Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:23 — 24.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podcast Index | TuneIn | Youtube Music | RSS

 

01:00    Traveling with remedies

03:54    Do X-rays affect homeopathic remedies

07:37    Traveling by car

11:48    Having the information at hand

15:04    Books to carry

18:21    Remedies to bring when traveling

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Homeopathy Kits available through Joette Calabrese

A Materia medica: Practical Homeopathy® for Busy Families

 

The top three single remedies you should travel with:

• Arsenicum album 6 or 30 (or Veratrum album 6 or 30) for dysentery, for Montezuma's Revenge, Delhi Belly (gut issues from food or water)
• Hepar sulph 30 or 200 for infections (ear infections, throat infections, eye infections) or plugged-up ears
• Nux vomica 30 or 200 (perhaps both) for jet lag, restaurant foods, not getting enough sleep, “over the top” feeling (see transcript for frequency appropriate to specific issue)

 

Related travel blog posts:

• “Flying: A Pain in the … Ear”

• “Holiday Travel? Call AAA!”
• “No Jet Lag on My Trip to India”

Joette:  Before you travel to a country that has diseases that are much different than your own, you might want to get this book. It’s super easy to carry around …

 Kate:  You are listening to Podcast Number 53 with Joette Calabrese at practicalhomeopathy.com. On today’s podcast, Joette shares her homeopathy travel tips and some of the most important remedies to have on hand while away from home. Now, let’s hear from Joette.

Hi! I’m Kate. I’m here with Joette today, and we are talking about travel. Travel is fun, right?

Joette:  Yeah. It’s fun, but it can also be cumbersome. So, let’s try to make it as easy as we possibly can.

Kate:  Exactly. So, let’s talk about how you travel with your remedies, and what remedies you might consider bringing and things like that.

Traveling with remedies

Joette:  Sure. Well, there are lots of different kinds of remedy kits. The manufacturing pharmacies — these homeopathic pharmacies that produce these kits — have a very good handle on what you will need. Besides remedies that are obvious to you or to most people such as Arnica, and Arsenicum, and Nux vomica, they know that in a household, most people will need “this, this, and this,” as well. So, they do the thinking in advance which is one of the reasons why I love kits.

By a kit, I mean, usually it’s a plastic box. Sometimes they come in pretty hardened cardboard boxes, but more often, they’re plastic boxes. They usually have 50 remedies. My first kit had 29 remedies, and they were larger bottles. But they have 50 remedies or 100 remedies, and they’re the top, most frequently used for most households. So, what I love about them is that you’ve got exactly what you need, pretty much. I mean it’s not going to be perfect. You can’t have 6,000 homeopathic medicines, but you’ll have 100 — the top 100. Those are the remedies that you need to know how to use once you really start learning homeopathy.

But you needn’t know how to use every single one of them while you’re just traveling. That’s just the goal that you should have for the eventuality of learning more. So, at any rate, what I like about them is the bottles are small. Some people complain, and they say, “Those bottles are too small.” I say, “No, no, no. You don’t understand.” If you get sick, and you’re traveling — or if you’re home, and you get sick or someone in your family falls ill — you need to have the choices of the medicines. Then once you know that Arsenicum album, for example, is acting for this terrible, relentless diarrhea and vomiting, then you get out, and you buy a bigger bottle. But at least it carries you until you can get to a place, or you can have it sent to you directly from OHM or Amazon or Boiron or something like that. So, you’ve got them on hand.

So, for travel, you don’t know where you’ll be in terms of finding a homeopathic pharmacy. Now, throughout the world, they’re very plentiful. In South America and Europe, you’ll find homeopathic pharmacies on many corners of big cities and even smaller villages, but you don’t know that for sure. So, it’s nice to be able to carry that with you. We carry some of the kits in our office so that folks have that available to them, and we have special packaging for them. If you buy two different kits — then one is a 200 potency, the other is the 30^th potency — then you get a special break. We also have produced a lot of information so that you don’t have to count on your memory or even my blog necessarily. But, there’s a lot of information that accompanies it. That makes it a little bit more valuable. So, that’s a great way to travel.

Do X-rays affect homeopathic remedies

Let me mention that there is the belief that homeopathic medicines will be ruined by going through X-rays and electromagnetic fields. I’ve not put together a scientific study on this, but in my experience — and I’ve done a lot of traveling — I don’t find that that is a problem. I still — when I travel — I get my kit, and when I’m in the checkout area of the airport, I tell them that these are homeopathic medicines and that I’d like them not to go through the X-rays. They usually oblige me, and there’s no problem. It takes an extra five minutes or so.

But, through the years inadvertently, I have left some remedies behind. One of them might have been in my makeup bag or inside of my purse, and it goes through anyway. Then I go to use it — two days later, a week, a month later — and it still works. I’ve labeled them so that I remember. It’s just happened so many times that it’s becoming clear to me that it really is not a problem. So, I still ask them not to put these remedies through the X-ray because there are 100 remedies in one of the kits that I carry and 50 in another. They’re very small kits so they’re really very portable. But just in case, I guess I still am being a little extra wary about it, and I ask them not to. But, I have not had any bad luck with it so far.

Kate:  Yeah. I haven’t either. I’ve flown with huge gallons of black bags full of these — much to the dismay of my family who has to roll their eyes when I’m standing there and getting hand-checked. Oh, my goodness!

Joette:  Pat-down. It’s a pat-down.

Kate:  You know, not always do you get patted down just because you ask them to hand-check. So, those of you who are wondering — once in a while, they do require a pat-down when you ask them to hand check, but not always.

Joette:  I was saying earlier to you that I believe that a lot of times the pat-downs and the extra scrutiny is because the medicines are in liquid. When they’re in liquid, I find that is more often when they go the extra mile.

Kate:  However, I have had times with liquids where they haven’t done the pat-down.

Joette:  Oh, for goodness’ sake. So, yeah, nothing’s completely consistent.

Kate:  Right. Hey, I think we should do a “myth buster” segment where we talk about all the myths of homeopathy, like you can’t put it through X-ray, can’t be in heat …

Joette:  Oh, I love the idea of a myth buster program! That sounds great. Yes, lots of myths around homeopathy.

Kate:  Yeah! We should do that sometime. So, there are lots of myths about homeopathy, and one of those is about X-rays. You’re saying that you haven’t found that …

Joette:  … X-rays dilute the value of the medicine — I found that it does not do that. So far. And as I said, I’m not willing to take a chance with 150 remedies in one felled swoop, but so far, I’ve had no trouble.

Kate:  So Joette, what do you feel about the liquid homeopathic medicines? Do you feel like they’re a little bit more fragile than the pellets?

Joette:  No, I don’t think so. Some of my liquids have gone through, and they still act.

Kate:  Okay. Well, that’s good to know. Yeah.

Joette:  Yeah.

Kate:  I think also, it’s a good idea to label your box, your kit, your bag — whatever you are bringing the homeopathic remedies in. So that if they’re really busy in the TSA or if you’re traveling and you accidentally leave them somewhere, that people know how to get a hold of you. Because it’s happened to me where I’ve actually shipped remedies, and they have gotten lost in shipping, and they are gone. I do not have them.

Joette:  Prudent.

Kate:  Yeah. I think it’s a good idea to label them.

Traveling by car

So Joette, what if you’re not traveling on a plane? Let’s say, you and your family are going on a camping trip or traveling across the states or in another country, you know, country-to-country? What advice do you have for traveling in a car?

Joette:  Well, it doesn’t change much. You just keep them inside the car itself. I mean, we used to do a lot of traveling to Chicago at Christmastime. There’ve been times when we were stuck in snowstorms. If I’d kept the kit in the trunk and somebody was not feeling well, we’d have to stop the car, open the door, shovel our way to the backend of the car, open the trunk, and get the remedies. So, you want to keep them on hand.

So, when my children were little — and even now with just my husband and I traveling alone — I keep the remedies right behind him, in the seat behind him so that I can reach over quickly. Which reminds me of a time in which we were traveling to Vermont, and my husband suddenly had tremendous kidney pain. He’d never had anything like that before. It was excruciating and abrupt. It was so painful that he didn’t know whether or not he could even pull off the thruway very quickly. He was perspiring heavily from the pain. He said, “It’s got to be kidneys.” He could barely speak. The pain was so horrible.

Kate:  Wow!

Joette:  It could have been a stone. It could have been just kidney colic that was extreme. Who knows? So, I grabbed the remedies that were right behind him, pulled up Berberis and Belladonna and started administering it to him immediately — we were on the thruway right on the side of the road with the trucks zooming by us. It took about … I’m going to say 15 minutes maybe? It’s hard to remember; it was years ago. He was better in, really, in about 15 minutes! It was over with! It didn’t come back again until perhaps a few months later. It came again but not as severely.

That’s not uncommon that we find with homeopathy. When you find the correct medicine for a condition, and you use it at that moment, the next time it presents, it’s often not nearly as severe. We used it again that time. We were not traveling the second time it occurred. It was the middle of the night. That was the last time that he ever had that pain and that sensation again — and it’s been years. So, it was good that I had it right there. Now, being on the thruway, if I had to get out, if the traffic was heavy, or we were in an inclement weather, it could have posed a little difficulty. So, I always try to keep them close by. I keep them in my bag.

Now, I don’t travel to the grocery store with my remedies. When I used to go to my parents’ house, they had their own remedies there. So, I knew that they had what I would need. But certainly, when I’m going to go someplace where I’ll be gone for somewhat of an extended period of time — a few days — then I take my kits. I take two kits. One has 100 remedies in it — very small kit, very, very tiny. We sell them at my office. Another kit has 50 remedies in it, and those are the 200 potencies. Then I also carry anything that my husband or I inadvertently need, have been needing from time-to-time that are not perhaps in the kit. Then I have a little ziplock bag for those. But generally, I just travel with these two kits.

Kate:  A good idea when you’re traveling is to do some investigation of the area where you’re going and find out what stores they have there that might carry homeopathic medicines — and more and more are carrying them now — because that can save you some packing room as well, if you can just go locally and get them.

Joette:  Well, also depending on where you’re traveling, homeopathy is ubiquitous all over Europe and South America. You’ll find plenty of pharmacies and stores, mostly they’re pharmacies. They’re on many street corners in large cities in South America, Europe, India. You see them everywhere. But in the US, you don’t know where you’ll find them.

Kate:  But quite often, you find them in surprising places, like grocery stores.

Joette:  Yes! Oh yeah! Wegmans carries them, and certainly Whole Foods, and Wal-Mart carries homeopathic medicines. It’s great!

Kate:  Yeah, Vitamin Shoppes.

Joette:  Right.

Having the information at hand

Kate:  So, let’s talk about another aspect of traveling and being prepared homeopathically. That is: having the information that you need at your fingertips. Because you may have the remedies, have those kits, but if someone gets sick — like your husband and you mentioned that kidney attack —how do you get the information that you might need to know? What remedy to use on the spur of the moment like that? I have a couple of things that I do. I know that you have lots of tips as far as keeping that information at your fingertips. What would you say?

Joette:  Well, I’ve been directing people just to go to my blog. But, a lot of folks are telling me, a lot of my students are saying, “Well, sometimes I don’t even go to your blog, Joette. I just write the name ‘Joette Calabrese’ and the name of the condition.” I think they’ve got a valid point. Not only because my website is not as sturdy as I’d like it to be — we’re in the process of updating it grandly. But until that time, there aren’t a lot of synonyms to use. So, if you think of “ear infection,” and the article was written about “otitis media,” then you might not find it. So instead, they just put my name in there, and they find it not only from my blog, but they’ll find articles that I’ve written for other blogs as well as articles that I’ve had published and speaking engagements that I’ve had online. So, you’ll find lots more information. Obviously, everything there is free. So, that’s a great way to find a solution to many of the conditions that most families would suffer from.

Kate:  What I do, also in addition to that, because I’ve done the same thing. We all have smartphones now, right? We can type in “Joette Calabrese, ear infection,” and come up with all kinds of ideas. But a couple of things that come to my mind are, one: those study groups because I’ve developed a close group of women who I’ve studied with over the years. These women, I know that I can call any number of them, and they are going to be there to answer my questions and to help me out. If I don’t have access to the information, they are willing to go in and look up the information for me. So, the study groups really give you that core group of people that are really going to be your support group and help you through those situations like that.

Joette:  Yeah, that camaraderie which is so important when you’re studying or learning something that is a little outside the norm because it’s not your average information. So, it also makes for people who are more excited about the subject and more passionate about knowing how to use this or that and willing to share information. It’s a great resource. Those study groups are wonderful. And not only with the Gateway study groups, but also in the courses — on Facebook, those folks who have taken those courses all have gotten to know each other. Many of them actually meet. One group is meeting in Florida. They’re coming from all areas around Florida and Southern US. They plan on meeting to actually meet each other physically after having been friends for so long on Facebook through these courses. It’s a very exciting movement that we’re involved in.

Books to carry

Kate:  The other thing that I want to do every time I travel is I want to take all my binders of the information from your courses, Joette. I want to bring them all with me, but I can’t put them all in my suitcase (or my family would really think that I’m crazy). So, I have made a compilation of all the protocols that are listed in your courses. I just carry those sheets of paper with me when I travel, so that I have that information at my fingertips, and I don’t have to bring all those binders.

Joette:  Well, I have a book that I bought many years ago that’s a desktop guide materia medica. It’s written by Gibson. What I like about this book (it’s not very thick; it’s hardbound), and what I like about my own materia medica for the same reasons, is that there’s not an enormous amount of information in each of the entries. So, what I’ve done has I filled it all in with my own experiences and information and studies and what I’ve learned from some of my teachers and my clinical experience and what I’ve observed in India. It’s all filled in. So, if I’m going to travel with any book, that’s the book I travel with. So basically, it’s a materia medica that I have filled in with my own notes.

Now, I’ve encouraged folks that when they purchase my materia medica that they do exactly the same thing. The materia medica that I’ve authored is not hugely extensive. Each remedy is maybe half a page or a page — at most two pages long. Whereas if you were to purchase the “Concordant Materia Medica,” you might find that, for example, Sulphur could be eight pages long. It’s almost too much information. It doesn’t leave you much room physically on the page to fill in the blanks for those areas that you have found valuable for your family or clinically. That’s one way that I would travel in the old days. Now, I don’t travel so much like that. I have them mostly memorized. I know what protocols to use, and it falls more readily at my fingertips.

But, I want to mention something else, Kate — and this is someone else’s book. It’s called The World Travellers' Manual of Homoeopathy. I love this book by Dr. Colin Lessell, L-E-S-S-E-L-L. The last time I looked this up, it was on Amazon for a dollar.

Kate:  Wow!

Joette:  It’s the best book I have found that’s small that is laminated — so, it can maybe fall in the ocean a couple of times (the cover). It’s super easy to carry around. I don’t know that I would necessarily carry it. But before you travel to a country that has diseases that are much different than your own, you might want to get this book and look it up. So, if you have someone who’s going on a mission to Africa or other parts of the world where the diseases are different than what our bodies are accustomed, then you might want to get this book and learn exactly which medicines you should have on hand for yourself or your family and in exactly that potency. And then you could certainly do what you said and keep a file card on it, so that the person knows exactly what to do should they encounter that condition once they leave the US.

Kate:  Yeah, great idea. Okay, so we’ve covered bringing our remedies. We’ve covered how to find the information on how to use the remedies. Now, let’s talk about maybe some top remedies that we just do not want to be without when we travel.

Remedies to bring when traveling

Joette:  Let’s see if I can come up with as few as possible, just to really tighten this up as much as I can. The top remedy — especially if you’re traveling to someplace like Mexico, or the Caribbean, or a place where the food is going to be different, the water is going to be different, and you’re worried about dysentery or something like that — I can’t imagine traveling without Arsenicum album or Veratrum album. So, think of it this way. It’s the two albums, Arsenicum album or Veratrum album. I would use them in a 6 or a 30 for dysentery, for Montezuma's Revenge, for Delhi Belly, for all the different names that are attached to this gut problem that people have by being exposed to water that’s different than what they’re accustomed to (or foods). So, I’m going to count that as one. Even though those are two separate remedies, Arsenicum album and Veratrum album, I put them somewhat in the same category because they work so similarly.

The next one that I can’t imagine leaving home without is Nux vomica. Because when we’re traveling, Nux vomica is one of those medicines that help with the jet lag, and eating restaurant foods, and not getting enough sleep, and over-the-top, and different weather conditions, and changing atmospheres, et cetera. Nux vomica is excellent. So, I can’t imagine leaving without that in a 30 or a 200 potency — perhaps both.

Then the third one that I can’t imagine living without is Hepar sulph or Hepar sulphuricum calcarea. It’s not two different remedies. It’s the same remedy. The second version is just the abbreviated name and the first one is the full name: Hepar sulphuricum calcarea. I would use that in a 30 or a 200 potency, probably more likely a 200 potency. It’s great for infections, ear infections, throat infections, eye infections. I’ve written about it on my blog and in other places. It’s what I call the homeopathic antibiotic. So, I love that one as well. That can also help with ears that get plugged up on travel — we talked about that in a blog just recently. It’s not the only one; we have others that could be just as useful. Pulsatilla could be helpful, et cetera. But, Hepar sulph is a great one because it covers so many conditions. So, there are three. I could go on, Kate.

Kate:  Right? Yeah, because I have, remember, that gallon-sized bag full of homeopathic remedies when I travel, so we could talk about everyone. So, let’s go back to Nux vomica for a minute. Let’s talk about how to use Nux vomica when you are traveling, and you’re not getting much sleep. How do you recommend to use it? Like for instance, how many times would you take it throughout the night that you’re traveling and not maybe getting sleep or in the days to follow?

Joette:  Well, today, I had these chocolate things: chocolate-covered pretzels. I can’t resist them. So, I bought these chocolate-covered pretzels. I thought, “Oh! How nice. I’ll just buy …  and I’ll have a few of them, and then I’ll give them to my son (because he’s here working with us for the next several days) and my husband. Everyone will enjoy them.” But that’s not what happened.

Kate:  What!?

Joette:  I have eaten so many of those stupid little chocolate-covered pretzel things that I actually feel very uncomfortable right now. It’s late afternoon for me. I started early this morning eating those darn things. I know that if I try to go to sleep tonight, I probably won’t sleep. Now, if I were traveling on top of it, that would really put me over the top.

So, why do I bring up the chocolate idea? It’s because when you’re traveling, you eat foods that are not usual to you. If you’re careful about how you eat generally, and then you can’t keep that up when you’re traveling, Nux vomica is a great remedy for if you start feeling uncomfortable. That’s exactly how I feel right now. I really should have taken Nux vomica before we started this podcast tonight! But I know that tonight, I probably won’t sleep unless I take a dose. So, I would take a dose of Nux vomica 200, probably about an hour before it’s time to go to bed. It would just bring me down from the chocolate, settle my stomach, allow me to sleep properly. I would not take it every day. I use it as an SOS from time-to-time when I’m stupid like this. “SOS” means Sorry that you did something wrong and feeling really Stupid about it — so SOS!

Kate:  I like that.

Joette:  But I’m never sorry enough to stop! Because then a few weeks from now, it will start all over again — like I haven’t remembered a single thing about it.

Kate:  Which brings us right back to that Nux vomica. So, when I travel overnight or don’t get much sleep, I’ll take some that night. And then I’ll take some again maybe a couple of times during the next day, and then maybe once or twice the following day — depending on how lacking I am in sleep and just how off schedule I am.

Joette:  Yes, because while traveling to get clear across the earth, it can take two days — sometimes two and a half days — and you’re sleeping at odd hours, et cetera. In that case, I wouldn’t just take one dose. I would probably take it every 12 hours for several days until my sleep was restored properly. Because once I get to India, every year I crash when I get there. I don’t take it generally while I’m flying because I don’t feel ill — although I probably should, prophylactically. But, I wait until I feel like I ate chocolate pretzels. And then I take it, and it does help. It makes a big difference.

Kate:  Okay, so I think we’ve covered our travel bases. We’re ready to take off in the car or on a plane now. We can travel knowing that we are prepared. There’s also a couple of blogs for those of you who want to follow up and know more about remedies to use while you’re traveling. You have one called, “Holiday Travel? Call AAA!” and that’s about anxiety for travel.

Joette:  Yes, for flying.

Kate:  You also have a blog titled, “No Jet Lag on My Trip to India.” So, for those of you who want more information on traveling and remedies for that, go to Joette’s blogs and look those up.

Joette:  So, having an interest in homeopathy is one thing but actually taking it on is another. So, if you plan on traveling or even if you’re just staying at home, but wherever you are in any part of the world, if you want to count on homeopathy, it is very important that you own the medicines — as many as you possibly can. So, birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Mother’s Day — ask for remedies. Buy as many as you can possibly afford, because it’s no good to say, “Oh, oh, I know the remedy for that. I know exactly what to use.” And then you go to your little kit, and you don’t have it. So, to be prepared, not only with knowledge but with the material acquisition of the medicines are both key.

Kate:  Okay. Well, thank you Joette for taking the time to share with us your travel tips.

Joette:  It was fun, Kate.

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

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