are the kind of people you want to read about Ipecac. Now, look at all the indications. It’s sweeping. Each of these remedies is pretty sweeping.

If you get a good material medica really like the Concordant, Frans Vermeulen’s Concordant for example, look it up online. I don’t know how much of that is online. But you look at them and you’ll say, “My gosh, Sulphur has six pages of indications. Holy cow.” Now you say, “Well, I thought Sulphur was only for hot flashes.” No, it’s for many, many conditions. If you know Sulphur and you’ve read it and you understand it has something to do with heat, not always but often, it has to do with heat or burning. Now you can think outside the box and say now I get why we use that for let’s say rectal burning. I get it. Now I understand why you can also use it for hot flashes during menopause.

Paola:  Right, I like that. Now, there is a specific subject in this course which I’m really excited about because you haven’t discussed it in any of the other courses. That was miasms. So tell me a little bit about that.

Miasms or inherited taint

Joette:  Let’s go back to my story because I think that will be instructive. When I got that vaccine and that antibiotic, why didn’t I get seizures? Some kids get seizures after vaccines. I mean, there are all kinds of these. Why didn’t I get an eye infection? Why didn’t I get conjunctivitis?

Paola:  Some people get nothing.

Joette:  Some people get nothing, absolutely. Why was I even affected at all? Good point. Well because we have miasms. Miasms is another way of saying inherited taint, T-A-I-N-T, inherited taint or the inheritance. If we look back at my parents, they didn’t have eczema. Actually, my mother had a tiny bit of eczema behind her ears and a little bit around her elbow when she was a young woman. But that was all it was. So nobody thought to take her to an allergist. That would be the last thing my grandparents would have done. My father had some allergies to certain insects, these sandflies that fly around the neighborhood where he grew up and so his eyes would swell up. We had allergies in the family. So once you have a child, you can assume that that’s going to be a potential concern are these allergies. Interestingly, both of them, one was on the skin for my mother and the other one was around the eyes and swelling. That’s what showed up in me later in life was swelling. Oh actually, when we did that trip to Florida, that’s exactly what happened and my eyes swelled up, not from insects but from the chemicals in the new car.

Paola:  Which would have been probably Apis, right, Apis 6 (Apply the discount coupon code – “Joette”– at check-out for an additional 20% off!)?

Joette:  Yeah, yeah, it would have been, absolutely. Apis, especially when it looks there are bags of water. It’s edematous, really, really swollen with fluid inside. So that would have helped. It would have helped my father all those years, too. So at any rate, what we’re looking at is when I was given the vaccine, the miasm was stimulated. The inheritance, the lowest level of the inheritance, the weakest link in the inheritance was let loose or was weakened further. So had I not had those allopathic methods administered to me at such a tender age and at the same time my mother stopped nursing, it was like boom, boom, boom. Really, when you think about it, it’s huge. No more nursing, vaccine, and antibiotics. No! I mean I was an infant.

Paola:  It’s the alarm clock for the sleeping giant.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  It’s like wake up now.

Joette:  Yeah, somebody kicked him in the gut and said wake up sleeping giant. All the bad stuff that’s in your inheritance has just been awakened. So I wasn’t going to get toenail fungus. I wasn’t going to get seizures. I was going to get what was already there lurking in the background that needed to be protected and unknowingly, my parents didn’t do that.

Paola:  This is so funny. People will say, “Well, we have pretty good genetics. Nobody in my family has cancer or whatever.” And I just want to say you’re not perfect. You’re not a Spartan, okay? Everyone has something.

Joette:  We have a lawyer here, folks.

Paola:  I know. You do no know. Everyone has something and you want to know what it is?

Joette:  Take a drug.

Paola:  Keep doing what you’re doing and don’t listen to me.

Joette:  Keep taking those drugs and you’ll see what the weakest links are in your family. But will this happen to everyone? Like you said, no, it doesn’t. There are many people who can get past all of this stuff pretty easily. But I was very sensitive and have been a good part of my life to chemicals, to heavy metals, to additives, to preservatives. So I think that had a lot to do with how I reacted as well. But who knows? Who know? You could analyze that until the cows come home. I don’t know that it’s worthy of that. Was it the adjuncts in the polio vaccine or was it polio vaccine. Was it the live polio that was injected? Was it live or was it dead or killed? I can’t remember now when they were. I don’t know what they were using in early 50s. Was it killed polio or the live? It was the sugar cube versus the injection? I would not have remembered, of course, what was done to me but I could certainly look it up and find out which one it was.

Paola:  So you’re saying the miasms that you’re going to talk about then look at correcting your genetics, basically?

Joette:  Yes. Now, that’s a big sweeping statement, isn’t it? Nobody can release that. What do you mean? If it’s inherited, I’m stuck with it, right? No, no, no, no, no. It means that you will always have the propensity for that but we want to correct the condition, the disease. It can be done. I’ve seen it done. I’m not going to tell you that it’s everyone. It can be done. I’m not going to tell everyone that they can all be cured because I believe and this is actually something that the Banerjis told me and I was thinking this all along but they put it so succinctly. They said every disease is curable, not every person is curable. So cancer is curable with homeopathy. AIDS is curable with homeopathy. I’ve seen it at the Banerji clinic. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched it. I’ve observed it. I’ve gone back looked at the records. I’ve checked it out. I want to see it for myself. I believe it. I see it. It’s data that is reproducible data. But it doesn’t mean that everybody with AIDS will be cured because it depends on how far they are, how deep the miasm is, how many the drugs they’ve taken.

Paola:  Their vital force, basically.

Joette:  Their vital force, absolutely. Their circumstances, there’s a lot to be included in this. Then a lot of people say, “Well so, what about my vital force? What are the chances of my getting past this?” Well we still don’t know.

Paola:  You just got to do it.

Joette:  We do the best we can. That’s right. We do the best we can. Of course, we want to put our ducks in order. I always tell people, “Look, make good choices. Before you have the baby, get married.” That makes life easy, right? It’s simple. It makes life super easy because now you’ve got two people taking care of one person. But make sure you’ve also got food on the table and you’ve got a roof over your head. I mean that’s just logical to me and it should be the right person to marry, too. That’s a big deal, huge. Make sure that person doesn’t have cocaine addiction.

Paola:  I always joked. I used to work at the bank when my husband and I were dating. He had an account at the bank that I worked at. Do you think I looked it up to see if he was in debts or whatever and what kind of places he was going to? Absolutely.

Joette:  I know. In the old days, you’d have to prove – the woman’s family would have to prove the dowry value. So you’re just using it in the modern way.

Paola:  Just doing my due diligence and I’m not ashamed.

Joette:  Yeah, you don’t want to live in abject poverty. You don’t want to do this alone. You want to do this. A partner makes a big difference. A husband makes s huge difference. So now you also want to make sure that you’re eating good food. Now, how can you do that without the other underpinnings? It’s possible. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that mothers out there who don’t have husbands are naughty or anything. I’m just telling you that it certainly makes it a lot easier in the long run if you’re doing this with someone else.

Paola:  Sure. So, kind of eating a high quality diet, that raw milk.

Joette:  Absolutely, absolutely.

Paola:  Reducing your stress.

Joette:  Yes, fresh air. Try to buy a house that doesn’t have pesticides sprayed all around it. Try to get into a school where you feel comfortable with where it’s a good school or you decide to homeschool. These are huge decisions and you want all your options available to you.

Paola:  Right, right. If your immediate family is exhaustingly stressful, move a few hours away. Do what it takes.

Joette:  And if standard family is good for you, by all means, take advantage of that. You need that extended family. Grandparents are key.

Paola:  Going back to the concept of genetics, there’s this hot new word out there called epigenetics. So we know about genetics but now it’s epigenetics. I’m not sure if all our listeners know what epigenetics is. It’s basically the modification of gene expression rather than the alteration of the genetic code itself.

Joette:  So we’re trying splitting hairs here. We’re moderating not changing.

Paola:  Right. So genetics, they’re saying, can change completely the code. Then epigenetics is saying is instead the code is the same, it’s just how it’s expressing itself as that.

Joette:  Yeah, yeah, so the expression of it, not the underlying molecular level of it, the makeup of it. Well and miasms have to do with what we’re talking about. There’s no doubt about it. I think we’re kind of splitting hairs, although it would be fascinating to find that out homeopathically.

But here’s the thing. Modern science is always digging around to find out these kinds of answers. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think we have any answers. I mean we know that there are certain inherited taints in the family. Whether you look it up and you go through blood tests or saliva tests or other kinds of molecular tests, there are specific diseases that you’re likely to get when you learn about miasms. That’s already determined. That was determined by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann back in the early 1800s, 1801, 1810, 1805. That was all figured out, not with microscopes, not with testing of saliva but it was determined through clinical experience. It was seen time and again. It’s a fascinating study. I won’t go into it too much here because we’re all going to talk about it in this course. I mean, we could talk about this all day long. Miasms are very fascinating.

But you can see that it’s coming from the family. What I love about this is it’s not saying, “Oh jeepers, now I’m doomed.” I’d rather say, “No. Look at your health. Look at your parent’s health. Look at your husband’s health and his parent’s health. Now, you know where your kids are going if you’re not careful, if you are imprudent, if there are drugs that are used for every sniffle and sneeze or even for not every sniffle and sneeze, for diseases or conditions that can so readily be corrected and aided or even softened if nothing else with methods that do not drive the pathology to a deeper state.” That’s the phrase. It drives the pathology or the family inheritance to a deeper state, a more sobering state. So that that next generation because now we’ve had three generations, four even, four generations depending on which family we’re looking at, of vaccinations. Now the kids are getting, I think the last tally was 69 vaccines by the time they reached college. By the time I reached college, I had maybe, I don’t know four.

Paola:  Wow.

Joette:  So it’s something to think about.

Paola:  So you’re saying, when it comes to homeopathy, who cares if the actual genetic code is different or if it’s expressing itself differently. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it came from your family and you’re sick. So now we treat it with the protocol.

Joette:  Right. Now, we use homeopathy to uproot it. Now we can look down the pike and look at our children and say, “Ho, ho, now I better watch out for that because my husband had asthma and I had eczema. That could come down the pike.” It doesn’t take much to turn that on or as you said, kick – put the alarm clock next to that sleeping giant or I said kick him in the gut. Suddenly, he wakes up and all the wrath of the family inheritance comes out.

Paola:  They wake up mad. They don’t wake up happy.

Joette:  Right, right.

Paola:  So I, myself was allergic or intolerant to it. It wasn’t so much chemicals for me but it was food. If any of the listeners are listening, you might have heard of the Autoimmune Paleo diet. So I couldn’t have milk, eggs, soy, beans, nuts. I couldn’t have any form of -.

Joette:  Grains.

Paola:  Oh, no grains, no rice, that goes without saying. I couldn’t even have nightshade vegetables, so tomatoes.

Joette:  Tomatoes and eggplant, and yeah, all the things that you love, that I love.

Paola:  Right. And I was slow and avocado, I was trying to crop out and that was a big one for me because it gave me all the fats that I needed and so I started living off of coconut products. I could tell that sooner or later that was going to get added to the list, too.

Joette:  The more myopic or the more narrow we become in our food choices, the more narrow we have to become on our food choices.

Paola:  Right, right. I have to say, Joette, all I avoid right now is gluten. I believe that I could probably start working on that but I’m just so happy that all I have to do is avoid gluten. So I’m just taking a break right now and just avoid gluten and I love it.

Joette:  Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing. I say that later on in life, I had eight, nine foods. I keep forgetting. I think I’ve said eight. I think I’ve said nine. So just to correct that, I’ve said both ways. Nine foods that I could eat and I called it my sad little diet.

Paola:  This was in your 30s?

Joette:  Yeah, when I was in my 30s. The more I couldn’t eat, the more I couldn’t eat. It was an exercise in my poor husband. We couldn’t go out to dinner. We couldn’t travel or if we did, we had coolers. I mean, I had the state of the art coolers, I have to tell you because when we were on road trips. That’s now what I want to be known for, my coolers.

Paola:  Right. Don’t.

Joette:  We went out to dinner last night. I didn’t even give it a thought. I mean I’m not going to eat stuff with MSG in it. But tonight, we’re going to meet with some friends and they’re going to have hotdogs and hamburgers and I’m going to eat it. Believe it or not, I’m going to eat on their free range. You know what I mean? These are not hotdogs that are high quality hotdogs. So actually, I will probably just have the hamburger but it’s certainly not from a free range cow. I can pretty much guarantee that. So I’m bringing the salad. I’m bringing an avocado salad and tomatoes. So I’ll eat a lot of my stuff and then I’ll have one hamburger, maybe without the bun.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  I still eat. I want to be part of the group.

Paola:  That’s my point. That’s what’s so exciting. Had I only found you now, I think maybe I would have taken this over even the Good Gut, Bad Gut because I have to tell you, my biggest fear, Joette was that I was going to starve.

Joette:  Yes, oh yes.

Paola:  I will have to have that bag that goes straight. I mean that was my biggest fear.

Joette:  Yes, absolutely. That’s the way I felt, too. I got to the point where I was afraid to eat anything because I didn’t know whether or not that was going to trigger it.

Paola:  Right, right.

Joette:  Being for me, it was asthma later on. So it went from skin to stomach to asthma.

Paola:  For me, it was my bladder. It would make my bladder bleed and that goes back to the whole genetics, whatever we’re predisposed to.

So Joette, why this course?

Who should take the course and why

Joette:  Because I feel as though there’s something in the other courses and that was just what we’re talking about, the genetic. So I feel that we needed to go deeper. I had not done that in other courses as deep as I’d like to. I want to explain how this has an inheritance value. It will give a lot of insight into what homeopathic medicines can be used but also what’s coming down the pike for folks, families. So this course is not for everyone. A lot of times, it’s so for all of my courses where everything I talk about is not for everyone. There are many people who really don’t have any interest in this. That’s their decision. But this course is not for someone who feels that they can’t take another course on, that they just don’t want to go this deep. They don’t need to understand why this is happening or how this is happening and what homeopathic medicines are connected to it.

But it is for someone who says I can’t get enough of this stuff. I know that many of the folks who are our students are of that ilk. They can’t get enough, just like me. I still can’t get enough. I’m in my 60s. I can’t stop reading this stuff. I can’t stop learning that’s why I go to India every year. I mean, I just got back a month ago. I’m ready to go in January. I just said to my husband, “Let’s go back.” I want to go back. He says, “Really?” Yeah. Why does it have to be once a year. Why can’t we go twice a year? I can’t get enough because it’s so fascinating.

It’s the only that I can equate this to is music. When you first start learning music and you find out where Middle C is and then you have one hand in the scales and then the arpeggios and then you can learn a little tune. Then you start playing little simple sonatas. Then by the time you turn into an adult, you really learned a lot but there’s always more to learn. You don’t even think to learn of the romantics or maybe you didn’t even think to learn about the jazz that came in the 20th century. I start learning rhythms. How cool is that? You could keep going on and on. How about country rhythms and how about comparing that to rhythms that were used in just a cappella or back in the 1600s by the monks? It’s just too cool. There is so much to learn and that’s the way homeopathy is.

Paola:  Well, I really relate to this. When my kids, and I play a little bit of piano, but my kids play piano. When they start off, they’re frustrated. It’s hard and I don’t get it.

Joette:  Because there’s no beauty to it, yet. There’s no fun.

Paola:  And that’s how I felt when I started off with homeopathy. But then as you progress, in piano, it takes a couple of years but with homeopathy, it’s much quicker than that. As you progress, you get your kid looking at you, “That was really fun.” My son’s playing this little song called Happy Farmer and it has this really fun scale. He loves it. That’s how I feel about the homeopathy. It’s no longer frustrating. I kind of passed the beginner stage and it is fun to cure people.

Joette:  Oh my God, it’s such a heady experience.

Here’s the thing I always tell people. We, humans are always looking at what the goals is, looking ahead, looking ahead. I got to cure this. I got to get to that. I got to be able to take care of my child’s this and my aunt’s that. I say, “No, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t look at what’s always ahead.” Of course, you don’t always want. You want to have goals. But turn around, look back, and look at what you have accomplished. Look 80% back. You won’t realize how much you’ve learned until you look back and say, “Wow, my child doesn’t have constipation anymore. My neighbor doesn’t have those arthritic knees any longer. My mother doesn’t have the weeping any more. My father doesn’t have shin splints.” I mean these are things that homeopathy corrects, not treats, remember. We’re not treating symptoms. We are correcting. So it is a heady experience. I always say it’s deliciously intellectual.

Paola:  I love that.

So there is one thing I want to talk about, Joette. That is your mission. Your mission is to get homeopathy in how many homes is it?

Joette:  I think it was a million. Did I say million? I keep forgetting. I think it was 100,000.

Paola:  You wrote it down somewhere.

Joette:  Yeah, I know. I have it written on a little slate at my desk.

Paola:  There’s a number.

Joette:  By 2020. That was the number, by 2020. So I don’t know if we’re being really ridiculous in thinking that.

Paola:  Yeah, we can do it.

Joette:  In four years, whether we can do this but with the help of the internet and people and really more than anything, mothers spreading it to mother to grand mom and to neighbor.

Paola:  At the rate people are getting sick with not very good options at their fingertips, I mean this is going to keep spreading.

Joette:  Yeah, it comes along faster for many, yes. Yes, that’s right. There, we want to get it out there. I always wonder whether or not I should do this podcasts about a course. I believe very strongly in this medicine, this medical paradigm. So my passion is to get it to people and so we create these courses. The courses are not necessarily for everyone. Not everyone wants to put out the money or doesn’t have the money to do this. So I have developed or we, as a group, my whole group and my team around me including you, Paola have put together tiers, levels of ability or interest in learning more. So I suppose the top tier would be working with me one on one.

So that if you have a problem and you don’t want to take course or you’re taking a course and you just can’t move fast along, enough along in it then you can work with me one on one. That’s certainly very acceptable for many people and it’s not for others. But let’s say that’s not affordable then I also have CDs and people can purchase CDs. They can also purchase the courses. So the courses are I think reasonable but some might not agree with that. But for what’s in them and for the fact that this information is so unique, I think that the value is there. But let’s say people don’t agree with that. The value isn’t there. Now, what I suggest you do is you spend time on my blog. I’ve been offering this blog for nine years.

Paola:  It’s awesome.

Joette:  It is every single week. In the beginning, I give a lot of classical information. So there are some information that it would be valuable but I say the last four, five years is the information that I’m the most proud of since I started working with protocols and the Banerjis. I give you, I come back from India. My assistant collates all my information for me, puts it together. Then I give this away on my blog. I teach people. I do this for free.

Paola:  Yes. I just want to, case in point, it costs money for you to get this information from India, here. It costs money to put these courses together. It’s a lot of work. I’m on the back side of that. I see how much work it takes. So obviously, you want to support those endeavors but I’m going to say it, Joette. I don’t think you’ve ever come out and said this before. But when I realized that this was what was going on, I just thought, “This needs to come out.”

When you buy a course from Joette like the Good Gut, Bad Gut or this Allergic course, you get access to a pharmacy where you get a discount. If you take even her study groups, which is kind of cheaper, it’s just like 50 bucks for that course, you do get a smaller discount but you get a discount and access to our preferred pharmacy. Anyhow, I was asking Joette once. So, why do we get this discount? It’s because Joette is waving her commission? For anyone who buys a remedy, she would get like 30%. But what she did is she turned that around and is giving it to her students because she didn’t want to have her hand in that way of making money.

Joette:  That’s the paradigm of conventional medicine where the doctor gives you a drug and he gets, I don’t know if I call it a kickback, I don’t know what it’s called these days. It’s changing all the time to protect the interest of those that are involved. But I don’t want to tell people, “Yeah, take this homeopathic medicine.” And then I’m getting a buck on it. I want you to just take it because it’s going to help you. I don’t want to make anything on it. It’s the same thing. We’re doing this with Boiron, too. When you click on it, on the medicine that’s on the blog and it takes you to Boiron, the pharmacy. It’s an international homeopathic pharmacy.

Paola:  Wonderful.

Joette:  You get a 20% discount if you use my name. I don’t get anything. I don’t want anything.

Paola:  That’s how we can make that possible is because you’ve given that up. That is your goal, Joette, is you want to help people and cure them. This isn’t about building some empire. It’s about building some empire. It’s about making people well. Am I allowed to say that?

Joette:  Well, it’s awfully nice of you to say that. But I still, I want you to know that I still make a living. That is part of this too. But I also know that people who come to the blog often can’t afford. So I don’t want them to say, “Oh my gosh. I have to send $15.” Some people can’t. They really can’t. So I want this to be available to all. If this is the way it’s best done, that’s the way we’re going to do it.

Paola:  Right, right. Well very good. Getting back to the Allergic course, how to conclude that idea. Tell me the Kali bichromium.

Kali bichromium for allergies 

Joette:  Oh yeah, yeah, bichromium, yeah. Because I want to give at least a protocol so that folks can go away with knowing something about how to use homeopathy for allergies. Quite a while ago, I used to have tremendous headaches and I used to think they were migraines. But I didn’t really know. I just knew the pain was horrendous. It was every single time the barometric pressure changed. Now, I lived in right downtown Buffalo, New York at that time. There was a barometric pressure change twice a week for crying out loud.

Paola:  So what is that exactly? I’m not sensitive to that. What is a barometric pressure?

Joette:  It means that the clouds have either come in and the sky is low. It’s actually the clouds are low. Then behind them, it might be a front or a clearing and as they blow through, it changes. The barometric pressure actually changes because now the clouds are lifted or they’ve dissolved or they’ve evaporated. The wind just blown them away and now it’s changed again. So it has to do with humidity too but it’s also pressure.

Paola:  So that’s what Chicken Little was referring to when the sky was falling because of that barometric pressure thing?

Joette:  Maybe, maybe. So every time a little storm would come through or a cloud cover would come through and it was imminent and I could feel that it was coming along, I would get these tremendous headaches. Well, these headaches were specific. That’s what I’m going to talk about, the specific kind of headache that was across my face, behind my eyes, above my eyes. It often started above my eye or between them and then it would just spread across. Sometimes it would go into my ears and it almost felt like it could be allergies.

At one point, I went to an allergist at that time. They said, “Oh yeah, it’s allergies.” Of course, he wanted to give me steroids. But I just started to learn about homeopathy and I said no, no, no, no. I’m going to have to stop. Thanks for the information and no thanks. So I went home and I just started to learn about homeopathy. At that time, I had a simple book and I looked up barometric pressure change or headaches or sinus. I think it was sinus. I looked at sinus pain and that’s what it was. So I took Kali bichromium 30, Kali, K-A-L-I, bichromium, B-I-C-H-R-O-M-I-U-M, bichromium 30C or 30X. Either one would probably act just as well. Because of my naiveté, I took one dose. I thought well, no change here. I guess that’s the end of that. Then I learned a couple of weeks later, no, no, no, when you’ve got something like this, you take several doses. You take them until it works. So I did it again.

Paola:  Just let’s remind people. It’s three to four doses and then the cue is not just end this.

Joette:  Yeah, you don’t take it forever. You give it a chance to act. It’s usually about four doses that will determine whether or not that will work or not. Yeah, so I took it maybe three times then it took the pain away within I don’t know, a couple of hours. Normally, I would suffer for days. So I was elated. I wasn’t going to take drugs at that time. I already knew at that point no more drugs. I knew that I was as sick with drugs as I was without them. So I said I’m stopping this stuff. I’m stopping spending the money on it and stop making myself sicker.

So then the next barometric pressure change came along and that was about a week later as usual or two weeks later. I took it again. I started to feel the pain, I took it again. That was it. I never had another headache, sinus pain headache or any headache for that matter now that I think of it except for maybe if I had a flu or something. I never had it again. I had suffered with these headaches for years, every week, every ten days. For years, I had suffered. It took two rounds.

Now, I want to parenthetically tell everyone it doesn’t always work like this. I love to tell the stories that are exciting like this because they illustrate so beautifully. There are lots of stories in which it takes months for conditions to correct but this was stunning. So I still have that bottle of Kali bichromium. No one else in my family has suffered from this except me. I can see how much I used. I used two rounds. Maybe what, four, six, eight doses altogether, I’ve never had another one since.

Paola:  So it’s like you were allergic to the barometric -.

Joette:  Oh, I was just allergic to the environment. I don’t know that you call it allergies. Yeah, it was in the environment. Yeah, maybe it is an allergy. Maybe some people do consider weather change as an allergic response. There’s no doubt about it. Some people say, “Well, it’s just because of the mold or that’s because of the pollen.” It can also be the change in weather. A lot of people suffer from allergies in spring or fall. They’re fine in the summer or they’re worse in the winter. Certain seasons bring it on. It doesn’t have to be that’s just because the heat went on and there’s dust or those kinds of things. It doesn’t have to be that. It can simply be weather. So yeah, I was allergic to – it seemed like so many darn things. It was just one more thing.

Paola:  So you’re saying as barometric pressure changes, Kali bichromium is the first one to think of?

Joette:  To think of when you have pain in the sinuses especially related to that. Now, there are other characteristics to this medicine. One is that the mucus is stringy and it’s Plasticine. I didn’t have any of that. All I had was the face pain, had pain into my ears above my forehead. I mean, it was the kind where I just had to lay down. I used to take this drug before I decided I wasn’t going to do this any longer. I used to take this drug called 222. I live in New York State and I used to travel. You couldn’t get it over the counter in New York State. I was so desperate for relief that I would go over the bridge to Canada and buy these things over the counter. They had codeine in them. I was creating like this codeine habit over this stupid barometric pressure change pain that I used to have then I’d be groggy. Then I’d get constipation from it. I mean, the list went on and on because of what the drug did. On one hand, I was thankful it got rid of the pain but it never cured me. It only caused the potential of a new long-term problem.

Paola:  It’s interesting how if the stars line up, something like a barometric pressure change can really bother some people.

Joette:  Oh you bet.

Paola:  I have a cute sister in law who delivered at the hospital. But she delivered in the hallway because there was some big, barometric pressure change and it put all these women into labor that they didn’t have a room for.

Joette:  Wow. And they recognized that. Isn’t that interesting?

Paola:  Yeah, they told her. Oh well it was the nurse. The nurses will know.

Joette:  The nurses are really astute. Really, nurses get it because they’re in the trenches. They see everything.

Paola:  They do, yeah.

Joette:  And they’re moms. They’re often moms and grandmothers. They’re observant because they’ve been watching their own for a couple of decades or so.

Paola:  Very good. Well thanks, Joette. This is a great treat. I’m so glad to talk with you. I’m really looking forward to your upcoming course.

Joette:  Oh Paola, I love doing this with you.

Paola:  Oh thanks.

Joette:  That’s really great. I hope it helps folks. Remember folks, if this doesn’t turn you on, you don’t want to go to courses, no problem. Go to the blog. Just use it. Use it. That’s what it’s there for. Just use that little search bar. Look up the condition that you or someone in your family is suffering from and including your dogs and cats and birds and wildlife. It’s the same thing for animals. So just look it up there and find out what I’m recommending for that particular condition and there you go. It’s free. You just click on it. Go to amazon and you buy it yourself or you go to your local store or you go to your homeopathy kit.

Paola:  You can get it from Boiron because we have that discount now.

Joette:  Boiron – that discount, Boiron, yeah, absolutely.

Paola:  Awesome. Thanks, Joette.

Joette:  Okay, my pleasure, Paola. Take care.

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, do 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.

” 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:

1:50  A  The origin

7:14  B  Being prepared

12:54 C  A little history

19:00 D  The importance and content of the study group

27:40 E  Motherhood

Today we look at the heart of Joette’s mission, which is to make homeopathy very usable and accessible to moms and families.

In this podcast, we talk about Joette’s brand new system she is launching called, A Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Book Curriculum

If you’re new to JoetteCalabrese.com or even if you’ve been with us for a while but haven’t known how to get started, this episode is pretty exciting because it’s your launch pad into the world of homeopathy.

Listen here or download to your personal device.

If you are on the fence and just can’t decide if this is what you should do…listen and hear what motivated Joette and so you can make an informed decision for you and your family.

Joette:  And it was just coming to light how dangerous antibiotics were. We really, truly don’t want these drugs in our kids’ precious little bodies. It falls onto our shoulders.

Paola:  Yes.

Joette:  And I love when someone comes pre-skeptical, already skeptical, “Ah, really. You’re going to have to prove it to me because really, homeopathy? If it was so important, why isn’t my doctor using it or how come I’ve never heard about it?” I embrace it. I loved it. I have this vision of mothers linking arms across the globe. It is transformational.

Paola:  We’ve got a great episode today and we really look at the heart of Joette’s mission which is to make homeopathy very usable and accessible to moms and families. In this podcast, we talk about Joette’s brand new system she is launching called Study Groups, A Gateway to Homeopathy. If you’re new to JoetteCalabrese.com or even if you’ve been with us for a while but haven’t known how to get started, this episode is pretty exciting because it’s your launch pad into the world of homeopathy. So let’s talk Study Groups.

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

Joette:  I’m doing well. Hi Paola. This is really fun. We’re going to do this to make this really extemporaneous, right?

Paola:  Yes, we are just going to talk like we’re in my kitchen right now.

Joette:  Right.

Paola:  I’m excited about this topic on Study Groups. It’s near and dear to my heart and I know it’s near and dear to your heart.

Joette:  It is.

Paola:  So tell us about Study Groups, what with homeopathy. Tell us about why you started your first homeopathy study group?

Joette:  Well, I started my first study group back in the 80s, when of course, there was no internet. It was very hard to find books on homeopathy. Most of them were from England and Germany and they had to be translated and all of that kind of stuff. I’d found a homeopath who I liked very much and she was helping me with conditions that my children might come up with here and there. And then, I asked her if she would teach a group of us.

So we got a group together and I got my friends together. Many of them didn’t know what homeopathy was. They thought it meant home remedies, that kind of thing. I had to do a little bit of selling but not much because around that time, it seemed to be a big interest, at least in my neck of the woods in New York State with the problems with drugs in children. It was just coming to light how dangerous antibiotics were. It still didn’t get out into the general public but it was just coming to light if you’re paying attention.

So I got this group together and we met in my living room every Thursday night for four years. It was a blast. And at the time, I had only one child. I wasn’t working outside of the home. I wanted to be home with him and I didn’t have time outside of the home. My whole life was our home, my parents, my child, my husband, my family. It was all about family and it was really nice to have kind of a night out. Well, it wasn’t really a night out because it was in my living room. But then after a while, we started to go to other places.

Paola:  I don’t think any group would meet for four years every Thursday night.

Joette:  Right, every Thursday night. I know. Exactly. 

Paola:  If they didn’t love it.

Joette:  Right, right. 

Paola:  If it wasn’t.

Joette:  Oh, we absolutely loved it. And sometimes, we actually veered off and said, “Maybe not homeopathy for the next month of two. Let’s come up with some recipes that we know are inexpensive, very wholesome, and easily made.” So we shared that kind of stuff. Every once in a while we take a little break. But the true focus was we, mothers all wanted to learn how to take care of our children without being dependent upon pharmaceuticals. That was the bottom line. That’s really what it was all about. So for those who came to the group, I’m going to go on and on. I’m sorry, Paola. I just – you only asked me one simple little question.

Paola:  I love it. You’re fine.

Joette:  Yes. For those who had children who were prone to ear infections, those mothers really studied the ear infection remedies. They wanted to know those, well they should. They wanted to know that handful of homeopathic medicines, what potency to use, how frequently to use it, what the indications were, what the differentials were between this homeopathic and that one. Those who had kids who were more prone to skin conditions, those mothers really made a point of learning all the skin remedies that were based on those particular conditions, of course. So we all became experts in our own little areas based on the maladies that were happening in our families.

Paola:  That’s exactly what I like about this because busy moms don’t have time to know deeply all those conditions necessarily.

Joette:  Right. 

Paola:  But when you have a little band of mothers who all know a piece of the puzzle; if he has an ear infection, call the ear infection mom.

Joette:  Exactly. So what it did is it broadened our understanding because we were sharing information. So even though my children, my child, I only had one at the time, was not prone to ear infections, he was prone to croup so I learned the croup remedies. I mean, I just said I better learn this. I better know cough remedies. But he did get an ear infection once. I went to a friend who did ear, who was our little ear infection specialist. 

Paula:  Right. Well, I have a girlfriend whose son, every time he gets a cough, it becomes a very asthmatic cough. She came to me super stressed out, “What do I do, homeopathy?” And I told her, “Honestly, I don’t know but call my friend Bessie.” She is my asthma.

Joette:  Bessie is the cough, yes, the cough person, right?

Paola:  And Bessie is off in some other state, far away but my friend here calls her, “Hi. Sorry. Paula said I could call.” And they went for that. 

Joette:  Right, right, right. It is mothering at its finest. It’s integrating mothering and community and like-mindedness. I have this vision of mothers linking arms across the globe learning how to use homeopathy but not just mothers, grandmothers and fathers can be involved too. But it’s usually mothers and grandmothers. I have this little vision of actually seeing women linking across the whole globe because homeopathy is ubiquitous except in North America. People don’t know about it here. But it’s all over Europe and Asia, India, South America. You’re from South America. It’s from South America, too.

Paola:  That’s the thing. If you live in those countries, maybe moms don’t need to be as versed because they can go to the neighborhood homeopath down the street. But out here, we don’t have an option.

Joette:  Right, right. So it comes down to our, it falls onto our shoulders.

Paola:  Right. It does.

Joette:  If we really take this seriously, if we really, truly don’t want these drugs in our kids’ precious little bodies.

Paola:  So if you’re a mom listening to this and you’re thinking but why, why do I want to learn all of these? Why can’t I just wait until my kid gets sick and then learn it? Then you just need to read Joette’s blogs and listen to her podcast on antibiotics because you want to be prepared if someone gets sick.

Joette:  You do not want to scramble at two in the morning when your child wakes up with a screaming ear infection or a strep throat or something, you don’t want to say, “Ah, what do I do now and where do I get these medicines?” No, no, no. You want to be prepared.

Paola:  I hate getting the phone calls from friends who’ve heard from a friend that I do homeopathy and they’re calling in the middle of a crisis. I hate that because now, then I spend an hour going through things, selecting a remedy with them. And then next thing I know the kid’s on antibiotics because the mom didn’t even know what homeopathy was and was scared to use it. They think maybe the antibiotics are safer. [08:08]. This is safer. That just drives me crazy. That’s my study group is it gives you the forum to get a leg up on this before it happens.

Joette:  Right, exactly, exactly.

Paola:  So my next question to you, Joette is what you guys talked about in your study group meeting. I mean, you just said at the beginning of the interview that some of the textbooks were pretty complicated, I think especially back then the homeopathy books to learn from were not easy. They were medical.

Joette:  Yes, they were medical books and they were books to learn classical homeopathy. So we got, I don’t even remember which book it was but we got a simple little book. It taught us how to use homeopathy for acutes, for those strep throats and ear infections and conjunctivitis and bee stings and that kind of thing. Then the more we learned about that, we realized well wait a minute. There’s more to learn here. What about the chronics? What about the eczema? What about the food intolerances? What about the allergies? And that’s all stuff that has to be learned, too.

What’s great about this is that – and I’m sure mothers will understand when I say that it seems like when I first had my first baby, I had my baby a little later in life. I was in my mid-thirties. Up until that time, I had a career. I wasn’t married and I’ve gotten married then suddenly I wanted to have children immediately. So my life was much different than a young mother’s life. When I had my baby, it seemed like it was one bodily function after another. It was the pregnancy and gaining weight and swelling and then the milk coming in and then the birth and the placenta and then the baby spitting up and the diapers. It was just one bodily function after another.

Homeopathy for me was like my intellectual nourishment. It was so smart and so intelligent and so much fun to learn. It countered all of the physical bodily functions that I was dealing with on a day to day basis. It was the perfect counterbalance to it. It then allowed me to feel free to spend money, for example, on buying homeopathic medicines because I wasn’t buying shoes and jewelry for myself or getting a great new hairstyle. I was buying and investing in my family’s health. I could justify it so that my intellectual pursuit was focused 100% on the care of my family. It felt not only justified, it felt lofty. It felt great.

I love opera. I love Italian opera and I’ve always said one day I’m going to really study it. I mean, really. I mean, I know some but I want to really take a deep, several courses on it. I actually thought when I was pregnant with my fist baby, that oh maybe I’ll do that. Maybe this is the time to do that; kind of an intellectual pursuit when I’m going to be so physically involved in my baby. Then it hit me that I didn’t want antibiotics, et cetera in my baby’s body. I said, “No, no, no, no. This is going to be my intellectual pursuit, this homeopathy.” It was very satisfying. To this day, it’s satisfying. It’s been 30 some years, still satisfying to me.

Paola:  Well, there is nothing like curing your own kid by yourself. I remember my son had an asthmatic cough that just developed out of nowhere. He never had it before. We moved to a new state. The allergies in that state were terrible. He started coughing and just [wheezing sound] and I remember I sat for a night. I picked the remedy. I gave it to him. Within two or three days, it was gone. I just felt like king of the world for those [12:03 crosstalk]. 

Joette:  Yes. Oh, yes. It’s the ultimate experience to be able to cure your own child.

Paola:  It is. It’s almost like, it brings giving birth to the next level.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Not only have I given him his life but I’m maintaining his life to the best of my ability. 

Joette:  Well put, Paola. Well put.

Paola:  Well and that’s why homeopathy is so exciting to study. It feeds that intellectual side.

Joette:  Right, right, right, right. It satisfies the mothering side, of course.

Paola:  It is. It is. Something I love about you, Joette is that you are always – everything you produce, every educational material you put out has mom in mind because you’re trying to simplify it and make it useable and ready to go. So tell us about study groups that you’re getting out there.

Joette:  Well, let me just step back for a moment because there’s a little history to that moms, the focus on moms. Because I started out as a mother and I found it very frustrating in that I could not learn how to treat my family, my children for chronic conditions like a food intolerance or an allergy or something unless I was willing to devote many years and a lot of money, tens of thousands of dollars going to homeopathy school, a lofty pursuit, no doubt about it, but nonetheless something that and I actually did it. But I felt as though I was being cheated out of something that I thought could be taught to mothers in a simpler way.

Then I became a tutor at an international homeopathic school. As these students came in, I recognized them, as time and again, they were mothers. I know what they wanted. They wanted what I had wanted. They wanted to be able to treat their families. They had no idea what they were getting into. They did not realize that homeopathy is extremely in-depth, extremely complex. It is medicine. You often need to know anatomy, physiology, pathology in order to go to homeopathy school. So, I found that many of these mothers who joined this school who I worked with closely as their tutor never graduated. They never completed their studies. And I know why. It’s because they thought they were going to learn how to treat their families. They didn’t realize they were being trained to become homeopaths out in the world and become a professional homeopath. That’s not what they wanted at all. So I found it irritating and frustrating that that was not made clear to them. Perhaps it was and they just dismissed it and believed no, no, no, it’s got to be easy. It’s got to be like essential oils because essential oils is really very easy. It’s got to be like herbs. Herbs are pretty easy.

Paola:  Right. 

Joette:  But homeopathy is not. In my travels, so to speak, in my professional travels, I’ve been digging and searching for these 30 years for homeopathic medicines that are specific to the condition not necessarily to the person. Classical homeopathy which is what people learned to use when they are being trained as a homeopath in homeopathy school (it’s actually medical school of sorts) does not teach this. And so, I ferreted it out until I found a lot of them. Then I started to utilize these practical methods. Then I learned. I went to the Banerji’s in India and studied with them. They have an entire system around practical homeopathy. So to me, it’s important that mothers have this information.

Paola:  I understand why doctors do it the way they do because it’s so easy. Have a diagnosis and then a protocol.

Joette:  Right, exactly.

Paola:  Drugs. But I can understand what you were grabbing at so go on.

Joette:  Yes. So I wanted the same thing not only for myself but later on I recognized that I wasn’t the only one who wanted this. This is what all mothers want. If the child has a strep throat, what’s the remedy? Don’t tell me I’ve got to crack open a medical book and go digging around and find, sift through 30 homeopathic medicines and depending upon the position that the child is sleeping in, et cetera, et cetera. Give me the remedy. What is the remedy? Now it doesn’t mean to see only one but give me the one that’s going to work in most cases. I’ll hedge my bet and that’s what I teach. That’s what I use in my practice. That’s what I teach in my classes. That’s what we want to teach in these study groups. This is what we teach in the study groups. It’s what I teach on my blog. It’s simple. It’s fast. You can teach anyone to use these protocols. Anyone can learn this.

Paola:  Well, and that’s the thing. I think today, you’re right, anyone can learn this. But I do feel that today, I mean, I can’t compare. I don’t know what it was like to be a mom in the 80s. I know what it was like to be kid in the 80s. But I see my friends today and I see these moms dealing with so much more. Most homes now are dual income so usually mom and dad are both working. 

Joette:  Right.

Paola:  And then you’ve got kids who almost all have chronic illnesses. My kids were watching this TV show or movie I think, something Monsters or whatever. This grandpa was babysitting the kid and the mom on her way out the door said, “Don’t forget to give him the nebulizer before he goes to bed and his breathing treatments.” I mean for this to put that in a cartoon shows you how mainstream and common chronic illness is.

Joette:  It is mainstream, I know.

Paola:  Today, chronic illness is normal. It is so stressful to be a mom nowadays to juggle the chronic illness plus the work plus all those other responsibilities.

Joette:  Right.

Paola:  And so you’re right. We need practical homeopathy that’s straightforward and to the hearty of it right away. 

Joette:  Right. It’s all about speed and efficacy and then of course, I hope it goes without saying that it is also about no side effects. That’s what, of course, homeopathy is noted for. Of course when I say efficacy, I mean cure. I want to see cure. I don’t want to see that we’re postponing this problem for some time in the future when it’s going to come back only this time with a vengeance. No, I want it uprooted. That’s the whole idea.

Paola:  Call it the end of it.

Joette:  Right. Okay. So, Paola, you ran our pilot program, actually two pilot programs for the study groups. One in Virginia and then you ran the other one in Texas where you are now. I mean, what motivated you to do this? I mean, I know what motivated me. Tell me what your experience was and what your motivations were.

Paola:  Well actually, you motivated me, Joette. Any mom who has friends and that’s everyone, right, if you don’t figure out on your own, you go to your girlfriends when your kid has a problem, right? You go to them first before you go to a doctor. You always talk about it to your girlfriends. So I’m very drawn to this group setting learning because I really appreciate the wisdom that other moms give. I love the camaraderie we have in raising our kids. I don’t care if you’re 45 or 25, if you both have a one-year old baby, you’re instant friends and you instantly have something to share with each other.

Then I remember you mentioning that you did a homeopathy study group and I thought that’s what I want because let me tell you my whole family came down with strep throat that you’ve mentioned and I had diarrhea the entire time. I was so stressed out. I remember thinking who can I call, who can I talk to that’s been through this, that can hold my hand and say you’re going to be fine, you’re going to get through this, I treated my kid with strep last month. Do you know what I mean?

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  I didn’t have that. I was utterly alone and I hated it. Now my husband is very supportive. But I even have girlfriends whose husbands are not very supportive of this. And then you’re left to yourself, I couldn’t imagine. 

Joette:  Right.

Paola:  That’s why I want my own study group. I want my own little group of moms who are in the know that can back me up and I don’t want to be alone anymore.

Joette:  Well yes and it’s not only for those events that are trying such as that but it also makes it easier when someone says I can’t find this particular remedy in the US but you know, I found this great place in England and you can buy it online or it’s like the same thing with the whole organic food movement. I love when my friends started to get involved in that with me because then I knew that I was going to have more organic foods available to me. There’ll be more resources, more brains involved, more brawn moving it along. Obviously, team work makes a big difference.

Paola:  Right. So I think that that first pilot that we did came together organically. We really started looking out what did moms need to know to get started with homeopathy. What are the basics, the ABCs and that’s what the first half of the study group ended up being that Joette wrote. Then the second half of these study groups really looked at chronic illness. So the first half, the ABCs, we looked at acutes and then the second half, we looked at chronic.

I have to say that when I gathered these friends over to my house the first time, I was begging them. There’s this thing called [21:25 crosstalk]. It’s really awesome. I really like you. I want you to love this, too. My friend calls me a homeopathy missionary. [21:35 crosstalk].

Joette:  You drew a lot of your friends from your church, right? I mean, this was all through your church.

Paola:  Yes. Well, mostly in that. 

Joette:  Well then they saw you every Sunday so they had no choice, the poor kids.

Paola:  I know. Not all of them. A lot of them were interested, too and some from my home school group. Then I felt like I had something to prove to them that this really is awesome and I crossed my fingers. I hope someone gets sick.

Joette:  You’re a cruel woman.

Paola:  Then by the end of study group, by the end of the eight weeks, it’s eight classes and so we divided them weekly but you could do them twice a week or whatever. By the end of the eight classes, these moms, I mean there was this transformation. It was amazing. I loved to see that transformation and that’s when I told Joette, I said, “Joette, we need to document this in videos. We need to document this transformation, what has happened in a matter of eight classes to these moms.” And so we did. We have seven little videos of these moms talking about that transformation to them.

Joette:  That’s the word. It is transformational.

Paola:  It is. And we’re not exaggerating one iota. 

Joette:  Yes. And I love when someone comes pre-skeptical, already skeptical, “Ah, really. You’re going to have to prove it to me because really, homeopathy? If it was so important, why isn’t my doctor using it or how come I’ve never heard about it?” I embrace it. I loved it. I like a nice, a good, solid discussion on those kinds of subjects or on that subject, I should say.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  I know that in that group I think you had a couple of skeptics.

Paola:  Oh, I sure did. I’ve actually done three study groups now. I’m done with the two pilot studies that we’ve carefully watched and took records and even statistics. But I love it now. Before, it used to intimidate me, that skepticism.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Now I feel like I just say whatever you say. I say, “You know what? That’s okay. You don’t have to believe in this. It will still work if we pick the right remedy.” 

Joette:  Right.

Paola:  I just love being that confident and it does. It just keeps working and working. By the end of my second study group, I had one mom who was on fibromyalgia drugs for I think four years now and she’s completely off of them, completely off of them. Another one has all of this physical pain like fibromyalgia but different and she is tons better.

Joette:  Well and the gut people. There are all the gut people with the food intolerances. That’s so big today, so big.

Paola:  So it’s getting to the point now where I feel like my telephone, my email, and my door is being beaten down. “I heard about your group. When are you going to have another one?” I’m like, “We just had one. For heaven’s sakes, it was eight weeks and I’m exhausted.” So I mean this study group curriculum is wonderful because it’s going to hand it off to everybody else. 

Joette:  Oh and the other part of this, Paola is for you. I found this for myself too when I taught homeopathy in different venues. Just like anything, you think you understand it. You think you have a good understanding of it. Then someone throws you a curved ball and you say, “Wow! I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question.” It forces you to research it and find the answer. So it forces you to learn your craft, so to speak, even better.

By taking on this course, these classes, you’re not actually on teaching level, you did do a lot of teaching. It’s unnecessary because we have the curriculum now, right? I mean, you wouldn’t say that you have to actually be teaching. But being a part of it and organizing, you’re putting, you’re bringing your friends in, in a way, you’re still teaching on some level or another because you’re going to offer your experiences. It rounds out your understanding. It fleshes it out in such a more in-depth way. It’s not boring if you already know all of this stuff. Well first of all, it’s not boring because you’re teaching all this and that’s exciting. But it’s also not boring because we’re using protocols that no one else knows about. Really these protocols that we use are pretty much unknown in the Western world so there’s always something new to learn.

Paola:  You’re right when you say that you don’t have to be the teacher and know this. Think about my first study group, I knew very, very little about homeopathy. I knew very basic stuff. So between the first, the second and then by my third time that I did study group, I mean there’s a lot of information. So what we did is we constructed a study group booklet that has everything that I wish I had had. They say from soup to nuts. It has a chapter reading that gives you the background information and then it has a guided discussion guide. Number one, say this to the group and they just read it and say it. Then it just hand walks me through it and that would be, that would have been so nice because I can read, I can follow step by step instructions. 

Joette:  Well, especially as a home schooling mother. As you know, there are a lot of times when you’re home schooling your kids and you don’t know the subject. But if you read it the night before, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Paola:  Yes.

Joette:  Even if you’re just one step ahead.

Paola:  Another, that’s exactly how I keep my sense in Math curriculum.

Joette:  Yes. That’s how I did it with my kids, too.

Paola:  No, I hate Math. I hate Math. 

Joette:  Yes. You learn it the night before and you present it the next day. Now it’s yours. Now you get it.

Paola:  Yes or even, I’m not going to lie, the morning I would sit down, okay, open the book, hammana, hammana, okay. Here we go.

Joette:  Right, hammana, hammana, exactly. Oh, Paola.

Paola:  Yes and I love that. I love that about this curriculum. I love that you always have moms and regular people in mind.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  So I am, I’m really excited about these study groups. I feel like we’ve been working on it for a really long time. I just, I really think it’s going to bless a lot of lives. 

Joette:  I agree. 

Paola:  We have to have that moxie.

Joette:  The moxie? Gut?

Paola:  Yes. 

Joette:  Spunk and moxie.

That’s what it’s about. But that’s what it takes to be a mother anyway. You really can’t be too flexible. I mean, flexible certainly with mothering and understanding your children. But you have to have a posture when you raise your kids in disciplining them, in what you’re going to serve for their foods, what kinds of education, what their spiritual life is going to be, how you’re going to carry this all out. You really have to have some pretty definitive ways of looking at life. If you haven’t gotten that far before mothering or just as you’re mothering, then it’s really time to start muscling up and figuring it all out.

Paola:  I mean, nowadays you do. I feel like everything in the world today is so extreme. The morals are so extreme. The medicine especially is so extreme, it’s not you know. When I was a kid, “All right, just let the cough wear off, it’ll be fine.” Now you can get in trouble if you haven’t taken them to the doctor, you haven’t gotten your vaccines. Everything is so, so extreme.

Joette:  Number one, there’s a lot of paranoia about health in children and illness in children. Interestingly, there was a study, there have been many studies done showing that really the danger in children’s lives are not childhood illnesses but accidents. That’s where the true danger lies. It doesn’t happen very often particularly if you’re living in North America or Europe and in countries where there’s good sanitation and decent food and families that can care for their children well.

But it takes a certain amount of flexing. I think it comes naturally for women for the most part. Once we have a baby, obviously there’s no turning back and you become the best that you can be. You become the mother lioness and you flex your muscles, you flex your mothering muscles and your intellect. You put that together and make it the best mothering. I call it becoming a mighty mom.

Paola:  Yes.

Joette:  We really want to make this act of mothering more than something quiet and serene, although that’s good, too. We want it to be powerful. We even want it to be a political statement of sorts. We, mothers can change the world if we decide it. We really have the power. We’ve the buying power. We have the resources. At least in North America, women are I believe, the most privileged group ever known in society. We have everything at our fingertips. We have the ability to become and do whatever we want and if we’ve chosen motherhood as our chosen vocation, we should be great at it and why not? Mighty moms.

Paola:  I love it. Well thank you, Joette.

If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about wanting to get that mightiness that Joette is talking about, study groups is your gateway. It’ll get you right in there and it’ll get you started. I’m really excited to send this out to the world. It’s been a very meaningful project for me and I know it’s been for you, Joette. And it is. It’s your gateway to be a mom, a mighty mom. I love it.

Joette:  Well Paola, I’d have to thank you too for putting this all together and making this happen from a distance, from state to state. It’s really great. So thank you too, Paola. 

You just listened to a podcast from JoetteCalabrese.com where nationally certified American homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shared her passion for helping families stay healthy through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition. Like Joette says, “Homeopathy works.”

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 share in this podcast the harrowing experience I had with my firstborn child and how that changed the way I raised all of my children. 

     I explain that Homeopathy is more than home remedies, herbs, and vitamins; how it used to be prevalent in the US and is still widely used in Europe, South America, and India.

     Homeopathy is a simple – yet intelligent and elegant – way to physically help your family.  

Jendy:              This podcast is sponsored by the book, “Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less).” Whether your goal is to eat healthier, save money, live more sustainably or a combination of these, “Backyard Farming” helps you get there. Comprehensive and detailed, it covers everything you need to know to plan, purchase, plant, raise, harvest, preserve and enjoy your own backyard farm.

Narrator:          You’re listening to The Mom Prepares podcast, a feature of momprepares.com, which is a modern guide to self-sufficiency, and a place to learn how to keep your family safe, fed and healthy.

Jendy:              Hello, this is Jendy, and I am here with Joette Calabrese from JoetteCalabrese.com, and she is an expert on homeopathy and has several courses coming out that I believe our listeners would be very interested in. So hello, Joette. How are you?

Joette:              Hi, I’m very well. Thanks for inviting me, Jendy.

Jendy:              Would you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Joette:              Yes, certainly. I’m an American homeopath. I’m a public speaker and an author, and I’ve studied and practiced homeopathy for about 27 years. But I was not always a homeopath. I raised my children and homeschooled them for 15 years while studying to become a professional homeopath. And I also made all my family’s foods from scratch and raised chickens and ducks, and we have bees, and we have a pond.

And so, my children are all grown now. They’re adults and away from the home, but I raised my children solely with homeopathy. They just never got an antibiotic, never had a Tylenol, not even an aspirin. My oldest is 27, and we have two others just under his age, and they’ve never had any drugs at all because I counted 100% on homeopathy and homemade foods and some botanicals as well.

I have been very involved with Weston Price Foundation. I’m on the honorary board of the Western A. Price Foundation, and I’m a professional speaker and present at many of their international and regional conferences. I’ve spoken internationally and have authored not only my own blog where I try to give mostly women … I skew towards moms because I feel very strongly about what I was capable of doing with my education, and I want to be able to share that with others.

Jendy:              I think for me, when I became a mom is when I became much more interested in what I was putting in the body. Before that I didn’t think about it, for me personally. And I love what you said about that, about antibiotics. One time I took my child to the doctor, I think for an earache, and they gave him antibiotic. And they said, “Well, that’s not really going to take it away. You’re going to have to come back and get something else.” And I was kind of like, “Well, then why do I want this?”

Joette:              Right. Good question. What I want to do with moms is I want them to question the authorities and not just … once you homeschool your children, for example, you can’t help but start questioning other traditional methods of raising children. Once you step outside of one box, you can’t help but note that, “Boy, that’s not right either, and maybe I should check this out; maybe I should look into this instead of that.” And it just snowballs into a lifestyle that is pure and noble, as far as I’m concerned.

Jendy:              So how did you first get interested in homeopathy?

Joette:              Well, I went to a lecture offered by a doctor, an M.D., about 27 years ago. He was traveling through my hometown of Buffalo, New York, and he was giving a lecture on vaccines, and I was pregnant with our first son. And I went to the lecture to learn a little bit about vaccinations, because I wasn’t sure. I’d read a little bit and just wasn’t certain about it. And I had no idea that this man was also a homeopathic physician. And so when I went and listened to him, I was astounded by the numbers and his data and the information that he gave this small band of mothers in regards to how every single illness that vaccines are supposed to protect us against, there’s a homeopathic medicine that’s been used for close to 200 years that has been shown to be even more efficacious.

I was blown away that night. And I went home and told my husband about it and was very excited. And I bought a book, a simple homeopathy book, and a little homeopathy kit, which meant that I had a number of remedies that I could use if something happened to someone in our family, and then this book to help me determine it. And then I went and met with a pediatrician to determine who I was going to have as my pediatrician for my child when he was born.

And I told the pediatrician that I was thinking about the idea of vaccination and that we were considering postponing vaccinations, or at least maybe minimizing the number in the very beginning and slowly adding them. And he kind of rolled his eyes a little bit, that should have been my first clue, but it wasn’t — I wasn’t savvy enough at that time to pick up on those nuances — but he rolled his eyes.

And all my friends told me, “Oh, he’s a great guy. He’s very open-minded.” Which was another clue I should have listened to, because when you hear “open-minded,” that’s not what you want. We don’t want an open-minded doctor; we want a doctor who really gets it — not someone who will consider. No, no, you want somebody who’s already done the homework.

So, my son was born, and I took him for his well-baby checkup. That was mistake number three now, okay, because there was nothing wrong with him. He was well! What did I need a doctor to tell me that he was well for? So, I foolishly did that and in trotted the nurse with a little vial and tossed it in my son’s mouth. I said, “What was that?” She said, “Oh, just his polio vaccine.”

Now, he was six weeks old. He was as healthy as can be. He never had anything wrong with him; he had been nursing vigorously; he was the right weight. And there was nothing I could say. There was nothing I could do. I said, “Well, I guess that’s the way it went.”

I decided though, I was pretty disturbed by the fact that they didn’t recognize the fact that on my chart, it was very clear that we were going to postpone, and we were going to talk about it before, et cetera, et cetera, and no one bothered to do that with me. And I went home deciding I am not going back to that pediatrician.

Well, two days later, my son got very, very sick — 105.5 fever — he was listless. It lasted for two and a half days. And I said, “I am not going back to that pediatrician because I know what he’ll do. He’ll want to put him on an antibiotic and Tylenol, and I will be down the road that I did not want to travel ever in my life.”

And he was only six weeks old, it would’ve been just the very beginning.

So, I had this book — this homeopathy book — and this kit. And nothing in the book indicated where to go with something such as vaccinosis or injury from vaccine, but what it did have was a chapter on high fevers. And so, I can’t tell you precisely why I chose this specific remedy that I chose. It was an embryotic decision, but I decided to use the remedy Sulphur 30. And my mother was with me; my close friend was with me. They could see how sick my son was. He was laying in my arms, lethargic. He looked all dried out. Later, I realized I should never have been without forcing some kind of fluids in him. And he probably should have been on an IV — he was so sick — to get at least saline solution. But I lucked out.

And I put the pills, four little Sulphur 30C — that’s a homeopathic remedy — directly into his parched little mouth. And honest to goodness, Jendy, it was less than 40 minutes. He became firm in my arms; he commenced nursing, and the fever was completely gone. I was flabbergasted. My mother said, “What just happened?” My friend said, “Holy cow, this is amazing.”

And that’s what turned me. I said, “I must learn about this medicine. I must know what this is.” Had I gone the other route, he would’ve had an antibiotic, like I said, and Tylenol. Tylenol’s very dangerous for the liver, especially a little baby’s forming liver. Antibiotics ruin the gut, even long term. I’m not talking about even if you give them probiotics, it takes a long time to undo what antibiotics can do to a baby’s — to anyone’s gut, for that matter.

And I found the answer myself in this book. I did it. I cured my son. I can’t tell you the pleasure that I had in having accomplished that. So, I got every book I could find, and there were not very many. We’re talking back in the ’80s, there were not very many books. So, I dug and dug until I found a woman who had studied homeopathy in England — because homeopathy has been big in this country since the 1940s. It’s very big in Europe and England and Germany, France, Switzerland, Greece. But she had studied there. And I begged her — she did not want to do this, but I begged her — to teach me and a band of mothers how to do this, so that we could treat anything that came our way. And we studied for four years — we met every Thursday night — studied for four years, and finally I decided to go to school in Toronto. And the rest is history, for my life.

Jendy:              Wow. No more antibiotics or vaccines after that?

Joette:              Well, he never had the antibiotic, and he certainly never had another vaccine, and we never went back to those pediatricians. Now he’s a 27-year-old man, and as healthy as can be — rarely ever gets sick, and if anything, it’s very mild. It’s a little cough once every four years or something. And so then I raised our subsequent children in the same fashion, and we just lived on the foods that we grew and the homeopathic medicine that I was learning about consistently.

Jendy:              So, if our listener doesn’t know what homeopathy medicine is, how would you explain it?

Joette:              Okay. Well, most people think that “homeopathy” means home remedies because of the prefix home in the word, but it doesn’t mean that at all. “Home,” in the word homeopathy, actually means homonym or like or similar. And “pathy,” of course, means pathology or illness. So, it means similar illness.

So, let me give you an example. Let’s say we get an onion, and we chop it up. And most folks, when they’re exposed to an onion will have a cluster of symptoms: their eyes might run; their nose might run; their upper lip might excoriate; and they might even become a little jittery. So, that is a cluster of symptoms associated with the gross exposure to an onion.

Now, let’s say there’s someone who says, “Every spring when the tree buds blossom, my eyes run, my nose runs and my upper lip excoriates, and I’m a little bit jittery.” That’s a similar cluster of symptoms as what an onion will cause in the gross form. But it’s not exact pathology, it’s homeo or similar pathology.

Because the difference is in the first scenario, the cause of the eyes running, et cetera, is as a result of being exposed to an onion. In the second scenario, the etiology or the cause of the illness is as a result of being exposed to tree buds blossoming.

So, in a homeopathic pharmacy (I might say parenthetically, regulated by the FDA — this is not underground, but in a homeopathic pharmacy), the pharmacists get a drop or a tincture — a drop of onion (of juice) and in alcohol, so now it’s called a tincture — and they dilute it many times. They dilute it and dilute it and dilute it. So, when I said that I used Sulphur 30 for my son, it was Sulphur, in that example, diluted 30 times. In the onion example, we might dilute that 30 times and “C” or “X” after it, means that it’s been diluted to the hundredth or the 10th power. So, it’s quite dilute.

At a certain point in dilution, homeopathy — excuse me — the original substance becomes curative. It might cause illness in its original form, causes symptoms such as eyes running, nose running, et cetera. But after it’s been diluted a number of times —and it’s a mathematical number — once it gets to a certain level, the toxicity is minimized, and the curative aspect of the onion (or whatever plant or whatever mineral we’re using) comes to the fore.

So, for that person who has the tree bud blossoming allergies, if we give them homeopathic onion that has been highly diluted — and of course we don’t use “onion,” (we don’t use that as the name). We use the Latin name because this is medicine. So, we use the name Allium cepa, which means onion in Latin. And then it gives us a number as to how many times it’s been diluted.

We give that to that person with the tree bud blossoming allergies, and it uproots the allergy. It uproots it — doesn’t treat symptoms — it gets rid of it. It’s done. We’re done. I’m not saying one dose, sometimes it needs to be repeated over a period of days, and depending on the severity of the allergy for that person, it might be weeks, could even be a couple months. But when it’s done, it’s generally done.

Now, we might find that two years from now when the tree buds are blossoming again, that person might again have that problem, but it will be a much lesser level. They won’t suffer nearly as much. It will last for a shorter period of time. So, then they use Allium cepa again, and it goes even deeper.

So, it’s almost like pulling up the weeds in the garden. Each time you see the presentation of the weed, if you pull it up by its roots, you might find that there’s a little bit of a root left behind. And the next time round, it’ll be a weaker level of that dandelion.

That’s what homeopathy is.

So, I warned you. I warned you, Jendy. I told you it’s a long explanation. Particularly because most folks still believe that it means, “Oh, it means vitamin C or using home remedies or taking raw honey and vinegar for indigestion or something like that.” And all of those have validity, but that’s not what homeopathy is.

It is a very specific medical paradigm. And I might also add that I think is rather interesting, is that homeopathy was very big in this country at one time. The homeopaths had 100 hospitals in our country, in about 1940. And at the same time, the conventional doctors had fewer hospitals. Homeopaths were bigger and more impressive hospitals. There were not more homeopaths than the medical doctors — about 40% of the doctors in this country were homeopathic physicians. But there were more hospitals, and they were the big, big important hospitals that you still see all around. They’re no longer homeopathic, but it was very big in this country. And then we had an infighting in medicine back in the 1940s, and it was abolished in U.S. and Canada. Again, not so in Europe, South America, India, just North America.

Jendy:              Is it coming back at all?

Joette:              I think it is coming back. I believe that the way it’s going to come back is grassroots this time. Although it was grassroots last time, too. It was mothers who wanted to learn homeopathy, wanted to be able to use it for their families because they were tired of the same old stuff we’re tired of today: the antibiotics, and at that time they didn’t have Tylenol, but they certainly had aspirin. They didn’t want to see their stomachs all turned inside out from aspirin poisoning. They were tired of the old ways, and they wanted something that was gentle, but very, very effective. And that’s the description of homeopathy.

Jendy:              Yeah. For you personally, do you take something from your homeopathic medicine every week, or is it just kind of like when you get sick?

Joette:              Well, if it’s something that is an acute — such as an ear infection, for example — then you would just take it for a few days or less than a week, and it would be resolved. And then the next ear infection — that had been historically repeated, like you said earlier, every couple of months it can happen again and again, and again and again. No, it aborts it. It stops the whole process because the body doesn’t need to show that any longer.

But if it’s something that’s chronic, like allergies or food intolerances or long-term illnesses like arthritis, behavior problems in children, now we have to use it for a longer period of time. But again, there are no side effects. No side effects. Can you imagine a medicine that only does good and no bad? We didn’t even know there was such a thing, did we?

Jendy:              No. And it’s always with the end goal to completely stop taking it. It’s not like some medicines you get on, you’re just on forever. But this medicine is to finish and be done with it.

Joette:              That’s right. Precisely. Precisely. That’s exactly how it works.

Jendy:              And at the very root, it is all natural substances.

Joette:              Well, it comes from plants, animals, minerals, elements on the periodic table. There are close to 6,000 homeopathic remedies that are made today. The difference between homeopathy and botanicals or herbals is that homeopathy utilizes things in nature that are toxic … because you can … because it’s so dilute that it eliminates the toxicity and allows the curative aspect to come to the fore.

So, we can use something like poison ivy. So, herbalists can’t use poison ivy; it’s too toxic. But if you get poison ivy — the plant — and get a drop of its juice and put it in alcohol, now we’ve made the tincture (like what I said earlier with the Allium cepa). And dilute it and then dilute it again and again and again and again — say, for example, 30 times to the hundredth power — it’s called Rhus tox (that’s the Latin name for poison ivy) 30C, for example. And we use that for chicken pox. Why? Because poison ivy acts just like chicken pox: pustules, itching, oozing, restlessness; it’s the same picture.

So, it’s “homeo pathology.” It’s similar illness, but it’s similar enough that it will resolve it, but not exact. Because if it was exact, then you would have to get chicken pox pustules and dilute them and give them to the child who has chicken pox. No, no, no, we use similar illnesses. It’s quite elegant. It’s simple and intelligent.

Jendy:              Yes. It’s like, “Oh, that makes so much sense, but oh, wow, there’s so much more to it.”

Joette:              There is more to it. And many teachers of homeopathy … and I will be honest with you, I too (and I’ve taught at colleges and universities and online and at seminars, and I do presentations all over the world), and I used to teach that it is extremely complex. And then I realized — it took me a long time, I’ll be honest with you, Jendy. It took me a long time to realize this — that there is a way to do this for chronic issues that’s very easy for moms and families to learn. And that’s what I’m teaching now, how to do this very simply with simple protocols.

Jendy:              And you teach this through your website, right?

Joette:              Yes. I have CDs and books that I have authored that are available on my website. But right now, we’re running a course called Good Gut, Bad Gut. And you can go right to the front page, click on the image for Good Gut, Bad Gut, and it gets folks to learn a little bit more about it.

And the reason I call it Good Gut, Bad Gut is because of my nutritional understanding. And because I’m so very much against the use of antibiotics in most illnesses — particularly normal childhood illnesses — I find that people gravitate towards me who have had problems with their children or themselves having been put on antibiotics.

And we find that the ills that come from having used them — even one round of it can do this — are not just about the gut. It doesn’t just disorder what’s happening in the gastrointestinal system, but it also changes children’s personalities. We see ADD in children, we see behavior disorders. We see moodiness and fogginess in adults, as a result of antibiotic poisoning. We see arthritis in older people. I mean, the list goes on and on, and I go into all of that. So, what I teach is how to uproot all of those issues in this Good Gut, Bad Gut course on my website.

Jendy:              And that’s all centered in the intestinal area?

Joette:              Yes. Sugar addictions and menstrual issues, and I’m just looking at some of the … chronic bloating, food intolerances. If I don’t get one call by noon every day regarding food intolerances, that’s an unusual day for me. Most people suffer; they can’t have wheat. Why can’t people eat wheat anymore? I mean, wheat has been around for thousands of years, for goodness sakes. Jesus broke bread that way. Why can’t we eat wheat?

Well, some people say it’s the kind of food that’s been grown, and I will concede that it is. A lot of the food is industrialized and is difficult to digest. Nonetheless, we can digest it until we have the antibiotics, and then it’s almost like a timeline. We can say, “I’ve not been well. I’ve been bloated and have sugar addictions, et cetera, et cetera, ever since last December.” And then my question is, “What happened in October or November?” “I had a sinus infection.” “Oh really? Let me guess what you took.”

And now that sinus infection that was a short-term acute illness … that had it been even left alone (I’m not saying that you would leave it alone), but had you left it alone, it might have lasted perhaps three weeks, two weeks, now has become a chronic illness because of the treatment that was used to uproot the sinus infection.

So what I teach is what do you do if you get a sinus infection? Let’s learn a homeopathic remedy so that you can uproot it, and you don’t have to think about antibiotics. But if you’ve already taken them, now what do you do? So, I approach it from the very beginning, the beginning thinking process and all the way to the end when we perhaps have already done damage … because it can be undone, and I’ve seen it many, many times.

Jendy:              Because the body can heal itself if you give it what it needs.

Joette:              Absolutely. Absolutely. But not if it’s been poisoned. Sometimes, it can’t be done on its own. And even with probiotics, they can be helpful here and there, but it depends on the person. Some people, a probiotic can make all the difference in the world, and they can get back on their feet. But what if it’s a child who’s had an antibiotic?

Let’s say my son had been given an antibiotic at six weeks old. And then he had another bout of another high fever or ear infection, would’ve had another one and another round and another round and another round, another round. Then maybe acne when he was 18, and then by 21, he had a sinus infection. Now how can we possibly expect that poor body to be able to respond properly after it’s been poisoned so many times? It’s very hard to do that without the help of high quality food (which is also, of course, important) but particularly, with homeopathy to uproot that.

Jendy:              Do you have an idea of cost? You mentioned something about you bought a kit when you first started, and then you said there’s FDA pharmacies. Are you buying the medicines or have you gotten to the point that you make them, and is there a lot of cost involved?

Joette:              Well, I don’t make homeopathic medicines, generally speaking, but I do teach it in my … I’m going to be teaching it in my Survivalist course using homeopathy. Where who knows if we’re in a storm or there’s a catastrophe of some sort, one may need to make a homeopathic medicine, and so I do teach that.

But for everyday use, given that we’re living in a comfortable world and things are not at that level, then I urge people to buy these remedies. You can buy them in health food stores, I sell a kit out of my office where they are 100 remedies. And that costs about 200 — I’m going to take an approximation — I believe it’s about $255 for 100 homeopathic remedies that are very commonly used in every day family care. [Editor’s note: 100 Remedy Kits are no longer available through Joette’s office.] You can get them at Walmart; you can get them at drug stores; just watch for them.

They have homeopathic remedies for teething, for sleeplessness, for restless legs, for muscle cramps, et cetera. They’re ubiquitous. I mean, you can find them most anywhere. Now when I work with someone one-on-one as a client, then I arrange for a pharmacy … for them to work with a pharmacy that makes the remedies specifically for that person. But it’s unnecessary. You don’t have to go that far in order to get the kind of reaction that you want, just by having a kit or getting to Walmart or a health food store, Whole Foods. They all carry them.

Jendy:              That’s so interesting, because you said about the hospitals not doing it, and it not being so popular anymore. But we can go anywhere and actually get them. So, there’s not the education.

Joette:              Yeah. The education is now in the hands of the mothers. That’s the bottom line. It’s not in the education of the doctors. They’ve stopped doing this. There are no more homeopathic medical schools in this country. So, that’s why I had to leave this country in order to study this. And so now there are homeopathic schools that are starting up again. There’s the American Medical Homeopathic School in Phoenix, Arizona, and I’m on the faculty of that school. But they’re far and few between, whereas they used to be two or three of them in every large city.

So, it’s not the doctors who are doing this — although in many of the courses that I give online, it’s jam packed with nurses. And we do see doctors, too. I have doctors who join my classes. But for the most part, you’re not going to find any doctor who knows what this is, who’s staying within the guidelines of what he was trained to do in medical school. He’s going to have to, or she’s going to have to step outside of the box in order to have gone this far and learned another medical science.

Jendy:              And you mentioned you sell a kit, and can they get that through your website, too?

Joette:              I don’t sell it on my website, but if they contact me through the website — either through contact or they can call my office — we sell them directly out of my office, yes. [Editor’s note: 100 Remedy Kits are no longer available through Joette’s office.]

Jendy:              And you said that’s 100 different remedies?

Joette:              Yes.

Jendy:              About how long would that last an average family?

Joette:              Well, I work with very large families often. I work with a lot of homeschooling folks and a lot of families have many children, and these kits can last for many years. Now, I own a kit — I own a couple of different kits — but I own one kit in particular, my favorite, which is the one I sell to people who are interested. I’ve owned mine for 19 years. And so, I raised three kids, my husband has used it. We have a dog, a cat, chickens. We’ve used it on our chickens. We used to have goats; we used it on our goats. And this kit will last, I’ll probably be able to pass this down to my great-grandchildren because the remedies never go bad. They don’t have stale dates. They don’t go bad.

I actually have (if we were live where you could actually see me on this), I’m going to point to a shadow box that I have up in my office here with remedies that were given to me by a man who was in his 90s when he came to see me about 15, 18 years ago.

His mother was a homeopath in Chicago, and he had some of the remedies that she had still left over from her practice. She was an M.D. And he gave them to me. And some of them are from 1910, 1918. And just to be certain that they worked, I used them for my family, and they worked. They still worked! So, they’re a century old almost, and they still are effective. So, in a survivalist setting, I can’t think of a better kind of medicine to have on hand.

Jendy:              If you compare that to the cost of antibiotics, it’s way cheaper.

Joette:              Oh, it’s infinitely cheaper. Meeting with me as a consultant, one-on-one, is not inexpensive, I’ll be honest with you. But that’s why I write this blog that I write every week, is I know that people can’t afford to work with someone one-on-one all the time. So, I write a free blog that is skewed directly towards mothers and their everyday issues. So, I deal with breast infections and teething problems and croup. And I’ve written about what the remedies are, what to use — exactly the precise remedies, the protocol — exactly how it’s to be used and where to purchase it. So, I have a little link back to someplace on Amazon or someplace else where we know that they can purchase these remedies. So, they don’t have to go running around Walmart or Wegmans or wherever in the country to try to find these.

Jendy:              Yes. And I saw you had a signup thing that you could get a free first aid chart or something, like a very simple one. And then you said you have courses, and those are probably a little more cost effective than the one-on-one consulting?

Joette:              Yes, of course. Absolutely. And so, these are all online courses, or they’re CDs, or they’re downloads. I have it in every format possible. No one has to travel to Buffalo, New York, to study with me, they can do it all. And we also have live forums at all times, we have students who are constantly studying and asking questions, and we’re always there to answer questions.

Jendy:              Awesome. So there’s a lot of ways they can learn through your website. And you said you have the Bad Gut, Good Gut course, and you have the Survivalist course.

Joette:              Yes. That’s coming up. Yes.

Jendy:              And are those the two main ones, are there more?

Joette:              No, we have another course that’s going to be coming up that’s called just Skin. And it’s all about anything on the skin (including chicken pox), but it can also be psoriasis or warts or skin tags, acne. So, I’m going to be teaching just about skin, so that’s another one.

We’ve got another one that’s now in the works, that my writers and I are working on called, Feminopathy, all about women and homeopathy. And it’s not even women, it’s actually starting at birth, baby, young girls, all the way through to old age, and what remedies are best used for each of the maladies that a girl or woman might encounter. We also have, what are the other ones, I said Survivalist, there’s Good Gut, Bad Gut. We just finished, How to Cure Yourself and Family, which is another very important book. That’s the goal! That is my goal is to teach families how to cure themselves.

Jendy:              So, if our listener is brand new to this topic but intrigued, what would you recommend that they do or start?

Joette:              The first thing that I would do is go to my website, Joette Calabrese, J-O-E-T-T-E, Calabrese, C-A-L-A-B-R-E-S-E, JoetteCalabrese.com and sign up for my blog. And it’s free. No one ever badgers you; there’s no advertising on it. I’m doing this just to get the word out. You’ll get a blog every week, it’ll be specific to the needs of most families. Even though I direct everything towards moms, to be honest, I know that dads are interested in these things, too — because I talk about shin splints and tendonitis and frozen shoulder and a lot of athletic issues that men might suffer from. But more often than not, it’s about children and families in general: the cold, Ebola (I’ve covered that as well). So, that’s a good place to start. And once you’re in learning about that, I guarantee you’re going to be hooked like I got hooked. I guarantee it.

Jendy:              I know I’m going to go sign up for it because I’m intrigued already. Oh, my.

Well thank you Joette, so much for taking the time to talk to me and our listeners today, because I know you’re busy with lots to do. And you know so much about this, I can tell I barely scratched the surface of the topic.

Joette:              Oh, we could go on this forever, Jendy.

Jendy:              I’m going to go have to dive into that blog there.

Joette:              Yeah, yeah, please do.

Jendy:              Thank you so much.

Joette:              You’re very welcome.

Jendy:              Thanks again to our sponsor, “Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less).” If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and leave us a good review. We always appreciate them. Our Mom Prepares community really is a great community, and we’d love for you to connect with us on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube.

Narrator:          Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a show. Visit our website, momprepares.com for show notes and more great information.

Warmly,

In this podcast, we cover:

0:46 A Taking prescription drugs starts in the pediatrician’s office.

3:06 B Statin drugs on lowering cholesterol.

19:40 C Rooting out cardiac problems with Arsenicum album.

35:14 D Lachesis for heart problems during menopause.

40:30 E Heart conditions could be symptoms of other health conditions.

46:10 F Learn to say no.

Shut UP! How Taking Drugs Shut Up Symptoms and Cause New, More Sobering Ones Later On:

Cardiac Disease Can Stem From This Abuse While Homeopathy Can Resolve It 

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.  

Jendy: Hello! This is Jendy, and I’m here with Joette Calabrese. And today, we’re going to talk about drugs, silencing symptoms, and heart conditions. Now I was a little taken aback from the title that is on here, Joette. Using “shut up” is a little rude, don’t you think?

Taking prescription drugs starts in the pediatrician’s office

Joette: Yes, it is. It is. But it’s an important subject given the number of people who take drugs pertaining especially to the heart. Let me give you a quote here from the Mayo Clinic that will open this up. It says that seven out ten Americans take prescription drugs. I find that absolutely shocking. And it all starts in what might surprise many people to hear. Now I believe it all starts in the pediatrician’s office.

Jendy: I’ve heard you mention that in the past. You’re not very fond of pediatricians and you blame them for a lot of things. Can you tell us why?

Joette: Yes. Yes. I blame them for ISIS too. Oh, just kidding, just kidding. The problem I have with them is that they’re paradigm for using an antibiotic for every infection, whether it’s bacterial or not; an analgesic for any pain; ibuprofen to shut up a fever; suppress symptoms that are simply signs of an illness instead of the illness itself. That it’s a model that needs to be turned on its head. And because in thinking this way, it becomes the training ground for mothers, young mothers and middle aged mothers. Not to mention that the child has now learned when you’re sick, you go to the doctor for a drug. It’s early training for compliancy, as far as I’m concerned in a modern drug lifestyle.

My favorite pediatrician who is unfortunately no longer with us on Earth is Dr. Robert Mendelsohn. He once said that the key to health is to stay away from doctors. He went on further in my favorite book of his and he’s written a few of them – was called How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor. He says the best way to raise a healthy child is to keep them away from doctors except for emergency care, in the case of an accident or an obviously serious illness. And if your child displays symptoms of illness, monitor it closely but don’t seek medical help. Don’t seek medical help until there are clear indications that he is, here’s the word – seriously ill. So it all starts there. That’s the end of his quote. It all starts there.

Then add to the chronic bombardment of commercials on TV and women’s magazines. Jendy, I can’t even look at those magazines anymore because they’re fundamentally drug promos with some nice photos of interiors and a few good recipes. What this has done is culminated into a lifestyle that is so drug-filled that no one considers it unusual to not be taking drugs. I have to say that the guidelines are constantly changing so that more and more of the population come under these guidelines.

Jendy: I think you have a recent study you can tell us about, right?

Statin drugs on lowering cholesterol 

Joette: Yes. There was a study that was just published online. Actually it was just this past week on Wednesday and by the New England Journal of Medicine. It was published by the American Heart Association, the study itself and the American College of Cardiology. What they’ve done is publish new guidelines for what percentage of the population ought to be taking statin drugs. And so it recommends that believe it or not, almost half of Americans ages 40 to 75 and nearly all men over 70 qualify to consider cholesterol lowering statin drugs. These new guidelines put less emphasis on cholesterol and more on drug treatment. So what they’re doing in my estimation is planning to put many people on statin drugs who previously would not have qualified for that.

I’ve a background in marketing and sales. I worked in NBC and I worked in an independent TV station years ago and I know marketing. I can smell a marketing campaign from miles away. Let me tell you what other doctors who are not in this camp are saying. For example, in the book, The Statin Disaster by Dr. David Brownstein, he says that statin drugs fail for nearly 99% of those who take them. They neither prevent heart attacks nor have they been shown to show that people live any longer.

Jendy: Can I ask you what would define a statin drug? What would that be?

Joette: Oh, yes. Good question. I always assume people know what that means but they might not. It’s the drug that lowers cholesterol. When your cholesterol is at a certain range, they automatically put you on these drugs.

Jendy: Instead of saying change your diet and exercise?

Joette: Yes, yes, exactly. They might also give that information. But I think the message is very clear to people that if they’re not going to do that then they just have to take these drugs. But my contention is that we don’t even need to reduce our cholesterol in many situations.

Jendy: Yes. So now they have these new guidelines.

Joette: Right. And these guidelines are increasing the number of people who only months ago, before Wednesday, before they put this out, they were considered healthy. Now they throw them into a pool of people they now can call patients and buyers. Once you’re a patient, you’re a customer for life. But as I said, this has been orchestrated since early childhood when the mom takes the child in for fevers and coughs and tummy aches and rashes. I always say never expect the disclosure of the dangers of medical procedures from those who use them. Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” 

Jendy: But you don’t have to take drugs for life, right? You’re only supposed to take them until you get better.

Joette: Well, you’d think that was the case but it’s not because once you started drug for so-called chronic condition, the guideline the doctors are taught by the ubiquitous drug rep is that this is a drug that’s used indefinitely. When I talk to people, I mean, we just had a loss in our family. Someone just passed away in my extended family and I’ll be going to the wake and funeral this coming week. I know that we’ll be talking about health, et cetera. And when I talk to them who have been taking drugs and many, I’ve a lot of cousins, lots – a big, fat Italian family is where I come from. And so I’ll be with a lot of people this next week. When I ask people how long they’ve been taking the drugs, “Oh, yes, 10 years, 12 years.” And I always ask them, “So are you cured, yet?” Really? Isn’t the idea of taking a medicine to cure not to keep someone on the conveyor belt for life?

But let me go back if you don’t mind. Let me go back because these drugs are used for cholesterol and I don’t believe cholesterol is a disease. High cholesterol is not a disease. It’s simply a marker. And it’s a marker for the lipid theory and I believe the operative word here is theory. With this new guideline, they’re going to increase the population by 56 million people. But only half of the people will be so-called protected from heart attacks in the next years. That’s 0.89%, less than 1%. We should be absolutely outraged.

But anyway, the lipid hypothesis of heart disease has been the darling of the medical establishment for I don’t know, maybe 60 years. Clogged arteries is their sacred dictat. This hypothesis, arguably without scientific merit, often has managed to influence and harm generations of people in my opinion. In contrast, there’s another theory – the myogenic theory of heart disease. That asserts that heart attacks occur as a result of a cascade of stress-induced conditions in the heart muscle cells themselves. It’s not the arteries is what this theory says. There is indeed compelling evidence to substantiate this therapeutic approach, too.;

And if there are opposing views on the same condition, oughtn’t we to know about both of them and perhaps a third or a fourth or a fifth theory? But as often as the case in medicine as in most subjects that we find where there’s a big profit behind, that the only view that’s considered is the view, is one view.

Let me propose another consideration, the homeopathic take on this. The homeopathic take on cardiac disease does not speculate on the various functions of the vessels of the tissues, their uptake ability or the extent of their occlusion, et cetera.

Jendy: So homeopathy doesn’t do any speculation at all?

Joette: Well, it’s well-established aphorisms in homeopathy. Aphorisms are the rules that homeopathy follows. They’ve been put out before us by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder; well, I wouldn’t call him the discoverer but the founder of today’s homeopathy as we know it and back in the late 1700s in Germany. He believed that once the disease is suppressed by outside means such as a drug that it drives the illness to a deeper state and that’s a basic aphorism. He had many aphorisms. This happens to be Aphorism 201. I mean, if you ever want to look it up – Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, Aphorism 201 in the Organon.

It emphasizes the externalization of internal symptoms. See, what we’re talking about, the externalization of internal symptoms are symptoms. The symptom is something that presents on the outside. It’s an instinctive reaction when disease is present which naturally creates less risk to more vital organs that are threatened from the originating disease. In effect, it could be described as an innate response by the body’s natural defenses to survive and reduce resulting impact on the internal organs and system.

So we consider one of the main causes of heart disease for example, we as homeopaths to be a result of suppression or deepening of some less serious illness from the past or even at the present. In other words, illness that originally presented in a less crucial organ is forced into a more vital organ, the heart; less crucial might be say, the skin, as a direct result of suppression by a drug and other heroic medical measures.

Iatrogenic, by the way is a great term for a disease because it means that a disease or a condition that is caused by medical mismanagement. And that’s exactly what we believe happens.

Let me give you an example. Imagine a skin condition such as acne or eczema. The person wants to fix it to silence, to shut up the symptoms via drugs such as topical steroid creams or antibiotics or such. So the illness must either beg to return as soon as the ointment or other suppressive method is halted. But it reappears with symptoms more severe than before or if not allowed to return, will and this is the pivotal moment, drive more deeply into a more critical organ. The illness has the opportunity to be freed from the bondage of drugs but only if it’s not suppressed. At this time, if the vital force of the person is capable, it will simply put the pathology right back where it belongs, on the skin where it started. That’s not a serious place. I mean, it might be uncomfortable. It might be horribly uncomfortable. But it’s not serious.

The heart is more vital organ. If the person is not of great resiliency because of inherited factors or overuse of previous suppressing treatments, then pathology will travel to the more crucial organ and this might include the lungs. Even pediatricians recognize it. Asthma follows eczema. But what they don’t recognize is that it’s the treatment of the eczema with the suppressive drugs that then drives it to the lungs. The gut, and here’s another example, the gut is also a place that is affected especially after a skin rash has been held back by a drug. Oh and then of course, the heart which is what we’re going to be talking about today. A new illness compensates for the suppression of the old is more serious and it can make it very difficult to eradicate this.

I want to mention this to folks who have skin conditions particularly eczema and psoriasis, et cetera. I just found this website. Actually a client, student told me about it. It’s called itsan.org, I-T-S-A-N.org. It’s a not for profit organization that is designed to help people understand that skin afflictions that have been treated with topical or oral steroids cause an addiction. If you or someone you know has used or is using steroids, check out the site. It is really fascinating. There’s a great video on it. I will tell you, I don’t agree with their solutions to the problem with the topical steroid addiction but at least it’s a group of doctors and patients who have accepted that there is a serious problem that needs awareness.

Jendy: What does this mean to us and to our listeners?

Joette: Well, if you go to ITSAN, I-T-S-A-N.org and watch their short video, this is really a great video. What it talks about is the resolve to keep your children away from medications for fevers, eczema, allergies, diarrhea and anything easily treatable with wiser food choices for example, homeopathic medicines. In the case of a normal fever, doing nothing other than leave the small issues alone; stop using drugs. Shut up the drug use instead of shutting up the symptoms with the drugs. The goal always is to protect our children from damage that can be thrown into their future.

Remember when Nancy Reagan, well you don’t remember Nancy Reagan or you barely remember Nancy Reagan. Well, I was in high school when Nancy Reagan was around and she said that slogan, “Just say no to drugs.” And people made fun of her. But she was right. The resolve is that simple. Say no to drugs. Now she was talking about street drugs. Well, but also prescription drugs to a certain degree as well but just say no. No, thank you. I’m not going there.

Jendy: What about the people that have already taken years’ worth of medication?

Joette: That’s a good question, Jendy. Do you know anyone who isn’t taking or hasn’t taken a drug in the past? Really. 

Jendy: I don’t think so unless it’s like… not even a newborn in these days.

Joette: Right. That’s right. Even newborns come into the world with Pitocin, spinal blocks, pain relievers, antibiotics and such. That’s from a simple so-called natural birth, born in the hospital. What if the mothers had a C-section? It’s ubiquitous. 

Jendy: How does that affect the heart conditions?

Joette: Well, let me give you a story to illustrate my point. Let’s take Arnie, okay? His digestion or intake of questionable ingredients in his meals has triggered something in him. He’s been getting these heart palpitations and pounding and restlessness and apprehension. It could be from the MSG and his Egg Beaters that he has for breakfast every morning or the gluten in corn syrup. He loves bagels.

We often blame what we’ve eaten and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at it. But then again, we put a timeline together and I’ve talked about this many times. If he would look back at what happened in the past several months or even years but particularly in the last several months because now this is new for him, he might recall that he took antibiotics just a few months previous. And his habit, he had this habit of sinus infections. I don’t mean to call it a habit but he had these sinus infections that were repetitive. And after the sinus infections, he suffered from indigestion and bloating. So if you were to put it together, you might think well, it’s the sinus infections problem, so that its the fault of his own body. It means that there’s something wrong with his body. But of course, I’m going in a different path right now.

A few months ago, Arnie woke up at three in the morning with pain in his chest. His heart was racing and in a panic and it scared the bagels right out of him. No, because he had diarrhea. A visit to his doctor and days off from work from all the tests revealed that Arnie was suffering from angina. Well, to be honest, he already knew that except he called it pain in his heart but they got to give this medical term. Along with Arnie’s angina also came a sense of urgency and overwhelming anxiety and racing thoughts. During all of this time, he had this painful heart spells. He also found himself pacing the room with angst and couldn’t quiet his mind.

But when he visited the cardiologist, no questions with the intent of shedding light on such information were opposed. His doc simply offered tests that revealed of course, a need for prescription. Because folks might think of the meds they took as a culprit but when they asked their doctor if the meds could be the culprit or be the source of the problem, the doctor usually says no, that’s not possible. Doctors believe in their paradigms. They’re not going to tell you what they gave you is going to cause a problem.

Jendy: Yes. It sounds like maybe he’s just prescription deficient.

Joette: Yes, I know. That’s what I think the way the modern medicine, medical world looks at it. That’s well said, Jendy, a prescription deficient.

In the end, the answer he received went something like this. You’re not young anymore, Arnie. No more steaks for you, Arnie. No more eggs. You have to take these pills. Oh, and for how long? Yes, yes, Arnie, for the rest of your life.

Jendy: What would you prescribe for him using homeopathy?

Rooting out cardiac problems with Arsenicum album.

Joette: Well, the considerations of his cardiac reactions to MSG would necessitate the remedy Arsenicum album 30. Now we don’t know that that’s for sure that it was MSG but that’s certainly something to think about. It has a reputation for being able to remove the immediate poisoning effects of such additives. It would not be taken – you don’t take Arsenicum album 30, however unless there are clear indications that it is the reason for the influence, so it’s influenced this problem.

In other words, this is not a time for speculation. If you look into antidote the effects of MSG, let’s say it wasn’t from his Egg Beaters even though he’d been eating them for a long time, Arsenicum album would certainly be the remedy. Arsenicum album 30 would be the remedy to bring down the palpitations, pounding, apprehension and restlessness. It has the ability to allay fears and panic and to abort the potential of ensuing cardiac pathology. We’re not treating symptoms here. We’re not just getting rid of the problems that are presenting. We’re rooting it out.

Jendy: And would he still need to stop eating the Egg Beaters?

Joette: Well, I would do that if I were Arnie. If he thought that was the cause, certainly; just to calm things down a bit. I mean, Egg Beaters, really? Nobody should be eating Egg Beaters. You should be eating eggs.

Jendy: True.

Joette: That’s the way they were intended to be eaten, the whole egg. So eventually, Arnie snapped to his senses. He realized that he was probably relying on drugs more often than was prudent. So he consulted with a homeopath. And the homeopath told him to take the nitroglycerin that the doctor had ordered for a while longer but to follow it with a specific homeopathic medicine within a few minutes of each episode. That would likely take care of the racing heart and his anxiety.

Jendy: So this is where the ‘like cures like’ in the homeopathic philosophy?

Joette: Yes. Yes. This is where it comes in. As its paradigm, what better remedy choice than something that in its gross form causes symptoms such as what Arnie was suffering? So we might also use the remedy, the homeopathic remedy that might be prepared from coffee because that’s exactly what he was experiencing, that raciness and stepped-up heart, et cetera. So he took the remedy Coffea cruda 200. That’s homeopathic Coffea that’s made originally from coffee. And after a few nights of taking Coffea cruda, Arnie was able to calm down. And he started to return to sense of himself again. The remedy helped him minimize the need to use the nitroglycerin. This is what his homeopath counted on, of course.

But Arnie didn’t listen to his homeopath. The next time he experienced that horrible anguish and jumping heart with pain, he skipped the drug altogether – the nitroglycerin and instead only took Coffea cruda 200. To his relief again, he not only came down from that anxiety but the pain and pounding heart vanished in about the same amount of time as he would have experienced with the use of the drug.

Jendy: Does that mean he could wean himself off the nitroglycerin?

Joette: Well, no homeopath in the US is willing to overstep in the situation like this. The homeopath was cautious and she’s told Arnie that she would like him to meet with his cardiologist regaining this decision. But Arnie didn’t do that. Arnie’s got this kind of personality that he just does what he wants to do which is actually very good in many ways. After using Coffea cruda, after the span of about two weeks, his confidence completely returned. He reported that now he keeps the nitroglycerin in his medicine cabinet instead of his hip pocket. And just as homeopathy is intended to work, he requires Coffea cruda less and less because his problem is resolving. It’s happening fewer and fewer times.Here’s the most important part about homeopathy as far as I’m concerned is that we’ve used symptoms as signs; signs that there is something wrong. And if the signs are not there then the disease isn’t either. So I’d like to be clear that because homeopaths no longer have their hospitals in North America nor the climate within which to practice freely, I, too would not recommend to clients that they eliminate a drug without the oversight of a medical doctor. Removal of any prescription medication is never a decision to be taken lightly especially blood pressure drugs, et cetera. But you have to consider the possibility of a boomerang effect when you do this, when you do get off of the drug with the guidance even of the doctor and even if it’s done slowly and judiciously. Remember, the body has habituated and compensated for with these drugs and remission should be carefully monitored, if possible.

Jendy: Did Arnie just stop the drugs? Is he still taking the Coffea 200?

Joette: Yes. Well, he no longer takes either one. He doesn’t take the Coffea cruda and he doesn’t take the nitroglycerin. Now, I also want to say here that if these were a more serious condition other than simply palpitations and some angina, this is not the answer. But this is the answer for Arnie and that’s why I’m giving a specific example. But the homeopathic remedies do something most people don’t even expect. They cure the condition so that even the homeopathic remedy is no longer needed. That’s the best part.

Jendy: So you are saying that homeopathy cures all diseases?

Joette: Well, I worked with Drs. Banerji in Calcutta and Dr. Prasanta Banerji once told me that homeopathy has the ability to cure all diseases but it may not cure all people with diseases.

Jendy: What about diseases like AIDS or cancer?

Joette: Yes, even those and more. I’ve actually seen it in Calcutta. But some people, depending on the amount of drugs they’ve taken, the depth and breadth of their involvement to such methods, their age, their history, the inherited taint, how late they came to homeopathy, all of those will influence the outcome in whether or not this person can find the cure.

But even now after being a homeopath full time for 20 plus years and having studied and taught it for 29 years, I’m still amazed even flabbergasted by what this medicine is capable of accomplishing. I tell people regularly, you must allow the medicines to act. It often takes time with little steps forward and perhaps a small one back again. I know we’ve got more with Arnie. So let me go back because we were talking about the bagels and his food, his Egg Beaters and all that.

Let’s look at another homeopathic medicine that would have benefited Arnie; Lycopodium 200 mixed with Arsenicum album. This is the combination that I learned from the Drs. Banerji while in Calcutta. And it’s usually taken twice daily. It’s a great antidote to the ills that result in bloating in the sense of uncomfortable fullness in the gut even including the lower chest. It’s not for heart necessarily but it certainly is for gastrointestinal bloating.

Of course, Arnie should improve his diet. But remember, not everyone is willing to do that and Arnie’s strong willed. He might be one of those people who don’t want to change his diet. But just doing that is a good step towards guiding him to excellence in his food even if we just discussed it. That alone can perhaps change his thinking a little bit. 

Jendy: Can you tell us more about a homeopathic medicine that would help a cardiac condition?

Joette: Yes. Yes. Let me give you an example of one that I have taught about a few years ago. Several years ago, for some reason, I received a rush of desperate phone calls. They were all from women and they were all about 45 years old. I don’t know why it happened like that but it just happened that way. They were complaining of overwhelming anguish and anxiety and their heart was quickened and their heart was thumping and they were having atrial fibrillation occasionally.

None had been asked by their family practitioners what they had eaten just before their cardiac incident. I think it’s important that we ask those questions. None were asked whether they regularly drank coffee or how much. None were asked whether chocolates especially, a lot of sugar, MSG laden foods, even wheat or other such foods for daily fare or consumed prior to their cardiac palpitations, their incidences.

The Mayo Clinic, I just want to include this little statement, says that palpitations can be frightening but they are not always dangerous and that’s something to remember. Now obviously, we don’t want to be foolish about this. But if you start looking at okay, they’re not always dangerous and what did I just eat, it’s really important to break it down.

A lot of women who have this are certain they’re going to die of a heart attack when this happens. And especially at that age, 45 years old, I see this happening more and more and I believe they’re entering into menopause. They run to the ER where they submit to a battery of tests and they’re exhausted and frightened and then they whimper home with the prescription that suppresses all of their symptoms. 

Jendy: These are pretty interesting. I’m sure you have another example you could share about shutting up symptoms.

Joette: Yes. Yes. I also want to mention that these calls that I started to get, a couple of them were women who were just eating a lot of chocolate. One of them was, actually two of them had just eaten. It was Halloween. It was after Halloween and one of them, when their kids went off to school, just got into the chocolate that they don’t normally eat that much of. And my guess is when it’s Halloween candy, I’m sure there’s MSG and all kinds of other kinds. 

Jendy: You would think that would to raise a red flag.

Joette: Yes. Yes. But you know what? It gets so scary for people that they just can’t think straight. And another time was the same situation. This woman had eaten those coffee beans coated with chocolate and her heart was racing. In both those cases I might add, I used, specifically I used Nux vomica. I told them to use Nux vomica 30 or 200. 

Jendy: And why doesn’t the doctor ask?

Joette: I know. They don’t think about it. It’s not about rooting out the illness. It’s not about uprooting and getting rid and getting to the bottom of things. It’s about simply, here’s the prescription, next; next person.

Let me tell you about Jane, okay, so another person. Jane was an empty nester and she didn’t like to speak about it too much. She suffered silently. She felt as though she was probably overreacting. But she was secretly weeping a lot. She would get into the bath tub nightly, night after night after night and she would just weep.

To everyone else, it appeared that she had strolled seamlessly back into her previous world. She was a real estate agent but it helped her get her mind off the fact that her last baby, who is now 21 years old was out of the house. And after raising four kids, the change required as usual significant shift in her nature. I know the feeling. I know that it’s an awful feeling. You know when they say empty nester, the real operative word here is empty. It’s a horribly empty feeling when your last child leaves.

But she would get into the bath tub to calm her nerves and she would whisper to herself all soaking in the tub, “I used to be a mom and now a real estate agent. I hate this.” So it was right about this time that not only did her daughter leave but her menses did, too. Isn’t that unfortunate that everything happens at once? In its place, of her menses came sleepless nights, heart pain, anxiety, palpitations, and even a little vertigo.

But her brother-in-law was from England and he was a homeopathic physician there. And England has many homeopathic physicians, very common. She contacted him. And instead of drugs, this is what he said. Instead of drugs to restrain the warning signals; do you hear that folks, again? I’m going to say it again. This physician in England knows; instead of drugs to restrain the warning signals. 

Jendy: It’s so different than homeopathic view.

Joette: It is. It is. We’re not going to use drugs to restrain the warning signs. We’re going to use homeopathics to correct the problem that the warning signs are telling us about. We don’t believe that symptoms ought to be shut up. I’m going to say it again and again. As I mentioned earlier, take in to a deeper level of illness. Instead, remember those symptoms. Everything that Jane is experiencing are indicators as to how to treat the problem that we are intended to make a point of. So we want to uproot the problem so that symptoms will not be required to present and the drugs will become superfluous.

Jendy: So did her brother help Jane?

Joette: Yes, brother-in-law. Yes. Jane didn’t favor hormone replacement methods either. Those are those bioidentical hormones that we euphemistically are calling natural but she might have halted some of her menopausal symptoms with that. There’s no doubt that those drugs would have done that. But what she would have done, she would have accomplished a suspension of her ills. It would not have cured her problem. 

Jendy: And I’ve heard that you have a course out now called Feminopathy? Do you cover this information about the bioidentical hormones?

Joette: Yes, yes, I do. I’m happy you brought that course up. It’s called Feminopathy: How You Can Correct Female Ailments Using Safe, Inexpensive, and Effective Homeopathy. It’s not that I want everyone to run and get this course. But what I do want people to do is to start thinking about learning how to do this themselves.

Lachesis for heart problems during menopause

Anyway, let’s get back to Jane. She went to these remedies that her brother-in-law sent along, her brother-in-law sent along. The first remedy was Lachesis, twice daily. Lachesis 200 is chosen probably because to calm Jane’s heart, palpitations, and the angina. It’s nearly specific for women during and around menopause. Interestingly, it’s particularly well-chosen for this particular combination of heart symptoms during menopause. Lachesis 200 taken twice daily.

hDr. Gibson in his studies of homeopathic remedy says of Lachesis; now remember here’s a doctor again. So for those of you who believe that I’m anti-doctor, I’m not. There are plenty of doctors out there who get all of these. He says, syncopal episodes are associated (this is under the title of Lachesis and how it is associated with the heart) with cardiac pain or accompanied by nausea and vertigo. Now she didn’t have the nausea but she did have vertigo. Heart thumping, palpitations, he says are associated with the sense of tightness in the chest. The remedy is of special value in relation to the throat and affections and menopausal disorders.

Now again, Jane didn’t have all of these symptoms. She didn’t have the throat problems yet the remedy picture here fits in other important ways. So then he added another remedy, Ignatia 200 taken twice daily. And this is the best bet for the deep sadness Jane felt for the loss of her life as a stay-at-home mom. It has a reputation for lifting sufferers from grief and relentless sadness.

I’ve written about this remedy on my blog and I urge folks to read about it. You just use the little search bar in my blog and put in Ignatia. Just read about how valuable this remedy can be. 

Jendy: It sounds really interesting because that brings the whole emotional side and not just physical which we always separate like mental health, physical health.

Joette: Right. Right. The Lachesis is dealing with the heart issue and the hormonal issue that’s obviously or apparently appears to be the ideology, the cause of all of these. But now we also have this emotional aspect and we give Ignatia to help with that as well. I totally agreed with her brother-in-law, by the way. They were very well chosen remedies.

And later on, he added Crataegus, C-R-A-T-A-E-G-U-S, Crataegus and it was a mother tincture that he gave her. It’s mother tincture. It means it’s not made into homeopathic medicine yet. It’s still in the gross form and so it’s a botanical. It also covers cardiac maladies. It’s just a great remedy for any cardiac malady and I believe she was taking that twice a day as well.

There’s another bit of information here that I want to read and this is from Frans Vermeulen’s Concordant Materia Medica, a medical homeopathic medical book. He talks about Crataegus with valvular murmurs, angina pectoris, cardiac dropsy which is swelling (dropsy’s the old word for edema), aortic disease, pain in the region of the heart under the left clavicle and under the left scapula, pulse accelerated and irregular, feeble intermittent valvular murmurs, and angina pectoris. That’s the end of his quote.

That’s what gives us this information as homeopaths to determine which remedies to choose. We use this book. We don’t just pick these remedies out of the sky. We use this kind of information that’s been collected through the sentries. 

Jendy: And did that help Jane get over her bath tub crying and her palpitations?

Joette: Yes, her bath tub crying. Yes. Yes. In a mere couple of days after Ignatia 200 and it’s her daily routine, Jane’s anxiety and sadness and depression just melted away. Then she started baking cookies and did something positive to send back to her daughter away at school. A lot of times, simple gestures will bring people back to themselves. But previously she couldn’t get there. She just wasn’t in that frame of mind. She was weeping and so saddened that she couldn’t move forward.

By the third or fourth day of taking all the remedies, she noted that the palpitations have gone and her sleep was re-established. By the end of the two months that rolled around and that’s when she was supposed to Skype call with her brother-in-law, nothing that was plaguing her previously remained. Instead, she asked if he had a homeopathic remedy for weight gain. But that’s the subject of another article. What that means is it finished everything though homeopathic remedies took care of every single aspect of what she was suffering. 

Jendy: Yes and you said it was like fours days. It was fast.

Joette: Yes, it was fast. But it doesn’t always act that fast. I got to tell you that, Jendy. It also again depends on the case and the person. But to get an idea of what to look for so that you can know that the remedies you’ve chosen are correct and that you’re moving in the right direction, I always want to tell people – our listeners to go to our podcast titled Podcast #12 and Why You May Be Disillusioned with Homeopathy. 

Jendy: So what’s the upshot?

Heart conditions could be symptoms of other health conditions

Joette: Okay. The upshot is that many cases that present as a heart condition may indeed be a reaction, a symptom of something else that just necessitates our attention. This means that all symptoms represent something. Hence, they should never be shut up with drugs. Sometimes it’s easy to figure out what they signify. Sometimes it’s not. But the examination of them is worthy of our effort, particularly if we have homeopathy to address each one of those and not just to cover them up.

This is also true when we take into account that these concomitant conditions that may appear unremarkable by ignoring them might easily miss the most telling information. The importance of taking superfluous drugs that shut up the symptoms or merely silence the condition away from our bodies can’t be emphasized enough. It is an off-missed piece to the puzzle of not only heart disease but many other chronic conditions. 

Jendy: We need to switch our thinking to look strategically and long term.

Joette: Yes and from a health standpoint, our lives are simply timelines. The more time on a drug, the darker the hue of the graph. Each onslaught affects our health on some area or another. 

Jendy: But it is encouraging to know that homeopathy can still help someone that has a burdened timeline from years of medication.

Joette: Well, who doesn’t have a burdened timeline? Would it not be wise to keep the assault to a quiet murmur now from the time that you know this though, instead of allowing it to get to a roaring tsunami before you start doing something about it? Less is more. Not when enjoying healthy saturated fats but when considering taking a drug. I believe and I want to mention that healthy saturated fats. I believe in taking saturated or eating saturated fats.

We need to remember that we save drugs as Dr. Mendelsohn said earlier for rare life-saving emergencies not for common ear infections, fevers, birth control pills or birth control I should say, eczema, menopausal shifts, or chronic conditions. But if you’re on them, don’t just slip off imprudently. I always tell folks, be careful. We have to seek a better way and put your life in order first and then move out of them quietly and gently.

I want to remind you that you mustn’t count on the doctor however, who prescribed the drug to offer that alternative solution. If he had one, he would have given it to you. I suggest that people find the doctor with compatible convictions. If you have to go to a doctor, find one who is in agreement with you, or work with a homeopath, or better yet learn how to use homeopathy for the small potatoes so that you don’t have a bigger one to pick later.

So try to learn to treat your family, yourself for those acutes. Learn how to really treat fever. Know how to root out eczema instead of driving it to a deeper state. Know how to address asthma yourself or with your homeopath. As your knowledge deepens, you’ll be able to take on more complex conditions and you’ll become more confident. Then you’ll be able to go use such foods, good foods as nourishing traditional foods and homeopathic medicine. And just be unstoppable in your resolve because it’s important. 

Jendy: You can learn how to do a lot of these on Joette’s blog. For our listeners, we go to joettecalabrese.com. I just am learning she has written a weekly blog post for about nine years and you can go there. There’s a search bar in the top and you can type in what your problem is and it’ll bring up a list of things to read and check out for. I’ve gone there many times. Just recently, we went through a bout of fever and flu at our house and she had a free eBook download. I think it’s called Ahh Choo! The Flu! I downloaded that. I was reading that. You still have it up, right?

Joette: Yes. I believe so. I mean, things are always changing here and I’m not the one doing it. I have my family members mail that for me. 

Jendy: Well, you can check in the search bar on the blog and then there’s also like if you want more in-depth courses and you really want to study it, Joette has things, the courses you can buy, the CDs you can download to put in your car. You can even get somebody to work with you one on one. Sometimes people feel better talking to somebody. But there are all levels of information if you want to learn more.

Joette: Yes and I’m not the only one out there teaching homeopathy for these everyday ills to families. For those who are just starting, take a look at our quick start guide on the front page of my website. It will help you get going on all of these. Then take advantage of every article I write on this blog. I teach how to use homeopathy instead of antibiotics and I teach how to treat acne using our medicines. Not our, meaning that you buy the medicines from me but homeopathic medicines. I teach how to address even Lyme disease and anxiety, et cetera. It’s all there for free so take advantage of it. 

Jendy: Yes, that’s the first place I go. I don’t go to the over the counter drug shelves in the store anymore when we’re sick. I go to Joette’s site.

Joette: Yes. Well, thank you. Thank you for saying that. Oh, yes. There’s no need to spend money here, folks. Just take it all for free. It’s a course in and of itself. 

Jendy: All right. Do you have any parting word for us this time?

Learn to say no

Joette: No. Well, actually not that I don’t have a parting word. But the word is no. That’s my parting word. I think I’ve said this before but the word is no. Say no. You could always say yes later but start with no first. It will buy you time to figure out what you need to do. It will also allow you to tuck in. Figure out what needs to be done after the blush of the doctor’s office has worn off.

No is the most powerful word in our vocabulary. No thanks, Doc. I need to give this some thought. Then run. Don’t walk to your search engine and look up the side effects that will help you understand what it is you’re about to take or give to your child and the homeopathic medicine that can be used instead. No. Not today, Doc. I need to discuss this with my husband.

My rule of thumb is don’t be a good girl. Be a good mother. Be prepared to fight to the finish for your family. Don’t be a compliant patient. Be a force. Don’t accept mediocre food. Don’t accept the mediocre life. In fact, don’t just step outside of the box. Gain enough knowledge so that you can kick the box away. 

Jendy: Thank you so much, Joette. I know you’ve told us this before but it’s always good to be encouraged and hear it again.

Joette: Yes. Thank you, Jendy. Nice conversation.

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:

0:50 Joette failed 17 times on a real estate exam

7:43 Don’t eat defeat

12:29 Perseverance and commitment in treating your family

17:30 Antibiotics and why we should avoid them

27:23 Change your way of thinking when it comes to treating common diseases

It helps to know when somebody else can (or has) overcome something, no matter how big or small, because only then can you start to believe you are capable of doing so, too.

Failure is not a shameful word. In fact, we must fail in order to find the right path to success. Stopping or giving up before you reach success is what separates the mediocre from the mighty.

I invite you to listen to/read my story and hopefully gain some inspiration from it.

Here’s the Banerji Protocol take- away from today’s podcast:

Lycopodium 200 mixed with Arsenicum 3, twice daily for bloating and a belly that’s distended.

Warmly, 

Joette 

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.

Jendi: This is Jendi and I’m here with Joette Calabrese from JoetteCalabrese.com. And today, our topic is on failure and how to get out of a rut of failure especially pertaining to curing your family. Hello, Joette! How are you?

Joette: Hi, Jendi! I’m doing pretty well. Thanks!

Jendi: Are you ready to talk about failure?

Joette: Yes, yes! This is one of my favorite subjects, yeah, how to defeat failure. I love this subject.

Jendi: So of course, the first thing we want to know is if you have ever failed, and can you tell us about that?

Joette: Oh, never. I’ve never failed. That’s always interesting, isn’t it? It’s fun to know who’s failed and who hasn’t, and it makes our shortcomings seem a little more tolerable, I think.

Jendi: Yes, it does. And it helps to know if somebody else can overcome something, then I can, too.

Joette: Yeah, yeah. Well, let me tell you about a failure that I experienced years ago. It was back when I was in my 20s and I lived in Arlington, Virginia just outside of DC, and I absolutely adored Washington, DC. It was vibrant. It was a great city. It was cosmopolitan, chic. It was so cool. At the time, I lived in these [Murphy – 00:01:34] apartments that looked like World War II barracks and so much wanted to live in the great city of DC. So I made the decision that I wanted to become a real estate agent to be a part of that excitement of DC. And it was going to fulfill two issues and that was one, to get out of this little apartment that I didn’t like, and also to be able to be a part of what was going on in that vibrant city. So this was back in about 1975. And if anyone was around during that time, any of our listeners, they might remember that there was a real estate boom in Washington, DC that was absolutely over the moon. So I wanted to be involved in that.

So I studied first for the Virginia Real Estate Exam because, of course, I was living there, and I passed the exam right away. No problem. And then because Maryland State is adjacent to DC also on the other side, I studied and sat for that exam as well, and I passed that right away. But what I wanted more than anything was to practice real estate in DC. But I had been advised to take the other state exams first. I wondered why this would happen. I asked, “Why would that matter?” Well, they gave me the example of the brokers for whom I was about to work for. Because the DC exam was particularly difficult and I might not pass it the first time. So to get started on my new career, I decided I should at least be able to sell in Virginia and Maryland. So indeed, I got hired by a real estate company and I set my sight on that exam, on procuring that coveted DC real estate exam.

So I took the exam and I failed it. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll take it again when it comes around in a few months.” I decided to do that again. So I did it again. But then, when I took it the second time, I failed it again, and then again, and again. Now, allow me to set the stage a little, perhaps to soothe my frazzling ego at the time. This exam was understandably tricky because there was such a boom market in DC. And I mean, contracts were being flipped within days, and even sometimes hours before going to closing while selling the contract two and three times. It was super intense. And that’s how hot it was at that time. People were making huge profits, agents were not excluded, and so the word in the real estate market was that the DC board wanted no more agents to be licensed.

So they made the exams irregularly challenging. And I mean irregular, but nonetheless. The wording in the exams was strange and it was difficult to decode and I don’t really know whether that was the case or not because I knew people who were also indeed passing their exam but for some reason, I just couldn’t get the hang of this thing. I took it so many times, I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. I had made the dean’s list for many semesters at college at the University of Buffalo and other schools that I non-matriculated back to. And I didn’t consider myself extraordinary but it wasn’t as though I was incapable. So I took the exam repeatedly.

Jendi: My husband took a real estate exam before we had our first child and he had to pay a fee. So did you have a fee then? And did you have a choice how often you could take it?

Joette: Well, I actually don’t remember the cost, but for a young person in her early 20s, it seemed like a lot of money. And no, the exams were not given very often. I think it was every few months or so. It was a long time ago so I don’t fully recall. But see if you can guess, Jendi, how many times I took that exam. Let’s see if you can figure it out from what I’ve told you.

Jendi: At the most, I would guess like four or five.

Joette: Yeah, well, you’re being kind. You know, Jendi, I took that odious exam – get this – 18 times. I failed it 17 times, and not until I took the 18th try did I pass it. Can you imagine? I mean, it was insanity.

Jendi: I can’t imagine going back 18 times. You must have really, really wanted it.

Joette: It was really important to me. There’s no doubt about it. Actually, it was more than important. It became an obsession. I studied, I cried, I was embarrassed, I kept paying, I was furious with myself and with the City Board of Realtors. I was a failure. We even went to a shrink because I thought only a sick-in-the-head person could fail time after time. I mean, why could others pass this exam and not me? Why could I pass the state exams of Virginia and Maryland and then later New York State but could not pass this stupid DC city exam? No amount of rationalization soothed my mutilated, and I mean mutilated, ego.

Jendi: Did the psychiatrist come up with anything?

Joette: Well, I actually don’t remember. All I remember was the feeling of defeat. For crying out loud, it wasn’t the law boards, for goodness sakes.

Jendi: But on the 18th time, you did pass it.

Joette: Yes, I did. I finally passed it. And what happened then changed things for me. At the age of only 24, something like that, I became a real estate hotshot. I don’t mean to be so bold, but I listed, I negotiated, I loved every minute of real estate sales. I popped out of bed at 4:30 in the morning like a piece of toast from a toaster, and I was in my office often by 5:30 in the morning. I had the key to the office because I was the only one who would start that early. I was so grateful for having that darned license that I took my work more seriously, I think, than anyone else in the office. I studied, I focused. I never allowed myself a diversion. It was complete immersion. And I became more successful at this new craft than I ever imagined. I worked myself like a workhorse and it was a blast.

Jendi: Sounds like it was worth all those tries then, and you really loved it. 

Joette: Yeah, I did. I really loved it. But I think a big part of it was the number of failures I had racked up. I think it was the fact that I decided that I was not going to eat defeat. And my determination was so embedded in me that I couldn’t stop. Even if I had to take it 38 times, not 18, I was not going to be conquered.

Jendi: This reminds me of how you told me you learned homeopathy when your kids were little.

Joette: Well, in a way, it really is not unlike that. I don’t know if this single experience or my consistent ability to fail did it or if it was in my genes. My father was a professional musician. He played jazz trumpet for many decades. And when I was a teenager, he decided that he was going to learn to play flute. And I always emulated my father. He took lessons for flute and he practiced for a few hours daily in spite of owning and running his own business. And I remember that when I was a teenager, not more than 10 years before this event of the failures in DC, he’d pick me up from school and on the front seat of the car, his silver flute would be nestled in its open case and at every red light we approached, he’d pick up his flute and play a few scales or a particularly difficult lick and parts of pieces he was trying to conquer for his next performance. He was obsessed.

Jendi: Very committed.

Joette: He was. He was committed. And I believe that this is what it takes. We have to become obsessed. We have to become committed. The only way to accomplish what you want to accomplish in your corner of the world is to bite in, sink your teeth in as deeply as you can and not let go. Anything less, in my estimation, will produce less than satisfactory results. In fact, it’s perfectly proportioned. You know the old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out”? Well, I think it’s, “Garbage in, garbage stays.” I don’t think it goes out. Once it comes in, it’s there. So the inverse, in the way that I look at it is, “Quality in, quality remains.” And so quality has to do with commitment.

Jendi: And of course, we can apply this to committing ourselves to studying homeopathy even when at a stoplight.

Joette: Right. Why not? Only you can decide how far you want to go. But when you lead a charmed life with no problems or no ills and your kids are not sick, it’s not compelling to figure out what you can do to change things. But if you’ve had a life of one medical problem after another that your child has, or your husband, or someone in your family, you get to the point of deciding that you must take things into your own hands. So I fully understand. I don’t want to get this wrong. I understand that mothers and grandmothers have busy lives. But I got to remind you, so did my father. And as I said, he had a business to run, a family to provide for, but he had a desire. And that’s what it takes, a deep, boiling desire. And remember, he used his driving time to his advantage. That’s what I did when learning homeopathy, too. And to be honest, it’s also how I studied for that darn exam back in 1975 or whenever it was.

Jendi: So did you have podcasts or audio CDs available for you to learn homeopathy?

Joette: Well, of course, there were no podcasts back when I was learning homeopathy in the ‘80s. When I was learning this as a student, I’d go to my classes in Toronto and New Jersey and New York and I’d take notes. And when the kids were in bed, I’d read these notes into a tape recorder. That kind of gives you an idea of how long ago this was. And then I’d listen to them in my car. So I was listening to my notes and my own voice over and over again while I was making meals, while I was making bread, whatever I was doing, laundry. Not only did I benefit but my kids did, too, by listening to this. So not unlike my father’s passion rubbing off on me, my passion then, in turn, rubbed off on my kids. They not only learned some homeopathy, which is an important enough tool, but they learned time management and the importance of diving into what you love and taking it seriously. So it gave me a chance to teach them three levels.

Jendi: And you demonstrated the importance of continually gaining knowledge.

Joette: Yeah. That’s very important. It should never stop. Who doesn’t love learning and stretching your brain? There’s more pleasure in that than most activities in life. 

Jendi: So we heard about perseverance in real estate exams and in playing music. Can you tell us about perseverance in relation to homeopathy and in treating our family?

Joette: Okay, let’s see. I’ll give you one example that caused me a great deal of concern when my kids were little. One of my children was a bad sleeper. He would keep me up at night. Night after night, I’d walk him and then after a while, my husband helped me and we would take turns walking him all night in two-hour shifts, not unlike a night watch on a boat while on their way. It was pretty tough.

Jendi: Yeah, it sounds tough. Do you know what was wrong with him or what was keeping him up?

Joette: Well, at the time, I didn’t know, probably for two reasons. One was that I was not seasoned in homeopathy and the other was that I was so sleep deprived and overwhelmed that I didn’t put two and two together.

Jendi: But now you know what the problem was?

Joette: Well, sure. In hindsight, it always offers clarity.

Jendi: Yeah, and you’ve learned a lot since then and practiced and trained.

Joette: Yeah. When you see this in other children, after a while, it becomes pretty focused on what the deal is. And that’s what I want to impart to our listeners and readers tonight. My experience is not unlike what many mothers suffer with their children. It took me a very long time to figure out that my baby had gastrointestinal problems even though it was glaring me in the face from nearly day one. His belly was tympanic and he had a very small appetite. And I finally gave him Lycopodium 200 twice a day for a few months and his belly took on kind of a better profile. It wasn’t as swollen. And his sleep was improved. It had restored somewhat. But then I was afraid because I didn’t know enough about homeopathy at that time to know what to do next. So I stopped giving it to him because I was afraid I was going to use it too frequently. Now I know better. Now I know we do need to continue with it for sometimes many months. And so within a month of having stopped it, it all started again, and the sleep, and the swollen belly, and the low appetite. So I began using Lycopodium 200 twice a day again for another several months. Years before this, I would not have known to repeat this if the condition returned or even how to do so.

Jendi: So how did you decide which remedy to use and how much to give him and how long? That’s the big thing with me. You spit out so many different remedies and I go, “I don’t know what to use.”

Joette: Well, you’re right. That’s right. Determining the correct remedy can be hard enough without having to decide on the potency, and the frequency, and for how long, and what to look for, and even how to interpret what you’re witnessing. So back in those days, I employed classical homeopathy. But today, I’ve changed that. Now, what I use is what I call practical homeopathy based on Doctors Banerji protocols. They’re called the Banerji protocols, which I talk about a lot on my blog. And this is why I love teaching this practical method. Because it takes all the guesswork out of it. The Banerjis have ironed out the kinks and they’ve handed it all over to us. They’ve handed it to me on a silver platter. In fact, on my course called Good Gut, Bad Gut, I teach how to use Lycopodium 200, but the Banerjis mix it with Arsenicum 3 twice daily. And that’s for bloating and a belly that’s distended, and I’ve used that now for several years and I find it’s even better than just plain, old Lycopodium. Because Lycopodium helped my son, but knowing what I know now over the last few years, I believe it would have worked much more thoroughly, and maybe even faster, had I employed it as per the Banerjis’ protocol, mixing it with Arsenicum. Then I also would have added Bovista for my son’s food intolerances because I assume that’s what was going on and his low appetite that I was actually unaware of at the time. And a Banerji protocol that I would use today for my son had I known about this many years ago would have been Coffea 200 to help him sleep. So that’s what I wish I had known back at that time.

Jendi: So then you were just treating the effect. But to add these other things, you’d be treating the cause as well as the effect.

Joette: Yes. That’s the best way to approach this. And in many kinds of cases such as this, that is the best approach. Since this occurred over 20 years ago, I’ve worked with thousands of students and clients across the world, and this has become a specialty of sorts of mine.

Jendi: You mean, dealing with the children who don’t sleep?

Joette: Actually, no – children and adults who have problems that seem unrelated to the main issue which is actually a gut problem in the long run. 

Jendi: And I keep hearing that these days in a lot of different things. It’s kind of like the buzzword, that it’s a gut problem.

Joette: Right. Well, I agree. And I blame it not only on the foods that are eaten but more importantly, much more importantly in my estimation, on the drugs that are taken. Antibiotics cause long-term illness, and they’re handed out like candy. And the new way of dispensing antibiotics is for the pediatrician to now say something like this – I’ve heard this; the pediatricians haven’t told me themselves, of course, but the mothers relay this to me – the pediatrician says, “I know. I agree. Antibiotics are bad. But this one I’m giving you for your child’s ear infection is different. This is a mild one.” So they’re catching on to this fact that mothers have caught on that the jig is up, basically. So I call this sugar-coated drug deal. I’m sorry, but an antibiotic is an antibiotic. Listen, if it kills bacteria, it kills bacteria. It’s like saying, “This pesticide is a mild pesticide. It only kills gently with rainbows and flowers and things.” It’s all malarkey. The next thing they’ll try to sell you is the hottest new vaccine to protect your sexually active 2-year-old.

Jendi: Oh, my. And when is it going to stop?

Joette: It never stops. It doesn’t. It’s not going to. Why would it? If you’re willing to buy once from this kind of thinking, then the pattern has been developed. And then the expectation is that you’re willing to buy again. So upsells are profitable at a pediatric practice. I know because I know marketing and I know upsells. Upsell such as vaccine sales if properly utilized can represent a large percentage of profits for an otherwise not very profitable practice. In case you don’t know, pediatricians represent the lowest incomes in the medical world. They make less than most accountants.

Jendi: I did not know that. But I’m also interested into why would that matter to mothers? Because doesn’t that mean the pediatrician isn’t as worried about money and would make his advice more pure?

Joette: I don’t agree. I don’t think so. I think it makes him more worried about finances. He, or it could be a she, has spent approximately as much time in medical school as the cardiologist or the surgeon has, maybe a year less. Spent just as much in tuition and has less to show for it now. It matters that mothers know what drive their experts. We should know this, what drives your car salesman, your real estate agent, so that you can discern what part of what they say is benevolence and which part is self-driven.

Jendi: It makes them sound like very selfish animals.

Joette: Well, they’re really not though. It’s just the reality of the world. This is my take on it. Live your life and think the way you want, but I believe that it’s time that mothers come to realize that no one except your family is out there protecting you and your child. No one. Not the government, not the food industry, not the education system, not the doctors. As soon as you recognize this simple but important fact of life, you’ll be able to step back and make much, much better decisions about your health and your family’s health.

Jendi: And that’s why you want to get your message out to mothers to learn how to take care of their families themselves.

Joette: You bet. And I offer no apologies, Jendi. If you decide to purchase my courses, certainly, I make a profit. I do, indeed, have fixed cost and a number of staff members but I also offer other information for free on this blog and this podcast. And if our listeners do nothing but use these resources, buy a few books, they’ll be far, far ahead of where I was when I began my journey treating my kids, my family, myself some 29 or 30 years ago. So I tell folks all the time, “Don’t buy anything from me. It’s okay. Just pass this on from one mother to another, from one grandmother to another, from one neighbor to another.” I know it’s cliché but I want to change the world one family at a time. And I know that sounds goofy but it really is the truth.

Jendi: So let’s get back to the subject at hand about how failure is not an excuse.

Joette: That’s why I need you, Jendi, to keep me in line, to keep me straight here now. Okay, so let’s get back to the idea of what we’re talking about. So the way to succeed is not just to persevere but to do so with your eyes wide open and learn to play the game better than anyone. It took me years to pass that real estate exam but once I got it, I was unstoppable. And I wasn’t deluded into believing that it was owed me or that others were there to help me pass it. There wasn’t anyone there to help me pass it. They wanted me to not pass it. Instead, I learned early in that career that the goal of the industry was to keep me out of the loop. But if you break down the issues or the aspect of what you want to learn into small parts, manageable parts, it’s of course, more doable. So as I say, it’s a free blog, it’s a free podcast, inexpensive CDs, downloads, more involved courses, and all of that. And all of that can be broken down and you use each piece as you need it. And if you don’t want to go any further, that’s fine. Unfortunately, the goal of keeping mothers and others out of the loop is not so much for modern medicine but especially pediatrics.

Jendi: So I’m getting the impression that you really don’t like pediatrics. 

Joette: Sorry to say, Jendi, but yes. I’m cross that they have stripped young mothers of their mothering dignity. I believe they teach mothers that they don’t know how to take care of their children without running to the doc for every sniffle and sore throat. I don’t like that they upsell drugs. I don’t like that they dole out antibiotics at every turn. I don’t like that they put little boys on Ritalin. They act too boyish. They don’t want to sit still in school. And they put little girls on birth control pills if they get acne. I don’t like that they send the mothers out of the examining room while they entice, and I mean, yes, entice girls to take birth control pills. I’ve heard far too many stories. I don’t like the whole racket.

Jendi: Previously, you have said that to understand how to approach taking your child to the doctor, you need to think of it like a game of chess. Can you elaborate on that?

Joette: Yes, sure. Well, you don’t put your queen out on the middle of the board and remove your hand from her. You look around. What will happen next once you make that move? What will your opponent’s posture be? What will they do after you lift your hands from that precious queen? Then what will you do after that? You have to know that. What are you going to do next? You must know the game, and that includes the players, the motives, discerning your goals, and how to move forward.

Jendi: So do you intend for us to look at the doctor as an opponent?

Joette: What it means is that if you take your child to a doctor for an ear infection, you need to know what he will do about it. If you don’t agree with that move, then why make the first move?

Jendi: How do you know what he’ll do?

Joette: Well, to be honest, it’s fundamentally the same for everyone. That’s the way I see it. If there’s an infection, you get an antibiotic. If it’s viral in origin, antibiotics are still administered, just in case it turns into a bacterial infection. There seems to be a casual regard about these drugs. If you have an allergic reaction, you give a steroid. If it’s on the skin, it’s smeared. If it’s in the lungs, it’s inhaled. If your child has a cough, it’s suppressed with a suppressant. If it’s a behavioral problem, it’s also suppressed but this time, with psychotropic drugs to numb down the behavior. If it’s a combination of all of these, the child gets all the drugs. But if he doesn’t know what it is, he’ll send you to someone else.

There you have it. That’s it in a nutshell. I can’t tell you how many times people tell me they have this inflammation on their skin and they go to the dermatologist and he tells them, “You have dermatitis.” Well, -itis means inflammation of, and derma- means skin. You already know that. That’s why you went there. Why did you need to ask someone else about what it is? He’s just giving you the same words back again but it sounds so, I don’t know, clinical. People are too easily impressed. And if you’re going there just to find out whether there’s an ear infection or a sore throat or not, I’d think, “Hmm, really? You mean, you didn’t know that already?”

It’s not difficult to determine if there’s an ear infection, or a urinary tract infection, or a rash, or a fever. If you know what it is and you know that you’ll not submit to an antibiotic and steroids, then why would you go? You can do this yourself. Now, I’m not saying you can just do this yourself without preparation. And I also am not saying you should always avoid the doctor. I want to get that straight. But after a while, it comes into focus that this just isn’t that difficult to figure out yourself for most common childhood illnesses. It’s a matter of a learned skill. 

If you agree with that thinking, then carry on. But if you don’t, it’s time to make the change and use your head. You learn the top three homeopathic medicines for ear infection. Just know them. Look them up. Look them up on my website, look them up online. Know those top three homeopathic remedies and have them on hand. And then if your child is prone to rashes, then you learn and have the top three homeopathic remedies for rashes. This is not complex. And you learn how to put it all together. It’s a matter of some fascinating reading that you’ll never regret having read and of taking your life on yourself. Not compromising, because compromising always has the potential of bringing you to your mediocre side.

Jendi: Can you give us a specific example?

Joette: Yes. Let me give you an example of strep throat. Pediatricians believe that strep throat is an automatic call for antibiotics. Why? Because they call to our attention that they can cause rheumatic heart disease. But when you lay their argument alongside the one for not using antibiotics, it begins to break down. Antibiotic use, particularly repetitive use, but sometimes not even repetitive, has been demonstrably shown to cause not just a little bellyache that some little probiotic would remedy, but often causes long-term chronic illness such as eczema, asthma, behavioral issues, even neurological conditions. Really, to fend off strep infection? More importantly, it all sounds like strep is serious. And indeed, it has the potential of being serious. But if you know what to use homeopathically for strep infection, it’s a slam dunk. It is not difficult to treat strep infections with the correct homeopathic medicines. So you see, you need willpower to withstand this kind of thinking, and then have a solution in the wings. You can’t do one without the other. But once this step is taken, the hardest work is done, the kind of self-discipline you will need to stay the course and learn for yourself.

Jendi: So how do you see that this fits into our failure theme today? Do you think we all tend to do the mediocre?

Joette: Yeah. I think accepting failure is not only somewhat innate in humans but it’s reinforced further with this kind of medicine, for example. What else can we do? We’ve got to accept the antibiotics, do this or that, or know that’s what kids get. So what do you expect? So I guess you just have to do it. Well, my answer is that I expect a medicine to make my family and me, well, not short-term more comfortable only to slam us in the long run for years, if not a lifetime. I’m in this for the long haul. So are you. So are all our listeners. Mothering is a lifelong commitment. My kids are adults now. I’m still just as committed now as I used to be when they were little.

Actually, I’ve come to expect that my medicine has a reputation for being curative and it leaves my family in a better stead than when we started. I don’t want something that’s going to beat them up in the long run and is going to cause long-term illness. The human body is equipped with the ability to repair and defend itself against most infections. All it needs is the proper stimulation to activate self-healing. And concurrently, the human will is equipped with the ability to withstand defeat. All it needs is the proper motivation to activate self-mastery.

Jendi: So are those your parting words of encouragement for us today?

Joette: Now, now, Jendi, you’re always trying to rush me. One last thought. I want to tell you that fail you must. We all must. But to not continue until success is reached is what separates mediocre medicine from mighty medicine, and further, a mediocre mother from a mighty mother. 

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:

0:59 Question, challenge, defy accepted ideas and practices

6:55 The mother’s role in her child’s life

17:54 Convincing your spouse on the wisdom of using homeopathy

19:48 Joette becoming accomplished in homeopathy

23:17 Arm yourself with knowledge to decide for yourself what’s best for you and your family

I realize I am going to receive some staunch differences of opinion regarding this blog for the position I take and the philosophy I espouse, but I offer no apologies.

This week I talk about a lifestyle change; one that takes courage. I personally have a set of rules, and have found that if I abide by them, they rarely fail me.

Listen to learn about the sense of self-satisfaction you will experience once you understand how to take charge of your family’s health and well-being.

With this podcast, I will be introducing a new feature; a full transcription providing more reasons than ever to listen, learn and pass on to others.

Warmly,

Joette

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.

Jendi: Hello, this is Jendi and I’m here once again with Joette Calabrese. Today, we are going to talk about being a mighty mom and grandmom. And I personally love that idea, and I imagine that you, Joette, are not going to be discussing mothers working out and getting rippling muscles, right?

Joette: Well, yes and no. And I don’t mean physically working out but I do mean muscles. We’re talking about learning to flex the brain muscle and more importantly, the muscle of the will.

Jendi: You mean willpower? 

Joette: Yeah, but it sounds a little trite, that term willpower. I want to talk about having guts, spunk, and moxie. And I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again and again, that living this kind of lifestyle takes courage. But I have some rules, and I found that if I abide by them, they rarely fail me. So let me give you some rules. We must defy the practices of our peers. This doesn’t mean you become their foil. It doesn’t mean you forget polite society and bash them down with your ideas. It means you find a way to speak pleasantly and with respect and then direct yourself in your own path.

And the second rule is you must question, even challenge, every idea that impacts your family’s health. This most often comes from pediatricians, other doctors, media, and of course, the rest of society that has profited from these ideas emanating from these sources. So this group might come in the form of in-laws and neighbors, too. And then the third rule that I adhere to and I urge others to do is at least question, usually challenge, and in many instances, downright defy. The world is filled with assumptions that are false and it’s up to you to tether your sails and set your family off on a different tack. So the upshot is that you must, and I mean must, set yourself on a path that is directly in conflict with what you see around you. The more you see an idea around you, the more you should resist it.

Jendi: That seems a little bit counterintuitive.

Joette: Well, the reason that I say this is because I believe most ideas are wrong, or at least, need refining. For example, read the billboards in your locale and whatever they say, do the opposite. Common horse sense is not found on billboards, in magazines, in doctors’ offices, on TV. Instead, those are marketing tools for an entity, either an industry or a government program trying to convince you of something.

Jendi: And there is no doubt that the internet has opened up our knowledge base and we can find out several sides of an issue through the internet.

Joette: Yes, yes, we can. But it’s useless unless you put it to good use. I know I’ve said this again and again and I’ll do until I have barnacles hanging on me. You must do your homework. You must look up every drug and procedure that a doctor recommends and I guarantee, he has not done this. But you, my friends, will do this because before you put a fragment of any stuff that is derived from an industry in your or your child’s mouth, you must do your homework, or you must submit to a test that is unnecessary. So there’s no doubt that we’re smarter now, we mothers. There it is, all the information we’d ever need, and yet, most people don’t even think about using it to its capacity, I mean, the internet. Not you though. You do your homework. And how do I know this? And I’m not talking just to Jendi. I’m talking to those who are listening. Because I speak to those who follow me every single day.

Jendi: And the internet is a wonderful research tool.

Joette: Yes, but without the master behind the tools, nothing is possible. So remember, the internet is only a marketing tool for big industry and government. So you must sniff out the answers in coy ways, because we as mothers and grandmothers and those who care for others are the masters of our and our family’s lives, and that takes a certain posture. You have to make a decision. Like if you decide you want to become a lawyer, you have to commit to taking the LSATs and commit to going to law school. I mean, it’s pretty simple. If you decide you want to become a concert pianist, you must pledge to practicing piano for hours daily. It’s that simple. Whatever you want to do, whatever you want to accomplish, it must be chosen, focused upon, and gone after myopically without even a glance back, regardless of others’ opinions.

Jendi: And that’s how we all move forward and learn things in any pursuit.

Joette: Well, that’s right. And the question always is, “Are we comfortable allowing the current to take us along, or are we made of the stuff that pushes us in the direction we know we ought to follow?”

Jendi: I think we all agree that we ought to sometimes buck the system but that can be hard to do when you’re a mom, especially of a little baby or a new mom, and when the doctor tells you to take an antibiotic or something and you don’t know what to do for sure. You might be scared for your child and you just simply do it knowing that the antibiotic is not going to do any better than the last one but not knowing what else to do.

Joette: Yes, but you know, it’s only hard to buck the system if you’ve not educated yourself. Once you know better because you’ve done your homework, that gives you confidence. The more you learn, the more confidence you acquire, the firmer your footing, and so on. And more importantly, once you learn how to treat that illness with homeopathy instead of the drug, you gain indelible confidence one illness at a time. Then you become the expert.

Jendi: That can be a daunting feat.

Joette: Well, Jendi, you and I have these discussions every week, don’t we? But the most satisfying and most important, the reason you’ve become a mother has nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with compliancy and everything to do with your legacy, responsibility, and integrity.

Jendi: Yes. And of course, sometimes doing what you personally think is best can be difficult, especially if your family doesn’t agree, like your in-laws, your friends, or even your spouse.

Joette: Okay. Well, let’s talk about spouses. This is a concept that I’ve taken on through the years and I’ve espoused to younger women. It’s most important that your spouse and you share the same philosophy. In fact, it should have been discussed before marriage. The problem is that most marriages occur outside of ill health and it’s often when a sick child comes along that inspires the move to take this on your own. That’s when the spouses must begin a different kind of a journey.

Jendi: It’s like no one gives a thought about the kind of healthcare the family is going to practice until something happens. And age comes into play, too, right?

Joette: Yes, I believe that’s right. I have a philosophy about parenting and marriage and I see the opposite of this philosophy played out every day, and it’s this. This is my philosophy. Marriage is like a corporation. There are department heads for each division. And each division has its specialty of capabilities – the marketing department, the finance department, the personnel department. They all have their responsibilities and specialties. And each department head is expected to know their craft inside and out to keep up with their craft so that they are always on top of their game. They’re the experts.

So let me give you an example. When I worked at a TV station years ago, we had a comptroller who used to hang around the marketing and sales department way too much. I was in marketing and sales. Granted, we were more fun than the pencil pushers in her department, but when she came in for her daily visit, she’d often put her two cents into the way our department was run. What became obvious in no time was that she was out of her element. Her suggestions were off-kilter because she wasn’t a marketing or salesperson. She was a number cruncher. She didn’t live the life daily. She hadn’t read a single book on the subject, nor had she gone to college for it, nor taken a weekend seminar on it. She had nothing but an opinion. Her expertise was in accounting. Now, that was something she could sink her teeth into. Her entire life was spent studying and accruing knowledge on that subject.

Jendi: And probably equally as important is the fact that when she was nosing around in your department, she was inadvertently neglecting her own work.

Joette: Well, that’s right. It took our department head to finally put a stop to this less-than-welcome daily interference.

Jendi: So I think I might know where you’re heading with this with spouses.

Joette: Well, if you know, then our listeners will also know, too, I hope. So marriage, yes, of course, is the same. When a woman gets pregnant, everything in her life turns to that, everything she eats, lives, and breathes, everything there is about the baby. She reads constantly. She ponders. She daydreams. She researches about babies’ health, what’s good, what’s bad, what kind of food, supplements, exercise is important. She talks incessantly about it with her friends who have children. She deliberates with her mother and her neighbors, and everyone offers advice and she soaks it all in. She researches all about the baby – birth, wellness, etc., on the internet. She’s consumed by the baby and its wellbeing.

What does the father do? He takes on the protective responsibility for his forthcoming family. He works harder to make certain that the finances are in place. He makes certain that the investments he makes have longevity. He gets the house repairs in order, make sure the car is safe, asks his buddies about insurance, then starts researching the best way to protect his new family. It all makes sense. Each parent takes on their roles and often with alacrity and aplomb. And once the baby comes, mom is literally attached to the baby with nursing, staying up at night with every sound. And during her waking hours, she generally is reading or at least, referring to books and sites that will teach her to become a better mom. Dad’s at work making sure the family is provided for.

Now, I know we’re going to get rebuttals to this on the blog about how women are perfectly capable of making a living and men are perfectly capable of taking care of children, but I offer no apologies. What I’m describing here is the way it more often falls together than any other. No matter how capable the woman was before the baby, she could be the comptroller of a Fortune 500 corporation, once that baby arrives, she changes in a profound way. It’s pure biology. She wants to be with her child as much as possible, all day, all night. And suddenly, the career she strove for for decades seems trite. Am I describing all women? No, but I believe it’s the majority of them. And this is one of my major complaints with Western lifestyles that women rarely factor in marriage and babies into their plans. It becomes a distant event that isn’t in the least bit focused upon in their teens and 20s and, of course, in college. But I divert here. This pet peeve of mine is something that is a subject for another blog.

Jendi: I hadn’t thought about that much before now but I think colleges don’t really talk about marriage or motherhood, the two big M words.

Joette: Right, yeah. It’s approached like a side dish of scalloped potatoes or something instead of the main dish of pot roast that actually is in many a woman’s life. So let’s get back to marriage as a corporation theory. So when the roof leaks, the dad usually swings into gear and talks to his buddies. He checks out roof products online. He decides what kind of tiles he should replace them with. Or he calls around for contractors. He’s the buildings and grounds department head. When the mortgage rates go down, it’s usually the dad who has done his research to find out if a better rate can be secured and then goes at it. He becomes the buildings and ground department head and the comptroller.

So when baby gets an ear infection and mom wants to use essential oils, homeopathy, or whatever and not subject the baby to an antibiotic because she has studied the possibilities for many months, if not years, she has made herself into an expert, just like the dad making him into the family expert on his subjects. So even if she has not researched, her hormones dictate in most cases she’s best suited for taking care of the ills of the children – the food they eat, the nutrition they take in daily, and the nightly care. After all, who does the grocery shopping? Who’s preparing the meals? In most cases, she’s best suited for the job as he is for his. And so mom becomes the personnel department and health and welfare.

Jendi: And that’s a very traditional position to put out on the internet and I think it’s a good position but I’m sure you’re going to get some disagreements in your comments on the blog.

Joette: Oh, I couldn’t care less. Being politically correct is not only not my concern but it’s so passé. I call it ever so ‘90s. And this is 2015, for crying out loud. We have learned something since then. Society needs to get with the program as far as I’m concerned. This is not your women study class here. This is biology, something that’s been conspicuously missing from those angry classes in the first place. I remember those women studies classes. I took them back in the ‘70s, and nothing has changed. This is the real world. When was the last time you met a lactating father, for crying out loud?

Jendi: I don’t think I ever met one and I don’t think I ever will.

Joette: I hope not. So when dad spends hours researching the roof tile and decides to take time with his buddies in the industry or his father about vapor barriers and he concludes that he’ll do this or that with the roof, and then if mom chimes in and says, “Hmm, I don’t think that’s what we ought to do,” she’s sticking her nose into the buildings and grounds department’s decision without the requisite research, inclination, and effort it takes to make a good decision. And if she gets too involved, then her health and welfare department suffers, too.

Jendi: Yes. And I think an argument would be that the child does belong to both of them. Doesn’t the father have the right to ask questions?

Joette: Well, certainly. If his understanding is unclear though, if it hasn’t been fleshed out by his own research and study, then it’s terribly inefficient and undermines the ability of the health and welfare department’s confidence. And certainly, both can study together. But asking both to do the same work twice seems a little bit of a waste of precious time, and time is of the essence. It’s an important commodity in a family. And when you’re running a corporation, or more importantly, a family, productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency matters. For if not there, then where else would it matter? It all starts with the family. In fact, everything starts with the family. Family is the team. And an extra quarterback is not only superfluous, it’s conflicting to the success of that team.

Jendi: So you were actually using nice words to say that the father should just butt out.

Joette: Well, not actually butt out but he needs to trust his wife. Isn’t that why he married her, because he trusts her and holds her in high regard? Well, of course, all bets are off that this is not the state of the marriage, but it certainly is the goal of a good marriage.

Jendi: So basically, what you’re saying is that when the mom spends hours, weeks, years learning how to treat a fever without drugs, or how to implement her knowledge in using homeopathy or any other method for that matter, the dad ought to step back and trust her.

Joette: Well, yes, unless she’s incompetent, completely incompetent. He needs to bow to her knowledge and dedication. That leaves him to pursue his areas of expertise. And that’s what makes a marriage whole and efficient, as far as I’m concerned.

Jendi: Can it be the other way around? Can the father take over the healthcare role?

Joette: Well, certainly. And after teaching homeopathy for 30 years to thousands of students, I have to admit, however, that in my recollection, I’ve had maybe five men join in my classes. Online, we have tens of thousands of social media correspondences and the same holds true there as well. I’ve learned that women are more interested in taking this job seriously and are better at nurturing while men are generally better at protecting. And yes, it’s certainly a generalization but I don’t for a minute think that it’s our culture to blame. Instead, I see, as I said earlier, that it’s human biology. That’s why I believe this pattern spans across the globe.

Jendi: What about if the father is worried, really worried about counting on homeopathy or nutrition or essential oils?

Joette: Well, I have an answer that includes two parts of this. The first part is that if it is a concern, he needs to do his own homework then, like what his wife did, and to the same extent. He needs to spend hours daily thinking about it, looking up solutions, calling friends, just like what she did, taking the kids to the chiropractor or the doctor, talking to school administrators, asking his mother and grandmother for advice.

Jendi: So do you have much faith in this happening?

Joette: No, I haven’t. I can pretty much guarantee that that’s not going to happen. I mean, it does occasionally, but generally speaking, not to the same degree. In my experience, the best way for men to catch up with enough information so that they can let go and let their wives do the job at hand, instead of asking them to read books, I’ve learned through the years that they won’t do it, so the alternative, the fastest way to get him up to enough speed that he gets what the mom wants him to get, is for the mom to amass videos on the subject, then you barter with them. So from one mother to another, I’ll let you in on a little secret. You make a big batch of popcorn, whisper sweet nothings in his ear, and promise him the world if he’ll sit through the video and the subject at hand, a video of, say, the value of homeopathy, the importance of nutrition. That is the way to get men to learn.

Jendi: That sounds like a big project.

Joette: Yeah. And what in life has any value that doesn’t have a big commitment attached to it? I can think of nothing that comes easy in life that’s of any value. It takes a vow to be the best we can be.

Jendi: And also, if he has a long commute, he might be interested in listening to some podcasts.

Joette: That’s right. And why not this one?

Jendi: So can you give us a peek into how you became accomplished in homeopathy?

Joette: Well, I’m an accomplishment freak. I want to learn more. I always want to know more. I want to experience more. At first, when my first child was an infant, I already knew how to make many foods from scratch. It was my interest since my early 20s. But then, I wanted to know how to find wild foods on my property, how to make herbal medicines, how to find the most nutrient dense foods available for the least amount of money. It was like a game. It became a compulsion, kind of an inner competition. And my pregnancies and births thrust me forward into an even higher gear. So then, once I learned of the power of homeopathy, I wanted to know how to treat every little problem my baby might suffer. I wanted to know how to treat first aid with homeopathy, infections with homeopathy, emotional and mental conditions with homeopathy. I wanted to be the expert. I did not want a condescending pediatrician telling me what to do. I kicked my mothering act up a notch. So I want to know every homeopathic medicine for every ill. That’s why even today with my kids grown and out of our home and now in my ‘60s, I travel to India where homeopathy is used as a mainstay of medicine. In fact, I’m going there again in about a month and a half.

Jendi: And I think this is what many of us mothers think but we wonder how to get it all done. Like for me, I have a book on it and I know stuff on your website and then it’s just hard to cram it in to my schedule. And also, I wonder what others are going to think about this.

Joette: Right. Well, when you become a mother, and even if you never do, and you’re taking care of others, animals, livestock, etc., but most importantly when you become the caregiver, you must not care what others think. That’s the first thing. I decided a while ago that I don’t care about what kind of an opinion others have about me. Some women say this happens in menopause or after menopause. I actually think it happened even earlier in my life. So if you don’t agree with my position on medicine or traditional values about how to take care of a family, the importance of a mother being at home to take care of her children, about the importance of going to church or synagogue, I couldn’t care less. And I don’t mind if that causes us to part ways. In fact, it’s even better that way. Each person needs to find their path.

But my posture is arrow pointed in one direction – the importance of the family and of the mother being the nucleus of the child’s and family’s healthcare. And accomplishing that goal is after all I’ve examined can’t be done fully if you depend on large companies to make decisions for you, and a reminder that that’s what using drugs is all about. It’s a fierce and mighty instinct in me and in all of us. I’m not alone. Most mothers and grandmothers come equipped with it naturally, but they need to beware because there are factions that are perfectly happy allowing mothering and grandparenting to become a spectator’s sport, of allowing mothering to take on a mediocre hue.

Jendi: It sounds like you would like to change the world.

Joette: Well, a girl can dream, I guess.

Jendi: Lots of food for thought there. I guess this is across the board with many industries, right?

Joette: Well, when we follow the road of least resistance and we just say, “Well, I don’t have time and I can’t do this,” then we’re just going to follow along with an industry that calls us something in particular – customers for an industry, whichever industry is behind it, the education industry, the medical industry, the food industry. Don’t think, folks, for a minute that someone hasn’t thought through every decision you make for your family and self and determine the best way to get you to comply to their ways of persuasion. That’s what Madison Avenue is all about. I know because I’ve been in the world of marketing. And how often you get your child a flu shot is orchestrated down to the month – what the doctor says if you don’t comply, the demeanor he takes on, the nurse’s attitudes when you resist. It’s orchestrated. And by the way, it’s orchestrated using human emotions. Guilt and fear are the most powerful emotions when it comes to parenting. Watch carefully. Observe. Once you discover this, you’ll see it being used again and again.

Jendi: If we think about it, we all know that this is the way things are. Do you really think this is the essence of how humans behave?

Joette: Well, we must understand that rarely are people and entities out there protecting your interest. People can be nice but they’re protecting their own interests. So as soon as I hear that this or that is for the sake of “the children”, I prick up my ears. The words “the children” are used in marketing campaigns and educational schemes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the welfare of children.

Jendi: So if we hear the word children, we naturally kind of join in the empathy?

Joette: Yeah. You can’t help yourself. It’s a powerful word. I’ll never forget a friend reporting to me years ago that when she was in labor with her first child, and she was in labor for several hours, that her smarmy doctor was pressuring her to allow him to chemically induce her, and she was resisting it. Finally, he said, “Do you want this baby or not?” What? What kind of a thing is that to say to a mother in labor? What possible meaning was behind that? Guilt for not wanting the baby to be born? This was the guy that all my friends went to for their births. They all thought he was the bee’s knees. Can anyone imagine that? That is beyond depressing.

Jendi: And if I were a paranoid person, I’d say it almost sounds like a conspiracy.

Joette: No. I’ll be honest, Jendi. I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy. I might add that this has nothing to do with capitalism, too, and everything to do with human nature at its worst. The same behavior is witnessed, only to even a worse degree, in Cuba – I’ve said this before – and the Soviet Union and China. Don’t think for a single minute that it’s better somewhere else. Government officials are usually worse in these situations than those in the free market because they don’t need to satisfy customers. And with government rules and mandates, we haven’t any choices. You can, however, decline to take the antibiotic or whatever is being encouraged or sold to you.

Jendi: So to wrap up this podcast, can you give us maybe some encouragement?

Joette: Yes. I don’t want to leave us on a down because it sounds a little sad. Instead, I want to encourage everyone. Allow me to share information that I’ve gleaned by being in full-time practice for 20 years, and from studying homeopathy for 29, and from traveling all over the US and Canada and to India to build my knowledge base. I offer a lot of information on homeopathy and how to use it for free. And yes, I also sell courses for those who want to delve deeper. But I urge you to take advantage of my free information as often as you need it on this blog.

So my closing words are this: Don’t engage in average anything – mediocre movies, mediocre literature, unexceptional magazines, one-of-the-mill medicine, unremarkable food, conformist conduct. Low-level anything is an act of compliancy, compliancy with our innate laziness which, by the way, we all possess, compliancy with our low-level anything. Instead, pursue the good. And I want to read this in our final words here, the great words found in Philippians. It says, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Jendi: And those words are great words to live by. Thank you so much, Joette.

Joette: My thanks to you, too, Jendi.

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.

Mother’s Day 2016 Special

Interested in learning more practical, proven protocols for women’s health? Well, you are in luck! My popular course,Feminopathy: How you Can Correct Female Ailments Using Save, Inexpensive and Effective Homeopathy, is ON SALE through Mother’s Day! Order now and get additional freebies: http://feminopathy.joettecalabrese.com/mothers-day/

In this podcast, we cover:

1:35 Acute vs. chronic conditions

6:58 Drugs are antithetical to true health

16:10 Drugs suppress while homeopathy cures for the long-term

23:16 Rousing the sleeping giant

24:13 Learn homeopathy to cure diseases

Just last week on the phone, Skype and through emails, I met and spoke with over 80 people in my practice.

What I heard from mostly moms and grand moms is that they have used homeopathy for their family’s illnesses from their collection of homeopathy books they’ve purchased from health food stores and online, but they can’t seem to treat the eczema their son or grandson has.

They can’t seem to get a grip on food intolerances or chronic constipation, arthritis, asthma, ovarian cystic disease, or severe acne etc., because they can’t find anything on these chronic conditions.

In this week’s Podcast I can tell you why and more…

I explain the difference between chronic and acute illness

The good news and the bad news

The solution; a real life solution you busy moms and grand moms can use immediately

It’s not good enough to strive to be the best in the world, you must be the best FOR the world. Join me and change your world first, then the rest by spreading the message.

Warmly,

Joette

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.

Jendi: Hello! This is Jendi and I am here with Joette Calabrese and today, we’re going to talk about acute versus chronic. Hello, Joette! How are you?

Joette: Hi, Jendi! I’m well.

Jendi: I know you talk about this a lot and we talked about it in some of the previous podcasts but why does acute versus chronic matter so much?

Joette: Well, let me step back a little bit. Just this past week, I’ve had a very busy week on Skype and emails and on the phone. I met with over 80 people in my practice. And what I hear from mostly moms and grandmoms is that they have used homeopathy for their family’s illnesses from their cadre of homeopathy books and courses they’ve taken that they found maybe at health food stores, etc., and online, but they can’t get to the eczema their son has. They can’t seem to get a grip on food intolerances or chronic constipation, arthritis, asthma, ovarian cyst disease, acne, etc. They can’t find any of these conditions. And, why not, they ask.

Jendi: Yeah, why not? I hate to ask you this but is it because homeopathy doesn’t help in those conditions?

Acute vs. chronic conditions

Joette: No, no, not at all, a resounding no. In fact, it’s these very conditions that homeopathy does its best work. It’s because in homeopathy, and all medicine for that matter, we categorize conditions into two main classes, but especially in homeopathy because it’s so perfect. First is acute and second is chronic. Those are the two main classes. And the difference is noteworthy. In fact, it’s downright vital. So in classical homeopathy, which is not what we’re talking about here, we are taught that an untrained homeopath can cure her family herself when it comes to acutes. But it requires years and years of study to be able to cure a chronic condition.

Jendi: So in case someone doesn’t understand, can you give me an example of a chronic and an acute condition?

Joette: Yes. Let’s start out with that. So acutes are illnesses that have a natural beginning and a natural end. They end. They are usually short lived, but not necessarily. They can last for weeks, months, but generally, they’re short lived, and they show a great deal of vitality. If you have the flu or strep throat infection, there’s a great deal of fanfare that accompanies it. The body gets super hot with fever, perhaps there’s vomiting. There might be weakness. Especially with the flu, we might even see depression. But this is the big distinguisher – you know it will go away at some point. Flu doesn’t stick with us forever. It resolves or you die. But it’s not going to last for years. By the way, acute conditions don’t always resolve. I want to make that point. Death can be the outcome. So otitis media, conjunctivitis, strep throat, lacerations, bug bites, injuries, they begin and you know that you won’t have that bug bite or laceration forever or even a few years, right?

Jendi: For most bug bites. In this area, we have a lot of Lyme disease, so I’m not sure about that one.

Joette: Well, that’s right. Lyme disease is a little different. Sometimes an acute or short-lived show of symptoms such as a bug bite can turn into a chronic condition, and that’s precisely what we’re going to talk about today.

Jendi: So that’s the acute conditions. Can you tell us about chronic conditions?

Joette: Yes. So with most chronic conditions, it often shows a lower level of presentation. So it’s not screaming-in-the-bed illness necessarily like a flu would cause but it’s in a lower level and it’s pretty much forever. And this is key: It doesn’t go away.

Jendi: So like people assume with allergies.

Joette: That’s right, exactly. But let me set the stage first. We’re all made from DNA. No matter what your politics are, the bottom line is that at the moment of conception, that blessed moment – sorry, I had to toss that in – the DNA is mixed between the mother and father – dad’s blue eyes along with his anxiety attacks, mother’s propensity for rashes, his grandfather’s over affection for alcohol, and we haven’t even gotten to the full extent of the entire family yet. So does this mean that the baby will be hampered with all these maladies? Of course not. But they are lurking in the background like a sleeping giant. The sleeping giant can be poked at and taunted, so beware. It can be roused. And we want to do whatever we can to not have to face this monster.

Jendi: And most people say that we should eat well and live a healthy life, right?

Joette: Yes, but that’s too vague an answer, as far as I’m concerned. That’s a woman’s magazine answer. Living a healthy life is meaningless if you’ve got the idea that that means eating a low-fat diet and submitting to mammograms every year.

Jendi: So what does it mean to you?

Joette: Well, what it means to me is that we want to minimize shocks to the system. What are they? Well, shocks are inevitable – the loss of a loved one, financial loss, plus those are psychological shocks, an automobile accident, a severe bout of bronchitis, terrorist acts. That’s the stuff that brings us down to a lower level. Modern day doctors talk about stress all the time but they miss one important piece, and that is that the medical methods they themselves employ are often the stressor. By medical methods, I mean drugs, medicaments, invasive tests, surgery, vaccinations. These are the stressors and I use the term lightly here, but this is what rouses the sleeping giant. It stimulates the weak link in our DNA. And what comes up is what is related to us and what’s in our family tree.

Jendi: The first thing that comes to my mind is I know a lady that was just fine until her son died and now, she has a bad nerve disease or condition. And that kind of explains that or how some people say they were fine until their dog died or they lost their job.

Joette: Right, right, and those are psychological. Yes, and then chronic problems set in – chronic fatigue, eczema, arthritis, chemical sensitivities. But mind you, the most common shocks to the system is pollution.

Jendi: And most people think of pollution as acid rain and pesticides on our food, right?

Drugs are antithetical to true health

Joette: Well, certainly, we need to stay clear of those kinds of poisons. Of course. And that’s practical. But more importantly, the poisons we put in our mouths daily. Now, I know I’m going to turn a certain number of people off by saying this, but I view all meds, drugs, and such as poisons, because they are. Drugs, no matter their value, what they were intended to be used for, they were never truly intended for mankind to ingest or smear on. They are antithetical to true health.

Jendi: So that statement is pretty extreme. Can you explain it a little more?

Joette: Yes, certainly. All poisons come with a label, a warning that this or that will happen on taking such. Have you ever read the inserts on the side effects of drugs, any drug including aspirin, Tylenol, birth control pills? Have you ever looked online what could happen to you if you take an over-the-counter or prescribed drug? As far as I’m concerned, it reads like rat poisoning. It warns us that it can cause hearing loss, bleeding, fetal damage, rashes, loss of normal vision, diarrhea, anxiety, convulsions, and my all-time favorite, death. I wouldn’t wish this on a rat. Well, maybe I would but not my child or my husband, my parents, my brother, certainly not. So why do people take these drugs? Why do we even consider these? These are the questions that I always wonder about. There are a couple of reasons. Number one, because their doctor told them to do so. And most folks have a long umbilical cord still attached looking for someone to plug it into. I don’t mean to be rude or unkind but we humans look to others for our answers. And certainly, that is a prudent thing to do to a certain extent but we must be certain that what we plug into is the correct socket.

Jendi: So what’s number two?

Joette: The second reason, I believe, is because they think there’s no other way. Once the doctor says, “Here, take this,” they say to themselves, “Well, I don’t really want to take drugs.” I mean, everyone tells me, “I don’t want to take drugs.” That is how they open practically every appointment I’ve ever booked. “I don’t want to take drugs, but what else can I do? I must do something.” And so they submit. And number three is because they don’t think the side effects will really affect them. It’s that old “That will never happen to me” attitude. But I have to say they’re wrong. I was wrong when I counted on drugs and others who still depend on them are also wrong. And what’s more, the long-term effects are the worst part and are never spoken of. Remember the sleeping giant now. These long-term effects are only noticed by the sufferers, not the drug companies who publish the studies. They often happen too long after and sometimes people don’t even recognize that that drug five years ago caused this gut dysbiosis today.

Jendi: So I’m wondering if you have an example or possibly even a story for us.

Joette: Well, I’ll give you a personal and very sad example of a short-term side effect. I had an aunt who I was very close to. She was my godmother. She sprained her ankle and went to the doctor to see if it was broken. I wish she had called me. I mean, I talk to her pretty frequently, maybe once, twice a week for years. And she didn’t call me about this, probably because she thought I was too busy. She always said that. So she went to the doctor. The ankle was not broken. Which was a prudent thing to do. She should know if it’s broken, certainly. And the doctor gave her a pain reliever. What he gave her was Darvon. But what happened was that night, she took the Darvon and died from Darvon poisoning.

Now, how do we know that it was Darvon poisoning? Well, they told us that the cause of death was heart attack. And just about a week or two before she had taken this, had had this incident, she went to the doctor and they checked her heart and they said her heart was fine. She never had any heart trouble at all. And she had never had any illness in relationship to going unconscious or strokes or anything like that. So interestingly when I researched this incident with Darvon, I mean, it was the first thing we thought of because the Darvon pills were right by her bedside and that’s all she had taken. She wasn’t taking any other meds, by the way. She wasn’t being treated for anything else. She had some arthritis years previous but I had pretty much worked that out with her with homeopathy and she wasn’t suffering from that any longer.

I went online and checked out what was going on with Darvon. There’s a lot of information on Darvon. And the gist of the story about Darvon is that it causes heart attacks in people without a history of cardiac arrest. So my aunt passed away as a direct result of taking a painkiller for a sprained ankle. Now, this is not uncommon. Let me tell you, I hear these stories all the time. And I come from a big, fat, Italian family. And I’m not going to go through all of my other cousins and aunts and uncles who have been affected by these drugs, but I’ve watched it through the years, and I am suspicious of all drugs. That’s just now the way I [unintelligible – 00:12:26] myself in life.

Jendi: That is so sad.

Joette: It was sad. It was very sad. It lets you think that drugs that are harmful are taken off the market. Certainly, there’s all this hullabaloo about Darvon causing these problems. The drug my aunt took was cheerfully placed and did swimmingly well since 1957. It’s been on the market for as long as I’ve been alive and then some. So you know how you have to be mindful and a little suspicious when choosing your kitchen contractor and when buying a used car? Well, that’s nothing, folks. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware when it comes to your medicine. There’s nothing more personal than your body. Who cares if your cabinets turn out to be cheap particle board or if your car is a lemon? But when it’s your body and mind, you better consider it sacred because no one else is watching over you.

Jendi: But Joette, most people believe that the FDA or the Food and Drug Agency in our United States is there to protect us and why can’t we count on them?

Joette: Well, Dr. Herbert Ley was an American physician and the 9th Commissioner and head of the US Food and Drug Administration back in the 1960s. And this is a direct quote from him, “The thing that bugs me is that people think the FDA is protecting them. It isn’t. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it’s doing are as different as night and day.” So by the way, as I said, this was not just any old, ordinary doctor. He was a Harvard graduate. He was an undergraduate in medical school. This man was very bright and capable. So I urge people to take heed.

Jendi: So what is the FDA doing then if they’re not there to protect us?

Joette:  Well, I don’t want to spend too much time on this subject because it’s a vast one. But consumers, like my Aunt Mary, for example, don’t have lobbying power. The FDA doesn’t even know my Aunt Mary or how she died, but I guarantee that they know the lobbyist from the pharmaceutical industry that produces that drug. I’ll bet they just had lunch with them in Georgetown’s most fashionable French restaurant just last week in DC. So who do you think is going to get the ear of the FDA official, the guy who’s picking up the $200 lunch tab or my Aunt Mary’s relatives?

Jendi: Yeah. Unfortunately, money talks loud.

Joette: Yes, it does. We always say that it’s greed but we are talking about human foibles. It’s not just our country. It’s all over the world. It’s everyone. It’s in the Soviet Union. It’s in Cuba. It’s not just capitalist countries, for goodness sakes. It’s about human behavior. So we have to understand that. So that’s why it’s so important that if you’re going to choose a medicine, you better choose it wisely. But let’s get back on track. I want to give our listeners concrete, practical, common sense help here. So let’s get back to acute versus chronic, shall we?

My Aunt Mary had an acute problem. Her ankle wasn’t going to be sprained forever. It would have healed. And I certainly recognize that this is an extreme situation and that women take birth control pills, for example, for years without dying from blood clots. But remember what I said about the sleeping giant. Well, the weakest link in the person’s DNA is usually what is weakened further. I can’t emphasize that enough.

Drugs suppress while homeopathy cures for the long-term

Jendi: So what should we do when somebody gets sick? Do we just try to live with it?

Joette: Oh, that’s a good point, Jendi. In many cases, the answer is an unquestionable yes. There’s nothing wrong with a fever and a child’s illness. What’s wrong with it is the mother’s lack of knowledge of the subject. That’s what needs to be changed. She doesn’t know that a fever in normal childhood illness is curative. It’s what cooks off the infection. And by suppressing it, even with a warm bath, it’s not in the best interest of the child. Okay, maybe for now the discomfort from the fever is addressed by giving them Tylenol or something, but it isn’t in the long run. And isn’t that what we’re aiming for, is the long run? We’re not raising our kids for the next week. We’re raising them into adulthood. Isn’t that why we make soup for dinner instead of a quick fix or brand-name cookies and Kool-Aid? We’re in this for the long haul so we have to know what will affect our family, our children in the future.

Jendi: So if they are in terrible pain from an ear infection or something, does that in itself cause stress on the system like we talked about earlier?

Joette: Well, yeah, I have an answer for that and I believe I have the answer. And that, of course, is homeopathy. What homeopathy has to offer is a way to stay away from the drugs. Look, before I found homeopathy, I studied essential oils. Before that, I studied herbs. Before that, it was vitamins. I recognized that these tools have value but homeopathy trumps them all. So for my Aunt Mary, for example, the solution was ironically only about 15 feet away from where she passed away. The solution was in her medicine cabinet. It was her homeopathy kit that I had given her as a Christmas present years prior. What happened here is that my aunt went to the doctor to see if her ankle was fractured. Good plan. That’s decent. That’s a good thing to do. Of course we need a diagnosis. If we don’t have the knowledge, certainly we need to know that. But as soon as it was determined that it was a sprain and that she was in pain, the prescription pad was whipped out and off she went to the pharmacy.

So what remedy would have made the difference for my aunt, would have saved her life? It would have been Arnica montana 200 every few minutes. And as soon as the pain had subsided, that’s when she would have stopped taking it. If the pain had been horrendous, really severe where she was crying out from it, then we might use Arnica 1M or Hypericum 1M every few minutes until the pain subsided. It would have been completely effective and most importantly, safe. And even more importantly, it certainly would not have caused long-term effects, in my aunt’s case, death.

So let me give you an example of how this works. Just the other night, I was pulling out a frozen chicken from the top shelf of my freezer and it fell out and landed directly on my three toes. I had no shoes on. I was barefoot and at the time that it happened, the pain was so extreme, I felt nauseous and woozy from it. I was certain I had broken at least one toe. The pain was pretty high on the pain scale and I screamed out and my husband ran to me with a bottle of – he knows what to use – Hypericum 1M. And quickly, between my screeches, popped a dose of it into my mouth. Within three minutes or so, something like that, the pain went from a screaming, horrendous 10 to about a 6. And not long after that, maybe another 10 minutes, it completely went away. But it came back 20 minutes later or so. So guess what?

Jendi: Oh, I’m sure you called the doctor to schedule an x-ray and prescribe a painkiller.

Joette: Oh, Jendi, you’re so funny. I took Hypericum 1M again. And the whole incident was over. Today, my toes are a lovely hue. This was just a few days ago. It’s kind of a bright azure with a touch of blackish green but I have no pain after that second dose. Let me also mention this. Toes, if they were broken, there’s not much that can be done, at least not that I’m aware of. So I didn’t need to know whether or not they were broken. Had it been something like my ankle or tibia or a wrist or something, then I might have gone to have an x-ray to find out whether or not it was broken and then I would have treated it homeopathically.

But for the child with a painful ear infection, the remedy would have been one of two or three remedies. Sot it might have been, for example, belladonna, if the pain was absolutely over the top and it was accompanied by a very high fever of, say, 105. Or another remedy choice might have been chamomilla 200 if the child was angry and teething. And if none of these, then Hepar sulph 30 or 200. How hard is this? Now, for those who are new, these words are all Latin to them because that is what they are. They’re all Latin words. But it doesn’t take much to learn this. I mean, I teach this on my blog for free regularly. I also teach it in my courses should you want to go that far. There’s no need to go crying to the doctor’s office and waiting until someone calls you in, no visits to the ER to catch the bug du jour while you’re sitting in the chairs that are rarely scrubbed down, to the doctors for a prescription, no need for a copay, only a bottle of homeopathy that costs about – get this – about $2.50 if you want a homeopathy kit, and about $12 if you buy it at your health food store one at a time or online.

Jendi: It really sounds like a no-brainer.

Joette: It is a no-brainer. And that is my message. You can cure your family yourself, folks, and that’s what I did and there’s no reason you can’t either. So I want to remind people, I teach this all the time, that in Greek, symptom means sign. So we actually consider the symptoms or signs of a condition or an illness to be gifts.

Jendi: Gifts. Wow. That’s hard to accept when a symptom is pain or anxiety or something like that.

Joette: Well, certainly. But remember, a headache is not just a headache. It means that something else is happening on a deeper level. It can mean allergies, sinus inflammation. It can mean change from barometric pressure changes in the weather, or hormone imbalances, or gut dysbiosis. It could also mean more serious underlying conditions as well, of course. So to throw a drug at it is not only imprudent, I think it’s downright archaic. Unless, of course, you don’t mind living for the now and don’t give a care about the future.

Rousing the sleeping giant

Jendi: So what you’re saying is that if you know how to cure an acute cold, menstrual cramps, otitis media, strep throat, etc., then later in life, you’ll not bring out the weakest link that is in your family bloodline.

Joette: You’ve got it. If dad was prone to eczema and depression and mama’s prone to depression and the child is given an antibiotic, what do you suppose will happen? It will likely turn into eczema or depression. Now, I don’t mean to oversimplify it but think about it. If the sleeping giant is roused, he’s not going to present with toenail fungus because that’s not found in the family. So if you look at the list of side effects from these drugs, you better look at those that are already in your family. So when the pediatrician blames your DNA, he’s partially correct. The part he doesn’t get is that it’s the drugs he prescribes that cause the DNA to weaken.

Learn homeopathy to cure diseases

Jendi: So what happens if the chronic condition is already well established? Did we lose our opportunity for good health?

Joette: Good question. No, no, no, no. This is also where homeopathy comes in. Remember, modern medicine treats symptoms. And when we suppress the symptom, we cause a more deepening of the condition. So a little eczema will often result in asthma later if it’s been suppressed. That’s not a coincidence. As you suppress the skin condition with a steroid or such, it will cause the pathology in a more vital organ to become ill.

Jendi: So the eczema moves inward like into the lungs?

Joette: Yes. Well, it’s not actually eczema itself. The pathology has been driven deeper. The skin clears up but now the lungs, a more important and vital organ that when ill can cause much more serious illnesses such as asthma, bronchitis, or pneumonia, is now what we have at hand.

Jendi: But everyone just goes and takes drugs, don’t they?

Joette: Yeah, pretty much. I want to remind you that I, too, believed in that drug paradigm and certainly took my share of meds but I’m a reformed medical drug taker. As you know, that makes me a zealot. I’m happy to be considered one, by the way. So now, instead of living with a continuation of the ills that drugs were supposed to eliminate and the side effects that I suffered from my lack of knowledge and the long-term effects that brought out my family’s worst traits in me, I teach folks how to treat even chronic conditions. So that’s a big part of the message that you’ll not find anywhere else. And that’s an answer that I did not answer earlier to your question.

Unless I’m unaware of this, I don’t know anyone else who’s teaching homeopathy for chronics. And if you are thinking of going to homeopathy school, by all means, that’s where you would learn this in more depth. And I certainly hope that you would do that. But if you already have a full life and a family to raise, it’s not practical to go to homeopathy school. That’s why I teach practical homeopathy for chronic conditions to moms and grandmoms. I use the Banerji protocols as well as my own protocols that I’ve learned through the years and that other homeopaths will admit that they as well have, and I can get this information out very easily because they’re protocols. And I often give it away for free on my blog every week. I teach as much in depth on my online courses and CDs and guides as I possibly can but I still love to give it away for free on my blog.

Jendi: So the upshot is that you need to cure your family yourself when an acute condition comes along but if you are already stuck with a chronic condition, don’t worry about it. Homeopathy can help root it out, right?

Joette: Yes, yes, but I also want to point out that acute moves exceedingly fast using homeopathy, not unlike my toe injury. But with chronic conditions, it can take months. I always say one step forward and a half step back when we’re dealing with a chronic condition. So if a child is screaming with an ear infection and a fever and you give belladonna or chamomilla, then you’re going to see a change probably after the first, second, or third, maybe even the fourth dose of the remedy given every several minutes or so, every 30 minutes or so. And that will likely be the end of it. It could happen the next day, it could come back again and you start again, use the remedies and it’s over with. That’s pretty fast. That’s a great response. But with chronic, it can take many, many months, slow and steady until the chronic condition is uprooted and the person can get back to taking care of others in her family instead.

Jendi: So I think I’ve got it. I need to make sure I have the information on how to deal with infections like flu, sore throat, injuries, etc., so that I won’t have to say I have to do something and go get drugs.

Joette: That’s right. I don’t want to leave our listeners with the idea that drugs are never useful, however. Certainly, first I’d say if someone is already on a medication, it would be very imprudent to simply hop off and there are times when all that will do is withdrawal. But I must add that this is the part that most don’t understand. There is always a risk and it must be evaluated in relationship to the benefits.

Jendi: I understand that.

Joette: So here’s my motto: Cure an acute, a true cure with homeopathy, and avoid a chronic. Suppress an acute and cause a chronic.

Jendi: That’s a great motto. Thank you so much, Joette.

Joette: Yes, thank you, Jendi. I just want to leave with one last message and that is it’s not good enough to just strive to be the best in the world. You must be the best for the world. Join me and change your world first and then the rest by spreading the message.

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:

0:36 Keep copious notes for future reference

9:13 Antibiotics act like a bulldozer

10:59 Always compare using previous notes

14:56 Joette’s headaches and how she got rid of them permanently

24:47 Pass on the knowledge and help others

Once they are over, we humans don’t generally ponder all of our previous sufferings. Soon we let them go, otherwise we’d be  doomed to chronic thoughts of misery.

Hence, it is the duty of the homeopath/mom to keep careful notes.  This is the only way clear comparisons between past and current symptoms can be drawn when assessing a chronic condition.

Without this information, you might be tempted to think (on the sufferer’s recall) that the remedy did not work.  And this could lead to premature abandonment of the remedy that simply wasn’t used long enough.

This ability to draw clear comparisons of the symptom picture is vital.

For this is where too many people become disillusioned with homeopathy because they don’t understand that it often takes time for a remedy to fully act.

There is a practical way to approach this and how to interpret the remaining symptoms that I teach it in my classes.

One story I tell in this podcast is a personal one.

Learn the remedy Kali bichromium 30 that cured my chronic, sinus headache. Over 25 years ago…and never returned.

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.

Jendi: Hello! This is Jendi and I am here with Joette Calabrese, and today, she has a story for us about a homeopathy cure. Is that right?

Joette: That’s my plan. Yup.

Jendi: I like to hear a good story. What do you have for us?

Keep copious notes for future reference

Joette: Well, I could write a book on the subject of cures from using homeopathic medicine and I could actually author volumes on this subject of how and when homeopathy works when all else has failed. I actually had forgotten about the one I’m going to relate today because it was a personal suffering that was so old. We humans don’t generally ponder all of our sufferings. We let them go. Otherwise, we’re basically doomed to chronic thoughts of misery and that’s not a good human condition.

Jendi: Yeah, I understand that and I think it’s probably a good thing that we don’t remember all the sufferings.

Joette: Yeah. And it’s not only so in forgetting these kinds of sufferings. It’s demonstrable. So before I begin my story, let me share with everyone what I witness every day. And although it may at the onset seem an uninteresting fact, it holds a great deal of information for those who are using homeopathy. So I’d actually like to share a little something on that particular subject, the subject of memory.

Jendi: And in particular, memory of suffering?

Joette: Yes. That’s exactly it, the subject of the memory of the suffering. And so on a day-to-day basis, I speak with clients and students and they report that they or their loved ones are very much better, of course, after using the homeopathic medicines. But there are also those who tell me they are no better after taking the remedies. We’re, of course, discussing more chronic conditions here, not an ear infection or a strep throat. So let’s stay with the chronic idea for a while.

The first thought might be when you hear something like this, I know better, is that the remedies were ill chosen. But homeopaths need to keep copious notes. And I always ask this person if they’re reporting when taking a case to give me not only the symptoms they suffer but to assign a number to each of them. So the person might report, “I get headaches.” And the question would be then, “How often?” And then you write that down, of course. “How long do they last? And let’s allocate a number to the pain on the scale of 1 to 10 so that we have a clear record of how you’re suffering.” This is all recorded in the notes now.

Okay, on to the next symptom. “Oh, you have anxiety.” “Yes, I have anxiety.” “How often do you get it?” I will tell you, I can often read someone’s anxiety by listening to their voice and demeanor. It’s not hard to do this. So I might put my two cents in there as to how it sounds in their voice. So then we ask, of course, for the frequency and the number again on the scale of 1 to 10 of the intensity or the anxiety that they’re suffering in numerical value. So the next symptom reported by the person, let’s say she’s got arthritis in her knees. 

Jendi: And you write all of this down, all the symptoms and all the numbers and everything?

Joette: That’s right. And on the left side on the margin, I’m writing joints, I’m writing about knees, or mind. I’m writing about how her emotions are, or sinus issues, and I’m putting that in the sinus category so that I can review it quickly in my notes. Otherwise, when the assessment is made in two months after this person’s been taking these remedies during that period of time, it will certainly be forgotten or it will be muddled in our memories and only the present sufferings will remain clear to this person.

So the person might report that her anxiety is an 8 on a day-to-day basis and it lasts about three hours every night. All duly noted in the notes, mind you. Rarely is there only one issue, so they might also report, “I have arthritis in my knees and the pain is every morning for about two hours.” We must know how long the pain lasts, remember folks, because next time it might be different and you have to have that comparison. Because if we don’t know that, we don’t know if a 2 is good or a 7 is good. The person might also say, “I have food intolerances and can’t eat gluten and dairy or else, I get fatigue and bloating right away.”

Okay. Now, I have a fleshed out disclosure of the depth and breadth of the case. So when two months have passed after the person has taken the remedies, they report back. This is when we learn how the remedies have acted. It’s the telling moment. It’s when we determine whether or not we choose a different set of remedies or we stay with this. And invariably, most people don’t recall what they experienced two months earlier. So if I were to leave it up to them to summarize whether they were improved or not, I would be left at the mercy of their memory.

So when I ask, “How are you doing?” they might say, “There is no change. I’m no better.” But the duty of the homeopath, the mother who’s taking the case, the friend who’s taking the case of the neighbor, is to go back and review what was happening two months later with perfect numbers and assessments. So we ask, “What is not better?” And now, let’s say, the reply is, “Well, I can’t eat bread or dairy or else, I get tired and bloated.” Well, of course, this is of interest. We jot this down, too, because we want to know where we’re going to be from here two months from now. And so again, it’s jotted down to compare for the next time.

Then it’s the homeopath’s turn. “So how are your knees?” “Oh, my knees are good.” “How about the sensations of angst? The anxiety, is that still occurring?” Pause. “No. I guess that’s gone.” “So the anxiety is gone?” we ask. “Pretty much. Well, except I did feel some anxiety before boarding a plane a few weeks ago. But in general, I guess that’s better.”

Jendi: So she had originally told you that she wasn’t any better.

Joette: Yeah. And now, we’re left with this information that we think, “Oh, no, I’ve done it all wrong.” But no, with that information, one would certainly be tempted to think that the remedies didn’t act and would lead us to abandon them. And I believe it’s human nature – I’m going to repeat this again and again – to not recall all of our sufferings in detail. And when the entire constellation of symptoms is much lessened or removed, what remains becomes paramount. So we need to know that. It’s very important.

Jendi: So what do you do next?

Joette: Well, what remained was her food intolerances, right, and this is not surprising. It can often take many months, even as long as a year to see remarkable results from homeopathy and rooting out allergies and food intolerances and such. This is not to say though that there won’t be improvements here and there. But in general, allergies are deep, often inherited and then driven in deeper with each transgression of antibiotics and steroids and allergy medications.

But if we can find that the person whose complaint is a food intolerance has improved even in a small way, then we are likely to be on the path of correction. So then we might say, “Have you had any cheese lately?” “Oh, yes, I have.” And has that made you ill?” “Well, I can get away with eating cheese about once weekly. But if I eat more than that, I get bloated.” “Lovely. Because last time, you reported that every time you ate cheese, you felt swollen and bloated and couldn’t even sleep.” Now, the person might respond, and I hear this all the time, “Really, I did?”

You see, the person is still sensitive to the cheese but we’re chipping away at the problem. Now, some might find this is far too slow, but I contend it’s better than any other method with which I’m familiar, anyway. I, too, had food sensitivities in years past and I could eat very few foods without sufferings. But today, I can eat anything. And I’ve not taken remedies for food intolerances for a very long time, maybe even, I don’t know, 10, 15 years or so.

Jendi: So homeopathy doesn’t finish the job in short order or real quick, is what you’re telling us.

Joette: Well, it depends on the condition at hand. If someone has an ear infection, of course that’s an acute, remember, and they employ Hepar sulph, for example, every three hours for a few rounds, it’s likely the pain will disappear and put the person right within about a few hours, 12 hours perhaps, sometimes much less, sometimes even within the hour. And why? Because the ear infection was short lived. It wasn’t inherited. It was caught, so to speak. It was likely a bacterial infection that was just [founded – 00:08:54]. On the other hand, when someone has recently contracted food intolerances such as gluten or dairy, say within the last few years, it’s a matter of drawing out a timeline and looking back at what may have triggered such a state. So what do you suppose, Jendi, might have caused this state of affairs?

Antibiotics act like a bulldozer

Jendi: Well, from what I’ve learned from you today and in the recent past, I would guess that they took antibiotics.

Joette: Well, that’s often the case. Yes, it often will cause gut problems and gut dysbiosis.

Jendi: So then why didn’t the round of antibiotics that they took 10 years ago not cause the same problem that the one they took a month ago caused?

Joette: That’s a good question. I believe that it can be cumulative. I think the human body can only take so much and perhaps for that particular person, one round is able to be withstood while more than one might be just one too many.

Jendi: I’ve heard you use an image of a bulldozer in relation to antibiotics. Could you tell us about that?

Joette: Yes. I liken antibiotics to a bulldozer. A bulldozer goes into the virgin forest and it wipes it clean and then it exits. And now, the forest has to start up on its own again. It doesn’t have the plants. It doesn’t have the trees that it had before. It doesn’t mean that it won’t grow again. Of course, it will. We see little sprouts coming up within a few days if there’s moisture and warmth and sun. But it takes many months for a bush to grow and it takes many years for a tree to grow. And so all of that has to be reestablished. And even 10 years after the bulldozer has left, the land is still not virgin. It will take a long, long time for it to come even close to its original virgin state. Of course, it will never be considered virgin ever again. So once that bulldozer leaves, just because someone’s not on antibiotics now or it only happened five years ago, it doesn’t mean that those antibiotics haven’t changed the gut and created something new.

Always compare using previous notes

Jendi: It’s always good to have the visuals and that does make it a lot clearer and that helps me to remember.

Joette: Yeah. I want to make it clear for those who are treating their families, and those who are students of mine, or those who simply use my blog from which to learn, that you must always keep copious notes. Not long ones, just detailed in the correct fashion. We must always remember the phrase, “Compared to what?” How are you now? Compared to what? Now, you’re not going to ask the person, “Compared to what?” because they’re not going to remember. That was your job to know the comparison. When they say, “I’m the same,” “Compared to what” is what’s going on in your mind.

And the only way you can answer that is if you give it a numerical value, length of time and space between each episode of that particular symptom. Because I practically guarantee if the person were to look back, they have forgotten it. They often say, “It’s the same. I’m the same.” And when I hear someone say, “I’m the same,” I say, “Tell me what you mean by the same.” Now, most people think you’re supposed to remember that along with them but we can’t remember it. Even if we’ve written it down, we want to know that there’s a change. And they are the ones who are not going to remember it, generally speaking.

Jendi: The comparison aspect sounds like it is very key. Is that right?

Joette: Yeah, it is. It’s paramount, vital. It’s the most important aspect of being the person who’s curing their family. This is the place where too many become disillusioned with homeopathy, even other medical paradigms as well, thinking that snap, and it’s all done. Because even doctors complain about this, too, after someone is using a drug. Sometimes, they’ll tell the doctor the exact same thing. Even though they’re using drugs, they still have to keep notes to determine how it was before and compared to how it is now. Homeopathy will take their woes away but I don’t want people to think that it is magical. You must know how to approach the case, how to interpret the remaining symptoms, and assess their degree of change and help them recall what they were suffering with last time so as to match it appropriately.

Remember, this is medicine we’re talking about. Homeopathy is elegant medicine. It’s efficacious and well-documented but particularly in chronic conditions, it is not often rapid. For long-term illnesses, sometimes we must be patient. Sometimes, we must be happy with two steps forward and one back. Even with this pace, it is a better stride, in my estimation, than drug medicine. Because allopathy doesn’t claim to be able to cure gut dysbiosis or food intolerances and allergies. All they do is treat the symptoms. With homeopathy, it has a history of being able to do this but we might have to give it some time.

Jendi: It sounds as though it’s all about perspective.

Joette: Yes, it is. And I use numbers to assess that perspective. So it was a 9 in pain that lasted three hours and it was daily. Now, it’s a 5 lasting 30 minutes and it occurs about once a week. That tells us we’re moving in the right direction and we don’t change the remedies. We stay with them. Sufferers are not going to put it to you in that fashion. It’s up to the homeopathic mom to draw it out and write it down. So we must also use our measuring stick that is in a macro way of viewing it, not unlike the commodities market. When we’re in it, we experience daily ups and downs. “Oh, no, it’s going up.” “No, it’s going down.” We don’t know what it’s doing. It’s not until you pull back from a distance and view it from a macro perspective that the ups and downs become less significant. Because remember, we’re always aiming at long-term resolution, so we don’t want to get caught up in the day-to-day, “Oh, no, it’s doing this. Now, I’m doing that. Now, this is happening.” Give it a couple of months and then you’ll get a much, much better perspective.

Joette’s headaches and how she got rid of them permanently

Jendi: All right. I think I’ve got it. In the beginning, you mentioned you have a story to share with us.

Joette: Oh, yeah. Let’s get to that. I went on and on, didn’t I? It’s a personal story that will help demonstrate something that I hope will help our listeners understand what to expect when using homeopathy. So here’s my story. Many years ago – and this is a true story – I suffered from repeated sinus headaches. I never had any infections, just headaches. They were debilitating. No infections, just pain every time the barometric pressure made a change. Well, I live on the Great Lakes, on Lake Erie, and the barometer changes nearly biweekly.

So I lived with these pains nearly chronically. So I foolishly took analgesics and after a while, they didn’t help enough. I just wanted to live my life so I went to Canada – I live right on the border of Canada and the US – where I could get over-the-counter products called 222s. At the time, I’m talking back in the early 80s, they were not legal in the US, this drug, without a prescription, so I’d scoot over the bridge to Canada, a stone’s throw away from my home, and stock up on these little “dolls”, reminiscent of Valley of the Dolls. I thought I was clever to have figured this out.

Well, it turned out I wasn’t in the least bit clever because the more I took them, the more I took them. I was becoming immune to them. And after a while, my stomach began to bother me, and constipation set in, and too many woes to mention here. So I decided one day to stop, not just those but stop everything, simply stop. I recognized that I was pretty sick with the drug and I was pretty sick without it, just with a different set of symptoms. It was kind of like an epiphany for me. I was also taking other meds for other issues, too, you know, Maalox, because of what the drugs were doing, and plenty of others. I’ll admit it. I was foolish.

Jendi: Did you just stop the medication cold turkey?

Joette: Yes. And I rarely do anything just a little bit, to be honest. I suffered for many months, it might even be close to a year, dragging myself to work with this awful pain but at least having ceased the use of one drug and the side effects that went along with it.

Jendi: Once you stopped the use of the drugs, did the side effects completely stop also?

Joette: No, they did not. Parenthetically, I have to add that side effects don’t just always melt away just because you’ve stopped the drug. They can often, and do, become a permanent fixture in the body. Well, anyway, it was about this time that I had learned a little homeopathy and stumbled upon a remedy that is specific for the kind of pain I was experiencing in my face, head, and sinuses. The pain was worse on the left side and actually began above my left eyebrow and then it radiated and went across the whole front of my face. I mean, it radiated like a migraine-type pain across my forehead and then down under my eyes. And by the way, I don’t know if I mentioned, I don’t think I did, I had seen many doctors about this and no one could help me other than just giving me pain relievers.

Jendi: No, you hadn’t told us that yet.

Joette: Okay. Well, anyway, they were always eager to offer their advice which was written on a prescription pad, of course. And at first, I always remained hopeful that this doc would find the answer to my painful head but it took me years to get with the program. It took me an extravagant amount of time to catch on to what they could offer and I finally learned they could offer me nothing but more drugs, and I had had it with that paradigm at this point.

So in one of my first homeopathy books, I read about a remedy called Kali bichromicum 30X. It seemed to fit the picture of the kind of pain I was experiencing. So I took a dose and nothing happened. There was no change in the pain. So then after suffering with the pain for another few days or so, I reread the chapter and kind of realized that you often have to repeat a remedy a few times for it to take effect, so I did that. And to my delight, it went away after about three doses separated by three hours between each dose. So it took a day’s worth but it went away. Now, I knew what to take for each headache that descended upon me every week or 10 days or so.

But something happened. Instead of getting the horrible pain the next time the barometer changed, I became an expert on weather, I might say, because of this malady. I arranged my life around it. I didn’t get a headache at the next change. And the clouds came through and then they lifted to reveal the blue sky and the sun and nothing happened. No pain. This was the first time I’d been without this pain for years ever since I had moved back to my hometown of Buffalo, New York.

Jendi: So did you get any other headaches after that?

Joette: Well, I did. About a month later or something like that, remember this was 25 years or so ago so I don’t exactly recall, but the barometer dipped and I got a headache. But this time was a little different. It was not as painful, kind of like a shadow of its former self, not as debilitating. But I took the Kali bichromicum 30 again. And while I was waiting to take a second and a third dose, I forgot all about the pain. It was gone with only one dose. And that was that.

Jendi: So what do you mean? It took away the pain then?

Joette: Well, yes, but permanently. That was the last time I ever had a sinus barometric headache again. In fact, I’ve never had any kind of headache ever since that time, not any kind of headache. So I can’t even say that well, it moved to another part of my head and it was dismissed for this kind of pain but now it’s that kind of pain. Never again.

Jendi: That’s amazing.

Joette: It is. A little $10 bottle of Kali bichromicum 30 with a total of only four doses completely cured my chronic, debilitating, years old, drug treated, silly-decision-making-around-it headaches.

Jendi: That’s awesome. And you could have avoided all those trips to Canada and to the doctor and everything.

Joette: Yeah, absolutely. This is one of those gobsmacking stories. And now, I don’t want to give you the impression that this is what will happen to everyone in every case. After all, again, it’s not magic, it’s medicine, in spite of the fact that it seems that way sometimes, and this one certainly seemed magical to me. But I want to remind people, homeopathy is honest. It’s polite. It didn’t hit me in the head. It didn’t cause liver problems. It didn’t get me addicted to codeine. It’s unlike much of modern medicine that is beguiling, leading us to believe that the steroids on the eczematous skin is an answer, or that a child’s fever requires an antibiotic or Tylenol.

But I want to differentiate between a functional problem and an architectural one as well. That is, the architecture of my sinuses was intact. They were not distorted that I knew of. There were no growths as far as I knew. But what was occurring was that they were ill-functioning under the circumstances of weather changes. Now, my guess is probably at the same time, I was also probably eating foods that were adding to this picture to a certain degree, too, but it mattered not because it was completely done. Additionally, this illness was not a very old one. That is, it was not something that had plagued me since I was a child or that I had inherited but rather, only for about four years since I moved back to Buffalo, New York on the Great Lakes.

Jendi: In your case, if you had to report to a homeopath what had occurred, you would have been able to remember the success of that remedy.

Joette: Oh, there’s no doubt. This was such a memorable event. I doubt anyone would be incapable of its recollection. And I hear this from clients and students on a regular basis. But had my results been less impressive, it would have been important that the homeopath had kept a record of how often my headaches repeated, how severe and how long lasting they were so that all the important comparisons could be made. And again, why is this comparison important, Jendi?

Jendi: Because it gives information as to whether the remedy is correct and needs to be used for a longer period of time or if it has to be changed.

Joette: That’s right. That’s exactly right. So having said this, I have witnessed the same results in others with sinus pain on the left side. It simply vanishes after using this remedy. So little to no investigation is even necessary in this particular case.

Jendi: So what if you have sinus pain on the right side? Will that remedy work?

Joette: Oh, good question. Yes, but usually only if the pain begins on the left side or is above the eyebrow and is accompanied by tenacious mucus. Now, I didn’t have the mucus but some people do, and that’s when Kali bichromicum acts best. But there’s also another remedy called Sanguinaria and many others, too. Sanguinaria happens to be one of the remedies that I choose that I find that works for sinus infections or postnasal drip or other nose and sinus allergic conditions. It’s a great remedy as well. And as I said, there are others but these are my two top remedies specific for sinus issues.

Pass on the knowledge and help others

Jendi: So to wrap up today’s session, what are your closing words and how will you tie it all together?

Joette: Well, some might say that this story I relay is simply anecdotal. And their aim often when they do that would be to make it sound useless or nonscientific, without merit; hence, dismissible. And I say that to look at this kind of evidence dismissively is incandescently stupid. This is how we learn every day, all day. We learn from others. We share experiences. We pass along something that has helped us to others who can benefit. We lend a hand. So from my personal sufferings and triumphs to your hip pocket, I urge people to tuck this away to help someone who has sinus pain that either begins on the left side or even stays on the left side, for someone who has tenacious mucus and is painful from the barometric pressure shifts. Then if you find that this helps, pass it on to others. This is how we learn. This is how we do this.

Six hundred million people in the world depend on homeopathy. Today, there are 100 million people alone in India who depend on it and it is vastly on the rise. In fact, it’s said that it will double by 2017 in India. Is it any wonder that the competition is worried and coming out with their dukes up? Make note, folks, this is the medicine of the future and I urge all our listeners, students, my clients, and people who I will never meet or hope to meet, make it yours and your future, too.

Jendi: Thank you so much, Joette, for all your information, for sharing it freely with the podcast and all the information on the blog.

Joette: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for doing this with me, Jendi.

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:

0:48 Using essential oils

5:25 The healing powers of homeopathy

6:34 Essential oils that are also used in homeopathy

9:03 Differences between homeopathy and essential oils

12:53 Rules in using homeopathy with essential oils

15:17 A protocol using homeopathy and essential oils

22:58 The Banerji protocols

Before I learned homeopathy 29 years ago, I used whatever means I had at the time.

When someone got sick, I employed botanicals. I wild crafted herbs from around my property, like St. John’s wort, coltsfoot, nettles and such and made them into tinctures so I always had a store of quality homemade herbal medicines.

Listen to today’s podcast where I answer the question, “So if you know that essential oils have therapeutic value, why don’t you use them in your day to day work?”

I know you are going to like the answer.

And don’t miss today’s new protocol to add to your growing homeopathic tool kit.

Ultimately it comes down to you having the tools to buck the system when necessary…transforming meek moms into mighty moms!

Warmly,

PS I recently gave an interview as a participant in an on-line summit called The Essential Oils Revolution Summit. Erica, of Homestead Bloggers Network, introduced me to Dr. Eric Zielinski, one of the two organizers of the Summit. Check it out as I discuss the subject of essential oils and homeopathy.

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.

Jendi: This is Jendi and I’m here once again with Joette from JoetteCalabrese.com. Hello, Joette! How are you?

Joette: Good morning, Jendi! I’m well. How about you?

Jendi: I am well also. And part of that is due to your recommendations.

Joette: Oh, great!

Jendi: I have a lot of friends that use essential oils and I would like to know what you think about them.

Using essential oils

Joette: Well, essential oils bring up actually a broader question and that’s what is my opinion of other methods of alternative health? So I’ll start from the beginning because of course, it’s a very good place to start. Before I learned homeopathy, I used whatever means I had at the time. I depended on my homemade bone stocks, my homemade meals, common sense methods to protect my kids, their immune systems, for when I got sick or my husband. I employed botanicals. I even wildcrafted. And I still do some of that today, too. I wildcrafted herbs from around my property out in the country like St. John’s wort, crowfoot, nettles. I made tinctures out of that. So I always had a store of quality homemade herbal medicines.

So I spent a lot of time learning about the herbs that are indigenous to my area. But I also had a store of essential oils for my old-fashioned vaporizer. Now, you’re too young to remember this but there was a vaporizer that we used to use in the ‘50s and ‘60s that was green glass and you plug it in. Now, when I look at it, I think, “Wow, this is a firetrap.” There’s no grounding plug on it. There it is, electricity extending directly into water. But it worked for all those years and so I used it when my family was in need to. So as far as essential oils go, I began using my old fashioned vaporizer and I would put lavender, etc., in that.

But I began making this lovely concoction that was not unlike one of the formulas produced by the large essential oil companies. Many people know it as Thieves. But a friend of mine got restarted on it and she named it Scoundrels which is such a great word, with of course, reference to the product Thieves. So now my father makes it for most of us in our family today. And when he puts it in a mist bottle, which he does so that when we travel, we can mist our hands and wash them up, he cleverly calls it Scoundrels in the Mist. So it conjures up this image of these interesting old characters from the Middle Ages. So anyway, it’s clove oil, lemon oil, cinnamon oil, eucalyptus, and I think rosemary’s in there, too. And we use it to clean the air and on our hands when we travel, as I said, and we put a few spritzers on in the cold season and spritz it all around the room and I love it. But I didn’t stop there.

Jendi: So you use it actually on your skin and you use it in the air, like just wherever?

Joette: Yes. I like to put a few drops in bathwater or on a handkerchief and I used to take sniffs or give it to my children to take sniffs. And I might add a drop of oil into a carrier oil such as coconut oil and rub it into the skin, the bottom of their feet. But generally, I didn’t give it to them internally. I just wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that. I used mint to make mint ice cream when I was making my own ice cream but I’m particularly concerned about using essential oils internally and in great concentration for children. So I’m rather conservative about the concentration, even for the concentration that anyone inhales. So with essential oils, I believe a little goes a long way. Now, I know there are those who disagree with me but I just don’t know the science about it and perhaps it’s out there. I just haven’t put my mind to studying it.

Jendi: So as a homeopath, did you work with essential oils with the clients or is it just kind of a personal thing?

Joette: No, no, I don’t use them professionally. I have no degrees in the use of essential oils, nor am I interested in acquiring one at this time since I find homeopathy to act so fully and efficaciously that I have no interest, nor do I need to go further. But I do encourage folks to take up whatever it takes to stay away from drugs as much as possible. But as you said, I’m a homeopath and homeopathy has no connection to essential oils despite the misnomer. A lot of people think when they first hear the word homeopathy that it means home remedies. The word hom– in the prefix throws everyone off. It’s a Greek word and homeopathy is not a general term for [natural remedies – 00:05:09]. It does not mean that at all. Hom- means homonym or similar or like and of course, -pathy means pathology. So the meaning of the word homeopathy is in the word. Its definition is actually in the word itself. 

The healing powers of homeopathy

So I’m particularly attracted to homeopathy because of one very important reason. I’ve seen it resolve an enormous amount of pathology. Osteomyelitis. I’ve seen it abort strokes right before my eyes, angina, panic attacks, mend broken bones in half the time. I’ve seen it abort a flu in its tracks. I’ve actually seen it turn a baby in the womb as Dr. Mercy Jackson taught us, we homeopaths, many years ago. I’ve seen it remove food intolerances. I’ve seen it eliminate long-time, lifelong allergies. I’ve seen it restore sleep, abort colic, arthritis. I mean, I can go on. I won’t because that will be this whole session. But what I’ve seen in homeopathy is nothing less than astounding because it’s a complete form of medicine with a compendium of scientific data to back its claims. I felt that essential oils can be useful but I’ve just never seen anything quite like homeopathy.

Essential oils that are also used in homeopathy

Jendi: Are there essential oils that have been made into homeopathic remedies?

Joette: Oh, yeah, good question. That’s interesting. Yes. They say that there are between three and six thousand homeopathic remedies and it’s kind of broad, isn’t it? How many are there then? We don’t really know. I don’t know how many the FDA categorizes in the United States but there are remedies that are used in other parts of the world that we have not begun using here and in Europe and South America. So of course, the delivery is different in essential oils than in homeopathy. Homeopathy is more subtle and it’s on a minute level. But there is a remedy that’s one of the most common, that most people who understand essential oils and those of us who use homeopathy look at and say, “Gee, I wonder what the connection is.”

So camphor is the remedy that I’m thinking of in the essential oil as well. So it’s an essential oil that’s often used as an antiseptic or disinfectant, sometimes even an insecticide in the world of oils. But in homeopathy, once it’s highly diluted using that mathematical process called succussion as well, dilution and succussion and potentization, it becomes a wonderful medicine that antidotes the ill effects of previously used drugs and also incorrectly chosen homeopathic remedies. When I teach homeopathy, I teach that we open a case with camphor 200C. That means it’s diluted 200 times to the hundredth power. So it can work on the ill effects of previous drugs, as I said. The power of that alone is worthy of our attention, given the amount of our population who’s propped up with drugs.

So for example, I specifically used this remedy after my father had surgery years ago to antidote potential ill effects, side effects of the drugs and procedures he was subjected to. Of course, I used other homeopathic medicines to aid in the quickened healing of the wound he sustained as well as helping him readily come out of the anesthetic. So this is the stuff of my blog. I have tips and tricks that I learned by traveling the world for homeopathic methods and having raised my family on this. Bottom line is that homeopathy is a very complex medical paradigm but I take pride in being able to distill it so that anyone can get the hang of it. 

Differences between homeopathy and essential oils

Jendi: Since we looked at a little bit of how they’re similar, what is the main difference between homeopathy and essential oils?

Joette: Well, there are many different ways to approach this question but I am going to take a user-friendly approach. So you know a little bit about my background with essential oils now but I wanted to know how people who follow my blog are using it today as well because I do get mentions on my blog. People ask me questions about it and tell me that they’ve used this or that oil for a condition in which I’ve recommended homeopathy.

So I gathered a team of my employees and canvassed many of my students who use both homeopathy and essential oils, and they also reached out to several essential oil communities online and interviewed a few pros. So from our sample of research, generally speaking, it appears that the vast majority of essential oil users use the oils to prevent disease such as infections. And the benefits in this area, they report, are far reaching, the blends that they call immunity boosters, for example. So that’s one of the main differences, is how it’s used. Expectations are different so the effects and the usage are different as well. Homeopathy consistently, however, goes beyond prevention of disease and it has been recorded to uproot infections and illness once it has been contracted.

That’s not to say that essential oils may not do the same. I’m talking about usage here. You see, homeopathic medicines are intended to stimulate the body’s ability to correct itself. So it’s often illness or condition specific. This means that we use the homeopathic medicines for the actual illness, not usually for prevention. There are exceptions but in general, that’s how it’s done, such as mending broken bones, as I said, eliminating allergies, not just addressing them as they occur but actually rooting them out slowly but certainly.

So in homeopathy, if someone is prone to colds and communicable illnesses like constantly getting ear infections or conjunctivitis and sore throats, that’s reason enough to employ a homeopathic medicine even when they don’t have it upfront to help root it out. We’re supposed to get colds. I believe we’re supposed to get colds. And children are supposed to get child illnesses such as chickenpox. But if the person is sick every month with one thing or another, it’s time to get to the bottom of things and that’s time for correction. And I see that correction made most frequently with homeopathy.

Jendi: And if someone was prone to colds or sore throats, they could use an essential oil, too?

Joette: Well, when we use essential oils, most folks use them for each and every sore throat but a homeopathic medicine would be used over a period of time to root out the problem – I guess I should make that a little bit clearer – instead of having to fix it each time. In other words, its intention is not to have to use anything after a while. That means what’s been done is that the person is essentially fixed. This also means that meanwhile, while the person is suffering from a cold, certainly you could employ both methods. You could use an acute remedy, not the one that we’re using specifically to root out the potential for these chronic colds or allergies, but something that’s also used for an acute. And then you can also use essential oils because I believe they’re compatible. Some people believe they’re not. I disagree. But if you’re going to do that and do what I did, if you’re going to take this on yourself and not depend on prescription drugs for every turn, you certainly want to be fully armed with knowledge of both of these paradigms.

 Rules in using homeopathy with essential oils

Jendi: So if I understand correctly what you’re saying, homeopathy can work alongside essential oils. So they can have a synergy?

Joette: Yes, yes, they can work together. I don’t know that I would call it a synergistic effect because I believe each one stands on its own. But they can be used side by side. But there are some rules. If you’re going to engage in this, you really should know some of the rules that you have to follow.

Jendi: So can you tell us those? I don’t want to do something that would hurt my kids.

Joette: Yeah, yeah. This is how it works. You will antidote a homeopathic remedy or neutralize it or render the homeopathic useless with particularly strong odors. A mint-based oil such as peppermint and menthol if used in its full strength, camphor, tea tree oil, eucalyptus, those very strong aromatics can indeed antidote. So this is how you incorporate the two. Consider separating the oils from the remedy, which means that you take the remedy, then wait 15 minutes, and then use the oils, and don’t use these particular ones in full strength, the ones I just mentioned, those aromatics.

So I like to use the combination of oils in a vaporizer as I said and those that may contain these particular oils. You may remember that Scoundrels in the Mist contains some eucalyptus and I think that’s acceptable as long as it’s not directly under the nose, directly at the face, on the skin. So those particular ones are the ones that I find can indeed antidote. Now, I might want to say, however, that not everyone is antidoted by essential oils so it depends on how sensitive the person is. That’s why it’s so ambiguous. That’s why people say, “Well, does it or doesn’t it?” Well, in certain cases, it does in every situation. In other cases, some people don’t have any of these. So the more sensitive a person is to, say, fragrances, they can’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke, it makes them sick, or they can’t be around fumes, those are likely the people who are going to be most affected by the essential oils and may indeed be antidote.

Jendi: That really makes me think about once again how good it is to keep that notebook or those files of what you are giving to your kids and how they reacted to it.

Joette: Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

A protocol using homeopathy and essential oils

Jendi: Is there a protocol you could teach us today that maybe would have the homeopathic and then the essential oil?

Joette: Yeah. I’ll give you a really easy example. I love giving people takeaways and let’s start with something that most people who may be listening may already know about but I’ll show you how you integrate it. Here’s something that everyone should know how to use, too, and that’s Arnica montana 30 or 200. That remedy, Arnica montana is used at the onset, or at least as close as possible, for a soft tissue injury or a head injury. Of course, if it’s serious enough, you certainly head to the emergency room, obviously. But on the way, you’re administering Arnica montana 200, preferably. If it’s serious enough, you may even want to go higher with IM or 200 every few minutes if it’s very serious so that you allow the action of the medicine to begin right away. This remedy has a reputation for reducing shock, it softens hematomas, accompanying anxiety, the person usually calms right down, and if there’s an open wound, it can often even protect from infection. This is all taken orally, mind you. These are little pills.

So my children have done a great deal of skiing in their lives and we’ve tended animals on our property. So there was always some injury or another. My kids who are actually now adults grew up knowing how to use Arnica montana 1M. Each of them had a bottle of Arnica montana in their ski jackets. They knew how often to use it and when to stop administering. They were often on the slopes together and so if one was injured, the other one would come to his aid and get his bottle out of his pocket and treat his brother. I mean, it never really happened that it was necessary but I wanted to be sure that they never had a problem.

Jendi: So what might you use alongside of Arnica montana as an essential oil?

Joette: You could certainly use frankincense for a head injury or [cypress fir – 00:17:14]. These are essential oils to support in a broken bone. But I have seen homeopathic Symphytum 200 mixed with Calc phos 6X work quick magic on bone healing in my own family and Arnica montana. Arnica montana, by the way, is used by professional ski teams in Switzerland and Germany, etc., and other areas of the world. And I also might add parenthetically that plastic surgeons in the US and throughout the world count on Arnica montana for hematomas and ecchymosis after surgery. Ecchymosis is the black and blue marks that occur as a result of it. So you could use [cypress fir] or frankincense as the essential oil. And in addition to that, start administering your Arnica montana, Symphytum, etc., Calc phos.

Jendi: So you obviously know that essential oils do have therapeutic value. So what is behind your decision not to use them in your day to day?

Joette: Well, professionally, my reason is in my experience, I find homeopathy to be so sweeping in its ability, so easy to learn when I teach it, at least the practical way that I use it and I teach it, so inexpensive and wholesome that I simply focused and dedicated the last 29 years of my life to it. It’s that simple. It’s been my experience and I’ve seen it work. So I have mastered as much as anyone can master in 29 years of study and family use and my practice. So I dropped essential oils in lieu of it.

I mean, basically, that’s what I’m telling you because homeopathy rarely fails me. This is not to say I don’t use my Scoundrels as a preventative measure and I wouldn’t consider frankincense. But for example, I used to see clients in my office and someone came in once who had infectious disease. If they had a cold or a flu and I knew my employees would be coming later, I’d spray the office with my mixture. So I certainly used it but not really in as much of a therapeutic method as many might expect. I have also used essential oils for my family. And when people tell me that they want to use essential oils, I tell them, “Certainly, go ahead and use it.” But it’s not my foundational go-to. My firmament is homeopathy.

Jendi: Professionally, you are a homeopath but personally, you are more than just a homeopath.

Joette: Well, I find that this path upon which most of us in North America travel before we get to homeopathy, when we finally get to homeopathy, what I consider truly the ultimate medical method, we pass through many towns, so to speak, if we’re on this road. Some of them are worthy of holding onto and using in tandem with homeopathy. Others may fail us and they’re pushed to the wayside so that the superior methods become more and more the focus of our study and our usage. It’s a matter of evolutionary process is the way I see it, my own personal evolutionary process of moving down the chain of what works more thoroughly and more consistently, more cost-effective, and is more learnable.

The problem with homeopathy is that while it fulfills all of this criteria I mentioned here, it has not until now been an easy method to use because it has been historically difficult to determine the correct remedy to match the condition. So until I learned many of the methods and gleaned enough protocols that I could have an answer at the tip of my fingers instead of having to study a case for an hour and a half or until I gathered enough by learning from my colleagues and going to India and studying the great masters, I did use other methods here and there as well.

Jendi: So essential oils and botanicals and vitamins, they seem easier to learn about, easier to find and choose from.

Jendi: Yes, they are. With essential oils, if you’ve got a cold, you would likely choose from two or three oils, perhaps you blend them together and start sniffing. But with homeopathy, you have to do more reading in some circumstances and a lot more than choose the most fitting remedy. But that’s the classical homeopathy. That is, you need to observe nuances of the sufferer to determine if this remedy or that would fit best. And I’m not saying that I don’t draw from my classical background. Certainly, after all these years of studying it and teaching it and writing about it, I certainly still draw from it. But it can be frustrating for those people who are new to this and it becomes too complex in the world of homeopathy. So that’s why people, I believe, one of the reasons they are drawn to an easier method such as essential oils, botanicals, and vitamins, for example.

 Jendi: But you share an easier way of homeopathic remedies, right?

Joette: Yes. Well, actually, every homeopath who is seasoned has eventually come up with shortcuts. Some glean simply by being observant and practice, others by reading the books of the great homeopathic masters. We’ve all done this. This is what I do. This is what I read at night. On my lap when my family and I are traveling and my husband’s driving or my sons are driving, I’m studying the great homeopathic masters of the last two centuries. Attending post grad, of course, is sharing with and learning from my colleagues. But you can accumulate, to be honest, only so much over the limited amount of time that we’re in practice. Human conditions and suffering is vast and we homeopaths have a finite amount of time to observe and collect data that is simple and in our fingertips.

 The Banerji protocols

So let me step back and make it clear that homeopathy works and it works thoroughly and often to complete resolution. But I want to make this clear. It’s not a hundred percent guaranteed. Its capabilities are often astounding even to me after seeing results time and again. The glitches that the system of choosing the remedy has complexity to it and has stymied many a neophyte, even those who are more experienced. But I’m here to say that this has changed. Enter the Banerji protocols. Some people might believe that the Banerjis are paying me to say this but it absolutely is not so. I am so grateful to the information that they shared with me.

The reason I keep giving accolades to these incredible doctors in Kolkata, India with whom I worked for two consecutive years is because they have gotten what would take other homeopaths a lifetime to accumulate and distill. They’ve gathered their [errors – 00:23:56], accumulated data, and offered them to me, to the world. Additionally, their model is extraordinary in that they don’t see the average number of patients as other doctors throughout the world. No. They each take – get this – 100 cases per day, and there are 10 of them. And they are open six days a week. That means they’re seeing a thousand cases per day and six days means 6,000 medical cases per week. I’m sorry, I don’t know any other medical paradigm that does that.

Now, some might argue, “Well, how can they possibly take a case in just 10 to 15 minutes?” Well, it’s because they have junior doctors who have taken a good portion of the case, gathered the information, looked at the x-rays, checked out the sonograms, blood tests, etc. So I don’t care what kind of medicine you practice. No doctor that I know, and I was living in that medical world for many years, takes that many cases. So there’s no data anywhere that can boast these numbers. Of course, what’s so great about numbers, well, it offers irrefutable evidence and this distills down to specific remedies for specific conditions. It’s clean, efficacious, and again I’m not going to say every time, but it often is efficacious and if nothing else, it’s indisputable.

Jendi: So if you kind of wrapped up everything we said so far, can you give us an overall picture?

Joette: Yes. The upshot of this message is this: Do what you need to do to get your family and self as far away from drugs as possible. I’m not saying we never use drugs. I want to make clear that people understand that. I also don’t mean that you just stop taking medications and flat out just start using another method. But the fewer drugs you take, the better off you and your family will be, generally speaking. I know it’s sweeping but it is generally correct. Employ botanicals, essential oils, whatever means to get a handle on keeping things simple. Get the protocols I teach in my blog, tuck them in your hip pocket, and start using homeopathy as often as you need.

Jendi: Thank you so much, Joette. I’ll keep my essential oils in my cupboard to use occasionally and keep learning about homeopathy as well.

Joette: Thank you for doing this with me, Jendi. I can’t resist alliteration so I’m going to put it this way. It’s my method of making mighty moms.

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:

0:36 Joette on pediatricians: “Yikes!”

2:17 How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor

7:54 Examples of drugs that are dangerous to us

12:04 Trust in your ability to mother

18:07 “I’ve had enough!”

22:12 Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa believed in the powers of homeopathy

25:26 Be a defiant mother 

Today’s podcast is a bit more personal than previous ones.

I offer no apologies. I am a defiant mother.

While raising my children, my thinking went something like this: If I was going to bring children into the world, I ought to be able to identify whether they were well or not.

In fact, not unlike any of you mothers reading this now, I checked my baby (who was generally in my arms anyway) pretty much by the minute so I felt pretty capable of conducting my own well baby check-ups.

I also read unceasingly.

Additionally, I put a lot of time into homemade, organic, pasture fed foods, so it seemed stupid (excuse the sophomoric word, but it’s so fitting!) to forget all that when the baby got a common illness and defer to someone with whom I fundamentally disagreed.

I hate drugs, he loved ‘em. Ultimately you have to be willing to buck the system. Listen to the podcast for more reasons why mothers need to be vigilant and defiant.

And why my parting word is NO!

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.

Jendi: This is Jendi and I’m here with Joette Calabrese. Hello, Joette! How are you?

Joette: I’m doing well, Jendi. How about you?

Jendi: I am good. I am glad for a nice, sunshiny day today.

Joette: Finally.

 Joette on pediatricians: “Yikes!”

Jendi: I’ve been looking at your site and I am particularly interested in how you raised your children. I know that your children are adults now and out of the house but my children are still at home and I am interested in learning how others who have already been through this did it successfully. So did you ever give your kids any medicine and what did your pediatrician think about this?

Joette: Well, for any mother, the most important aspect of their lives is, of course, their children. And then let me say most emphatically, pediatrician, yikes! I’m being a little flippant here but there’s a measure of truth to my reaction. I didn’t need a pediatrician. Those ubiquitous well-baby checkups were something I never bought into. Excuse my skepticism but they’re just a calendar-building technique for an otherwise not very busy medical specialty. Perhaps they fulfill a need in mothers who don’t trust knowing whether or not their children are well.

But I always felt that I was happy to buy things when I needed them but I don’t really like to buy services and products that are redundant. And I found from years previous to having children and having been married to a doctor back in my 20s before I remarried and then had my children a decade later, you can learn a lot in a decade of going to doctors, that they’re always looking for something to do. And I interpreted that something to do meant prescribing drugs or ordering tests and I was already clearly against that from the very onset.

How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor

I guess I don’t care for nor do I trust drug fundamentalists and I prefer those who are looking to protect the sanctity of the human body and not taint it with questionable drugs, particularly during the susceptible years of childhood. And I think a drug fundamentalist is someone who says, “Ear infection? Oh, antibiotic. Eczema? Oh, steroid. Got a little issue here on your skin? Let’s remove it.” So the more I read, the more I found this medical specialty to be a disappointment.

I loved Dr. Robert Mendelsohn and his book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor. Love that book. So my thinking went something like this. If I was going to bring children into the world, I really ought to be able to identify whether or not they were well. In fact, not unlike any mother, I checked my baby pretty much by the minute because they were always in my arms when they were babies. And when they weren’t and they were at my feet as I was doing my work around the house, I felt pretty capable of knowing what was going on with my children. I knew when they were sick. And I felt and still feel that common horse sense that what I was applying trumped any pediatric drug-laden scheme every time.

Jendi: I personally really like this kind of thinking but it seems like it’s hard to carry out and there’s a lot of fear around mothers today when we hear about the medical community coming and taking the kids and it just seems like the fear takes away the confidence and it’s hard to rely on yourself as the mother.

Joette: Yeah. Well, I think we should be getting our PhD in mothering. I really believe it’s important that we know what we’re talking about. We should not say, “Oh, I can just do this,” without doing some homework. Mothering should command our full attention. The act of mothering should be civilized and respected and resourceful. After all, we are raising a human being, our offspring, our worldly and spiritual legacy. So if you’re not up to the task and you need a pediatrician or another person to tell you to put chemicals into your baby’s mouth, then well, I guess, in a way we may even part ways and our conversation is over because that is my philosophy. I’m being a little blunt but I believe it needs saying.

Jendi: So what did you do when your kids got sick?

Joette: Well, the problem with modern pediatrics is that drugs opened a door to overuse. And I believe there are long-term ethical questions to be considered here. But then, worse yet, the door closed behind and slammed shut. And once I recognized that that was the paradigm that pediatricians adhere to and that it was based on, I believe, a cavalier, smearing-on, injecting-in, and tossing-about suspicious chemicals, it was easier from there on because I knew that wasn’t what I wanted. So that was my first step. For crying out loud, I put a lot of time into my whole homemade, organic, pasture-fed foods. I sourced them carefully. I bought directly from farmers. I grew my own. It seemed downright stupid to me to forget all that and suppress a fever with an antibiotic.

So there’s a point of view that needs a discussion here, one that’s not heard frequently enough, and that is is it possible that we are being systematically altered and manipulated with substances that have never been proven to be safe? I mean, drugs aren’t tested on children, mind you, only adults, for obvious reasons. Children are not supposed to be legally tested and at least not in the conventional way. So how scientific is that? In a circuitous way, however, we eventually find out how dangerous these products can be.

And remember, that is what they are, products of an industry. We find out after the drug has been on the market for a few years, sometimes months, sometimes much longer depending on the frequency of the prescription of these drugs, but eventually, we learn that this or that drug is not only doubtful but sometimes can even be lethal. That makes our kids lab rats for an industry. When I recognized this, that’s when I begged out. And I realize I haven’t answered your question. What was your question again? I get so caught up in this.

Jendi: What about when your kids got sick? What do we do then?

Joette: Oh, okay. Well, around the time that I started to have my children, just before I had them, I started to realize all of this. And so what I wanted to do was to learn another way. And the other way was first, what I learned was naturopathy – clean clothes, warm room, leave your window open, fresh air, high-quality foods made at home, sourced well, stay away from foods that are manufactured, stay away from foods that have ambiguous or unpronounceable ingredients, make everything myself. But when they got sick, I did more than that, of course. That’s when I started to learn about homeopathy. 

Examples of drugs that are dangerous to us 

Jendi: So you learned that the drugs were dangerous to kids and you were trying to raise your kids naturally. Can you give me an example of a drug that is dangerous for kids, maybe something we should avoid?

Joette: Well, in my estimation, they all have dangerous aspects to them. It’s just a matter of balancing what is more important. There are certainly times when the dangers of a drug can be put aside for the advantage of something that is more looming. If someone needs surgery, obviously, we need to have anesthesia. It’s a risk. Anesthesia is a risk but it’s worth taking if the surgery is absolutely necessary and I am a proponent of surgery. I believe surgery can be very valuable. Not to remove tonsils, mind you. That’s absolutely ridiculous. There are so many other ways that are easier. But when surgery is truly needed, of course. But that gets us into the question of unnecessary surgery that is performed on our children.

But today, taking birth control pills, giving it to children over the course of years for acne when they reach puberty or because a pregnancy would be an inconvenience so that the child is taught very early on to use something like that to keep from getting pregnant – I’m going to probably turn a lot of people off by saying this – I find that odious. There are so many intelligent, clean alternatives to these kinds of over-the-top methods. There’s always an alternative. You just have to ask the right person, you have to ask the right questions, and not someone who’s promoting that drug. That person’s already convinced that their methods are worthy of touting.

I’ll give you an exact example. That famous drug that opened the public’s eye, at least when I was growing up because we used to see kids that were so horribly affected, was thalidomide. It was way before your time but it caused limbs to not develop in utero. I used to see children when I was a child who didn’t have fully formed arms or legs or missing fingers. But then there’s Darvon, for goodness sakes. It’s a ubiquitous drug that’s been regularly prescribed for pain up until a few years ago. And its claim to fame is now how brilliantly it was aiding humanity, but now it has countless deaths by cardiac arrest in people who – this is the most important aspect – who had no previous heart disease. It was merrily selling on the market since the late ‘50s. I think it was like 1957 when Darvon came on the market. And it was recently removed from the market after nearly 60 years of causing these deaths going untraced.

Then there’s Accutane that was specifically targeted at teens. It has been linked to serious side effects like birth defects – get this one – thoughts of suicide, depression, and bowel disorders. For goodness sakes, we’re talking about acne. It was removed in the market back in 2009 and there was no official recall. You see, it’s not that there was a conspiracy of evil out there like some people might suggest. It’s simply a market square that says, “Here’s a drug if you want to take it. If you don’t, then okay, too.” But meanwhile, it’s up to us as mothers, as members of the public to make sure that we have done our homework. The public for some reason, well, it’s not for some reason, it has certainly been directed at us in this way, that there’s an erroneous idea that our government is out there protecting us, and it just simply isn’t true. It’s up to us to determine if we want such a chemical in our or our children’s bodies. There are just too many instances to name here but it’s worthy of attention of any conscientious parent to ask what kind of thin gruel are we giving our children.

Jendi: So I know a question on my mind, and probably a lot of mothers, is if I stop asking my doctor, how do I know enough to take care of my children?

Trust in your ability to mother

Joette: Well, I’ve been asked that question many times and I always say, “Do you really have to ask that?” I mean, I realize your question’s rhetorical and you’re interviewing me but how does anyone know how to make any decisions of substance in their lives? How do you know what house to buy, how to educate, examine? Who should you marry? What church should you go to? Really, for goodness sakes, have we lost our ability to make good decisions? Do we not have the control in our lives to be able to decipher what’s best for us and our family?

I worry about what’s wrong with the world that the most fundamental work of an adult must be run by another. If we really don’t know, ask your mother, ask your grandmother. That’s where wisdom lies. Now, there are those circumstances, of course. If they have fallen into lockstep with the lopsided way of dependency on a doctor for every little fever, then start studying. If your mother is saying, “Go to the doctor, go to the doctor, check with the doctor, call the doctor,” then you know it’s time to start doing some work on your own.

Jendi: I have thought about that and I do believe we are way too dependent on the doctors and what the medical community thinks.

Joette: And not just the doctors. I think many industries in general because they’ve done a very good job of marketing. I work with clients who hail from all over the world on a day-to-day basis from far-reaching places such as Mongolia, the Philippines, United Arab Emirates, in my fellowships in Kolkata where I’ve worked with Hindus and Muslims and sheikhs, in the US. I worked with Amish Mennonites, Hasidic Jews, Fundamental Christians, you name it, Conservative Catholics. I’ve also lived in many areas of the US and attended school in England and have done extensive travel. And I don’t say this for any other reason than to say that I’ve observed a great deal in my 63 years on this Earth. I’ve gleaned a perspective, I think, that’s sweeping.

And what I’ve consistently noted is something that is going to fly in the face of the narrative of the Western World and that is – it’s a sweeping generalization but I can’t help but note it time and again – that the greater the formal education of the mother, the less she trusts her ability to mother. And the flip side of it is that the more conservative the family values are, the more involved and less likely the mother is to run to the ubiquitous experts for caring for her children, not just pediatricians but the educators for the child’s education.

So for the educated mother, the common horse sense, I believe, has been educated right out of her. I’m not talking about intelligence here. I mean, higher education. Just try for one minute to see if you can convince a mother who has a law degree that she should know how to treat a fever herself without drugs on one hand and a phone to the doctor on the other. It might just throw her into a fit of disgust with those who don’t respect the education of doctors with the mere mention of it. And I don’t mean to condemn women who are attorneys. In fact, I took the LSATs myself and was on the entry list to join law school many years ago with a real strong desire to join the legal ranks.

But I have to tell you that I have noted this phenomenon playing itself out in educated women. It’s prevalent in mothers with demanding careers. They simply don’t have the time to learn this stuff. But I say we must make the time. It’s that simple. Priorities need to be set with children at the apex and the career well below that. Ultimately, if you have to buck the system, you have to do that, and yes, the feminist manifesto in order to take on this way of thinking. I defiantly taught my children and I still say to them as adults that they would most likely succeed in life if they watched everyone else and what they did and then did the opposite. That’s when they’re likely to get it right just about a hundred percent of the time.

Jendi: So did they follow your advice?

Joette: Well, unfortunately, my kids don’t always listen to their mother. But I’ll share something with you when I didn’t follow my own advice. My first son was in a school for a few years before I homeschooled him through the rest of grammar school age. And I was being told by his teacher that he should not be taught how to play piano until he was older. It was the philosophy of that particular educational program to relay such intellectual pursuits. Now, my father and my brother are both professional musicians. I have played piano most of my life. I took classical music training in college. So it took some convincing for me to be convinced of this.

But she did. She convinced me for a short time. What the heck was wrong with me? The teacher was almost half my age. I considered her education to be superior to my years of life, my family’s values, and more importantly, my undying devotion to my child. Yet, I took her advice for about a year. So I have to admit, I, too, am prone to being sold. I still kick myself today for having fallen for that pitfall. And I do call it pitfall. Soon after, I woke up though and I decided that I was not going to pay attention to that kind of thinking and I took him out of that school, the so-called experts, mind you, and then we started homeschooling from that time on. As mothers, we must step back outside of the situation, gain a common sense perspective. The world is brimming with ideas and lifestyles that are lacking in common horse sense and we must sift through that rubble.

Jendi: It looks like your situation is different. It looks like you are a homeopath and have studied all this so you have confidence to take care of your kids that the rest of us don’t have. So was it your training that gave you the guts to take on curing your family yourself without a doctor?

 “I’ve had enough!”

Joette: No. Actually, it was the other way around, Jendi. I knew nothing about medicine, even alternative medicine until I decided it was important enough to learn. I didn’t learn about homeopathy until I got sick at the hands of modern medical treatments – antibiotics and those god-forsaken birth control pills. That’s when I said, “Okay, I’ve had enough.” And that was just about the time my husband and I were married and we started looking into having a family. And that’s when it became crystal clear that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

Jendi: I’m sure there are naysayers that will say, “Well, your kids probably weren’t as sick as others and that’s why you could handle it.”

Joette: My kids were no different than anybody else. They got the usual coughs, colds, croup, stomach flus, bronchitis, ear infections, cold sores, food intolerance, you name it, strep throat, injuries galore. I have never been completely opposed to seeing doctors. I just knew I could handle most any condition that came our way. And the more I learned homeopathy, I preferred it to not be interfered with, thank you very much. But if something serious happened, of course, I would take them to a doctor, something that was beyond my understanding. Certainly, I wasn’t going to be foolish about this. We lived on a small farm. We raised some chickens and had a couple of goats for a while. We had bees and we not only didn’t depend on others but we rarely even needed a veterinarian because I learned enough about livestock and tending for them as well with homeopathy. But it was a process.

I believe that we Americans have been hoodwinked into believing that all germs are bad. And the truth is that exposure to bees, germs, etc., and eschewing the stifling process of employing drugs is what actually keeps our children healthy. There is a beneficial purpose to acute illnesses and so I wasn’t afraid of them. I really believed it was important that my kids got chickenpox, that they got the flu, they got colds. I celebrated it when they got it. Stumbling on these fundamental discoveries, I sighed a sigh of not just relief but belief. I believe in myself that I could do this myself and then I set off and started to work on it so that I could prove to myself that I was worthy of it. So I did it the other way around.

Jendi: I really love those ideas and I really want to do them in my own family. And I do think we’re often worried about pleasing others, but of course, our first duty is to protect our family and so until that is accomplished, nothing else matters.

Joette: Well, we have to aggressively seek answers in our lives. They’re not just going to come to us. And I find that most of the answers that come too quickly are often planted there by media, marketing, etc. I used to be an account executive for NBC back in the 1980s. That means I was a member of the sales and marketing department. I know marketing when I see it because I used to write the local TV commercials. So I can identify motives and who’s behind what we read and hear very easily. I wish that everybody could. In fact, I assume many people do, and yes, I was one of them. And what I see in media is that they, the media themselves, are the stenographers for the government and health agencies, the self-promoting medical organizations and out-of-control big pharma.

So when I got out of that field and began raising my family, I used my experiences as my guide. Far too often, what I witness in the general public is apparent indifference, kind of an injurious way of living, a way of thinking that is far too accepting of status quo. And I believe that leads to mediocrity, which is the one word that scares the wits out of me. Those who are listening today are certainly not of that ilk. Otherwise, they’d be watching a reality TV show instead of learning how to take care of their families, or at least considering what I have to offer here. 

Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa believed in the powers of homeopathy

We need to get back to traditional values of commitment to our craft, whether it be as a parent, a grandparent, an engineer, a pianist, no matter, a commitment to excellence and not depending on others’ opinions. That’s why I look to those people in the world who have made a mark that lives beyond their time on Earth for their inspiration. And since I have a [unintelligible – 00:22:35] feeling towards India, I’ll use two of my favorite Indian citizens – Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. I saw evidence of both of these two great minds during my time in Kolkata. There’s evidence of them everywhere in statues and bulletin boards, etc. And as a Roman Catholic, I appreciate that Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity depended on homeopathy and treated the poorest of the poor in Kolkata with homeopathic medicines.

Jendi: So it’s a known fact that Mother Teresa and Gandhi used homeopathy?

Joette: Well, I don’t know that Gandhi administered homeopathy but he held it in high regard. He is quoted as saying – I’ve got this quote right here – “Homeopathy cures a larger percentage of cases than any other form of treatment and is beyond a doubt safer and more economical.” And yes, the sisters were not fully trained homeopaths but they knew how to use the medicines and administered them to the sick and dying. Dr. Prasanta Banerji, the wonderful man who trained me in his methods, knew and personally acknowledged that to me.

Jendi: The wide world has a lot to offer us if we seek for it.

Joette: Yeah, there’s no doubt. There’s no doubt. And the reason I mentioned this is because it demonstrates that homeopathy is so very poorly underrepresented in the US today, yet highly valued in the rest of the world. In fact, it’s valued everywhere but the US and Canada and oddly enough, the communist countries, too. But more importantly, I share this because what I have unearthed are what I believe the answers to so many homeopathic protocols that can be learned by families to treat themselves. These protocols take away the trial and error found in both classical homeopathy and even what an essential oil or an herb can provide. I love to say, “Here’s how you do it. Here’s the condition, here’s the remedy, here’s the potency, and here’s where you can purchase it if you don’t have it. And now, this is how it’s employed.”

Jendi: And I love that you share so much free information on your blog and I love to go there and search for something that is bothering my family instead of going to the drugstore. And if I don’t find something right away, I try to pick a synonym or another way to describe it and search that way. So I was looking up acne for my daughter. I didn’t find a lot so I put in pimples and it brought up some information about that. And I reference it to other people. “Oh, I learned about this on JoetteCalabrese.com,” or “I was reading about this on JoetteCalabrese.com.” So it’s a great resource.

Joette: Yeah. I’m glad you’re using it. And that’s the way to do it. You may have to come up with synonyms.

Jendi: Do you have any parting words for us today?

Be a defiant mother

Joette: Well, actually, I just have one. My parting word is “No”. The most powerful word in a woman’s vocabulary is no. You can always say yes later but start out with no first. “No candy right now, honey.” And more importantly, “No, thanks, doc. I need to give this some thought.” “No, not today, doc. I want to discuss it with my husband.” “No, not Tylenol for fever. Thank you very much.” When it comes to our posturing, dealing with health and welfare, this includes dealing with education administrators, too, by the way, my general rule is no.

Don’t be a good girl. Be a good mother. Be prepared to fight to the finish for your family. No, don’t be a compliant parent. Be a self-respecting, well-informed force. Be defiant. Unapologetically, take control of your destiny. Instead of bumping around the bottom in mediocrity, get to the top of your game. Go ahead and tuck away some of the protocols and the homeopathic tricks of the trade into your hip pocket, then take your family by the hand and face the opposite direction from the rest of the world and that’s when you say, “Yes, yes, I can do this myself.” That’s when you’re likely to get it right.

Jendi: Thank you so much, Joette, for all your encouragement.

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.