Joette Calabrese Podcast

In this podcast, we cover:

0:45 Joette as an anti-pesticide activist

2:32 Medicines: The worst kind of pollution

7:52 Don’t rely on your doctors to tell you the harmful effects of medicines

11:05 Transitioning from conventional medicines to homeopathy

Today’s podcast is about pollution, but not the first kind that comes to mind. Years ago, I was an anti-pesticide activist. I met with local hospitals and school boards in my community and got them to stop spraying dangerous pesticides on their lawns and school grounds. We are all too familiar with that kind of pollution, and the ability of grass roots activism to create positive change.

This podcast, I want to talk about one that may be much more important than the sprayed kind.

It actually might be the most vicious, as its overuse has become the number one killer in the U.S. today. Remarkably, we not only willingly accept this kind of pollution, we agree to it, so it’s not enforced like taxes. Instead, the public is convinced to respect it enough to pay for it! It’s even bold-facedly standing in your medicine cabinet every morning.

Listen, as I tell a story of a young girl named Dolly, who experiences the devastation that occurs in the wake of having taken only a round or two of one of these pollutants… on the recommendation of a trusted college physician.

There’s a little Dolly in each of us, but failures teach. Don’t we all wish that someone, be it a doctor, our mother or SOMEONE, would just tell us what to do, what to take and be on with our lives?

A life well lived is one that requires that we unapologetically take control of our own destinies. For if we don’t, we will likely fulfill someone else’s instead, and it might be the way of industry promoting, pharmaceutical pollution.

In the end, knowing how to use homeopathy before or even after poor choices can be transformational.

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 with Joette Calabrese. Today, we’re going to be talking about pollution and what we can do about it to protect our families. And I’m excited to learn about this. So Joette, is there something we can do about pollution other than getting involved in grassroots and community movements? 

Joette as an anti-pesticide activist

Joette: Yeah, there certainly is. Years ago, I was an anti-pesticide activist. I met with local hospitals and city groundskeepers in the city of Buffalo and school districts, etc., because I was concerned about the amount of pesticides that were being sprayed on the lawns where children played and in the hospitals where people who were sick were adjacent to the lawns. So given the amount of pesticides spewed on the lawns or on our food supply, fluoride in our water, the GMOs, the mercury in vaccines and dental fillings, you’d think we were doomed.

But consider a different take on pollution. That’s what we’re going to look at today, one that may be much more important, I believe, actually, than the randomly emitted sort, not the kind that is sprayed on the trees in the summer by the city workers, and that’s exactly what I was working against. And actually, by the way, I might say parenthetically that I was successful. Buffalo was the first city in the nation to stop its use of pesticides on city properties.

So it did work. It was back in the ‘80s and it was very effective. We made the national news and Reuters picked us up and we went all over the country with this information. But at any rate, what we’re going to be talking about today might be the most vicious as its overuse has actually become the number one killer in the US today. And remarkably, we’re not only willing to accept this kind of pollution, but we agreed to it, and it’s not enforced like taxes. Instead, the public is convinced to respect it enough to pay for it. And it’s bold facedly standing in your medicine cabinet every morning.

Jendi: So I worry about all those other things you said. So if this is worse, this scares me.

Medicines: The worst kind of pollution

Joette: Well, you might have guessed what this is anyway if you thought about it. The pollution is the medicines and over-the-counter drugs, pharmaceuticals. And they’re euphemistically christened as medicine instead of what they often actually are, and that is pollution of a most personal nature.

Jendi: So why is it more serious than DDT and all those other things?

Joette: Well, because it’s what I call personal pollution. The spraying of DDT with all its side effects was only done once every summer, and the same thing with lawn pesticides. They’re sprayed once a month. I actually remember DDT being sprayed on the trees on my street growing up in Buffalo, New York. We were often playing outside while it was being done. But with drugs, we actually place them into our mouths. We spray them into our nasal cavities or smear them directly on our skin every day, often for many years.

Jendi: And we’ve all heard about the dangers of drugs and I don’t like using them at all but I never thought of them as pollution.

Joette: Well, let me demonstrate the devastation that occurs in the wake of having taken in many cases only a round or two of one of these pollutants. Here’s a typical story. I love to give stories. This is so common that it’s become the new normal. It’s a story about a 19-year-old girl whose name is Dolly. Dolly attends an Ivy League university and she studies piano performance. She has lived her rather healthy life with nary a thought towards health. She’s typical of the kids in upscale universities in the US today. Actually, most universities in the west. She eats organic fare at the school’s trendy cafeteria and she sups on whole, organic yoghurt, and wouldn’t dream of consuming a Big Mac.

Yet, when her skin breaks out, she becomes worried. Each month, she gets visited by blemishes and since she performs regularly on stage, of course, she wants to have flawless skin. So what does Dolly do? She takes a trip to the infirmary on campus to get an expert’s opinion. If you’re anywhere near where I am in this thinking, we already know what the doctor will say. But because of her age, Dolly is unsuspecting. She leaves the clinic with two predictable prescriptions, one for an antibiotic and the other for birth control pills. Her “acne”, that was in reality a little more than a monthly show of pimples on her cheeks, disappears within days after commencing the drugs.

Jendi: And that sounds like a typical teenager. I’ve known many people that have gone and got those prescriptions.

Joette: That’s right. But then, wham!

Jendi: I think I know what you’re going to say next. I think I know what’s going to happen.

Joette: Yup. Dolly begins to not feel so well. Her bellyaches after eating. She gets some constipation and she begins to notice a creeping sadness. Well, actually, it’s more like a frank depression. Small matters that never troubled her before become dismal and heavy. And she also notices that certain foods cause embarrassing gas, one of which is her beloved yoghurt. So what’s happened is Dolly’s developed chronic illness. And these sufferings may not dwindle over time regardless of how soon she stops taking the drugs because side effects don’t always go away just because you’ve stopped using them. If they’re not fully addressed, they will be commensurate with the amount of time she indulges in this lifestyle.

Jendi: So if I’m understanding correctly, Dolly traded minor skin conditions for a lifetime of gastrointestinal discomforts and depression.

Joette: Yes. Now, it may not be a lifetime. Hopefully, if Dolly gets it straight and gets off of this quickly enough, she may have years to undo this. But she’s essentially traded a minor skin condition, just as you said, that would easily be uplifted with a homeopathic protocol for an illness that is likely not going to simply melt away by itself. Not unlike most North Americans and others throughout the world, Dolly, as bright as she is, has been well trained to dash off and get drugs for every ill. By the way, did I mention that she now suffers fatigue, too? She drags herself back to the prestigious clinic and her prestigious university where more up-to-the-minute drugs are prescribed and again is lulled with a little paper for yet more prescriptions for the new conditions.

Jendi: Okay. So let me guess. This one, she got one for her stomachaches and she got another prescription for depression and a pain reliever for her gastrointestinal pain.

Joette: That’s right. You’ve got it. A pain reliever and a psychotropic drug. There is simply, in my estimation, no responsible argument for the use of a psychotropic drug for a young woman who is having a response to birth control pills and antibiotics. This I believe, my friends, is debauchery and pollution of the most sobering sort. It’s shocking and more conspicuously, one issue that actually is avoidable.

 Don’t rely on your doctors to tell you the harmful effects of medicines

Jendi: And we are raised up to trust our doctors. Wouldn’t Dolly’s doctor tell her about the potential harm that she could get from these drugs?

Joette: Well, it’s a rare doctor now that takes the time to inform patients and patients don’t get that part. This is where it’s important for folks to take their healthcare into their own hands. And thank god for the internet because there’s a good way to acquire this information. It really takes only a visit to Drugs.com or such to accumulate only a small portion of vital facts regarding side effects of drugs. But this is where the official effects are listed.

To find out what I call the unofficial short and long-term effects takes only a few keystrokes more and the realm of forms of people suffering from the fallout of drugs congregate and share their misery. Had Dolly thought to do this or to be honest, in many ways more importantly, if the clinic doc conscientiously warned her, she would have found that the side effects read like side effects expected after DDT spraying. The long-term effects are rarely listed and they, too, often ought to be taken into account. But that’s usually not what’s listed. Knowing what these might be takes some experience and plain, old horse sense that we gain after living life a little longer than Dolly has.

Jendi: So can you tell us more what you mean about that?

Joette: Well, it’s only logical that when you take an antibiotic, it will rearrange, transform the interior of the gut. After all, they’re not called antibiotic or anti-life for nothing. And they don’t target only the bad microorganisms. They’re like napalm. They kill the beneficial organisms along with the bacteria that has overgrown.

Jendi: And we mentioned Dolly was taking birth control drugs also. Are they a problem, too?

Joette: Well, we’ve not yet observed the full effects, as far as I’m concerned, of the birth control drugs that Dolly is ingesting daily. But if the last 50 years plus of birth control sorrows is an indication, we can only imagine what they may superimpose on Dolly’s life in the next decade. I don’t want to go too far into that but if you’re at all interested in that, you might want to check online the sorrows and the problems that have occurred as a result of birth control drugs. And so why do I say a decade of Dolly’s life? I mean, I bring that up for a reason. The reason is because most women stay on the pill for about a decade.

Jendi: So what should Dolly do?

Joette: If I could yell out to her, I’d say, “Stop, Dolly! Stop!” Dolly must stay clear of drugs that pollute the body and that throw off symptoms into the future only to compound them. The way to do this is to consider food changes, add some tincture of patience and time and perhaps a homeopathic remedy, and drop that idea that drugs are okay even when taken in moderation.

Jendi: What plan do you have for her?

Transitioning from conventional medicines to homeopathy

Joette: Well, the first step is for Dolly, of course, to get off the drugs. This can be done by offering homeopathics first. So if Dolly had known about homeopathy, that would have been much easier to deal with her skin so that the need for the drugs then become obsolete. This would include employing a protocol for her now gut dysbiosis as well as one for depression and aiming backwards towards her original complaint of the blemishes. And each of these conditions will thoroughly be completed via homeopathy, then we can place Dolly back on wholesome firmament.

 Jendi: Do you think that everyone should get off of any drugs that they’re taking, and wouldn’t that be potentially dangerous for some people, depending on their circumstances?

Joette: Absolutely. You have a very good point, Jendi. This is not to say that all drugs can or ought to be stopped abruptly by everyone in all circumstances. Such a sweeping generalization carries potentially dangerous consequences because the body accommodates the drug. And sometimes, drugs prop people up in such a fashion that it can really cause trouble and the boomerang effect after stopping the drugs or for other reasons as well. But in Dolly’s situation, antibiotics, birth control, and psychotropic pills are at best superfluous. So the next step is for Dolly to consider taking a dose of nux-vomica 200, and that can be taken once daily for three days and then, of course, stop. This will help settle the chaos that’s going on in her body now. It’s likely that her stomach pains and gas and even depression, once off the drugs, will soften enough that she can begin moving to a more intelligent way to treat each of her now varied conditions.

Jendi: What about her diet? Does she need to change the food she’s eating, like leave out gluten or dairy?

Joette: Depending on how Dolly suffers, to give her gut a little reprieve, she might want to lighten the burden and abstain from these foods if she thinks they may be contributing. But the aim of homeopathy is to root out even food sensitivities so that this step will become unnecessary in the near future. So a dose of nux-vomica 200, that can be taken once daily for three days, this will help settle things. It’s likely that her gas and pain and depression, once off the drugs, will indeed soften. But once Dolly’s gastrointestinal tract has responded to the antibiotic, she will need to tighten up the purity and choices of her food, probably, for some time while taking up a homeopathic protocol to right the wrongs. And so what may accompany it is that her stomach, she may still have constipation or other issues. And if that’s so, a good remedy that she might want to consider is Chelidonium 30 mixed with nux-vomica 200. And that would be taken twice daily for approximately six weeks, and that would be after she had been using the nux-vomica.

Jendi: Okay. I grabbed my pencil. Can you repeat the remedy name again?

Joette: Yes. It’s Chelidonium 30 mixed with nux-vomica 200, and it’s taken twice daily for approximately six weeks. This is actually a Banerji protocol. And they mix them together. They do a lot of that in Kolkata at their clinic and I have used this many times for my family members and many students. But remember, it covers stomach pains that’s associated with an incomplete bowel movement. And that’s what Dolly was complaining about, was an incomplete bowel movement.

Jendi: Now, what about her acne which was the start of the whole thing?

Joette: Right. Well, what Dolly could have done to take care of her minor problem of acne, only this time with homeopathy, would be to use a remedy called Hepar sulph 200 mixed with Arsenicum album 200 taken every other day for about six weeks. I’ve written about this method on an earlier blog. So just plug in the search bar on my blog and insert the word “acne” or “pimples” and you can do this for many maladies, by the way. And that article will give you exactly how Dolly should have utilized these remedies before going for heavy duty drugs. So I want to remind folks that I give this information out free for my readers to learn and pass on. In fact, all I ask if readers go to this, if this information is helpful to you, is that you pass it on to friends, neighbors, relatives, and colleagues.

So anyway, back to Dolly. Often, that’s just enough to eliminate the problem permanently in that amount of time. And as I said, I learned this little trick in Kolkata at the side of the great doctors Banerji, and they assured me of the efficacy of this medicine for acne and boy, were they right. I witnessed the success of this protocol acting time and again. And after I wrote that blog, I got many responses from people about six, eight, ten weeks later, who reported that indeed, it actually helped them, their daughters, their nieces, their nephews, etc. So in fact, for nearly any medical condition that Dolly might encounter, with a little effort, she might easily have rooted it out with homeopathy. This is not the forum for an in-depth discussion of chronic illnesses, of course, such as serious food intolerances, allergies, Crohn’s, hormonal imbalances, constipation, eczema, gut dysbiosis, and depression. But had Dolly been interested in learning how to tend her gut garden with these kinds of illnesses, she would need to consider taking a course or two or simply owning a good homeopathy book.

Jendi: And it would certainly be helpful if Dolly learned how to use homeopathy and common sense methods while she’s in college because at some time in the future, there’s a good chance she’ll have a family and she’ll have a head start on already knowing a lot of these things.

Joette: That’s right. This is when young people should learn about it. She’ll want to know that fever is normal when she has her children. It’s normal in childhood diseases, that acne is not something that we quell, pains are warning signs that something is remiss and they need to be rooted out at the cause, not covered up by a drug. And she’ll need to know what is trustworthy of treatment, homeopathic or conventional, and what is normal and ought to be left alone to avoid this labyrinth of complications that she found herself in.

Jendi: Thank you, Joette. This story helps put it into perspective and Dolly is like a lot of us, I think.

Joette: Yeah. There’s a little Dolly, I think, in each of us. Don’t we all wish that someone, a doctor or a mother or someone would just tell us what to do, what to take, and be on our way with our lives? But I have to say failures teach and Dolly will probably learn. A life well lived is one that requires that we unapologetically take control of our own destinies. If we don’t, we will likely fulfill someone else’s instead and it might be the way of the industry promoting pharmaceutical pollution. So in the end, knowing how to use homeopathy before or even after poor choices can be transformational.

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:

1:09 Conditions that take longer to treat

2:11 Antimonium crud mixed with Arsenicum album for itchy eczema

7:41 Petroleum for eczema that’s worse in the winter

9:22 Use camphor in between the wrong protocol and the new protocol

10:16 Coffea helps with sleep

12:08 Food intolerance, the root problem

Herein I finish the three-part series What to Expect When Using Homeopathy.

In my previous two podcasts (and blogs) I covered acute illness, general guidelines for selecting dosage and chronic illness, what to watch for (the three magic markers) to determine whether the remedy was well chosen.

Now in Part 3, I cover what to do if you recognize that the remedy is not the best selection for the case.

Here are my guidelines:

Give the remedy the necessary 6-8 weeks time to work.

Access the case applying the 3 magic markers (Part 2 of 3 – Podcast 7)

Stand firm in your convictions. Go back to your study course notes and observations. New realizations often present that were not obvious 6 weeks previous, leading you to select a second remedy.

Consider Camphor 200 for a smoother transition to the next remedy if you clearly made a mistake.

Remain confident in your skills, knowing even the wrong remedy choice can give us information that may have gone unnoticed or perhaps wasn’t available at the time the first remedy was selected.

I know you know what it means to have your child feel better after months of suffering. Now imagine what that must feel like knowing that it was at your hand…that YOU cured your child, husband, mother, friend.

Many of you know this feeling.

I know this feeling. Is there anything on earth that is a better high than this?

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 back with Joette Calabrese from JoetteCalabrese.com, and this is our series of What to Expect When Using Homeopathy. So far, we’ve covered the number of doses, the spaces in between, and the other important details and kind of focused on acute conditions. That was part one. And part two, we talked a little bit more about chronic conditions and we covered how to watch for what Joette calls magic markers to determine whether the remedy was well chosen. Now, this is the third and last part of this series of What to Expect When Using Homeopathy. And I’m looking forward to hearing about what to do if I choose a wrong remedy for a condition.

Conditions that take longer to treat

Joette: Okay. Let’s talk about some conditions take longer than others, sometimes even remedies. Certain remedies are slower acting. But generally, it’s the conditions and in the corresponding article, I mentioned vitiligo. And for vitiligo, the Banerji protocols have been shown to alleviate this problem in a certain number of people. It’s not a hundred percent for everyone. But it’s generally a very long process with slow results. You know, I like to use musical terms. I know that you play instruments and I play piano. And so I love to use musical terms. And it might be called adagio, adagio. That’s a very slow snail’s pace. And although homeopathy has a history of being able to treat psoriasis, it, too, has an elongated pace. And here is how it often fleshes out. I’ll explain this to you. Pun intended, by the way, Jendi.

Jendi: And you have another story for us about a little boy today. And I love it when you share the stories because I understand and I find I remember the example better.

Antimonium crud mixed with Arsenicum album for itchy eczema

Joette: Yeah, it does help. Yeah, there’s nothing like a story to demonstrate a point. So I’ll tell you about Joseph who’s 10 years old. This is a case of a mother who’s been taking my online courses and she’s been following my blog for a few years, and also, she’s had other interest in homeopathy through other homeopaths as well, and then decided to take my course, Skin: The Ugly Truth, and later, Good Gut, Bad Gut. And this is where she learned how to master the Banerji protocols which is who I promote indirectly. And she implemented them with her son.

So Joseph had a few things going on. He was irritable, he had food allergies, but most importantly, he had kind of mid-level eczema until a few months ago. And then around that time, probably two or three months ago, his skin worsened and so did his behavior. His rashes got very itchy and his mother, Millie, figured it was something he was eating. He was allergic to something. She kind of knew that all along anyway but didn’t have to pay too much attention to it until a few months ago. But she wasn’t sure it was anything more than dairy and wheat.

So the family had been on the GAPS diet kind of loosely. And if you’re not familiar with the GAPS diet, it’s a good diet to help eliminate food intolerances and build up gut flora. So the whole family was pretty much on it but she was a little more strict with Joseph, particularly when he had some flares. But this was the worst that he had ever had. By the way, for those who don’t know about GAPS, it’s a great therapeutic diet but it’s pretty difficult on moms, especially for kids such as Joseph’s age who sneak candy bars and such. It’s pretty tough but for the most part, Joseph, even though he was a little difficult as of recently, he was a rather compliant boy. So based on the information that she found on this blog, she gave Joseph Antimonium crud 6 mixed with Arsenicum album 6 twice daily for about six weeks. This is the Banerji protocol that is pretty specific for itchy eczema. Now, not all eczema is itchy. But it’s a really good place to start when you see eczema coming forth.

Jendi: And then she had to check Joseph’s skin over and over to see how it was doing? Because I know I get impatient and I want to see how things are moving along.

Joette: Right, right. Certainly, it’s difficult not to check Joseph’s skin day by day, even by hour. Most moms want to see how things are progressing. But I urge parents to not get too caught up in this when it comes to a chronic issue because we need to look at the net gain in the long run to know where we stand. I was in touch with Millie at the time and she was my student and I cheered her on, “Hold off from assessment, Millie, hold off; you can do it,” which is, as I said, difficult to do.

Jendi: But in this case, the Arsenicum album and the Antimonium tart, they weren’t right after all?

Joette: Well, that’s right. It’s easy to get muddled in the process of ebbs and flows. And what I mean by that, this could be a step forward and a half step back, etc. So after the prescribed approximately six to eight weeks, Millie then decided to change course. And the reason is that when she assessed at the end of that time period, she noted that Joseph had a little less itching, as she was keeping kind of a record of it somewhat, here and there. So based on the magic markers and determining the progress, she admits that the only change was that he was itching less frequently and that when he scratched, he would go into a frenzy.

Now, that hadn’t been happening previously. So it looked as though things were not really moving ahead as she had hoped. So she concluded that there was no net gain in his condition, nor was there also any change in his demeanor. And that matters, too. We want to look at the whole person as well, even though we’re dealing with eczema and food intolerances. So Millie was most concerned because his skin was vulnerable and now he had cracks that oozed and bled a serous fluid. And this was as tough on Millie as you can imagine as it was on her son. Even her husband was also worried about infections since his skin was open in so many places. But Millie resisted because she, too, had eczema and experienced a lifetime of steroid use and she had decided that she wanted to protect her son from sufferings that she endured, and still to this day, as a matter of fact, from the fallout of the steroids. And she also had noted that they never cleared up the problem and caused only new ones.

So she was determined not to use steroids. I had nothing to do with this decision. This was because of her own experience. Once the six weeks had passed, she felt it was time, of course, to at least start looking at another protocol. And as I said, she looked back at the course, Skin: The Ugly Truth and the Good Gut, Bad Gut course. And I mention this because this is where I teach how to use these protocols very specifically. So she referred to her notes and Millie remembered petroleum 200. Now, this is homeopathic petroleum. We’ve had people who have commented on the blog and said, “Petroleum is the worst thing you could use on skin.” Well, that’s precisely why petroleum 200 is so valuable because it’s highly diluted and what causes illness removes illness when used homeopathically.

Petroleum for eczema that’s worse in the winter

She remembered the petroleum 200 as a remedy that is specific for eczema that worsens in the winter and presents with cracks. And of course, this was just a few months ago that she relayed all this to me when it all began. So it had started to get really bad on his skin back in late November, early December. So she hadn’t realized until she read the description of petroleum in her notes because she had been thinking that the problem was not because of going into winter as much as the fact that the children had gone to their grandparents who routinely served heaps of cookies, breads, and soda, sometimes even diet soda, she mentioned. So that makes things a little difficult and it kind of scrambles up the information.

Jendi: And so then she figured that that diet was the cause of Joseph’s skin flare up.

Joette: Right, exactly. So Joseph was not getting a full night’s sleep because of the skin or maybe vice versa. So then she was thinking well maybe, having checked her notes again, Coffea 200 might be indicated because it is the perfect remedy, specific actually for itching that keeps the sufferer up at night. And again, here we go with Coffea. You would think coffee, that’s from which it’s made, would keep someone up. And indeed, if we use it homeopathically, it does the opposite. So this is when Millie decided to change gears. She stopped using the Antimonium crud and Arsenicum album and instead, switched to petroleum 200 and she used it every other day and Coffea 200 once at night, probably just around bedtime or after dinner sometime.

Use camphor in between the wrong protocol and the new protocol

However, Millie didn’t take an interim step that I believe she should have taken. That is, it would have been a little bit cleaner, and I can’t prove this but I mean, we see this all the time, that camphor 200 one dose for one day between the wrong group of remedies and a new fresh protocol is a part of the Banerji protocol that helps clear the way and it allows for a smoother transition into the next remedies if the previous medicines didn’t produce results. And when I say I can’t prove it, as you understand the story and how it unfolds, you’ll see things worked out in the long run even without camphor. But I’ll be writing more on this subject soon, the subject of camphor and antidoting. So Millie’s new choice of remedies was right on in spite of this misstep, what we might consider a misstep, in not using camphor.

Coffea helps with sleep

Jendi: But the Coffea got him to fall asleep, right, like a perfect remedy for insomnia even though it’s coffee. So the like cures like was illustrated with her use of that.

Joette: Right, exactly. You’ve got it. And he promptly fell asleep and stayed peacefully asleep the very first night after taking Coffea 200. And the reason I emphasize that is because sometimes it takes two, three, four nights, sometimes even a week or so, sometimes even longer than that for a remedy to act when it comes to something that’s chronic. But that’s what’s interesting about this remedy, is that it’s even more specific for those who suffer not just from inability to fall asleep but who suffer from itching and the itching keeps them awake. So it’s kind of a dual remedy. It’s really great for when the itching causes that insomnia.

So little-to-no scratching ensued. Joseph’s mom knew this because she had always had her ear glued to her son’s bedroom one room over and the sound of his scratching used to keep her up nightly, worrying with angst. I mean, that’s what it’s like. And on that first night, the only sound she heard, she told me, were nothing but the soft sounds of a sleeping breath drifting from his room. So you can imagine how Millie must have felt that night. You know how mothers are. We sleep better knowing that everything is moving in the right direction and our children are well. I call Millie now a homeopathic mom. It’s been over two months of taking the new Banerji protocols with petroleum and Coffea and Joseph’s skin is not what she’s reporting as perfect but the itching is now about a 2 out of 10 and the condition of the skin overall in appearance and comfort is what I would call a triumphant 3.

Food intolerance, the root problem

Jendi: So now, she has to figure out about the food intolerances?

Joette: Yeah. That’s right. We are not finished here just because we’re seeing some good conditions here. The remedies will help with the skin but unless we address the essence of the problem, which is the food intolerances, his skin will likely never fully recover. And we don’t want him to live a life of abstinence in terms of his diet. His skin still responds to his diet. But remember, before he embarked on this method, it mattered not how carefully restrictive his diet was; his skin still tortured him. So Millie plans to refer to her notes in Good Gut, Bad Gut hoping to address this problem so that he will slowly be able to incorporate the more important aspects of his diet, especially dairy.

Jendi: That’s a great story because it not only illustrates that the wrong remedy doesn’t hurt them, it helps you find the other problems. It illustrates kind of slow and steady. You got to keep track of it and watch it. Don’t get impatient. A lot of things in there.

Joette: Right, right. Exactly, exactly. That’s why I love telling these kinds of stories. It really does help a lot. This is what I call a return to traditional family values where mothers and grandmothers cure their families themselves and throw away the drugs of commerce that have never been shown to cure such conditions in the first place. Remember, the first remedies Millie used didn’t really fail. They weren’t exactly right. They did something. We did see a little something. They were simply ill chosen.

Jendi: It was very important for her to pay attention to the details of the skin and also what he was eating and know what symptoms she had to address first. So she had to draw out the telling of most important systems and conditions from the case. And that’s something any mom can learn, right?

Joette: Right. It’s a skill learned and it’s the case in point. Even the wrong remedy choice can give us information that may have gone unnoticed or perhaps unavailable at the time. For those who are moms or grandmothers, I know what it’s like to have your child feel better after months of suffering. And now, imagine that feeling of knowing that it was at your hand. So the thing is that a lot of times, if we use a remedy that’s incorrect, it brings forth the awareness that, “Oh, my gosh! This is really worse at night. He can’t sleep.”

So then we have to look at a remedy that’s specific to that. In fact, she didn’t. She had not even noticed that until she had used those remedies and recognized that, “No, we’re not only not moving forward but boy, this is a nightly issue, an insomnia issue as well.” And then, of course, she started to look at it in the overall scheme of the timing and that it perhaps wasn’t grandma’s cookies and baked goods and diet soda perhaps. It had more to do with the time of year. That’s when petroleum came to mind.

So I know these feelings. Is there anything on Earth that’s a better high than curing your own child? I know many of you who listen to these podcasts have done it and there’s nothing like it. You get hooked. You can’t stop. Once you cure a bee sting, once you cure an ear infection, once you resolve a horrendous fever or eczema… eczema, for crying out loud. That doesn’t have an end naturally. Dermatologists tell us that children outgrow it. Well, no, it doesn’t. It’s not outgrown. It just shifts and becomes something else. You still have now the gut issue. And then in teenage years, what we often see is then there’s acne related to the food intolerances or there are stomachaches that are related to the food intolerances. So no, it’s not presenting as eczema for a dermatologist to deal with. But indeed, we have not gotten to the bottom of the pathology.

Jendi: And I do want to remind the listeners, if you like what you’re hearing in this podcast and the other ones, please share it with your friends, neighbors, your family, your coworkers, whatever. And I know whenever I learn things, then when another mom starts complaining about how their child’s feeling or they’re not feeling good, this all goes through my mind, like, “You need to learn about this from Joette.”

Joette: Right, right. Well, the goal of a good homeopath is to give just enough guidance so that at some point, as soon as possible, you as a mother or grandmother can gain the knowledge from the new protocols to be able to follow through on your own. That’s my role. So the role of the mother and grandmother is to do your homework and question, question, question. Even question me. I don’t have all the answers. I’ll be honest. I do the best I can in just getting out what I know. But just like Snowbell said to Stuart Little in the movie Stuart Little, I’m dating myself here, he said, “You’ve got guts, Stuart. You’ve got guts. You’ve got guts, spunk, and moxie.” And that’s the way I want mothers and grandmothers to approach their family’s illnesses.

Jendi: Thank you so much, Joette. This one again is full of information. I hope that they had a pencil and paper ready. If not, they can replay it and write things down, or there’s an accompanying blog post at JoetteCalabrese.com, right?

Joette: That’s right.

Jendi: Thank you so much.

Joette: No, thank you, Jendi. Nice talking with you.

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

In this podcast, we cover:

1:01 Length of time needed to treat a chronic condition

5:00 Take copious notes

8:58 Homeopathic remedies for vomiting

10:13 Take note of the improvements

16:21 Joette’s magic markers of improvement

“Being able to take responsibility for your family’s care in such a meaningful and committed way is the substance that makes for a life well lived.”

This week’s podcast is about starting and using homeopathy for your family’s chronic conditions.

First, when addressing a chronic illness, the length of time that we need to stick with a protocol is generally about 4-8 weeks. It’s a matter of pacing. Think of it this way…allegro for acutes and adagio for chronics.

I talk about the crucial need to take notes at the onset of the case. And the need to continuously take observational notes, for only then will we be able to see the proof that things are getting better.

The 3 questions to ask when taking notes for your case records.

3 Magic Markers of Improvement: the presence of any one of these indicates that we’re on the right track and have chosen the correct protocol.

2 Top remedies for horrible vomiting.

Being a wife and mother is one of the noblest jobs on this earth. Use this free blog and incorporate my homeopathy tips, and you’ll accomplish this like a sovereign.

Podcast 6,7 and 8 are supplemental to blog articles that are titled: What to Expect Using Homeopathy Parts 1-3

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 back again with Joette Calabrese and I am looking forward to learning more on the subject of what to expect after using a homeopathic remedy. So in our last podcast, we talked about using homeopathic remedies for acute conditions and I have used them for colds and headaches for my kids. So I now turn to the homeopathic remedy instead of a store-bought drug, and I’m looking forward to hearing what happens when there’s a condition that continues or has been for a while, as you call it, a chronic condition.

Length of time needed to treat a chronic condition

Joette: Yes. So last week in part one, we covered the kind of results we would look for when using homeopathy to address acute situations such as fever, like you said, otitis media, sore throats, headaches, bee stings, things like that. So acute problems are relatively straightforward compared with what to expect when dealing with chronic conditions. That is, it only takes a few minutes, hours, or maybe a couple of days to know that you’ve chosen the remedy correctly. But in a chronic condition because it’s a longer lasting one, it’s different. Certainly, there are also signs along the road that we can look for to reassure us that we are in the correct path or to redirect us if we’re on the wrong path.

So here’s the first one. When addressing a chronic illness, the length of time that we need to stick with the protocol is generally about a month to two months. So that gives us information in and of itself. That tells us that it is a matter of pacing. Think of it this way. Allegro is the acute pace and adagio is the chronic pace. So we don’t expect something that’s a chronic illness that’s been going on for many years or decades, sometimes months, but more often it’s years or decades, to completely clear up overnight like we would a headache that just started three hours ago. So in general, it’s usually best to observe a chronic protocol over that two-month period of time before there’s an assessment.

And to give you an idea of what this means, for a 4-year-old, expect sleep to be reestablished within a few weeks, whereas someone who’s older, it might take a lot longer for it to be reestablished. Someone who’s had insomnia for, say, five years, it might take many weeks. So it will be a couple of months. Mind you, these are examples of what might occur so don’t hold these degrees of length of time to specific scrutiny. I’m kind of giving you an overview. So it can take time, perhaps months, but it is a march in the direction of wholeness. So we have to remember that along the way, that we’re looking for improvement, prompting you to continue with your remedies in the same fashion.

So if you’ve decided to use a remedy twice daily and you’re going to use that every day for a full month, you need to stick with that. Don’t waver because if you waver, you’ll certainly question yourself and wonder whether or not you’ve made the correct decision. So when a remedy is working, we must not tinker with success. And this is one of the catches that most people get stuck on. As much as we want the remedy to move quickly because we’re so, again, accustomed to seeing an acute situation resolve so quickly, we must hold our ground. Once the remedy no longer acts and there’s no improvement at all and there’s nothing left to be realized, then and only then is it time to abandon it and move on.

So undeniably, there are three steps forward with a step or two back. So you might see, “Oh, my gosh, I’m doing so well! But oh, no, now it’s not doing so well again.” So if we think of it as a moving up the ladder and we’re getting closer and closer to wellness, we might take a couple of steps forward and a step back. But we’re looking for greater and greater strides over this time that holds vital evidence. And what I mean by that is if this information is not realized simply because the information wasn’t logged properly and referred to with accuracy, it will toss the prescriber and the sufferer about like a schooner without a rudder. So what I mean by that is you need to keep really careful notes when it comes to a chronic illness, and even acutes, for that matter.

Take copious notes

Jendi: How do you keep track of all this? And I know you said write it down. Is there any way that I can make it easier because I’m a busy mom doing all kinds of things through the day?

Joette: Right. This is where I stress how important, how absolutely crucial it is to take notes at the onset of taking the case. Don’t think you’re going to remember this. And also, you want to, along with numerical values, compare them to a two-month outcome. So what I mean by numerical values is you’re going to be asking yourself if it’s for yourself or for a family member, on a scale of 1 to 10 how severe is this pain, for example. Ten is the worst; zero is no pain at all. You want that number. Let’s say it’s a headache. We want that by the headaches that are coming. On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s, let’s say, a 7. We have to know this because if in two months the headaches are still occurring but now they’re a 4, that shows improvement. We have to make the assumption that the remedy did that.

Now, we don’t always know that it’s the remedy that did it. It could be, indeed, the sun is out. It could be life is better. But life does that. It has its ebbs and flows and this is the only constant, the remedy. So we at least have to consider that as our baseline and always be open to the possibility it could have been something else. But since we have no way of holding life to a constant, it’s all we’ve got. So I want to remind folks that we’re prone to that forgetfulness and inaccuracy, especially when it comes to illness. This is particularly so when dealing with the suffering of loved ones. If your child is suffering and they say they got another headache, “Mom, it’s another headache,” you can’t help but say, “Okay, well, I guess the remedy is not working.” When really, you have to go back to your records.

So when we have clear proof in the form of our notes showing us that yes, things are getting better, not only does it let us know that we’re on the right track and that we should stick with it but it reignites our hope, of course, for the future of it being resolved completely. Hence, when taking notes for the case, the questions to ask and then compare every two months need to include, again, on a scale of 1 to 10, what is the intensity of the symptom, number two, how often do the symptoms occur, and how long do they last? But remember, don’t force this to fit. In other words, be honest with yourself. If you blew it, own up to it. We don’t want to pretend that the remedy worked when it didn’t. We really want real science here. We want this as close as we possibly can to the truth. So don’t encourage the person or yourself to believe that they are better if they’re not.

Jendi: And sometimes, if it’s a kid and they’re in the middle of vomiting or diarrhea and I’ve given them the remedy but you want them to feel better right away, you think that there should be more that you should do, right?

Joette: Right, right. And the hardest part of being a mother/homeopath is the pressures that arise by simply being available to the person, to their child. Just by being there, they entreat you. This is where being a mother and holding their head, giving them a hot water bottle, encouraging them with gentle words can make the difference until the remedy kicks in. Now, again, what we’re talking about here is closer to an acute problem. I just talked to someone who said her mother used to distribute cuddles instead of drugs, and it’s a great way to look at it. If someone is vomiting relentlessly – let’s go back to an acute for a second – if they’re vomiting relentlessly and they want you to give more remedies or a different remedy because it hasn’t stopped even though you’ve just administered it, you want to hold firm to it and give it a chance to work. We have to give it a chance.

 Homeopathic remedies for vomiting

Speaking of relentless vomiting, I always like to give a remedy if I can in these podcasts and a little information that you can kind of tuck away. My two top remedies for horrible vomiting. The first is Arsenicum album 30 and the second one is Veratrum album 30 every hour or so. And you use only one. You choose one and stick with it. So these are good ones, and they’re worthy of writing down. So it’s Arsenicum album 30 or Veratrum album 30. They’re not the only ones but they’re my two top favorites for horrible vomiting.

Jendi: And those are for acute symptoms. But if it’s chronic, then we have to be patient even longer, right?

Joette: That’s right. You have to stick to your guns, unless of course, the person is worse. We need to give it a few weeks at least. But when someone you love isn’t treating, it’s awfully difficult to stay firm but firm you must be. So I urge listeners today to be sure to read my corresponding article to this podcast called What to Expect When Using Homeopathy Part II for further details. There’s a little bit more information in little areas that I’ve gone off on tangents here that I didn’t in that article.

Take note of the improvements

The problem is that expectations are sometimes unrealistic. Some who are familiar with homeopathy’s swift results in an acute condition expect the same for the chronic and I can’t emphasize this enough. So here’s another common occurrence after administering the medicine to a loved one. Folks often don’t take full notice of the degree of their improvement. So when someone is suffering, they’re saying, “I’m vomiting, I’m vomiting. I’m still vomiting.” The reason for this is that we want to get better so much that we entreat those who we believe are in power over us, our mothers or our wives or whoever it might be, to do something sooner.

I’ll give you an example. I’ll use the example of my cousin Maria in my article. She was suffering from anxiety and insomnia and some hot flashes for approximately 10 years. So, of course, this was a chronic issue. And when asked to give me a number as to how severe she’d rate her insomnia now after having had the remedies for a couple of months on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being horrible, referring to my notes because I asked her the same question two months earlier, she responded, “Oh, it’s about a 4, and I was hoping it would be gone by now because I’ll be in a play next week.”

So her expectation was based on the fact that she needed to be in a play. Now, it’s up to me as the homeopath to note that she had said it was a 10 before. Now, it’s 4. We’ve got a 60% improvement. So my notes – and I might not remember this readily so that’s why I have my notes – revealed that she rated it as a 10 last time. And when I asked her how often she’s sleepless, she reports that she’s able to fall asleep most nights now with the exception of the night before the dress rehearsals. And I’m thinking that’s great. She’s thinking, however, “No, no. You don’t understand. It’s before the dress rehearsal.”

But when someone is sleeping consistently after complaining that insomnia was one of the biggest issues, and there is a night or two without restful sleep, then we have to be satisfied with that. We can’t expect necessarily perfection. And so her anxiety, when I asked her about that, she said, “Oh, I forgot about that. I guess I haven’t had any since the first week of using the remedies.” So it’s easy to forget, you see, when you’ve taken these remedies, that this is how we used to suffer, this is how I used to suffer, compared to how you feel now. So my job is to put things into perspective, just as it’s the homeopath’s job to put it in perspective, remembering that we might have to face that things are indeed not improved.

And remember, we’re not going to guide them to lead us to believe that things are better when they’re not. We don’t tell them what it was last time until after they’ve given us all this information so that we can compare. Because we may have to go back to the drawing board. We may have chosen the wrong remedies. There’s no doubt about it. And we have to be honest. I’ll be talking more about that, actually, next week, when we’ve chosen the wrong remedy and what to do about that.

So there’s no doubt that folks are impatient to feel well. So dates or goals are set as though gaining health is like a financial goal. But the nature of the human body simply doesn’t work that way. And if it’s clear that Maria has improved, I have to point that out to her. That’s my job. And my aim is to uproot the problem, not mask it with drugs or supplements or with synthetic vitamins. We all know all about that. Even if we take two steps forward and a half step back, the goal is we’re going for the gold. Hence, our standards are solid and they may take a little longer to achieve. But meanwhile, we can at least enjoy knowing that improvement has been shown and there’s more to come.

 Jendi: So we need to not be an average person in our microwave society that wants everything fast. We need to learn that slow and steady is sometimes the only way to achieve genuine health, right?

Joette: That’s right. That’s right. And having said this, interestingly, there are plenty of others who report to me that they’re very much improved after two months of taking the remedy. And once you see that happening in your family and your neighbors and your relatives and friends, you gain a little bit more confidence and the anxiety is melted away and you can start saying, “Okay, I’m really getting this.” So it’s the job of the homeopath to assess the problem, choose the remedy and its application, keep high-quality notes, and gently remind the sufferer how things have improved, if they have, and tell them that you’ll make the adjustments if they have not.

Jendi: You mentioned about seeing improvement in other areas. That’s an indicator that the person is improving. Like emotions or energy, mood, or overall vitality. Can you explain that a little bit?

Joette: Yes, yes. In other words, what we want to see is that perhaps vomiting is not better. We’ll use it as an acute for a moment. Perhaps the vomiting is not improved. The person is still in the bathroom. But they’re not as frightened, or they’re not as cold, or they say, “You know, mom, I think I’m okay now. I think if I just sit here for a little while, I should be better.” When it’s a chronic problem, they might still have that insomnia. But it doesn’t seem to bother them as much. There’s maybe fewer emotional discords. They may need fewer naps. There might be even improved mental acuity. And again, you’re observing, always observing this in people and not telling them. You don’t want to tell them that they’re improving unless you absolutely need to. But you want to allow this medicine to act properly without giving them too much encouragement into believing that it is working when indeed, it may not be.

Jendi: And I know you have some kind of markers or rules. Would you share them with us again?

Joette’s magic markers of improvement

Joette: Yeah. I call them my magic markers of improvement and if you want to jot them down, you may do so. But certainly, that’s in the article that accompanies this. The first marker, and I’ve already discussed it, I touched on it just a few minutes ago, but the first marker is that the symptoms now appear, once the remedy is given and it’s correct, appear with less intensity. So on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s no longer an 8. Now, it’s becoming more like a 6 and then maybe like a 4. So we want to see that pain scale reduced.

The second magic marker is a shorter duration of the event of the sufferings. So in this scenario, for example if it’s vomiting, that it’s not happening for as long. And so it’s shortening up. And even though the person may have vomited two days ago and then yesterday and then today, now we’re seeing that it’s only lasting a few minutes instead of hours. So we want to see it lasting for a shorter duration.

And the third magic marker is that there are larger spaces between each event. So if someone again is vomiting and they’re in the bathroom and you’re noting that they’re actually actively doing so, that after they’ve taken the remedy, now it’s been three hours since they’ve had the last episode. So we want to see a larger space between each episode.

Jendi: These are such good things to write down and to keep with the remedies. Because when you’re in the middle of dealing with the sickness or the condition going on, then there’s something to look at. And of course, they can listen to this and write them down or they could print them out probably right from JoetteCalabrese.com.

Joette: Yes, certainly. That’s right. But I’ve had these techniques through the years and I’ve fine-tuned them, but you should have seen my medicine closet, what it looked like when I was raising my kids. I had all my notes pasted all over the inside of the cabinet door. No one would ever see if the door is closed, of course, but when I opened it up where my remedies were, there were all these reminders and notes and remember to do this and remember to watch for that and be aware of this or that. And that’s how I learned a lot of this. I mean, I want the inside of your closet door to be plastered with protocols, too, like this information. Otherwise, it’s easy to forget this kind of information. We really need someone nudging us and it’s really us reminding ourselves.

Jendi: I kind of have the things in a kitchen cupboard and I don’t know if I would be able to keep that very organized because it’s like open-shut a lot. But I definitely want to have a notebook or something that I can have the information that I collect and I already have a book to read. So I would like to keep the things I print out from your blog and the books that I get on homeopathy and keep them together.

Joette: Yes. Yeah, it’s great. It’s very important to keep yourself organized. Otherwise, when in a crisis, you won’t know where to go. You won’t know what your resources are.

Jendi: And I really liked your idea of having the file folders because you said if you scribbled it on a napkin, you could just throw it in the right file folder.

Joette: Right, right. I have sons and so I was always thinking, “How can I make this easy?” And I color coded the file folders. So my oldest son was a blue folder, my next son was a light blue folder, and then my youngest son was a green folder, so that I knew instantly to grab their file folder when something was going on and I could find out what happened last time. Because a lot of times, what we see happening today in someone, let’s say it’s nausea and vomiting, etc., we might see that one person is prone to that. And if we open up that file folder, we might find that, oh my goodness, we did this two years ago. And look here, Arsenicum album really did it, 30, and I only needed to use it three times. I have a record of it happening at that time. It makes it so much easier than to start from scratch because you have a history already. So I think it’s very valuable to have as much organization as possible.

Jendi: An organized home is a less stressful home.

Joette: Yeah.

Jendi: And I’m working on it. You constantly have to work on it, keeping it straightened up and organized. I do have a question about what if you are working on a chronic condition and you missed a day. Does that affect the duration at all?

Joette: No. I don’t believe it does. Many times, people ask me that question and I said, “Just continue where you left off and you’ll see it just pick up. No, it’s not a problem.” Sometimes, it’s difficult to remember or you leave for the day and you don’t get home until late that night and you were supposed to take the remedy. No, it really has very little bearing on it. The timing is more critical when it’s something that’s acute because you’re going to want to deal with it and get it done as soon as possible.

Jendi: The next thing that I’m wondering about is what happens if I choose the wrong remedy. So will we talk about that soon?

Joette: Yes. I wish we had more time today to do that but it really is another subject in and of itself. So yeah, we’re going to cover that in our next meeting.

Jendi: All right. So I am looking forward to hearing part three in our next podcast. Do you have any parting words for us today?

Joette: Yes. What I always want to tell moms is that this is a great place to be ambitious. We can be ambitious mothers, we can be ambitious grandmothers, and you want to find like minds. You want to find other moms and grandmothers who are also ambitious in treating and taking care of themselves and their families. And they can be found everywhere. You can find them in your church, in your synagogue, in your homeschool group, in your local PTA. They’re everywhere.

So I urge you to find like minds. If you don’t find them readily, just go to my blog. Hang out there. There are lots of people there, a lot of mothers, families there. And I believe my blog is brimming with motivated mothers. Just read their responses to some of these blogs. They share their successes and failures after having taken classes or if they’ve only just been reading the blogs. Find like minds. This is the way you will accelerate your understanding of this and encourage your life forward in this way. Procure those friendships.

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:

0:54 Open your doors to homeopathy

4:17 What to expect with homeopathy

10:19 The harmful effects of using antibiotics

13:44 What dosage to use and how to know if treatment is working

26:08 Get started with homeopathy

The Secret of Getting Ahead Is Getting Started – Mark Twain

This week’s podcast is about starting and using homeopathy for your family’s acute illnesses.

I list the 5 main goals we expect to accomplish when treating an acute illness.

Where homeopathy surpasses modern medicine and in contrast often makes modern medicine look outdated.

General guidelines for selecting dosage.

The 3 criteria that need to be met to know if the selected remedy is working. (This is a writer downer.)

Why it is important to improve your observational skills and why it will happen naturally as you study and use homeopathy.

A little hint on how to keep your family’s records. This took me years to refine.

In 1890, Mark Twain was quoted in Harper’s Bazaar: “The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business. You many honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the allopaths to destroy it.”

Good old Samuel Clemens’ words were prophetic. But he had no idea that only 50 years later homeopathy was indeed attacked and destroyed in North America.

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 again with Joette Calabrese. Hello, Joette! How are you?

Joette: I’m well, Jendi. Here we are again. I think this is the sixth podcast we’ve recorded. This is becoming a habit.

Jendi: But it’s a good habit.

Joette: Yeah.

Jendi: And I did hear a statistic that most podcasts don’t make it past about number eight. So we’ll see how we do.

Joette: We got two more to find out.

Jendi: Yeah, yeah. I hope the listeners enjoy it and follow along with it and it becomes a habit with them.

Joette: Yeah, exactly.

Open your doors to homeopathy

Jendi: So I am learning a whole lot and thinking about a whole lot of new things. And everything I learn just opens up like more questions and more ideas of more things that I want to learn about. And it is so exciting. We went for many years without health insurance and I wish I would have known some of this then. It’s just like I can do this and that’s very exciting for me. I was able to meet a lady at church who grew up on homeopathic remedies, raised her children that way, and it’s just like, wow, more and more people the more I learn about it.

Joette: Well, you know, I think what happens is that we don’t know anything about it. We have never heard the word before. And then once we learn the word and recognize what it is, because most people misunderstand what homeopathy means and what it is, then suddenly you start using the word and you find out there is a whole another world. It’s like what I always said before. It’s like you know that under the water in places like the Caribbean, you know it’s beautiful under there. You’ve seen it on television. There it is, this vast, beautiful world.

But it’s not until you put that snorkel on and you go there on the surface and hang out over a coral reef do you realize the depth and breadth of the subject or the depth and breadth of the beauty and the vastness of what’s below the surface. That’s what homeopathy’s about. It’s not until you open up this door do you recognize how fabulous this is. And, “The secret of getting ahead” always “is getting started,” by Mark Twain. That’s one of my favorite statements by Mark Twain. So yeah, let’s get started.

Jendi: So one of the questions that I wonder is I get the homeopathic remedy that was advised. How long do I use it before I change that remedy? And I’m used to a society that’s an instant society and microwave society like they call it and give me one pill and I’m fixed. So how long should I stick with a remedy before I move to a different one?

Joette: Yeah. That’s a good question. I get asked a lot of questions that demonstrate beginners and even those with more experience that there’s confusion about what kind of results to expect if they use one dose or two doses or whatever. And when they begin relying on homeopathic methods, now, what do I do? And that’s really the essence of the question, is people want to know how long they ought to continue with a particular remedy, how many times to administer it, and how to tell if they have chosen the correct remedy or protocol. And sometimes, folks make the mistake of not sticking with the protocol long enough. Other times, the error is sticking with the protocol for too long.

I might add that the former is the one that’s most common because most folks get impatient. They say, “Well, shouldn’t it be working by now? I’ve already given two doses.” So they get impatient. And they also don’t trust their decision on the remedy choice that they’ve made. They say, “I don’t know. Is this right? Is it wrong? I can’t tell.” And another problem is that they don’t know how to read symptoms that are presenting before them and their changes. And so if you don’t recognize that there’s improvement, you might easily jump off of that remedy and say well, there’s no change. Well, it depends on what you mean by change.

What to expect with homeopathy

So I will lay out some guidelines to help you get a clearer idea of what to expect. So we begin with the difference between, first of all, acute illness and chronic. So we’re going to be talking about acute and it’s something that is generally short lived on its own. For example, a bee sting, a sore throat, otitis media which is an ear infection, urinary tract infections, etc. Usually, there’s a great show of vitality, meaning there’s a lot of symptoms and they present pretty intensely sometimes, such as pain, fever. There could be exhaustion. There could be swellings. But even if you don’t treat it, it would eventually, and sometimes in short order, just go away on its own.

If it’s more serious, like a very serious urinary tract infection, then it might end up in something more dire. Pneumonia can certainly end up in death. But it’s not a long-term illness. You don’t have pneumonia forever. It’s an acute so it has a beginning and an end. But chronic conditions are issues such as allergies. You don’t just have allergies and then they go away. Cancer, food intolerances, long-term constipation, long-term anxiety or insomnia.

So as you can see, the word “long term” is key here when it comes to chronic, but we’re going to stay in the realm of acute today because the rules that we’re going to learn today can be used somewhat with chronic but we have to start with acute just to get a better idea and I encourage people to treat their acute problems as often as possible. So when treating an acute illness with homeopathy, we should expect to see results within hours, sometimes minutes, or a few days, depending on the type of malady we’re addressing.

So for example, with nausea from food poisoning or vomiting, we would expect to see results within hours, meaning the person is no longer vomiting relentlessly. They might still have nausea. They may not be well. They may not be perfect after a few hours but at least, the relentless vomiting has backed off. While with an elongated cough or a sprained ankle or a urinary tract infection, it’s more reasonable to expect results within hours or even days. So for example, with a urinary tract infection, we don’t want to wait many days before we say, “Oh, gee, maybe this is the wrong remedy. We need to move on.” But before it’s completed, it could take a couple of days. Usually, what we see with a urinary tract infection is we see a shift within a couple of hours after taking the first dose.

So it would obviously be silly to expect months of treatment to clear up an acute problem since in the normal course of events, acute conditions would clear up on their own and within that timeframe, with or even without homeopathy. So we do expect it to happen fairly quickly. I laid this out today and I wanted to go over this, and there are five main goals we expect to accomplish when using homeopathy to treat an acute problem. The first goal is to alleviate, of course, the distress of the illness or condition. Now, we’re not suppressing the symptoms. We’re rooting out the problem. We’re not trying to cover up the pain. We’re going to get rid of the pain because the illness is going to be resolved as well with the remedy.

Number two, to aid the body at regaining health more quickly or more fully than it often can on its own. So even though yes, many conditions, a bee sting, etc., could be not treated, you just leave it alone and it just takes care of itself, eventually it will just go away, but by using homeopathy, we not only get to the bottom of that particular bee sting, but we’re also helping the person build an immunity to bee stings so that in the future, instead of the whole arm being swollen from that bee sting, next time, it will be more concise and it won’t be as extreme. So we’re going deeper than that.

And the third goal to accomplish is to root out the potential for the problem to recur. Or if it does, then it does so in a less flamboyant manner, just like that bee sting. So you might still get the bee sting next time around, but now, instead of the whole arm being swollen, now it’s a nice, neat, tidy, little bee sting, and it stays localized.

And the fourth goal is to avoid the negative repercussions of drugs and other suppressive treatments. And this is what most people come to homeopathy for in the first place. They want to get away from the drugs and suppressive treatments. They don’t recognize that you can also get all these other benefits. Those are all the bonuses.

But probably, in my estimation, one of the most important goals and that which is the hallmark of homeopathy’s ability to work on us, is to keep an acute illness from turning into a chronic one. Because if we get an acute illness such as an ear infection and we treat it with antibiotics, it is very likely that your infection will return. And then we treat it with antibiotics again. It’s likely to return again. Because we’ve not rooted out the propensity for ear infections. We’ve not addressed the essence of the problem. All we’ve done is kill bugs. I’ll get more into that in a little while. But this is where homeopathy surpasses modern medicine and in contrast, often makes modern medicine look almost foolish.

Jendi: Do you mean because homeopathy is so much simpler, so much more elegant?

The harmful effects of using antibiotics

Joette: Yes. What I mean is that although using an antibiotic may seem the only solution, it is instead, often shortsighted. Now, that is if we use an antibiotic for let’s say urinary tract infection or ear infection, set your watch, folks, or refer to your date or your calendar because it’s likely, and I mean very likely, that it will return. And why? Because the infection wasn’t cured with the antibiotic. Instead, the symptoms were treated. The bugs were killed. The bacteria were killed. But not all of them, and when they mutate and come back for that next skirmish, they return with more virulence.

It’s not unlike using pesticides on our garden. Those of us who don’t want to use drugs certainly understand the importance of organic. And when you use pesticides on the garden, it kills the bugs. But it weakens the plants and makes them vulnerable to further decay and problems. The bugs recognize that weakness and take advantage of it and those are exactly the plants that are gone after by the insects. The same thing for a human.

So one of the greatest threats to our health, I believe, is that we are susceptible to more serious conditions after the use of drugs. One lone urinary tract infection too frequently turns into repetitive urinary tract infections, met with, of course, antibiotics that suppresses the symptoms and drives the illness to a deeper state. And sometimes, after years of these kinds of treatments, we see interstitial cystitis. In fact, if you met anyone who has interstitial cystitis, just ask them their history. The history almost is a slam dunk for repeated urinary tract infections met with antibiotics. Had the antibiotic been forgone the first time, and instead homeopathy had been used, the one and only UTI would have been just that, only one UTI.

By offering a drug – this is the way I see it anyway – by offering a drug when you’re sick, it’s like kicking the person when they’re down. It’s an oversimplified method and now in the last few years with increasing evidence, it is known even in conventional medical circles that it is a dangerous one. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not altogether advocating for the elimination of all antibiotics on the market. But to use them for something that is mild, particularly otitis media, sore throats, conjunctivitis, acne, boils, I think it’s stupid. Yes, stupid. It’s not a word I use very often. It reminds me of grammar school. But to be honest, it is.

When there are homeopathic medicines that will take care of the problem often more adroitly and without instilling more serious ones, I just don’t think there’s a reason to use these big guns on illnesses that can be treated at home, or even by a doctor if they knew anything about homeopathy. That’s not likely to happen very often. But if you take it on yourself, you can do this yourself. Actually, I think we’ve gotten a little bit off track here, haven’t we?

What dosage to use and how to know if treatment is working

Jendi: Yeah. We wanted to talk about how long should we take one remedy, how many doses of a remedy should we take, does one dose do it, what if it’s just a small improvement, do I need to change it, all that kind of stuff.

Joette: Right. So when I use the term results, in other words, when you see that there are results, what I mean is a movement towards improvement. So for example, back to the urinary tract infection, one might not achieve a perfect result within minutes. In other words, if there’s some pain and urgency and frequency, it won’t be necessarily totally gone and life back to normal within minutes, obviously. On the other hand, one might find that after two doses of a remedy over the course of hours or three doses, the urgency is not as great. So we’re getting results and the pain is minimized. We still have a urinary tract infection. This is not a magic wand. We’re reversing and rooting this out. So this is an indication that the remedy is working, but we don’t stop there because we’re not done. It’s that simple.

So now what? Well, this means the remedy is acting but it has not completed its action and ought to be continued until it has done so. Let’s take even an acute rash for an example. We’ll use something else so that we can use this across the board, maybe an outbreak of, let’s say, contact dermatitis from using a really strong detergent that you wouldn’t normally use and now your skin is all broken out and it’s itchy and it’s going on for days, maybe even a few weeks. Something that you don’t experience daily but here it is.

So results in a case like this would often mean that after a few days, the rash is still visible after taking the correct remedy but the itching has become less intense. In this case, I will continue with these remedies until the rash was fully healed. But I might reduce the frequency. So instead of using it say every three hours because it’s not so extreme, instead, I might use it twice daily. I know that’s your next question because we actually have a little key here as to where we’re going with this. You want to know, “How many doses ought I use?”

So generally speaking, the number is about four doses but this is only to make the determination that it is the correct remedy. Remember, this is considered an acute condition at this point. And that means that if by the fourth dose no improvement is seen, the remedy ought to be abandoned and replaced with another. So the reason to count those four times is to determine whether the correct remedy has been chosen. So once you’ve made that determination because symptoms are abating, that’s when we stop counting. We don’t use numbers anymore now. We just use it as needed because we’ve determined that it is correct. From this time forward, just simply continue offering the remedy until the job is done.

Jendi: I think I have a pretty good example. This week, I had a sore throat. So I went and got the Coldcalm and I actually took three every 15 minutes and then my throat felt better and I got sidetracked and I forgot about it. But then the next day, it was kind of sore again in the morning so I took it again. But then I questioned, should I go ahead and take four the next day, like do the first thing again?

Joette: No, you’re not counting anymore because you know the remedy’s acting. You know it’s working. You’ve already seen results so don’t count anymore now. Just use it as needed. Now, if that sore throat was horrendously painful, you might take it maybe every 30 minutes. I mean, if it’s a child and they’re screaming with pain, every 30 minutes is acceptable. As the child calms down, now we go to every three hours. And if it’s still coming down even further yet after a few doses of every three hours, now you go to say twice or three times a day. So you’re always looking for the opportunity to lessen the number of times you use this.

You see, the misunderstanding, I believe, often, especially in those folks who are new, arises when folks get the impression that homeopathy is like a supplement and that it needs to be taken forever. But that’s not so. Homeopathy has nothing to do with supplements. Its goal is to put the problem to rest which means that your remedy should continue being useful and put to task until the job is done. And at any time there is wellness, the UTI or the rash is gone, then of course, logically, you stop using it. You don’t continue on it for the rest of your life. I also think confusion arises when folks think that one dose of a remedy will cure.

Those are the stories that we love to tell because they’re fun and they’re dramatic and it can happen. But it’s more likely that it will take hours, if not days, of repetitive use of the remedy. So if improvement is realized, even in a small amount, don’t abandon the remedy choice. Continue with the fifth dose and sixth dose, etc. So you’re really not counting. I’m just giving you kind of an example. And as improvement ensues, the space between each episode might be better placed approximately every six hours or every twelve hours. In other words, we use the remedies when needed. As the symptoms return, the gentle stimulus is used to move things along.

Jendi: That makes a lot of sense. That’s very helpful. So how fast should I expect to see results?

Joette: First, let me give you something that I think is a writer downer. And I know that many folks who listen to these podcasts are doing so on their walks in the morning and in their car. But if you can write this down, I know you’ll find this helpful in the future to help you know if your remedy is working, if it’s acting. And then that will determine how often to use it. Here are the criteria for knowing if the remedy is acting. By the way, this criteria can be used both for acute and chronic conditions. So here’s the criteria that needs to be met. If one, two, or all three of these criteria are met, then we know that the remedy is good and it’s acting properly.

The first is that the symptoms are not as severe as they were before you started taking the remedy. If the pain, for example, of the urinary tract infection was a whopping eight on the scale of 1 to 10, and now after using the remedy, it’s a 4, then we know it’s going in the right direction and we’re set. That’s a good way to get started.

The second criterion that we need to incorporate is if the symptoms last for a shorter period of time. In other words, that pain may not last for three minutes after urination like it did before. Now, it only lasts for a few seconds or so. Beautiful. We’re moving in the right direction. This is how we know.

And the third is that there’s a larger space between each episode of the painful urination or urgency. So if it was happening that someone was urinating every five minutes and now they’re urinating every three hours, we are definitely moving in the right direction. So if all three of those are met, it’s a slam dunk. If even only one of them is met, it is an indication that we need to stay with that remedy.

Jendi: When we are watching our children and they can’t really tell us the pain because they’re a small child, we just watch their symptoms and the amount of time.

Joette: That’s right. And with a child, you’re always observing. You’re better off not asking and just observing. And this certainly hones our observational skills. And it really is the watchful eye of the mother that picks up on all this. Anyone else who hops in and comes to visit, a friend or something, they may not see anything that you’ve seen because you’ve been watching. And you’re recording this. I’m going to repeat this because I think this is so valuable and I’ve never seen this in a book anywhere. I’m not even sure where I learned this.

So symptoms are not as severe. So if it’s pain or if there’s itching or something like that and it wasn’t 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, now it’s a 4, it doesn’t have to be exactly that, but even if it was an 8 and now it’s a 6, we know that we’re moving in the right direction, so we stay with the remedy. But also, if the symptoms last for a shorter period of time. That is, the pain may not last for three minutes after urination but for only a few seconds or so. And the third is that there’s a larger space between each episode of the urgency or pain. Now, remember, we’re using urinary tract infections as our prototype here but you can do the same thing with itching of a rash. You can do the same thing with pounding of a headache. You can do the same thing with the swelling and pain of a bee sting.

Then there’s the speed with which the remedy acts. Here’s another general rule of thumb. The more intense the symptoms, often, not always but often, the faster the remedy acts. For example, that bee sting again that is very severe will often respond within minutes to up to an hour. Now, it’s not going to get rid of the swelling but the pain and the freaking out of the person who’s had that experience. The child is now outside running around after only 30 minutes.

Previously, he was freaking out in your arms with pain. That’s how you know that you’ve definitely chosen the correct remedy. And as always, we look to cure, not suppress. This, I believe, is the colossal appeal of homeopathy. Because regardless of the length of time it takes to resolve the condition, in the end, we will more likely have genuine health instead of covered up symptoms that often return with renewed vigor. And the vigor is in the person, not the illness. Now, that is the kind of medicine that we want to use in our lives.

Jendi: So how long do you think it will take me to learn all this stuff, that I won’t have to constantly look it up online or in a book, that I will be able to have it in my memory and know what to do?

Joette: Well, I will tell you that it’s a great idea to go online. And that’s why I put that blog out there, so that you can learn this stuff yourself. And you will be using books and other people’s ideas for quite some time but it doesn’t take long to fine tune your observational skills, and you’ll soon be able to pick up on the signs that improvement is ensuing. Because wellness leaves hints. It leaves little clues.

Jendi: Clues. What do you mean by clues?

Joette: Well, you’ll see that your child’s sleep is restored even though he’s not yet a hundred percent. You’ll see that she has more energy and she’s not as needy. There are signs that it’s likely that the remedy is acting. And I teach my students to keep a file on each member of their family and keep notes with the date, of course, the chief complaint, and any other pertinent issues, and then of course, the remedy that you chose. And after the remedy has acted, it needs to be logged. You want to know what remedy you used and how many times and just get a little idea within a sentence or two.

And this information will become your record that will serve you when dealing with your child for the rest of her life. It’s surprising how often certain things are repeated, whether it’s her or her sister. One of my little hints is don’t keep a book for each family member or even for the entire family. You’ll often be without that book. Instead, just get different colored file folders. Pink for your daughter, blue for your son, brown for your dirty dog or something. That way, when you’re away from your home, you can easily write it out on a paper napkin or a little sheet of paper with the date on it, what happened, what you used. And then when you get home, you just toss it into the file and now you’ve got it forever. And it keeps very good records.

Jendi: Thank you so much for all the information you have shared and for the clarification on the finer points of when to use the remedies. And you even mentioned that the one, two, three things to look for are not in homeopathy books. There is so much that we can learn through these podcasts. Is there something else that you think would be valuable to our listeners to wrap up this podcast?

Get started with homeopathy

Joette: Yes. I must hear every day, and mostly from mothers and grandmothers, that they don’t want to use drugs. And then what follows saddens me, sometimes even angers me. But they say, “I didn’t want to take the drug but I didn’t know what else to do.” The part that angers me is that homeopathy was a threat to conventional medicine back in the 1940s. It still is today. It was taking away market share from the conventional medical doctors and the constituents of the AMA. And as a direct result of this, it was systemically – and I hate to sound dramatic, but it’s really true – annihilated through a well-funded, well-organized, and well-executed smear campaign. And as I said, it continues even today.

And so unless you happen to be tenacious in searching for this medicine, unless you have guts, spunk, and moxie, unless you or someone in your family has suffered at the hand of drugs or overuse of surgery, you will not have made a point of seeking it out or making it your mission to find this great medicine called homeopathy. Hence, it’s a feat to even learn that there’s another way, a way that for every disease known to mankind, there is a homeopathic medicine or protocol. So will it cure everyone every time? No.

But if the remedy is chosen correctly and the principles are observed and you have a burning interest to keep your charge and yourself away from the world of drugs, homeopathy is a viable, sophisticated, elegant solution, particularly for families. Because once you learn how to treat an ear infection for one baby, you’ll know what to do for another and another. And it’s likely you’ll never forget it. One illness at a time, one child at a time, one pet at a time, you’ll become the healer in your home. So there is power in words in general. The words, “I don’t know what else to do,” it means, “I can’t.” There’s power in that word. “It can’t be done,” says modern medicine. “You can’t cure strep throat without antibiotics.” “You can never cure allergies,” they say. “There is no way,” says the doctor.

But I submit to you, don’t fall for that canard. This kind of thinking holds you at bay, never allowing you to enter the great oceans of life. It keeps you from moving forward or even trying, and it subjects you to forfeit yourself to drugs. My message is that you can cure your family of what appears to be recalcitrant conditions. And again, I’m not saying that every illness can be cured. But you might be astounded at how many illnesses and conditions you’ll wipe out of your home, many of which confounded the pediatricians and family practitioners in your life. You’ll know what the doctors wish they knew but will not.

And speaking of Mark Twain, I kept this little quote. He said back in 1890 in Harper’s Bazaar, he said, “The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor,” he’s talking about conventional doctors, “to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business. You may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the allopaths to destroy it.” Now, of course, he didn’t know that indeed, 50 years later, the allopaths did end up destroying homeopathy. The marketplace really did that.

Well, anyway, my promise to you is that once you know how to put these pieces of the puzzle together, it presents in a tidy fashion and works admirably. And this way of thinking will keep you from feeling as though illness is implacable. Instead, when presented with illness, you’ll approach it nimbly and eventually, with confidence. By the way, I want to mention that given the depth of the subject on this podcast, we’ll have written a blog with some of the same information and slightly different so that you can get a more in-depth understanding of it and that will come up in the next few days after this is placed on our website.

Jendi: Thank you, Joette. It’s good just to know that there are options and it gives hope that we can have a good and a healthy life.

Joette: Yes. And it’s certainly worth the effort. Happy New Year, Jendi, and everyone. Now, get to curing your family yourself.

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:

1:08 Homeopathy is universal

5:06 Benefits of homeopathy

10:36 Remedy for colic

16:10 Happiness that homeopathy brings

20:59 Organizing one’s life

This week’s podcast should have been titled: “What can homeopathy do for you and your baby (and other ages too)? Plus 3 benefits that you can take to the bank.”

This is the take-away.

I tell my story of raising my three boys so you can hear my practical advice and use it.

How I used Chamomilla for teething instead of Tylenol and avoided the dangerous side effects.

What one of my nursing babies received when he had a bout of colic because I ate too much garlic.

How knowing some homeopathy made me happy, had me leap frogging instead of ladder climbing when it came to curing my family’s ills and gave me confidence as a new young mother.

Don’t be dissuaded. Like a good piano teacher, my methods and the Banerji Protocols can have you treating your family’s ills in no time.

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 back with Joette Calabrese. Today, we’re going to talk about What Homeopathy can do for you and your baby. Hello, Joette! How are you?

Joette:  Hi Jendy. I’m well, thanks.

Homeopathy is universal.

Jendy: You have about three remedies or three benefits of homeopathy that we can use for babies?

Joette: Yes, that’s right and other ages, too. So I’m trying to bring it into both babies and adults, so that those who don’t have babies can also be helped. It’s not of course not everyone has them. So you might have a baby cat or a baby dog or your neighbor might be struggling with a baby and this will apply across the board. Homeopathy applies for babies, infants, the elderly, dogs, cats, livestock, wild birds, you name it. So, homeopathic remedies are universal. That’s my point here in teaching you that it says for babies but we can use it for anyone

Let’s get back and give you some benefits while offering kind of a practical tip so you can talk these tips away in your mind for future reference. Many of you are just entering this profound world of homeopathy. While others have recognized intuitively the importance of health independence, autonomy, and particularly now in the glaring light of the changes our American health system is going through, I always try to make the information I give here on my blog as practical as possible. So I’m going to use my personal experiences as a springboard. It will help define the best way to use the remedies. It gives you stories and a little narrative so it’s more easily remembered.

Today I’ll give you what homeopathy did for me, especially when I was first starting and I had young children. Of course one at a time and it was with my son that I recognized the importance of homeopathy. Then you can extrapolate how this might fit into your lifestyle.

Let me clarify that you needn’t go as far as I did. Although I secretly hope you will. That is I never used Tylenol in raising my children or aspirin or antibiotics in the two and a half plus decades of my mothering years. Instead, I bought a kit with the top 100 remedies in it. I used it. It became my, I don’t know maybe my arsenal. I took my kit with me on road trips, on family vacations. It was quietly present in my home at all times. At first it was in the linen closet in our city home. Then when we moved to the country, it had its own little place in a chest at home as well. In fact, I could barely resist using it. But I always encourage moms now to hold back and not jump into using remedies too quickly. But I also want to mention that I actually still own the same kit and replaced only a few remedies in it.

Jendy: So those remedies, they are still good even though your children are grown up and adults? They still have the same amount of potency?

Joette: Yes, yes. They don’t go stale. These remedies, I’ve owned in my kit – this particular kit for about 20 years. I have remedies that are even older than that. They last for decades. In fact, I’ll share with you that in my office I have a shadow box with four remedies in it given to me by an elderly man who was a client of mine many years ago. His mother was a homeopath in Chicago when he was a lad. As a gift, he gave me four bottles dated from about I don’t remember now, but about 1919 to around 1930 something. I’ve used these same remedies, the ones in these bottles over the years and indeed they still work. So that means that these remedies, some of them are 100 years old and yet they still have their ability to do exactly what they did back in 1919.

So when I purchased my first kit, instead of looking at it as a financial stretch, I considered it as an investment in my family. I don’t know. Can you think of anything greater value than a box of cures that it can be used for decades? I can’t think of anything that could be as valuable as that.

Jendy: The medicines in the stores are expensive if you go in to buy Tylenol and stuff like that.

Homeopathy for pain and better sleep

Joette: Oh yes. That’s not even getting into prescribed drugs which can be hundreds if not thousands of dollars per month. So here is the first benefit of homeopathy to babies and others. It’s a remedy that I gave my entire family a good night sleep and let me explain.

My first baby started teething and my goal was to never give my children Tylenol or antibiotics. So instead of Tylenol when he was teething, just to mention – Tylenol has been implicated in studies to cause asthma, sometimes even within an hour of taking the stuff. At that time, I didn’t know that but I knew that it was not a good thing to give my baby, particularly when he was already down. To give him a chemical on top of it was counterintuitive to my thinking.

So instead, I learned about a remedy called Chamomilla, like chamomile, like chamomile tea only Chamomilla is the Latin word because it’s made into homeopathic remedy and we use it as Chamomilla 200. Now, you moms out there with babies, this is a writer downer. This is an important remedy for teething. So, Chamomilla twice daily for about three or four days and sometimes a little longer depending on the severity. If very severe, the baby’s really screaming and arching his back then you can give it three times per day for a few days.

So not only did this end the particular bout of teething the first time I use it but the next time a tooth came in for my older son, it was less of an ordeal. So of course I went back to giving him Chamomilla 200 when the next tooth was coming in. But now, the pain was not as grand. It was only needed for a day or so and it was over with. But what was most interesting was that he never again needed another dose. Even though he had suffered for a long time with teething until I found Chamomilla, it ended it.

Why does this happen? Well let me make it very simple because this is homeopathy folks. It cured the teething problems. It didn’t just cover up the pain. I could have kicked myself for not having learned this earlier because we had all suffered. We were up all night, my husband and I with this screaming baby. This particular son had months of those painful and sleepless nights until I learned that he was irascible and fractious. He was arching his back and screaming sometimes. Sometimes he would scream out in the middle of the night. That of course was the pain of the teeth coming in. So I turned a crying, sometimes screaming baby into a sleeping angel and allowed him and my husband and I to fall back to sleep and that was the end of it. What we did it with was a $9 bottle of Chamomilla 200.

But wait! That’s not all. I’ve used the same remedy for when adults suffer from teething, too. Adult’s teeth? Yes! Think about it. That’s about the time in the early adulthood. It’s about the time when wisdom teeth begin to emerge, right? Of course, the dentist wants to yank them out. No! I say. Put those teeth back. Let’s just see if we can save those teeth that are coming in with Chamomilla 200. So, the very same son who had the teething problems when he was a little baby now is an adult and this was a few years ago, began to have pain in his wisdom teeth as they emerged. He reminded me, “Mom, all my friends are having those extracted.” Nasty old teeth, what do you need those for? Well, I happen to think they’re beneficial to keep. So we employed Chamomilla 200 again in exactly the same fashion as we had 25 years earlier.

What’s interesting about this story is that I actually used the same bottle, the one that I used in the 80s. It worked like a charm in 2013 just like it did in 1988. What do you know? It wasn’t taken off the market because of its horrendous side effects like so many conventional drugs are taken off. You can’t find the drug that did something for you years ago. No, these remedies stay consistent. Homeopathy isn’t capricious. In fact, we could go back even further and the very same remedy was likely used by the British Royal family for their teething babies and young adults back in 1801, as I used it 200 years later.

 Jendy: So the British Royal family was using homeopathy over 100 years ago?

Joette: Yes, yes. They have used it for close to 200 years from my understanding. Not just used by the Queen Mother but the entire family. She actually travelled with her homeopathic physician. She was said to have enjoyed longevity. I believe she lived to about 102, 103, some place between 101 and 103 years because of homeopathy. That’s what she has told many of her followers of what’s the reason. So I guess if it’s good enough for royalty who can demand any kind of medicine and travel anywhere in the world to get it, I suppose it’s certainly good enough for the rest of us, right?

Jendy: Oh I think so, sure.

Joette: Yes.

Remedy for colic

 Jendy: Let’s move on. What would be a second benefit for baby?

Joette: Of course, colic is very common complaint in babies. So at first when my baby was a newborn, I used gripe water. I don’t know many mothers may know about this. At the time back in the early mid-80s, I even had a hard time finding gripe water. I lived near the border of Canada. So I used to have to travel to Canada to get it.

But then I instead learned about two remedies with my babies. My births were without drugs. I’m going to step back so that you understand a little bit. My births were unmedicated. But when a baby is born after a medicated birth, this particular remedy is even more clearly indicated because it’s the ultimate remedy to clear drugs that I know of. Many of you who already know homeopathy may know that it’s very famously named Nux vomica. I should also mention that you’ll be able to read about these remedies and find them online. We’ll connect them to you online so that after this podcast, you’ll see it written so that in case you don’t know what I’m saying, it will be written out.

So the first time I used this for my infant was when I had eaten a lot of garlic. Since I was nursing, it affected the baby. So he began pulling up his legs in pain and crying. It was obvious that there was something gastrointestinal going on. I gave him Nux vomica 30. After three doses, over a period of maybe I don’t remember exactly but maybe it was six hours, he fell into calm and sleep. But another time with another child, Nux vomica didn’t do it for my next child. So what was I to do? Sometimes the remedies are right on and sometimes there’s just enough differential that it makes it a little confusing.

So I refer to a little priceless book that I owned. Actually it wasn’t even a book. It was more a pamphlet. Back in those days, it was very hard to find homeopathy books. It said when a child has colic, the remedy that should be employed is Colocynthis 200 or 30. So for this second child, when he had colic, this Colocynthis worked better than Nux vomica did. The way that I knew that it was slightly different was that in the second child, if I pressed his belly or I laid him on my arm like football hold as they say and the pressure of my arm was up against his abdomen, he was comforted a little bit. It didn’t make it go away but you could tell that he was a little more comforted. That better from pressure issue was something that I had not noticed in my first child when he was younger. So now I added these two remedies. I had these two remedies from which to choose for colic.

That’s around the time and it was vague now, it was 25 year ago that my husband came home one night after eating out for lunch and complaining of stomach pain. He said that he wanted me to give him both remedies. Well I was just studying homeopathy in those days. This was the time when I adhere to the strict laws of classical homeopathy. And I said, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t add two remedies together, particularly two remedies that I don’t know well enough to know whether or not they do come together.” But he wore me down. He said, “Look, give them both to me. I don’t want to wait for one to work and see if it acts and then go to the next one.” So we did it. I guess I’m here to tell you that of course it worked like magic. The pain in the stomach was gone in about 15 minutes. But this isn’t the end of the story. This is just the beginning and it’s really fascinating, to me it is anyway.

When I had my fellowship with Dr. Banerji in Calcutta, I learned that they had been doing the same thing, putting these two remedies together, these precise remedies together. In fact, their protocol for colicky babies is Nux vomica 30 mixed with Colocynthis 200. I couldn’t believe it. Across the other end of the earth, some 25 years later independent of each other, I and the Banerji’s had come to the same conclusion.

Now, in the homeopathy world, I’m sure that there are other homeopaths who have figured this out as well. But for me, it was interesting because I actually even use the same potencies. Theirs was probably more trial and error because they see so many thousands of patients per week. But while mine was the insistence of a suffering husband but it’s pretty remarkable given that there are thousands of homeopathic remedies and probably 100 just for the use of stomach pain alone. So that makes it pretty unique.

 Jendy: It is. We’ve talked about Royals and Americans and Indians. It’s like across continents, across social stratum. It’s decades and hundreds and centuries of years. It’s so applicable. It’s just amazing.

Happiness that homeopathy brings

 Joette: Yes, it is amazing. As I said it’s not whimsical. It’s founded on the bedrock of solid medical principles. It surpasses what might be boundaries and limitations that might otherwise detour us from understanding its capabilities. So let me give you the number three of the benefits of homeopathy to a baby and a family in general because of course it’s going to affect everyone.

What I found to be one of the most compelling aspects of homeopathy is that it made me happy. I will explain in a moment. But when I was happy as a mom and satisfied, of course I was a better mom in many ways. So it offered me the satisfaction of an intellectual feast. As a mother and as most mothers, I tended my children. I made meals and I was insistent on making my meals from scratch. I even made some herbal tinctures from the property around me, from the fields, et cetera. I tended a small garden. Later as my children we growing, I homeschooled my kids, and sometimes for my personal enjoyment I played the piano. But that was the extent of my intellectual pursuit.

But all women I believe have ultimate pursuits in which they yearned for a little more intellect in their lives. I’ve always disliked mediocrity and intellectual sluggishness in society but especially in myself. So what homeopathy offered me was a clever pursuit that absolutely ignited me. It kept me sharp and concomitantly gave me information that was useful, no, downright lifesaving in some instances for my entire family. So of course it brought me to where I am today as a practitioner and a teacher. And I never dreamed it would take me so far.

But homeopathy has been the best investment of my life. It saved my family tens of thousands of dollars in doctor’s bills and drug costs, time missed from work for my husband, my father, my brother, and now as adults, my sons and of course myself. It has given us, my family immeasurable piece of mind and comfort knowing we had the answers that no doctor has. Well, I shouldn’t say no doctor. There are occasionally a doctor or two in North America you might find who know a little bit about homeopathy but certainly not the run-of-the mill or the garden variety of doctors.

When I saw some of my friends struggle with not wanting to give their children drugs but simply didn’t know what else to do, well I did know what to do. In fact, when I learned of someone I knew who had had a problem, I’d go home and study up on that problem and what I would have done and what remedy I would have used for this or that.

Jendy: So were you able to help those friends?

Joette:  Well, here’s the thing. Because homeopathy especially in those days, back in the 80s was such a different paradigm, I usually offer to help. But many were grateful for what I taught them but others were not so interested. It was something they knew nothing about. So they were unwilling to try something new. Remember, if they were asking their doctor about it, the doctor would say, “Homeopathy, no, no.” Most doctors especially then and even now don’t even know what homeopathy is. Remember, this was back away when the word homeopathy was unknown. Before the internet allowed us also to readily discover the horrific side effects of antibiotics and acetaminophen and asthma and drugs and such that are related to that. So it was the harder sell back then.

But today, mothers have had about had it with drugs. Doctors have to do a lot more convincing especially to those mothers who are willing to do their homework that their methods are useful. So this pursuit of learning to cure our families, ourselves fits seamlessly into mothering and homemaking. It always just felt right to me to have this intellectual side to myself brought to the fore and allow it to work nicely with being a mother.

Jendy: It’s so interesting to me when I start learning about it. I start cringing now when people say, “Oh I went to the doctor and got an antibiotic.” And then I have to share with you that yesterday I was in Wal-Mart. The cashier was complaining about her allergies. And it just came out. I was like, “Oh! I’m learning about homeopathic remedies for allergies. I can cure it.” She was like, “Oh I heard about that.” I was like, “Go to JoetteCalabrese.com.”

Joette: Oh aren’t you sweet.

Jendy:  But it just comes out. I don’t know a lot how to help them. I like how you said you went home and learned about it. So then you could tell more. How would you wrap this all up in your farewell words, so I can go off and repeat all this to my husband?

Organizing one’s life

 Joette: All right. Well I always tell moms or anyone for that matter, anyone who will listen. Plot out your life. Don’t let life just happen. Actually lay it out. What do you want in life? Plot it out one step at a time. You know how you learned to make soup from scratch? There was a time when you didn’t know how to do that. But you learned. You know how you know how to make your home lovely and organized and tidy, this is not that different.

This business of learning how to cure your family really is very innate in all of us and becoming a healer in your home is really not that complex. So as I say, plot out your life one step at a time. Know how to cure just one ailment. Know how to use Hepar sulph for example for ear infections that we discussed last week. Know that remedy now. Read up on it. Go online. Read it in the material medica, material medica, Hepar sulph. Look that up. Use that as your stepping point.

Then read my blogs. So okay, there it is. There’s one remedy under your belt. There’s one illness that’s under your belt. Now add how to cure your baby’s teething pain in fractiousness. That’s Chamomilla 200 every three to six hours depending on the severity. Now you’ve got two remedies.

So what about if your husband shovels the snow too vigorously like mine did last week. Remember I live in Buffalo. My husband was shoveling snow all day long for three or four days. Arnica montana 200, Arnica montana 200 every three hours. He just came in the house and just took it. He doesn’t ask me any longer. He just knows what to take now.

This is not unlike learning to play the piano, one hand then two and you begin with scales and Arpeggio. Soon you’re playing melodies and eventually, if your passion is ignited enough, sonatas. Learning to play a sonata can take a lifetime to perfect. But not so with the method of homeopathy that I teach moms. Not so with this practical method called the Banerji protocol. You’ll not only be playing a sonata, you’ll be the piano in the concierto. You’ll be the violin in the first position. You’ll take the lead in your family’s life. You become the virtuoso. So I urge families to be relentless in your pursuit of beauty, genuine health, and a masterful, robust life.

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:

0:56 Acute versus chronic condition

7:02 Otoscope for diagnosing ear infections

12:20 Examples of chronic conditions

20:30 The use of remedies after antibiotics

25:55 Protocol for all

Can you treat only acute illnesses or are families able to root out chronic problems too?

Here’s the upshot of this week’s blog:

Is it safe for moms to treat their family’s chronic illnesses? (If you’ve been following my blog, you actually already know the answer.)

Learn my little secrets on how to avoid drugs

If nothing else, at least have this essential remedy on hand

What I mean when I say that when you know some homeopathy, it is life changing.

Forget what this administration is touting. Homeopathy is the affordable health care.

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 again with Joette Calabrese. This week, we are going to talk about the difference between treating chronic conditions and acute illness with homeopathy. Of course, I’m going to get another homeo tip from her that I can use right away and other moms can as well. So stay and listen to the whole interview with us. Hello, Joette! How are you?

Joette: Hi! I’m well, Jendy. Nice to talk to you again.

Jendy: First of all, let’s start off. Can you tell us the difference between acute illness and chronic conditions?

Acute versus chronic condition

Joette: Yes, an acute illness is something that has a natural beginning and a natural end. It actually finishes.  So a fever would be an acute illness. A fever when a child shows vitality in an illness which we actually call that vitality, a fever presents. The fever gets good and high. I will also say that good is good. It’s important in fevers. We do want a nice show of vitality through a good high fever. Then if you just left it alone and did nothing but just kept your child hydrated, and warm, and clean, etcetera, the fever would just go away. It would take maybe four or five days, maybe 10 days but it would just finish. That describes an acute condition in which it ends on its own.

Now let’s say the child gets an ear infection and this is the same thing. An ear infection is an infection. It comes. If you did nothing as they often do in Europe, pediatricians don’t treat ear infections. They just left them be. Give something for the pain. That’s about it. They don’t give antibiotics generally. But in any way, you would just let that ear infection come to fruition and make the child comfortable. Make sure she’s hydrated, et cetera and watch the ear infection go away.

However in this country, the US, we often see where the pediatricians can’t keep their hands off those kids with their infection so they give them antibiotics. What that does is it forces the ear infection to be suppressed. So it kills the antibiotics but it hasn’t gone to the essence of the propensity for it to occur in the first place. So we give the child an antibiotic and it looks like okay it’s done. But then more often than not, I don’t know the statistics. I used to know them but I don’t remember them now. Very frequently, the child gets a second ear infection. It appears as though it’s isolated. But it isn’t. It’s really the same ear infection that’s just come back again because it was ill-treated. Only the bugs were killed. We didn’t get to the illness or the aspect of getting these kinds of illnesses. We didn’t root out the problem. So the child’s given antibiotics again and again.

It looks as though we’ve resolved the condition. Everybody happily goes on except now, six months’ later another ear infection. So now what we’ve got here is chronic otitis media. We’ve got an ear infection that keeps coming back. Many times we even see where it’s constant, always low-level ear infection so that after that third or fourth time of the antibiotic use, the ear is saying, “Boy, you’re not letting me show this vitality with a high fever. I’ll just stay suppressed here and stay low level.” So now what we have is a chronic condition.

So in homeopathy for moms in all of my original works, my CDs, and books which still have some value but the message is slightly different. I gave the message originally. My narrative was you can only treat acute illnesses. You can only use homeopathic remedies for acute problems where there’s a natural beginning and a natural end. When it comes to chronic, now you need the aid of a professional homeopath. I am recanting that. I am saying something different now. Because of the methods that I have learned by working with Prasanta Banerji Homoeopathic Research Foundation in India for two years, I have gleaned enough information in their chronic cases because they have put together protocols over the last 120 years, I can pretty much tell parents, moms what to use for chronic ear infections as an example. We can do that for sore throats. We can do the same thing for acne. We can do the same thing, et cetera for any chronic condition that is long lasting. That’s what chronic means is it’s very, very long lasting and would not go away on its own.

So what we’re looking at here now is what I would call iatrogenic disease. Iatrogenic means doctor or drug induced illness. So these ear infections might have gone away by themselves if this person had been to a pediatrician in say England where they just let it happen. But no, in the US we’re antibiotic happy. It’s given again and again and it caused chronic illness.

Now, up until this time as I said, I as well as other homeopaths, most homeopaths throughout the world say, “Okay now it belongs in the hand of a seasoned homeopath.” As I said I’m recanting and I’m telling folks now I can teach the methods. I do teach the methods. I teach them in my courses. I teach them on my blog even for chronic ear infections where you can see that homeopathy roots it out. It doesn’t bring it back to where it was in terms of now the child is still getting ear infections once in a while, although they may happen for a little while longer. You may see that a child will get an ear infection one more after the use of these homeopathic protocols. But more often than not, we see an end to it. It’s aborted. It’s abruptly ended. That’s it. We’re done. No more ear infections with the correct remedy choice and used at the time that the acute is presenting, so it’s at that pinnacle of the illness. You can use the remedy then. You can even use the remedy protocol when it’s a low level ear infection.

When the mother’s going to the pediatrician, basically she camps out in the waiting room and finds that oh yes indeed. There it is with the otoscope, there it is. That ear infection is still brewing. It’s just low level. The child may not feel it so much but it is indeed there. Let me just say parenthetically, I think this is valuable for parents because a lot of what I teach or my message, my main message is to encourage parents to take control of their children’s health themselves. And it always ends up, pretty much ends up in the mom’s hands.

Otoscope for diagnosing ear infections

So my message is to mothers. If your child is prone to ear infections, buy yourself an otoscope. Go online. Get the one that is the highest quality for the least amount of money. Get the one that you can afford best. Then you don’t have to go to the pediatrician to say, “Oh yes! Look indeed. It’s pearly or it’s red or it’s swollen.” Get online and learn how to read the inside of an ear. If you can read your children’s eyes, you can tell them their bloodshot, you can tell if they have conjunctivitis, you can tell if your child has eczema, why not learn this too?

I actually have planned on buying an otoscope for my children when I was first raising my children. I never bought one because they only had, only one of them had ear infections. He had two of them, gave him the correct remedy and that was the end of it. So I didn’t need it anymore. But until you get to that point and you use the remedies and they’re done, these infections are aborted, I think it’s a great idea. It also might be something you purchase with a friend. Maybe two or three mothers get together in the neighborhood or from church or homeschooling groups or however you’re affiliated with other friends and buy one together. So if there’s $400 and you’ve got three of you, it’s just a little over $100 each. Great investment, heck of a lot better than going into a pediatrician’s office and wasting a whole morning and then being given antibiotics, which is what we don’t want to be using.

Even the American Academy of Pediatrics tells us, tells the doctors, tells their members, “Stop! Stop with the antibiotics!” Come on. You save antibiotics for life-threatening illnesses. If the child’s got bacteria pneumonia, now you give antibiotics. But the problem is as I see it is that they don’t know any other thing so use. They’ve gotten so accustomed to that. They know nothing about homeopathy. They know nothing about herbs. You could certainly use herbs. You could use garlic or Mullein oil, et cetera for ear infections. But they can’t stop because they have no other solution. So another acute would be a sinus infection. A chronic would be chronic sinusitis.

Another acute would be a urinary tract infection. It’s the same paradigm with urinary tract infections as it is with otitis media. That is the urinary tract infection comes along and to the doctor we go, get the antibiotics. It seems to knock it down for a while. Six months later, eight months later, up comes the urinary tract infection. Not isolated. We always look at our history. If it’s happened before and you used antibiotics, it’s likely to happen again because it actually throws off the flora in the body so that the antibiotics are more likely to be needed now. So we see that again and again. Then that eventually turns into the repetitive urinary tract infections.

Then turn into often interstitial cystitis. We see that a lot in women who have had a lot of urinary tract infections met by antibiotics. It’s not the urinary tract infections that are causing it in my estimation. I believe it’s the treatment of the urinary tract infections. So we’re even seeing interstitial cystitis in children, in little girls because there are so many antibiotics used. So the difference is that for an acute, it has a natural beginning and it ends all by itself. It would do that anyway. Broken bone, it’s going to knit. Eventually it’s going to be over with. But if it’s repetitive again and again, if someone’s breaking their bones regularly not because they’re athletes but because the bones are not strong enough, that means there’s a chronic condition. So those are the two differences.

Jendy: What about things that are chronic that we don’t necessarily treat with antibiotics, things like allergies or food intolerances? Can homeopathy help with those also?

Joette: Well, I’m on the board of Weston Price Foundation, the international organization based on the works of Dr. Weston Price. It’s a nutritional organization, excellent. If you know nothing about it, please look, check them out online. It’s westonapricefoundation.org. Because it’s a nutritional organization and I also author a column in their journal and I have been doing so for about five years now. I speak at their conferences. Most of the people who call me for information, most of the students who contact my office to learn homeopathy comes through that organization or offshoots of it. So those who are suffering from gastrointestinal tract issues and are on GAPS diet or a paleo diet, those are the people who call me. So I have a lot of experience plus I had many of these problems myself which is what brought me to Weston Price originally some 20 some years ago, 25 years ago.

Examples of chronic conditions

So food allergies, yes indeed are chronic. There’s no doubt about it. Food intolerances, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, chronic indigestion, those are all gut related obviously and homeopathy doesn’t just shine. It sparkles in its ability to root out these problems. This is where homeopathy shines is in the chronic realm. So having told moms and other homeopaths still telling moms that they can only treat acute conditions is only telling half the story. You could go to homeopathy school for many years and still not be able to treat these conditions. But I will tell you that these protocols that I learned and that I teach, that I have learned and that I utilize and I teach, they are self-empowering. It gives us the ability to root out something that is on a day to day basis, a real troubling condition. So yes, homeopathy has a history of being able to treat such conditions.

Jendy: And not just self-empowering but life changing because how many families have to deal with food allergies wherever they go. There is stuff like that that you have to handle every day, everywhere. If homeopathy can help that, it’s life changing.

Joette: Absolutely. Mothers become overwhelmed by this job because we, mothers take our job seriously. We want to make sure that the food is correct. If you give the child the food and then they get sick and they bloat, or they have ADD or they have anxiety attacks around this food and you’re beginning to suspect that the child can’t have anything anymore practically. It’s maddening so I like to talk about solutions. It’s a drag to be in a bad mood and to be overwhelmed as a mom. My message is uplifting. This narrative offers is good news. It’s about not being angry and upset and neurotic which is what we can all become if this problem becomes too entrenched in our lives. But we become happy warriors. It’s a much better message than submitting to antibiotic after antibiotic after antacid, antibiotic, antacid. The drugs that are for irritable bowel syndrome and GERD and constipation and Miralax and oh my gosh! Have you ever read the side effects?

I caution people. The beauty of the internet is that now we can find out what’s really going on. We can go online and look at what the side effects are. Don’t read the side effects from the sites that are pharmaceutical raps. You can tell which ones they are because they only give you few of the side effects. Key in in Google something like, let’s see what would be the best way to do this? I suppose it would be something like problems with this drug, suffering from this drug. Once you get to know some of the players on the internet like Dr. Joseph Mercola and others, you can start going to his site specifically and start reading what he says about it. There are doctors out there who know this, who get it. Some of them are on the internet. Many of them are in their offices and even in their hospitals. If people don’t get this then there’s something wrong with their human intelligence because after a while it shows again and again and again. These side effects are noteworthy at best and sometimes insurmountable.

Jendy: I understand this from talking to you before but I want to make it perfectly clear in case we have a new listener. That you say we can treat ourselves. We don’t have to go to a homeopath even.  They might understand that we don’t have to go to a doctor but we don’t even have to go to a homeopath. We can do it ourselves.

Joette: Well, I’m going to share a dirty little secret. That is homeopath and I don’t mean to be disparaging towards my own but homeopaths don’t share this information with families. They don’t teach them about chronic illness. But I do. It’s not that I’m trying to toot my own horn. I’m just trying to get this out there. Certainly if you get stuck, you can always call me obviously or a homeopath that will help you. But there’s a lot that can be done that with these tips and tricks and these protocols that can be employed immediately. You may never have to see another doctor or homeopath again with this particular condition.

It’s to be honest, I’m not interested in the tips that doctors offer because to be honest I can’t imagine what kind of tips the doctor would give. So maybe they might say, “Oh don’t eat wheat.” They’ve caught onto that. It took a long time. Those of us who have been involved with the food world, I’ve been involved with it all my life and we’ve always known that wheat can cause trouble, while the doctors are just learning this. I don’t know. Maybe they’re watching television or something. I’m sorry to be so condescending but I hear it too often from my clients and students that their doctor just won’t listen to it. It’s just this can’t possibly be. How could that be? Well it can be. And it’s usually as a result of the antibiotics that were given previously that caused the gluten intolerance today.

Jendy: For the price of internet connection, we can have our own healthcare.

Joette: Yes oh yes, absolutely. Make sure that you choose well though who you’re following. There is a faction that very much hates homeopathy in this country. It has been shown in a couple of courts of law in California that they indeed were being paid by basically the competition. The competition is the pharmaceutical industry and the AMA. I’ll be honest, that’s really what it’s all about. So nobody likes to give up their monopoly once they’ve established that.

So it’s up to us as mothers and families to take this on ourselves. I’m not saying fight the industry. I’m saying don’t use them. That’s all. Just don’t buy it, dollar power. And slowly but surely the message will be clearer and clearer, which is why I believe that some doctors are really coming around because they’re tired of hearing the same old stuff. If I give my child this antibiotic one more time, I’m going to destroy that gut so badly. He’s already got constipation from the last two rounds of these antibiotics. So the mothers are hip. The doctors are behind. So it’s up to us to educate.

Now, I’m not going to tell you go in and try to educate your doctor in that regard. They’ll get the message eventually because the waiting room is perhaps, I don’t know, won’t be as full or maybe not. Maybe that will never happen. But meanwhile, I would not urge parents to argue with their doctors. It’s often fruitless. Then you just create a bad relationship. You still need them for diagnostics often. You can do a lot of this yourself but from time to time, you may need somebody who can help you with the diagnosis. You want to know if there’s a lump, is it a hematoma? Is it a benign cyst? Is it a tumor? So that would be valuable. I don’t know that you’d find an answer to that on the internet because it has to palpated and perhaps even biopsied. But it’s important to have someone in your court who can give you that information as well.

Jendy: I know lately JoetteCalabrese.com has a little search bar on it. If there’s something I’m curious about, I just go and type it in. Then all the blog posts and the information come up. There’s lots of information there. Let’s say for a mom that is listening to this that has a child that has had ear infections because you were talking about that earlier and they did get them antibiotics. They can still treat the ear infection, right?

Joette: Oh yes.

Jendy: How would they do that?

The use of remedies after antibiotics

Joette: Well not only can they still treat it but most of the students that I have and people who call me in my office have already had antibiotics. I don’t know very many people who’ve not had antibiotics. Maybe Christian scientists, maybe moms who have learned this a long time ago. But I would say, I’m just going to take a wild guess, probably 98% of the population has had antibiotics in North America or in the western world. So we have to start somewhere and the best place to start of course is wherever you are. So we move forward with a remedy.

One of the main remedies for ear infections whether it’s an acute or it’s a chronic is Hepar sulph, H-E-P-A-R, sulph, S-U-L-P-H. Sometimes it’s just called plain old Hepar sulph. Sometimes it’s called Hepar sulph calcarea. But it’s still the same remedy and 30th potency is what we usually use. If the ear infection is severe then it’s used every three hours. Then once it starts to back off a little bit and sometimes it takes only a couple of doses. Sometimes it takes two or three days. But if you start seeing improvement and what we’re looking for in an acute situation as to whether or not the remedy’s acting properly is we’re looking for the vitality to increase.

In other words, if the child is lying on the couch and they have no interest in getting up and going out and playing with their friends, then that is the vitality is down. You give the remedy. As you see the ear infection if you’ve got an otoscope or you even look inside, sometimes you can actually see discharge or a swelling, that may still be. But now the child’s got vitality, it’s the correct remedy. That’s how you know. If they were ornery and fractious and weepy and you give the remedy a few times, and you see that the child is now more buoyant emotionally and is talking, and there’s more joyfulness in his or her life, that means soon after, the ear infection will start to dissipate. So what we see is an overall general shift in the person and then an emotional or mental shift in the person.

Now it’s not always that way. Sometimes it’s just so fast that the ear infection, this pain is gone. Child is up and ready to play. That’s when you know when everything is gone, when you know that the infection is aborted and the wherewithal of the child is positive then we know that it’s time to stop the remedy. You don’t use it any longer. You don’t carry on. It’s not like a vitamin or a drug for that matter where you take it for the rest of your life. That’s absolute nonsense. No, instead we stop when we’re done.

Now let’s say four days later comes back again. You start exactly where you left off. It means that you didn’t go far enough. There was something that still remained and you need to use the remedy again. So you go ahead and use the remedy again in the same fashion, perhaps every three hours if it’s severe enough, only twice daily if it’s not so severe. Then you wait to see now how far can we take this. Let’s go an extra day just in case. Generally speaking, it gets rid of the ear infection. And even the propensity for it to return in the future.

Now sometimes as I said earlier, I eluded to this earlier, sometimes we see that the ear infection returns maybe two or three months later but what we often see is a lesser version, less intense are the symptoms, shorter lasting is the ear infection and larger space between the first and the second time that it comes around. So it’s presenting but it’s not nearly as ferocious. So we want a less fierce representation of the illness. So then we use that same remedy again, Hepar sulph, Hepar sulphuris calcarea 30, if it’s severe every three hours; when it becomes not so severe then twice daily for a few days until it’s much improved. And you’re probably done. It’s very likely that that will be the end of it. That will be the end of it. That will be the end of it. Isn’t that remarkable?

This is the medicine we’ve all been waiting for. This is the stuff we thought we were getting. We thought we were being cured. We had no idea that we were driving the illness to a deeper state by using those drugs. We have no idea as mothers and now we do. This is the good news. So I urge people to please once this works for you and it will. If it doesn’t work parenthetically that I may mention, if it doesn’t act, it means it’s the wrong remedy. So in 80% of the population who have ear infections, Hepar sulph is the remedy. It’s not always because there’s still 20% of the population may not affect. And in that case, that’s when it’s time to start learning a little bit more about homeopathy so you can learn the second level, the second tier of choice. I learned this protocol.

Everyone knows in homeopathy, anyone who studied homeopathy knows that Hepar sulph is a great remedy for ear infections. But often when you go on websites of other homeopaths and myself as well, for years this is how I taught, that gave you the top five homeopathic remedies from which to choose. If your child is weepy, give Pulsatilla. If your child’s eyes are bad and they’re weak, give them Silica. If the pain is extraordinary, you give Belladonna. Wait, wait, wait, wait! What if it’s all of those things?

Protocol for all

That’s why I like this method, this protocol – this Banerji protocol because in 80% of the cases, it’s going to be Hepar sulph, regardless of whether or not the child is weepy or clingy or has extreme pain or not. It matters not. It’s definitely worth the 80% try. There is a protocol for every acute and chronic illness known to man and animal kind.

I just had, my last blog was about my dog, Buster. We call him Buster, the bad office dog and how he had a torn meniscus. So if people suspect that this is related to placebo because that’s what the word is out amongst the conventional medical people to subdue their competition, homeopathy, although we’re not much competition for them quite yet again. We used to be but we’re not so much anymore because that has been squashed quite effectively by that side.

But if anyone questions that possibility that this could be placebo, I don’t know how Buster would know what I was doing. First of all, he didn’t see me put the remedies in his milk. I put it in his milk. We get raw milk from our local farmer or I put it in his water. Then when he drinks his water which is about twice a day then he gets his remedies twice a day. He had no idea what we were doing unless he’s much smarter than I think he is. He would not know that we’ve used homeopathic remedy. So placebo doesn’t hold up. The reason that they keep bringing up placebo is because they can imagine that it could work as well. But tried it a few times and it is and like you said earlier, it’s life-changing.

After you become more experienced with homeopathy, you can use these remedies in a little higher potency. The Banerjis actually use this Hepar sulph in a 200 potency but I urge those who are starting out to not use 200. I really urge you to stay in the 30th potency realm. It’s just a little bit safer. It’s not that this is unsafe. It’s just that we can make mistakes and use remedies too frequently and we don’t want to do that. So by using a 30th potency, it’s a great place to start.

Jendy: And you said that there is a remedy for everything known to man so we just have to learn about it. You have some ways for us to learn about it, right?

Joette: Yes, I have courses. I have online courses. We just did a wonderful course called Good Gut, Bad Gut. We did that last – well it was many months ago. It teaches what remedies to use for what specific conditions that are gut-related. Those that are seemingly unrelated such as, as I mentioned earlier ADD is often a gut issue, depression often a gut issue, anxiety – anticipatory anxiety, insomnia, hormone levels that are off can often be related to the gut. Not always but if we don’t look at the gut, particularly if we know that there is any bloating or something that’s frank from the gastrointestinal tract, then we’re missing a whole segment of discovery if we don’t at least consider that possibility.

But Hepar sulph and getting back to that remedy is not good for just ear infections. I’ve had people tell me that they have a child who was a teenager and they gave their child Hepar sulph for an ear infection that’s been raging on and off throughout this child’s life. Their acne went away. Yes, Hepar sulph is a great remedy for acne. It’s a great remedy for chronic sore throats, for tonsillitis. It’s one of the top ones. It’s not the only one. So we see that concomitantly other issues melt away as well. That means that the remedy certainly was well chosen.

Jendy: This is probably a very basic kind of question but it comes in the little, tiny balls when you get that shake thing. It says on it to put it under your tongue, I think and let it dissolve. But it’s okay if the kids just swallow it?

Joette: Oh yes. Well we ask people to try to keep it in their mouth a little bit longer just to be sure that they’ve gotten the full effect of the medicine that’s around the exterior of the little balls. But as I said with Buster, I just put it in just water and it still works. So I just don’t use a lot of water.  I don’t use a lot of milk so that as it dissolves, it’s now incorporated into the liquid.

Jendy: So as long as it gets inside them, even if it’s in their stomach?

Joette: Yes, absolutely, yes, yes. This is a lifestyle. You needn’t embody all of the principles that I report through my blog and my teachings and my courses, et cetera. But even if you’re only using two of the methods that I believe are valuable for a family, this is stuff that makes us into a good mother at home healthcare, home cooking, homeschooling if you choose, even home birthing if you choose, and of course homeopathy. You see the common thread here, home. They don’t all have the same means, home remedies.

The common thread is don’t let anyone tell you differently. Don’t ever be apologetic about being at home with your kids. It is an important job for mothers. It is something that needs to be done. We need to take care of our children. Who else is going to do it? Really, can you hire a minimum wage employee to do what you do, to take care of your child? It’s just not the same. I’m not saying don’t go to a babysitter. I’m not saying not to ever use professional caregivers from time to time.

But on a day to day basis, I believe as you can see I’ve traditional values, I feel very strongly that one of the most important things we can do is raise our children. It doesn’t mean you can’t have a career. I have a career. I’m very busy. Now my children are grown but I incorporated both. You can do both. There’s no reason why you can’t do both. You decide how far you want to go with the career. Now with the internet, think of the possibilities. You’re a perfect example of it, Jendy, working from at home in front of your computer while your kids are right there at your feet. It’s a beautiful picture. It’s gorgeous. So I feel very strongly that if we don’t take this back into our arena as mothers, as families, we’re committed to the family, we’re not going to go in the right direction; not only for ourselves and our children and our legacy but also in our country for that matter.

Jendy: I was thinking as you were talking, so much you say is about observation and observing when they’re feeling bad and their emotions are off and when they’re getting a fever. If we are not there with them, we can’t observe. We don’t know what is normal and what is not normal if we’re not with them.

Joette: That’s right. That’s right. Because as you’re learning this and you’re asking questions and you’re looking at your child and you’re trying to pick up on the nuances of the illness that they’re suffering, you’re giving them motherly love. That’s the watchful eye of a mother, not the watchful eye of the healthcare provider. It’s not the watchful eye, careful eye of the pediatrician. This is in the mother’s realm. We can’t go wrong if we take this on in this fashion.

Now let me also say that there are many women who don’t have children and so it’s the same principle. If you’ve got dogs or cats or you’re caring for an elderly aunt or a neighbor or wildlife, that’s still mothering of sorts. So I stretch that a little bit and offer that to those women who don’t have children, that we’re still mothers. We still have that instinct. We’re biologically different, excuse me but we are biologically different than men. That’s why I like taking care of the children at home.

Jendy: I tell you, it is refreshing to me because so many thoughts that have been through my head through the years, like I doubt at the doctor. I doubt at lots of doctors. I saw my friend do that exact thing with the ear infection. Go back every month when her kid got another ear infection. Now I’m like you are confirming my doubts were okay and not only that, telling me a way to make it better and telling me something to do about it. Like you said, it’s so empowering.

Joette: Look at the doctor. If the doctor is helping you, by all means stay with him or her. But if the doctor is not helping, that would be like going to an accountant who consistently makes mistakes. Mistake, okay you get audited. Another mistake, oh you get audited again. Another mistake – third time, at some point you say, “Hey pal, you’re fired. You’re not doing a good job.

Why do we give such leeway to pediatricians? I don’t get it. The same illness over and over and now the child can’t have this. Now the child can’t eat that. Now they got stomachaches. Now they’re not learning properly. Now they’re languid. Now they’re insomniacs, children who are insomniacs. Now they have a chronic constipation. No, they’ve got diarrhea. You got to look at what is being, how this illness is being treated. Start questioning those who seem to have more understanding of it than you do. No one has as much understanding about your child as you have.

Jendy: So if there are other mothers out there looking for information and/or have doubts about the things, they can go to JoetteCalabrese.com and they can look. Like I said, there’s a search box. There’s a little search bar. Also, sign up for the email list because for me I love it when I get the update right in my email that hey there’s a new blog post, so I can go and read it. That comes right to me so I don’t have to go look if it’s posted yet or not. I love that. So I hope they will check out JoetteCalabrese.com. And stay tuned because we’ll talk about more in the next podcast.

Joette: Yes, we will. Just remember folks, this is the affordable healthcare. Not the stuff the government is talking about. This is the stuff. So take it to the hilt and you will be surprised at what you will be capable of doing.

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 Curing and caring for our family

6:28 A wonderful legacy

9:01 A cure for any sickness of all ages

16:35 Treating colds

19:56 Remedies worth having all the time

24:28 Essence of motherhood

I’ll supply the inspiration; you the perspiration. But I promise that the benefits to you and your family will be significant. Let me give you several more reasons and tips you can use today in this week’s podcast.

I believe knowing how to cure your family is the epitome of womanhood. It is the essence of who we are. It is what we do best. And when you learn how to do this, it is what I call parental exceptionalism.

I’ve been teaching moms for almost 27 years, so I get a lot of folks coming back to me saying, “Holy cow, I cannot believe what this has done for my child.”

Once you learn this easy homeopathy, it will become second nature to you.

Become the extraordinary parent, in a class of your own, the kind of parenting that gives you a legacy.

And here are a couple of my favorite remedies every family should have in their medicine cabinet:

Calc carb 30 or 200

Nux vomica 30 or 200 (I’ll tell you why I took this away from my son when he was a teen.)

Arnica montana 200

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

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

Joette: I’m doing well. Nice to see you again, Jendy.

Jendy: It is good to see you. These two weeks went a little slower but not too much. I was looking at your website a little bit and seeing how you really have a passion to help moms. You even go into nutrition. You really seemed like an advocate for the families. So how does that connect with homeopathy?

Curing and caring for our family

Joette: Well, it really takes an interest in the subject. The subject is taking care of your family. Most moms are very interested in that subject, of course. Just like anything else that’s important in life, it takes inspiration which is what I hope to offer here, too in addition to homeopathy and perspiration because there is some work that’s involved in learning this lifestyle.

I know what it’s like to be at home with kids. I was a full time mom and I homeschooled my children until high school. But let me share that when you’re home with them, of course it’s one of the most important jobs a woman can ever have. It’s pure joy but it’s physically demanding. It takes emotional stability and it’s nearly fulltime consuming except for one little area.

We as humans, we moms, for those who love to learn especially when our kids are babies, we need and crave intellectual stimulation. I know that I did. If you’re a lifetime learner, that comes automatically. If you’re homeschooling your children of course, you’re getting that. You’re learning things that you never caught on to when you were a kid. You learn all kinds of great, new things. But if you’re not homeschooling your children, there is that desire.

So ought we take up the study of say Renaissance Art or how about something like 19th century opera. That’s one of my favorite subjects. I would love to take that up more thoroughly. But wait! Wait! I’ve got an idea. Why not learn something that not only satisfies the intellectual appetite but it supports our lifestyle so thoroughly. Why not learn something that will save our family money? Even more importantly, put us in control of our own destinies and our family’s. That’s where homeopathy comes in.

It’s brilliant! It’s a medicine at its best. You learn biology, anatomy, physiology, pathology, botany. It’s like going to medical school of sorts without all the junk science that that attends the profession because you’re not learning how to subdue symptoms with drugs. You’re actually learning how to cure your family. You get a full understanding of it with all of these other sciences that are relevant to it.

Now, I don’t know if anybody really heard me. You can cure your family, not suppress symptoms, not watch it diminish only to come back later like pressing down on a water balloon where it bulges out not too long after. You could actually do this with your family. In fact, that’s the name of one of my books: Cure Your Family and Self with Homeopathy. So I find this extraordinarily exciting.

For those who don’t have a grand income, I urge them to read my blogs. They’re free for goodness’ sakes. Download them. Print them. Learn them. Study them. Use them. They’re very user-friendly and they’re practical. I believe in practical homeopathy. For those who want to go the next step, they can get CDs. They can learn that. They can get other homeopath’s books and other homeopath’s CDs. If someone wants to go further, they can take courses. I have online courses. Other homeopaths have online courses. Then of course, there’s tutoring. I did tutoring online. Other homeopaths do this.

So this is not just about me but it is about the idea of taking up a hobby of sorts that becomes your lifestyle. It defines who you are because you not only then can treat your family for minor issues and sometimes even more confounding issues. But then you become the community healer, in your church, in your extended family, in your neighborhood. People will start flocking to you. It’s amazing how this happens. Once they recognize that you have knowledge and they have a problem, they’re going to ask you. They may not follow exactly as you say until you gain more and more of a reputation. But that reputation is gained by knowing this information.

So I find it and I found it. Now my children are adults now. But I found it very exciting to learn this because I was protecting, helping. I was a very integral part of the financial aspect of our lives. We didn’t have health insurance. So this was my insurance and even if we’d had health insurance, there were times in our lives when we did. Then there was another time in our lives especially as our children were growing that I don’t know that I would have gone to a doctor for certain things. I wanted to be able to do it myself. I took it only as far as I was capable of taking it. It’s amazing for me. Maybe I lucked out. I think there’s partially luck but a lot of it has to do with the fact that I took this so seriously so early on that my children didn’t ever have antibiotics. They didn’t have Tylenol. They didn’t have those drugs that can cause trouble in the end. So that’s how I advocate for families. Long answer to a short question.

Jendy: Out of curiosity, do your children still practice homeopathy in their homes now?

A wonderful legacy

Joette: They do. They do. They still don’t have Advil or any of those products in their homes. In their home, they all live together as a matter of fact. It’s kind of fun that my three sons are together. They cook from scratch. They make full meals every night and they actually eat together every night. It’s really very nice. I’m really happy that it’s worked out that way. I don’t know how long that will last. They each have to go their own ways eventually but at least at this point, they’ve taken it on, yes.

Jendy:  That’s all they knew so it’s probably almost second nature.

Joette: Right, well I just got off the phone with my oldest son. He was having lunch and I said, “So what do you do at lunch at work? Do you buy the lunch there?” And I was curious as to see if lunch means that he’s buying it. Oh no. He says, “My brother and I made dinner last night and it’s soup.” They used bone stock. He made some soup. He brought it to work with him that day or today. So it warms my heart to hear that.

Jendy: That is awesome because how many young guys do you know that will do that? They got old already.

Joette: I know, I know. Well I emphasized it. When the boys were being raised, I taught them how to make yogurt, keefir, how to grind the flour and make bread. I taught them the importance of making bone stocks, the importance of using a lot of good animal fats, butter, lard, tallow, et cetera. So it just became a part of who they were. Because I’m Italian, I love to cook. I love preparing meals. I love eating. I love cooking and everything around food. So I think they took that on as well which is really very satisfying.

Jendy: That will help them with their health the rest of their life.

Joette: Oh, I hope so and I believe so, yes, yes.

Jendy: So I didn’t know anything about these homeopathic remedies until I talked to you. So replacing the drugs is new to me but I can honestly say I’ve always been leery of them. Even growing up, it was always like a last resort. We did chiropractor if we had headaches, not Tylenol.

Joette: Great! Great!

Jendy: So now I’m still really leery but when they were little and if you call the doctor, right away they say, “Go get this medicine off the store shelf and use it.” So right now I have twins, three about twin-aged children. Can homeopathy cover any illness that they get?

A cure for any illness of all ages

Joette: Yes, yes, it can. It seems counterintuitive to give someone something that not only doesn’t cure, addressing what you were talking about before. But worse yet is a synthetic, commercial product that causes side effects. It’s almost as though you’re rubbing salt in the wound. When someone is sick, that’s when you give them chemicals? It doesn’t even make sense. It flies in the face of common sense. But unfortunately, we have been told repeatedly over the past 80 years that this is all there is. I’m here to say it’s not all there is. In fact, there’s a whole world.

You know how when the first time you go snorkeling or scuba diving, you knew that under that water there was a luscious world of color and depth and excitement? But it’s not until you put that mask on and you go down, or you lay on the surface and float on the surface, and you see it, and you experience it yourself firsthand that you realize the depth and breadth of what’s under that water on a coral reef for example. That’s what it is to get involved in homeopathy. You knew that there had to be another way. Intuitively we all know there’s got to be another way. This stuff, these drugs are problematic at best. So there had to be another way. Would God make it so difficult for us to be able to take care of our families that we have to use something that has blue dyes and unpronounceable ingredients? No! There is another way. So that’s homeopathy. That world is once we put our goggles and mask on, we’ll see a whole new world.

It doesn’t take long for us to figure out that the drugs are not going to cure. We don’t kick someone when they’re down. It also was not uncommon for folks to start questions, just like you did. You wonder is the emperor wearing clothing. After a while you start seeing that he’s naked. Wait a minute! This has been false all this time. I think I said earlier in other podcasts, it’s not that I believe that all of modern medicine is unworthy. But I would say certainly surgery and I think I’ve talked about this before is incredible. What they’ve done with surgical procedures is downright remarkable.

But when it comes to mothering a child and taking care of ear infections and otitis media, conjunctivitis, strep throat, bee stings, injuries that are not terribly serious, the list goes on and on. You have a sickness after having eaten the wrong foods or a post Halloween stomachache or diarrhea or something. That’s something every mother can take care of. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind. Not only do I know this personally in having raised my children this way but I’ve been teaching this close to 28 years. I’ve taught it in many arenas and schools and in churches and educational institutions and colleges. People come back and tell me, “Oh, my gosh! I can’t believe what this did for my child’s ear infection. That’s the end of the ear infections. We used to see them every three months. We don’t see them at all anymore and it was repetitive. So yes, this is medicine. This is the medicine we’ve all been looking for. It is applicable in just about every situation except for strictly surgical needs.

Jendy: Even things that we think aren’t really an illness like pimples, some of the cosmetic things homeopathy helps with.

Joette: Yes, because it’s not necessarily illnesses. It’s also conditions. Think of it that way. Skin problem is often just a condition. We don’t call it a disease if someone doesn’t have acne vulgaris or rosacea or something extreme like that, although I just offered a class. I just finished it last night which has been recorded. We’ll have it up and running at some point soon on that specifically, on how to treat acne vulgaris and rosacea and eczema and psoriasis and skin issues. So yes, it covers everything. I can’t think of anything it doesn’t cover other than as I said requirement for a surgical procedure.

Jendy: Yes and especially if you’re a family that’s really watching your budget, when you have something like that, you don’t necessarily go to a dermatologist for it.

Joette: Right.

Jendy: Because it costs extra time, extra money.

Joette: Oh, how about that time, how about that time? Can you imagine? I’ve thought about it and I’ve talked to other people who spend a lot of time in doctors’ offices. Usually it’s the elderly. It’s very sad to me because it’s a lifestyle that it becomes myopic. All they can think about is the next doctor appointment. That almost becomes their outing. It’s depressing. I’ve seen it happen too many times. I’ve seen it in my elderly relatives.

Thankfully my parents are not caught up on that conveyor belt, partially because my mother was of this ilk as well. My mother was not unlike your mother. We went to chiropractors who I believe in. By the way, I believe very strongly in chiropractic. I think everyone should have a good chiropractor. My mother made our food from scratch. Not that we didn’t have Oreos and potato chips once in a while. But for the most part, everything was made from scratch because she was at home tending her children. There was a nice dinner every night, so between that and my mother eschewing the idea of drugs in the first place.

My grandparents were from Sicily. When they came to this country and I don’t believe that it’s all that unusual but when they came to this country, they were suspicious of doctors. They were suspicious that when you went to the hospital, you went there to die. Of course now it was a different time. It was back in the 1920s, 1930s, et cetera. But they were very suspicious of their nostrums and they wanted to use their own ways. So my mother took that up. She’s now in her late 80s. I was raised that way myself even though we did succumb to drugs. There’s no doubt about it because we didn’t have these other tools.

But you see homeopathy offers the tool. This gives us what we’ve been lacking as mothers for all these years, for these last many decades. Because homeopathy was in every educated home. I say educated because those were the women who took it on. Louisa May Alcott wrote about it in Little Women. How they used Belladonna for a fever that I think Jo had or maybe her sister. So all families that were educated, the mothers, the women were educated in learning how to treat their families with homeopathy. It was just a given throughout the United States and of course Europe, and India, South America, et cetera.

.

Jendy: Now, a lot of the moms are busy working out of the house, getting the kids places and I noticed you have this CD that you wrote on your website. Put it in your car and listen to it over and over. Then you can learn and then you can have this stuff in your cupboard so that you know what to grab and give to your children.

Treating colds

Joette: Right. It should become second nature after a while and it will. At first it seems insurmountable but it really is not, particularly if you have a family where your children are prone to colds. If they get colds too frequently or when they get them, they’re too extreme or they last too long, the remedy you want to have on hand is Calc carb 200, Calcarea carbonica, Calc carb is an abbreviation, Calcarea carbonica 200. When it’s used every other day over a period of months, many and most families find that the colds start diminishing or they abort altogether. This is not a remedy that we would use for someone who doesn’t get colds frequently. You don’t use it and say, “Oh well, it’s coming up the cold season. I think I’ll take this.” No, no, no, no, no, this is specifically for someone who has a problem with immunity to colds and flus and infections like that. It’s one of my favorite all time remedies.

It can be used in a 200 potency. That’s Calc carb 200 every other day or if you have a homeopathy kit and you happen to have it in the 30, that’s a Calc carb 30 then it can be used once daily. Many times, families use it every single day for a few months and they watch their children not miss school. They don’t miss piano lessons. They’re actually robust and back into the game. It’s a wonderful remedy that every family should own. Sometimes you’ll find it in homeopathy kits. Your kit is a little box with 100 remedies and my office sells them. If folks are ever interested, you can get them on these kits online. So you’ll find this remedy readily available. And it is one of my favorites.

Jendy: If you do want to just protect against colds, do you have a suggestion for that or is it just like vitamin C?

Joette: No, I would say it’s Calc Carb to protect against colds. Now, if you’re talking about someone who doesn’t get colds very frequently and you just want to be a little extra cautious then vitamin C. But I would not take vitamin C. I would eat foods with Vitamin C. I don’t like vitamins. I’ll be honest with you. They’re usually synthetic.

What you can use is rosehips. I have rosehip plants in my garden. I harvest the rosehips. They’re little cherry-like sized hips that taste quite good. You can buy them at the health food store. They’re dehydrated and ground up and then put in little capsules. They’re loaded with vitamin C naturally. I like the food with the substance rather than the synthetic version of it because most vitamins are a synthetic version of the real thing. I like the genuine. I can’t help but consider always looking for those products, homeopathic remedies as well as food substances that smell real to me, that feel real to me. That’s what I’m looking for. I don’t want anything tinkered with.

Jendy: If there was only one homeopathic remedy that every family should have and understand how to use, what should it be?

Remedies worth having all the time

Joette: Yes, good question. Certainly that Calcarea Carbonica 30 or 200 but I’m going to actually step outside of the box and offer two. One is Nux vomica, N-U-X; second word is vomica, V-O-M-I-C-A, Nux vomica. It can be used to the 30th potency or 200 potency. What I love about Nux vomica is that it’s great for overdoing. So too much candy from Halloween, too much food after thanksgiving, too much alcohol in an adult after New Year’s Eve, overstressing, becoming overwhelmed by city life or fast paced life.

It’s excellent for husbands because they have so much responsibility and they often work very, very hard in an intellectual setting. If it’s not an intellectual setting, it might not be quite as useful. It’s great for kids when they overstudy, when they’re worried too much about exams and they start getting stomach or gastrointestinal issues such as constipation or diarrhea or both, and alternating between both. So I love Nux vomica.

I actually tell a story about Nux vomica because it’s great for hangovers. When my sons were younger, you may already know this story. When my sons were younger, they knew homeopathy. I taught it to them as part of their homeschooling curriculum. Nux vomica was one of them. They quickly learned that Nux vomica is for hangovers. So when they got to the age where they were interested in drinking alcohol, I hid all the Nux vomica. I said, “If you’re going to drink because you know that’s against the rules, if you’re going to drink alcohol especially underage or you’re going to over drink even of age, you’re going to suffer. You need to suffer. If you don’t suffer, you’re not going to learn your lesson. I’m not going to give you a little pill that’s going to take away that groggy, painful head, disoriented stomach. You’re going to live with it.” Well, I thought that I was successful in this but then one day, I found in one of my son’s cars a bottle of Nux vomica. He had gone out and bought one. But I took it. We, mothers have that prerogative.

So Nux vomica, Calcarea Carbonica, and there’s one more. This is the one most people learned when they first start learning homeopathy. It’s Arnica Montana, A-R-N-I-C-A, Arnica Montana, like the state of Montana. It’s a fabulous remedy for injuries. Injuries to the head, I like 200 potency for that. Injuries to soft parts, injuries even before surgery, after surgery, for broken bones, for ecchymosis which is black and blue, particularly after surgery and any injuries after. It’s great for sports injuries. So those are my top three. I’ve got so many more, of course. I could go on all day but we can start with those three.

Jendy: Now the Nux Vomica, you said it’s for stress and worry. If a family is stressing about moving or finances or something, how often should you take it?

Joette: The more extreme the condition, the more frequently you would take it. So if it’s very extreme, someone is vomiting relentlessly for example then it would be say every hour or two. If it’s not so extreme and they’re feeling just logy and out of sorts then it might be twice a day. Anywhere in between would be a consideration.

Jendy: My 10-year-old daughter, when we have something big that’s going to happen, she tends to stress the day before. I recognized that, know that and just try to calm her down. But this is something that would help?

Joette: It’s possible that it would. I’m not going to say. It is not specific for that. It’s more when they overstudy so they’ve overworked their brain. Now their body is paying for it particularly if it’s a gastrointestinal reaction.

Jendy: What would be your parting advice for moms and families that we can take to the bank?

Essence of motherhood

Joette: Okay. Well, I believe that knowing how to cure your family is the epitome of womanhood. It’s the essence of who we are. It’s what we do best. It comes from us deep on a soul level. When you learn how to do this, it’s what I would call parental exceptionalism. This is what takes us to the next level of parenting. This is what puts us, excuse me, but in a class on our own. This makes us the kind of parent that gives us a legacy, more than just the love, training them up properly, teaching them what’s important in life. But it also teaches them how to then teach their children so that we can break this cycle of drug after drug after drug for even minor or major issues. So those are my parting words.

Jendy: Thank you so much. Thank you for teaching and for being an example of it.

Joette: Oh well, thank you for noticing. Yes, it’s a pleasure. Thank you.

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

In this podcast, we cover:

1:07 What conventional medicine is great for

4:32 Using homeopathy versus conventional medicine

10:14 Chamomile and its uses

15:35 Poison Ivy: From poison to homeopathic medicine

18:48 Homeopathy is medicine, not supplements

21:30 Hypericum for cuts

25:46 Take advantage of available resources to study homeopathy

I’ve just recorded my second podcast. I hope these podcasts will become a valuable resource in your audio library.

Every two weeks we will post the latest podcasts here. Very soon you will also be able to find these on popular sites like Itunes.

I promise to bring you useful content in my weekly blog, on my community page and now in this new podcast format.

Each podcast will include a new section on “Remedies You Need to Know” designed to help you start treating your family’s everyday conditions right now with homeopathy.

Here are some of the topics we discuss on this week’s podcast:

And here are the remedies you might want to add to your medicine cabinet:

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 back again with Joette Calabrese from JoetteCalabrese.com. Today, we want to kind of go back to the basics and talk a little bit about what homeopathy is. Good morning, Joette! How are you?

Joette: Good morning, Jendi. This is so nice doing this together.

Jendi: It is fun. I enjoy talking to you and my family reaps the benefits of it as I reiterate everything that I learn from you, and I’m learning so much because until I talked to you, this was totally new to me.

Joette: Great! That’s what I love to do, is to turn people onto this, especially families.

Jendi: Yeah, and mothers.

Joette: Yeah.

Jendi: I am already like questioning my doctor.

What conventional medicine is great for

Joette: Well, let’s use that. Let’s use that as a springboard. That’s a great way to look at this. I don’t tell people that they should not have a doctor. But I do believe that the mom should be the first doctor. And doctors are great for diagnostics. If you have a lump, you need to know. Is that a cyst? Is that cancer? Is it a boil? You need to know what it is. And without a lot of experience, it would be great to have a doctor that you could go to and say, “Okay, doc, what is this?” And that’s what I love them for. They’re also very good for emergencies. If you’re in an automobile accident, for goodness sakes, you don’t go to a homeopath. You get yourself to an emergency room. And then I also believe that modern medicine is excellent for surgery. I cannot say enough, obviously, about organ replacement and the kinds of surgical procedures and plastic surgery and heart surgery. We might not even have my father today if it weren’t for surgery. So I believe that surgery is very useful.

The problems lie in the degree to which we count on these methods. We’ve got it upside down. What we should be looking at is, “What can I do at home first? I’m the mother. What can I do with nutrition?” Let’s say if somebody has a fever or something, “How can I change the environment for this child or this member of my family? What homeopathic remedies can I use?” And if you’re stumped, then you move on to someone else and look at that possibility. What I don’t like is the idea that we mothers have been “trained” to go to a doctor for every single ill. I think that is far too much dependence on someone whose interest in our lives is not as great as our own interest in our lives.

I think surgery is performed too frequently. There are a lot of surgical procedures that I think truly are superfluous. But when it’s needed, we need it. I think the diagnostics are used too frequently. I think this mammogram every year is silliness. Chronic colonoscopies when there is nothing wrong, I think, is a potentially dangerous pursuit. But when there is something wrong, you need that colonoscopy, perhaps. You need that mammogram, etc., etc.

So I want to just soften the edges a little bit, get this down to the point where we’ve not lost common sense and we’re capable of making a lot of decisions on our own. And thank god for the internet because there’s a lot of great information out there. Now, be careful. I always warn people, “Be careful because there is a lot of erroneous information and there’s also a lot of information that is directed by self-serving sites. And you have to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. And so you want to go to places that question the status quo, not who offer the status quo. We already know the status quo. Do we really need to know more? Well, yeah, we might need a little bit more to fill in the blanks, but for the most part, what we’re really looking for here is an objective point of view, and you have to see both sides in order to do that. 

Using homeopathy versus conventional medicine

Jendi: So then if that’s what we use the doctors for, what is homeopathy and what do you use it for?

Joette: Good question. If you need to have a diagnosis, then certainly, the doctors can be very useful for that. But there are a lot of times we don’t even need a diagnosis. My child’s got a fever. Is it viral? Is it bacterial? Does it matter? If it’s normal childhood illness and they’ve got a cold, leave it. So what? So it’s viral. So it’s bacterial. Do we need to know that it’s a streptococcal infection? Do we need to know what kind of bacteria? Sometimes it can be useful, but for the most part, a painful sore throat is often met with a simple homeopathic protocol such as Hepar sulph 30 given every three hours if the pain is horrible, or if the pain is really severe, belladonna.

So these are remedies that we ought to know on our own. And everyone out there who’s interested in this subject ought to consider getting a simple book, taking a course – you don’t have to take my courses, you don’t have to use my books, but they are available certainly on my site, but there are a lot of good homeopathy books – and learn how to treat simple acute issues, and you should own a homeopathy kit. And by a kit, I mean, it’s the top 100 homeopathic remedies that are the most useful for most families in most circumstances. Now, there are thousands of homeopathic remedies. Some say it’s about 3000, others say it’s about 6000 homeopathic remedies that are available in the world today. So when you buy a hundred of them, you’re only going to get a small sampling of what might be useful on a day-to-day level and in a given household. But it’s a very good start.

Jendi: And then the book will tell you how to use them.

Joette: How to use them, absolutely. When to use them, to what degree, how frequently, what potency, etc. And that’s where I am now working. I’ve gone down a different path than most homeopaths and what I had been doing previously for years as a classical homeopath. Classical means that you have to take a very elongated case and you have to look at the entire person before determining the remedy. And I taught that for years, and I used that methodology myself.

But having spent time in Kolkata with the Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation, I have to say that I have learned protocols that are very easily learned by families that make it much easier. So one does not have to go through as many mental gymnastics to determine the correct remedy. It’s as simple as if it’s an ear infection, it’s most likely to be Hepar sulph. It can also be, in some cases, belladonna, chamomilla, or Pulsatilla, but Hepar sulph, generally, is the remedy. And so I call this practical homeopathy. Instead of studying for years, you don’t have to go as deeply with it as that and you can simply look at, “Oh, this is the disease. Oh, this is most likely the remedy that will act.”

Jendi: And you can kind of get your feet wet a little bit. Like, “Okay, they have an ear infection. I’m going to treat it with this.” But you don’t have to feel like overwhelmed that you’re going to throw out every medicine right away.

Joette: Every medicine, you mean, conventional medicines?

Jendi: Yes.

Joette: Since I’m not a doctor, I’m mostly an educator, and I do work with people one on one but my goal is always to educate and to teach people how to do much of this themselves, my goal is never to tell someone to get off the drug. I never said that. That would be injudicious. If it’s something that is not a drug that’s being taken daily, let’s say it’s Tylenol – we were just talking about Tylenol and children having fevers – the comfort level with the amount of knowledge that someone has in homeopathy will determine how soon you get rid of this or that, or whether or not you ever get rid of it.

In raising my kids, I had learned just enough homeopathy when my first one was a newborn, and that was 27 years ago. And up until that time, I had gotten rid of a lot of the drugs that I had been taking all during my pregnancy. And before that when my husband and I were first married, I had gotten rid of Tylenol. I found that Tylenol caused more trouble. I had gotten rid of these products. I actually was taking a product that had codeine in it almost every day for headaches. I threw that out. And you do it as it’s called for. You say, “Oh, well, I know how to deal with a fever for my child.” “Oh, I know how to deal with pain.” And you see it again and again and again. And after a while, the Tylenol expires and it’s time to throw it out anyway.

So when my kids were little, I had herbs and homeopathics in my medicine cabinet. And even through the years, the herbs still hold a place, and some essential oils as well, but the bulk of my methodology has been through homeopathy because in my estimation, after using all three of those methodologies, I’m going to say homeopathy is far beyond herbalism and essential oils. Still valuable, they still have value, but I always count on homeopathy first. And while I’m waiting for the remedy to act, and sometimes you do have to wait, then I might employ herbs or essential oils. But I don’t use drugs. 

Chamomile and its uses

Jendi: Can you tell us a little bit more why you chose homeopathy over the herbs and the essential oils?

Joette: Yes, certainly. I can give you a perfect example. Let’s say we use the herb chamomile. You pick the flower. And I make herbs. I mean, I make the tinctures, I should say. I pick the herbs, wildcraft them from the property around my land, and I pick chamomile flowers, I pick the little buds, I dry them, and I put them in a jar. And I keep them for making teas out of them. And sometimes, I make them into tinctures which means I’m putting them into alcohol. Now, it becomes more like a medicine once it’s in alcohol. And I let it set there for, say, two weeks. They call it a fortnight in the old botanical books. And now you can decant it and use it as a tincture and closer to what you might want to consider a medicine.

But if a child has difficulty with calming down at night, let’s say they’re crying and they’re irritable and they’re fractious and they might even be teething, that could be perhaps the cause of it, you could give chamomile. You could give chamomile tea and give it to the child. If it’s in tincture, it would be in alcohol so you have to be very careful and you only use a drop or two of this alcohol tincture and dilute it much in water because you don’t want to give alcohol to a young child. And you give that to the child and it might help them fall asleep. And very likely, it will calm them down and help them fall asleep, particularly if you use it day after day.

Now, you get that tincture and this is made in a homeopathic pharmacy, and they make chamomilla 200C which means that they’ve gotten that tincture in a pharmacy, regulated by the FDA, I might add. They take a drop of it and they put it into 99 drops of alcohol, quite dilute now, we’ve diluted it, one time to a hundred; 99 to one is a hundred. So we use C as the delineation. And that dilution now is we’re getting away from the chamomile in its gross form. And then they shake that. It’s called succussion. It’s done in a special way. And they take a drop from that vial and they put it in a second vial of just that drop plus 99 drops of alcohol. Now, we’re at 2C, 2 to the hundredth power. And they do it again, shake it up in a special way. It’s called succussion. And they take a drop from that one and they put it in a third vial of 99 drops of alcohol. Now, we’re at 3C. And they do this 200 times. It’s extremely dilute.

But what it does is anything that is not positive or perhaps toxic – although I don’t know that the chamomile has toxicity; I’m not familiar with it deeply enough to know that botanically – but anything that might be toxic is now reduced and everything that’s curative comes to the fore. It flies in the face of what’s logical. But to be honest, when you think about it, this is mathematical and pharmacological, great intelligence, and it is put together in such a lovely way that when you get to 200C of chamomilla and you give that to the child, now, not only does the child fall asleep – and not because he’s forced to fall asleep but because the body can let go and do what it’s supposed to do – but you’ve eliminated the problems of teething, which means that if you give this for a few nights, the child is not fractious, he’s not arching his back angry and fighting you, he’s falling asleep readily at the right time, not because he’s forced to, this is not a drug, but more importantly, the cause of the illness or the problem or the irritability is most likely as a result of the teething. You have uprooted teething pain and teething problems.

So now, a child who might have teething pains for months, now what you’ve done is you’ve stopped the whole process of it being pathological and you have rooted out the teething issue, along with everything else that’s concomitant. So compare that herbal tincture, that original one, that herbal tea in helping the child calm down a little bit, to rooting out the very cause of the problem using this pharmacological method of great dilution and succussion, and you’ve got a medicine that goes much deeper and is very gentle and just simply stimulates the child’s ability to root out the problem.

I’ve seen it time and again. I’ve seen it in my own children when they were young. I’ve had many students/clients who have reported to me after they’ve used this method. They tried chamomile in herbal form and then they go to the homeopathic and it’s a slam dunk. It works nearly every time. So we don’t have to just use it for teething babies. We can actually use it for a fractious teenager, a 19-year-old who’s getting wisdom teeth, or even a 27-year-old who’s getting wisdom teeth and they find that they’re irritable as well. When they say, “I’m just irritable; everything bothers me; I feel sensitive to everyone; I don’t want to be around people,” then you say, “Well, so how are those wisdom teeth?” “As a matter of fact, my wisdom tooth is coming in.” They take chamomilla 200 for a few days and the whole thing is resolved. It’s gorgeous. 

Poison Ivy: From poison to homeopathic medicine

Now, herbalism then has value, there’s no doubt. But it also is quite limited. See, homeopathy uses not just plants but also minerals and toxic plants. We use poison ivy. We love poison ivy. Now, the herbalist can’t use poison ivy but we love it because what poison ivy causes in the gross form can actually be resolved in the homeopathic form. So if somebody has chickenpox and there are pustules, and they’re itchy, and it’s maddening, and they’re restless, when homeopathy is employed by using Rhus tox – which is homeopathic poison ivy and it’s diluted many times, 30 times to the hundredth power, or 200 times to the hundredth power – it reduces the toxicity and it actually even eliminates to a certain degree the toxicity of the poison ivy and brings to the fore the curative aspect of the poison ivy. So when someone has chickenpox and you use Rhus tox, the Latin name for poison ivy, you will see that the restlessness is resolved, the pustules are not as eruptive, the itching comes down tremendously, and they can get over chickenpox in a shorter period of time.

Jendi: It doesn’t matter if they’re allergic to poison ivy.

Joette: No, it doesn’t. Because there is no poison ivy left in it, pretty much. By the time you get to the 200th potency, 200 times to the hundredth degree, you have eliminated the toxicity. In fact, those who are very sensitive to poison ivy are more likely to benefit from the use of this homeopathic poison ivy.

Jendi: My oldest daughter gets poison ivy much worse than my other two children. But would that same remedy help with her reaction?

Joette: Well, that’s the way most people would think because you would say then you would use poison ivy to treat poison ivy. But remember, homeopathy, hom- in the word homeopathy means similar or like pathology. Not exactopathy; it’s homeopathy. So it’s better to use a remedy that is more closely related to the symptoms but is not actually the absolute same source. So Rhus tox, which is the Latin word for poison ivy, can be used for a case of poison ivy, but it’s not our first choice. Actually, our first choice is Anacardium because Anacardium is not exactly the same thing but it’s close enough, and in the gross form it can cause pustules, itching, restlessness, etc.

So we’re always looking for the similars. Now, it doesn’t mean we never use the exact but more often, we find in homeopathy that similar substances, or the similar cluster of symptoms, is better than the exact. And usually, the etiology is what’s different. And etiology means the cause of the disease. So if the cause of the disease is poison ivy, then that’s a different etiology than using Anacardium because it is not caused from the same reaction to a plant. 

Homeopathy is medicine, not supplements

Jendi: As a mother myself, that I’m looking into this and trying to figure that out, are there cautions that I could hurt my children by trying a homeopathic remedy?

Joette: Yes. It is relatively safe. And what I mean by that is first of all, we have to remember that homeopathy is not a supplement. Again, they’re not herbs in their gross form. It is medicine. There’s no doubt about it. And so it is relatively safe. So what I mean by that is you can do harm if you don’t do as directed. Let’s use poison ivy, for example, and you give your daughter homeopathic poison ivy, and it is not the correct remedy. It’s not acting. And you keep insisting on giving it, and give it, and give it, and give it, and repetitively. You may find that you’ll cause trouble. But that’s because the remedy is ill chosen.

So you have to choose correctly. You don’t want to go too high a potency when you’re first starting out. You want to stay maybe at 6X, 12X, 3X, 6C, 12C, 3C. Stay at those lower potencies and you’re more likely to have better results. And I always encourage parents to start out with the simplest form of homeopathy and that is the stuff that you can buy at Walmart and your health food stores. And those are a combination remedy that’s for teething, a combination remedy that is specific for leg cramps. And they give you exactly the protocol that you should be using once you find that you love this because there are no side effects. There is no danger in terms of side effects. The danger is if used injudiciously. So if it’s used correctly and you follow those directions, you’ll find that you’ll probably fall in love with homeopathy.

Jendi: So when we go to Walmart or a kind of store like that, is it going to say homeopathy on the product?

Joette: Yes, it does say that. It does say that. So you can find what’s called Cold Calm, a great remedy for when somebody’s coming down with a cold. And it’s made by Boiron. It’s one of my favorite companies. And it is a combination remedy, so I believe there may be six or eight homeopathic remedies in there. Many parents have reported to me that this works again and again and again to keep their children from getting colds. This is just to get you started because the more you learn, the more infrequently you’re going to want to go to a remedy combination such as that and you’re going to want to learn how to do this more with your own intelligence involved in determining what remedies are best chosen for your family. 

Hypericum for cuts

Jendi: And so far, we’ve talked about things on the skin or ear infections, teething pain. What if they get like a cut?

Joette: Yes. When there are lacerations and if the cut is very painful, we automatically would consider using something like Hypericum, and that would be taken orally. Certainly, wound management is very important when it comes to lacerations. You want to make sure it’s very, very clean. You want to make sure that you’re pressing so that the blood is coming out because blood cleanses injuries. And truly, it has to be cleaned extremely well. Some people use peroxide. I like to use Calendula tincture. Simple soap and water is a good idea. If the laceration is deep enough, then certainly you would get to an emergency room.

If it’s small enough and you feel you can handle it, then by all means, Hypericum is a great remedy for that. And we would use Hypericum, say, 30. It’s a good remedy to take every 15 minutes until the pain comes down, and then every 30 minutes, and then as the pain reduces even further. We’re always watching for what’s presenting and if the pain is still presenting, then we continue. So every three hours and then maybe three times a day over the next several days. And you can continue with Hypericum even if you end up in the emergency room because stitches are imminent. And you might want someone else to clean it for you because you don’t feel as though you have enough expertise in doing that.

However, I urge parents to learn that expertise. Learn it. Figure it out. Go online. Learn how to do these things. There’s nothing like being able to handle it yourself because what if you get to the emergency room and now, you have to wait four hours. You could have spent that time cleaning it yourself, and that does happen. And with our healthcare system as it’s going today, that could easily be an issue. Not that it hasn’t already been an issue at certain areas of the US and other parts of the world. So knowing how to take care of your own is more important than hoping that there’ll be someone there who’s available to help you out.

Jendi: Plus, there are all those other sick people in the emergency room.

Joette: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Now, you’ve got a laceration that hasn’t been cleaned yet and you got someone sitting next to you who’s got SARS or Ebola or something. I’m being a little fastidious here, obviously, but at this point, I might mention that at this juncture, Ebola has taken two lives in the United States so far so we still are waiting to hear whether or not that’s ever going to really manifest itself here.

Jendi: But homeopathy should be able to find a cure somewhere, right?

Joette: Well, you know, homeopathy has been around for 230 years and it’s been used in clinics and hospitals throughout the world. Millions of people have been using it – doctors, medical schools. There are homeopathic medical schools all over the world, and there were many of them in the United States at one time. And so with all of that data that had been collected and still is being collected in other parts of the world where homeopathy is still institutionalized, there’s a lot of information on just about every disease known to mankind.

Jendi: That’s all the questions I had for you today. Thank you so much. You gave me a lot to think about and implement and try. When you think about the big picture, at least when I do, I get overwhelmed. And when you spit out all these names, you know all this stuff, I’m going, “Ahh!”

Joette: Oh, I’m so sorry to do that to you, Jendi.

Jendi: No, it’s okay because it makes me aware that there is so much more to it. But then you bring it back in and say, “Well, get the common cold stuff from Walmart and try that.” And part of me cringes now when I open the medicine cabinet and go, “I know there’s a better way, but I need this right now and I don’t know what to do, and I don’t have the other one.” So if I can just kind of replace one at a time, I’d feel more confident with that…

Joette: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jendi: … and like I’m not going to hurt my family. 

Take advantage of available resources to study homeopathy

Joette: And the way you really learn this is to take courses. I have online courses. I have CDs. I have downloads that people can purchase. You can listen to them on a CD. And they are also covered. We have the text in print that can be downloaded so that you could study it. That’s the way you learn this stuff. And as you become more attuned to it and you deal with the issues that your family suffers from most, then you gain more confidence. So if there’s a family that gets colds frequently, that’s the area where you need to spend your time learning. You want to know those remedies. You want to have them on hand. You want to know how to use them, what potency. And all of that is all taught in my courses and other books as well, as I said earlier. There are many sources of good books for especially acute issues available on Amazon, etc.

Jendi: Thank you so much.

Joette: Yeah, you’re welcome. My pleasure.

Jendi: I will start figuring out what new books to put in my library.

Joette: Yeah, great. Okay, Jendi.

Jendi: Yours are on Kindle, too?

Joette: No, I don’t have any on Kindle. My books are actually not on Amazon. We’ve not set it up that way because we’ve set them up more as courses. But all of them are on my website. If people to go Products, they can click on them, and we have a first aid CD, and we have a CD on how to raise a drug-free family, a whole course on how to raise a drug-free family. And that includes DVDs and information such as that. I also talk about foods that families should be considering on a day-to-day basis. Secret Spoonfuls is the name of that one. I’ve got another one, a segment of homeopathy that’s very easy to learn. So I try to make it as family oriented and as simple to learn as possible.

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.e herself.

In this podcast, we cover:

0:38 All-natural foods that you can use on your face

7:16 Uprooting the problem versus suppressing it

21:35 Homeopathy’s proven efficacy for over 200 years

27:26 Joette’s personal battle with eczema and other health issues

31:36 Joette finally finds homeopathy

Would you eat Diazolidinyl or Imidazolidinyl urea? Doesn’t sound appetizing, but these are two common preservatives used in moisturizer creams.

Yes, urea is an organic waste compound, and the body excretes it through the skin (in the form of sweat), but the urea in your common moisturizer cream is synthetic. That means it is made in a lab, and the synthetic raw materials are ammonia and carbon dioxide. Would you be comfortable spreading them on a slice of toast?

Consider this, the moment you put anything on your skin it is absorbed into the body.

Hi folks, this week’s blog is a little different because I am using it to announce a new feature here at JoetteCalabrese.com.

I will start podcasting every two weeks with the help of my friend Jendi. We will post the podcasts here, and later you will be able to find them on I-tunes and other websites that archive podcasts – my favorite is Stitcher radio.

Whatever service you choose, I promise you’ll find these short 30- minute or so recordings to be informative and an easy way to teach your kids, whether they’re still at home or across the country, to turn friends and relatives on to homeopathy and, of course, to continue your homeopathic education and ultimately your health independence.

As you might have expected, this week’s podcast is on the subject of skin. That’s because we are right in the middle of the launch of my newest course Skin, the Ugly Truth: Safe, Effective Treatment of Skin Ailments, Chronic or Acute, with Homeopathy.

What I recommend folks use on their skin.

What if you have already used drugs like prednisone or Accutane to treat a skin problem?

Remember, your past need not control your future.

Why is suppression so bad with skin problems?

Why homeopathy is the medicine you hoped you were getting from your doctor.

Why skin problems should be considered a representation of what is lurking below. (Hint-hint: The goal should be to get rid of the problem within, not simply try to cover it up or scrub it away on the surface.)

A quick and simple way to learn what may have caused your skin issue that will likely lead to a revelation of monumental proportions.

Why we look better but in many ways we are worse off or even sicker.

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 from JoetteCalabrese.com. Today, we’re going to talk about Skin, The Ugly Truth. Hello, Joette! How are you?

Joette: I’m doing well, Jendy. Nice to talk with you, as always.

All-natural foods that you can use on your face

Jendy: Let’s jump right into the topic. What do you use or recommend people use on their skin?

Joette: I urge people to use only food. And I don’t mean ketchup and relish. I mean food such as ointments and oils that are made that are actually from the kitchen.

So coconut oil. Now, some people can’t use coconut oil. And it turns out that sometimes, it’s folks whose families originate from Northern Europe. So Germany and Sweden and those parts of the world often can’t use coconut oil. It’s uncomfortable for them or they actually have allergic reactions to them. And I think it’s because coconuts are from around the Equator.

So coconut oil is one of my first choices but if that doesn’t work, butter. Yes, but without salt. Because if you have any cracks or abrasions, then of course, salt is going to hurt. But butter is so available. There it is. It’s right in the kitchen. In the old days, they used to say if you have a burn, you put butter directly and, of course, it’s salt-free butter.

But one of my favorites on skin besides butter is tallow and/or lard. So lard is the fat that’s been rendered from a pig, and tallow is the fat that’s rendered from the fat of beef and you can make it yourself. Now, it’s hard to find this in grocery stores but if you happen to be purchasing your own meat directly from a farmer, then you ask for the fat and you render your own. It’s very easy to do. And then if that doesn’t work, you can often purchase it online.

Also, another product that can be used on the skin is cod liver oil. So that sounds like it would smell really awful. However, there’s a wonderful product that Radiant Life sells and it’s cod liver oil that’s made into a product without the preservatives, etc., etc., that doesn’t have a strong odor. So cod liver oil is another good one.

Saturated fat is what it’s boiling down to. And then, of course, the reason we don’t use other products that are manufactured on the skin is because they cause trouble in the long run. They may cover up, they may make things a little more comfortable for a short period of time, but in the end, you don’t put anything on your skin that you wouldn’t eat because the moment you put it on your skin, it’s absorbed into the system.

And the way that I know this, besides the fact that this is a known fact, is that I learned years ago when my oldest son was a little boy and it was before I knew enough about homeopathy to treat his colds and flus and sore throats, etc., with homeopathy. So I used essential oils and herbs and things like that. So I knew that if you put garlic and you mix it together with olive oil, you mash it all up, and you put it on the bottom of someone’s feet who has got a cold or an infection of sorts, it will absorb into the skin and deal with the infection at hand. So he was about maybe 2, 2-1/2 years old, and I had this mixture of garlic and olive oil and I said, “Okay, lay down here on the bed.” I put an old towel under his feet and I said, “I’m going to rub your feet up with this garlic oil and you stay very still,” because I didn’t want his feet to touch the covers and ruin the blankets, etc.

So I went off, went into the bathroom, washed my hands of all the garlic that I had on them, got some old socks, got another towel to wrap up his feet with as well, came back, put the socks on, wrapped his feet up, put the covers on him, and kissed him. And within those five minutes, his breath smelled of garlic. That’s how fast what we put on the skin is absorbed into the body. So we always want to use the most pure items on our skin that is worthy of our entire body. The skin is not hermetically sealed. It is an organ that is a part of the entire system. So nothing but food.

Jendy: So that kind of rules out a lot of makeup.

Joette: It does rule out makeup. However, I have a little caveat. Because we women want to be lovely, it is important to use a high-quality makeup, to use as little as possible. I wear eyeliner. I wear lipstick, not on a day-to-day basis but when I go out. So I buy the highest quality that I can find. And if you’re going to use a foundation, then you want to try to find something that is the cleanest and the purest. Now, I’ve done a lot of reading on this through the years. I don’t use foundation personally but I know many women who do, and one of the companies that I like is Dr. Hauschka but I don’t know that I’m going to stand behind that product. I’m just going to tell you that I use their lipstick and I use their eyeliner. So I do know that they have foundation and I’ve not researched deeply into what kind of foundation ingredients are involved. But you want to read those ingredients and if there’s anything in there you can’t pronounce, I would think twice about it.

Jendy: When you say about the saturated fats, that’s for lotion and cleaning, like a cleanser at night. Is that what you use them for?

Joette: No. For a cleanser at night, I would use baking soda and water. I would use raw vinegar and water. I would use a high-quality soap. I like Kirk’s soap. It’s just coconut oil. I don’t remember what else is in it but you can get unscented and I like that. But that’s only if you feel you absolutely must wash your face. I don’t wash my face. I’ll be honest with you. I can’t remember the last time I got soap and scrubbed my face. I just don’t do that. I put water on my face. And whatever comes down from my shampoo, then that’s useful, too. But I use coconut oil and sometimes butter and/or tallow or lard on my face and my body in general most every day, even just a little bit. I put it on my neck and all around my eyes and it feels good to me. My skin is not dry but sometimes it feels slightly tight, and that feels very comforting to me.

Uprooting the problem versus suppressing it

Jendy: I’ve been trying to find something for my daughter who’s struggling with acne. I know she needs to keep her face clean, so will the coconut oil help her with that?

Joette: Yes. I believe that keeping clean and then coconut oil afterwards or lard or tallow, one of those. It flies in the face of what most people would believe is problematic with the skin and that you have to get rid of the oils. But I believe it’s not the oils that necessarily are causing the trouble. It’s what’s going on inside. So when we talk about this course that I’m about to present on skin, acne is covered in it, and so we use remedies that are specific for acne, homeopathic remedies, and it’s not something that you take for the rest of your life. It’s not like something such as an antibiotic. The goal is to root out the pathology, to root out the skin condition. Acne is one of the easier ones to get rid of. I find that psoriasis is more difficult. That’s more entrenched and usually longer lasting for most folks.

But the idea is to get rid of the problem that’s at hand, not cover it up or to scrub it away. Because it’s only presenting on the skin. It really is a representation of what’s lurking below, which, of course, is then why we want to make sure that what we’re putting on our skin is worthy of our entire body. Because it does go directly into the body and it does have to be processed by the liver. It can affect the gut. We have to be so careful not to use antibiotic soaps, one of the worst ideas that these companies have come up with. But it’s based on the pop culture, common medical information that’s out there that says we have to stay scrupulously clean. I don’t buy that. I don’t think it’s a matter of staying scrupulously clean. I think it’s a matter of from the inside out and making sure things are dealt with in a systemic level rather than a localized level.

Jendy: What if somebody has already used the antibiotic drugs or prednisone or Accutane?

Joette: Well, that’s a great question because I don’t know anyone who hasn’t. You know what I mean? That’s the world in which we live. Everyone’s used antibiotics. I mean, I think there are very few people in this world who’ve never had antibiotics. And if they are even in existence, their parents had antibiotics, and that changes the gut flora for them as well, potentially. So once you’ve had these injuries or insults to the body, now we want to do the best we can to be certain that we keep it as pure as we possibly can now and try to help the body to undo it on its own. But if you use homeopathy and, of course, that’s what I’m teaching in this course, it will uproot that. If we had to look at life as, “Well, we’re doomed; we took antibiotics, we took those birth control pills, we used those steroids, there’s nothing left, we’re just doomed,” then I might as well just crawl into a hole and die because that’s really a depressing way of looking at life.

The beauty of homeopathy is that it is the savior medically. It is the medicine we thought we were getting. It’s the medicine we all hoped we were getting without knowing, of course, the name of it. But every time we went to the doctors, dermatologists – and I had terrible skin all my childhood life – every time, we all hoped this was going to do it, this doctor was going to do it, and not only didn’t do it, it made it worse. Everything that was used on me covered it up for a short period of time, and in the long run, it bankrupted my account of health, so to speak. It’s like if we use something on the skin that’s superficial from the drugstore, from the dermatologist, we see a little bit of benefit. And the benefit is really superficial. It leads us to believe that, “Wow, this is really working. This is great.” Give it some more time and it will boomerang. It will come back with a vengeance and cause new problems.

Sometimes, seemingly unrelated problems but in the end, it turns out that the problems then can go to the gut. We actually see people going to depression as a result of suppressed skin eruptions. So suppression is a really bad word in homeopathy. We don’t want to suppress anything. Because if we’re suppressing, it’s as though we’re unscrewing the smoke alarm in the ceiling when there’s a fire ablaze on the stove. All it’s doing is taking away the sign that something is wrong. So if you’re outside and there’s a flame on your stove and you run in, you hear the smoke alarm, you say, “Oh, that darn smoke alarm. Let’s get rid of that sign, that signal that something is off.” They unscrew it and they throw it in the garbage and they walk back outside again. Well, wait a minute! You haven’t gotten to the issue. The issue was the fire on the stove.

And so in the beginning, it appears as though you’ve come up with a solution because you don’t have to hear the loud, annoying sound of a smoke alarm screaming at you but eventually, you’re going to have to face the fact that there’s a fire on the stove. And often, with skin, the fire is related to the gastrointestinal tract. So if somebody’s had an antibiotic, even one round, or they’ve used birth control pills, even just a few months, or they’ve used steroids, even just a round of it, a couple of months, a month, what those drugs do is they suppress the body’s natural ability to resolve the problem, and then it shows up, depending on what is your weakest link in your body, often on the skin.

So in uprooting the skin problems, we’re not just going to say, “Oh, let’s just use this ointment and we’re on,” or even, “Let’s just use this tallow or coconut oil or cod liver oil on our skin and just be done with it.” No, no, no, no, no. It’s a representation of something that’s going on on a deeper level, and that’s what I want to teach or what I’m teaching in this course – How do you get to the bottom of it? Now, let’s look at what preceded this. 

What I tell people is, “Look, you want to know what’s really going on? You want to really get an idea of what has caused the skin issue?” Get a pencil. Make sure it’s sharp. Make sure it’s got a good eraser on it. Get a nice, long sheet of paper and lay out your life in a timeline. The only part we want to know about your life is all of the health issues. So start now and go back two months ago or a year ago or six months ago and look at, “Well, I had bronchitis a year ago.” Now, we don’t want to know just that you had bronchitis. We want to know what was the treatment for that bronchitis. Oh, antibiotics. Okay. You write down bronchitis, 2013, November, and the antibiotics. Okay, now, you go back further. What was before that bronchitis? “Oh, there was another bronchitis three years prior to that. Oh, 2011. Here we go. What do you know? Look at this timeline. I remember I took antibiotics for that, too.”

And you go back and you go back. And you can go all the way back to croup as an infant, the vaccines that were given, the steroids that were used, and you lay it all out. And the reason I say you need a good eraser is because you’re going to change things around. And you may not remember exactly everything as you approach this little task within that same half hour or hour that you put into this. You keep that timeline out there and two days later, you’re going to say, “You know what? I forgot to put that part about the fact that I had conjunctivitis.” Or, “I forgot; you know, I used to get ear infections, too.” Well, conjunctivitis has [met]1529 with antibiotics. Now, we can lay out and say, “Holy cow! I think this does have something to do with my gastrointestinal tract.” And so when you lay it all out, it is a revelation of monumental proportions. And once we recognize that, now we can say, “Okay, this does seem to maybe have something to do with my gastrointestinal tract. And it does seem that every time I have milk, my acne is worse, or if I have too much milk, or if I have cupcakes with blue dye on them, or if I have too much wheat. That’s where this is likely coming from.” 

Jendy: Is it all going back to the gut or do you pinpoint other issues as well?

Joette: No, there are other issues as well. The other issues are what are the weakest links in the family inheritance? If you look at someone who has terrible acne, look to the parents. Did the parents have acne? Now, the parents are likely not to have had acne quite as severe because it’s generational. And what’s generational is the voluminous amount of drugs that have come into play in the last generation. So the parent might have had a little acne, and the parent’s parent didn’t think to take the child to a dermatologist because in those days, perhaps they just didn’t do it. They said, “Here, just have some more eggs.” Or, “Get out in the sun or something,” or “Scrub your face better.” So the answers were, in my estimation, actually more intelligent than going to the dermatologist and getting the drugs, to be honest.

So if there’s a propensity for something, skin issues – and it may not have been acne for the parent, it could have been eczema, it could have been a little bit of psoriasis, grandpa may have had just a little bit of psoriasis on his knees – it was no big deal. Because basically, we’re DNA. I mean, if we look at ourselves as a biological entity, we are DNA. So the DNA, the clay from which we’re made is the cumulative aspects of our grandparents and parents, etc., etc. So if grandpa had a little bit of psoriasis on his leg and didn’t bother with it, maybe he did use tallow on it because he would have thought to do that. Now, his daughter has a little bit of acne and they didn’t do much with it. Maybe they used an antibiotic once or twice and that was the end of it. Now, that daughter has a child and the child has acne.

Now, what we’re looking at is there is a DNA that’s running through the family. And in homeopathy, we do want to know that, if we can, because it gives us information as to what remedies that if we’re stuck in terms of using a specific protocol, the protocols that I teach in my course, we’re stuck and we don’t know where to go with it, we can always look at a remedy that is specific to uproot family inheritances.

Jendy: So you’re working down to the DNA.

Joette: We’re getting to the bottom of it. A lot of parents tell me – and as I see it on the internet, it’s everywhere; I mean, it’s one of the most ubiquitous stories in the internet today – “My child was perfectly healthy, had great skin, until six weeks old, he was given the vaccines. The vaccine was on Wednesday. On Monday, my child’s got some eczema. What is this?” Go back to the pediatrician. “Hey, doc, what’s with this eczema? Could it be related?” “Oh, no! It couldn’t possibly be related to the vaccine.” Well, if I were in his shoes, I’d be a little uncomfortable, too. I might want to deny that because I was the guy who did it, potentially. And I’m not saying it’s a slam dunk but it certainly is a place where we want to start looking, want to examine all of these medicalized methods of treating the human body. It gets to the point where you start saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop! Okay. I got to get a breather here. I got to figure out what’s going on.”

And we got to stop treating, treating, treating, treating. We got to start looking at what else is going on. Now, I’m not going to say that it’s a slam dunk that it’s vaccines but I hear it all the time. And I don’t think mothers are whiners. I’m going to be honest with you. I think the watchful eye of a mother is a very intelligent place for medicine to be looking. Mothers are just the first step outside of their child and they’re observant, and they note first this, then that. But if they’re shut down and told, “It can’t be; no, no; there’s no link,” then she starts to question herself and she starts thinking, “Well, wait a minute. The pediatrician is saying that can’t possibly be related but boy, it sure seems that way.”

So she subdues herself though. She doesn’t tell people about it because she knows it’s an uncool thing to say. It sounds uneducated. But what it really is is her gut saying, “But this timeline, it’s undeniable.” So I urge mothers and grandmothers to pay attention to what happens to their children and don’t let any industry tell you that you are wrong about that. I’m not saying you don’t listen to them because doctors are fabulous for diagnostics. Excellent. You want to know. Is that eczema or is it psoriasis? That can be very useful. Is this rosacea or is it garden variety acne? That’s useful information, particularly if you take my course because I distinguish between that sometimes. And the reason I distinguish it is so that you have an exact protocol of exactly what remedies can be used for something like that.

Homeopathy’s proven efficacy for over 200 years

Jendy: And homeopathy can help all of those that you mentioned?

Joette: Homeopathy has a history of being able to uproot skin issues for over 200 years. In fact, to be precise, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann started his treatise on homeopathy in 1796. So since 1796, whether it’s acne in Paris in 1805 or it’s eczema in Leipzig in 1870 or it’s rosacea in Boston, Massachusetts in 1905, it’s the same remedies. It’s the same stuff. It’s the same protocols. Pretty much. It’s the same methodology. Nothing capricious, nothing has changed. The only thing is that most people don’t know about homeopathy. That’s the problem. Not that the medicines of homeopathy don’t know how to uproot the illness, it’s that nobody knows that it’s possible. That’s the crux of the problem.

Jendy: Is there any skin problem that you wouldn’t recommend homeopathy for?

Joette: I can’t think of one. And having worked in Kolkata at the Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation, I saw skin issues that you would never see here. And why would we not see them here but we would see them there? That’s kind of the burning question. Is it because there is so much more poverty there? Well, that’s part of the picture. That is part of the answer. Is it that they’re more prone because they’re Indian and not American? No, I don’t think so. I think that the reason is that because of the poverty, they don’t go to the dermatologist and the dermatologist doesn’t get a chance to suppress it. So they still have illnesses that are expressed on the skin, where in the United States, you don’t see as many skin issues here. And instead, we see other issues because they’re a result of the suppression of all the drugs that have been used on Americans for so many years.

When I was a little girl, I used to take a bus to school. It was not a school bus. It was a city bus. And I would get in the bus and I had eczema as a child and it was pretty severe. So I was hypersensitive to other people’s skin issues. And because of that, I would sit down on the bus and I would look around and I would see all the other people’s skin issues. There were lots, lots of skin issues in those days. We’re talking about the ‘50s and ‘60s. I saw people with lots of warts. I saw people with lots of skin tags. I saw people with eczema and psoriasis and flaking of skin, and I noted it because I was so aware of my own skin.

Now, mine was pretty ugly, but it was so suppressed that it only was able to come through every once in a while because of the ointments that had been used on my skin for so long. But a lot of people didn’t have the availability of a dermatologist like I did, and the reason I did, perhaps, was because I had a lot of doctors in my family, cousins, etc. And so we were taken to the doctors much sooner, I think, back in the ‘50s when it was just starting to become a lifestyle.

Now, I have to admit, I haven’t been on a bus in many years but my guess is if I were to hop on a bus today, I would likely not see those kinds of skin issues. Instead, I saw them in India. So it’s the outward expression of a deeper pathology that remains on the skin for many people in India. And so I saw leprosy in India. That still exists. I saw psoriasis that just encapsulated the body. Not sat on top of the skin, encapsulated the body, so it looked as though there was a second skin on top of them. I certainly saw acne and eczema, psoriasis, chronic hives, alopecia, which is hair loss, which we have to consider on some level is a skin issue. So in this country, we look better. The middle class looks better but in many ways, we’re worse off or sicker.

Jendy: Did you see some of those cases in India get better?

Joette: Yes. I did see it. And not only was I keenly interested in this because of my own history with skin and because I knew I was going to be putting this course together within a year or so, I went back and I went to the data that they collect on the second floor of this world class research center. By the way, I might add, all they used was homeopathy even though they were all doctors, medical doctors. And I went on the second floor and I asked to speak to some of the data inputters on the second floor so that I could go back and look. They took photographs and you could see the history of a particular case going back to see how bad it was. So that if I observed a case downstairs with the doctors of psoriasis, for example, and I saw that the plaque still remained but the doctors turned to me and said, “This case was much worse a year and a half ago,” I went upstairs and looked at it. I wanted to see it before, because now I’ve seen the whole case. And then I recorded it so that I knew how long it would take. Psoriasis takes a long time to root out homeopathically, but it is doable.

Joette’s personal battle with eczema and other health issues

Jendy: When did you conquer your own skin problem?

Joette: Well, I didn’t. And this is what happened. I was six weeks old – and I tell the story in my course – I was six weeks old and I was healthy and everything was fine and I went for my first vaccinations and shortly after, I started to develop, within about a week or two, eczema on my face. My cheeks looked very rosy, but then too rosy, then they looked rough. Off we went to the dermatologist, apparently, and my parents were told I had eczema and that I had to stay away from anything that tasted good – dairy, so cheese, and milk, and orange juice, and chocolate. Of course, I wasn’t having chocolate at that age. I was too young. But nonetheless, all of those kinds of things could not be included in my diet. And I couldn’t wear wool, and I couldn’t have feathers around me, so I couldn’t have a feather pillow and couldn’t be around dogs and couldn’t have cats, and of course, then there was dust. So basically, what you’re doing is you’re living a life of abstinence from everything. I mean, how do you deal with all of that?

So I had eczema in spite of all the shots and all the treatments that I had, and I had plenty, all the way up until puberty. And then at puberty, something changed, which often happens for many people with eczema. Instead of it being eczema and going to the dermatologist, we ended up at the gastroenterologist because now, I had stomach pains, because all along, it was a gastrointestinal issue because that’s often what a vaccine can trigger, for example. So all along, it was a gastrointestinal issue, and the dermatologist knew that to a certain degree because I wasn’t allowed to eat certain foods. So obviously, what was being put in my stomach was affecting my skin to a certain degree. Now, my mother made sure that I abstained from all of those foods but, you know, it still lived on. There was much more to it than just the food.

So then in my teens, I got very sick with a lot of gastrointestinal issues, and then in my 20s, I had a period of respite where nothing bothered me, and I call that the grace period. And most people, their 20s is a grace period. I don’t get very many people calling me in their 20s who are sick with skin issues, or any other issue for that matter. It usually doesn’t come back with a vengeance until they get into their 30s. Because then in their 20s, they’re taking birth control pills, another big mistake as far as I’m concerned. If they have a little cold or a little boil or a little sore throat, off to the doctor they go and they get antibiotics. So now, they’re revving up for what’s going to happen in their 30s. And then in their 30s, it’s wham! All hell lets loose, and that’s exactly what happened to me.

And so I was very sick. I went to doctors again, after doctor, after doctor, after doctor. I was actually married to a doctor in my 20s so I believed in the medical paradigm, the conventional medical paradigm. It took a lot to get it out of my head that drugs were not going to be the answer. It took a long time. I wanted to go to “the learned”. But the learned had learned only to use drugs. I didn’t realize that for a long time. Until finally, I said, “That’s it. I’m just as sick with drugs as I am without drugs, so I’m going to stop all drugs. Not even an aspirin, not a Tylenol, nothing. I’m going to get everything that’s in my medicine cabinet thrown in the garbage.” And I did. I got rid of everything, except for one thing, Benadryl, which I had never used but I was afraid because I started to develop asthma at that time, I was afraid very much that Benadryl could be a lifesaver for me. I never opened it, never used it, and kept it for a long time and then finally, eventually, threw that out as well once I learned the method to uproot asthma as well.

Joette finally finds homeopathy

So now, I had asthma and chronic fatigue and a lot of other issues and I don’t want to go into it all. I don’t want to bore people. But I had a lot of problems. I changed my diet. I was vegan, I was macrobiotic, and I went to both of these. First vegan for many, many, many years. Not that many. It was for about three years, I should say. And then macrobiotic for a few years as well, very strict because I wanted relief. When you want relief, you’ll go to the extreme, and that’s exactly what I did. Then I went to vitamin therapy. I used essential oils for many years. I studied them. I studied herbs. I picked my own herbs in the way fields around my home and made my own tinctures.

And I went through all of these paradigms until finally, I met up with a homeopath. It was a lecture I had gone to and it was around the time my son was born and the doctor was offering lectures. He was a homeopath and an MD and he offered this lecture and it completely turned my head. It was the most logical lecture I’ve ever been to. Finally, somebody was saying something that made sense, and I didn’t even know what the word homeopathy meant. He wouldn’t take my case so I found someone who had studied in England. About six months later, I met with her. She lived about an hour away from where I lived, and she cured me, cured me of the asthma, a good amount of the chronic fatigue. The asthma was gone in fairly short order. The chronic fatigue took longer. And then I decided I wanted to learn. And once I learned how to use homeopathy, then I was able to finish the rest of what she hadn’t finished for me. But I never turned back.

Jendy: And now you have beautiful skin?

Joette: Now I have beautiful skin. Now I don’t have gut problems. Now I don’t have asthma. I don’t have any of those things. I get a little bit of allergies at this time of year. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, I’ve scratched my nose here and there. I feel a little itchy once in a while when the leaves turn and there’s mold, etc., and there’s a change in weather. Nothing compared to what I’ve had all my life. And I can eat anything now.

Jendy: Even chocolate?

Joette: Yes, even chocolate, but I just don’t eat it in large amounts.

Jendy: So you’ve taken all this learning and what you tried on yourself and you’re putting it into this course. Can you tell us a little bit? Is it just reading or is it audio, video? What is it?

Joette: It’s audio and it’s a PowerPoint presentation, and it is my opus on many levels. It’s cumulative of literally 62 years of trying to figure this skin thing out from the time I was six weeks old. Now, I didn’t have the wherewithal to figure things out when I was six weeks old, but I can tell you, very early on in my age, I said, “There’s got to be a cure for this. There’s got to be a way.” I’m remembering say maybe 8 or 9 years old. “There’s got to be a cure. Why am I not better?” And so this is the answer, as far as I’m concerned.

So what I’m going to teach folks is how to deal with most of the common skin ailments that people suffer from, and I’m using the protocols, I’m teaching them the protocols that I learned when I was in India working with Doctors Banerji. Then we’re going to use some cases. It will be live to start and then later on, of course, it will be recorded and we’ll be able to probably present it a couple of years from now as well. But this is a live course and folks will be able to join in and not only submit cases, and I can’t promise I’ll cover all cases but I’m going to try to find as much time as I can to do that, but they’ll be able to join in on an online forum where other people who are suffering from the same skin issues or their children or their parents are suffering, they will be able to meet and discuss what has helped them out of the protocols that I’ve presented.

Jendy: Sounds like a great course. And they can get that through JoetteCalabrese.com?

Joette: Yes. They’d go to JoetteCalabrese.com, and when you go there, there will be information. And I urge you to read the story – I mean, I give more information about my own personal story – and note what other people have said about how skin issues have been resolved for them with these homeopathic Banerji Protocols.

Jendy: Thank you so much, Joette, for talking to us today and telling us about homeopathy and your own story, and I for one am going to go get my coconut oil out of the cupboard and try it on my face today.

Joette: Great, Jendy! It’s been a pleasure.

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.tion with Joette herself.