Podcast 6 – The Secret of Getting Ahead is Getting Started

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In this podcast, we cover:

0:54 Open your doors to homeopathy

4:17 What to expect with homeopathy

10:19 The harmful effects of using antibiotics

13:44 What dosage to use and how to know if treatment is working

26:08 Get started with homeopathy

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The Secret of Getting Ahead Is Getting Started – Mark Twain

This week’s podcast is about starting and using homeopathy for your family’s acute illnesses.

• I list the 5 main goals we expect to accomplish when treating an acute illness.

• Where homeopathy surpasses modern medicine and in contrast often makes modern medicine look outdated.

• General guidelines for selecting dosage.

• The 3 criteria that need to be met to know if the selected remedy is working. (This is a writer downer.)

• Why it is important to improve your observational skills and why it will happen naturally as you study and use homeopathy.

• A little hint on how to keep your family’s records. This took me years to refine.

In 1890, Mark Twain was quoted in Harper’s Bazaar: “The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business. You many honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the allopaths to destroy it.”

Good old Samuel Clemens’ words were prophetic. But he had no idea that only 50 years later homeopathy was indeed attacked and destroyed in North America.

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

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Jendi: Hello! This is Jendi and I’m here again with Joette Calabrese. Hello, Joette! How are you?

 

Joette: I’m well, Jendi. Here we are again. I think this is the sixth podcast we’ve recorded. This is becoming a habit.

 

Jendi: But it’s a good habit.

 

Joette: Yeah.

 

Jendi: And I did hear a statistic that most podcasts don’t make it past about number eight. So we’ll see how we do.

 

Joette: We got two more to find out.

 

Jendi: Yeah, yeah. I hope the listeners enjoy it and follow along with it and it becomes a habit with them.

 

Joette: Yeah, exactly.

 

Open your doors to homeopathy

 

Jendi: So I am learning a whole lot and thinking about a whole lot of new things. And everything I learn just opens up like more questions and more ideas of more things that I want to learn about. And it is so exciting. We went for many years without health insurance and I wish I would have known some of this then. It’s just like I can do this and that’s very exciting for me. I was able to meet a lady at church who grew up on homeopathic remedies, raised her children that way, and it’s just like, wow, more and more people the more I learn about it.

 

Joette: Well, you know, I think what happens is that we don’t know anything about it. We have never heard the word before. And then once we learn the word and recognize what it is, because most people misunderstand what homeopathy means and what it is, then suddenly you start using the word and you find out there is a whole another world. It’s like what I always said before. It’s like you know that under the water in places like the Caribbean, you know it’s beautiful under there. You’ve seen it on television. There it is, this vast, beautiful world.

 

But it’s not until you put that snorkel on and you go there on the surface and hang out over a coral reef do you realize the depth and breadth of the subject or the depth and breadth of the beauty and the vastness of what’s below the surface. That’s what homeopathy’s about. It’s not until you open up this door do you recognize how fabulous this is. And, “The secret of getting ahead” always “is getting started,” by Mark Twain. That’s one of my favorite statements by Mark Twain. So yeah, let’s get started.

 

Jendi: So one of the questions that I wonder is I get the homeopathic remedy that was advised. How long do I use it before I change that remedy? And I’m used to a society that’s an instant society and microwave society like they call it and give me one pill and I’m fixed. So how long should I stick with a remedy before I move to a different one?

 

Joette: Yeah. That’s a good question. I get asked a lot of questions that demonstrate beginners and even those with more experience that there’s confusion about what kind of results to expect if they use one dose or two doses or whatever. And when they begin relying on homeopathic methods, now, what do I do? And that’s really the essence of the question, is people want to know how long they ought to continue with a particular remedy, how many times to administer it, and how to tell if they have chosen the correct remedy or protocol. And sometimes, folks make the mistake of not sticking with the protocol long enough. Other times, the error is sticking with the protocol for too long.

 

I might add that the former is the one that’s most common because most folks get impatient. They say, “Well, shouldn’t it be working by now? I’ve already given two doses.” So they get impatient. And they also don’t trust their decision on the remedy choice that they’ve made. They say, “I don’t know. Is this right? Is it wrong? I can’t tell.” And another problem is that they don’t know how to read symptoms that are presenting before them and their changes. And so if you don’t recognize that there’s improvement, you might easily jump off of that remedy and say well, there’s no change. Well, it depends on what you mean by change.

 

What to expect with homeopathy

 

So I will lay out some guidelines to help you get a clearer idea of what to expect. So we begin with the difference between, first of all, acute illness and chronic. So we’re going to be talking about acute and it’s something that is generally short lived on its own. For example, a bee sting, a sore throat, otitis media which is an ear infection, urinary tract infections, etc. Usually, there’s a great show of vitality, meaning there’s a lot of symptoms and they present pretty intensely sometimes, such as pain, fever. There could be exhaustion. There could be swellings. But even if you don’t treat it, it would eventually, and sometimes in short order, just go away on its own.

 

If it’s more serious, like a very serious urinary tract infection, then it might end up in something more dire. Pneumonia can certainly end up in death. But it’s not a long-term illness. You don’t have pneumonia forever. It’s an acute so it has a beginning and an end. But chronic conditions are issues such as allergies. You don’t just have allergies and then they go away. Cancer, food intolerances, long-term constipation, long-term anxiety or insomnia.

 

So as you can see, the word “long term” is key here when it comes to chronic, but we’re going to stay in the realm of acute today because the rules that we’re going to learn today can be used somewhat with chronic but we have to start with acute just to get a better idea and I encourage people to treat their acute problems as often as possible. So when treating an acute illness with homeopathy, we should expect to see results within hours, sometimes minutes, or a few days, depending on the type of malady we’re addressing.

 

So for example, with nausea from food poisoning or vomiting, we would expect to see results within hours, meaning the person is no longer vomiting relentlessly. They might still have nausea. They may not be well. They may not be perfect after a few hours but at least, the relentless vomiting has backed off. While with an elongated cough or a sprained ankle or a urinary tract infection, it’s more reasonable to expect results within hours or even days. So for example, with a urinary tract infection, we don’t want to wait many days before we say, “Oh, gee, maybe this is the wrong remedy. We need to move on.” But before it’s completed, it could take a couple of days. Usually, what we see with a urinary tract infection is we see a shift within a couple of hours after taking the first dose.

 

So it would obviously be silly to expect months of treatment to clear up an acute problem since in the normal course of events, acute conditions would clear up on their own and within that timeframe, with or even without homeopathy. So we do expect it to happen fairly quickly. I laid this out today and I wanted to go over this, and there are five main goals we expect to accomplish when using homeopathy to treat an acute problem. The first goal is to alleviate, of course, the distress of the illness or condition. Now, we’re not suppressing the symptoms. We’re rooting out the problem. We’re not trying to cover up the pain. We’re going to get rid of the pain because the illness is going to be resolved as well with the remedy.

 

Number two, to aid the body at regaining health more quickly or more fully than it often can on its own. So even though yes, many conditions, a bee sting, etc., could be not treated, you just leave it alone and it just takes care of itself, eventually it will just go away, but by using homeopathy, we not only get to the bottom of that particular bee sting, but we’re also helping the person build an immunity to bee stings so that in the future, instead of the whole arm being swollen from that bee sting, next time, it will be more concise and it won’t be as extreme. So we’re going deeper than that.

 

And the third goal to accomplish is to root out the potential for the problem to recur. Or if it does, then it does so in a less flamboyant manner, just like that bee sting. So you might still get the bee sting next time around, but now, instead of the whole arm being swollen, now it’s a nice, neat, tidy, little bee sting, and it stays localized.

 

And the fourth goal is to avoid the negative repercussions of drugs and other suppressive treatments. And this is what most people come to homeopathy for in the first place. They want to get away from the drugs and suppressive treatments. They don’t recognize that you can also get all these other benefits. Those are all the bonuses.

 

But probably, in my estimation, one of the most important goals and that which is the hallmark of homeopathy’s ability to work on us, is to keep an acute illness from turning into a chronic one. Because if we get an acute illness such as an ear infection and we treat it with antibiotics, it is very likely that your infection will return. And then we treat it with antibiotics again. It’s likely to return again. Because we’ve not rooted out the propensity for ear infections. We’ve not addressed the essence of the problem. All we’ve done is kill bugs. I’ll get more into that in a little while. But this is where homeopathy surpasses modern medicine and in contrast, often makes modern medicine look almost foolish.

 

Jendi: Do you mean because homeopathy is so much simpler, so much more elegant?

 

The harmful effects of using antibiotics

 

Joette: Yes. What I mean is that although using an antibiotic may seem the only solution, it is instead, often shortsighted. Now, that is if we use an antibiotic for let’s say urinary tract infection or ear infection, set your watch, folks, or refer to your date or your calendar because it’s likely, and I mean very likely, that it will return. And why? Because the infection wasn’t cured with the antibiotic. Instead, the symptoms were treated. The bugs were killed. The bacteria were killed. But not all of them, and when they mutate and come back for that next skirmish, they return with more virulence.

 

It’s not unlike using pesticides on our garden. Those of us who don’t want to use drugs certainly understand the importance of organic. And when you use pesticides on the garden, it kills the bugs. But it weakens the plants and makes them vulnerable to further decay and problems. The bugs recognize that weakness and take advantage of it and those are exactly the plants that are gone after by the insects. The same thing for a human.

 

So one of the greatest threats to our health, I believe, is that we are susceptible to more serious conditions after the use of drugs. One lone urinary tract infection too frequently turns into repetitive urinary tract infections, met with, of course, antibiotics that suppresses the symptoms and drives the illness to a deeper state. And sometimes, after years of these kinds of treatments, we see interstitial cystitis. In fact, if you met anyone who has interstitial cystitis, just ask them their history. The history almost is a slam dunk for repeated urinary tract infections met with antibiotics. Had the antibiotic been forgone the first time, and instead homeopathy had been used, the one and only UTI would have been just that, only one UTI.

 

By offering a drug – this is the way I see it anyway – by offering a drug when you’re sick, it’s like kicking the person when they’re down. It’s an oversimplified method and now in the last few years with increasing evidence, it is known even in conventional medical circles that it is a dangerous one. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not altogether advocating for the elimination of all antibiotics on the market. But to use them for something that is mild, particularly otitis media, sore throats, conjunctivitis, acne, boils, I think it’s stupid. Yes, stupid. It’s not a word I use very often. It reminds me of grammar school. But to be honest, it is.

 

When there are homeopathic medicines that will take care of the problem often more adroitly and without instilling more serious ones, I just don’t think there’s a reason to use these big guns on illnesses that can be treated at home, or even by a doctor if they knew anything about homeopathy. That’s not likely to happen very often. But if you take it on yourself, you can do this yourself. Actually, I think we’ve gotten a little bit off track here, haven’t we?

 

What dosage to use and how to know if treatment is working

 

Jendi: Yeah. We wanted to talk about how long should we take one remedy, how many doses of a remedy should we take, does one dose do it, what if it’s just a small improvement, do I need to change it, all that kind of stuff.

 

Joette: Right. So when I use the term results, in other words, when you see that there are results, what I mean is a movement towards improvement. So for example, back to the urinary tract infection, one might not achieve a perfect result within minutes. In other words, if there’s some pain and urgency and frequency, it won’t be necessarily totally gone and life back to normal within minutes, obviously. On the other hand, one might find that after two doses of a remedy over the course of hours or three doses, the urgency is not as great. So we’re getting results and the pain is minimized. We still have a urinary tract infection. This is not a magic wand. We’re reversing and rooting this out. So this is an indication that the remedy is working, but we don’t stop there because we’re not done. It’s that simple.

 

So now what? Well, this means the remedy is acting but it has not completed its action and ought to be continued until it has done so. Let’s take even an acute rash for an example. We’ll use something else so that we can use this across the board, maybe an outbreak of, let’s say, contact dermatitis from using a really strong detergent that you wouldn’t normally use and now your skin is all broken out and it’s itchy and it’s going on for days, maybe even a few weeks. Something that you don’t experience daily but here it is.

 

So results in a case like this would often mean that after a few days, the rash is still visible after taking the correct remedy but the itching has become less intense. In this case, I will continue with these remedies until the rash was fully healed. But I might reduce the frequency. So instead of using it say every three hours because it’s not so extreme, instead, I might use it twice daily. I know that’s your next question because we actually have a little key here as to where we’re going with this. You want to know, “How many doses ought I use?”

 

So generally speaking, the number is about four doses but this is only to make the determination that it is the correct remedy. Remember, this is considered an acute condition at this point. And that means that if by the fourth dose no improvement is seen, the remedy ought to be abandoned and replaced with another. So the reason to count those four times is to determine whether the correct remedy has been chosen. So once you’ve made that determination because symptoms are abating, that’s when we stop counting. We don’t use numbers anymore now. We just use it as needed because we’ve determined that it is correct. From this time forward, just simply continue offering the remedy until the job is done.

 

Jendi: I think I have a pretty good example. This week, I had a sore throat. So I went and got the Coldcalm and I actually took three every 15 minutes and then my throat felt better and I got sidetracked and I forgot about it. But then the next day, it was kind of sore again in the morning so I took it again. But then I questioned, should I go ahead and take four the next day, like do the first thing again?

 

Joette: No, you’re not counting anymore because you know the remedy’s acting. You know it’s working. You’ve already seen results so don’t count anymore now. Just use it as needed. Now, if that sore throat was horrendously painful, you might take it maybe every 30 minutes. I mean, if it’s a child and they’re screaming with pain, every 30 minutes is acceptable. As the child calms down, now we go to every three hours. And if it’s still coming down even further yet after a few doses of every three hours, now you go to say twice or three times a day. So you’re always looking for the opportunity to lessen the number of times you use this.

 

You see, the misunderstanding, I believe, often, especially in those folks who are new, arises when folks get the impression that homeopathy is like a supplement and that it needs to be taken forever. But that’s not so. Homeopathy has nothing to do with supplements. Its goal is to put the problem to rest which means that your remedy should continue being useful and put to task until the job is done. And at any time there is wellness, the UTI or the rash is gone, then of course, logically, you stop using it. You don’t continue on it for the rest of your life. I also think confusion arises when folks think that one dose of a remedy will cure.

 

Those are the stories that we love to tell because they’re fun and they’re dramatic and it can happen. But it’s more likely that it will take hours, if not days, of repetitive use of the remedy. So if improvement is realized, even in a small amount, don’t abandon the remedy choice. Continue with the fifth dose and sixth dose, etc. So you’re really not counting. I’m just giving you kind of an example. And as improvement ensues, the space between each episode might be better placed approximately every six hours or every twelve hours. In other words, we use the remedies when needed. As the symptoms return, the gentle stimulus is used to move things along.

 

Jendi: That makes a lot of sense. That’s very helpful. So how fast should I expect to see results?

 

Joette: First, let me give you something that I think is a writer downer. And I know that many folks who listen to these podcasts are doing so on their walks in the morning and in their car. But if you can write this down, I know you’ll find this helpful in the future to help you know if your remedy is working, if it’s acting. And then that will determine how often to use it. Here are the criteria for knowing if the remedy is acting. By the way, this criteria can be used both for acute and chronic conditions. So here’s the criteria that needs to be met. If one, two, or all three of these criteria are met, then we know that the remedy is good and it’s acting properly.

 

The first is that the symptoms are not as severe as they were before you started taking the remedy. If the pain, for example, of the urinary tract infection was a whopping eight on the scale of 1 to 10, and now after using the remedy, it’s a 4, then we know it’s going in the right direction and we’re set. That’s a good way to get started.

 

The second criterion that we need to incorporate is if the symptoms last for a shorter period of time. In other words, that pain may not last for three minutes after urination like it did before. Now, it only lasts for a few seconds or so. Beautiful. We’re moving in the right direction. This is how we know.

 

And the third is that there’s a larger space between each episode of the painful urination or urgency. So if it was happening that someone was urinating every five minutes and now they’re urinating every three hours, we are definitely moving in the right direction. So if all three of those are met, it’s a slam dunk. If even only one of them is met, it is an indication that we need to stay with that remedy.

 

Jendi: When we are watching our children and they can’t really tell us the pain because they’re a small child, we just watch their symptoms and the amount of time.

 

Joette: That’s right. And with a child, you’re always observing. You’re better off not asking and just observing. And this certainly hones our observational skills. And it really is the watchful eye of the mother that picks up on all this. Anyone else who hops in and comes to visit, a friend or something, they may not see anything that you’ve seen because you’ve been watching. And you’re recording this. I’m going to repeat this because I think this is so valuable and I’ve never seen this in a book anywhere. I’m not even sure where I learned this.

 

So symptoms are not as severe. So if it’s pain or if there’s itching or something like that and it wasn’t 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, now it’s a 4, it doesn’t have to be exactly that, but even if it was an 8 and now it’s a 6, we know that we’re moving in the right direction, so we stay with the remedy. But also, if the symptoms last for a shorter period of time. That is, the pain may not last for three minutes after urination but for only a few seconds or so. And the third is that there’s a larger space between each episode of the urgency or pain. Now, remember, we’re using urinary tract infections as our prototype here but you can do the same thing with itching of a rash. You can do the same thing with pounding of a headache. You can do the same thing with the swelling and pain of a bee sting.

 

Then there’s the speed with which the remedy acts. Here’s another general rule of thumb. The more intense the symptoms, often, not always but often, the faster the remedy acts. For example, that bee sting again that is very severe will often respond within minutes to up to an hour. Now, it’s not going to get rid of the swelling but the pain and the freaking out of the person who’s had that experience. The child is now outside running around after only 30 minutes.

 

Previously, he was freaking out in your arms with pain. That’s how you know that you’ve definitely chosen the correct remedy. And as always, we look to cure, not suppress. This, I believe, is the colossal appeal of homeopathy. Because regardless of the length of time it takes to resolve the condition, in the end, we will more likely have genuine health instead of covered up symptoms that often return with renewed vigor. And the vigor is in the person, not the illness. Now, that is the kind of medicine that we want to use in our lives.

 

Jendi: So how long do you think it will take me to learn all this stuff, that I won’t have to constantly look it up online or in a book, that I will be able to have it in my memory and know what to do?

 

Joette: Well, I will tell you that it’s a great idea to go online. And that’s why I put that blog out there, so that you can learn this stuff yourself. And you will be using books and other people’s ideas for quite some time but it doesn’t take long to fine tune your observational skills, and you’ll soon be able to pick up on the signs that improvement is ensuing. Because wellness leaves hints. It leaves little clues.

 

Jendi: Clues. What do you mean by clues?

 

Joette: Well, you’ll see that your child’s sleep is restored even though he’s not yet a hundred percent. You’ll see that she has more energy and she’s not as needy. There are signs that it’s likely that the remedy is acting. And I teach my students to keep a file on each member of their family and keep notes with the date, of course, the chief complaint, and any other pertinent issues, and then of course, the remedy that you chose. And after the remedy has acted, it needs to be logged. You want to know what remedy you used and how many times and just get a little idea within a sentence or two.

 

And this information will become your record that will serve you when dealing with your child for the rest of her life. It’s surprising how often certain things are repeated, whether it’s her or her sister. One of my little hints is don’t keep a book for each family member or even for the entire family. You’ll often be without that book. Instead, just get different colored file folders. Pink for your daughter, blue for your son, brown for your dirty dog or something. That way, when you’re away from your home, you can easily write it out on a paper napkin or a little sheet of paper with the date on it, what happened, what you used. And then when you get home, you just toss it into the file and now you’ve got it forever. And it keeps very good records.

 

Jendi: Thank you so much for all the information you have shared and for the clarification on the finer points of when to use the remedies. And you even mentioned that the one, two, three things to look for are not in homeopathy books. There is so much that we can learn through these podcasts. Is there something else that you think would be valuable to our listeners to wrap up this podcast?

 

Get started with homeopathy

 

Joette: Yes. I must hear every day, and mostly from mothers and grandmothers, that they don’t want to use drugs. And then what follows saddens me, sometimes even angers me. But they say, “I didn’t want to take the drug but I didn’t know what else to do.” The part that angers me is that homeopathy was a threat to conventional medicine back in the 1940s. It still is today. It was taking away market share from the conventional medical doctors and the constituents of the AMA. And as a direct result of this, it was systemically – and I hate to sound dramatic, but it’s really true – annihilated through a well-funded, well-organized, and well-executed smear campaign. And as I said, it continues even today.

 

And so unless you happen to be tenacious in searching for this medicine, unless you have guts, spunk, and moxie, unless you or someone in your family has suffered at the hand of drugs or overuse of surgery, you will not have made a point of seeking it out or making it your mission to find this great medicine called homeopathy. Hence, it’s a feat to even learn that there’s another way, a way that for every disease known to mankind, there is a homeopathic medicine or protocol. So will it cure everyone every time? No.

 

But if the remedy is chosen correctly and the principles are observed and you have a burning interest to keep your charge and yourself away from the world of drugs, homeopathy is a viable, sophisticated, elegant solution, particularly for families. Because once you learn how to treat an ear infection for one baby, you’ll know what to do for another and another. And it’s likely you’ll never forget it. One illness at a time, one child at a time, one pet at a time, you’ll become the healer in your home. So there is power in words in general. The words, “I don’t know what else to do,” it means, “I can’t.” There’s power in that word. “It can’t be done,” says modern medicine. “You can’t cure strep throat without antibiotics.” “You can never cure allergies,” they say. “There is no way,” says the doctor.

 

But I submit to you, don’t fall for that canard. This kind of thinking holds you at bay, never allowing you to enter the great oceans of life. It keeps you from moving forward or even trying, and it subjects you to forfeit yourself to drugs. My message is that you can cure your family of what appears to be recalcitrant conditions. And again, I’m not saying that every illness can be cured. But you might be astounded at how many illnesses and conditions you’ll wipe out of your home, many of which confounded the pediatricians and family practitioners in your life. You’ll know what the doctors wish they knew but will not.

 

And speaking of Mark Twain, I kept this little quote. He said back in 1890 in Harper’s Bazaar, he said, “The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor,” he’s talking about conventional doctors, “to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business. You may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the allopaths to destroy it.” Now, of course, he didn’t know that indeed, 50 years later, the allopaths did end up destroying homeopathy. The marketplace really did that.

 

Well, anyway, my promise to you is that once you know how to put these pieces of the puzzle together, it presents in a tidy fashion and works admirably. And this way of thinking will keep you from feeling as though illness is implacable. Instead, when presented with illness, you’ll approach it nimbly and eventually, with confidence. By the way, I want to mention that given the depth of the subject on this podcast, we’ll have written a blog with some of the same information and slightly different so that you can get a more in-depth understanding of it and that will come up in the next few days after this is placed on our website.

 

Jendi: Thank you, Joette. It’s good just to know that there are options and it gives hope that we can have a good and a healthy life.

 

Joette: Yes. And it’s certainly worth the effort. Happy New Year, Jendi, and everyone. Now, get to curing your family yourself.

 

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.