Podcast 13 – Why Homeopathy Trumps ‘Em All

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In this podcast, we cover:

1:35 Acute vs. chronic conditions

6:58 Drugs are antithetical to true health

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

23:16 Rousing the sleeping giant

24:13 Learn homeopathy to cure diseases

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

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

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

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

• I explain the difference between chronic and acute illness

• The good news and the bad news

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

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

Warmly,

Joette

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

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

Joette: Hi, Jendi! I’m well.

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

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

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

Acute vs. chronic conditions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jendi: So like people assume with allergies.

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

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

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

Jendi: So what does it mean to you?

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

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

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

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

Drugs are antithetical to true health

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

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

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

Jendi: So what’s number two?

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

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

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

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

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

Jendi: That is so sad.

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

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

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

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

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

Jendi: Yeah. Unfortunately, money talks loud.

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

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

Drugs suppress while homeopathy cures for the long-term

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jendi: It really sounds like a no-brainer.

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

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

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

Rousing the sleeping giant

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

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

Learn homeopathy to cure diseases

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jendi: I understand that.

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

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

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

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