Podcast 33 – New (and Not So New) to Homeopathy Part II

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In this podcast, we cover:

04:15    Differentiating between homeopathy and natural medicine

18:30    All About Dosing

26:20    Aggravation

30:45    Proving

36:50    The Banerji Protocols

Editor’s Note: References made within the podcast’s audio to the previous podcast “New to Homeopathy Part I” should refer to Podcast 17 instead of Podcast 7. 

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.

Paola:   It’s Podcast Number 33 at joettecalabrese.com and here’s what we have coming up.

I’m really looking forward to sharing this podcast with you today. Joette and I got to geek out over why we love homeopathy. So, today’s podcast focuses on subjects that newcomers to homeopathy might appreciate. At the beginning of this podcast, we look at how we can distinguish natural medicine from homeopathy. We also spend some time talking about how some people have a hard time accepting the fact that these homeopathic remedies are so diluted and yet still work. We talk a little bit about how the term nano for nanoparticles are more accepted today. But why wait for society to catch up and accept the terminologies of homeopathy? Instead, just use it right away and just uproot your illness. Then the meat of the podcast comes from you, Joette’s listeners. We get into several questions that are coming from newbies to homeopathy.

Alright, so here we go. Hi. I’m happy to be here with Joette recording another podcast.

Joette:  Hi Paola. Yes, it’s fun. I love doing this, too. We say that every time but they really are fun. It’s just like a natural conversation.

Paola:  It is fun. I enjoy your mind, Joette but also very much enjoy your friendship. So, this is fun.

Joette:  It goes both ways.

Paola:  We’re taking a step back with this podcast, not a step back as in a step down but just like pausing and we’re looking at the big picture in this podcast. I think it’s important to do because every day, Joette, you are getting new listeners, new people that are jumping in the middle of things. So, this podcast takes an opportunity to look at the new person who’s new to homeopathy. For those of you who aren’t new, you need to revisit the old stuff.

Joette:  Not only that, Paola, but I find that it is useful even if you’re a person who’s been doing this for 25 years. It’s amazing how you will learn something new even if you get one little pearl that can be useful. Interestingly, I found some tapes. I mean tapes, little cassette tapes that I had studied on homeopathy from back in the early 80s. I found them in my closet. I pulled them down. I’ve got an old car that still actually has a tape player in it. So, I thought, “Gee, why don’t I see what’s on here. Let’s see how I think differently now.” So, I’ve been listening to these tapes for the last several days in my car and loving it because even if there’s one little bit on Aconitum that I hadn’t considered before or one little aspect of Bryonia. These are medicines I had to memorize in order to get my degrees. So, it’s not like this is something that I don’t know anything about. But there’s always something more to learn from a slightly different set of words, slightly different language. So yes, there’s always something more to learn.

Paola:  Absolutely. You said Aconite. One of my favorite things to tell people about Aconite that they don’t always know about, and this is something that I stumbled across, Aconite is the Arnica of the eye.

Joette:  Yes, ma’am.

Paola:  That’s really cool information. If you don’t go back to the basics sometimes, you’re going to be stuck with what you know — and then you don’t know what you don’t know.

Joette:  Right, exactly.

Paola:  Very good. So, with our newbies in mind especially the structure of this podcast, so I have several questions that a lot of people who are interacting with newbies to homeopathy, these are the kinds of questions they’re getting. The first one is how is homeopathy different from herbs, specifically herbs and then also natural medicine.

Differentiating between homeopathy and natural medicine

Joette:  Well, homeopathy is based on a lot of the botanicals, the botanical world. So, there is a lot of crossover in certain ways. But herbs or botanicals in and of themselves mean that you’re using herbs in their gross form. In homeopathy, we’re getting that herb or mineral or animal venom or something from the periodic table, et cetera and it’s being diluted. Now, we’re not going to go into how it’s diluted and all of that because that is the essence of what homeopathy is about. But it takes it to a different level.

You know how when a child is teething? And if you know anything about botanicals, the first herb you might think of would be chamomile or Chamomilla. So, you get it and you make it into a tincture or you make it into a tea, especially a tea because it’s a small child. You don’t want to give a child alcohol, not too much of it anyway. You make the tea. You give it to the child. It might calm the child down a bit. In fact, it often does. It not only calms the child down but also keeps the pain down a bit. That’s why it’s calming it down. So, the pain is not so grand.

So, you get that Chamomilla and you get that flower and you put it in alcohol. You let it sit for a fortnight, two weeks. Now, you’ve made it into a tincture. I’m describing the homeopathic process. Now, it’s sitting for two weeks. Then from there, it’s decanted. Then a drop of that made tincture that has the essence of the plant and the medicinal properties of the plant, now diluted into and absorbed into the alcohol, a drop of that is taken and put into 99 drops of alcohol. Now, we’re starting the process of making a homeopathic medicine. I’m not going to go through all of that again because as I said, we can refer to our podcast that describes that but it’s diluted.

Paola:  That would be Podcast Number 17 where Joette really kind of breaks down the homeopathic process of taking something like an herb, chamomile herb tincture turning into a diluted homeopathic remedy.

Joette:  Right. We’re going to dilute it, let’s say 200 times because I love Chamomilla 200 for teething fractious children. So, it’s diluted 200 times if it’s 200C to the 100^th power. That gives us then the medicine Chamomilla. It’s always in Latin. We don’t use common names. We use Latin words. Chamomilla 200C diluted 200 times, C to the 100^th power. Now, we give this to the child who is teething and something even grander happens.

What happens is it’s not just dealing with that child that night and allowing that child to calm down from the teething pain and the irritability but also it softens the whole aspect of teething. It makes it so that the teething is no longer the condition. If you give Chamomilla 200C to a teething child who is fractious and irritable, and not able to sleep, and very touchy, and every little thing bothers them, and every little thing hurts, and nothing makes them happy. You give them Chamomilla 200C, twice a day for several days, not only will you have a child who now will be able to sleep (some people, it’s two days; some children, it’s eight days), but within that framework, you will see that child will not only fall asleep easily and the fractiousness will melt away. They will no longer be irritable and kicking you and pushing off of you and being sensitive to every little noise and touch or anything but you’ve also stopped the action or at least reduced the action often greatly of the pain that the child is experiencing with teething. So now, you’ve got a child who’s been teething and chronically has these problems for the last six months. My gosh, when is this tooth going to come out. Finally, you give Chamomilla 200C and you see the entire picture change. So, it gets that essence, the medicine, the healing aspect of chamomile flowers. By diluting it, it seems like it would go the opposite way. But there is an aspect of homeopathy that stimulates the mixture so that now, it becomes a very potent healing medicine because it’s diluted.

Paola:  I like to think of it as because it’s so diluted, it enters the body at a cellular level.

Joette:  Deeper.

Paola:  Nano, nano-level.

Joette:  Nano-molecular, yes, I love it. I love it. That’s exactly what it is. Now, in the world in which we live, nano is not an unusual word. It is understood. So, it goes deeper. By diluting it, it minimizes any toxic aspect of the plant of which there’s not much in chamomile but brings to the fore the curative aspect. So now, instead of dealing with this age-old teething, this baby, my gosh, three years old still teething; every single time a tooth comes in, the whole family is up. Now, you give the Chamomilla 200C twice a day, sometimes even three times in a day. You will see that not only will the pain go down and the irascibility but also the return ability of the condition.

Paola:  Very good. I guess one question that I think people have is okay, so you started this example by saying you can give like chamomile tea. So, what you’re saying is herbs can cure or help uproot the condition.

Joette:  Yes, yes, ma’am, absolutely.

Paola:  Homeopathy might do it more efficaciously, at a deeper, quicker possible level.

Joette:  Exactly, exactly, it goes deeper. I started out studying herbs. I live in the country. I would gather my plants from the wayside and in the fields and in the woods. I’d make my own tinctures because I didn’t know enough about homeopathy. But once I recognized the curability of homeopathy and the depth and breadth to which it can carry a person, I asked myself, “Why am I using it in the gross form as a plant when I can use it in the homeopathic form and go way past what a plant can do?”

Plus, here’s another part of this picture. Now, it opens up our world because an herbalist can only use plants that are safe. But in homeopathy, we can use plants that are not safe in their gross form because we’re going to dilute them so many times that we have minimized or eliminated to a certain degree the toxic properties of the plant and brought to the fore the curative. So, it opens up the world. So now, Rhus tox which is poison ivy is a fabulous medicine for arthritis. Now, without that poisonous plant being diluted in this pharmacological, mathematical, scientific method called homeopathy, we would not have a cure or at least a help for arthritis, osteo — as well as often rheumatoid arthritis.

Paola:  If this piques your interest, how is it possible that we use these toxic substances and they become curative in the homeopathic preparation, again, I’m going to refer to that Podcast Number 17.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Listen to that …

Joette:  I know it flies in the face of what we think is common sense but think about dilutions and how important they are. Dilutions matter.

Paola:  Yes.

Joette:  They’re big part of our lives. Only the difference is this is so scientific, it has been proven again and again and again for well over 230 years now.

Paola:  Well, and that’s the interesting thing is whether or not society has caught up with, like we were just discussing the word nano. That’s kind of widely accepted now. That’s something we all know about. So now, we can use the word nano and you don’t sound like a crazy person. But I think 20 years ago, if you use the concept of nano being a real thing, people would think you’re crazy.

Joette:  Here’s the thing. You know what? It doesn’t really matter how …

Paola:  It doesn’t matter.

Joette:  It really doesn’t. The fact is these medicines act. They work.

Paola:  Exactly. So, my point is you can wait for society to catch up with something that works or you can just go with it right now.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  That works.

Joette:  Yes, absolutely.

Paola:  So, there’s one thing I want to discuss, too, though, is we have herbs and then we have natural medicine. I want to distinguish that not all natural medicine necessarily cures in the same way that homeopathy cures.

Joette:  Well, natural medicine is really just a catch-all phrase. I don’t know what it really means except that does it mean chiropractic? Does it mean acupuncture, qigong? All of those are considered natural medicine and they all have their places. But I’ve never found anything that is as profound-acting as homeopathy. I’ve been searching a long time.

I was born in 1952, ladies. I got to tell you, I’ve been around a long time. My mother used to do reflexology on my feet when I was little because she was into this for a long time. She took us to chiropractors. She didn’t take it all the way but she did explore a great deal of this and not homeopathy, unfortunately. I’ve been exposed to this kind of information for my entire life. It took a long time for me to find homeopathy. I also had very poor health for a good many decades of my life. So, I was always searching. It’s not like I lived a charmed life where nothing went wrong. I was always searching and digging, and this is the most profound.

I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m sure you can probably tell in not only my voice because of the speed at which I speak and the excitement in my voice, but also your voice too, Paola. You just said today in one of our meetings here in the office that you love this. Anyone who learns enough of this to just be able to cure themselves or their family will fall in love with this.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  I always say that you think it’s lovely getting pregnant and then holding your baby in your belly for nine months. I mean it’s also romantic. It’s so gorgeous and then giving birth. A friend of mine once said it’s the most profound human experience to give birth to your child. You think that’s incredible, try curing your child for a condition. Talk about heavy. There is nothing on this earth like being able to cure your own child and know down to your toes that you’ve done no harm. You can’t say that with antibiotics. You can’t say with steroids. You can’t say with inhalers. You can’t say with any conventional medicines. But with homeopathy, you can cure your child of something that could have been plaguing that child for months if not years and maybe even goes all the way back to your own family. That, my friends, is what excites us about this and that we want to share this with other families.

Paola:  Absolutely. It’s not to say that you don’t like chiropractors. We do.

Joette:  Oh, I love chiropractors. No, no, no, I think they’re great. Yes, absolutely.

Paola:  You’ve even told me before, having other natural medicine things in your kit as a backup.

Joette:  Yes, you need all the tools you can get. But once you start learning homeopathy, many of those tools will fall to the wayside. I studied essential oils, I don’t know, 35 years ago. I love them. I still have them in my house. I still use them here and there. But if I want medicine, I go to homeopathy.

Paola:  Absolutely. I do want to point out one more distinction between natural medicine and homeopathy, and you’ve taught this to me, Joette, this is where I learned it from, is that homeopathy re-educates your immune system, your body to learn to overcome. So that on the other side of an illness, be it chronic or acute, it is wiser for the illness. Whereas, opposed with natural medicine can be colloidal silver. It’s kind of grouped into that. It could be high doses of oregano oil that you take because you have strep throat or whatever. On the other side of those types of situations, your body does not learn anything.

Joette:  You’ve used something that doesn’t cause harm most likely, which is a great thing. But you want to up the ante. You want to go even deeper. You want it not to come back again. You want that teething episode to not be something that your child and family have to experience every couple of months just because the child is growing.

Paola:  Popping another tooth. Yes, that’s exactly right. I remember I taught one of the study group classes. My friend said, “Well, I always just use colloidal silver every time I get strep.” I said, “Well, did you hear yourself? Every time you get strep, how about not getting that again?”

Joette:  Right. We’re not saying it will never happen again. But usually, it’s a lesser version so the teething might be not as extreme. It won’t be as intense. It won’t last as long. There’ll be a larger space between each time that it occurs. Same thing with strep, you might still get a sore throat. You might still get a little strep infection. But you hit it again with the same homeopathic medicine that worked last time. It’s likely that is the goal of homeopathy, here’s the keyword, to uproot the condition.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  Not that episode of it, the entire condition. Absolutely gorgeous.

Paola:  I think it even gets more exciting like, “And there’s more. You might have inherited your dad’s tendency to, I don’t know, have bad joints.” Going back to Rhus tox, that can help you get away from that inherited.

Joette:  Well, hey, let’s put it this way. Everything is inherited. Everything is inherited. I know people don’t think that way but the moment the sperm meets the egg …

Paola:  I know, unless you’re Adam and Eve.

Joette:  Right, really, the moment the sperm meets the egg, it’s done. I don’t care what your politics are, that is the start of human life. Once that begins, and I know that might turn some people off and it might turn some people on, I’m of that ilk that I believe that’s when the moment of life begins. At that very moment, the mixtures of the two DNAs are now set in stone. So, what happens to that child, to that person, to that teenager, to that young adult, to that middle-aged adult, to that elderly person is all based on their DNA. So, all we can do is correct it. So, if homeopathy can correct it, it means it must be affecting it.

Paola:  We’ve got homeopathy. It takes toxic substances and turns them curative. It has a specific process that separates itself from just generalized natural medicine. In addition to curing, it allows your body to become empowered on the other side of illness. It really sets itself apart from other forms of medicine.

Usually, the next question is how do I dose? Meaning, how often do I take it and how many pellets do I take.

All About Dosing

Joette:  Well, the number of pellets is determined by looking on the back of the bottles. So, that’s super easy. How often to take it? Well, that’s too broad a question. Are you talking about for rheumatoid arthritis or are you talking about a child’s ear infection or for teething? You take it until it works. I go into this. I’m being very broad and explaining it like that. But that’s why you need to learn a little bit more about homeopathy. So these kinds of questions are answered. For example, when our study groups meet, we talk about that, how frequently a homeopathic medicine should be repeated. Basically, you take it until it’s done. Now, how do you know that you’ve chosen the right one? Well, you see improvement. If you don’t see improvement after X number of uses of it then you have to go on.

Paola:  But all that is very specific. You’re right that it takes more learning. That’s why you’ve done the study group curriculum, Gateway to Homeopathy, because how frequently you take it changes between an acute and a chronic. Acute, you can take it a little more frequently. Chronic, you have to space it out more. Then to measure improvement, again, it’s different between an acute and a chronic. That takes just a little bit of learning. So, I guess that again separates itself from natural medicine. I think natural medicine is a little bit easier to understand like lavender oil for when you have a stuffy nose; whereas with homeopathy, it takes a little bit more learning.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Another question people get in relationship to dosing is, “Is it safe to give my baby a remedy? What is the dosing difference?”

Joette:  Well, let’s put it this way. I gave my baby, and I’ve been at births where the newborn is given their homeopathic medicine. So, as long as you have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing then yes, it’s safe. Everything comes with a risk. So, I’m not going to tell you it’s perfectly safe. Nothing is. So, I want you to remember that. That if you choose a medicine and you say, “Wow, I know what I should be using.” And you give it. You say, “Well, I don’t see results yet.” You give it again and no results yet. You give it again. You give it again. You give it again. You may cause trouble.

So, you have to know what it is you’re treating. You want to know a little bit more than just let’s just throw this out and see if it sticks. You want to have a little bit more knowledge than, “Gee, I wonder if I can give this or not?” That’s where it really matters that you take this on. If this is of interest to you, I urge you to consider our study groups and our courses. If nothing else, go to my blog. It’s free. I’ve been writing articles on this blog for close to nine years. I give away exactly how to treat one specific condition at a time and exactly what medicines they are and how frequently to use them, et cetera.

Paola:  Yes. That is your signature style is you get that busy moms don’t have time to learn this the long way. So, you’re going to teach it the shortest way possible.

Joette:  I try very hard to distill it down as much as I can.

Paola:  I think a lot of women get overwhelmed. Like, “Oh boy, I have to learn this thing called homeopathy and it just seems so overwhelming.” I really feel like it’s just a few hours. If you get okay, okay, I’m going to commit to four hours of learning homeopathy this week. You’re going to learn a lot to get going, even just with four hours.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  Just to be clear then, dosing for a baby, if I have a baby who is nine months old …

Joette:  Let’s go to the teething situation.

Paola:  Okay. I don’t need to reduce the amount of pellets I physically give, the physical number of pellets. I don’t give five to an adult and two to a baby because I’m reducing the dose.

Joette:  Yes, that’s right. Although some places will, some bottles will tell you to give the baby fewer pills but that’s because it’s not necessary to give a full four pills. For example, you can just use two. But if the baby got into the bottle and ate the whole bottle, it still would not cause trouble.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  The numbers of pills, it’s a lot different than what we’re accustomed to.

Paola:  Yes, you have to kind of break that paradigm. Tell them your analogy of lighting a fire with matches.

Joette:  Yes. It’s like if you were to start a fire, you could start a fire with one match or you could start a fire with six matches. It’s still lighting the fire. That’s what we’re doing is stimulating the body’s ability to correct itself.

Paola:  But of course with Tylenol, it’s completely different. You really need the proper dose.

Joette:  Yes. That could be dangerous if you don’t do that properly.

Paola:  But think about it. Earlier, we mentioned dilution. These are highly diluted remedies. It’s kind of impossible to get an overdose from two nanos versus one nano, you know what I mean, or five nanos versus 100 nanos. It’s kind of all the same. Those of you who are learning homeopathy, you realize that there’s one remedy that does many things. For example, we’re talking about Rhus tox.

Joette:  Rhus tox is great for joint pain, for arthritis, for tendon pain, for muscle strain, for overuse. It’s also great for chicken pox. When you think about what poison ivy can cause, it causes pustules and itching and restlessness. So, we can then say that it can also be used then because that’s the signature of the plant and how it acts on us as humans. It can then eliminate that by using Rhus tox 30C or 30X, or 200C or 200X, or even a 6x, 6C. We can uproot the itching and restlessness and maddening sensations of having chicken pox.

Plants have many purposes. So, when people say how was it that it could have so many purposes? Well, plants have many purposes. If you have a stomachache, if you’re thinking of botanicals, you could use oregano. You could use mint. Many other substances can be considered for one condition. Healing is not linear. We don’t want to put health into little boxes so that we can say, “Okay, this is for this. That’s for that.” It’s a little bit overprescribed and oversimplified. Life is a little more complex than that. There are nuances. We want to know those nuances. They’re really fascinating.

Paola:  Tell me if this is wrong to get it in people’s minds. People are just so used to taking Benadryl for allergies, Advil for headaches. It feels like it’s one drug for one thing. Homeopathy uses the whole plants or the whole mineral, or the whole organism. So, it has many sides to it. But when you’re trying something into a pharmaceutical, it’s very narrowed down and it’s very isolated. It’s a specific drug. Therefore, it tends to only work for a handful of things.

Joette:  Well, it’s patented and it’s synthetic. In other words, they couldn’t sell it for what they sell it for. You can’t own chamomile. You can’t own that. That’s part of the earth. But if you get chamomile as they would in a conventional pharmacy, not a corner pharmacy but in the pharmaceutical industry, they get the constituents of the chamomile and synthetically mimic it. Now, they can own it. By owning it, they can patent it. By patenting it, that’s how they make their income. Then they could charge anything they want which is why you see some drugs are $3000 for one injection.

Paola:  So, it’s like they basically narrowed the ability of that plant that used to be so versatile. They’ve narrowed it down to be something specific so they can make money off of it.

Joette:  Well, they’ve done more than narrow. They’re mimicking it. They’re synthetically mimicking it. It’s not the same thing. It would be like sugar is sugar. It’s from the cane plant. If you want to mimic those properties, you can end up with NutraSweet. Now, is that sugar? No. It’s a mimic of it. It always amazes me that folks who are very, very studious and particular about what foods they put in their mouths and what foods they put on the table for their families but when the child gets an ear infection, they toss an antibiotic in there or they toss a steroid in there. Now, I realize. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving anyone a hard time because a lot of times, mothers don’t realize that there’s an alternative. This is the alternative.

Paola:  Okay. So, here’s a big question. This might be a new word for some people. What is an aggravation? How often does it happen?

Aggravation

Joette:  Well, an aggravation is a word that’s used in homeopathy to describe when you use a homeopathic medicine for a chronic condition, not acute, not an ear infection, not teething, not something that has a natural beginning and a natural end. It’s going to be gone in two weeks even if you do nothing but for a chronic condition like arthritis or eczema or something that the person often gets worse before they get better. So, it’s frightening to many people and I don’t blame them. It is something that is found in classical homeopathy which is why I don’t use classical homeopathy any longer. I use protocols. It is one of the many reasons that I’ve abandoned the use of classical homeopathy for chronic conditions because I don’t want to see anyone suffer any further. It often will frighten someone enough away that they will never want to do it at all because they know how sick they can become. They’re afraid that that could cause it. So, I don’t worry about it in the very least anymore.

Paola:  So, to use the term, “aggravation” is this new term. So, to use a term, I think that people might relate to more easily, in natural medicine, we know that there’s a detox reaction, detox symptoms. So, it’s like they say in natural medicine that a detox symptom is a good thing. It means that you’re releasing the toxins. Then once you get past that, you’ll be improved. So, in classical homeopathy, an aggravation is like a detox symptom?

Joette:  I would say that it’s kind of overshooting the mark and the body is having to compensate. I think that’s the way I would describe it.

Paola:  You’re right. I feel like I’ve rarely, if ever, had an aggravation using the Banerji Protocols, the practical homeopathy that you teach.

Joette:  Yes, right.

Paola:  Next question is can homeopathy be harmful if taken wrong? You’ve kind of touched on this. Well, let’s talk about it a little bit more because we walk a fine line though. We don’t want to scare people from using homeopathy but we still want them to respect it.

Joette:  That’s right. That’s a good word. We want to respect it. It’s like water. Here’s the ocean. Now, this is really beautiful. It’s really great that you want to play in it. It’s important that you learn how to swim. But you have to also understand that there can be a danger associated with this if you’re not prudent, if y don’t know how to swim, if you go to the edge of the pier and you don’t know what you’re doing. There is good and bad in most things of great value. We could do the same thing with food. Salt is a very important aspect of cooking. We need to have that mineral in our foods. But we can overdo it. It can become dangerous if we use too much. On the other hand, if we use too little, that can be a problem. So, there is always the chance of causing trouble if you don’t follow the rules. That’s why I try to make the rules very, very precise as best as I can.

Paola:  Which goes back to what I keep saying is your signature style to try and give us the facts so that we can take this and use it in the safest way possible.

Joette:  That’s true. You see, in classical homeopathy for those who know what classical homeopathy is, it’s very vague. You could take one person as a patient and have five classical homeopaths interview that person in separate rooms within an hour of each other. I can practically guarantee that you’ll come up with five different medicines for that person because it’s also based on the perception of the homeopath. Now, it doesn’t mean that they’re all wrong or that any of them are wrong. It doesn’t mean any of that because there are many ways to skin a cat. However, having said that, what I love about the Banerji Protocols, which are the protocols that I use now and some of them I call just plain old practical homeopathy, is that there are specific medicines we use for specific conditions. So, they are and here’s the keyword: reproducible results.

Paola:  Which is very different from classical homeopathy.

Joette:  Yes, it is quite different.

Paola:  In the sense that the same remedy will treat the same condition on everyone. Homeopathy can treat the same condition but in classical, you’d use very different remedies to get to the same results.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  So my headache remedy will be different from your headache remedy because we’re different people. Classical homeopathy likes different remedies.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  So Joette, in light of respecting homeopathy and knowing that we have to respect it and knowing that it is powerful medicine, like the ocean, we love it but we have to respect it, what does proving a remedy mean? How do we know if we are proving?

Proving

Joette:  Let’s stay within the realm of acute illness such as a child’s fever or otitis media, strep throat or something like that, okay? Because if we’re talking about chronic, that’s too complex to explain but let’s go at least the setting.

Paola:  And you do explain chronic stuff in your courses.

Joette:  Oh, I do. I teach it on my blog as well. But we could spend a good 45 minutes just on that. So, it’s best that we try to keep it simple.

Let’s say a child has got an ear infection. You decide the remedy that should be given is Pulsatilla. So, you give Pulsatilla, and there’s no change. That’s acceptable. Give it again by three hours later, still no change. Do it again three hours later and still no change. Now, you’re going up to the fourth dose. That’s generally my rule is after the fourth dose, now, you start questioning whether or not you’ve got the right medicine. Let’s say you’ve gone past four doses and you still don’t see a change. You keep saying it’s got to be Pulsatilla. I just know it is. You give 20 of these or even 10 of these doses. What you could end up getting is a child who starts acting as though they really need Pulsatilla.

What that means is that the picture of Pulsatilla, the need for it as a child is very needy and weepy. They have eyes that get goopy. They get conjunctivitis. They get stomach aches. They’re crying constantly. They’re very irritable. You might cause that to become the problem when all you really had was otitis media before that. So, it makes things much worse but it’s not permanent. You stop using the medicine. It goes away. Then you find the correct medicine that should have been used in the first place and you move on.

People are very, very worried about provings. But I don’t worry about them as much as long as you follow the rules. That’s what I teach. I’m very specific about rules on my blog that we put out every week. I’m very specific about rules in my classes, in my online classes and our study groups, et cetera. I’m pretty careful about that.

Paola:  Right. That’s why I always cringe if I talk to someone who has taken your class and they’re breaking the rules. You shouldn’t do that. Homeopathy is complex and your rules are there for a reason. So, you should really stick to them.

I have a little pinkeye story. It’s funny that you mentioned it where I had a great experience where I learned about a proving. My friend’s daughter had pinkeye. We actually went to your blog. One of the remedies that you suggested was Hepar sulph. That’s the abbreviation, I think. What’s the full name?

Joette:  Hepar sulphuricum calcarea.

Paola:  Right. So, we say Hepar sulph.

Joette:  Right, for obvious reasons.

Paola:  Right. She started dosing it. I think she got through maybe just four or five doses throughout the first day. Then she noticed that all of a sudden, that pinkeye was not only just how it was before but there was a new symptom. It was weeping. The eye was draining some fluid. Also, her daughter mentioned that the light hurt and that she wanted her mom to turn off the lights in the living room.

Joette:  Which was something that hadn’t been happening previously.

Paola:  Two brand new symptoms on top of the pink eye. So then, I went to my materia medica which is something you do learn about in your courses. Actually, you are coming out with a materia medica pretty soon here.

Joette:  That’s right. I can’t wait to get that out.

Paola:  I know. It will be really great. I cannot wait to get it too because you’ve put together a bunch of other materia medicas you’ve put together in courses, and it’s one little enchilada. Anyways, I went to my materia medica, soon to be yours. I looked up Hepar sulph. They break it down by body parts. So, I looked under Hepar sulph for the eye. I saw that with Hepar sulph, there could be a lot of drainage and sensitivity to light with something. So, because we were taking Hepar sulph and because the pink eye developed new symptoms that related to Hepar sulph, boom! I knew we were proving the remedy. That’s one of the ways you can deduce. So, then we stopped the remedy. What do you do now, Joette?

Joette:  You stop using that medicine. Sometimes people will use Camphor 200 or they’ll just move on. You don’t want to wait too long because you got to get at that conjunctivitis. Now, you go to, okay, what is presenting now? Now, we start thinking about what is the next medicine that could be most valuable. That’s the way this is laid out. So, you might go to Pulsatilla because Pulsatilla has a lot of weepiness. The discharge is yellow or white and that’s what it looks like. Now, they’re super sensitive. So, Pulsatilla would be my guess, would be the next good choice.

Paola:  Well, that is what we did and it worked.

Joette:  There you go.

Paola:  There you go.

Joette:  Then you use Pulsatilla 30. You use that every four hours. If it’s really severe, you might use it every two hours. I mean severe. You don’t say, “Oh gee, I just don’t like this. And she’s got a dance recital tonight.” No, no, no. Use it according to the method, about every four hours as your benchmark. Usually by the third dose, sometimes the first dose, you see an improvement.

One of the ways we know that we’re witnessing improvement is that the person is better. She stops weeping. She stops being so sensitive. She gets more energy back. She feels happier. She eats a better meal. Another way to know is that she falls asleep because that’s where we heal. When we’re really sick, we need to sleep. We’re just too sick to sleep. So, that’s not what’s happening. But when you use the right homeopathic medicine, that’s often what ensues. Then when the child wakes up or whoever it might be, they wake up again. If the symptoms have returned, guess what you do? You go right back to the medicine that acted. So, you give that Pulsatilla again because it just was needed again. So, use it until it’s done.

Paola:  Finish it off.

Joette:  Yes.

Paola:  So, let me review here really quick then. A proving is when you have selected the wrong remedy. Typically, new symptoms arise related to that remedy. You can use the materia medica to double check. Then how do you fix the problem that you’ve gotten into? You can either antidote like you said with Camphor, or what is the preferred method is to select the proper remedy because the proper remedy like in this story of Pulsatilla will correct the ill-chosen one.

Joette:  That’s right.

Paola:  Last question Joette, what is the Banerji Protocols? How are they different from classical homeopathy?

The Banerji Protocols

Joette:  The Banerji Protocols are named after Drs. Prasanta and Pratip Banerji who have become my not only colleagues but very dear friends. They use protocols that they have come up with from having seen thousands and thousands of cases because they run a clinic and research center in Kolkata. But what’s fascinating about them is they don’t just see many patients per day but this was Prasanta Banerji’s, who is in his 80s, clinic. Before that, his grandfather was using these methods. Before that was his great, great uncle. So, what we see is 150 years’ worth of homeopathic physicians — and they are MDs by the way — who use only homeopathy and see an average of 100 patients per day per doctor. So, after a while, it becomes pretty darn clear that in 80% or 70% or whatever the number turns out to be, usually it’s about 80% to 85% of all cases with this specific condition, whatever condition it is we’re discussing, will be aided greatly by this particular medicine, whatever medicine has been found to be used for many thousands of people prior.

So, classical homeopathy is a little different as we touched upon earlier. Classical means you’re going to choose based on the person, not on the condition. Whereas the Banerji Protocols and practical homeopathy that I teach is based on the name of the condition. And then of course, we look at the symptoms. That’s also quite important. But we don’t go as deep into the personality per se. We go more into what is presenting. Oh, the eye is red. There’s a discharge. It’s sensitive to light. The person is weepy. It’s been going on for two or three days. She’s got a stomach ache. There’s the case. There’s the conjunctivitis case.

So, if we don’t use the first medicine that is most often considered the first level, then we can go to the second level. If we use the first one and it doesn’t act like what happened with your friend and her daughter, that is pretty much the first level for conjunctivitis. Had there been any creamy or weepy substance exuding from the eye at the onset that perhaps wasn’t truly noticeable by the mother or by you, or it was there but you didn’t give it an awful lot of credence, had you seen that, you might have skipped right over Hepar sulph and gone right to Pulsatilla. So, what it is, is it really exemplifies getting a very complex medicine and distilling it down to those medicines for those conditions that will work for most of the cases on earth.

Paola:  So basically, the Banerji Protocols take a diagnosis, conjunctivitis for example. It does take note of some of the nuances that might be applicable to that diagnosis perhaps. Like you were saying, if we hadn’t given any credence to the weepiness or if there hadn’t been any at all, it would have helped us maybe kind of narrow down between Hepar sulph and Pulsatilla right away. Then you apply the protocol.

Joette:  That’s right, super easy. Let me put it this way, relatively easy. What I mean is that I’m coming from a classical background. I studied classical homeopathy 31 years ago. I was classically trained and taught the first classical homeopathy course in New York State that was ever credit-bearing at a college. So, I was a dyed-in-the-wool classical homeopath. I used to do my practice for many years. But I was frustrated by it because it was not, number one, reproducible. It took too long to take the case. And number three, and this is the key for me, I couldn’t teach it to families. I can’t teach classical homeopathy to families unless they’re willing to spend many, many, many, many years learning theory 1, theory 2, the history. That’s a big chunk to bite off.

Paola:  Do you mean that mostly for chronic conditions, not acute?

Joette:  Yes, for chronic conditions, yes, yes. I’m able to teach acute pretty easily and always have been but now, I can teach chronics pretty easily.

Paola:  Right.

Joette:  How beautiful is that?

Paola:  Well, I think it’s important to know this, Joette. You have two groups of students in your client base. You have one group that has been with you since the beginning or at least have done homeopathy since the beginning. We have Kate Bechard that we interviewed. She’s a Mom with Moxie that we interviewed if you look through our podcast. She’s one of them. She used to do classical homeopathy before and then she’s like, “Oh boy! But then Joette and the Banerji Protocols came on board. It has rocked my world. It simplified it so much.” So, she appreciates how much simplified the Banerji Protocols have become.

But you have a group of students that have come on the scene. They haven’t done any classical homeopathy. They’ve come right into the Banerji Protocols. They feel like it’s complicated. So, I just want to point out. Remember, if you’ve come on the scene late in the game, straight to the candy, it really is a lot easier now in relationship to classical homeopathy. I think that’s really important to remember and be grateful.

Joette:  Well, it’s human health. Medicine is a very, very vast subject. You could study it for five lifetimes and still not get all of it. So, what we’ve done is gotten the complex and made it into a simple as we possibly can.

Paola:  So, know if you feel like well, this is really hard, well, it could be worse.

Joette:  That’s right.

Paola:  Joette, I think you wanted to share with us some closing thoughts.

Joette:  I did. I want to mention and I know that those followers of this kind of a group who would be listening to this kind of podcast are probably already in this court. But it doesn’t hurt to remind families and moms and grandmothers what we’re really doing here. So, I feel very strongly that every decision, no matter how uncomfortable socially, personally, culturally, professionally, even financially must be based on what is genuinely best for the family. Family is the core of our society. We must keep it together as tightly as we can. At the bottom of the family pecking order is the child. The child is the most innocent of all in our society. It is up to us to protect and to make sure that what is put into that child’s body is worthy of a human being, especially a human being in our own family.

So, with that, I bid you all the best of studying and learning homeopathy. Get as much free from me as you possibly can. I really don’t mind. That’s exactly what I love doing. But should you decide at any point in your life that you’d like to go a little further then consider study groups. Should you decide to go even further than that then we have classes online. We’ve got a lot going on here. It is my passion to teach this and get this out there. I want to see homeopathy get back on the map in North America once again.

Paola:  Very good. That is your mission. How many families do you want to get this into?

Joette:  We want to get to 100,000 households by 2020. We’re getting there.

Paola:  We are getting there. It’s because moms like sharing good stuff with other moms.

Joette:  Yes. Well, that’s what we women do best. I don’t want to discount men but this really is more often in the woman’s realm because she’s the mother or the grandmother. She’s the one who’s responsible for the wellbeing of the children, their health, and their nutrition, et cetera.

Paola:  Thank you, Joette. You’re an awesome mom. Thank you for mothering us through this world of homeopathy. I hope that the newbies to homeopathy and the oldies appreciated this. I think it’s especially good for those of you who do have experience with homeopathy to listen to this podcast and share it with your friends when you’re trying to do that. I know that I have a lot of people coming to me, “So what is homeopathy?” I just feel like, “Oh dear.”

Joette:  Oh, you just have to explain.

Paola:  I send them to this podcast. Podcast Number 17 is a great first one. Then let’s say this is number two.

Joette:  It’s great. Well, thank you, Paola.

Paola:  Thank you, Joette.

You just listened to a podcast by joettecalabrese.com where nationally certified homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese shared her passion for helping families stay healthy through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Stitcher, and TuneIn radio.

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.