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IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

01:11    Joette’s new course

05:05    Healing Paradigms

09:00    MTHFR gene, unhappy liver

13:26    Detoxing after vaccines, dental work

16:18  Toxic lungs

19:14    Detoxing from chemotherapy

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

NEW COURSE: “Rethinking Detox with Practical Homeopathy®: How to Stop Stressing About Toxins and Fearlessly Achieve Health the Simple Way.”

 

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 70 with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:  This is Joette Calabrese, and I’d like to welcome you to the Practical Homeopathy Podcast. Women and men worldwide are taking back control of their families’ health and learning how to heal their bodies naturally, safely and effectively. So, if you’re hungry to learn more, you’ve come to the right place. Stay tuned as we give you the tools — and the inspiration you need — as I share my decades of experience and knowledge using this powerful medicine we call homeopathy.

 

Kate:  Good evening, Joette.

 

Joette: Hi, Kate! Normally, we do this in the morning, but now we’re doing it in the evening.

 

Kate:  Right! It’s kind of a change for us.

 

Joette:  Yes, it is.

 

Kate:  So, we want to get into a different subject tonight. You are getting ready to teach another course … on toxins! Tell us a little bit more about this course that you have in the works.

 

Joette’s new course

 

Joette:  Well, the title of the course — and this is a real mouthful — is “Rethinking Detox with Practical Homeopathy®: How to Stop Stressing About Toxins and Fearlessly Achieve Health the Simple Way.”

 

(Okay, see if you can repeat that now. It’s a long one!)

 

So, we’re going to be talking about rethinking detoxification — being toxic. We’re going to rethink that. I’m going to address it from the homeopathic perspective, and from the practical homeopathic perspective which is even more different than classical homeopathy, more different from naturopathy, from functional medicine, from conventional medicine, from chiropractic.

 

This is a completely different way of viewing things.

 

Up until about ten years ago, I didn’t hear much from clients and students about toxicity. It became more prevalent in their conversations with me in the last … I would say … last decade. I believe that’s because more and more folks are going to alternative practitioners, and alternative practitioners are where these ideas often emanate.

 

But a big part of this, especially now that I’ve heard this so many times with so many clients and students, is it harkens back to when I suffered from toxic thinking. It really did affect my thinking. I actually became obsessed with avoiding toxins. I had been declared as “toxic” by a functional medical doctor at Yale University. So, I became obsessed with trying to detox my body. Let me tell you. I got pretty neurotic about it.

 

This was in the 80s. So, I had plenty of time to mull this over and think it through, but what gave me my comfort and my cadence was homeopathy. It actually offered me my way out of that paranoia. I lived with it for a long time because I had been not well for many years — and I had a little break in my 20s and maybe until about 32 — but other than those few years, I had been suffering from allergies and chemical sensitivities and asthma, et cetera.

 

Kate:  You tried a lot of things, Joette, before you came to homeopathy to heal your body.

 

Joette:  Yes, I did. I used functional medicine. I used chiropractic, essential oils, years of supplements — years of all of these! This was not, “Let’s try this this month and try that the next month,” … vitamin therapy, herbalism.

 

I still hold to herbalism. I think it’s an excellent method. I think that chiropractic can be also very valuable. I don’t discount the other methods as well, but homeopathy and botanicals and chiropractic is pretty much where I landed. I landed more steadily on a firm ground as far as I’m concerned with homeopathy.

 

Kate:  Joette, did you see a naturopath in this journey while you were trying to figure out how to heal your body?

 

Joette:  Yes, I did see a naturopath. I saw a couple of naturopaths.

 

Kate:  I know that naturopaths and functional medicine doctors are really popular right now. So, talk a little bit about that for a moment, how we can figure out what path to take for healing.

 

Healing Paradigms

 

Joette:  Well, one of the problems with naturopathy, functional MD, is that it’s completely different than homeopathy. That might not be a problem for those who are seeking naturopathy. But it is pretty much the opposite in many ways to homeopathy.

 

Most people figure, “Well, more knowledge is better.”

 

Well, too much knowledge can be very confusing.

 

“Well, why don’t I just get all these tests and find out?”

 

Well, because there is a different way of interpreting these tests. So, we have to be careful not to straddle too many worlds.

 

We almost have to make a decision. I’m either Republican, or I’m a Democrat. I’m a Christian, or I’m an atheist. I mean, really, I hate to be so sweeping in my examples. But in a way, we kind of have to make a decision where we want to land.

 

One of the reasons I decided that I wanted to land squarely in the world of homeopathy is because it wasn’t scary. Homeopathy didn’t talk about toxins. It didn’t declare that my liver was limping along. It didn’t declare that I had high lead levels, and that I needed to use enemas daily (coffee enemas) and take baggies full of supplements and vitamins and herbs and enzymes and … (What were some of the others? I’m trying to think of all the stuff that I’ve done!) Saunas, I mean and not that those aren’t … I mean there is some value in some of these. There’s no doubt about it. But it became my avocation. It became my lifestyle because I wanted to get well so badly.

 

I often ask folks … I just met someone the other day, and she was telling me that she has this health problem. I asked her if she’s taking medications for it. She said, “Yes.”

 

I said, “For how long?”

 

“About 10 years.”

 

I said, “But you still have the health problem.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“So, the drugs have not helped.”

 

She had to pause for a second. “No, I guess they haven’t helped. In the beginning, they helped a little bit.”

 

So that’s a good measure because after all the years of my going through these all-so-strict diets and water cure and et cetera, et cetera, I came to the conclusion that I was only a modicum better. It wasn’t enough! For all the effort I was putting into it, it just wasn’t enough value.

 

That’s when I said there still has to be even another better way. As you keep asking that question, for those who seek and who have not been helped by these methods … and some people are. So, if you have been, then, of course, you’re not listening to this most likely. But if you have not been helped, you might be listening to this for that exact reason. But homeopathy offered me a psychological, physical, financial and intellectual cadence.

 

Kate:  I totally agree with what you’re saying, Joette. That is also why I came to homeopathy: is not only does it work, and it works quickly and well, but also it takes you from the paradigm of fear-based to fearless.

 

Joette:  Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Not only do you become more fearless because you know that you can handle this or that because you’ve seen it happen so many times. But the paradigm is a very positive one. I no longer look at the world as toxic. It doesn’t look like a toxic world to me anymore. The world I live in now looks like a beautiful world, a nourishing world, a safe world, a healing world.

 

Kate:  So, it’s kind of funny that you’re doing a course that talks about toxins, and then we’re talking about how we’re not afraid of the toxins anymore.

 

Joette:  That is a big part of the course, and then I give my examples of how we can use this homeopathic protocol or that homeopathic protocol for conditions that may indeed arise out of toxic exposures.

 

Kate:  Okay, good.

 

MTHFR gene, unhappy liver

 

Let’s talk about some of the questions that were sent in when you asked people to give you some things that they would be looking for in a course about toxins. Let’s just go through some of those right now and give us a little more information about the course in relation to these questions.

 

So, here are just a few examples of some of the questions you received. One person wrote in and said, “I’m a poor detoxer.” I’m not sure what they meant exactly by that, but they said, “All my life, I’ve had an unhappy liver. I’ve had MTHFR and COMT mutations, genetic propensities for …”

 

What would that be, “genetic propensity?”

 

Joette:  Well, it would be from not being able to release toxins readily. So, they get sick. They have chemical sensitivities, et cetera, often.

 

Kate:  I hear that acronym come up a lot, the MTHFR gene. What might you have to offer to someone who talks about that?

 

Joette:  Well, the MTHFR gene was just recently become the center stage in the world of naturopathy, functional MD, medical world, et cetera. I see it as the tubercular miasm for those who are familiar with classical homeopathy and know what I’m talking about. For those who don’t, it’s not important that you know this, but I see it as a miasm that’s coming through the family bloodline. And, yeah, there are a lot of people with that MTHFR gene. In fact, just about everyone I meet with who has seen a naturopath comes out of the office with this information. “I have the MTHFR gene.”

 

Kate:  But that may not mean anything if they’re not symptomatic, right?

 

Joette:  That’s right. I believe it is pretty meaningless — at least at this point in time it is. Now, can it determine what will happen to this person in the future? Perhaps. But instead of “I have an unhappy liver,” that is kind of meaningless. That is not a diagnosis. I need to know: What is the diagnosis?

 

Neither is the MTHFR gene a diagnosis.

 

If having that gene and unhappy liver means this person can’t digest fats, and because of that they get bloating and nausea every time they eat meat, now we got something we can sink our teeth into. Now, we can say, “Oh, we have a gut problem here. And the person gets bloating every time they eat fats.” Now, we use the homeopathic medicine that is specific to the true diagnosis.

 

Perhaps it’s colitis, that they not only get bloating, but they have diarrhea as a result of this. So, colitis would be the diagnosis, and how it presents would be the bloating and nausea. So, we would use a homeopathic protocol that’s specific for colitis — regardless of the cause — whether the cause is from happy liver, an unhappy liver, the MTHFR gene or the lack of the MTHFR gene.

 

It matters not what is being assigned to that condition. I think for our purposes, it’s actually too much information. What we really need is to look at what is obvious: the diagnosis and what the symptoms are.

 

Kate:  So, we would never give a homeopathic remedy based solely on knowing that you have that gene mutation if there are no symptoms.

 

Joette:  That’s right. If there’s no disease, what are we treating?

 

So, you see, naturopathy, functional MD, medical doctors are looking for what’s behind the curtain. We’re looking at what’s the most obvious — what is happening now.

 

We also want to know what’s happened in the past to a certain degree because that gives us the idea of what the propensity for this or that might be. But we’re looking at always: what is happening now. “Oh, you have indigestion every time you eat, got it.” That’s indigestion. That’s reflux.

 

So, a conventional doctor would diagnose that as reflux. A gastroenterologist … that’s what he would call it.

 

So, if the person has reflux, now how does that present? “Oh, it’s only after you eat, and oh, there’s indigestion that erupts and comes from the stomach and into the throat.”

 

Now, we’ve got something.

 

Detoxing after vaccines, dental work

 

Kate:  Okay, so the next question is about detoxing after vaccines and dental work. This person wanted to know, “How much do we treat the symptoms versus the underlying cause?” (I assumed that they mean the vaccines or the dental work versus what they’re experiencing after those things.)

 

Joette:  Well, in a way, it’s too speculative. How do you know that those vaccines or that dental work have caused this or that? So, without knowing absolutely — and there are circumstances in which we do know that something has caused a condition. But if we don’t know, and the vaccines were 40 years ago, and now you’re sick, and you’ve made the assumption that it must be from a vaccine — we’re standing on shaky ground.

 

So instead, we put that information aside and say, “Interesting. But to be honest, if you live in this world, you’ve had plenty of vaccines. Everyone has had them.”

 

So, we want to know exactly what’s going on. Again, what is the name of the condition that leads you to even wonder about cleaning up old vaccines? “Oh, you have asthma. Oh, and you’re thinking that the asthma must have been promulgated by a vaccine when you were ten. Well, when you had the vaccine when you were ten, did you go right into asthma at that moment?”

 

“No.”

 

“Okay, did it come on a week later, two weeks later, a month later?”

 

“No. I just always know that these vaccines are not good for me, so I’m making the assumption …”

 

No. We do not base homeopathic medical choices on supposition. We want hard, cold facts.

 

Now, if someone has just had surgery, and they were not coming out of the anesthesia very well, and ever since that anesthesia, they’ve had a headache — now we can blame something. Now, we can say, “Oh, this is likely from the anesthesia.”

 

It could also be from other aspects of the surgery, too. Mind you, anesthesia is not the only thing that’s used. It could have been the antibiotics. It could have been the position the person was put in, in order to carry out the surgery. There could be others, too.

 

But if it is a very obvious type of condition that has happened time and again to many people after having used this particular anesthetic, then now we’ve got an etiology. Now, we’ve got a true cause.

 

Kate:  That’s a big thing in homeopathy — “not well since,” or …

 

Joette:  “Never well since,” Right, “Never well since.” It can be very valuable if you truly know what that cause was … what that etiology was.

 

Kate:  But regardless of the cause, if it’s asthma, we still look at how…

 

Joette:  We’re still going to use the remedy that’s specific for asthma or remedies specific for asthma. That’s right.

 

Toxic lungs

 

Kate:  So, another question is from someone who asked, “What if you have toxic lungs from inhaling dusts when you’ve been cutting tiles or bricks?”

 

Joette:  Well, that’s a little more specific. If you could say it’s someone who’s a stone cutter essentially, there’ve been stone cutters for millenniums, so we know homeopathically what medicine to use specifically for stone cutting diseases. That is very clear. If the person is, let’s say, a professional stone cutter or is a professional tile cutter, someone who works in a quarry, and they’re coughing — same thing with black lung disease, for example — we know what the cause is. Now, we use a specific medicine that is used for the accumulation of that kind of a dust in the lungs, and the bronchioles, and the trachea, et cetera.

 

And we use how it’s presenting. How is it presenting? What is the disease? Oh, they’re coughing. Oh, they have episodes of gagging, coughing. Okay, now we use a remedy that’s specific for gagging cough, in addition to the remedy that is specific to uproot or to help the body cope with the accumulation of stone dust.

 

Kate:  I love this about homeopathy. There is a remedy for everything! With so many remedy choices, it is so exciting that we don’t have to, again, have that fear. Because whether we live in a toxic world, whether we’ve been exposed to this or that, we have solutions to help our bodies heal from those things.

 

Joette:  Well, when you think about the body of works of homeopathy across all of Europe, North America, South America — and this has been used since the late 1700s in the grandest universities and the most important hospitals in our history (in American and European history, and as I said, South American history) — then we start recognizing that, my gosh, this is voluminous! There’s a lot of good information regarding homeopathy and how to use it through the centuries.

 

Kate:  But way more information than the allopathic drugs that are new, and now we’re finding out that the side effects can sometimes be very serious for those. So, there’s a lot more history with homeopathy.

 

Joette:  Well, a lot of times, we give it 20 years with a conventional drug, and we’ll find out what the effects are. Now, it seems to be much faster than that. We find out a little bit sooner. But I still don’t believe that it has gotten out to the general public how dangerous antibiotics can be; steroids can be; use of birth control pill.

 

I also don’t want anyone to believe that I think those drugs should never be used. I just think that they’re grossly overused, and they’re depended upon far too much and used too readily, too early in a condition before we even can do anything to uproot the condition rather than just suppress it.

 

Detoxing from chemotherapy

 

Kate:  Here is another question. What about detoxing from chemotherapy since cancer is so rampant?

 

Joette:  Oh, there are homeopathic medicines that are specific for detoxing from chemotherapy. Many people use it while they’re taking the chemotherapy to help them not lose their hair, to help them not become as nauseous, the same thing with radiation treatment. We can use homeopathic medicines that will allow them to continue with the method that they’ve chosen that’s allopathic and yet still use homeopathy in conjunction.

 

Kate:  So, is this something that you’re going to cover in the course, Joette?

 

Joette:  I believe we will be covering that in the course, yes.

 

Kate:  Okay, so someone else writes, “If I get worse when I’m taking homeopathic medicines, am I perhaps really seeing toxins?”

 

Joette:  No. I don’t think that that’s necessarily so … or it could be. I don’t know how we would know that. Can it be tested? Can the perspiration or the stool or the urine be tested? Perhaps, but I don’t know that we need to go that far.

 

I think what happens with folks, when they’re asking this kind of a question, is because they’re so afraid of being toxic that all they want to know is that, yes, they’re getting the toxins out. “I’ll do whatever it takes. If it means suffering ever more so by using the wrong homeopathic medicine perhaps or seeing my body react in such a negative way that perhaps this means something good, and it gives me some hope.”

 

But the real hope is much bigger than that. The real hope is that I don’t know that toxins are as big of a concern as we have been led to believe.

 

Kate:  Okay. So, here’s another question. “After my husband works out, he says he sometimes smells nicotine or some other detoxing smell,” (whatever that might be).

 

Joette:  Yeah, I don’t know if that means it’s detoxing. I mean if he smoked cigarettes for a long period of time or chewed tobacco, then I suppose that you might call it that, but again it’s speculating. What it is, is that he has a strange odor when he works out. That is a rubric. That is what we use to determine whether or not we choose this remedy or that.

 

However, I don’t see that as an illness. It’s not a pathology. It’s an interesting quirk. It’s an interesting aside that can help us choose the homeopathic medicine in the end. But for example, Sulphur has that. They smell things that are not there. They’re smelling perfume when it’s not there. They smell smoke when it’s not there. So, it helps lead us perhaps to the medicine, but it still doesn’t tell us necessarily that we’re detoxing. It’s just one of those symptoms.

 

So, we take it out of the realm of everything is toxic and put it in the realm of, “Oh, that’s interesting. We could use that in our determination of which homeopathic medicine to choose perhaps.”

 

Kate:  So, someone else writes, “If every little toxic exposure brings my health to a crisis, can your body become resilient through homeopathy, or do you just apply the homeopathic medicines after each exposure?”

 

Joette:  Oh, that’s such a great question because it’s what I used to suffer. No, we use a double-pronged method. One is we use one medicine specifically for those people who are sensitive to chemicals and every sniff of perfume. That’s the way I used to be. If I smelled perfume, it would make me sick or I would get asthma. If I ate the wrong foods, it would cause terrible fatigue, et cetera, et cetera. So, I felt very vulnerable. Once I learned how to do this, I learned how to take a homeopathic medicine.

 

Now for me, it was Arsenicum album that helped time and again, but there are many other homeopathic medicines depending on what kind of exposure.

 

But meanwhile, the baseline is we’re using a homeopathic medicine that is specific to the fact that this person is overly sensitive, that they get sick from every exposure. So, we’re using that as the baseline, and then we use those other medicines specific to how it’s presenting as needed as an SOS.

 

Kate:  So, you’re going to be talking more specifically.

 

Joette:  Oh, my gosh! We’re going to go through that exactly. That is a good mainstay of what I’m going to be teaching. I can’t wait to do it because it so harkens back to my previous life.

 

Kate:  You will be speaking from your experience and from your education.

 

Joette:  Yes, yes.

 

Kate:  Will you be covering the different medicines that you will use if you suffer from a reaction to say chemicals versus cigarette smoke versus …

 

Joette:  Perfumes versus pesticides — yes — versus bad food at a restaurant, versus drugs that you’ve just taken. Absolutely, we will be covering that, yes.

 

Kate:  So, what about the different supplemental approaches to detoxification, say enemas, juice detox, castor oil packing, those kinds of things? Will you be talking a little bit about the stance that you take about those supplemental detoxification modalities?

 

Joette:  Yes, yes, we will be talking about that because there’s a lot of information out there that tells us that much of that is not what we had hoped it would be. Sometimes it’s a matter of the method that’s used. Sometimes it’s a matter of the testing that is interpreted. So, we will be touching on that pretty heavily in this course.

 

Kate:  So, this is an example of some of the questions and information that will be covered in this course on toxins. So, if you want more information on this course, check out the information below.

 

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.