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IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

03:36    Alternative Routes and Other Background History

10:04    Recovery Process

14:57    Headaches

20:04    Dog Story

22:52    Feeling Empowered

 

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

The Survivalist Guide to Homeopathy: https://survivalmedicine.joettecalabrese.com/survivalist-guide-to-homeopathy/

Allergic!? Escape Allergies, Sensitivities, and Intolerances, with Homeopathy. Practical Protocols to Get Your Life Back: joettecalabrese.com/allergic

The Antibiotic Alternative: Balance Your Bugs Without the Drugs: joettecalabrese.com/aa

Good Gut, Bad Gut: A Homeopathic Strategy to Uproot Seemingly Unrelated Illness in Body and Mind: joettecalabrese.com/ggbg

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 108.

 

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, this is Kate, and I want to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast. Today is another Mom with Moxie podcast. I have a wonderful mom here whose name is Lisa.

 

Lisa has a story that I believe a lot of you have as well. If you feel that you've tried so many things … You've tried essential oils; you've tried herbs; and you're stuck. You just don't know where to go. You still have issues, and you're not getting to the point of healing that you want to be at.

 

I think you're going to want to hear Lisa’s story because that's exactly what happened to her. With that, I want to welcome and invite Lisa to share her story with us.

 

Lisa, so thankful that you're here today.

 

Lisa:  Hi, Kate. Thanks for having me.

 

I have a long history of holistic medicine as well as traditional Western medicine. I went to school to become a registered dietitian, and I worked in hospitals for about 10 years. Then I moved into education.

 

I have had lots of health problems that started from infancy that continued on well into my 50s.

 

One of the exciting things that happened to me is when I was at my last legs of feeling like I was never going to regain my health, I heard a summit where Joette was speaking. (And to be honest with you, I don't remember which it was. I think it was probably around gastrointestinal health.) She was talking about IBS and some other protocols.

 

From there, I connected with her. Then that was the beginning of the improvement of my health. Without homeopathy, I can't imagine that I would be where I am today.

 

Kate:  Well, I'm anxious for the listeners to get to hear more about how you have gotten to that place of healing today and more about your time with Joette. But I want to step back for just a minute and talk about your history and how you grew up — because you have actually a pretty fascinating history with your parents and their interest in alternative medicine.

 

So, give us a little background here about your grandfather and your mother, and what they did.

 

Alternative Routes and Other Background History

 

Lisa:  Sure. My grandfather was, I consider, a visionary. In the 1940s, he went to Chicago to study to become a chiropractor. Back then, chiropractors were actually part of physiotherapy or what we now call physical therapy.

 

But he came back to New Hampshire after that training, and he raised my mother and her sister in a more of a holistic manner. So, my mother grew up in that alternative medicine background.

 

Then when I was young, and my brother was young, we were both having health issues. Mine were related to bowel, and my brother’s were related to chronic ear infections.

 

She figured out that it was food-related — specifically dairy — and she was having a hard time finding whole foods in the area that we live. So, she decided to open a natural food store. I was seven years old at that time, and I grew up in the health food industry.

 

One of the things that was interesting about growing up in the health food industry in the mid-to-late 70s and the 80s is that if you went to a health food store at that time, you were thought of as being a “hippie.” I'm dating myself with that term, but a hippie!

 

What was interesting is the town I live in has federal offices, and from time to time someone would come in to make sure my mother wasn't selling marijuana in the store because that's what they thought about the health food industry back then.

 

But I had all of those experiences working in the store from the time I was quite young. But one of the things I realized at that point was that I wanted to kind of be more legitimized after watching my mother kind of be also a visionary in this field.

 

That's when I’ve decided to go the traditional medical route.

 

I did that for quite a long time. But I always had my alternative roots, right?  My alternative roots never go away. One of the things that … I wouldn't advertise it because if I said something to a medical doctor or whatnot, that I was afraid that they would not treat me with the same level of respect. But people knew.

 

I had my own little posse of other employees who would come and knock on the door and peek their head in and say, “Hey, got anything in that drawer for me.”

 

Maybe it was Rescue Remedy − that was one of my early dabbles in homeopathy-like medicine; or maybe it was supplements or charcoal for gas and bloating or whatever it was. I had my usual pile of things in there.

 

I can still remember the first time I was dealing with a patient who had had chronic diarrhea (and it's what we see frequently now — C. difficile — in hospitalized patients), and the diarrhea was endless … going up to a physician and saying, “Would you ever think about using probiotics?”

 

I mean, this was in the early 1990s. He said, “I don't know. I don't think so.”

 

Nowadays, it's fairly commonplace to use probiotics as one of the mechanisms to dealing with chronic diarrhea. In some ways, I was trying to introduce it, but I didn't get very far.

 

Once I left healthcare, I went into education. From there, I started to experience some of my own health problems. My bowel-related issues continued to worsen. After the birth of my last child, I was put on IV antibiotics. That was the last straw.

 

From there, I started to have such severe IBS that it became debilitating.

 

I was a dietitian, I knew all about food, right? I knew how to modify all those things. Despite my best efforts — no matter what I did nutritionally — I couldn't seem to get off the steaming train that was going forward that where my intestinal system was just getting more and more inflamed. It got to the point where I couldn't really eat very much and couldn't take much for supplements.

 

Kate:  In fact, I think you told me earlier that you could only eat about 25 foods.

 

Lisa:  Yes. I had really narrowed down. Anything that had any kind of fiber in it, I couldn't eat it. And vegetables!

 

Again, here's me, the dietician: I can't eat any beans; I can't eat any vegetables; I can't eat any … no fruit whatsoever — the fruit was the worst, right? My diet was just getting narrower and narrower and everything. I couldn't even take probiotics; they were actually aggravating it.

 

Everything that I knew how to try had either worked in the short run and then stopped, or I found that no matter what I did, there seemed to be an aggravation.

 

I used to liken my health to … I’m sure everyone brought their kids to like a water park where they've had the little fountains or the little water things where the water squirts up from the ground. If you step on one hole, then the water comes up somewhere else.

 

Kate:  Right.

 

Lisa:  That's exactly the way it felt like with my health! I would take something, and I said, “Oh, this is starting to make me feel a little better.” And then something else would pop up. It just never felt like I was getting off the hamster wheel with it.

 

Kate:  That's a great visual, Lisa. I love that! I bet a lot of people feel that way actually.

 

I was just talking to my mom today. I said, “I feel like things keep happening in life.”

 

And to some extent that is just living life, right? Things are always going to happen and pop up, and it's never where we've reached optimal health, and that's where we stay!

 

Joette and I talked about that as well. I know she's mentioned that as well that that is just living life. Things happen.

 

But I want to hear where are you’re at today, Lisa? Can you eat more foods?

 

Lisa:  Oh, yeah. I would say I'm at 98% recovery. It's taken several years, but now I am eating pretty much everything. I still have some slight gluten sensitivity, so the volume of gluten I eat has to be monitored. But aside from that, I am back to eating everything.

 

Kate:  How long of a process was that?

 

Recovery Process

 

Lisa:  Well, I would say, for the big shift in my IBS, it took about a year.

 

The one thing that I've learned about homeopathy is that there's often steps forward and then a step back and then a step forward. So, it's not a continual linear line. If you look at it through the big window, you see that where you're at is better than where it was six months ago, but it's not linear.

 

I did work with Joette with this. It took us many remedies to figure out what the right combination was that was going to be the difference. It was significantly better in, I would say, a year. And then in another year, it's probably was where I'm at now. It took a good solid two years to get back to eating pretty much everything that I wanted to, but there were improvements along the way.

 

I will say after the better part of 10+ years dealing with that, there was — a lack of a better description — there's a lot of PTSD around it. I became really afraid of food. I became afraid of what the ramifications were going to be if I were to eat that.

 

So, I was very, very slow at reintroducing things. Perhaps it might have been a little bit quicker, but I would say it was a solid two years before I was feeling as good as I am now.

 

Kate:  Lisa, you are just imparting lots of wisdom for the listeners today because I feel that our expectations are that once we start taking a homeopathic protocol or remedies, that we should expect a huge shift in two months even.

 

I love what you said that it's not going to happen overnight, and it's not just a straight line, linear progression of getting better and better and better. You do have those two steps forward, one step back. I think that is so important to remember, especially when you're dealing with chronic issues such as food intolerances and allergies. It doesn't happen overnight.

 

Lisa:  I agree.

 

Kate:  Yes.

 

Lisa:  It does take patience. But the good news was there was enough good things going on, that it encouraged me to stay the course, right? We would flare, and then I would just have to trust.

 

Sometimes, you just have to trust the process. My system is extremely sensitive even now. I'm somebody who's likely to aggravate on a remedy when somebody else doesn't. One of the things I've learned is if I feel like something is aggravating, stop and wait, and let it settle out, and then try it again.

 

That took a lot of time for me to feel comfortable with. My first reaction is to stop it because I'm aggravating. But then the question is, “Should I have continued to take it?” right? But I learned with me, it's better to stop and reassess. Then try again, and if it happens again, then go looking for another remedy.

 

Kate:  Oh, good. That's wonderful advice too: evaluate and try it again. Don't be afraid to try it again. But if it happens again, then it's really time to think about, “Is this the correct remedy for me?” I love that. Thank you.

 

You've been healed, for the most part, and you still have a few things you're dealing with you said. But I want to hear now about some of your family members, because you have some great stories. Your co-workers used to call you “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.” Now you are! You're helping other people. You're that healer in your community.

 

Why don't you tell us about some of the people that you've helped, and what you've done?

 

Lisa:  Well, what's interesting about working with homeopathy is that I always … when someone has not had experience with homeopathy, I have a tendency to just kind of throw out in the middle of the room: “This is going to feel a little bit like ‘woo-woo’ medicine. But if you're willing to try, then it might help, or it might not (if I pick the remedy right or not), but it's not going to hurt you. So, are you willing to go with me?”

 

And because of that … I'll start with some co-workers first because, honestly, I find treating my co-workers a heck of a lot easier than treating my family.

 

My family looks at me, and I try and ask them to describe their symptoms, and they're like, “Mom, get the heck away from me. I'm miserable. I don't want to tell you where the head hurts,” or wherever it is. Right?

 

I find picking remedies for myself to be hard. If my family members aren't willing to talk to me, I find them difficult. But I work in a public health department. So, I work with a bunch of people who are also very health conscious who have no trouble giving me whatever information I need.

 

Headaches

 

Some of my favorite stories actually surround headaches. I know for a lot of people, headaches are tricky to find the right remedy. I've had quite a bit of success with that — with headaches — for everyone but myself. I still have one kind of headache I've still not figured out how to treat.

 

But for example, I can go back a couple years. I had a co-worker who had had a really bad cold, respiratory infection, and a headache that would not go away. What I gave her was the Banerji protocol, Sanguinaria and Belladonna, and within 24 hours the headache was gone.

 

That same remedy has worked for sinus headaches for my mother. That also has worked well.

 

I've given that one to my husband as well who has a tendency to get sinus headaches after a cold. Generally speaking, it's been pretty effective across the board when I know I'm truly dealing with a sinus headache — you know, something that is related to either a cold or allergies. So, that worked pretty well.

 

I also recently had one of the same co-workers who has had a history of migraines. About a year ago, we were in a meeting, and I said I’m trying to get an idea where the headache was.

 

We tried Belladonna, and Belladonna helped a little bit, but it didn't completely go away. Then of course, off we go into the wild blue COVID hole of never seeing each other right. So, when we got … this is about three weeks ago … I walked down the hall, and I peeked in her office, and the light is off, and she's got indirect lighting on, and I said, “Oh my God, do you have a migraine?”

 

She said, “Yes, I've been meaning to ask you. I have a migraine every three days, the first three days of my menstrual cycle ever since my son was born, which is a little more than a year ago.”

 

So, I kind of was paying attention to what was going on. Last time she had the headache, in the back of my head I'm thinking Bryonia. That's what I'll try next time. But of course, we didn't have a next time.

 

I went ahead, and I gave her the Bryonia at this time and within a half hour, she told me that the headache was better. She only took two doses. I gave them to her within an hour. Two doses within an hour because the headache was really bad.

 

I got an email later that night that she said she was substantively better, and she woke up the next day with no headache. That was day one of the three-day migraines she'd been having for 10 months. Is that uprooting the problem? Probably not. It sounds like its hormonal. It's probably worth a chronic remedy — a chronic look at it. But for right now, it got her out of that pain. We'll see how what happens next month when it pops back up.

 

My last headache story was actually my daughter in high school started to get these chronic, well, these headaches that would show up. It was like a cross between a cluster headache and not quite as strong as a migraine but a little bit like a migraine and would go on for weeks — low-grade headache that would go on for weeks. It was one where as soon as she went to school, she would read. She’d think it would get worse.

 

I tried a bunch of different remedies. Eventually, I thought, you know, there may be an anxiety or fear component there. So, I gave her Ignatia for those headaches. They went away, and they have never come back. That was three years ago at this point.

 

Kate:  Wow.

 

Lisa:  I mean, she's young, right? I mean, there's an opportunity to uproot things fairly easily when you're young. It wasn't a long-standing issue. It had happened previously six or eight months before.

 

But yes, she doesn't get that type any more. But I mean, literally, those headaches would go on for four or five weeks. It wasn't debilitating, but it was just chronically there.

 

So, anyway, the headaches have been one of the areas where I've had some luck with — even though I know that for others, finding headache remedies can be a bit of a challenge.

 

Kate:  Yes, those are great stories. I love that. For those of you who may be newer to Joette and newer to homeopathy, a good way to find some information on what remedies you might use for headaches is just to go to JoetteCalabrese.com.

 

In the upper right-hand corner, there's a little search box there and you can type in “headache”, and it will bring up all of the blogs and podcasts and articles that Joette has written where she talks about headaches and what medicines to use for those.

 

So, if you're new and you're looking for ways to find what information there is on treating headaches with homeopathy, or some of the remedies that Lisa was talking about just now, that information can be found on Joette's website. Check that out.

 

Lisa, you have a dog story that I think illustrates how homeopathy is not only effective in helping to heal our bodies, but it's also cost-effective. Tell us that story.

 

Dog Story

 

Lisa:  I have an older dog who loves to run around. She tore what I know the “cruciate,” I think it's called, but it's basically the doggy ACL.

 

When I brought her in, they were telling us that what we should do is operate on her, and it was going to be $3,000. Of course, she was already 12, almost 13, years old. To me, it didn't make sense to do that.

 

I decided that I was going to look around. In looking around, I used the internet largely to get ideas, and there are homeopathic vets that have some stuff online.

 

I ended up selecting two remedies, Ruta grav and Rhus tox, and I put it in a 6C. For the dog itself, I diluted it in water. What I did is I was giving that to her three times a day.

 

What was really interesting about it is because I had it in a water bottle, I would shake it. I would do the succussions.  I would shake it. What was fun was that the dog would hear me start rapping the bottle on my hand, and she would come right over, looking for it. I mean, she sensed that that was making a difference. We did give that to her for months.

 

Then when she was getting better, I think she kind of self-selected when she was done with the remedy because she stopped coming when I was bashing the bottle.

 

Kate:  Wow.

 

Lisa:  At that point, I decided she probably had better knowledge about what her body needed than I did. We stopped, and she's good. I mean, she's running around. She's really old. But she's not running around so much anymore. But she's not limping. We never had to go through and have the surgery.

 

Kate:  You talked earlier about those remedies probably cost you about 20 dollars or so (maybe a little bit more), versus the $3,000 to get the surgery, and that didn't include the MRI.

 

I love what you said about how that paid for your homeopathic education. Is that correct? Tell us that.

 

Lisa:  Right. I mean, just having that cost savings meant that I could take additional courses. Three thousand dollars pays for a lot of homeopathic classes. I've done several of Joette's classes. I've done the Survivalist class, the Allergies, the Antibiotic class, Good Gut, Bad Gut. So, I've had the opportunity to do that, as well as the two Gateway courses, and I believe still I'm well under that $3,000.

 

Kate:  Right and bought some remedies.

 

Lisa:  I bought some remedies.

 

Kate:  Yes. It's so cost-effective. That's one of the things I love about homeopathy.

 

Lisa, would you be willing to share with us some final thoughts or advice that you have drawing from your experience with homeopathy?

 

Feeling Empowered

 

Lisa:  Well, I think one of the thoughts that's been in my mind for the last several months as the world has dealt with this pandemic is how much of a peace of mind knowing homeopathy has given me. While everyone else is feeling victimized, or that some mysterious virus or ailment is going to attack them, I know that I have tools and my homeopathic remedies, and I don't have to be afraid.

 

Kate:  Yes, that's what I hear over and over again from these moms and dads that I interview, is that they feel empowered, and they don't have as much fear. I think that's just a great way to wrap this up to know that by learning these skills — learning about this medicine — that it will empower you.

 

Lisa:  Absolutely.

 

Kate:  Thank you Lisa for being willing to share your experience with us today.

 

Lisa:  My pleasure, Kate.

 

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.