Podcast 9 – The Worst Kind of Pollution

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In this podcast, we cover:

0:45 Joette as an anti-pesticide activist

2:32 Medicines: The worst kind of pollution

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

11:05 Transitioning from conventional medicines to homeopathy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joette as an anti-pesticide activist

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

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

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

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

Medicines: The worst kind of pollution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joette: That’s right. But then, wham!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jendi: So what should Dolly do?

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

Jendi: What plan do you have for her?

Transitioning from conventional medicines to homeopathy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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