Joette Calabrese Podcast

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

03:11    “Nourishing Traditions”

10:31    Learning is Key

16:50    Becoming a Matriarch

19:29    Polar Opposites: Complacency

22:38    Polar Opposites: The Savior

26:05    Pneumonia/Bronchitis and Ear Infection

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

The Antibiotic Alternative: Balance Your Bugs Without the Drugs

How to Raise a Drug Free Family

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Joette’s Cold and Flu chart (Developing a Homeopathic Brain – A Cold, A Flu, A Cough; Which Is It; Which Remedy?)

Feminopathy: How You Can Correct Female Ailments Using Safe, Inexpensive and Effective Homeopathy

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 99 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:  Joette Calabrese here, folks. I’m happy that you’ve joined me for my podcast today. You’re in for a treat. From my virtual classroom, I’m privileged to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. Their successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep their triumphs a secret. I want you to hear the excitement my students experience, too. So, you can be inspired by their unique stories.

With the help from Kate, my reporter, I bring you a podcast series I call, “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity” or “Teens with Tenacity.” See how regular mothers and others — average folks who love healing those around them — have gone from freaking to fabulous by simply applying what they’ve learned using what I call Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:  Hi, I’m Kate, and I would like to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast. Today, we’re going to have a different type of a Mom with Moxie podcast. We’re actually going to be talking about “the big picture.”

Jordan is a big picture thinker, and I can’t wait for you all to hear what she has to say about the power of being a matriarch. So, Jordan, welcome to the podcast.

Jordan:  Thanks for having me, Kate.

Kate:  I am so excited because we’re going to be changing things up a little bit. You are going to be talking to us about the big vision. Like, what is the big picture? Why are we doing this as moms? Why are we using homeopathy, and what does this mean to us, and how does it empower us?

So, before we get started, Jordan, tell us about yourself.

Jordan:  Sure. I’ve got five little ones. I have all the way from eight years old down to nine months old: Terry, Simon Peter, Elijah, Thérèse and Felicity.

I homeschool them. I’ve been doing that now for a couple of years.

But before I was homeschooling, I was a youth minister for about 10 years. That’s kind of my other side passion is ministry, reaching out to teens. So that’s really heavy on my heart.

This May, I’m celebrating my 10-year anniversary, so that’s super-exciting.

I’m relatively new to homeopathy. This has really been only something I’ve been doing for now, like, maybe eight months. But I am just so passionate and excited to share what I’ve learned — and hopefully, to encourage those who are learning, too, along the way.

Kate:  Yes, I can’t wait to hear what you have to say. When we talked a little bit earlier, I was very excited that you wanted not just to talk about those individual success stories or the struggles that you might have with homeopathy, but to talk about how this really can change our family’s lives. How it can empower us!

You said that yourself, you’re very new to homeopathy. But at the same time, I feel like you have a lot of wisdom in this. So, I want to hear about what led you to finding out about homeopathy. How did that journey come about?

“Nourishing Traditions”

Jordan:  I’ve always been suspicious of the allopathic medical paradigm for a long time, but I didn’t know what to replace it with. I just kind of still went along with it for the most part, so gave Tylenol, Benadryl, things like that.

But then, I really, Kate, can boil it down to certain key events where something shifted in my thinking. And the first key event was when my mom handed me the book “Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon — and I would recommend any mom to get that book.

Kate:  What a great mom you had that she gave you that book! That’s awesome!

Jordan:  She did! I think she was surprised I read it. Because literally, she took it and gave it to me, and I think within a month, I had read it cover to cover.

I was just on my way to Minnesota. I had a long, 12-hour car ride from Michigan. So, I opened it up, and I read it. My husband was driving, so I was sitting in the passenger seat and just reading, reading. And it opened a huge door that I didn’t know was there.

I got into raw milk first. As I was reading it seeing that was a big thrust of Sally Fallon’s way of thinking, I was like, “Okay, let’s do raw milk.” That was a huge step for me. I was really nervous.

I remember Anthony, my husband, going to get the milk from the farmer’s market and bringing it home. I said a prayer before we drank it. I was like, “Please, Lord, I hope this is the right call,” because I’d been given lots of mixed messages about the safety and the efficacy of it.” But I thought, “I think this is what we are supposed to do.”

We went ahead, and we have been drinking it ever since. Love raw milk. (This was probably about a year and a half ago, by the way.)

Kate:  Can we talk for just a second about how you grew up? Was your mom very much into whole foods and Sally Fallon growing up? Was that the culture of your household, or is this something that your mom just found recently.

Jordan:  This is more recently for her. Growing up, it was pretty similar to what most people were doing in terms of diet. This was a slow build for my mom.

We have a very interesting family dynamic. I am the second oldest and then down to my youngest sibling who is 11. My mom has had a chance to parent the older siblings (and myself) in a different way. Now she is doing those more holistic ways with my younger siblings.

But no, when I was young it was pretty much typical diet and, along the way, sort of discovering this other direction to take her family.

As a young mother, I’m benefiting from her discoveries enormously.

Kate:  Did she also learn about homeopathy with you?

Jordan:  My older sister and I are leading the charge, and she’s following along, too. She’s open to it. She is an avid learner politically, nutritionally now. So, he is definitely on board.

We are kind of filling her in, like, we’re giving her remedies to try saying, “Hey, Mom, you got to buy this.”

She let me buy her a whole remedy kit. So, she’s on board. And we’re hoping eventually that she can start taking classes and really getting invested like my sister and I had been.

So, that was the first event.

The second one was my son’s ear infection which doesn’t sound like a good thing. But one night he awoke in the middle of the night with a really painful ear infection. I was able to stave that off with an onion. Onion …

Kate:  Poultice.

Jordan:  Onion poultice. Yes! I had read that in that book, “Nourishing Traditions.” I thought, “Great! We’re going to do the onion for Simon and Elijah.”

It worked for Simon. It did not work for Elijah.

It was really hard watching him writhing in pain, nothing was helping him. I even resorted to the typical Tylenol/Motrin alternating, and it was just not working. I remember thinking, “There has to be a better way. There has to be something I can do.”

That is the moment. I can pin it and say that is when the inner matriarch awoke in me, and I knew that I needed to start learning.

The morning comes, he’s still in a lot of pain, but I’m still holding out hoping I don’t have to take him to get the antibiotics. But then that whole day, he’s not doing well. So, I relented, and we took him and got him the antibiotics.

But I just kind of made that decision in me that never again — I am going to find a better way.

So, that’s the second key event that kind of spurred me along this journey.

Then, I would say another important event was a few months after the ear infection with my son, my niece came down with pertussis — which if anyone knows about that, that can be a very scary, serious illness. They, of course, gave antibiotics but that doesn’t help the symptoms of the sufferer.

I remember thinking, “Wow!” That was a moment again where the insufficiency, the inadequacy of the allopathic paradigm was just smack in my face again. I kept thinking in my innermost thoughts, “I have to keep searching for something. I can’t, as a mother, depend on this (in my opinion) failing medical paradigm.”

I kept searching, searching.

And then as I mentioned, I had gotten on to the Weston A. Price diet through the Sally Fallon book. So, I was doing raw milk. I was just starting to culture vegetables. I’m not a good cook. It sounds silly, like, how hard could it be to culture vegetables? But I was literally thinking I need someone to show me this.

So, I reached out to a fellow mom who had been doing that for a while. She came over to my house; we were chopping up veggies, putting them in the brine. We’re talking, and we chatted for a long time.

It wasn’t until the very end of our meeting that she just happened to say, “Have you ever heard of homeopathy? Have you ever heard of Joette Calabrese?” That was pretty much the end of our discussion. It wasn’t like we discussed it anymore or delved into it, because it was at the very end of our meeting.

But that’s all that I needed. As I say, if Weston A. Price opened the door, Joette blew it open!

Because once I delved into what Joette had to offer, I thought, “This is it! This is what I have been looking for. This is what my mother’s heart has been aching for. Something that I can start learning so I can take care of my sick child. I can take care of their needs. I don’t have to wait until nine o’clock in the morning when the urgent care opens, and I have to take them to the doctor — and all they’re going to give me are harmful drugs with side effects. I have something that I can learn, and that I can do!”

That to me was the gift from God. It was something that I can totally see His hand in each step of the way. Every event, every heartache, every failure, led up to that “aha moment,” and I am so grateful for it.

Kate:  It offered you a solution. It offered you hope. It offered you the feeling of empowerment.

Jordan:  Absolutely. I don’t think I could become the mother I am supposed to become without homeopathy. I truly believe that.

Kate:  From that moment, you decided I am going to learn about this, and you went onto Joette’s website? How did you learn then more about homeopathy?

Jordan:  It was a blur because once I discovered it, it was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. I couldn’t stop.

I think I went on the website, and I discovered she’s got classes! I love classes!

I’m kind of an academic by heart. I love learning. I love things being organized, as you know, Kate. I like things in an organized manner. I’m not a Google person that likes to Google things in kind of piecemeal information. I want it laid out systematically, comprehensively, intelligently.

So, when I saw Joette’s list of classes, I thought, “This is for me!” And it had what I was looking for, Antibiotic Alternative — and that was the first class I took.

I have since taken also the Drug-Free family course.

But I remember just begging my husband, “Please can we find the funds to do this class? Can I take it now?”

God bless him. He said, “Yes, you can do this. I know that you need this. This is what our family needs.”

So, right away, I mean, almost within a week of hearing about her, I was signed onto her Antibiotic Alternative class and just gobbled that up.

Kate:  Then you started a Study Group, too, right?

Learning is Key

Jordan:  Right. So, learning is key. Self-education is so critical to this. But I think another huge part of this is relationships.

So, I discovered that as much as I was learning, I needed women around me to support me, encourage me — obviously be another source of information — but primarily, I was looking for community support. That is why I began my first study group. Again, this was only a few months after I had started learning. But I thought I learned a lot, but I think what we can offer each other is support.

Kate:  Jordan, let’s stop there for a second. Tell us how you went about starting a study group because I know there are a lot of listeners that might be a little nervous about starting a study group. But they want the same thing as you, right? They would like a community of people to come alongside them and learn together and support one another.

So, tell us how you went about finding those people and starting the group.

Jordan:  The very first thing I did was to email. Remember that woman I talked to you about who came to my house to ferment carrots or vegetables? I reached back out to her, and I sent her an email. I said, “I’m so amazed, impressed with what you have shown me. What do you think about joining together and recruiting women?” Because I didn’t really know a lot of women besides my sister who could potentially be interested.

So, I teamed with another person is what I did — you know, that was of the same mindset. She talked to some of her women in her mom’s group. If any of you are a part of a mom’s group, a homeschool group? So, that’s where she reached out.

Then I had my sister who I was close with and invited her to consider doing it.

Then another friend who had never heard of homeopathy, but we had talked about holistic things before … cod liver oil, colloidal silver … things that indicated to me, “Okay, she’s probably somebody that would be interested.”

Then I sat on it for a while, and I would invite more people.

And then I did … I got some people back saying, “I’m not interested.”

And that’s okay. I think those of us that start groups have to be prepared for that.

Then I kept sitting and thinking, “Who else in my church? Who would be interested?” And then another woman came to mind. She was somebody that I knew drank raw milk.

I guess the way I did it was, number one, I teamed with another woman. Number two, I just considered those who I had seen developing what I think to be healthy lifestyle habits: raw milk, trying to use holistic things instead of drugs. So, that’s where I went with it. A lot of these women had not heard of homeopathy but were open once they were introduced to it.

Kate:  That’s what I did as well. I reached out to a lot of homeschool moms and asked them. You’d be surprised. Even if someone tells you no right now, they may at some point come back. It just may not be their time to learn it right this minute. But usually, they come around and want to know, “Hey, what are you doing that seems to be working really well.”

Great advice. Thank you.

Let’s move on to how you walked forward in this. You’ve taken a class; you have started a study group. I like what you’ve said about what Joette has given you. So, tell us about that.

Jordan:  I think many of us who have been part of Joette’s circle (I’ll call it) for a while, know what a gift she is. I mean, I’ve taken other classes and other subjects before. I love learning. I love studying things. What makes Joette uniquely different is not just that she has good information — which she absolutely has amazing information — but I think with Joette, she is not just a teacher; I consider her a mentor. That to me is critical in learning any life skill.

We live in an age I’d call the “Age of Google.” We’re used to “when I want to find something out, I just type it into my search bar. That’s how I find out information.”

That is how you find out information, but that’s not how you grow. That is not how you truly learn to acquire new life skills. That is not how we’re built. We are human beings; we’re flesh and blood. We need to be shown; we need to be mentored.

Even though Joette may not come into my home and make bone stock with me and be there to consult when I need, like, “Hey, my son has this, what kind of remedy should I give him?” but she has made herself available in other ways.

She has Facebook Lives, where you know she’s connecting with her people. She loves her people. She writes blogs endlessly. She has these classes. She has a real presence about her, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. That’s what I needed because I think mentoring is important.

As I mentioned, I was a youth minister before being a homeschool mom. And one of the things I learned in my years as a youth minister is that teens will not come to know God unless you walk with them. It is not enough for a youth minister like me or anyone else to get up there and preach and talk about God. “He is so amazing, and you guys need to read your Bible, and blah, blah, blah, and you guys need to pray.”

They want to be shown. They want to be shown by people who care about them.

That is how I feel about Joette. I know it sounds cheesy, but I think Joette cares about us. That is what has allowed me to really learn from her.

It has inspired me to want to continue learning because there are days where we are being pulled in different directions as moms, and there’s information overload. So, who do you look to? Who do you trust for your information?

Because Joette mentors and she cares and she imparts wisdom — she imparts a mindset — I think that’s what makes her approach so different than most people out there, even other homeopaths out there. So, I think those who have been learning under her would agree with me that Joette mentors, not just teaches.

I think, too, another thing to add to this is that motherhood can’t be Google. We need to be shown. Even if we’ve had good mothers or maybe we haven’t had good mothers, as we go through a mothering we need to be shown by other wise women.

How do we do this? How do we take care of our families?

We need to be inspired along the way. And I feel like Joette, once again, she fills that gap.

A lot of us are disconnected from the generations of mothers who have gone before us. We are really disconnected from the wisdom that many of these women knew. They knew how to take care of a fever or not take care of a fever — however you want to look at it. They knew what kinds of foods to give their kids. They knew that sunlight was important. They knew all these things that you would think that we would know now, but we’ve lost. We’ve lost that thread connecting us.

I feel like Joette kind of picks that thread back up and says, “Here’s the wisdom that you’ve been looking for. Here is how you do it.” That has been invaluable to me because I want to be mentored. I want to be shown and not just told.

Kate:  Just like the fermented veggies, right? Yeah?

Jordan:  Exactly.

Kate:  You want to have someone to come along side you and help you walk this path and you go one step further and you say that she empowers to be a …

Jordan:  Matriarch. Yes! Like I said, I think that that moment for me of realizing the difference between a mom and a matriarch was when my son was really ill with that ear infection. How awful it was watching him, and I could do nothing.

The way I see it, Kate — and some may disagree with me — but you are a mom by birth. You don’t have to grow into that. That’s what you are when you have a child, you are a mom. In my estimation, a matriarch is somebody now who has taken being a mom to the next level — a mother who has acquiring skill; who is seeking out the knowledge; who is making it an art to be a mother.

I looked up in the dictionary what a matriarch is. There are a couple different definitions, but one that I thought was super-poignant and that speaks to the way I’m looking at this is this:

It says, “An older woman who is powerful within a family or organization.”

And the word powerful caught my attention because I think a lot of us moms have abdicated that power to, in this case, let’s say, the medical field.

“Well, they know what’s best. They know what our child needs. We need a doctor to help us take care of our children.”

And not to say that there’s never a time for that. But I would say that for the most part, a lot of moms nowadays have given over the responsibility of mothering their child to the medical industry. And I can say that because that is where I was a year and a half ago. I was waiting for urgent care to open up when my son was sick because I felt like I couldn’t take care of him.

And that’s what didn’t sit right with my matriarch heart. It didn’t sit right with me.

Joette and her knowledge and her wisdom and her mentorship has given me back the power. In a sense, she has given me back that ability to be a matriarch.

I don’t know everything, for sure, but I’m learning. And I’ve already been able to take care of certain things in my family where I’d have been running to the doctor.

Now Joette has given me that ability to say, “No, I’m the one taking care of my child now. I can trust my judgment. I know what’s best.”

But again, as Joette says that that then puts the responsibility on me to learn, of course. But what a freeing feeling to know that I have that power as a mother now that I didn’t have before, and now I can be a matriarch.

Kate:  I love what you’re saying, Jordan. I think that is an amazing revelation. That is why we all love homeopathy, right? Because we feel empowered. We feel that we don’t have to fear. We feel like we can do it. We can be the healers in our family. We do know, we have an instinct as a mother that is built in.

So, now, we’ve gotten this big vision, right? We know what we can be, and what we want to be. But sometimes there are things that stand in the way of that. I think you have some good insight into that.

Polar Opposites: Complacency

Jordan:  As I reflect on my journey with homeopathy, I’ve come to see the different attitudes that can really halt us from pursuing this.

The first one that I would say … I call them the polar opposites. The first polar opposite I’ll talk about is the complacency — or maybe just the resistance to really getting into this. Complacency can come from several different places … maybe just that feeling of comfort because we feel comfort in maintaining the status quo. It is hard to break outside what you are already doing.

I was reminded of “The Truman Show.” Have you seen “The Truman Show”?

Kate:  No.

Jordan:  Okay, so, maybe our viewers haven’t seen it either. But if you haven’t, it’s a great movie. I would rent it, watch it.

It’s Jim Carrey, and the whole plot is about this man who has grown up from infancy to adulthood under the camera lens. He doesn’t know he’s being filmed and that his life is basically being broadcasted live to the whole world. But the whole world tunes in to watch Truman everyday doing his normal stuff, and he has no idea. He literally is put in a bubble where his city, his hometown, his job, everything is there. The whole movie is about them trying to keep him in this bubble because if he ventures outside of that bubble, he’ll realize, “This isn’t real, I’m not living in a real life.”

Then one day, he gets so fed up with the bubble, and he sets off to go across the ocean. It’s stormy, and he presses through the storm, and he gets to the end of this bubble, and his ship penetrates the end of the studio.

The end of the movie is — sorry, this is a spoiler alert, but … I just ruined this movie but it’s such a good analogy! The front of the boat penetrates the bubble. He realizes, “Wait a minute. This isn’t a real sky; this is a wall!”

There is literally a door to go outside of this bubble. He has to make a decision. “Am I going to open this door? Am I going to leave what’s comfortable? Am I going to leave the reality that I’m used to? Because I don’t know what’s on the other side of that door.”

And so, he has this conflict, this moment of decision. But he ends up opening the door and walking out.

And I feel like that’s for me, homeopathy. Taking this door that was opened. It is scary! It’s scary to step outside the normal, medical, allopathic paradigm because there’s a false sense of security there. But once you realize there’s more beyond this, it’s exciting, but it is scary. It definitely takes you outside your comfort zone.

That’s something that I think we have to be aware of in ourselves, that “Yes, we have to press beyond that storm … that door.”

That is good for us to keep in mind, too, when we’re sharing it with other people because it can be a little bit scary to think, “Hey, there’s this paradigm. It’s amazing, but you’ve got to take responsibility; you’ve got to learn; you’ve got to grow as a person to use this.” That’s a big challenge that we as moms can and should take, but it’s difficult. So, that’s, I guess, important to keep in mind.

Kate:  That’s why those Study Groups come in handy, actually, because you have those other moms, those other women, to walk alongside of you.

Jordan:  Right. I think that’s why the relationships are so key.

Kate:  Jordan, you mentioned the polar opposites. Tell us now the other extreme of the complacency.

Polar Opposites: The Savior

Jordan:  Right. So, we can be complacent or resistant, but then on the other side, we can go to the other extreme where we take this, and we become in our own minds, “the Savior.” We’re going to fix everything! We’re going to fix every ill that comes our way.

Not that that eagerness, that enthusiasm, is bad — I guess I’m speaking about myself here — when it becomes a compulsion to fix everything, or that there’s this idea that I can fix everything, that can lead to burnout. It can lead to frustration.

The reason why I say that is because I was starting to experience that earlier on when I had been introduced to all this wonderful information.

Just like “The Truman Show,” I had opened the door and stepped out. There’s this whole, brand new world! Like a kid in the candy store, I’m going around just grabbing up all the information that I can hold.

Then my kids started to experience these coughs. I thought, “Great, I’m going to tackle this. I know what to do.” And, I will tell you, I pulled out Joette’s Cold and Flu chart. I was looking on all of her blogs. I was looking on the student Facebook page. I mean, I tried so many remedies: Kali bich, Pulsatilla, Rumex, Spongia, Drosera. I mean, I was just like at my wit’s end, I could not get these coughs to go away.

I had come to this realization of I can’t put all of this pressure on myself to save and fix everything.  

Homeopathy is a wonderful, life-changing paradigm, but it can’t make me a savior, in a sense, I guess, where now I’m the one who’s going to fix everything in my family. Like I said, it can lead to burnout. It can lead to frustration. We are learning; we are growing. Sometimes failure is part of that growth.

I’ll be honest, my first experience of homeopathy wasn’t win, win, win, win. It was kind of a string of failures as I was learning how to use these remedies. I could have been easily taken off the path if I had allowed that frustration to kind of overshadow the excitement that I initially had.

So, I really had to temper myself. I had to kind of talk myself down and say, “You know, I need to give myself a break here. I need to give myself permission to just learn and grow along with this paradigm.”

Matriarchs are not formed overnight. I am still young, and there’s lots of years ahead of me. So, even these failures I can use to put in my toolbox. Put that down as, “I remember going through that. I remember what that was like.” I think wisdom goes a long way in determining, “When do I act?”

I remember Joette — I don’t know where it was because I listened to all of her podcasts, have read all of her blogs. So, I don’t know where she said this, but I remember her saying, “When you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.”

That was a big “aha moment” because I’m a Type A, get-it-done type of personality. And it’s hard for me to sit back and not do anything. But I agree with that — unless it’s a true emergency — sometimes the wise matriarch says, “You know what, I’m just going to let this ride out. I’m going to comfort my child. I’m going to observe my child. I am going to be there for my child, but I don’t know what remedy to give. And that’s okay.”

Like I said, it’s part of learning. I think that’s important for a lot of moms out there, maybe who might be experiencing failure with this and thinking, “Maybe it’s not for me. Maybe I’ll never figure this out.”

Don’t think that. That’s part of the journey. It’s part of being a matriarch, quite honestly. Just to stick with it and be encouraged and keep learning.

Kate:  You know, you’re right. We don’t always get it right. No matter how many years of experience you have with homeopathy.

Let’s jump now to some of the ways that you’ve used homeopathy. Tell us just a couple quick stories about your family, and what you’ve done.

Jordan:  My first big win — and this was an exciting one for me — was my son Simon when he had been having this cough for several weeks. He was starting to get better. This was right around Christmas time. I remember it vividly because it really impacted our ability to really celebrate because he was not feeling well.

I remember he woke up the morning after Christmas Day. He was not doing well — heavy chest coughing really heavily. He’s six years old. He’s a little guy … sort of. In my eyes, he’s little. My husband looks at me, and he says, “I think we need to take him into the doctor.”

And all of my training (I had read Dr. Robert Mendelssohn’s book like Joette recommended), I’m thinking, “Oh, man, I don’t know. I think we should really keep trying these remedies.” 

Anthony was like, you know, “I don’t know. We really got to change something.”

Then I thought about it, and I remembered in the Antibiotic Alternative class, Joette talked about those really bad chest colds that could be bronchitis, could be pneumonia, but certain remedies work for all of those. So, I went back, and I listened to that.

I googled “Joette Calabrese bronchitis,” “Joette Calabrese pneumonia,” and just comparing notes and seeing kind of what remedies she had used for these conditions.

That day I started administering them to him. Within four hours, he had a huge shift. He had been lying in his bed earlier, and now he was out playing and running in the yard — still had the cough, but huge mental shift, huge behavioral shift.

Kept administering the remedies. And then that night was big. Because up to that point for about two weeks, during the night, you’d hear him coughing, coughing, and it was really concerning to me. But that night, no cough! That was huge. I knew, “Okay, this is the right way; this is the right direction,”

You know, the convalescence period took a little bit. But, man, I could really see a difference within, like I said, four hours. And then by 24 hours — significant shift. I was less worried. I was not as concerned. He was doing great. I was doing great because I was feeling better. It was a huge win for me because I didn’t have to take them into the doctor.

Had I not taken Joette’s class, had I not been reading her blogs, I would have been dragging him in the day after Christmas into the doctor. That was just so freeing to see, “Wow, this is what it could be like. I can really do this!”

So, that was my first big win.

The other one that happened shortly after that was my daughter. She had, lo and behold, an ear infection very similar to the one that she and my son had the previous year. As I mentioned that previous year, both had to be on antibiotics. But this time, I was ready, I had taken the class.

So, that night, she woke up in the middle of the night holding her face. At first, I did not know what was going on, but I reverted to my training: observe, observe, observe. I’m just watching her trying to figure out, “What is it?”

Because I think that’s important, too, for us moms … is that sometimes we need to just spend some time observing, to really get the full picture of what’s happening so that we know what remedy to choose. I sort of didn’t do this here. I observed for a little bit, but because my anxiousness to help her was so strong, I thought, “She has got a sinus infection!” (The way she was holding her face, describing her pain — and she’s not really describing it. She was three.)

So, I started administering that protocol to her and no change after three doses.

But I kept observing her. I kept looking to see, “Okay, is there a shift in her symptoms? Is there a shift in her behavior?”

She was still pretty much doing the same thing. It looks like she was still in a lot of pain. But then I noticed she was holding closer to her ear. That reminded me of what she was doing last year when she had her ear infection. I thought, “That’s what it is! It’s an ear infection!”

So, after several hours of misdiagnosing and mistreating it, I reverted to good old Pulsatilla for ear infections — administered that every 30 minutes because she was in quite a lot of pain. As I mentioned, I had already been giving her the wrong remedies for a while. So, I kind of wanted to see if we would get some improvement.

First dose, second dose, third dose, no change.

I was thinking, “Man! Really? Come on! Why isn’t this working?” I was kind of starting to have that panic that I think a lot of us moms can relate to when maybe it’s not working.

But I thought, “No, no, no. Four-dose rule, four-dose rule. I got to stick to the four-dose rule,” because I knew I hadn’t gotten to that four-dose yet to really see was this the right choice. I gave her that fourth dose, and I kid you not, after two minutes, fell right to sleep for rest of the night. No pain the next day. It was gone; it was finished.

I point that out because number one, it’s important to remember your training in those moments of fear of panic.

Even taking a step further back, to know your training, you have to be trained. So, reading as much as you can, listening to the podcast, taking a class. When you make it second nature to you, those facts, those thoughts come more readily to you when you are distressed.

If it’s kind of still like a second language to you … homeopathy, because it is like a second language — all these words, all these ways of thinking, it is like learning a second language. Like, anytime you learn a second language, you have to be immersed.

When we immerse ourselves in this world of homeopathy by listening to it occasionally throughout the day or whatever, it becomes second nature so that in those moments that’s where our mind goes when our child’s really not doing well, and it is easy to abandon and panic. But that kind of staid me in that moment when I didn’t see a shift in her yet, and I was starting to get really concerned. It took me back to that time where I was not able to help my son when he was really sick. And I thought, “No, I’ve got to stay the course. I’ve got to see this through.”

It did, it really worked.

Now that doesn’t happen every time. But it just showed me how important it is to, again, be trained, remember my training and stick to it in those moments.

Kate:  Jordan, those are some really great examples and really wise words that you said in those success stories that you have. I love how you said to observe, and that’s key.

And how change … there may not be a shift in the physical thing that’s going on, but there’s an emotional shift.

Then the other thing that you said with your daughter was that four-dose rule, and how when it worked, she fell asleep, and she slept. Both of them — you talked about them sleeping well that night.

Those are great things to look for because sometimes we don’t see that physical shift like we want to, but the emotional is really the first thing that seems to change a lot of times. So, really great observations, Jordan. Thank you for sharing that with us.

I want to wrap this podcast up by just having you give us some words of wisdom. You have so many great things that you’ve shared, but just give us your ending thoughts.

Jordan:  I want to close by repeating a quote that Joette has in her Feminopathy course. It’s by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. He says, “To a great extent, the level of any civilization is a level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice and goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”

So, if the kind of women we are impact society, how much more do we impact society based on the level of mothers that we are or that we become?

Are we moms by birth? By just happenstance? By going through the motions? Or are we aspiring to be powerful matriarchs? I know some of what we’ve talked about today can seem daunting or challenging. It can be because it requires that we step outside the norm, our comfort zone, what we’ve been used to what most people are doing around us.

But I would say you have it in you. You have been built to be a matriarch. So, grab hold of what Joette has to offer.

Joette:  As I hope you know by now, on my blog, podcasts and Facebook Live, I offer as many protocols for simple conditions as I can — for free, without affiliates or advertising.

But let me be clear. When it comes to more complex conditions, it’s key that you learn how to use these medicines properly. I want you to be well-trained. So, I save discussions of the more involved methods for my courses in which I walk students through each method with step-by-step training.

In these podcasts, I focus on those students of mine who have already tunneled in and learned how to take care of themselves, family, friends, and pets, and even livestock using homeopathic medicine. Many of these students began their education by participating in one of my Gateway to Homeopathy study groups. And now, after taking one or more of my courses, they’re well-trained to use my specific brand of homeopathy.

I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you to follow in their footsteps. With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

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

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

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

In this podcast, we cover:

01:27    Fictional Girl Named Maddy

05:58    Number Rating System

15:58    Food Intolerance

18:58    Determining what is most important

25:06    Sprezzatura

Kate: This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 98 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette: This is Joette Calabrese, and I’d like to welcome you to the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast. Women and men worldwide are taking back control of their families’ health and learning how to heal their bodies naturally, safely and effectively.

So, if you’re hungry to learn more, you’ve come to the right place. Stay tuned as we give you the tools — and the inspiration — you need as I share my decades of experience and knowledge using this powerful medicine we call homeopathy.

Kate:  Hi, this is Kate, and I want to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast. I’m here with Joette today.

Hi, Joette!

Joette:  Hi, Kate, always great to talk like this.

Kate:  Yes, we have so much fun on these podcasts.

Today, we are going to be talking about what it’s like when you first start using homeopathy, and you are so excited. Right? You finally found homeopathy, and you’re so excited. You’re trying it for some conditions, and it’s working.

And now, you want to treat everything, right?

Joette:  Now let’s make our bodies perfect and live forever.

Fictional Girl Named Maddy

Kate:  Right.

So, what we’re going to do today is we’re going to talk about this fictional girl named Maddy. I’m going to give you an example of a case, Joette.

We see this all the time. I’m sure you do. I hear people in the Study Groups who get excited, and then they want to treat everything. They want to heal every single symptom that they have, their family members have, their friends have — which is great, right?

Joette:  But enthusiasm needs to be tempered sometimes, and we have to pull back and be a little more logical.

Kate:  We’re going to flesh this out. I’m just giving you an example, Joette.

Maddy has osteoarthritis, right? She has pain in her joints. She has food intolerances which gives her bloating and gas. She has alopecia so maybe some thyroid issues. She has white spots on her nails. She’s 20 pounds overweight. She doesn’t sleep well at night, and she has a little patch of eczema on her neck or her back.

Joette:  How old is Maddy? It’s most likely that Maddy is not in her 20s. It can happen. But most likely the osteoarthritis is usually the tipoff that she’s older. She’s postmenopausal. She’s in her 60s, most likely 20 pounds overweight. All of this is super-common for someone in the late 60s, for example. (This is fictitious, right?)

Kate:  Exactly.

Joette:  Maddy is not real, so let’s put her exactly where she would fit in the scope of demographic. I would say Maddy is probably about 65.

Kate:  You see a lot of Maddys, I would imagine, Joette, because this may be some typical conditions that people in that age range are dealing with, yes?

Joette:  Yes. You know what you didn’t mention about Maddy? My guess is that she’s got anxiety, too.

Kate:  Of course, she does.

Joette:  You bet. You bet. Things that come her way or her family’s way, she worries about her grandchildren. You know, it keeps her up at night sometimes. You did say insomnia, right? Yes, she has insomnia.

Kate:  Maddy is really excited, Joette. She’s just taken some of your courses. She joined your Study Groups.

Joette:  Down, Maddy. Down!

Kate:  She’s listened to all the podcasts, read the blogs, and she wants to tackle the world!!

Joette:  Yes, yes, great! That’s good. We don’t want to extinguish this excitement!

But what we want to do is then put it all together for her so she can understand how she approaches something like this.

Kate:  And Maddy’s dog has a tick disease. We could go on and on, right?

Joette:  Yes, well, her husband’s got, you know, sciatica pain, and he’s about 40 pounds overweight. He has chronic constipation.

We could go on and on and on because that is the profile. It’s “baby boomer” profile. That’s basically what we’re describing here.

The most important thing that we have to do first is to see what is it that’s keeping Maddy down?

Is it the alopecia?

In other words, if her hair is so thin that she looks like she has almost no hair — she’s starting to wear a wig — then by all means, that’s really important to her!! That’s going to change everything for her, especially for a woman. That is a big deal for a woman.

But if we’re talking about alopecia in which, well, her hair’s falling out a little bit too much, and it’s thinner. It’s not the same as it was when she was in her 20s, of course. Whose anything is the same as when we were in our 20s?

If it was just a mild case then we can put that on the back burner for now. It’s just not as important.

And, it might fall into the category — like you said — it could be thyroid. We don’t know that. She has not gotten tested. We never treat just because we suspect there could be a thyroid problem. We really do want a diagnosis.

Whether it’s a diagnosis from a conventional doctor — which is what I urge folks to do — or it’s your own diagnosis — meaning, “I’ve got a fever, I don’t need a diagnosis to be told I’ve got a fever.”

Sometimes it’s obvious, and we can make our own decisions.

Or “My joints ache, and it’s probably arthritis because that’s the definition of arthritis.”

So, getting back to the alopecia; I would put that on the back burner.

But she also has arthritis, and we’re going to assume that it’s not rheumatoid arthritis. (It’s too big of a category to tackle on something like a podcast.)

But osteoarthritis is, of course, super-common in women postmenopausal, especially in their 60s. Now, that all depends too. Is this osteoarthritis absolutely over-the-top for her? Are her knees very painful? Does she have to flip around in bed trying to get comfortable because her hips ache? Is she so stiff in the morning that she can barely walk, get out of bed? And she can limber up, but there’s still no real comfort?

I would give it on a scale of 1 to 10 … let’s say her sufferings from this arthritis are maybe around a 6. That’s pretty significant.

Number Rating System

Kate:  Joette, you bring up a really good point: that number-rating system, 1 to 10 (10 being the most severe). That’s important, right, as we’re going through these conditions — to assign it a number?

Joette:  It’s important to assign a number so that the person who’s taking the case has something from which to springboard when they review the case in two months.

I had someone respond to me the other day, she said to me, “I hate that number system because it’s so subjective.” But that’s exactly why it’s valuable!

The only person who can report on it is the person who’s experiencing it. Unless you’re reporting on a dog or a baby or someone who’s unconscious, then you can give it a number based on your observation.

But your own personal subjective number is very valuable because when we compare it, we’re going to be comparing it back to that subjective person’s take on it. So, you want to use the same person.

Let’s say you’re observing — excuse me for going off on a tangent — but let’s say there’s a dog that’s sick, and the vet says, “Oh, this pain in this dog has got to be a 9.”

And the homeowner or the dog owner is thinking, “Well, gee, I thought it was a 3.”

Well, you better stick with either 3 or 9 or both, and then make sure that you’re comparing that in a month or two when you need to look over what you’ve accomplished with the homeopathic medicines.

Which one are you using? Use the same criteria. You need that common denominator.

Kate:  Okay, let’s get back to Maddy. I didn’t mean to take us on …

Joette:  I think I did it. Yeah, it’s me. It’s always me.

Kate:  So, we’ve talked about her thinning hair. We’ve talked about the arthritis.

Joette:  Right, the arthritis is … let’s say, it’s a 6.

So, he also has insomnia. What does that mean? Does “insomnia” mean it’s every night she can’t fall asleep for three hours? That’s pretty significant.

If instead it’s, “Well, once a week, I wake up at two in the morning. I go to the bathroom. I go back to bed, and I don’t fall asleep for an hour.” That’s not so bad.

It’s not horrible, especially if she doesn’t have to get up in the morning and work, and she can sleep in or she can take a little power nap for half an hour in the middle of the day. That’s not such a big deal.

But if she reports to us that insomnia is, “My gosh, this is ruining my life.” I’ve worked with people who don’t sleep more than three hours every night, and it’s driving them mad!

Now that goes to the top. The hair’s gone way down at the bottom; the arthritis is a 6. If it’s very severe insomnia, we could call that maybe even an 8 or 9 with insomnia! That goes to the top!

Now, let’s say this anxiety is pretty intense, too — but only sometimes. Let’s say, it’s only when she sees bad news on the news. (Oh, wait a minute. That’s kind of all the time. That’s what they report on. That’s how they get the ratings. Are you kidding? Nobody is going to listen to good news. It’s only going to be bad news.)

So, it’s only when she watches the news that she starts getting anxiety. But she can control it, is my point. Let’s say she can control it by simply staying away from those kinds of things or reading things online or news reports that are a little bit more lighthearted or more positive.

So, we could maybe put that off to the side. But let me also point out when I’m looking at insomnia and anxiety, both of those are often central nervous system. Already, we’re starting to clump two possibilities together. There could be possibly one medicine that would kill two birds with one stone.

Let’s go back to the other areas.

She’s got food intolerances; she gets bloating when she eats wheat. Let’s say Maddy is eating wheat, and she refuses to change the diet. She just doesn’t want to do that. I don’t want to make her sound stubborn. But you know, some people have no choice, and they have to eat wheat because that’s what the family eats, et cetera, et cetera. It’s too hard.

So, she’s eating it. Now, if she’s eating wheat, and it’s causing bloating, it could also be causing her arthritis. It could also, of course, be causing the weight gain that she’s got.

But if on the other hand, she’s got gluten intolerance (wheat intolerance), and she’s got bloating, but she stays away from it! So, she hasn’t eaten wheat in two years, and so the bloating is gone because of it — let’s put that on the back burner.

Because if she can abstain from that wheat for a while — while we clear everything else up — we can go back and pick that up later on so that she is able to eat wheat. Because, of course, the whole goal of true health is to have freedom! The freedom would be from dietary restraints.

If she’s doing all right … Let’s say she’s doing all right. She knows wheat’s a problem. She knows she bloats from it, and she knows she gains extra weight from it. But she doesn’t eat it now. Let’s put that on the back burner because we got bigger fish to fry here.

Remember, now, she also has this eczema — or a patch of rash that’s on the back of her neck. Could be psoriasis; could be eczema.

Now if this is keeping her up at night … (we don’t know that; we don’t know the whole case). If this is keeping her up at night, and that’s the cause of the insomnia, then we’ve got something to consider here because we’ve got medicines that will cover not only the itching at night, but also insomnia. So, that could be covered.

What I’m doing when I’m taking this case, I’m writing down all my medicines — all the possible medicines depending on how severe they are. And then we edit!

It’s like writing a novel. We want to be wordsmiths. We want to get it precise, as tight as we can. We don’t want to just add it all up and just throw it at this person so that Maddy can take just about anything — a medicine for every specific condition. That’s sloppy work, and that’s not what we’re looking for.

Kate:  Joette, that’s what I was going to ask you. I think that’s a tendency — when we first learn about these protocols and learn about homeopathy — is we write down this huge list of conditions. Then we want to take a medicine for each one of those. You’re saying that that’s not exactly how to approach it.

Joette:  It’s a good way to start structuring your thinking. You’re not going to actually use all these medicines that you’re writing down. In fact, that is absolutely the opposite of what we’re doing. Instead, what we’re doing is wordsmithing.

We’re choosing medicine just like we choose words in writing a novel. We choose them as carefully as we can.

But we throw all the ideas out. There are no bad ideas, so to speak. But all we’re doing is laying it out so we can look at it, so we don’t forget our train of thought.

But then we go back, and we choose one word, for example, when we’re writing that will cover many concepts, or one word that deeply represents the feeling that you’re trying to portray as the author. That’s the same thing with homeopathy. We’re looking at one condition, two conditions, three conditions, and we’re going to try to find one medicine that can cover all of those on a very deep level.

Let me give you an example.

When we talk about insomnia, and let’s say, that rash is itchy, and it does wake her. (Or let’s say, it doesn’t even wake her. It’s just a very itchy rash. It’s really maddening.) But if it wakes her, this puts this remedy that I’m thinking of in a clearer light, and that is Coffea 200.

That’s a medicine that we use specifically for three of the conditions that Maddy has. One is insomnia. It’s a great medicine for wakefulness. It’s a great medicine for not falling asleep.

It’s a great medicine for itchiness, especially itchiness that might attend at night.

It’s also a great medicine for anxiety.

We’ve just killed four birds with one stone with one medicine. Instead of giving Ignatia for anxiety and Coffea fear for sleep (et cetera, et cetera and going all the way down the line), we’re going to use one medicine. Even though I’ve written all those other ones down as possibilities, we come up with one medicine.

As we’re writing these medicines down, it’s becoming clearer and clearer. Coffea might be the one that will cover all four. In fact, if we crack open our materia medica, we will find that that’s exactly what Coffea has the ability to do.

By killing those four birds with one stone, we’ve got something that can address all four of those conditions.

Kate:  Joette, as you were talking about this, I was looking at the list, and I was thinking that also we could possibly say that the food intolerance and that patch of itchy skin and the sleep …

Joette:  And the arthritis.

Kate:  Might all tie into a medicine as well.

Joette:  Food intolerance. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So, that is something that we want to very seriously consider. We’ve written that down!

We write down the medicines that are specific for food intolerances, for example, Bovista might be one; Calc carb could be another; Lycopodium could be another. There are many … Carbo veg could be another.

Those are all remedies that we want to potentially consider for food intolerances — especially to wheat. But we haven’t gotten that far. We don’t know that much about her, but we’re definitely going to write that down because it is clearly a part of this picture.

Kate:  Don’t forget she has those white spots on her nails also.

Joette:  Right. Well, we’ll go back to how we’re going to kind of tie this all together.

But the white spots on the nails is something that a lot of people like to use as well. “That means it’s a zinc deficiency or magnesium deficiency or this or that.”

In homeopathy — at least the way that I look at it — we don’t look at it from that point of view. I want to look at what is a pathology.  I don’t see white marks on nails as a pathology. It’s not causing pain. It’s not disrupting her life. It’s not big enough.

It’s something that will possibly inadvertently melt away by changing some of these other conditions so that they become less of an issue.

And yes, it could easily be something to do with her mineral uptake which we already know could potentially be a problem because she’s got food intolerances.

When you have food intolerance, then the gut is off, and many satellite conditions fall to the wayside once that’s cleared up.

Food Intolerance

Now we’ve also got the possibility of …

I put the food intolerance away for a while. But you bring up a very important point, and that is that maybe we want to keep this food intolerance as something important.

You know, a lot of times people don’t even report to me that they have a food intolerance because they’ve been not eating wheat or dairy or soy or anything, corn, or so many foods for so long that they’ve practically forgotten that they can’t eat these foods.

I still consider that a food intolerance because, again, we want to be able to eat anything. I don’t suspect that you should eat just anything, but we want the freedom to be able to do so.

Let’s go back to that, Kate. I love that you brought that up that we might use a medicine such as … let’s say, we use Bovista. We would use that for the food intolerance that could then clear up all of the other … potentially or help clear up.

Meanwhile, we’re also going to clear up the arthritis, the hair loss, the rash on the back of the neck, even the anxiety, even the sleeplessness, it could all stem from the gut. We’re not going to really speculate. We’re just going to hope that perhaps that might touch it.

So, we use something like Bovista for food intolerances.

We would also use, if the joints are very painful, we’re going to use something like Symphytum for the joints and maybe Rhus tox because of the way she’s experiencing that.

We might mix Symphytum and Rhus tox together and Bovista — that’s basically two medicines essentially.

Then we go to Coffea because of the itching, sleeping, anxiety and wakefulness.

Now we have three medicines. That gives us a whole schedule. That covers an awful lot.

All of the other niggly conditions — that may or may not present here or there or daily that are not noteworthy but just something that she doesn’t care for so much — may fall to the wayside, including the weight which will take time. Weight doesn’t generally fall off quickly using homeopathy in this fashion. But it will help curb the destiny of even more weight gain.

Kate:  Okay, so. We’ve given Maddy a schedule of some medicines to take. We’ve kind of made it all into a tidy little package. Maddy is going along day-to-day. She’s taking her homeopathy.

Now Joette, she gets a cold, and it’s not just a little cold. Because you’ve said often, if we get a cold, sometimes just let it run its course. We don’t need to treat every little thing with homeopathy.

But this is a cold that’s really got her down, and so she wants to use — maybe it is influenza even — now she wants to use some medicines, homeopathic medicines, for that.

What should she do? Should she keep taking her medicines for the chronic conditions and then add on top of that the medicines for the symptoms that she’s treating for this acute condition?

Or should she stop taking the chronic medicines while she treats this acute condition?

Determining what is most important

Joette:  Yes, this is a common question. The way that I see it is if it is a cold in which she can just take it easy for a couple of days, make some bone stock, and make sure she stays hydrated, take a couple naps throughout the day here and there and let it run its course, then I would likely encourage someone like that to leave it alone.

If, however, it turns out to be influenza, and it’s something really big, then by all means you could add an influenza protocol on top of that. No doubt about it!

One of the medicines that I like for the onset because we don’t know whether or not we’ve got the flu or cold or what it is at the very beginning, then you use something like Oscillococcinum made by Boiron.

You can add that in. You’re not taking it at the same moment as the other medicines, but you’re adding it into the schedule of the other three medicines that we’re already using.

Stay with the original because it’s worth staying with them.

But let’s say it became really serious. Let’s say, instead of a cold, she got hit by a car. Now she’s in the hospital, and we’re worried about a ruptured spleen. We’re worried about internal bleeding.

Do all those other medicines … are they still valuable? I would say we’re putting those way off to the side. Those are for the future when Maddy can recover from her automobile accident.

It’s all a matter of degree. It’s all a matter of hierarchy because now she’s got to deal with something much bigger than food intolerances, eczema, arthritis, insomnia, anxiety, alopecia.

We put that to the side.

Once she completely recovers, and she’s all better — now it’s six, eight months later and she’s doing much better now — and now we may have some residual problems from the accident. Maybe she’s still got some aches and pains from it. We might add something, we might add Arnica to this. But then we can return to the original schedule and get her up and running again.

I can’t imagine that if she were in an automobile accident that she would even be considering her alopecia, her food intolerances or perhaps even her joint pain.

Kate:  But even if it’s a serious case of influenza, and she is down for the count for days, she again might put those to the side, right?

Joette:  Yes, she might. Yes, absolutely. It’s not a horrible thing to do. You have to base it on what is most important.

You know, if you have six kids, and they’re all healthy, and then one of them is overseas and gets malaria, then another one has got the flu, and another one just fell out of a tree and sprained his ankle, how do you determine which one needs the most attention and needs the most concentrated effort on the mother’s part?

I mean, we have to say the child who fell out of the tree and sprained his ankle, that’s not great. Toss something at him, and off he goes. Or put the kid who’s sick to bed, but now you’ve got to deal with bigger fish. When that occurs, it’s just like triaging anything in life. That’s really all we’re doing is determining what is most important.

Now remember, there are times when alopecia, for example, and anxiety become so big (especially in a woman’s life), that it’s all she can see, and think, and hear, and sleep on it, and wakes with it, and has nightmares about it. Now that, too, could become big enough that now she’s obsessing to the point where that is very important as well. (Not in light of the automobile accident but certainly in light of the scenario before she had the automobile accident. That could be one of the more important conditions that we look at.)

But if it’s simple alopecia or some hair fall, then I wouldn’t give it a lot of thought during an acute.

Kate:  All right. So, Joette, we’re going along, and Maddy has her protocols. She knows what she’s doing for all these chronic conditions. She knows how to treat the occasional acute things that might come up.

But! Now it’s a week later, two weeks later, and now she remembers, “Oh, yeah. Every once in a while I get this little eye twitch or eye flutter, and that bugs me. It doesn’t last too long, but I remember that I have that. And, I’ve just learned from your courses something that might help that.”

Then another couple of days later, “I remember, yes, oh my gosh, my feet! They get these cracks. It’s now dry, it’s winter.”

Then a week later, she remembers, “Oh, my goodness, these hangnails are really bugging me. There must be some cell salt that I can take for these hangnails.”

All these little conditions…

This happens to me. I’m not getting on anyone because of these things happening. They think about it, and how can we deal with this homeopathically — because it’s happened to me. When I consult with you, I present all these things. Then a week, two weeks later, a month later, new things come up. Or I remember things that I didn’t talk to you about. Now I’m thinking, “Now, what should I do for that?”

What do you advise to Maddy?

Joette:  What happens is because we know that certain homeopathic medicines can approach those issues — and that’s all taught in the Gateway to Homeopathy course. For example, Mag phos is known for eye fluttering or muscle twitching and that kind of thing. Cracked skin is really greatly addressed by using Calc fluor, et cetera. So, we can’t help but want to treat that.

But that’s too many medicines. It’s far too many. You can use those medicines for those conditions if that’s all you’re treating. But you’ve got bigger fish to fry, Maddy!

Stick with the medicines that you need right now, even if you’ve never had that car accident.

If you’ve got very achy joints that are quite painful, and you’re flipping around in bed from it, and your skin is driving you nuts in the middle of the night, and you can’t sleep, and you have anxiety, let’s work with the things that are the most prominent. Because by doing so … and the food intolerances, et cetera … by doing so, we may find that those little issues will fall away. In fact, not only may we find that, it often happens that way.

Kate:  Joette, we’ve talked about a lot of conditions for our Maddy and talked about how she could go a number of different ways. Can you take all this information and bring it all together and wrap it up in a nice package?

Sprezzatura

Joette:  Sure. One of my favorite words in Italian is “sprezzatura.” I talk about it a lot.

It means that what appears to be nonchalant — kind of a way of concealing all the art that comes behind something. Behind what someone does or what someone says, or how they appear, seems to be without effort — almost without thought behind it. Yet, it’s very elegant and gorgeous in the end.

So, sprezzatura is what we’re looking for. All the work that you’ve put into it, what we want it to do is to be refined in the end with that beautiful, simple schedule of only a few medicines — perhaps only even one, but sometimes more often than not, three or four medicines — that encapsulates the entire person as much as we can in those areas that they need the most help.

So, Leonardo da Vinci said it best, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Joette:  As I hope you know by now, on my blog, podcasts and Facebook Live, I offer as many protocols for simple conditions as I can — for free, without affiliates or advertising.

But let me be clear. When it comes to more complex conditions, it’s key that you learn how to use these medicines properly. I want you to be well-trained. So, I save discussions of the more involved methods for my courses in which I walk students through each method with step-by-step training.

I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you. With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

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

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

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

06:16    Food Intolerance

09:25    Protocols or Remedies

11:47    Accurate Diagnosis

23:12    Travel with Homeopathic Medicines

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Courses page

When a Cold or Flu Hits Hard, Hit Back

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 97.

Joette:  Joette Calabrese here, folks. I’m happy that you’ve joined me for my podcast today. You’re in for a treat. From my virtual classroom, I’m privileged to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. Their successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep their triumphs a secret. I want you to hear the excitement my students experience, too. So, you can be inspired by their unique stories.

With the help from Kate, my reporter, I bring you a podcast series I call, “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity” or “Teens with Tenacity.” See how regular mothers and others — average folks who love healing those around them — have gone from freaking to fabulous by simply applying what they’ve learned using what I call Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:  Hi! I’m Kate, and I want to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast. I’m here with Regina today, and she has lots of good tips to share with you. So, get your pen and your paper out and get ready to take some notes.

Regina, welcome to the podcast!

Regina:  Thank you, Kate. Great to be here.

Kate:  Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where you live, your family?

Regina:  Well, I’m originally from New England, but I’ve lived in Annapolis, Maryland for the last 19 years. I’ve been with my husband … we’ve been married 40 years now. I have a stepson and daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, and my sister and her daughter and husband and stepchildren, and some other family in the area. So, we get to spend a lot of time together.

Kate:  It’s kind of fun because some of your family actually uses homeopathy as well. You get to share that with them. Tell us a little bit about that.

Regina:  Yes, that’s been great. I’m very fortunate. All the family members are pretty open to it. My husband became sold on it when we fixed his gout.

My daughter-in-law has really taken to it. It’s been great fun because it’s given us a great subject matter to get close … because of always talking back and forth on text:

“What are you using for this? And what are you using for that?”

So, it’s been great.

Kate:  You have a homeopathy study buddy built right into your family.

Regina:  Yes!

Kate:  Wonderful.

Okay, so you have taken every one of Joette’s courses, is that correct?

Regina:  Gateway to Homeopathy and every one of her courses. And I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned in each and every one of her courses.

Every time she says she’s doing a new course I get so excited because I know I’m going to learn so much, and then you can refer back to it over and over and over again.

Kate:  Actually, you were in one of the study groups that I led quite a while ago. That’s so fun!

Regina:  That is right, right, exactly, back in the beginning.

Kate:  Yeah, that was a while ago.

You’ve also consulted with Joette.

Regina:  Yes, I started consulting with Joette back in February 2017, because my headaches had gotten so bad. And it’s so much fun talking with her. I look forward to every session.

She has a great way of handling not only adults, but I’ve seen her interact with teenagers and preteens. She just makes every situation so manageable. She doesn’t get thrown by anything, and she’s experienced so many things. I don’t think there’s a condition she hasn’t ever heard of!

So, it’s been great working with her. That, combined with the classes, has been a deep-dive education over the last three years in homeopathy.

Kate:  How did you get to homeopathy? Take us back just a little bit and tell us about your journey.

Regina:  I’ve had chronic conditions my whole life — eczema, gut issues, allergies, colds, headaches. Like most people, I spent most of the time working with allopathic doctors.

Then I realized that by the time I reached my 50s, I was just sick of being sick all the time and decided that I would study what was causing it. And spent the next 10-12 years studying naturopathy and using everything I could learn to help myself get healthier.

I did dental work, diet work, supplements, energy work. Everything helped a little bit and somewhat, and I was making some progress — but not enough. And then some things started getting worse.

My headaches started getting worse. My food sensitivity started getting worse, and my world was getting smaller. Everything I ate was restricted. Where I could go was restricted.

I knew I had to do something different.

I had been doing some homeopathy with a girlfriend — classical homeopathy — but not really made a lot of progress. Then I heard Joette talk and realized that she might be my last chance.

So, I set up a consult with her because my headaches were getting to the point where they were almost daily, and they were pretty severe. I started working with her in 2017. I’m happy to report it’s a rare day for me to have a headache now.

It’s just been a miracle, nothing short of a miracle. She’s not only helped with the headaches, but she’s helped with a whole lot of other things, too.

Kate:  I can’t imagine, Regina, living in that kind of pain. It makes you grouchy, doesn’t it? When you have pain.

Regina:  It makes you tired. You’re just constantly tired because you’re trying to fight through it, and ignore it, and not let your family and friends …

Because you get sick of hearing yourself whine. I’m sure other people got sick hearing me whine, too! I got sick of hearing me whine!

Kate:  So, that leads us into your food intolerances. Talk to us a little bit about what you experienced there, and how Joette has helped you. Or what you’ve found to be helpful with homeopathy … how long it’s taken you, that sort of thing.

Regina:  What Joette knew was that the headaches were just the symptom. In addition to helping me with those, she gave me the remedies for the underlying food allergies and sensitivities.

What I experienced was that it very slowly over a matter of many months just got better and better and better. I would realize, “Oh, this week I only had one headache!” Or, “This week I only had one stomachache.” And the next week the headache was a 5 instead of an 8.

It’s now gotten to the point after a couple of years, where I can eat pretty much whatever I want to eat.

I had been gluten-free for about 15 years. It has been so freeing now to be able to eat pretty much anything.

I’m careful I don’t overdo things. I still have to be careful with chocolate, and I definitely can’t do alcohol. But more and more, I noticed that I just wasn’t having reactions to what I ate.

My whole family is so thrilled because now social situations are so much more enjoyable because I’m not always the one saying, “I can’t eat that. I can’t eat this. What’s in that? What’s in that?”

So, the world’s gotten big again instead of small. I feel like I’ve got my life back. Joette totally’s given my life back. It’s not an exaggeration at all.

Kate:  I hear this story so often, Regina — that other people share the same experience. If they’ve had severe allergies to things, they say they’ve gotten their life back.

That is so exciting to me! That’s why we use homeopathy! That’s why we study it, right?

Regina:  Right. Right. That’s why you get hooked. You totally get hooked. Then it’s like any problem, like, “Well, what does homeopathy say I should do about this?”

Kate:  Yes! Tell us about some of the other things that you’ve tackled with homeopathy.

Regina:  The headaches were just the beginning.

Then she also helped me … I’ve had lifelong eczema which ranged from moderate to very severe. That also has taken a couple of years. But over time, the itching has gradually gone away to the point where now if I have an itch, I’m like, “Oh! Wow! I haven’t had one of those in a long time.” It’s just a normal itch, not the kind that wakes you up in the middle of the night driving you crazy.

She’s also helped me with interstitial cystitis which was huge. That was debilitating. I would chase circles trying to figure out what I had eaten that had caused the problem. Only a few months on the remedies she gave me for that totally has it under control. That also is a rare occurrence now … of interstitial cystitis.

Kate:  That’s a pretty painful condition, isn’t it?

Regina:  It can be. It can be mild, or it can have you doubled over in pain. It comes out of the blue where there’s no rhyme or rhythm to it. All of a sudden, it’s excruciating.

Kate:  Oh, wow.

Regina:  It’s usually not diagnosed well. So, everyone thinks you’re crazy because nothing ever shows up in the testing.

Regina:  I used the protocols whenever possible and anything Joette’s given me of a protocol nature. But sometimes I’ve found, as I’ve studied more, that you have to use some other options.

Joette’s a definite supporter of combination remedies. I have discovered that when it comes to family and friends (who I know I’m not going to be around to support what they’re doing and how they’re using the homeopathy or see how it’s working), I found that recommending the combination remedies such as Boiron’s Coldcalm, the Oscillococcinum. Those are great to recommend to family and friends because they can go to Whole Foods or Amazon on their own, order the remedies, and usually have very good luck with that.

And then I had great luck with it. I had been using all the protocols for athlete’s foot, and it wasn’t working. Then I saw this company, Forces of Nature, which uses homeopathic remedies in addition to essential oils, and I decided to give it a try. In the first day, I saw like an 80% improvement.

It just reinforced between the food issues, the headache issues, the eczema issues, the athlete’s foot … It just reinforced the message of don’t give up! Just because the first remedy didn’t work (or even the second or even the third) it doesn’t mean you won’t hit a remedy that when it hits, it’s going to be like magic. It will take your breath away; it will work so well.

I mean it’s just been amazing.

Kate:  I really like your point about utilizing those combination remedies from, like, Boiron or Hyland’s. I was just talking to a friend yesterday. I was saying how you could get those locally at … the pharmacies carry them: Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Target.

Just look where they carry the normal cold remedies. You can find Coldcalm usually among that, and that’s a mixed homeopathic remedy from Boiron.

I like Optique, if you’ve never heard of that. That’s amazing. Have you used that, Regina?

Regina:  Yes.

Kate:  That’s a liquid form of homeopathic that you can put in your eyes for allergies or if you got something in your eye. It’s an amazing remedy.

Regina:  Yes, they’re great.

Regina:  The other area that’s been very big is making sure that you have an accurate diagnosis.

I was working on some chronic sore throat and hot flashes. But they were intermittent, so they never quite made it to the top of list of things to whine about. But they were kind of always there in the background.

Then, I was reviewing some notes and realized that I’d been complaining about this quietly — at least to myself — for quite a while. But it was so intermittent. It wasn’t really on the top of my mind.

Then I ended up doing some research and consulted with a doctor and realized that I, in all likelihood, had pharyngitis — which is a low-grade infection of the pharynx. It’s similar to tonsillitis, and it manifests with chronic sore throat.

I had been using remedies for the sore throat and the hot flashes, and I wasn’t making much progress. As soon as I switched to the Banerji Protocols for the pharyngitis, within a day I saw a huge shift, and then every day subsequently.

As much as I would have thought that I was working with the correct diagnosis, I actually wasn’t.

It really reinforced that if the remedies aren’t working, we tend to think it must be, “I have the wrong remedy, or the remedy won’t work.” But just as likely is, “Maybe I have the wrong diagnosis. If I came at it from a different angle, I might pick different remedies that would in fact work very, very well.”

Kate:  Yes, that’s a really good point. It’s very important to know what you’re dealing with. I think we think, “Oh, it’s just this,” and then we try to fix it that way.

But, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know, right?

Regina:  Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Kate:  I think you had mentioned that you have someone that you know that’s a physician, and they kind of helped you to talk about what this might be only because it wasn’t an option for you to go into the doctor at that point.

Regina:  Right.

Kate:  It’s great to have someone that you can talk through things with, who has a medical background and might be able to brainstorm with you on conditions.

Regina:  Right.

Kate:  Right. Good.

Regina:  We have so many resources available to us now for medical information. The more research you can do on your own and the more consulting with people who are knowledgeable, the better position you’re going to be to make a good selection of either diagnosis or remedy.

Kate:  Yes.

Regina:  Then my husband actually became a believer when he had a bout of gout, which we usually manage with diet — and usually took about a week and a half to go away when he had a flare up. I gave him the protocols for the gout, and it resolved in a day and a half.

If you’ve ever had gout, it’s debilitating. He was completely sold on it after that.

Kate:  Yes, I bet that’s so fast. Wow! Wow, I can see why your husband became a believer after such a fast recovery from what is a painful condition.

Regina:  Yes, very painful.

Now if he gets a sore throat or a cold or something, he is always saying, “Can I have something?”

For a few things that he might take on a regular basis, I just leave them out on the counter in the morning. By the time I’ve gotten up, he’s taken some of them. If he forgets to take the rest, I just follow him around during the course of the day and hand them to him, and he takes them.

Kate:  You actually have a really good trick for how to remember your remedies every day.

Regina:  Like most women, I don’t stand in one place and read the paper or something in the morning. I’m always moving around. I put my remedies in my right pocket. Then as I take them, I put them in the left pocket. Then I can keep track of which ones are taken!

Because half the time you say, “Oh, I remember I took that one.” Then you’re like, “Did I take that one? I don’t think I took that one.”

This way I always know which ones I took. Then as I go back to the kitchen, I just take them out when I finished using them.

Kate:  That’s a great idea! I love it.

Regina:  Yes. You have to get creative with finding ways to make yourself compliant, if you’re taking more than one, you know.

Kate:  It is. It gets hard to remember and like you said, then you think, “Oh, did I take that? I don’t know.” Or you walk out of that room, and maybe you don’t go back there for a couple hours. Then you’re like, “Oh, now it’s the afternoon now, do I take it; do I not?”

Regina:  The other thing my husband and I do is what we need to take is closer to the front edge of the counter. Then when we’ve taken it, we put it in the back up against the wall.

It’s very clear, “Oh, they’re still too close to the edge. I haven’t taken those yet.” That makes it very clear. We can see which ones we’ve taken and which ones we haven’t.

Kate:  I flip mine upside down when I’ve taken them. I have them in a box. In the morning, I flip them upside down. So, I can tell which part of the day it is, too, because if they’re upside down, I’ve taken it. And then I flip them back up when I take them at night.

Regina:  Right. You have to get creative with finding ways that work for you.

Kate:  Right, we all have our little tricks.

Tell us about some of the other things that you’ve handled with homeopathy.

Regina:  So, I have worked with dogs and cats. I have a friend with a cat with arthritis, and I told her to use the arthritis remedies. She said that it was very obvious it worked within a couple of days.

Actually, I have a really interesting story with my own dog where he had just gotten fixed. He had swelling of the scrotum which was actually very upsetting. I didn’t have a protocol for that. I used a repertory to look at what I possibly could use.

I ended up using Aurum metallicum 200 a couple of times a day. Within a day, I saw a huge improvement. Then he was off the remedies after about a week and a half.

I was thrilled because it meant I could avoid a course of antibiotics for him. Of course, I felt really good because it wasn’t a protocol. I had used the repertory and figured out something!

Kate:  Isn’t it exciting when you figure it out?

Regina:  I know. It works. It works so dramatically. Like there was no question. Nothing was helping.

They were, like, “You have to put him on antibiotics.

And I said, “Okay.”

Then I went home I said, “Let me try one more thing.”

Kate:  Right.

Regina:  So, it’s very helpful with animals. Absolutely.

Then we’ve had a bunch of other successes. A friend of mine who’s in the health field, had a bulging disc. He was getting ready to go back to the chiropractor and get some more shots.

I said, “Well, you could try the bulging disc protocol.”

He said it was amazing. It worked right away! He didn’t have to go and get any more shots or go to the chiropractor. Months later, still, he hasn’t had it come back at all.

It made me especially feel good because it was somebody in the exercise physiology world. When they say, “Oh, it really worked for my bulging disc,” and they’re pulling heavy weights all the time — there was no question that that’s what worked.

Kate:  That seems so incredible, doesn’t it? The fact that it can help with a bulging disc!

Regina:  I know. I think a lot of people think if it’s structural, it can’t work. I have found that it works fabulously for structural issues.

I’ve found a couple of remedies because I’m the type of person who is always going to the chiropractor because I’m too flexible. I don’t hold structural integrity — my back goes out easily.

I’ve been on a couple of remedies that overnight I don’t need to see the chiropractor anymore. Whereas before, I’d be like, “Oh my God, if I can’t get to the chiropractor this week, I’m a mess.”

That has been hugely freeing. I don’t have to spend the time going to the doctor.

Some of the other areas that we’ve used it … acne for the kids has been very helpful.

My daughter-in-law uses the cold protocols because she works with little children all the time. In the winter, they’re always coming in sick, and she’s always getting sick. But since she started using the protocols for colds, she doesn’t get sick as much anymore. In fact, I don’t even know if she got sick at all this winter.

Kate:  When you say, “protocol for colds,” do you mean that Aconitum 200 mixed with a Bryonia 30 which is a Banerji Protocol.

Regina:  Yes.

Kate:  Joette has that quite a few places on her blogs. One of the blogs where you could find that information is called “When a Cold or Flu Hits Hard, Hit Back.” You can look that up there.

Regina:  The other area that I wanted to mention around animals is that I also ended up using — for the dog — the remedies that Joette recommended in the survivalist course for heartworm and ticks and fleas.

There’s a fabulous product called Mozi-Q, (M-O-Z-I -Q) that is for ticks. You use it both for people and for animals before, during, and after a walk in the woods when you know there’s going to be a lot of ticks around.

It was very helpful and very reassuring knowing I was giving my dog some prevention without putting a lot of chemicals on him. So, that was a huge psychological relief. Especially with pets, you always worry what you’re doing with them.

We’ve also had great luck with warts. One of the kids had warts, and the wart protocols really worked very well.

One thing I noticed is when you’re taking remedies for some of the bigger conditions, very often, things that were a symptom — that you didn’t even pay any attention to and wouldn’t bother have mentioning — all of a sudden it’s gone!

So, things like chemical sensitivity or light sensitivity: I realized that I went from needing to wear my sunglasses absolutely every day whenever I went outside to never needing my sunglasses.

That was nothing that I said to Joette, “I need help with light sensitivity,” even though it was pretty severe. It just never made it to the top of the list.

Things like I’ve noticed my memory is better; my sleep is better; my eyes aren’t gritty, and my cravings are better.

I used to crave coffee all the time or ice cream all the time. I’m still very happy to have a cup of coffee or eat ice cream, but I’m not craving it the way I used to.

That was all secondary benefits from the primary goal of fixing the major issues. Those are the kinds of things that just … they don’t stop you from living your life, they’re just annoying all the time.

Kate:  I think that’s comforting to know, too, that we don’t have to have this huge list of everything to fix in our health — that we can focus on those conditions that are the most pressing and those ones that are really bothersome.

Oftentimes, some of those secondary or tertiary conditions improve, which is so great because you’re getting to the root cause! All the rest of the dominoes fall into place oftentimes.

Regina:  Right. It’s like the whipped cream and cherry on the ice cream. It’s like, you get the benefit, but then you get extra benefits that you weren’t even expecting.

Kate:  Yes, exactly. That’s a good way to think about it, speaking of ice cream!

Regina:  Yes, right. Speaking of ice cream …

Kate:  Regina, you have some really great advice about how to travel with homeopathic medicines. So, tell us what you use.

Regina:  For traveling just around town, I keep in my pocketbook a mesh bag that’s about 4×5 inches. In that I have little plastic baggies that are usually used for supplements that are only 2×3.

What I do is I put 10-20 pellets of a remedy in those baggies and label it. Those are the remedies that I might need for generic situation like a car accident, or I might need specifically for my husband or I. (What if I have an allergic reaction to something, or my husband gets a headache.)

So, all of those are handy or I just started feeling like I’m getting sick. I want to take Aconitum and Bryonia really fast.

What’s great about that is, because there are only a few pellets in a baggie, I can have about 30 remedies with me in a very small flat mesh bag — which is great.

Then what I do is I just put those pellets in my palm or my husband’s palm and make sure they don’t roll around or anything and then just pop them in our mouth. Then that keeps us going till we get home, and I have the regular containers of remedies.

Kate:  You also have some sort of paper that you’ve written down things that you can use to take along with you, right?

Regina:  Right. Well, we always did a lot of traveling. We traveled to a lot of places like Myanmar, India and to remote areas where there wasn’t any medical care of any kind. So, I had to figure out a system that I could have everything with us that we might need.

First, I took all the information from Joette’s classes and from her blog and made a first aid cheat sheet of all the conditions that I might need — a concussion or gout.

Then I bought the small size —the kit-size — of the remedies. That works for remedies that are 30s and 200s.

But you can’t buy the small size for 6C or 3C, as an example. So, for those, I just bought the big size and then bought small brown bottle vials (similar size to the 30 and 200 kit-size) and made up my own little vials.

Then, I put those in little baggies so all the As are in one baggie (because there’s a lot of them), and the Bs and Cs are all together, and then D, E and F are all together. Those I put in a snack or sandwich-sized bag, and then I put all of them in a two-gallon bag.

I can carry a couple of hundred remedies with me in a freezer-sized baggie, and that’s not even completely full.

What I’ve found is that when somebody gets sick — if you get a phone call from a family member, “What do I do for this,” or your husband’s sick — that’s the worst time to try to think, “What am I supposed to give them?”

It’s so frustrating!

Like, “What class did I read that in? What podcast was that?”

It works great if you have a cheat sheet already ready. Like I did one for colds: What do you do for fever? What do you do for cough? What do you do for sore throat? And any mini description that might help me figure out the best one.

That way, I don’t even have to think. It’s just like, “Okay, this is what I try first.” I already know I have that in my baggie. So, it’s with me if I’m at home, or it’s with me if I travel.

Kate:  That is a great system. I love it! I’m going to have to use that when I travel again because you can fit a lot of remedies in those little Ziploc bags.

In fact, we’re going to put some pictures here with the podcast that you guys can see what she’s talking about how she does this.

Okay, let’s wrap up this podcast by hearing some of your advice for the listeners, if you have any tips that you want to share with them or words of wisdom.

Regina:  Well, I think the biggest thing is don’t give up. If you try a couple of remedies, they don’t work; you try a couple more; they don’t work. Don’t give up because it’s probably the third or the fourth one that’s going to work — and make sure you give them enough time.

Then the other thing is if you think that you’re just not seeing any kind of a response, make sure you rethink your diagnosis because it could be you’re trying to fix the wrong problem. And if you come at it from a different direction, you might find, as I did, that all of a sudden the remedies for that second condition work beautifully. So that’s been huge.

I just feel like the last three years of studying homeopathy is really paying off. We’re in the middle of a pandemic right now. And I feel like it’s okay. I can cope with this because I am prepared to be self-reliant! Thanks to homeopathy and thanks to Joette!

Joette:  As I hope you know by now, on my blog, podcasts and Facebook Live, I offer as many protocols for simple conditions as I can — for free, without affiliates or advertising.

But let me be clear. When it comes to more complex conditions, it’s key that you learn how to use these medicines properly. I want you to be well-trained. So, I save discussions of the more involved methods for my courses in which I walk students through each method with step-by-step training.

In these podcasts, I focus on those students of mine who have already tunneled in and learned how to take care of themselves, family, friends, and pets, and even livestock using homeopathic medicine. Many of these students began their education by participating in one of my Gateway to Homeopathy study groups. And now, after taking one or more of my courses, they’re well-trained to use my specific brand of homeopathy.

I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you to follow in their footsteps. With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

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

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

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

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:14   Symptoms

07:14   Fatigue

11:54   Medical Tests

15:55   Alternatives to Homeopathy

21:57   Influenza

24:58   Sprezzatura

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 96 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:  This is Joette Calabrese, and I’d like to welcome you to the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast. Women and men worldwide are taking back control of their families’ health and learning how to heal their bodies naturally, safely and effectively.

So, if you’re hungry to learn more, you’ve come to the right place. Stay tuned as we give you the tools — and the inspiration — you need as I share my decades of experience and knowledge using this powerful medicine we call homeopathy.

Kate:  Hi, I’m Kate, and I want to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast. I’m here with Joette today, and we are going to be talking about “keeping it simple.”

Joette, you wanted to share with your listeners about the idea of symptoms, and how sometimes, they can actually be side effects from some things that we might be taking. So, why don’t you expand upon that today?  

Joette:  Sure, let me start with this. That is that symptoms are key in homeopathy — not because we want to treat them, but because we honor them, and we use them. They are our gifts.

I know that’s hard to believe when someone’s suffering. The last thing you’re thinking of is that this headache is a gift. But in a way, it is because it directs us to which homeopathic medicine will help correct it.

Symptoms are just representations of something that’s going on deeper.

Now, let me say parenthetically, we needn’t know what it’s representing. That’s not the job of the homeopath or the person who’s using homeopathy. The job of the homeopath is to use that information.

So, if there’s itching in the middle of the night only, that’s different than itching after taking a shower. That’s a symptom that matters!

If we are treating symptoms with drugs — steroids, for example, for that itching, or magnesium (gross magnesium), or whatever else we might be taking — it can cause trouble.

It might relieve that itching in the middle of the night, but that’s not what necessarily we’re looking for.

Now, that sounds really ridiculous for someone who is new to homeopathy.

Kate:  Right.

Joette:  But the problem is that steroids don’t cure! Homeopathy has the ability to do such.

I’m not going to tell you it’s going to cure every case or how far it will go. But steroids   don’t cure; they actually suppress.

Suppression of symptoms is a naughty word in homeopathy. We don’t want to suppress anything.

Those steroids might indeed get rid of that itch at that time. But later on, now the itch, my guess is — and it’s an educated guess because I’ve seen it happen many, many times — now the itching is not in the middle of the night. Now the itching is first thing in the morning and in the middle of the night. Now the itching is not just on the scalp. Now the itching is on the flexors and on the belly and on the nose.  

So, it gets worse and worse, and we need stronger and stronger steroids to hold it down. It’s like pushing down on a water balloon, and then it bulges up somewhere else. And you press down on that bulge, and it bulges somewhere else.

So, symptoms are very, very important in homeopathy. We use them; don’t treat them. Symptoms can be caused by a myriad of substances.

And so, when someone tells me that they have a condition — or they only have symptoms, they don’t even have a name for the condition necessarily — my first question is, “What are you taking?”

Always.

“What are you taking?”

They think that “natural substances” will not cause trouble, but I totally disagree. So, it can be natural substances such as vitamins — although I don’t think they’re all that natural, and we’ll get into that too in a minute — or supplements, food supplements, et cetera.

Drugs will most definitely cause symptoms. They’re called side effects. There is no such thing as a drug without a side effect. If you’re taking a drug, you’re going to get a side effect.

End of discussion.

It may not be what you expect, but you will get a side effect — unless you get on it for a short period of time, and you’re done, and you get off it quickly enough. But if there’s ever a chronic condition or a chronic use of a drug, just count on it. That’s what it will cause.

But I also warn people that homeopathy can cause symptoms, too, if it’s used incorrectly. So, many times, people say, “Well, yeah, I take cell salts every single day. I’ve been taking them for years. And now I’ve got these hangnails all the time, or I’m getting whitlows, I’m getting infections on the tips of my fingers.”

I always say, “Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! You’re taking homeopathic medicine for years! Not that we would never ever, ever consider that. That certainly is a potential. Sometimes we do need to use homeopathic medicines over a period of time. But if you’re taking it just willy-nilly because you’re thinking, ‘Oh, well, it’s just a cell salt. I can just take these lower level potencies forever and not have any problems,’ well, you might be mistaken.”

I would urge people to assess what it is they’re doing.

A lot of what we suffer is extrinsic. Not everything! We have hereditary conditions. We have conditions that come from events earlier in our lives, injuries, et cetera.

But a lot of what happens to us is our over-intellectualizing and trying to find a solution and adding them all up. So, I meet many times with folks — students and clients — who tell me that they have a condition, and I ask, “So, what are you taking?”

They tell me the list of supplements. Sometimes their lists of supplements are so long that I can’t … my fingers get tired writing them all down on my keyboard!

Then my next question is, “So. Are they helping?”

Well, obviously, they’re not helping, or they wouldn’t be asking for help from me!

Then the question is, maybe shouldn’t you consider the possibility that these supplements and vitamins — which by the way vitamins are almost always synthetic. If we know that, that changes things. We think vitamins are, “Well, vitamin D? Yeah, that’s natural.”

No. It’s natural if it comes from food or sunshine. It’s not natural if you’re taking synthetic vitamin D.

Then the question is, “Is the vitamin D helping you with that fatigue?”

“No. I’ve been taking vitamin D for a year.”

So, okay. That tells me that we need to consider the possibility that, number one, it might not have been a vitamin D deficiency in the first place that caused the fatigue. It might be hormones. It might be psychological. It might be an old cold that was never resolved.

There are so many causes of fatigue. Don’t assume that just because your vitamin D level is low that that is the cause, the etiology, of your fatigue. It’s a guess that that’s what causing your fatigue. Perhaps it’s an educated guess on someone’s part, but it’s a guess.

Instead in homeopathy, we don’t try to figure out the etiology of the cause, we look at fatigue.

All right, what are the medicines that are specific for fatigue, and how does this fit into the person’s picture?

What kind of fatigue? Are we talking about gobsmacking fatigue? Are we talking about mild fatigue? Is it someone who’s studying all the time? Could it be having to do with using the brain so much? Could it be instead that the person has a food intolerance, and every time they eat gluten unknowingly that they’re getting fatigue? Could it be that they had the flu six months ago, and that fatigue has still not released them? So, it has something to do with a virus?

So, there could be many causes, but we don’t need to necessarily know what the cause is.

Getting back down to our idea of keeping things simple, what I want to make clear is that if you’re not feeling well, and you’ve been taking these vitamins and the supplements and even the homeopathics and the essential oils, maybe it’s time to stop everything. Halt it all and reassess and see where you really are. Let’s see the real you without you being propped up by those Ziploc baggies full of pills.

Kate:  Ziploc baggies.

Joette:  That’s how people do it. I know because I used to do it myself some 40 years ago: Ziploc baggies. You take two of these before you eat. You take four of these after you finish eating. You take these in the middle of the day.

Oh, my goodness. If you’ve got to take a number of them before you eat, you almost have to muscle down your meal because it ruins your appetite.

Kate:  Joette, you mentioned having low vitamin D. What do you do if you actually do have a test that confirms that you are low in vitamin D?

Joette:  Well, I don’t have a test. I don’t test. I’m not a medical doctor. I don’t diagnose.

But people come to me with their tests in hand and this is what I find — not always — but I find it far too frequently. They’re low in vitamin D, so they start taking it. They’ve been on it a year. The vitamin D levels are improved, yet they still have the fatigue.

Now what?

Or, here’s another second scenario. They’re low in vitamin D. They take vitamin D synthetically. The vitamin D levels don’t change.

It makes me question the test. I question a lot of these kinds of tests. Because before we started studying vitamin D or using these tests for vitamin D, we were doing tests for other vitamins and other blood levels. I find that there are “tests du jour,” and they’re not across the board. Some practitioners use this kind of test; some practitioners use another kind of test. And so, we’re getting uneven information. We’re getting skewed information.

What I find is that homeopathy doesn’t treat “low vitamin D.”

Instead, we look at what is the condition? What’s the problem? Before you went into the practitioner who declared that you have low vitamin D levels, what did you go in for? What was the condition? Was it fatigue?

Okay, as I said, let’s use a homeopathic medicine that’s specific for fatigue regardless of the cause.

Or did you go in because you had bad skin; it was dry, cracking. When the test showed up that you were low in vitamin D, there might be an assumption that it must be that you need vitamin D in order to bring the skin up to snuff. But now, that person’s been taking the synthetic vitamin D all these months and maybe years, and lo and behold, the skin is no better.

So, why don’t we just use the medicine — the homeopathic medicine — that is specific for skin that’s dry and cracked, especially in winter, especially around the fingertips and heels?

So, here’s the thing. We started homeopathy in the late 1700s before there were any of these tests. Microscope was only just invented around the same time. They still didn’t know how to use it really — certainly not the way that we use microscopes and these kinds of tests now. And we were still able to deal with fatigue, and dry, cracking skin, and brain fog (another condition that is declared to be related to vitamin D).

Kate:  Joette, when we do our Study groups, we talk a lot about the Banerjis and the fact that they’re medical doctors, and they rely upon tests and also diagnoses.

Can you just reconcile that for us, because I know those are important things when we’re taking protocols? We want to be sure that we do have that particular condition that we’re taking the protocol for. But on the other hand, we’re saying we don’t necessarily rely on the tests.

Can you just talk about that for a minute?

Joette:  If there’s low ferritin or high ferritin then we want to know that. That’s an important test.

Kate:  Maybe thyroid, although that’s not necessarily accurate either.

Joette:  Thyroid tests — that can give us information, there’s no doubt about it — MRIs, all of those. We depend on conventional medical tests.

But when they get to the point where we’re testing whether or not this or that vitamin is high or low, that’s when I draw the line.

I’m not saying — for a minute — that this will never be of any use. I’m just saying that so far, in my experience — especially in the last five years, and I see a lot of clients and a lot of students every week — that I find that these tests that show low vitamin D, as an example, are not as reliable as we would like them to be.

Thyroid tests, pretty much we know when the thyroid is low. But it’s not a bad idea to get that tested. We know because there’s hair loss; there’s fatigue; there’s dry skin on the shins; and we could keep going on what happens when someone has hypothyroidism.

But if there’s a test that shows it, and it’s pretty clear, then by all means, let’s use the homeopathic medicines that are specific to that.

Kate:  Even those tests cannot be super-accurate.

Joette:  Yes, absolutely. There’s no test that’s 100% accurate.

Same thing with x-rays. A lot of x-rays never show bone infections. Well, now what? Does that mean there’s no bone infection or does it mean that we keep asking questions and keep looking?

Any doctor worth his or her salt will tell you, “Our tests are not conclusive.” Which is                                                             why they use two and three and four tests. Because if this doesn’t work — doesn’t give enough information — then we go with this one or that one or this one or that one.

That’s why homeopathy is so valuable because I encourage people to get tests. Not over the top! I think tests can be superfluous — grossly superfluous — in our world today: that you just go for a mammogram just because you’ve hit a certain age or a colonoscopy because you’ve got a colon. I mean, it’s over the top.

So, I think that’s …

But if you need it, but if you need it … you’ve got something wrong … then by all means, I urge people to use their doctors and go for tests — conventional doctors for their tests. It can be very revealing.

But once we got the tests, and there’s still a problem (in spite of working with those tests and using a method that reflects the information that we’ve gotten from that test), if the problem still resides in that person, then obviously that test — not obviously — it may be that that test didn’t reveal what we were looking for.

Then we can depend on this method where we use the symptoms to determine the medicine regardless of what the etiology may indeed be believed to be in place.

Kate:  I think this gets back to when you said, “Stop everything that you’re doing, take a break,” also the importance of keeping notes and writing everything down. What are those symptoms after you are off of all those things?

Joette:  Yes, but, let me also throw this caveat in there: I would never tell anyone to get off their drugs. So that’s different.

Kate:  Right.

Joette:  If someone just hops off their drug injudiciously, it can cause a boomerang effect.

Again, I will say I’m not a doctor. I would not have prescribed that drug. It’s always better to use the homeopathic alongside — in tandem with — the medication that’s being used for whatever it is.

Let’s say it’s a hypothyroidism. Then the person goes to the doctor and says, “You know Doc, I think I’m doing a little bit better.”

Then they see how things are going and then they can back off of the Synthroid, for example, with the guidance of the doctor or the pharmacist.

That’s not my realm.

My realm is to use the homeopathics so that the drug becomes superfluous. And once that happens, then the person goes to the doctor and says, “What can we do about this? I guess I don’t need this so much anymore.”

Or, “Do I need this so much anymore?”

Or, “Now I’m going into hyperthyroidism because I’m using a synthetic drug to take up the slack, and I’m using a homeopathic to make the correction. Apparently, something is working. So, let’s back off of the thing that is the most synthetic.”

Since homeopathy is not synthetic, it might be prudent to consider that possibility.

Kate:  Joette, let’s talk about what you take other than homeopathy? I would like to hear what you use besides homeopathy. Because I know for myself once I found homeopathy, I really don’t use many other things at all. Like right now, I’m actually taking some elderberry juice just to boost my immune system, but that’s not a supplement. That’s a fruit.

Joette:  It’s food.

Kate:    Yes, it’s food. What about you Joette, what do you use besides homeopathy?

Joette:  Well, I have a cold right now. You can probably tell by my voice. I sound so “deepened.” “Authoritarian.”

Kate:  Yes, you do.

Joette:  I don’t take anything. I eat garlic when I go through something like this, and I use my homeopathy.

Now, last night, I felt pretty sick. I felt very weak. My chest felt congested and heavy and weak. I took my homeopathic medicines, and I got rid of it. I took it again this morning. I’ll take it two to three times a day. That will clear up this cold.

But I’m working all day. I don’t feel fatigued now. My chest feels fine. I don’t have a problem except for how I sound. That’s fine with me.

But no, I eat garlic because I love it for one thing. Anytime I have an excuse to eat raw garlic, I’m on it!

Kate:  I wish there was an excuse to eat chocolate.

Joette:  You bet. I know.

I’ll drink extra bone stock.

But no, I don’t take anything. I’m trying to think. I use essential oils — not for my health. I put some essential oils in the unscented dish soap that I use. I put mint in there, essential oil of mint, because I like the smell. It makes my kitchen smell fresh.

People worry about mint with homeopathy, but it is nothing to worry about if it’s just mild like that. It’s not as though I’m opening the mint bottle and putting it up to my nostrils and inhaling deeply. That could antidote a homeopathic medicine.

I take things more with a grain of salt as I age, as I use homeopathy. I just take things with less concern, with less worry.

I know that homeopathy will take care of this cold or whatever it is that I’ve got — this cough, this lung issue. To be honest, I think I probably have bronchitis — or a mild case of it because the homeopathic medicines have not allowed it to get too deep, to get too trying, too sobering.

I eat food. I get out in the sun; I’ve got a tan right now. I live in Florida. I love it. I walk on the beach. I sit in the sun.

What else do I do? I spend time with my husband, and when my children are in town, spend a lot of time with them, little time with friends. I have a very, very busy life. I work a lot. I work well into every night.

But my husband and I go out to dinner on date night every Saturday night. Sometimes we go on Wednesday nights, too — especially if it’s a very busy week, and we can get away and talk about what needs to be done next in our lives or help our children or work on my practice and teaching and the courses, et cetera.

I have a busy life. I don’t know. It’s a purposeful life. It was more purposeful when I had my mother to take care of. That changed everything when my mother passed away — and before her, my father.

Having purpose in life is absolutely huge. I can’t think of a better purpose to have in life than to take care of your parents — your elderly parents — your young children.

If you don’t have either one of those categories in your life, then you go to who else you can help; the little bird on the lawn that has a broken leg if you can help wildlife, your pets, livestock if you live out in the country, neighbors, churchmates. That’s our pleasure in life. That’s our joy. That’s where we get … the reason for living is to help others in need.

That’s where (got to bring this right back down to homeopathy) … and that’s where homeopathy comes in — because we can help so many.

But you’ve made a good point, Kate. Once you get to homeopathy … and I might say that we didn’t just come to homeopathy after being freshly born or just after allopathic drugs, we come circuitously. We’ve come from diets (vegan, macrobiotic — that was my background some 40 years ago … I was using those methods, each one, for many years), vitamin therapy (we’ve used, I used that for years), supplement therapy, chiropractic, (which I still think is a very valuable method. I like chiropractors. Make sure you’ve got a good one that has lots of good experience. “Gray at the temples” is the person you’re looking for).

Once you get to homeopathy, it trumps everything! This is the cadence to the symphony. This is where we land.

Kate:  I don’t know about you, Joette, but I see people that are newer to homeopathy. They get a cold. They’re taking their homeopathics. They’re also taking vitamins and they’re taking … I can’t think of what else it might be … but they’re taking a number of things in addition to the homeopathy.

Do you see that as well with people that are newer, like they want to hold on to those other things?

Joette:  I do see that, but I’m not going to slap them on the back of the hand because they don’t have the confidence in homeopathy yet. If they put the time into it, they will gain the confidence and the comfort level to know, “I don’t need any of that.”

You know, I had asthma years ago, and I used to have Benadryl. I never took it. I bought it and had it in my medicine cabinet. It took a very long time for me to feel comfortable that homeopathy would take care of this asthma that I had.

So, I didn’t throw it out for many years. It just sat there. Every time I went to my medicine cabinet, there was … a glaring evidence that I had asthma.

But as the years went by and the asthma fell to the wayside — just completely melted away — I finally had the gumption to throw it out. I did! I threw it out! And I haven’t had asthma in, I don’t know … my youngest was an infant; he’s now 24. So, 24 years ago. Not even a whisper of it.

Even with this potential bronchitis that I might have — this cold, whatever it is that I have now — I don’t get asthma. I feel heavy in the chest, but I don’t get the sensation of inability to breathe in or out.

Kate:  Joette, I wanted to bring up an interesting study that was published and is on the pubmed.gov website. I was reading this today when I was looking at different things for influenza.

There was a study done in 2009 to 2010 for people who had influenza-like illnesses by homeopathic and allopathic general practitioners in France. And the conclusion of the study which was interesting (it wasn’t unexpected to us who use homeopathy), it says that, “In France, homeopathy is widely accepted for the treatment of influenza-like illness and does not preclude the use of allopathic medicines. However, patients treated with homeopathic medicines only are more satisfied with their treatment than the other patients.”

So, that was interesting.

Joette:  Go on.

Go on!

What a revelation!

Well, of course, they’re more satisfied, and that’s really the answer. Was the question, were you cured? No, they were more satisfied.

Because if you take a drug for influenza, it might keep you from coughing a little bit. It might suppress your cough. It might keep you from vomiting. It might keep you from getting diarrhea. But then the flu lasts for two months, or now you’ve got a cough that’s chronic, or … or … or …

Because drugs always have side effects. Always, always, always.

Satisfaction is what we’re really looking for. In the end, how do we feel about how we were treated?

Plus, I have to say that homeopathy is much more humane. You never hear a homeopath saying, “Don’t worry your pretty little head. I’ll tell you what you need to take.”

I certainly hope you wouldn’t.

Instead, any homeopath worth their weight in salt says, “This is what we’re using. Go ahead and read up on it,” because it’s teamwork between the homeopath. (It should be! If it isn’t, then you’re with the wrong homeopath.) But it’s teamwork.

You’re working with the person who’s proclaiming that the condition, who’s describing the symptoms, who has perhaps used a homeopathic medicine and found that particular one wanting, so that we can move together on to the next idea. It is a pas de deux. We need to dance together and come up with it — the homeopath and the client.

Unfortunately, it’s often not like that with modern medicine. Perhaps not at the fault of the medical doctor, but at the fault of the system because they’re required to see so many people in a day. They’ve been trained to just throw a drug at it readily.

But they are overworked often, depending on what kind of practitioner we’re talking about. But they’re often overworked, and they may not be able to listen for 30 minutes to get to the essence of the problem. Plus, they don’t need to. They’ve got a drug that treats that particular symptom. So, that’s where they go with it.

Kate:  Joette, let’s summarize and just talk again about keeping it simple.

Joette:  I don’t want people to think that I’m saying stop everything, especially the drugs. I really want to emphasize that. That could be a dangerous practice for someone to just drop it. You need to work with your doctor if you’re going to slowly back off of it.

But I do caution people to not get into too many paradigms. Too many paradigms will confuse things, and every rabbit hole causes more confusion. So, try to keep it as simple as you possibly can.

But there’s something else about simplicity.

One of my favorite words in Italian is “sprezzatura.” The meaning of sprezzatura is to do something that looks very simple in its application or in its results … by doing something, by taking, by learning something, by approaching a problem or a condition or a subject with a lot of forethought, but looking as though you’ve done it with great simplicity so that it looks simple and elegant in its presentation … is the meaning of sprezzatura.

And that is homeopathy.

We’ve gotten 250 years’ worth of the great masters — the great homeopaths of our past, medical doctors who were much greater thinkers than I am — who have put together our materia medicas and our repertories and have given us (such as in Dr. Samuel Hahnemann’s case) the whole layout of what it means to use homeopathy. What homeopathy is, the aphorisms, the theories and even beyond theories, the rules, the laws of human health.

Get all of that and concentrate it, put it all together. Then allow me to get that information and pass it along to mothers and grandmothers and others who are interested in a very simple fashion.

It looks like homeopathy is really simple often because if you’ve got this; you can take that.

If you’ve got a head injury; you can take Arnica.

If you’ve got joint pain in your knee; you can take Arnica and Symphytum. It makes it pretty simple.

But in the end, when you look back and look at how complex this medicine is and how complicated the human body is, then we realize that the essence of the word “sprezzatura” is homeopathy.

It gets what’s complex and complicated and hands it to a person and says, “This is how you do it. Here’s the medicine, here’s the potency, and here’s the frequency.”

We don’t need all the superfluous stuff that people use on the way to finding homeopathy. It’s okay that you do it for a while. But learn enough homeopathy, and you won’t even think of using it any longer. You’ll just depend on your beautiful sprezzatura homeopathy.

Joette:  As I hope you know by now, on my blog, podcasts and Facebook Live, I offer as many protocols for simple conditions as I can — for free, without affiliates or advertising.

But let me be clear. When it comes to more complex conditions, it’s key that you learn how to use these medicines properly. I want you to be well-trained. So, I save discussions of the more involved methods for my courses in which I walk students through each method with step-by-step training.

With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

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

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

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

06:14    RN background

07:56    Homeopathic stories

13:31    Farmhands and homeopathy

15:03    During harvest time

17:02    Saving calves

24:22    Snakebite remedies

27:54    First aid box

30:22    Some advice

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Allergic!? Escape Allergies, Sensitivities, and Intolerances, with Homeopathy. Practical Protocols to Get Your Life Back

First Aid Chart

Boys, Concussions, and Broken Furniture

3 Homeopathic Remedies for Mastitis

Homeopathic Remedy Kits

Frost Nip, Frostbite; This Medicine Works

From Tendon, Bone and Cartilage Problems to Healing with Homeopathy

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 95.

Joette:  Joette Calabrese here, folks. I’m happy that you’ve joined me for my podcast today. You’re in for a treat. From my virtual classroom, I’m privileged to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. Their successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep their triumphs a secret. I want you to hear the excitement my students experience, too. So, you can be inspired by their unique stories.

With the help from Kate, my reporter, I bring you a podcast series I call, “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity” or “Teens with Tenacity.” See how regular mothers and others — average folks who love healing those around them — have gone from freaking to fabulous by simply applying what they’ve learned using what I call Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:  Hi, I’m Kate. I want to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast. Today, I have a very special Mom with Moxie with me. Her name is Michelle.

Michelle, I want to welcome you to the podcast.

Michelle:  I am glad to be here, Kate.

Kate:  I’m glad to have you. You have so many things to share with the listeners today. I’m super excited to dive right in because we have a page full of things that you’ve used homeopathy for.  And I’m sure this isn’t even all of it, Michelle — that you’ve written down here.

Let’s get started. Michelle, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Michelle:  I am a wife to a farmer and a rancher. We live on a lot of prairies that we farm, and we live close to some rivers where we run cows. I have three grown children, and I am grandma to 11. Even my parents live kind of close. So, all of our family lives together and works together on a lot of occasions. I like to spend a lot of my free time just learning more and more about how to be a good Christ-follower. I like to teach. I like to help. I do have a medical background. I’m an RN. I think that’s all the exciting things I can think about myself right now.

Kate:  I think that is super-special that you live so close to all of your family. I know you’re close with your children and your grandchildren and your parents. I think that’s pretty amazing that you are surrounded by your family. That’s, I think, what every mom wishes for, right?

Michelle:  I think you’re right. It really is wonderful.

Kate:  Yes, living on a farm — a working farm in the prairie — you have a lot of occasion to use homeopathy. But before we hear about your stories, I want to know a little bit of your background, Michelle. Tell us how you came to find out about homeopathy and start using it. Especially, I’m interested because you have a medical background: you’ve worked in the medical field. So, tell me about that transition.

Michelle:  Yes, it’s because of the grandkids. The mothers of all the grandkids were starting to use — talk a lot about essential oils. So, I thought I want to be the good grandma, and I want to learn! (And so I know what they’re even talking about because they’re medicine — or they are choosing to use it as their medicine.)

So, I started researching that, and I ended up listening to an online summit that was considered an essential oil summit, but Joette spoke on there.

After I heard her, I went back and listened again. And the next day I listened to her again. My brain just started working, and I kept thinking, “Is this some new kind of medicine? Is this the latest hottest deal?”

I just spent time thinking for about three months. I didn’t change my mind super-fast.

But I went to her blog site then, listened to some of her podcasts, read some of her materials, did some other research and in about three months’ time realized this is not new medicine. It’s an old medicine. I realized how it was made and a little bit about what they know.

I just said, “I think I can learn about this,” and I did!

Then all the kids go, “Mom, this is so much better than what essential oil was offering us. It has a lot broader scope.”

Kate:  That’s interesting because your children got you into the essential oils. Then you brought them in to understanding about homeopathy.

Michelle:  I did. I have to give them a lot of kudos. But I have to thank Joette, too, because she had that Gateway to Homeopathy course about that time. All those moms were a part of that group that I had, and I knew practically nothing, Kate. I was so brand new. They were willing to join me to learn (and few other ladies), and we have had a wonderful three or four years now working with homeopathy.

Kate:  That’s so great! You started leading a Gateway to Homeopathy group, and you really were brand new to homeopathy.

Michelle:  I was very brand new. I was very brand new!

I actually jumped into homeopathy by taking a course from her — which was an unusual thing for me to do. I’m not a real computer person, but I have gotten way better at that. I did that.

Then it was like, I want to lead. I want some of my friends to know; I want my family to know — if they’re willing.

Yes, I did not know hardly anything.

Kate:  So, what course did you take?

Michelle:  I took the Allergic!? course with her. And that was … it was very interesting.

Kate:  That’s one of my favorite courses. I mean, I guess if I think about them all, I could say that about all of the courses. But, I really like the Allergic1? course. It has way more in it than you think that it would. It’s not just allergies. It encompasses many more conditions. I really enjoyed that course.

So, that got you started into understanding homeopathy. You led a study group, and you and your family members have been studying together ever since.

Michelle:  Yes, they have studied different things. Some of them have taken different courses. I’ve probably done the most, spent the most time — partly because I’m at a point in my life where I’m grandma, and I have a little bit more time than those that are raising the children right at this moment.

Kate:  Michelle, how does your nursing background come into play when it comes to alternative medicine? How did you reconcile those two things?

Michelle:  Well, actually, Kate, as a nurse, our primary thing is to help people. What I was starting to see is all we do is keep adding medication upon medication upon medication. Most people I know, especially since I’ve had some elderly in my life, they are on like 7 to 10 to 12 medicines forever, and nothing actually ever goes away. They just keep adding more.

So, when I learned about homeopathy and the fact that it could have the possibility of correcting even one or two of those things so that they may possibly be able to take fewer conventional medications, I wanted to look into it and learn more.

Kate:  Yes, isn’t that exciting to know that there’s something out there that can actually reverse conditions, and you can heal — you can heal the root cause of the issues.

Michelle:  You can. And one of the things that I really liked is there’s also homeopathic remedies for so many things that conventional medicine wouldn’t even touch: itchy skin and just stuff that comes up. We can do something rather than sit around and wait for it to get bad enough to go to the doctor.

Kate:  That’s a good point. I love that!

Alright, Michelle, let’s talk about all the ways that you’ve used homeopathy. Well, I know we won’t get to all of them. But let’s talk about some of the ways that you have used homeopathy with your family and on the farm.

I want to hear first about those grandkids because I know that there have been some pretty interesting things that have happened. So, tell us some of those stories.

Michelle:  Well, probably my favorite thing that I found early on when I started with Joette was her First Aid chart. You go on her site. You download it.

I have used that for the very first things I ever did — which was broken arm, concussions, abrasions, pokes. I learned those few medicines, and that really got me started.

The broken arm one, I remember the granddaughter came home with a broken arm, her arm in the little cast. I said, “You know, why don’t we try the Symphytum and the Calc phos.”

She took it for a couple/three weeks; went back for her checkup. The doctor says, “Your bone has healed really fast. You don’t need your brace anymore.”

So, I chalk that up to a victory for homeopathy.

Kate:  Yes! Then what about the fishhook? That sounded horrible.

Michelle:  It was horrible. The hook was actually a big three-pronged hook with a piece of bait on it about an inch by an inch by an inch. So, we’re not talking small in a 10-year old’s palm of his hand. He was throwing it out, and he got it hooked.

He was doing one of those things that we say. “Please don’t do it this way.”

But he did.

It embedded all the way through the palm in his hand. If I were his parent, I’m afraid I might have just taken to the emergency room. But they cut off the barb end and worked the hook back through his hand, giving him Arnica. They gave him Ledum, and they gave him Hypericum. The nurse in me said definitely watch closely for streaks going up his arm and infection and keep giving him Arnica for several days thereafter.

It healed nicely!

Then I just saw it a couple weeks ago, and they said, “That almost looks like there is still something trying to come out in it.” (This is my daughter!) And she said, “So, I think we might give him Silica for a few days to see if there’s still something in there that needs to work its way out.”

I think that’s a great story.

Kate:  Yes. Oh, my gosh, that sounds horrible. So, I’m glad that he’s doing well.

Michelle:  I also have one family who has a tendency to get croup, and my daughter just typed in “Joette Calabrese croup” and as of yet, has not had to take any of her children to the hospital when they get that.

Kate:  Yeah, those medicines for croup are amazing. They work so fast usually. That’s great. That’s great! I know croup can be very scary for parents. It’s nice to have something that you can do in the middle of the night when that happens.

Michelle:  Yes. Yeah, that daughter happens to be a nurse also. It’s been interesting to see her share with a lot of her friends. “You can do this, or you can try this homeopathy.” And you know, she just says, “If it were me, I try the homeopathy first. And I go to the doctor — next.”

Kate:  Maybe she will start a study group with her friends.

Michelle:  She kind of hasn’t tried to encourage quite a few of them. She probably will someday.

Kate:  Yes.

Michelle:  I have one granddaughter who’s had a couple of concussions. The first time it happened, of course, the mom didn’t exactly know. But she said, “She fell off the tramp. She’s kind of sitting there funny and staring at me.” She gave her Aconite.

Then she said, “I think it’s a concussion.”

I said, “Yes, I think it is too.”

And so, she treated her for that.

She actually has done it one more time. So, her mom knows how to treat concussions by just following the remedies that are on Joette’s blog about concussions. The blog that we used for the concussion remedies was called Boys, Concussions and Broken Furniture.

Kate:  Great. I know your daughter has had some issues with mastitis. Can you tell us what you guys did for that?

Michelle:  I sure can. She had four children, and each time that she had one, she started having more and more hotspots, little breast infections.

By number four, Kate, she ended up with an actual full-blown case of mastitis — which it comes on in about 15 minutes, and it feels like you’ve been run over by a train. And she was in bed for two or three days with this little baby and, of course, with three older kids that need some kind of care. And got antibiotics from a midwife and got over that bout. And in another month or six weeks, it happened again!

At that point, she had to quit nursing. I don’t know if she had to, but she quit nursing. This little baby has had antibiotics a couple times just through his mother’s milk. And so, she was a little concerned. “You know, I’m afraid to have any more children because that mastitis knocked me off my feet.”

Then we learned about homeopathy. Her sister and I said, “You know, we are willing to help you through it if it should happen again.”

She did have number five. She had all the remedies on hand. She armed herself with the knowledge that she needed. She did end up with a couple hotspots and feeling sometimes like she was starting to get like a little breast infection. But Kate, she was able to never have that terrible mastitis with him and never have to go on antibiotics. That little guy got to nurse as long as his mama wanted him to.

Kate:  Awwwww. She just used the remedies when those spots started appearing, and she started feeling like it could head that direction.

Michelle:  She did, I think there’s a blog post called the 3 Homeopathic Remedies for Mastitis. I think that is what she used — got the remedies off of — that Joette just has written down there, right for us to just look up for free.

Kate:  I love that.

Okay, so, let’s move on to all of your farmhands because I love hearing these stories about the harvest and the calves, and how you’ve used homeopathy with that.

So, why don’t we start off with the harvest that you call The Pinkeye Harvest?

Michelle:  We do name some of our harvest just if they’re terribly dry or something specifically memorable. The one about the fact that most of us ended up with pinkeye is memorable. That will go down in the memory books.

We do get a lot of — not a lot — but four or five help, that come in and help us during harvest. It’s an intense time. It’s several weeks of seven days a week, several hours a day.

As pinkeye starts creeping through the family and finally eventually one of the workers that’s actually out in the harvest group got it. She chose to go to the doctor. That was fine. The rest of us were using homeopathy. It was very interesting to notice that she did not get better any faster and, in fact, possibly a day or two slower than the rest of us did.

That is why we get to call it The Pinkeye Harvest.

Kate:  Not exactly a great memory, but …

Michelle:  I’ve also been able to use it with a couple other of our farmhands. One of them had a tendency to get a lot of bloody noses again during harvest. It’s dry, hot.

One night at supper, he was having another bloody nose, and my daughter says, “I think I have my kit along.” She says to him, “Are you willing to try this?”

We told him just a little bit about it. He said, “I’m sure willing to try it.”

He took that bottle of Phosphorus and tucked it in his pants pocket. And, of course, he took one and in five minutes, his bloody nose was much better. As far as I know, he didn’t have very many more of them during that harvest. So, we use it for our harvest hands if they’re willing. That’s for sure.

Kate:  I love hearing about the girls that come and visit you during the summer. I think this is such a great ministry. So, tell us what you do with those girls that come and help out during harvest time.

Michelle:  I think I did tell you; I enjoy helping; I enjoy teaching; and I do enjoy having girls around. For one thing, they just keep you feeling young. But I’ve had a couple that stay — often in my home — during summer for a month or two.

This last summer, we had a couple that stayed. And they showed up, and the one had this terribly sprained, strained wrist. I’m thinking, “She’s supposed to be driving a combine for a month?”

She’s already in a lot of pain, and I said, “Are you willing to try this homeopathy?”

She said, “Sure.”

Kate, in like two days, she says, “I am way better.” And in four days, she was really good. Then she went into harvest and never had another problem.

But those girls, you know, just things with girls: menstrual cramps, complete exhaustion, all those things there’s usually a remedy that can help that through.

Those girls, when it is time for them leave (of course, they’d been in my house for a month or six weeks), I said, “Girls, do you have just 15 minutes to give me? I want to sit down with you. I want to explain just a little bit about homeopathy to you.”

They were very gracious, very wonderful. Sat them down, gave them my little 12-minute speech and got them to sign up to get Joette’s weekly blog and just encourage them that they would always consider that and think about homeopathy as they go through life.

Kate:  That’s so great. You’ve really planted that seed with those girls. Now they can have a resource for the future when they have issues. That’s great.

So, let’s talk about the farm next and the animals. I know that you guys grow grains as your primary crop. But you also have beef cattle. And I know you have some pretty cool stories about saving calves. So, tell us a little bit about that.

Michelle:  I know you’ve probably heard Joette say, “Practice on the animals.” It is such a wonderful way to try things out that you hope you never have to use (probably) on humans. But I have enjoyed it so much.

Probably the very first thing that happened with us when I was first learning, I learned that Carbo veg is … the name on it is “corpse reviver.” Well, we were having a cold, wet, snowy, I suppose, calving season. Some calves just don’t react very well to that.

I remember the cowboys coming in and saying, “We have a calf out there, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but their legs get straight, their neck starts to arch back. Their eyes are half closed. Basically, we just know they’re probably going to die. They look like a corpse.”

I said, “Take this out. Stick it in their mouth. Try it.”

Anyway, Kate, it saved three out of four of the calves in that first season that we even used that stuff.

Honest to goodness, my husband and my son-in-law have told other ranchers that this stuff really works.

Kate:  That’s a big deal, saving a calf! Obviously because you don’t want to see an animal suffer and pass away. But also, on the farm, those animals are valuable too.

Michelle:  They are. It’s the crop of calves that puts cash in the bank and shoes on our grandkids’ feet. That is exactly right. We want to save as many as we can.

Kate:  Tell us what potency did you use in the Carbo veg?

Michelle:  We use Carbo veg 200. When they’re laying like that, it’s pretty easy just to open that cold little lip and stick it right in there. Of course, we do try to warm them up and do some other things for them. But primarily, that was the only medication that they had.

Kate:  Do you usually end up giving more than one dose, or is it just one time that you use it?

Michelle:  It had kind of depended on each calf. But one or two at the most, I think, that they ever gave … was one or two, because they’d start getting better.

Kate:  I found that remedy amazing for animals that are having severe health issues as well. It’s so incredible.

Michelle:  I could tell you one more little story about a calf. It was a terrible spring storm, very late spring storm. We could hardly see. We get a call that we have cows that have been pushed through two fences with the storm and were getting onto a roadway.

We had to go out in this terrible storm to go see if we could get those cows into a corral near a neighbor’s house and stuff. When we got there in the pickup, my son-in-law was already there. He had his three-wheeler unloaded. My husband unloaded his. I’m sitting in the pickup and follow them to this farmstead. Pretty soon I see my son-in-law driving up with a calf that’s just draped over the back of his four-wheeler.

And I thought, “Oh my gosh, he found a dead calf. He’s going to throw it in the back of the pickup.”

But instead, he opened the door, threw it at my feet and said, “I think it’s still alive!”

Kate, for some reason, I had my remedy kits; my red kit, my 200 kit. So, I just started administering remedies to that calf.

This is where I’m going to tell you it’s important to try to learn them because I didn’t have my phone. I didn’t have my computer. I was out in the middle of nowhere.

I knew to give it Aconite for the shock. I gave it Carbo veg because it looked like it was almost dead. Then I remembered reading a blog article that Joette has, something about frost nip and frostbite, something like that. It said to use Hamamelis.

I alternated those things and just left that calf in the pickup until they got done. Then we took it down to our farm and the next morning, it was up running around the shop. We went back and got its mother and put the two of them together and watched them for a week, and he was fine.

Kate:  How incredible. I know you said, too, as a nurse, you took the time to just let its body temperature rise slowly.

Michelle:  You’re right, and that is something from my nursing background. I know you just don’t go plunge him in 110-degree water and try to rush the process. Since it was an animal, we took it to the shop and let it get better. If it would have been a person, we would have went to the hospital.

Kate:  Yes, right. That’s an amazing story! How fun it was to walk outside the next morning and see that calf running around. I bet.

Michelle:  It really was. It was really a happy day when we actually took that calf to market. Because we thought well, maybe it’s one of those that’ll die during the summer out in the pasture. But it didn’t Kate!

Kate:  Ohhh!

So, your farmhands have, with your instruction, use homeopathy with the animals and themselves. Are they enjoying using homeopathy, or how do they feel about homeopathy?

Michelle:  Each one’s a little bit different. But I will admit that it’s kind of fun to see.

I plan someday to actually make a poster to put down in the barn that “If you want to try this …”

We actually have some remedies down in the barn. One of them is Arnica, and one of the young men who do some calving for us got bumped into by a cow here not too long ago. When he came to the house and told me, I said, “Gosh, are you okay?”

He says, “Yes, I’m going to have a pretty nice bruise.”

I said, “Well, maybe would you mind take in Arnica?

He says, “I already did. There was some in the barn, and I’ve already taken a couple doses.”

So, he was receptive to that, and he even knew which one to take.

Kate:  That’s great!

You had talked about snakes and the possibility that when those ranch hands are out fixing fence or whatever, that one of the worries is that they could possibly be bitten by a snake. You do some special things for them to help in case they were to run into that situation. So, tell us about that, Michelle.

Michelle:  This is one of those cases when you stop and think about something that your family is likely to run into and learn about it. That’s what I did.

All four of our homes are where rattlesnakes live. So, I researched what to do in case of a snake bite. So, every one of those houses has a little baggie with a snake bite kit in it and a simple little card that tells them how to use that.

But besides that, when the men are actually out in the coolies themselves, we send two remedies with them. We send them Aconite (for just the fear of thinking you got bit by a snake), and then making sure that if you did, then we send them with Lachesis. And of course, then get back to the house where there’s more remedies, and then they can get you into the hospital and stuff if you are truly bitten. So, I do, do that.

It’s Aconite 200 and Lachesis 200 that we send out with them. But then there’s a little bit longer list that’s at the houses.

Kate:  But that at least gives them some time, they can get back after they’ve taken those remedies. You can determine what they might need next and get them to the hospital, of course.

Michelle:  That’s exactly right. I think that’s why I stuck the Aconite in there because I think “thinking” that you got bit by a snake would be a fearful thing to even think happened.

Kate:  Right, and it’s a shock to your body. So, anytime that there’s an accident or something like that, I think Aconite is a remedy that I think of.

Michelle:  As I do. I think if you’re by yourself, you sure wouldn’t want to pass out from the shock and fear of everything. Let’s hope we have that not happen and let us get back to where we can get more help.

Kate:  Aconite is definitely one of those remedies that you never want to leave home without, I think.

Michelle:  That’s true! That’s true.

Kate:  So, you told us about these little Ziploc baggies with the snakebite remedies. You also do something for your dad — where he has a condition, and you make a little Ziploc baggie full of remedies specific for him. Tell us what you do for your dad.

Michelle:  Well, hose little baggies … I made one up for my parents because my dad has a tendency to have some anaphylactic reactions in his past. One time even actually had to have a helicopter trip because of that. And so, I knew this was a possibility.

And here, not so many months ago, my mom called up one night and said, “I think your dad’s having a reaction.”

I said, go get that little kit. Give him the Apis 200.  Get in the pickup. Start to town. I will meet you.

That is what they did.

I met them. I had some higher potency Apis with me. We took it, and even by the time he got to me in about 20 minutes later, he said, “Well, I’m not worse, and I think I’m a little bit better.”

We went on ahead to town. I gave him the medicines I have — or the potencies that I had. We drove around town for an hour, and he just kept getting better and better. He said, “I think I’m ready to go home.”

He slept fine that night, called the next morning, hasn’t had another incident yet!

But I do have that little baggie. It has simple instructions — written rather large. I hope my parents can read it if they should need to, in case of another emergency like that.

Kate:  Yes, my daughter has had some anaphylactic reactions and we’ve used those medicines, and I just think it’s so incredible. We don’t need an EpiPen! I mean I’m not saying you shouldn’t have one or shouldn’t get to the doctor, but we, thank goodness, have never had the need for that.

Michelle:  Right. You haven’t had to use it. I’m thankful for that, too, because I asked my dad about that, too.

He said, “Well, those things are always outdated, and they’re expensive.”

I’m like, “He’s right!” They are, and when you need them, you’re not sure that they’re going to work anyway!

You don’t know for positive anything’s going to work, but I love the option to take something on the way to the hospital.

Kate:  Yes, I agree. Take it, get to the hospital. Like Joette says, you can sit in the parking lot at the hospital.

Michelle:  Or drive around town. That’s what we did.

Kate:  Or in the waiting room, you know.

Michelle:  Yep, exactly. My dad also has an aneurysm in his abdomen that they found as a result of him having a reaction to some conventional medicine. It gave him Pancreatitis. They did a scan … find that he has this abdominal aneurysm.

Anyway, I thought through some remedies that I thought would help him, and he had been taking them. Basically Kate, the goal with this is that it doesn’t get bigger. Because we had to go see a vein surgeon, and he says, “You know, if it gets bigger, and it risks bursting …”

I’m so happy to report to you that it’s been two years now, and his aneurysm is slightly smaller, definitely not any larger! I’m thankful.

Kate:  You’ve been using homeopathy with him all that time.

Michelle:  Specifically, for this, yes. And he may always have to take that. That’s all right with me as long as it doesn’t get bigger.

Kate:  Right. That’s pretty incredible. Good job, Michelle!

Michelle:  Well, thank you. I consulted with Joette once. She said, “That’s just a wonderful story. Good job!”

Kate:  Yes. You’re doing great!

Michelle:  Yep. Yep!

Kate:  I know that there’s been so many other things. We could go on and on and on about different things that have happened on the farm, with the family members and farmhands. So, just walk us through a few of the situations, Michelle.

Michelle:  Probably one of the things we do, we have a rather large machine shop, and there’s the first aid box. Inside of that we have Aconite and a couple potencies of Arnica.

The men in our family and the guys who work out in that shop pretty much know what to use.

I also have Calendula ointment out there for them to put on their band aids after they’ve taken their Arnica. And by in large, they take care of some of the things out there. Of course, they go home to their families when they have something more serious … a bad cut in the finger.

My husband did that not so long ago. He came home, and he said, “It’s throbbing terrible. It hurts terrible.”

And I said, “Take this Hypericum 200.”

He’s a typical man, doesn’t like to complain a lot. But in half an hour, he came back down and he says, “It doesn’t hurt at all!”

I said, “Well, every time it starts to hurt, take it again.”

It wasn’t too long before he felt a lot better.

I want to mention to your listeners that if they don’t know what Vet Wrap is, it’s something you buy. I buy it at the farm store. (It comes in pretty colors.) But it’s stretchy enough, and it sticks to itself. It holds on — like on fingers and wrists — which for my guys, when they’re going to go back out and work in the shop, it’s really great to be able to keep those wounds clean.

Kate:  I love Vet Wrap. I have it in pretty colors, too. It’s in my emergency kit.

Michelle:  Yes, we sure use it on the arm. We do especially for bendable areas that band-aids just don’t stay on, and that you want to keep it clean.

Also, one of the men in the shop got flash burned by a torch. I thought that looked awful, but it healed up very well. Again, went to the First Aid Chart for the things to do for burns. Took care of it; cleaned it; kept it covered. It got well.

Oh, you fall, and you hit your knee on a rock. That happened around here … gimping around for a few days thinking I’m pretty miserable. Back again to her blog, and she has a blog that told us to take Symphytum and Arnica. After a couple weeks — it took me a little while — I thought of her tendon, bone and cartilage blog. Felt much better.

So, there are all sorts of things that keep happening around here, and we’re ready for first aid.

Kate:  You guys have experienced quite a bit on that farm with your kids and grandkids. I’m just proud of you, Michelle! You’ve done a great job!

Michelle:  Thank you, Kate.

Kate:  Let’s wrap this up by telling us what advice you might have for the listeners.

Michelle:  Well, some of the things that I’ve done, of course, is to figure out how to make your notes make sense. And in my brain, I actually — probably because I’m a little bit old school — I got myself a 4×6 card box, and I split things up into body systems. It’s possible I do that because of my medical background. But like an anatomy and physiology book, it says things like the skin, gastrointestinal, emotional, musculoskeletal.

And so that’s my divisions. Then I add on a few for specific things like cold, and fever, and flus … head. I split that one out specifically so that my eyes and ears can be on that.

Then I write on the card, the information that I find. Then I write on the back where I found the information like which blog or which podcast, so that I can always go back and double-check it.

Kate, I love those. Because one of the kids calls and says, “I have an eye injury or an eye infection, what do I need to take?

I pull my little card out, take a picture on my phone, message it to them, and they have it. It’s that simple for me. So, I really like those for that.

Kate:  I think that’s brilliant, Michelle. I, too, I don’t know if it’s our age group, or what, but I like writing those index cards. If you wake up, say in the middle of the night (or a kid wakes up) and you have a condition, you can just pull out that card, and you don’t have to go and research. You can just have that information at your fingertips.

But I haven’t written on the back of the card where I got the information, which I think is great. Because if you want to look up some more about that condition, then you can just go there. So, I think that’s brilliant, Michelle. I love that! Thank you for sharing that.

Michelle:  The other thing that I do is I buy 12 gauge shot shell boxes to hold my tubes of remedies. Then I write on the ends with a little, round sticky that fits on there what each of the remedies are. Then I have boxes of them — alphabetically ordered, and that has worked for me in my situation.

Kate:  Michelle, thank you so much for sharing all this information with the listeners today. You have been an inspiration for me. I just want to thank you for being here.

Michelle:  Okay, thanks so much. As you can tell, I’m really thankful that I found out about homeopathy, but I didn’t stop at just finding out about it. I adopted Joette’s attitude of learn, learn, learn about it. And use it and share it and think about what my family is probably going to face and make sure that I have those remedies in my house.

So, I just love it that as far as Joette continues to share her knowledge and her sources, I get to be empowered more and more!

Again Kate, I’m so thankful I found this wonderful medicine and a common-sense mother like Joette to share what she’s learned with me.

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

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

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

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

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

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:15    Stramonium for Night Terrors

08:47    Stramonium for Pets

14:14    Watching Violent Movies

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Stramonium by Paul Herscu

Stramonium 200C

Mindful Homeopathy: Practical Protocols for Mental and Emotional Conditions

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 94 with Joette Calabrese.

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

Kate:  Hi! This is Kate, and I’m here with Joette. I want to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast.

This is a bit of an impromptu podcast. Because Joette and I were just doing some work together, and she thought of a subject that she really was passionate about and wanted to share with you listeners.

And so Joette, why don’t you get us started?

Joette:  When you and I were just talking, I was recalling a story about one of my children. It was from many years ago, and how I studied a specific medicine and the medicine was Stramonium, S-T-R-A-M-O-N-I-U-M, Stramonium.

At the time when we needed this medicine for my son, I was a novice in homeopathy. But I knew enough that if I found the right medicine, that it would abort the condition.

Well, this was the condition. We used to borrow movies from the library when my children were growing up. We borrowed the movie, “Swiss Family Robinson.” I’m talking about the version from 1959 — this was an old version. Great story, nice movie, great movie for kids.

But, my son was very young — he was about six maybe, at the time. He was very taken by the scene where the bad pirates were going to harm the family — the Swiss Family Robinson family. He wanted to watch it over and over again. He was obsessed, almost, by watching this one scene.

I know what he was doing. It’s what children do — and all of us, for that matter — is trying to process it. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that someone would try to hurt a family. Of course, he was relating to the family, probably greatly. He wanted to watch it over and over again to make it clear in his mind. It was something that he had never experienced and was trying to understand what was going on. Why would somebody want to hurt this family?

And so, with that, then when he would stop watching the movie … we’d borrowed it from the library for a week. When he finished watching the movie, he would play with his Lego guys. And these Lego guys who were kind of peaceful creatures up until that point became aggressive — very aggressive — and killing the bad guys. I mean, not just killing, but you know, killing in really gory ways that I didn’t even know he understood.

Kate:  Oh, my goodness.

Joette:  His good guys were stabbing the bad guys. These Lego creatures were having wars constantly.

And, then he would go to bed — that first night he went to bed — and he had a terrible nightmare. In fact, it wasn’t a “mare.” It was a terror!

We ran into his room because he was screaming and turned the light on, and he would not wake up. And that’s what a night terror is: They are out of their mind with the images in their brains, and they can’t let it go.

And so, it would take an awful lot for us to calm him down. We’d have to have bright lights on. He needed the bright lights.

In those days, I used homeopathy classically. I didn’t know that there was a protocol for violent thoughts or severe angst from witnessing something that was violent. All I knew was to repertorize, and so I repertorized in my book, and I found Stramonium.

Now, I had many materia medicas at the time, and I certainly opened them up, but it wasn’t until I totally delved into it. I purchased a book titled “Stramonium.” It was just simply on the subject of Stramonium by Paul Herscu, and I read it from cover to cover.

Meanwhile, it was night after night of this with my son suffering, not being able to sleep, all of us not being able to sleep because of these night terrors. When I finally convinced myself that Stramonium was the medicine, I gave him a dose of Stramonium 200C.

Now again, in those days very classically thinking, I was thinking only one dose, maybe two doses over two days, maybe a third dose, but that was it! You don’t give any more.

And so that’s what I did. I gave three doses over a 24-hour period, and it completely changed everything. He relaxed. He did not have the angst any longer. His Lego guys started to act more civilly. There was no more Lego blood all over the living room floor.

Kate:  Did you give the Stramonium to the Lego guys?

Joette:  No, but I think that their master was in control and made sure that they didn’t have these gory … these battles.

The night terrors melted away the very first night. The day I gave it to him — the first dose that night — he didn’t have one.

This was consistent. He had been having these night terrors for … oh, I’m going to say, by the time I got the book and read and felt comfortable doing all this, it was probably two weeks.

So foolish of me not to just give it, but in those days, I was so worried about using a 200 potency — which is not even a high potency! It is really medium. But that’s the way I had learned homeopathy, is that you should be very, very careful.

So, I always caution people to be careful but not that careful. Oh my gosh, he suffered for two whole weeks, because I didn’t have the confidence to give him the medicine.

But when I did, it worked like magic. It melted the angst away. All of the violent thoughts in his head that he needed to try to settle down went away. I gave him three doses over a 24-hour period. And that was the end of it, or I thought.

Then about six months later, we went back, and he said, “Oh, I love this! Let’s get this, please, Mama. Can we get this?” So, I got it again.

Got the video again but he wanted it so badly. It was really not a very violent movie at all. It was from 1959 or something. I thought, well, he’s safe now he’s got the Stramonium in case it happens.

So, we got it again.

We watched it, and three days later — after watching it over and over and over a period of three days — the symptoms returned. He started having the night terrors again. His Lego guys got violent again with each other. So, I reintroduced Stramonium.

It only goes to show that sometimes we need to reuse these medicines. As the symptoms return, we use them again.

So, I, indeed, used Stramonium 200C. I gave it him three times in 24 hours, and it took it away — again.

We did not see it again, I’m going to say, for about a year. And then something came up, and it had nothing to do with the movie (because the movie in my mind was, “Okay, enough of this movie.”)

Kate:  You’d had it! No more “Swiss Family Robinson!”

Joette: “No more “Swiss Family Robinson” until you’re older, and maybe you had processed it enough.”

Something else came up. Oh! I remember what it was. It was Halloween.

We went to the library. At the library counter, which was a very tall counter where you checked your books out, there was a very, very scary face on the front of the desk that was exactly at the height of my son.

Kate:  What were they thinking?!

Joette:  They were not. They were not thinking. It was so stupid. Somebody there, I don’t know, did they not have children? Did they not realize? It was scary to me! So, I mean, not that I was frightened by it, but it was a very intense image. It was exactly at his height.

And it happened again. That night, we got home; we went to bed; woke up in the middle of the night; night terrors; gave the Stramonium again. From that time forward, we never saw it.

Now he’s a full adult, and I’ve never seen him need Stramonium again.

So, his Lego guys survived. In fact, we still have all those Lego guys. We still have them! My sons don’t want to get rid of them.

Kate:  They didn’t kill each other off or anything?

Joette:  No, no, no, there were no more massacres. They made it — I guess because they’re made of plastic. They’re protected.

Kate:  You also have used Stramonium for some of your pets.

Joette:  Yes, we also use Stramonium for Buster. Now Buster was home birthed.

Kate:  Home birthed?

Joette: Yes, his mother, Dolly, gave birth to her pups, as a matter of fact, in my office one early morning. He was born at home. We didn’t get him from a home or from a veterinarian or any place where he had already gotten vaccines.

So, at one point, we decided that he really ought to get a vaccine for rabies because we lived in the country, and he did a lot of running around roaming.

We were concerned, even though I don’t believe … especially at that time, there was no incident of rabies for many, many years in the entire region of where we lived. I did a lot of reading up on that and checking with vets, etc. Indeed, there had not been any cases of rabies.

Nonetheless, because he did so much running around, if he had gotten bit by a rabid animal, we would never know that that’s what had happened — because it might not be severe enough for us to notice it.

So, we got him the rabies vaccine, and it was even a small amount. He’s not a very big dog. He was only 18 pounds when he got that vaccine. And he reacted very badly.

He has always been my husband’s dog, by his side at all times, won’t go anywhere without my husband, etc.

But suddenly he became vicious, angry, wouldn’t let me near my husband.

Now, Buster sleeps on the foot of the bed, and he wouldn’t let me on the bed. If he saw me walking towards my husband or even walking into the bedroom — he and my husband already were ready for the evening — he would not let me in. What I mean by that is he would snarl and become very vicious — something I’ve never seen in him.

That anger and that response — we know that’s a response to this vaccine. We see it all the time: that this vaccine often causes a neurological response. And that’s what Stramonium is all about. It’s a neurological shock to the system just like that movie was a shock to my son’s system. The angst that came from this vaccine is a shock to the dog’s system. And this is how he reacted.

I gave him Stramonium in precisely the same way I had given it to my son: three times in 24 hours, and he calmed down.

That was not the end of it. I needed to repeat it.

A week later, it was not as severe. He was no longer snapping at me. These are not little gentle cautionary snaps. These were … I think Buster would have done harm had I gotten too close to my husband during that time. Even with my husband’s grabbing him and shaking him and saying, “No,” and, “Stop it,” and keeping him off the bed and doing everything that you would normally do to a dog that would behave in that manner. It made no difference until we gave him Stramonium 200 C, three times in 24 hours.

At that point, he calmed down. And then a week later, he did it again because it was still … it got amped-up again. Basically, I think as I recall, we used Stramonium three times in 24 hours about every 10 days. That’s my recollection (it was a long time ago). About every 10 days for about a month. After that month, he became himself again. That was the end of it.

It’s a very powerful medicine for when we see a shock to the central nervous system, an injury to the central nervous system, on some level — whether it’s psychological, or vaccine-induced, or whatever it might be. It could also be for having witnessed atrocities. The reaction is protection of the cell for protection of the family through a violent sensation. So, the dog was going to protect my husband at any cost. My son was going to have his Lego guys protect the family at any cost.

Kate:  Powerful medicine.

Joette:  Very!

Kate:  You know what this makes me think of is animals that end up in a shelter and end up being put down because of their aggression.  Don’t you just want to go and give them all Stramonium and see how it works?

Joette:  I think about it all the time. I know many people who have had to put their dogs down because they were attacking neighbors or attacking their own children. It was a very nice dog, sweet dog, great dog, wonderful dog, but for this one little idiosyncrasy! It turns out the dog wants to masticate everybody at sight.

Kate:  What about dogs wanting to go after certain other pets? You know how dogs have an instinct to go after the chickens? That would be … same?

Joette:  Yes, Buster killed a chicken once — one of our chickens. Yes, carried it around all day. We decided to just leave it in his mouth because if we took it away, he might go after another one. So, we thought, “Oh, well, let’s just leave it at that and let him get his fill.”

No, I think that’s within a dog’s instinct. I think that’s what that is. I don’t think that that is an aggression towards a family member. He didn’t consider the chickens family members. We might have, but he didn’t. They were his prey.

Kate:  What about if there’s rage, or you see that acting out, but you don’t know that it’s preceded by watching something violent or, say, a rabies vaccine, what then Joette?

Joette:  Good question. Many times, we don’t realize that our children have been at someone’s house, and they’ve watched a movie that was inappropriate violence-wise. Or it could have been a very violent birth that this child had.

Now let’s not over-analyze. I don’t like to run down those rabbit holes. We want something that’s somewhat substantiated.

But, sometimes we don’t even need to know the etiology. We don’t have to know that, “Oh, my gosh, when he was at that friend’s house six weeks ago, they watched movies. I wonder what they watched, and he’s never been the same since.” Or a Halloween costume that scared someone. Or witnessing an atrocity.

I mean, we live in a very mild world here in the Western world. We don’t witness atrocities. Other parts of the world witness atrocities regularly.

This is where we can do the best work without necessarily even knowing whether or not there was an atrocity witnessed. If we see someone acting in a very violent behavior, my go-to, and I teach this in my course, Mindful Homeopathy (and many other medicines) to use Stramonium. We often use it in a 6 twice a day, or we use in a 200 in the fashion that I used it.

Now, the Banerjis use it in a 6, twice daily. I think that’s often a better method to use, especially when it comes to children. But, a 200 can also be utilized as I had used in my two situations from the past.

You don’t need a specific event that you know of. How do we know what someone has gone through? We may not know, even if we are the mother, we may not realize that something was very hard on this child, and now they’re acting out in either violent words, or their games that they’re playing with their animals or their toys seems too violent, etc. — seems like it’s out of character.

“What is going on?” That’s when we start thinking about Stramonium.

However, having said this, I would not administer something like Stramonium without reading up on it. So, if anyone ever wants to use this kind of medicine, I urge people … I mean, I read and read and read and read before I administered it to my son. I purchased that book, which I think is a very intelligent way to know your medicines and utilize them properly.

Kate:  I think one of the keys, too, is to stop that medicine when they are very much better. Don’t continue on. “This is medicine,” like we often say. Right, Joette? You say that all the time.

Joette:  These are not supplements where you say, “Oh, well, you know, this is vitamin D …” or vitamins, “Oh, I’ll just take them. My vitamin D levels are kind of low. I’ll just throw it up and see if it sticks.”

No, no, no. This is medicine, and it is relatively safe. Nothing is perfectly safe. Remembering that this is medicine will give you the respect that this medicine is owed.

Kate:  So, I wonder if you used Aconite when that event occurred — like your son — maybe had he been given Aconitum 200C after that event, I wonder if it would have quashed that, and he would have never got into rage?

Joette:  Yes, I think you’re right. I think you’re right.

When I observed him watching that movie intently and scrolling ahead to get to that particular part, I knew there was something that had captured him. I didn’t realize to what degree until that night when he had such a difficult time sleeping and had such horrible nightmares. Had I realized, Aconitum probably would have been a good choice.

So, think about people who have witnessed atrocities. Think about those who were around 911. Think about our servicemen and women — what they see; what they’ve experienced.

Just because my son used it within weeks of the time of the neurological onset … and for the dog within, I mean, I realized immediately with him. It was only a short time after he got the vaccine that this behavior began to appear. It can be years later that we finally recognize, or it can be years later that it shows up.

Now, it’s more likely it’s going to show up at the onset of the event, but it doesn’t mean that years later you can’t treat it.

That’s another incredible benefit of homeopathy: that you can treat something that should have been treated five years ago with a medicine at the present.

This medicine is like a Mendelssohn symphony. It’s elegant; it’s polite; it’s intelligent. It belongs in the hands of families. It doesn’t slam us with a psychotropic drug. It doesn’t slam us with Valium, or something.

Had I taken my son to a doctor for something like this, they probably would have given him something like a psychotropic drug. And now, we think about what those synthetics can do to a young brain. Think of what it does to an adult brain, let alone a developing one.

Whereas homeopathy gently touches because that’s Stramonium was diluted 200 times to the hundred power. So, it’s very, very dilute, very gentle.

It’s polite.

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

I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you. With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

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

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

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

02:16    Journey to better health

10:04    Ways to use Homeopathy

15:10    Homeopathy for cancer and surgery

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Joint American Homeopathic Conference in Orlando, Florida

National Center for Homeopathy

Homeopathy for Plantar Fasciitis blog

No More Pneumonia: Homeopathy and Pneumonia

Anticipating Surgery? Homeopathy Can Help

Surgery: Answering Your Questions

A Materia Medica: Practical Homeopathy® for Busy Families

Watch Out for Dem’ Bones

Rethinking Detox with Practical Homeopathy

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 93 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:  Joette Calabrese here, folks. I’m happy that you’ve joined me for my podcast today. You’re in for a treat. From my virtual classroom, I’m privileged to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. Their successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep their triumphs a secret. I want you to hear the excitement my students experience, too. So, you can be inspired by their unique stories.

With the help from Kate, my reporter, I bring you a podcast series I call, “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity” or “Teens with Tenacity.” See how regular mothers and others — average folks who love healing those around them — have gone from freaking to fabulous by simply applying what they’ve learned using what I call Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:  Welcome to the practical homeopathy podcast. I’m Kate. I’m here with a dear friend of mine today, a Mom with Moxie. Interesting story – we actually met in one of Joette’s Gateway to Homeopathy study groups many years ago. We’ve become dear friends since that time.

So, those of you who are wondering whether or not you should join a Gateway to Homeopathy group, I highly recommend it because you will meet some really amazing women. Today, I want to welcome my dear friend, Michele, to the podcast.

Welcome, Michele!

Michele:  Hi, Kate. It’s good to be here.

Kate:  Yes, I’m so excited that we get to do this podcast together. You have some pretty incredible things that you and your family have been through over the years. We actually learned about Joette about the same time many years ago. So, I feel like you are my homeopathy journey buddy.

Michele:  Definitely been a journey to better health.

Kate:  Before we get into your stories about using homeopathy, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Michele:  I am married to a wonderful husband who totally supports my love for homeopathy, and he loves it, too. We have a small convenience store in Chico, California. I have five boys ages 14 to 23. Four are still at home, and I’ve homeschooled them all the way through. Three have graduated. One more will this year, and I have a 9th grader left.

Kate:  Let’s talk about how you came to know about homeopathy?

Michele:  Well, I was actually using homeopathy and didn’t even know that I was — through a naturopath that I was working with a little bit. My kids had got the swine flu, and I did. We were hit really hard. We even had the diagnosis of it. I started using Oscillococcinum and Cocculus indicus and Nux vomica.

I didn’t even know they were homeopathic, but they worked. The flu only hit us for three days instead of weeks. We were so blessed!

Then I met Joette in 2012. She came to Chico for a two-day homeopathic intensive course through our Weston A. Price group. I was like, “Oh, wow, I was already using these remedies!”

That was the moment I really fell in love with homeopathy.

Kate:  Tell the listeners … What was Joette like in person? (Shhh. We won’t tell her we’re talking about her.)

Michele:  She’s just same as she is on the Facebook Lives — just so much fun. It was a two-day — like all day — two-day intensive. It just was such a pleasure to listen to her, and I left there feeling encouraged and uplifted. She even … I think she brought Perry with her and two of her sons. So, it was so neat to see their family traveling together.

Kate:  I’m pretty excited because she is going to be speaking at the Joint American Homeopathic Conference in Orlando, Florida. For those of you who are interested in possibly attending that conference, it is sponsored by the National Center for Homeopathy. It’s May 15th through the 17th at SeaWorld. So, that will be a fun time.

If you’re interested in coming there, you can go on to homeopathycenter.org and find that information about the conference there.

So, Michele, let’s get back to you. After you met Joette, you realized that you had already been using some homeopathic medicines. Then I assume you started studying more about homeopathy, and what steps did you take next?

Michele:  Well, we got a really neat workbook along with our course. I studied from that for a while and studied the remedies that were in that. I kind of did not really know where to go. So, I just listened to her podcasts, read her blogs and signed up to receive her email so I would get updates.

That was actually when my husband stumbled along — he wasn’t totally sold on it yet — he stumbled along the Homeopathy for Plantar Fasciitis blog that she wrote. He had been suffering for years — at least two or maybe three years — of terrible pain in his feet from it. Saw a podiatrist who said basically the only way to treat it is surgery. He did inserts, went to the chiropractor, did laser therapy, like everything we could think of naturally to do. He’s on his feet all day in our convenience store.

He decided, well, I might as well try these. They’re not expensive. I went to the health food store, and I picked them up. Within a couple of weeks, he was totally healed and has not had anything since, and that was a couple years ago. That was really amazing for both of us to watch how quickly that healed with all the suffering he went through!

Kate:  That’s so great. I assume now he’s very supportive of you studying and using homeopathy.

Michele:  He is completely in support of it and encourages it. So, yeah, that’s pretty neat.

Kate:  What about your children?

Michele:  Well, they’re teenage boys, so …

Kate:  That says it all!

Michele:  They all come to me and say, “Mom, this is what I have wrong, and what do I do?” They won’t exactly say they’re sold on it, but they always ask me for it.

In fact, recently one of my sons had roaming hives. The only reason I knew what that was, is because my oldest son had it when he was small. We figured he touched a plant or something that made him have an allergic reaction. So, it was like the hive started in one area, and then all of a sudden they’re in another area, and they’re gone from that original area.

We couldn’t figure out. We tried Apis 200 and ended up doing a little research and used Rhus tox 200 and completely took it away from him! Yes, they come to me for wisdom.

Sometimes I have to say, “Oh, let me look into that a little bit,” and trying to teach them how to do that, too.

Kate:  Yes, I know. I feel like the boys are harder to get them to take the initiative with the homeopathy.

Michele:  Yes, my husband will go online and do research now when he has a symptom. Then he’ll come to me and say, “How about this?” or “I’m going to take this.” He is really sold!

Kate:  That’s great. Michele, tell us about the study groups, and what you’ve done with that over the years.

Michele:  I’ve done some one-on-one study groups, because local people — just can’t tie them into it. I’ll do one-on-one with people, and that’s worked. Then I love joining yours, Kate.

From day one, I think I’ve only missed one study group. We just keep going through them together again and again. Meeting the new people, and it seems like every time I see something different, so that’s exciting.

I’ve done a couple of Joette’s larger courses, and then I meet with Joette. Really, all of our money goes to me meeting with Joette every other month for my health needs.

Kate:  I love what you’ve said in the past about the study groups that you continually learn new things. Even though we’re using the same base study guide, new things come up in each group, and we remember things, or we see something that we didn’t before! At least that’s how it is for me. I think that’s the same for you, right, Michele?

Michele:  Yes, I find that interesting. Joette says to go through the courses over and over again. That is so true! Even with these little study groups, that every time there’s something new — or just through the discussion of the women that are on these groups — we’ll find out new things. It’s really exciting. It’s really exciting to see people blossom throughout the course of these groups and hear their positive stories.

Kate:  Yes, yes, it is so encouraging! I love getting to meet the women and like you said, hear their stories, find out their backgrounds, and what they’re going through. It’s almost a support group in a way, don’t you think?

Michele:  Oh, very much so. In fact, there’s a few of them that I’ve kept in contact with throughout the years, and we’ll email once in a while, and it’s neat. It’s like you have friends all over the world!

Kate:  Yes, yes! I agree.

Kate:  So, why don’t you tell us about the ways that you’ve used homeopathy over the years and some of those success stories, Michele?

Michele:  Well, my son suffered with mold sickness. We didn’t even realize what it was for a really long time — like, I want to say two years. We went to specialists trying to get a diagnosis. Why is he having all these terrible symptoms?

For those of you who don’t know, mold sickness mirrors Lyme disease, so it’s really serious. He even, I was telling Kate earlier, he totally lost his voice. Like, he couldn’t speak, and he had to speak through typing on a computer.

We did many other things, pharmaceuticals and things. It did, I believe, a lot of damage. So, with homeopathy, we’ve really been able to help him to heal in so many ways.

That’s when I started working with Joette. We couldn’t figure it out. My husband said, “You need to call Joette!” And so, that’s what we did.

It’s been a long journey because, let’s see, he got it when he was 15. And he’s now 20, but so much better! I look at the milestones he’s reached. It’s like having a toddler, and they’re learning to walk again, just through the help of homeopathy.

I also have another son that had come up with, recently, a seizure disorder. We’re working with him, and he’s very open to homeopathy. He’s my oldest. Ignatia is really helping David with the stress of the seizures. He feels the stress when they’re coming on. So, he takes Ignatia 200, and that really helps him.

Ignatia has been a blessing to our family in so many ways. I had cancer. I was diagnosed October 31st in 2017. We had Ignatia 200 all over the house! Literally everywhere, so that people could just have access to that when they were feeling stressed.

One of my sons had a bout of OCD — severe — cleaning his hands like they were raw because he was afraid of spreading germs to me. That Ignatia amara, it was amazing! I was so concerned about his future with having that because he’d never had that before.

One time I was kind of losing it after a doctor’s appointment, and I’d gotten some bad news, and my husband said, “Where is the Ignatia amara, Michele? You need to get Ignatia amara out!”

“Here let me get it for you!” He went in, got it, and gave it to me. And I’m serious — when he gave it to me, within five minutes, I was calmed down. I was having a serious panic attack.

Kate:  Yes, oh my gosh. Ignatia. Joette always says that Ignatia should be in the water. I agree.

Michele:  It should! I actually thought about putting it in our Berkey water thing. I probably should have done that, but I thought maybe it would filter it out, and I didn’t want that!

Kate:  That’s funny!

Michele:  When my son was sick with the mold sickness, he got asthma. Him and I both. I’ve struggled with asthma my whole life. I went to Joette’s blogs on asthma and learned about them, and I took her allergic course. But also, Joette had him on a protocol.

I have a lung disease. It’s really terrible. I almost lost my life to that before I got cancer. It’s called allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis. “ABPA” is what they call it for short. I’d never heard of it. I tried looking up stuff online to see if there was anything natural for it and nothing. So, I took all these pharmaceuticals.

My asthma was really, really bad. My lungs were really bad. I’d gotten fungal pneumonia. At the time, I was so sick. I couldn’t work with Joette because I couldn’t even speak. So, I had taken kind of a break from that.

I started on the protocol for asthma that my son was on — after I’d gotten well and gotten through the worst of it. So, I am completely off of all pharmaceuticals which I thought I would be on for the rest of my life for asthma and everything. In fact, I was telling my oncologist yesterday that I threw away my inhaler because I had not used it in so long! I had kept it. I kept getting a new one when it would go out of date just to have it, and I’m like, “I don’t need this thing! I have other medicines for that that are natural.”

Kate:  What did she say?

Michele:  She said, “That’s great!”

You know, it’s funny because I found when I work with my pulmonologist and my oncologist, it’s like, “Whatever works!”

I’m good with that. I don’t go into detail, but I am so happy to be drug-free. I have had some flare ups with my lungs, but homeopathy has always covered it. I’ve used the pneumonia protocol from Joette’s website, her blog, many times in our family, and it always works.

Kate:  That blog actually is called No More Pneumonia: Homeopathy and Pneumonia.

Michele:  Yes.

Kate:  Michele, let’s get back to your story about the breast cancer for a bit, if you don’t mind sharing with us. I know that you’ve used homeopathy with various surgeries with the cancer and the aftereffects of that. So, tell the listeners a little bit about that.

Michele:  Well, when I got breast cancer, I really didn’t know what to do. So, I decided on the conventional route. It was such a whirlwind! I have a pretty aggressive form of breast cancer, so that just made sense to me. I didn’t know of any other alternatives at the time, actually.

What I did was …  I took a list of all the potential side effects that I could get from the radiation, the chemo, and I matched them with homeopathic remedies. I used those remedies like Hypericum for neuralgia, Apis for itching, Arnica for pain. I went and made that whole list — still have that list. I’ve been able to share that with people from our Gateway group that have had cancer or had friends struggling with cancer. I feel like that’s kind of become a little bit of a ministry for me.

Then I also took the “Anticipating Surgery? Homeopathy Can Help” from that blog that Joette has. She has a blog, “Surgery: Answering Your Questions.” So, I took all those protocols with me when I had my surgery. I kept them on my bed in a little bag so the doctors wouldn’t see them. I was sneaking my Staphysagria, and my Arnica, and my Hypericum in the hospital. I was in there for several days.

And we’ve used those protocols because my family seems to be on the surgery track this last year.

Kate:  Yeah, you’ve used that a number of times. I know.

Michele:  Yes. I’ve seen the “Anticipating Surgery? Homeopathy Can Help” blog, first. Then I found the “Surgery: Answering Your Questions” one later, and so I kind of put them together, and they were great.

Kate:  Michele, it sounds to me like Joette’s blogs or her website is where you go when you are looking for a remedy for a certain situation. That is what I’ve heard over and over again from other moms that I’ve interviewed as well. Tell us what you do when you’re needing to find a remedy for a situation?

Michele:  I go to her blog first and see if there’s anything on her blog that would help with whatever the situation is. Then if I can’t find it, then I go to the repertory, the materia medica, which we teach about in the Gateway program — how to use those. So, that’s what I do. Sometimes I sit in bed and read my repertory. That’s my nighttime reading.

Kate:  So, when you’re talking about searching the blogs, what you really do is go to her website, and in that upper right corner, there is a box where you can enter a keyword and search for that. You could search for a condition or a remedy and look it up that way. Is that what you do?

Michele:  Yes, that’s what I do.

Kate:  Let’s switch gears to your husband who, not so long ago, had a pretty bad fall. Tell us what happened to him, and what you did homeopathically?

Michele:  My husband loves to do things with my boys. My husband can be kind of a big kid. So, he was playing soccer with my boys and slipped and fell and tore his meniscus — which he was working on healing through homeopathy on his own.

Then in our grocery store, he went to help someone out of the store. They kind of moved their arm back, and he fell and landed right on his kneecap ending up crushing his femur bone under the kneecap and tore his meniscus further.

So, really, the only option was surgery for him at that time. He couldn’t even walk. It was so swollen. Right away, we started using the Arnica and Hypericum, and it just wasn’t cutting the pain.

So, we went to the orthopedist, and we got together the surgery protocol. And I actually upped some of the remedies because the surgery protocol in the blog, I believe, has them at 200. I got the 1M Hypericum and the 10M Hypericum and the 1M Arnica and the 10M Arnica to have just in case.

He ended up using the 10M Arnica postsurgical for the pain for a little while. We went to her blog, “Watch Out for Dem’ Bones,” (“D – E – M.” It sounds so funny to say it like that.) We used the Symphytum mixed with Calc phos and the Ruta during the healing process. It was Symphytum 200 mixed with Calc phos 3 and Ruta 6. He did not even take an Ibuprofen or a pain pill after that major knee surgery. Not once!

Kate:  Wow!

Michele:  It was just homeopathy that he used, and that was incredible.

Then my son also has knock-knee where your knees bend in together. He’s had to have a few surgeries for that. After his last surgery, Arnica 1M was the choice for him … when he did the surgery protocol and then had to up the Arnica to 1M. But that was all he needed. No pain pills. I was amazed!

Kate:  You guys have really been through a lot over the past years, Michele.

Michele:  We have. My oldest son has suffered with addictions from … he had gotten in a horse accident when he was around 15. He had to have several surgeries — lots of pain pills — and ended up becoming addicted to pain pills. This was before homeopathy for us. It’s been amazing to have this wonderful medicine.

Now, he has been sober for two years. He is totally sold on homeopathy. It’s just been a real gift to our family for so many things.

Kate:  Did you have some remedies that helped him to get over that addiction?

Michele:  I did take Joette’s course on toxins. She talked about remedies in that course for helping with that. So, yes, we did use those remedies from that course. That course was called “Rethinking Detox with Practical Homeopathy.”

He had actually made a commitment to be sober before that. We were just using the remedies as a help for him. Now, he uses them for pain and stress and different things, and he loves — he loves — that I’m doing this. (When he was younger, he did not so much buy into it.)

Kate:  Then they get older and I think they go through a stage where they kind of go away, and then they realize.

Michele:  “Oh, Mom was right!”

Kate:  Oh, yes.

Michele:  It’s neat. We have a great relationship now. It’s really good.

Kate:  Well, Michele, I want to thank you for sharing all those stories with us. You have been an inspiration to me over the years. I just want to thank you for your friendship.

You’ve been there for me over the years as well. We text each other once in a while when we get into trouble, and we can’t think because it’s an emergency situation. It’s so great to have a “homeopathy buddy” and a dear friend.

So, tell us any advice, as we close out this podcast, that you might have for the listeners.

Michele:  My advice would be to listen to all of Joette’s Moms with Moxies and read her blogs. Some people have financial issues, and you could just do that.

I love the Gateway to Homeopathy. I think it’s a great way to start. If you’re starting your journey with homeopathy, there’s so much knowledge in those. Then you could take the larger courses.

When I started out, we didn’t have those, we just had the larger courses. So, now you have a great way to start! It’s just such a blessing and a gift that Joette is able to share all this information to us moms out there who want to treat our families in a healthy, natural way.

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

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

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

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

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

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:08    Remedies for flu

10:16    Homeopathic medicines as prophylaxis

17:07    Signs that show whether or not a medicine is acting

21:14    Things that help the body when ill

21:59    The Antibiotic Alternative course

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

My free flu chart

Oscillococcinum

Boiron

Dr. Dale’s Wellness Center: Dr. Dale’s ALL FLU [Editor’s note: ALL FLU is now called Dr. Dale’s COLD GUARD PLUS.]

Rhus tox 30 mixed with Bryonia 30 (Banerji protocol)

No Flu Here in India, but Boy, It’s Big Back in the US (Banerji protocol of Rhus tox 30 alternating with Bryonia 30)

Arsenicum album 30X or 30C

Gelsemium 30

Aconitum 200/Bryonia 30 (Banerji protocol) When a Cold or Flu Hits Hard … Hit Back!

The Antibiotic Alternative Info-graphic

Allergic?!

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 92 with Joette Calabrese.

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

Kate:  Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, Joette and I are going to be talking about the flu. It’s been going around, it’s that time of the year, and we’re going to talk about: how do you know it’s the flu, what remedies to use, and some other things.

So, Joette, why don’t you get us started?

Joette:  Well, one of the things that I want to mention is that when someone has a bad cold, they often think it’s the flu. It may not be the flu, and sometimes it’s difficult to decipher. Also, with allergies, sometimes folks get allergies, and they can’t tell whether or not it’s a cold, or it is allergies, et cetera.

One of the distinguishing factors is when someone has allergies, generally, they don’t get a fever; generally, they don’t have achy joints and bones. That’s more related to colds and flus. We can distinguish that. We can put that aside.

We can also say that if no one else around you is sick with the similar symptoms, that it is more likely your allergies rather than what’s going around in your community, in your home, in your church, et cetera.

Now, to distinguish between the cold and flu — that can be rather difficult. The flu is, for lack of a better way of describing it, a gobsmacking cold. I mean, you’re really sick with the flu, generally.

A cold is annoying, it’s uncomfortable, but you can generally push yourself through it, and get to your daily tasks. But influenza, generally speaking, really brings you down and assigns you to your bed — or at least, the sofa — for several days. So that helps a little bit.

Kate:  One of the things that can help you determine whether or not it’s the flu or something else — or walk you through what to use for the flu versus allergies or coughs or colds — is the free flu chart. That will actually pop up on Joette’s website when you go to joettecalabrese.com. It will pop up and ask you if you want to download that free flowchart. You can just click on that and you’ll have access to that. [As of this recording in February 2020. Click on this link, if the flu chart does not pop up on the main page.] That will walk you through what remedies to use in each of those situations whether it’s flu or a cold.

That’s one good resource. I know we have some other resources that we’re going to talk about in a little bit.

Okay, so let’s get started. Let’s flesh out what to do if you truly do have the flu then, Joette.

Joette:  Okay, so there are a couple of different ways — actually, there are many different ways — to approach flu (or cold for that matter). The reason there are so many choices is because homeopathy is vast, and it’s been around for over 230 years. The homeopaths in France most likely do it a little differently … homeopathic medical doctors. In fact, in France, that’s usually who prescribes these medicines are the pharmacists and the medical doctors. And in Spain, they might be doing it a little differently. In India, it’s different than that. In the United States, it’s different.

Then we also must adjust accordingly — according to the genus epidemicus. It can make a big difference. The “genus epidemicus” is a term to describe the kind of medicine that we would use — homeopathic medicine that would be useful for a very, very large aspect of the population. Because once one person gets it, and the next person gets it, and it goes around, it becomes the same medicine over and over and over again.

Now, I find that’s true for a lot of conditions that are common. It’s not just the flu and the cold in which we all respond in the same way. Hence, we all receive the same homeopathic medicine. It’s the same thing for an injury; we most often use Aconitum or Arnica. It’s the same thing for cramps (menstrual cramps); it’s often Cimicifuga or Mag phos.

It is something that we can say is across the board. But in this situation, it’s an epidemic; so, most everyone responds in a similar fashion. Hence, we can come up with one medicine that works across the globe often.

Having said that, there are also homeopathic medicines that we find are consistently valuable. I’m going to give you the medicines that I have found to be the most valuable more recently in my family, my community, my practice. It doesn’t mean you can’t go back and look at others that I’ve used in the past.

Kate:  Like that flowchart?

Joette:  Like in that flowchart, exactly. But it means that this is … I wouldn’t call it necessarily updated … it’s just another way to approach this, and it’s a little fine tuning for the subject at hand at this time in 2020.

Kate:  It actually makes it easier as well. You don’t have to work your way through all the symptoms. There’s just a couple of medicines that are considered effective most of the time for the flu — especially, we’re going to talk about the ones this year. Correct?

Joette:  That’s right. Now, if you try these medicines that we’re going to be discussing, and you find that they just are not acting (we’re going to talk about how you know), then by all means, go to the flowchart! Because you may have to be more specific and realize perhaps that you were barking down the wrong … or barking up the wrong tree. (You don’t bark down trees; you bark up trees.)

Kate:  And when you said, “barking,” I was thinking about cough! Was that a little play-on-words there?

Joette:  Yes. So, I like the homeopathic combination medicines. I think they’re quite valuable. They make life easier. They’re sold at Walmart and Wegmans or health food stores, which I think they belong in those kinds of settings. Those are the retailers we want to carry homeopathy!

One of the first ones I always think of is Oscillococcinum, and we’ll have that written up here so you can see how it’s spelled. That is manufactured by Boiron. If you go to their site — you go to Boiron (B-O-I-R-O-N) — and you purchase it, you can get a discount by putting my name into the little box — just “Joette” (J-O-E-T-T-E).

I don’t have an affiliate program with them. This is just for listeners to get a discount, and then you’ll get it in the mail.

Or, some people like to go to Amazon. Others buy directly from Whole Foods or, as I said, Walmart, Wegmans, et cetera. That’s a good one, and you simply follow the directions on the bottle. That’s one of them. Given that that is a very important medicine in France (where it’s manufactured) — that is the most purchased over-the-counter medicine in all of France.

Kate:  That’s all medicines, right?

Joette:  All medicines including allopathic medicines. It’s number one. So, apparently, it works for the French, but it works for us, too. Personally, I’ve yet to find Oscillococcinum help me personally. I don’t know why that is, but I know it works for many, many others.

It can be used prophylactically meaning, “Uh-oh! My child has got it, and I’m prone to this kind of flu or cold. So, I think I’ll start taking it as well as giving it to my child.”

That’s the first one. So, another medicine that my sons have used — I have not also used — is ALL FLU by Dr. Dale’s. You go online, and you use your browser to find Dr. Dale’s Wellness Center, Dr. Dale’s ALL FLU, and there it is. You have the ingredients written in front of you, haven’t you, Kate? [Editor’s note: ALL FLU is now called Dr. Dale’s COLD GUARD PLUS.]

Kate:  Yes, because I actually purchased it this year. I wanted to try using it if we came down with the flu. It has Aconite, Arsenicum, Bryonia, Eupatorium, Gelsemium, Helix, Hydrogen, Influenzinum, Kreosotum, Phosphorus, Teucrium, Thuja, Veratrum and Anas Barbariae.  

Joette:  That’s a lot of medicines, and generally, I don’t like to use combinations that have that many. But when you’re at a loss, that’s not a bad choice.

Interestingly, the reason that I wanted you to read those, Kate, is because there are some mainstays to flus. That is Aconitum, which is in there; Arsenicum album is in there.

Kate:  Gelsemium.

Joette:  Gelsemium is in there. Those are all well-known flu medicines … and Anas Barbariae. So, I find that those are mainstays. So, when in a pinch, it’s not a bad choice at all. We follow the directions, which is usually you use it every three to six hours depending on the severity. It can also be used prophylactically.

Generally speaking, when we use any of these medicines prophylactically, it’s twice daily, every day for, say, seven or 10 days until the imminent threat nearby is gone. Not the kind of threat where it’s in another part of the world or even another state. But rather, your child is in school, and there are children who are falling sick. That’s when you know it’s definitely time to start using it prophylactically.

Then after that point, after you’ve taken it, say, twice a day for a few days (because it’s right there in your child’s classroom or your child hasn’t gotten sick yet), I would use it more frequently for the first week. Then after that, maybe once a week.

Kate:  So, I’ve heard — and I imagine a lot of your listeners have heard — various ways of using a homeopathic medicine prophylactically. What you said is a little bit different than what I’ve heard. Can you just explain it a little bit?

Joette:  There are many methods because there are many homeopaths, there are many practices. Again, it’s going right back to the way it’s done in many parts of the world. When you’re just one to protect from the flu in general, then you might use it once or twice a week, or three days in a row and then once or twice a week after that.

But if it’s imminent — it’s in your child’s classroom; your child has not gotten it yet; or your child has gotten it and you haven’t gotten it yet — you might want to be a little more aggressive. In that case, I would use it perhaps twice a day for a week to 10 days. Then after that, perhaps once or twice a week.

I know this is vague, but that’s because I don’t know exactly the circumstances. And it depends on how prone the family members [are] that you’re treating to these kinds of conditions. The more prone they are to … if you’ve got a husband who catches every single cold and flu that comes your family’s way, then it’s time to be a little more aggressive. If it’s someone in the family who rarely gets sick, but you know that this influenza that’s coming around is pretty powerful and is really laying people out, then you might use it a little less frequently with them. But be on the lookout for how frequently to use it.

Kate:  Okay, that makes sense to me that you’re saying you would use it that often — more often, like every day — if it’s imminent (like it’s in your household; it’s in your child’s classroom, things like that).

Joette:  There it is! Right next to you. Right next to you. Bam! There it is.

Kate:  But if it’s just out there in the community, and you’re not necessarily exposed every day to the virus, then you can use it a little less frequently.

Joette:  That’s right. Now, a simpler way (or perhaps not simpler), but if you’ve got a kit, a homeopathy kit — and I certainly hope that you do because there’s nothing worse than knowing what medicine to take and not owning it. (That’s what the kit is all about is having that basic mother stock of the most important medicines.) And that is to use the Banerji protocol for viruses and flus, and that is to use Rhus tox 30 with Bryonia 30 and take them together. You can mix them in the mouth.

Kate:  In our Gateway book, we have it “together” on one place. Then I’ve also seen it in a blog: it’s “alternating” you have.

Joette:  So, the reason that we do that — or the reason that I’ve done that — is because I’ve seen it used both ways, and I’ve used it both ways.

I’ve used it where it’s “alternating.” Meaning, you’re going to take Rhus tox, say, at 9:00 in the morning. And about 9:10, you’re going to take Bryonia 30. And then go back to Rhus tox about three hours later. And then 10-15 minutes later, you’re going to go back to Bryonia 30. And you’re going to keep doing this throughout the day.

This is generally when someone has gotten sick, or they’re first getting their first aspect of it. That’s a great combination: alternating combination.

But I’ve also used them mixed together where now — “Uh-oh” — the person feels the achiness has already established itself. “My gosh! Every bone in my body is in pain.” That’s Rhus tox.

The Bryonia picture has already begun. The person is starting to feel it in their chest and coughing. That’s when I would use it mixed together and take it every few hours.

Kate:  Is that the predominant protocol that the Banerjis used for the flu?

Joette:  The flu method that I have in my notes after having worked in the Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation clinic for over about a year and a half was to alternate them. BUT, I’ve also observed the doctors at the clinic mixing them as well.

So, I believe that the alternating is the actual protocol, but sometimes when we’re working with someone, not unlike what I just described — “Uh-oh” — both those symptoms that are so prominent in those two specific medicines are already presenting in a very heavy way, then we can also mix them together and take them accordingly.

Kate:  Are there other protocols that the Banerjis or you have come up with for the flu?

Joette:  Yes. Another one that I like to use is plain old, Arsenicum album in a 30 (30X or 30C). I like this as a prophylactic, particularly if we have someone who fits the picture of Arsenicum album. So, I want you to go to your materia medica and read that. But even if you don’t fit it, it can also be useful for a prophylactic as well — particularly if there’s any gut issues (not necessarily with the flu, but perhaps the person has a queasy stomach or they can’t eat this or that), or they have a sinus-y issue in their lives. These are their chronic low-level conditions. This medicine is most likely going to act for that particular person.

So, Arsenicum album 30C or 30X as a prophylactic — maybe once a day for a week; maybe twice a day for a week and then back off and take it only once or twice a week from that time forward. That’s, again, as a prophylactic, because we know that the flu is imminent.

If, however, the person has already been exposed or someone in the family’s got it, we can do this the same way as what we were just talking about with the combination flu medicine, as well as the Rhus tox/Bryonia combination. We’re going to use them all in the same fashion — prophylactically and as needed. So, Arsenicum album is also great then once the person gets the flu, and then we’re going to use it every three to 12 hours, depending on the severity of the conditions.

Kate:  Are there certain remedies that you have found effective for this strain of the flu virus that’s going around this year? When I say, “flu,” again, we’re talking about influenza, not necessarily the stomach flu. Although you can have those symptoms with the influenza, but we’re specifically right now addressing influenza.

Joette:   Well, in the last month or so (and this is the end of January 2020, in which we’re recording this), but in the last month or so, I find that Gelsemium has been very valuable because fatigue has been so grand. So, Gelsemium 30, every few hours, has been very helpful.

My son got something, and it helped him a great deal. He also got a cough, so we used Aconitum and Bryonia. You can refer back to Aconitum and Bryonia on my blog, an Aconitum/Bryonia combination (which is a Banerji protocol as well). We used Aconitum 200/Bryonia 30 every few hours.

So, we were using both of those, but I believe Gelsemium was the one that really made the biggest difference, particularly with his heavy fatigue. Then we used it long after he was much improved — but for the fatigue. Then we stayed with Gelsemium, and it cleared it up in a few days instead of several weeks.

Kate:  You’ve given us some options to use for the flu. How do we know then, when we come down with something and we’re taking these medicines, how do we flesh out if this medicine is working or not?

Joette:  Well, the first thing you’re looking for is a shift. What does that mean? It sounds rather vague. But one of the ways that we know something is acting is if the person falls asleep, because that’s where we heal. So, if the person falls asleep, then we have to make the assumption, “Well, the medicine must be working because they’re not in pain. They’re not crying because their legs or their back is achy, or they’re not coughing so much that it’s disrupting the ability to fall asleep, or they’re not crying (if it’s a child, et cetera, et cetera). They’re not moaning (if it’s your husband). They’re asleep!

Now, when they wake up, they may feel somewhat improved. But oftentimes, it’s not that quick. You may need to do this every several hours for a couple of days. But at some point, you’ll see that when you give the medicine, there’s that sleepiness. It’s almost a delicious sleep.

Then you might also find that the person feels a sense of well-being. Not like they want to go for a run, but rather, instead of that tremendous angst that can sometimes accompany a cold or flu, they feel, “Oh, all right, okay, I still feel sick. The fatigue is still great. My chest feels compromised. I don’t know. I just feel … I don’t know.”

Most people don’t even know enough to report it. But if they start smiling, or they can laugh a little bit, or they can look at you with soft eyes instead of with anguish, then you know that’s likely a movement towards improvement.

Kate:  I think that is so important, and we need to catch that. Because, remember, homeopathy is gentle, and we’re not looking for, necessarily, the fever to go away or the cough to 100% go away. Although we would like that, you might still have the fever; you might still have the cough. But like you said, the person might smile or converse with you instead of laying in bed not wanting to talk and just rolling in pain. They will have that softness in their face and the willingness to talk now and to maybe even joke a little bit. That is an important thing to look for.

Joette:  Well, it’s because homeopathy touches us on a very deep level. It’s more that … We’re not treating symptoms, we’re using symptoms. So, we’re not suppressing the cold or the flu or the fever or the pain. That’s what allopathic medicines do.

Instead, what we’re doing is stimulating the body’s natural ability to make the correction. In making the correction, there is often a sense of restful sleep or a sense of well-being. Or the person’s posture relaxes, and they become more comfortable. Or their language improves, or something that you notice there’s a little bit of a difference. Or they’re not as worried about the illness. Or they’re just as sick, but it’s not as bothersome, and they can start talking about their plans in the next couple of days, et cetera. So, that’s what we’re looking for. That gives you important information.

If you don’t see a change after several doses — and I mean a couple of days’ worth, every few hours, two days, you should start seeing certain conditions softening.

Now, a cold or flu can still last for days with homeopathy, but instead of weeks, however. Meanwhile, the person can get on with their lives. They may still have a little sniffle. They may still feel a little fatigued here and there. But what you’re doing is stimulating the body’s natural ability to make the correction each time you give a dose.

You don’t want to give the doses too close together. The first few doses, it’s okay. But after a while, you really want to keep them several hours apart or only as needed.

So, when you see the person is getting a little perky, and they’re feeling a little bit better, and then, bam, they start not feeling so well again — there’s your cue. That’s when you administer it again. If you note that the last time you administered it was, say, six hours ago, now you know approximately every six hours, that person needs the medicine. You continue using this method until the person is very much better.

Kate:  Joette, we talked about homeopathic medicines for the flu. What else can we do to support our bodies when we’re sick?

Joette:  Well, many times, mothers contact me and say, “He hasn’t eaten.” Well, that’s exactly correct. One should not necessarily eat.

Now, if you have an appetite (that’s pretty unusual). If you have an appetite, then, of course, eat. But generally speaking, people who are sick with a cold or flu do not eat. That’s normal and natural, and it’s the way it should be, and we should not worry about it.

Instead, we want to keep the person hydrated. Good homemade bone stock is a good idea. Making homemade lemonade is a good idea. These are all opportunities to keep the person hydrated. That’s very important. Forget the food but add the fluids and keep them flowing!

Kate:  Okay, and let’s not forget that another great resource is “The Antibiotic Alternative” course that you have. Can you talk about that for just a minute? Because I think that’s another tool that we can have in our tool chest to help.

Joette:  Well, with colds or flus, it’s only a secondary infection that would come about that would bring forth a bacterial infection, so antibiotics are going to be useless in a cold or flu. Over-the-counter drugs can prolong the suffering of the flu in the long run. It might reduce the symptoms at the moment, but it can prolong suffering. So, there’s not an awful lot that allopathy has to offer.

So, this online course that I put out a couple of years ago (that I presented a few years ago) is still very available on the website should you be interested. And it talks about the subsequent infections that can follow. Such as an ear infection — they can be bacterial. Strep throat — that is bacterial. Conjunctivitis can be bacterial.

So, I give you methods and specific techniques and recipes — formulaic methods — so that you can use these homeopathic medicines instead of having to go to antibiotics and other, even viral, medications as well.

Kate:  I think “The Antibiotic Alternative,” I’ve heard you say, is a great place to start. If you’re looking for a course to take, and you’re not sure where to start — which course —and you don’t have any, say, allergies in your family that would point you toward the “Allergic?!” course, “The Antibiotic Alternative” is a great starting point. Is that correct?

Joette:  I think it’s a good starting point. But I would say even before that, start with the free blog. Hang out on the blog. It’s free! I’ve been publishing that for 10 years now every single week. I’ve never missed a single week, and I give a lot of great information for free.

The next one is the idea of joining a study group — some of which you run, Kate, which is great. That’s up all on my front page, and that’s called the “Gateway to Homeopathy.”

There you’ll meet other like-minded mothers and grandmothers so that you can learn right along with them. That’s a fabulous way, and it’s very inexpensive.

But if you’re looking for a real course where I give case studies and carry you through step-by-step what to use for urinary tract infections, otitis media, conjunctivitis, et cetera, that might indeed be the one that’s for you.

Kate:  Don’t forget, for those of you who don’t know this yet, Joette does a Facebook Live every Monday night. In fact, this week, again, we’re in the last week of January of 2020, you addressed the virus and influenza on your Facebook Live. So, make sure you tune in and listen to those Monday Night Lives, or you can actually listen to those anytime on your Facebook page, Joette Calabrese. or Joette’s YouTube Channel

Joette:  That’s right.

Kate:  Don’t forget, there is a ton of information if you go on to Joette’s website or just Google: Joette Calabrese flu. You’ll find a lot of blogs that she’s written and other podcasts that we’ve done, et cetera.

Joette:  The freedom that this gives us, knowing what medicines to own and how to use them instead of fearing that you don’t know what to do is a comfort that’s beyond explanation. As a mother, I know when I was raising my children, it was something that gave me such comfort. I know what to do if they have a head injury. I know what to do if they get a cold. I know what to do if my husband gets the flu. I know what to do if my father, my mother, anybody in my family … I felt as though I could take care of them because I prepared myself.

Something that a client of mine just said to me the other day, and I think this was so profound, she said, “Being a mom has become a lost art.” I think that’s true!

I think that we’ve lost track of what our focus should be in life. That we’ve gotten … excuse me for those — and I don’t mean to criticize anyone who has a booming career or even a partial career — but I think careerism has replaced being a mom at home: knowing how to cook, knowing how to keep a tidy house, keeping her family healthy, knowing what medicines to use, taking care of her husband, and keeping their lives, the family’s life, organized and well-structured.

It’s a beautiful art. It’s a womanly art. It’s something that mothers and grandmothers need to get back to. Many of my followers are already there. So, I’m commending you. Those of you who are on the fence wondering which way to go — one way or the other — I’m going to try to pull you this way. Because I think it’s very important for women to focus on the family as the primary goal and purpose in their lives.

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

I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you to follow in their footsteps. With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

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

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

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:49   Homeopathy for all kinds of illnesses in general

08:29   Calc carb for cataracts

13:28    Joette’s courses

14:35    Ignatia for PTSD

16:12    Arnica for labor pains and Caulophyllum for stalled labor

18:25    Hypericum, Arsenicum album, and Ledum for animal bites and puncture wounds 

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Cataracts Halted, Even Improved with Homeopathy

Rethinking Detox with Practical Homeopathy®: How to Stop Stressing About Toxins and Fearlessly Achieve Health the Simple Way

Mindful Homeopathy: Practical Protocol for Mental and Emotional Conditions

Good Gut, Bad Gut

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum (Parts I and II)

Combo Pack: Top 7 Products (including Baby Grande)

He Bit Me! Homeopathy Cures Animal Bites

The Survivalist Guide to Homeopathy

Feminopathy

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 91.

Joette:  Joette Calabrese here, folks. I’m happy that you’ve joined me for my podcast today. You’re in for a treat. From my virtual classroom, I’m privileged to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. Their successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep their triumphs a secret. I want you to hear the excitement my students experience, too. So, you can be inspired by their unique stories.

With the help from Kate, my reporter, I bring you a podcast series I call, “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity” or “Teens with Tenacity.” See how regular mothers and others — average folks who love healing those around them — have gone from freaking to fabulous by simply applying what they’ve learned using what I call Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:  Hi and welcome to another “Mom with Moxie” podcast. I’m excited for you all to get to meet our guest today. Her name is Janie and she has been using homeopathy for a very long time. So, I’m really looking forward to learning from her today. Welcome to the podcast, Janie.

Janie:  Thank you very much, Kate.

Kate:  I would love to start off by learning a little bit about yourself.

Janie:  I’m married, and I live in England. I have three grown-up children who don’t live at home anymore and two lovely little grandchildren.

Kate:  Awwww! So, you have been using homeopathy for a long period of time. Tell us how you got started learning about homeopathy, and then the history from there in using homeopathy.

Janie:  Okay. I think I’ve probably been using homeopathy almost as long as Joette. I started when I was pregnant with my first baby. I got itchiness on my belly one day, and it spread to all of my body really rapidly. I tried everything natural that I could think of — or knew of or could hear about — that was possible to help. The only things that worked were about three or four cold showers a night, and then slathering myself with almond oil, and wearing a cotton nightie that was up to my neck down to my wrists and down to my feet so I wouldn’t touch the bed clothes when I got back into bed.

Kate:  That sounds miserable.

Janie:  It was really awful. I was at a health food store one day, and the man there said, “Why don’t you look at some of our books. There are some books on homeopathy. I think that might be able to help you, and it’s safe to take when you’re pregnant.”

I looked through and found an anti-itching remedy in one of them, and I bought the book. I took that remedy every two or three hours during the course of the rest of the pregnancy which was about another six weeks or so. It really helped. It was the only way I could survive it.

It happened again in my next pregnancy, but for longer. And I was so pleased because I knew what to do; I knew what I could actually help myself with (in terms of coping). That was 23 weeks that I had the itching in that pregnancy.

I hadn’t figured out which remedy might help to uproot it, obviously. So, I learned a bit about homeopathy in between those two babies because I found a local homeopath who was teaching a class on first aid with homeopathy. I had about eight or 12 weeks of night school, and that was really, really useful. That, along with the book I had bought, helped me to look after my family when they were little and do all sorts of things to sort them out with bumps and goose eggs and broken bones and a bee sting that was in the hand of one of my friends’ babies (the arm swelled up and went all the way up the arm) and a fairly severe swelling reaction to a vaccination.

There were all sorts of things that I was able to treat when I was a mom with first aid. But I didn’t know how much I didn’t know … until I’ve learned how much I didn’t know since I came across Joette’s courses and her blog. It’s wonderful. I’m just so excited about what I’ve been learning in the last two years.

Kate:  Then you sort of fell away from using homeopathy.

Janie:  I did actually because I only thought of it as a first aid thing. I didn’t think that it could be used for anything else or anything that was serious.

So, there were serious tonsillitis, measles, and even things that I should have thought of looking in my first aid book and seeing if I could use homeopathy. It somehow left my sight, if you want to say that. It was really only when I had come across Joette in the Weston Price journal (because I had Sally Fallon’s books and loved her cooking and stuff like that).

I came across Joette around the same time that my knees were really, really, really bothering me. I still am not somebody who wants to take medications. So, I actually got in touch with her because I couldn’t sleep at night very well at all. I was waking up every single time I turned over because my knees hurt so much.

Kate:  So then, you reached out to Joette, and you consulted with her?

Janie:  Yes, I did. I had been reading on her blog for maybe about four or five months by then. I’d learned quite a lot. I’ve tried a few little things that she had mentioned on her website, in the blog posts, in the recordings, and I learned a lot from you. Thank you very much, by the way.

Kate:  It’s just those moms that I interview and Joette. They do a fantastic job of sharing with us their success stories. I learn so much.

Janie:  Yes! Yeah.

Anyway, I got in touch with Joette and got rid of the pain in my knees in about four weeks, and that was fantastic — the constant pain. I still had it occasionally, and especially if I walked downhill. But that had been a long-standing problem that it never even occurred to me to ask her about — because I didn’t think it could be fixed; it had been so long-standing.

About probably eight months later, I went for a walk with my sister down a canyon, and I was able to walk down there and only have Arnica once for the pain. Then another three or four months later after that, I was able to walk halfway up a mountain and back down again without pain.

Kate:  Oh, my goodness!

Janie:  That was amazing!

Kate:  Yes. You said you’d had that pain for 40 years.

Janie:  Yes, maybe longer — since I was a young teenager.

Kate:  I just had someone email me who is going to be very encouraged by hearing this because … “I’ve had several long-standing problems,” they said, “and is it possible that homeopathy could help me?”

I encouraged them to try the homeopathy for those conditions because I think yes, in fact, it can help. Not every condition is going to be totally healed, maybe necessarily, but there is the possibility that those conditions can go away, even if they’re long-standing.

Janie:  Yes. I think one of the things I’ve been learning in the last year or so from the podcasts, from Joette’s blog, and from the consultations, too, is that things that you don’t even think about can be something that can be sorted with some other remedy that you’re taking for another purpose — because remedies have way more than one particular purpose. That is just so intriguing and so interesting. It’s just wonderful!

And I have another story about a remedy like that where I got an unexpected benefit, too. Do you want to hear it?

Kate:  Yes, I would love to hear it. Tell us!

Janie:  Well, I had come across — just in flicking through Joette’s website — a blog post about cataracts where her cousin had started taking the protocol for cataracts. So, I decided to do the same — mostly because my dog had cataracts. I had been told I had early cataracts, but it was normal for someone of my age and not to worry about them. I decided to take the remedy with him (because I was giving it to my dog twice a day, so I might as well just do it at the same time to me).

That was great. I actually did have my optician tell me four or five months later that he thought that my left eye had improved a bit — which was great! I hadn’t told him that I was taking anything. I still haven’t! Because I want to see if I keep taking it, whether it will improve the right eye.

Certainly, in my dog, I don’t think he has eyes that are quite so cloudy anymore — which is great.

But the story about unexpected benefits is that my dog actually has always been a really super-sensitive person. Well, you know … you think about your pet as a supersensitive soul. He lost his puppy-like trust that he had when he was literally a baby pup and his affectionate nature and was much more distant. He was also kind of slow and a bit sluggish. He loves to sleep a lot. (He still loves to sleep a lot.) But he actually ended up with the Calc carb giving him some “oomph,” and he became a lot more affectionate in his nature — which to us is a complete joy and delight, of course.

Kate:  You were giving him the Calc carb for what?

Janie:  Part of the remedy protocol for the cataracts was Calc carb. Joette told me in one of our conversations that actually the Calc carb was the thing that was probably helping him to become more affectionate and more confident.

Kate:  Wow, that’s great! I love it when you take a remedy for one thing, and it helps other conditions. It is fabulous!

Janie:  Yes, I agree totally.

Kate:  Yes, so exciting. I just looked up the name of the blog for those of you who are wondering where to find that protocol. It’s called “Cataracts Halted, Even Improved with Homeopathy.” You’ll find that on Joette’s website under her blogs.

Janie:  The blogs are a fantastic resource. You can learn so much from flicking through the website and having a look at what Joette has written over the years. It’s so much fun to learn.

Kate:  One of my goals is to go through all of the blogs and write down all the protocols that she mentions in those blogs. I know there are actually remedy cards that you can print off as well for each blog where she mentions remedies or protocols.

Janie:  Yes. I save those remedy cards. When I have something that is going on, if I have my computer in front of me, I just search on whatever that condition is or what a friend has asked me about. I can find those remedy cards really easily which helps.

Kate:  I believe that you have another story about your dog.

Janie:  Our lovely Labrador has always been subject to getting wet eczema under his chin. We didn’t realize at first, but we think now that it’s probably due to various tick bites — because we have a lot of ticks in the woodlands near where we live and where we walk him. So, he gets bitten frequently, and we find these ticks and have to take them off.

He got really, really sick about a year ago, and his whole chest lost its hair, and it was weeping. He was a very sad situation.

Actually, the vet was desperate to put him on antibiotics. But I went to her for a diagnosis to find out what was going on. She looked at my face, and she said, “You don’t want him to have antibiotics, do you?”

I said, “Well, I’d really like to try homeopathy.”

She said, “Okay, this is Wednesday. If he’s not better by Friday — better enough — then you have to promise you’re going to put him on the antibiotics.” And, so, I did promise.

By Friday, he was so much better that we were able to keep going with the homeopathic support.

Kate:  Is she a fan of homeopathy now?

Janie:  I think she’s heard about it before, so she was willing to give it a try. She’s also quite open-minded to her clients using raw food diets for their pets and really helping them in other ways than just pharmaceutical medications which is great.

Kate:  Yes. I’m so glad that he got better. Ticks can be a real issue for pets.

Janie:  Yes. Now, we know what to do, so we fix him before it gets bad.

Kate:  Yeah.

Kate:  So, have you taken some of Joette’s courses as well as consulting?

Janie:  Yes, I have. I’ve taken the Detox course, the Mindful Homeopathy course, the Good Gut, Bad Gut course, and of course, both of the Gateway courses. And I’ve learned a ton!

Kate:  Yes, I love the courses. They’re packed full of protocols. People always ask, “How do I learn these protocols?” And the only way that I know other than the Banerji book is Joette’s courses. I actually think her courses have more protocols in them than the Banerji book.

Janie: Yep. I think that when you read Joette’s stories, I always find that stories are sticky, and I remember them. I understand why there might be a certain protocol, or I remember a story about how it worked. That makes it stick in my head a little bit more.

Kate:  Right. That’s the same for me, too, with the Gateway groups. When I’m studying with a group of people, and I hear over and over again about how different people have used the remedies, it helps lock it in in my brain.

Janie:  Absolutely. It’s really neat if somebody tells you that something’s helped because that’s their personal story. It can be quite stunning actually.

I have a friend who has PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and it is amazing when this person takes Ignatia. He says it’s like a little miracle. It helps him survive. It’s great.

I like Ignatia because it stops the feeling of being overwhelmed. I’ve had that myself as well, and it really works.

Kate:  Are there other things that you’ve used Ignatia for?

Janie:  Yes, amongst various friends, definitely things like insomnia because they were too overwhelmed with stuff in life; anxiety — it’s been a great one for anxiety for several people that I know; the PTSD, of course; and grief.

When one of my children moved to a different country, I was quite overwhelmed with the feeling of grief and actually took an Ignatia because I’ve read one of Joette’s blogs recently. I took one, and I could just feel this grief draining out of me — that sense of being completely incapacitated by it. It didn’t take the grief away, but it just made it not impossible to deal with. That was really, really helpful.

Arnica for labor pains and Caulophyllum for stalled labor

Kate:  There are so many stories that you have of using homeopathy, of course, because you’ve been using it for a long time. What would you like to share with us next?

Janie:  Well, I’d like to tell you about my daughter when she had her baby. I happened to be at her house, and I happened to be talking to Joette. She reminded me, “Oh, have a look at the Baby Grande information for what to possibly use during labor.”

So, I did, and I wrote down some ideas. I ended up — totally by accident; it wasn’t designed — I ended up being with my daughter when she was in the hospital in labor.

I gave her Arnica once an hour for the pain. She didn’t need any pain medication other than just once, and she went through her labor really quite well.

In the Baby Grande thing, there’s another remedy that helps get labor moving if it stalls. She had that once. She also had it when she had delayed delivery of the placenta. It worked both times just to get the uterus moving, doing its job. That was great. She recovered really well.

Kate:  I think that’s Caulophyllum. Is that correct?

Janie:  It is.

Kate:  Yes. Joette has talked about that on another podcast, at least one other podcast [blog].

Janie:  Yes.

Kate:  Great. Did you use that in a 30C potency?

Janie:  I used the Caulophyllum in a 30C and the Arnica was 200C. They were my favorite ones for during her labor just because it was nice and straightforward. But I think maybe it was nice and straightforward because she had her pain under control and was able to concentrate on the job at hand.

Kate:  Yes. It’s so exhausting when you’re in such pain, right? So, if you can control that pain, you can give the mom more energy to do the things that she needs to do.

Janie:  Yes.

Kate:  And the Baby Grande CD that you referred to earlier, that is on Joette’s website, and it’s available as part of a Combo Pack of her Top 7 Products. So, you’ll find that under “Shop” and then, “Books and CDs” — the Combo Pack right there.

I so wish that I had known about homeopathy when I was in labor. We just have to move forward. Now, this is great because on the podcast, you can share these stories and help so many other moms. That’s really exciting.

Janie:  Yes. I have some other stories as well about things that have been helped with homeopathy over the years.

A friend had a very severe dog bite on her hand. The doctor, when he saw it was so swollen, he couldn’t really tell, but he thought it had gone down to the bone. We looked up Joette’s blog for animal bites and followed that. And although, she was on antibiotics already, she thinks that the healing happened faster because of the homeopathic support, too.

Kate:  That blog is called “He Bit Me! Homeopathy Cures Animal Bites.”

If you’re new to Joette’s website, she has a search bar at the top right-hand corner. You can just type in whatever you’re looking for whether it’s “animal bites” or if you want to look up a remedy and see what she’s written about a specific remedy. You can type that in there, and it’ll bring up all of her articles, blogs, podcasts, anywhere that that particular condition or remedy is mentioned.

That’s one of the first places that I go when I need information on something. Really, I just open Joette’s website, and I type in like, I don’t know, “sore throat”, and then I read all of the things about sore throats.

Janie:  That’s what I do, too.

Kate:  Yeah! Good.

Janie:  Yes. It’s really practical.

Kate:  It is. Yes, easier than looking things up in a book honestly.

Janie:  Yes. Interestingly, that dog bite story, I had a spider bite, and somebody else had a spider bite a couple of weeks later, I used that protocol for the spider bite because it looked the same as my friend’s hand. That worked, too, which was great.

Kate:  In that blog, I know it mentions the Hypericum 200 and Arsenicum album 200. Is that what you used for your spider bite?

Janie:  Yes, that’s what I used.

Kate:  Because it was looking infected-ish.

Janie:  Yes. In fact, it’s swollen really tight. It was so swollen. I also used the Ledum because that’s for puncture wounds. I figured that if the dog had bitten my friend’s hand — and it did puncture it, and that helped — then the spider had also bitten me — punctured me — and that helped, too.

Kate:  Well, that’s great. Spider bites, I think everyone gets those. Every once in a while, you get one that just really is irritating or starts to swell up. That’s very helpful. Thank you for sharing.

Janie:  I also had two friends that got plantar fasciitis within about a year of each other. The first one, he thinks that he just got better. Which is perfectly fine; I don’t mind if he thinks that.

Kate:  Had nothing to do with the homeopathy!

Janie:  Within about four days of starting the homeopathy after eight months of pain! But that’s all right!

Then the next one also got better within about eight days. I think he thinks it just was “coincidentally,” but never mind.

Kate:  Oh, my gosh. That’s funny.

Janie:  Food intolerances, a crick in the neck, constipation, diarrhea, all sorts of things that’s really amazing, and even cat flu with our cat many years ago.

Kate:  Cat flu, what is cat flu?

Janie:  I think it’s called feline influenza or something like that. Usually, cats die from it. I looked it up in my animal homeopathy books. (I bought one about cats when we had cats. I bought one about dogs when we got dogs. That was really useful.) And, I just gave the remedies for the situations that arose. Animals always have situations every once in a while.

Kate:  Yes, they do.

Janie:  It helped her. She actually had that twice and was really, really ill. But luckily, she wasn’t a cat that slunk away to be ill by herself. She actually stayed in the house, so I noticed she was ill. Then I could help her because I could see what was going on.

We’ve also sorted out all sorts of cases of flu for people. People have different remedies that work for them. That’s quite interesting, too.

If I’m showing a friend something about homeopathy for the first time — say, they can’t go to sleep at night or something like that, or they wake up in the middle of the night — then I’ll show them two or three of Joette’s stories on her blog and let them pick what they think matches best for their own symptoms. That is really practical and very friendly and low-key.

Kate:  I think that’s a great idea. I do the same thing. I say to go to Joette’s search bar and type in whatever condition they have just like we were talking about earlier. It’s been exciting to see other people catch the homeopathy vision and get excited about it as well.

Janie:  Yes, I totally agree. I know that I probably sounded like Joette is my idol during this podcast, but I have learned so much from her, and I am so grateful. I’m so excited about what I’m learning. I’ve just bought two more courses!

Kate:  Yay! Which ones?

Janie:  Survivalist and Feminopathy. I do intend to take them all over the course of time.

Kate: Something that’s interesting that people don’t realize is that The Survivalist Guide to Homeopathy comes in a big binder, so you get a huge binder filled with information on history of homeopathy, remedies for pretty much every emergency situation that you can think of, a materia medica, all about the cell salts, and so much more. In fact, I have my binder right here. I use it all the time. That’s exciting! You’re going to love it!

Janie:  Thank you. Yes, I’m really excited about that one, too … and Feminopathy for all my friends.

Kate:  I know you mentioned that you sound like you’re promoting Joette. But Joette doesn’t want to necessarily promote her materials; she wants to share stories about people who have been helped with homeopathy and encourage people. That is why we do these podcasts to say yes, it is possible. Here’s what these people have used, here’s how they found the information, and it is possible to heal yourself with homeopathy. Be encouraged, everyone that’s listening, because this is amazing medicine!

You can do it, too. Janie has been doing this for a long time. But like she says, she’s used it on and off for many years. But all the success stories that you’ve had are just amazing. I think about what would I have done without homeopathy in my life and all of the medicines that my children would have taken over the years. I’m so grateful as well for homeopathy and for the things that Joette teaches.

Janie:  We’re in the same boat then, Kate. This is an approach to homeopathy that I didn’t come across before. I mentioned how this approach to homeopathy — protocols — you don’t have to spend hours and hours and hours researching and trying to figure out the one single remedy that will fit everything like you do in classical homeopathy. So, it makes it possible for somebody who is busy living their normal life to actually use homeopathy in a much more practical way. I’m just delighted that I’ve come across Joette’s approach and the Banerjis’ approach. The protocol idea of using homeopathy, it is really practical!

Just to wrap up, if we’re at that point, Kate. My conclusion here that I want to share is really that homeopathy is fabulous. Practical Homeopathy® with protocols is fabulous! There’s so much to learn, and so much you can do. It’s really changed my approach to listening to my friends talk about what’s going on in their lives in terms of pains and aches and all sorts of things. I’m delighted to be able to share it.

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

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

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

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

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

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:22   Be prepared: Own your medicines

03:25   Know how to order

04:52   Be prepared with knowledge

06:24   Be prepared in advance

07:01   Stay informed

08:01   Join a study group

10:12   Have a study-buddy

11:06   Listen while you work

12:32   You know more than you think

13:34   Start small

14:55   Use Google

16:30   Don’t be discouraged

17:42   Buy from reputable pharmacies

18:27   Learn the individual medicines contained in combination remedies

19:17   Know how to administer the medicines

22:38   Keep important homeopathic medicines in your purse

23:59   Invest in yourself

25:24   Do not encourage people to get off of their conventional drugs

26:22   Use the protocols

28:20   Don’t give up         

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Homeopathy kits

Boiron, Washington Homeopathy, Hyland’s Homeopathy, Hahnemann Homeopathy

My blog, podcasts and Facebook Live events

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

My courses

Online materia medicas and repertories

A Materia Medica: Practical Homeopathy® for Busy Families

Dr. James Tyler Kent’s materia medica

Americans for Homeopathy Choice

“Podcast 89 titled “ACTION REQUIRED! Due in 5 minutes!”

JoetteCalabrese.com homepage for searches

ColdCalm®

“Emergency Remedy Series: Keep Calm! (ColdCalm®, That Is.)”

Oscillococcinum

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 90 with Joette Calabrese.

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

Kate:  In today’s podcast, we’re going to continue on with the theme “2020 Twenty.” That is the theme that we’re going to run through this coming year. You’ll see lots of things titled “2020 Twenty,” and we’re going to be giving you twenty tips today to take into 2020.

Joette, let’s get started.

Joette:  Love it. It’s 2-0-2-0 for the year, and then “twenty” spelled out. It’s the “Twenty of the 2020.”

Kate:  Yes. So, let’s get started with your twenty tips for 2020, Joette. Start us off.

Joette:  Okay. Well, you and I worked on this a little bit. The first one we came up with was, “Be prepared.” I mean, that just goes without saying, I suppose. But you know what? Sometimes, we need to hear these things time and again.

That means, own your medicines. If you think you know or you know what medicine to use, you have to own it! Because there’s nothing worse than saying, “Okay, my child needs Hepar sulph because of this ear infection.” It’s Saturday evening around seven o’clock when no stores are open, or you live in an area where they don’t carry them anywhere. There’s no Whole Foods or Wegmans or anything like that — or Walmart, because sometimes Walmart carries them. And you have to wait until Monday morning to order it!  And you don’t get it until Tuesday or Wednesday from Amazon.

Well, that makes no sense. You need to own homeopathy kits. I don’t mean one kit. I’m using the plural — kits — because one kit is not enough. You want a 200 Potency kit, you want a 30th Potency kit, and you want a cell salt kit, just to get started. There are others as well. But I can’t urge folks enough to invest in that. Then you’ll be ordering a lot more than just those. Those are just your basics.

Kate:  I always tell people, have a backup kit, and then have a backup-backup kit, and so on and so forth. When I share with my study groups the kits that I have and the backup-backup-backup kits, and how I’ve actually used the medicines out of those backup-backup-backup kits, I think they’re surprised. But you really need to own more than one kit. Start with one if that’s all you have money for right now. Just start with one.

Joette:  One step at a time. That’s right. But what you should be spending your money on, that should have been one of our tips. This is what you should be spending your money on. Not nail polish. Not café au lait from Starbucks. This is where you spend your money — because this is an investment.

Kate:  Okay, Number Two.

Joette:  Well, what I want to tell folks is how to order. I suggest that folks order a couple of different ways, especially if you’re looking not just for the kit, but for single remedies. Order via Amazon for next-day delivery, and literally, you’ll get it the next day. But if you want to get a discount, I urge you to go to Boiron (B-O-I-R-O-N), and order there because … they won’t have all of the medicines you’re looking for, but they’ll have a good number of them … When you go to checkout, there’s a little box there, a code box, and you put my name in, “Joette” (J-O-E-T-T-E), and you’ll get a discount. I believe it’s 20%.

Now, don’t think for a minute, folks, that I get a kickback because I don’t! I do not have an affiliate program with them. Instead, I wanted you folks — I want the general public — to get the discount. It’s just a good way of knowing where you’ve come from. So, either Amazon for a really quick delivery or Boiron for a discount. Then you weigh it out what you’re looking for, how soon you need this or that medicine.

Kate:  All right. There are others, too, but those are just a couple of the quickest places to get your medicines.

Joette:  Thank you. That’s absolutely right because there’s Washington Homeopathy, there’s Hyland’s Homeopathy, there’s Hahnemann (H-A-H-N-E-M-A-N-N) Homeopathy. All of those are very reputable companies. Those are the ones that I’ve used for decades.

Kate:  Okay, tip Number Three.

Joette:  Number Three is be prepared with knowledge. Nobody can take your knowledge away from you. This is so key. This is important that you take care of what it is you need to know. So, if you have a family of a lot of girls, and they’re coming into menarche, you need to know the medicines that are useful for menstrual cramps, or for behavior problems around menarche, or whatever might come up. You need to know those medicines.

If you have a family of athletes, then you need to know about Arnica, Aconitum and Hamamelis Arnica, et cetera, et cetera. You need to understand what it is your family needs.

If your family never gets a cold or flu, consider yourself lucky because it’s pretty rare, then you don’t need to know the cold and flu medicines. But if anyone in your family gets these, by all means, you need to know these.

How do you know them? By going to my blog — we’ll go into that a little bit further — it’s all free, learning from courses, the courses that I teach, learning from the free podcasts that you and I do, Kate.

Kate:  Just reading online, reading the online materia medicas and repertories.

Joette:  Yes, reading my materia medica, reading others’ materia medicas such as Dr. James Tyler Kent. Dr. James Tyler Kent’s materia medica is online, and it’s free. That’s where you’ll learn about each medicine.

Kate:  Yes, know your medicines. Know how to use them. Number Four.

Joette:  Number Four is very closely related to number three and one. That is to be prepared. Don’t wait until you have a need. Know everything. Have everything. Be prepared in advance.

There’s no such thing as an illness that comes in a timely manner. Illnesses and injuries come. Yes, they’re extemporaneous. They come out of the blue when you least expect it. You don’t schedule it in. So, don’t expect life to deliver it in that fashion. You need to be prepared in advance with knowledge and the owning of the homeopathic medicines.

Kate:  Don’t put it off. 2020, this is the year! Be prepared!

Joette:  That’s right.

Kate:  Number Five.

Joette:  Stay informed about what’s going on with the FDA. Get the remedies now. Own as many remedies as you can now. We don’t know exactly what will come of these new guidelines with the FDA. It does not look very encouraging. I will be soon interviewing Paola Brown. You’ll be able to listen in on what her organization and she is doing — working with the FDA to protect homeopathy.

But stay informed because we need your letters, your phone calls. Whatever she says to do, I urge folks to do. We’ll have links on the website. We already have them, but we’ll be adding more in the near future.

Kate:  Actually, Joette, that interview you were just referring to with Paola Brown of Americans for Homeopathy Choice will be coming out ahead of this podcast. That will be “Podcast 89 titled “ACTION REQUIRED! Due in 5 minutes!” You can listen to that podcast right now.

Let’s move on to Number Six, which is one of my favorites as you know, Joette.

Joette:  You bet. You know why it’s one of your favorites? Because you run these!

I suggest everyone join a study group. Kate runs a number of the study groups, and she does an incredible job. So, if you’re looking to join a group … and it’s all online! It can be done online; it can be done via Zoom or Skype. You can also do it in your own living room. You can join when you can start one, but Kate actually runs them. It’s nice to have someone who actually runs them and has lots of experience with homeopathy as well.

There are a couple of different ways you can do that. You can start with yourself even though you know nothing about homeopathy; if you know a little bit about homeopathy; if you want someone who’s an expert in homeopathy, then you can work with someone like Kate. I urge you., and you just go to my website and look at …

Kate:  It’s Joette’s Study Group: Find Your Study Group Friends. [On Facebook]

Joette:  Yes. If you have any questions, you can always contact my office. It’s pretty clear how to do that on the website, on the front page. You can ask for help as to, “Are there groups studying now?” Eileen is there to help folks, and so is Audrey. Shannon sometimes joins in as well to help out with those kinds of questions. We can fix you up with a group, or we can direct you as to how to start a group, or whatever you need.

Kate:  Those study groups are designed — the books are written, actually — so that you can, without having much knowledge, run a study group. So, don’t be intimidated. Just go ahead and get your friends together and start one yourself.

Joette:  Well, what I love about the study groups is that it’s a great opportunity to bring in friends, relatives, neighbors who are not sold on homeopathy — maybe even our skeptics. Instead of your being the one to explain and to defend homeopathy, if you bring them into a group and say, “Just join us for maybe one class and see if you like it,” others in the group will automatically bring them around with their explanation of how they have treated their families. Because there’s inevitably those who know nothing about homeopathy in these groups and those who know a great deal. It’s wonderful to have that combination. It’s a great mix.

Kate:  This leads us actually into Number Seven. It’s a great way to do Number Seven, which is …

Joette:  … to have a study-buddy. That study-buddy is invaluable, especially if you’re approximately the same knowledge, but one of you has knowledge more in, say, fevers because that’s what your family gets. Another one might have more knowledge in skin conditions because that’s what her family gets. Surprisingly, every family will get fevers and skin conditions, so you want someone who’s knowledgeable in that and you’re knowledgeable in your field.

You can meet these study-buddies through your study group. That’s exactly how it often happens. But it doesn’t have to be. It could be your neighbor. It could be your sister-in-law. It’s a great way to help each other when all else seems to be falling in your household.

Kate:  Right. That is one of the benefits of a study group or starting your own study group is finding those people and connecting with them. Okay, moving on to Number Eight.

Joette:  Listen while you work. I’ve got to do that again. I didn’t get it right.

Kate:  That sounds like a very sad whistler.

Joette:  Listen while you work!

I can’t believe I’m doing this. Use your car! Listen to the podcast while you’re driving in your car, while you’re making bread, while you’re folding laundry, while you’re raking leaves. That’s when you learn — listen, listen, listen. Hook up to the podcasts. Hook up to your courses that you’ve taken from me, if you’ve started them already. By all means, do two things at once. It’s very doable. It’s the way that I studied.

I actually used to take my courses in Toronto. Then when I got home, I would read my notes into a tape recorder … just a little hint as to how long ago that was, based on the technology I’m referring to … then I would play it back when I was cleaning, or cooking, or making beds, or whatever I was doing. It was a great way to remind myself of what I had learned. Because we think we remember, but we don’t always do so.

Kate:  You actually still, to this day, continue to learn that way. I know you listen to many podcasts.

Joette:  I love podcasts. Yes, it’s a great idea. I listen to them frequently.

Kate:  Okay, let’s move on to tip Number Nine.

Joette:  Well, let me also tell you that you actually know more than you think you do. What I mean by that is: you don’t realize how much you’ve learned over a period of several months until someone in your group or someone outside of your group asks a question that you learned many months ago, and it’s been quite settled in your mind, and you stored it back into the recesses of your thinking. And you don’t realize that you do know more than you thought.

Don’t be too bold, but on the other hand, have enough guts to be able to say, “I can do this!” Then dig around until you find the answer. Usually, especially if it’s an acute or a common chronic, you can find that information on my blog.

Kate:  Yes, just insert that condition in the little search box on the top right-hand corner of your homepage. You can search for any mention of that condition in your blogs and podcasts, et cetera. Let’s move on to tip Number 10.

Joette:  Start small. People think starting small means colds, because they’re so common. But colds actually can be pretty difficult to treat. For that situation — for colds — start with something like ColdCalm®. ColdCalm® (C-O-L-D, calm, C-A-L-M). You can read about it on my blog.

It’s an excellent medicine as long as it’s a cold, and it’s not flu. It’s not a sore throat. It’s not bronchitis. It’s not a cough. It’s a cold. So, it’s still up in the head. Maybe it’s draining into the throat a little bit.

But start simple. That is a great way to start is with ColdCalm®.

Also, Oscillococcinum is another good one that you can start using. Just read about these on my blog for colds and common sinus infections, et cetera.

But don’t consider the fact that you’ve just started homeopathy, “And I really want to keep my father from taking his blood pressure meds.”

No! That’s not what you start!

First of all, we never tell people to stop their drugs when using homeopathy. That’s the first important piece of information.

Start small and use these combination medicines to get yourself going with them.

Kate:  A great place to start is actually bumps and bruises.

Joette:  Yes, you’re right, injuries. You’re absolutely right. Yes.

Kate:  All right, tip Number 11.

Joette:  This leads us to the importance of Googling. You Google the condition — I already said this — you Google my name and the name of the condition. You Google where to purchase the medicines, if you don’t find that you’re finding them readily in the places that I suggested earlier. But get online and find out what is used for this particular condition.

Now, when you Google something like a name of a condition such as an ear infection, and you go online, generally speaking, other homeopaths will give you the top five medicines.

Instead, I don’t do that, generally. I do have some of those in my old blog articles. But in the last many years, I give you the top medicine, the one that is going to affect most often about 80% to 85% of the population instead of forcing you to determine which medicine it is. We can at least start with that top medicine and assume that — given that most people fall within 80% to 85% (that is a high number) — that it’s likely the medicine will act.

So, use your keyboard to find out what you need.

Kate:  I just want to add something into this tip. Because while this is great and I do it very often when something comes up, if I just want to look up something quickly and I don’t want to search through my notes, I Google. But I do want to say, please write these things down, copy-and-paste.

Joette:  Put it down in your notes. You can put it in a 3×5 card. I think it’s a great method of learning and storing this information.

Kate:  Copy them onto your computer, on your hard drive, so that you have it for the future.

Joette:  You bet.

Kate:  Okay, tip Number 12.

Joette:  Number 12: Don’t be discouraged. Just because you didn’t get the medicine right the first time, don’t assume that you’re no good at this, or even the second time, or even the third time. I’ve made many, many mistakes myself. Sometimes, especially if it’s for myself, I can’t see the forest from the trees. So, I’m going to suggest to you that you keep trying and keep at it.

Follow the rules, though! You can’t just throw remedies at someone one after another. You want to stay within a certain number that you’ve chosen. Of course, that’s what you learn in these study groups and through experience — that you don’t want to flip around and say, “I’ll try this one. Then I’ll try that one. I’ll try this.”

No, no, no. Whatever you decide to choose for this particular condition, stay with it for the prescribed amount of time, and then you’ll see a better chance of success.

Kate:  But that also means if your symptoms change, then you do need to change the remedy.

Joette:  That’s right. That’s exactly right.

Kate:  Because I think some people get that stuck in their mind that, “I can’t change the remedy for four doses.” But in the meantime, you might have gone for half-a-day or a day and your symptoms may totally change if it’s a cold or flu.

All right. Let’s move on to tip Number 13.

Joette:  So, tip Number 13 I’ve already addressed to a certain degree, but I want to make a point of calling your attention to this. Even though you’re buying a kit, even though you own single remedy tubes, I want to make sure that you understand that combination remedies made by Hyland’s, Boiron, OHM Pharmacy, Hahnemann Pharmacy, those that I’ve mentioned already, Washington Homeopathy, those combinations are really valuable. Sometimes, we can’t see what we need to do. Let’s say it’s your seven-year-old son has leg cramps. Just go online and order one of the medicines that are specifically titled “Leg Cramps,” then stay with that until the condition is complete.

Kate:  Tip Number 14.

Joette:  Well, 14 relates to Number 13. That is, if you’re going to use a combination medicine named for the condition (instead of the name of the medicine itself, because there are several instead of only one), I can’t urge you enough to read the back of the package with the list of ingredients. Know them! If it says that for that leg cramp medicine, there’s Belladonna and Cuprum — I don’t remember the top ones that they usually include, maybe Zincum metallicum — you want to know that.

The reason you want to know is you want to learn each one of those. If it turns out that it helps your son, then you want to look up each one of those in a materia medica, each of those medicines, so that you know exactly what those medicines are used for. That’s how you learn your materia medica.

Kate:  Okay, tip Number 15.

Joette:  Number 15 is to know how to administer the medicines. For those of you who have lots of experience, I’m sure you know this already. But for those who don’t, this is much different than conventional medicine. Where in conventional medicine, the drug needs to be absorbed in the stomach — generally speaking, unless it’s a dermal application — but it needs to be absorbed in the stomach.

In homeopathy, it’s generally in the mouth where it’s absorbed. So, you want to keep a clean mouth when you administer the medicine. In other words, you don’t want someone who’s still eating the sandwich to take the medicine because it will take the medicine right down into the stomach. It may still act, but we know that it will act more appropriately if in a clean mouth.

By clean, I don’t mean you brush your teeth, just not food in the mouth. You can tuck the medicine between the gums and the teeth for someone who is maybe young or maybe too sick to even think about doing anything other than just laying there. It will be absorbed naturally in the mucosa of the mouth if you do it in this fashion.

Having said that, I’ve got to tell this story though. My father, many years ago, back in the early 80s, did not believe in homeopathy. He didn’t want to take it. So, my mother and I were very interested in it, and I decided we were going to treat him anyway in spite of himself.

He would complain he has terrible indigestion, or he’s got a terrible headache, or something like that, and I would put the medicine in his soup. I actually had been known to put it even in his coffee. Then my mother and I would sit back and watch how he was certain that that soup was the best soup he’s ever had because it made him so well within about 15 minutes.

We know that the medicine was acting.

Eventually, my father loved homeopathy, and was starting to learn how to use it himself — administer it to himself and to my mother as well.

But, it doesn’t mean it can’t work if it’s in food. Because certainly, we give it to ruminating animals who are constantly chewing their cud. It’d be almost impossible to keep them from doing that, and it still acts. We put that in their mouths. I believe that’s the best way to do it.

Now, some believe that you could put it in a bowl of water or trough of water. I think you could put it in a bowl. We’ll go on to talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But a trough, I think, is a little bit too large. I mean, I think that’s asking a lot of the medicine.

So, if you must administer to an animal that you can’t put into the mouth — because they’re aggressive or whatever — then you can put it in their water that you’re certain that they’ll drink from, and it’s just about a couple of cups of water, for example, in the bowl.

Now, for babies, a lot of people ask me, “What do you do for an infant? You don’t want them choking on a pill.” A lot of times, what I urge people to do is to mash up the pills with a mortar and pestle, or something like that. And then put water on it, and then draw that up with a little pipette and squirt it into the baby’s mouth. That way, they’re getting it in liquid form. It’s already been broken up and diluted.

Kate:  You could just put the pellets in a little… like, two to four ounces of water, though, and let it dissolve.

Joette:  Same thing. That’s right, if you have that much time. Because sometimes the pellets, if they’re in sucrose, will take longer to dissolve. But if you want to move it along faster, and the baby needs it immediately, then you mash it up and put it in water, and it starts to break down.

Kate:  That’s a great tip. Okay, tip Number 16.

Joette:  Number 16 is to keep important homeopathic medicines in your purse — the ones that you know your family could end up needing when you’re not at home. For example, Arnica montana. There’s no doubt, that’s a great medicine to have on hand for injuries: Arnica montana 200. Aconitum napellus (Aconitum 200), also very good for shocking events, for automobile accidents, et cetera, for bleeding. Arnica is also for bleeding. And Hypericum (Hypericum perforatum), which is excellent for extreme pain if there’s an injury.

Those are just three. But you choose according to what you know your family’s needs are.

If they’re catching colds all the time, then you might add ColdCalm® to that mix. Then you put them in your little make-up bag or a little special pouch that you’ve got with your homeopathic medicines in it.

It’s not a bad idea to label what they’re used for. Because if you’re the one who needs them — and you can’t think straight, or you’re not well at that moment — you can at least tell your child or husband to go into your purse and get the one labeled, “injury,” or “head injury,” or “bleeding,” or whatever. And they can pull it out themselves.

Kate:  Excellent. I never leave home without homeopathic medicines.

Joette:  Yep. Neither do I.

Kate:  Okay, tip number 17.

Joette:  Number 17 is to invest in yourself. You know, some of the best investments we can make financially is in someone that we know and trust.

Well, who do you know best? Who do you trust more than yourself? So, invest in yourself. Invest in your learning. Invest by joining study groups. Invest by buying books for yourself. Learn and study. Learn and … I will tell you that if you haven’t gotten this far with homeopathy, you need to just push yourself a tiny bit more, and you will be bitten by this bug — because there’s nothing more exciting than curing someone that you love of something that up until that time you had no idea how to do.

Kate:  Many of your students ask for books or courses for their birthdays, Christmas, and you’ve mentioned this before in the podcast, but I just started a study group, and many of the people in the study group have either taken your courses, Joette. I believe there are nine courses now. Is that right?

Joette:  Yes, that’s right.

Kate:  Yes. Many of the students that are in these study groups have already taken courses, or they asked for them for Christmas, birthdays …

Joette:  Mother’s Day.

Kate:  Mother’s Day, right. Yes. That’s a good way to be able to get those courses. Have your husband or some friend gift you with that.

All right. Let’s move on to tip Number 18.

Joette:  Number 18 is to not encourage people to get off of their drugs — their conventional medicines. I would never urge someone to do that. In my practice, and when I teach, I tell folks that they stay on the medications for these chronic conditions — such as Synthroid or blood pressure meds, et cetera, et cetera — and that you use homeopathy in tandem with them, so that slowly the person can improve with the use of homeopathy. Perhaps with the guidance of this person’s doctor or their pharmacist, they can start minimizing the amount of medications that they’re taking.

We’re not wild about drugs. There is a place for them! However, it could be potentially dangerous. If someone were to hop off of a drug, there are boomerang effects and many ill-effects from doing something like that. Homeopathy can be used in conjunction with many conventional drugs.

Kate:  That’s very important. Okay, tip Number 19.

Joette:  Use the protocols that I teach. Many times, people say, “Well, I’ve got your protocol, but I was thinking maybe I would go to a higher potency of that Arnica,” for example. Let’s say it’s Hamamelis 200/Arnica 3, that’s a Banerji protocol. They’ll say, “Well, I think that the person really needs a higher potency of Arnica 200.”

I say, “Really? So, all of those years that this protocol has been used, and with thousands, tens of thousands of people that they have found clinically have been benefited by this — you feel that perhaps this might not be right for you.”

I can’t urge you enough to put that aside and not think that way. It is very important that if I teach a protocol that you stick with the protocol exactly as it’s written. When you become an expert — I mean, the kind of expert where you’ve been in practice for many, many years — and then you find that sometimes that protocol doesn’t act fully, then you shift over. But let’s not assume that we know how to use a medicine when we have a protocol that’s been used for, oftentimes, as long as 150 years.

Kate:  Right. I think that applies to what’s written on your blogs and people that consult with you, why mess with it? I’ve had many people ask me, “Well, I know Joette said, use this in a 6 potency. But I think maybe I have it in a 30, and I don’t want to order it, so I’m just going to use the 30.”

I say to them, “Why are you doing that? Order the 6C potency. Use the 30 …

Joette:  If you can get it. Right, right.

Kate:  Yes. But get the correct medicine. Why mess with success?

Joette:  Well, homeopathy is a very complex medicine, and human health is a very complex subject. To add another complexity to it that doesn’t follow the simple rules, I think, is foolhardy.

Kate:  Yes, I agree.

Okay, and we’re going to finish big with Number 20.

Joette:  Number 20 is big: Don’t give up.

Some things are more difficult to treat than others. I’ve made many, many mistakes. That’s how I learn, especially when I treat myself. I said this earlier, there’s often a blind spot when you’re working on yourself. You can’t decide what it is you’re even working on. Is this a cold or is this an allergic reaction? It can be very difficult sometimes, but don’t give up.

You might need to take a break for a while. That’s certainly understandable. A break for a day, a few hours, a week, a month, but then come back to it again, because what you’ll glean by starting afresh or staying on path is beyond our wildest dreams.

This is the medicine that we’ve all been looking for.

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

I hope listening to this podcast has inspired you to follow in their footsteps. With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

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

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