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IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

 

02:41    Warts and Thuja 30

08:37    Joette’s column and thyroid nodules

14:42    Asthma

20:42    Dr. Dorothy Shepherd

25:11    Cold and flu stories

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

 

“Dr. Hahnemann and Dr. Price: A Combined Approach to Resolving Thyroid Problems,” Joette Calabrese, Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Winter 2017.

Practical Homeopathy® courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

Joette Calabrese's Blog

JoetteCalabrese.com

Joette Calabrese’s Podcasts

Facebook Live

            Generally held most Monday nights at 8 pm Eastern

            Replays available here

 

More Magic of the Minimum Dose by Dr. Dorothy Shepherd

 

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 71.

 

Joette:  Each day from my office, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe, and I want to share them with you. Some of my students have really caught my eye. Some of you have done all you can to learn how to cure those around you using homeopathic medicines, and your successes inspire me. They’re glorious and powerful, and I can’t keep these successes a secret any longer. So, with help from my roving reporters, we bring you a mini-podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” Sometimes we even interview “Dads with Audacity.” See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them, have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

 

Kate:  Hi, Sara! Welcome to the podcast today.

 

Sara:  Hi, Kate. I’m so glad to be here — really excited!

 

Kate:  We’re excited to have you. I know that you’ve been studying homeopathy for a little while now, but you dove in head first and tried to discover how to heal your family. So, I know that there are some things that our listeners can learn from the way that you are studying homeopathy. So, I’m excited to hear about what you’re doing, and how you’re working with your family to help their bodies heal.

 

Sara:  I’m really excited to share. Even if it’s helpful to one person, I’m just elated to be here to do that.

 

Kate:  Right. We often feel inadequate. I know that I don’t feel like I should be doing this, but I think that we all have things to share. I know Joette was really excited about a couple of things in particular that you are doing and that she wanted her listeners to hear. But before we get into that, Sara, let’s hear a little bit about you and your family.

 

Sara:  Okay. Well, I live in the Denver area, and I am a mom of four. We have chronic issues with some of my kids, then myself also, which led me to stumbling into homeopathy.

 

Kate:  So, had you done other natural methods of healing before homeopathy? Or what were you doing to address your family’s health needs up until this point?

 

Sara:  Well, allopathic measures and food supplements, changing food diet, things like that. But never homeopathy until a year ago or so.

 

Kate:  So, how did you learn about homeopathy?

 

Warts and Thuja 30

 

Sara:  Well, I learned about it because my daughter had probably a nickel-sized wart on her knee that just kept growing and growing. She had a lot of other things going on with her body, but I didn’t even know how to begin to address them. But I thought, “Well, let’s focus on the wart.” So, I went to the natural groceries locally and was looking at the containers made from Boiron and found one that they had labeled for warts. I got that, started giving it to my daughter, and over about a few months, the wart was completely gone.

 

Kate:  So, you probably thought, “What is this stuff that I just gave my daughter and that healed her?”

 

Sara:  Oh, I did definitely. And I saw a bunch of the other problems I knew that she had go away at the same time — that I didn’t know would even have been linked with that remedy.

 

Kate:  Wow! That’s pretty incredible! So then, what did you do next?

 

Sara:  I gave her this homeopathic remedy with the intentions of just removing her wart. But she was also biting her fingernails down to the quick. She had frequent UTIs — like, every couple of weeks. She frequently cried of pain in her double-jointed knees. She was tearful and sobbing multiple times a day (very fragile) and getting hot or sweating really caused a lot of distress with her.

 

Over that same amount of period of time in which I was giving her these remedies, all of those things subsided or went away. She hasn’t had any UTIs, no pain in her double-jointed knees. Her fingernails are long; we have to use clippers now to clip her nails.

 

Kate:  Oh, wow! That’s great.

 

Sara:  All of that with one remedy … which were all of the other things that I knew were disturbing her that needed to be worked on, but I didn’t even know how to approach.

 

Kate:  So, what remedy did you use from Boiron?

 

Sara:  Thuja 30.

 

Kate:  How often did you give it to her?

 

Sara:  Once a day. I started off giving her Thuja 6, twice a day. And I thought, “Well, let’s just try Thuja 30.” So, we just stuck with that.

 

Kate:  Okay. This is so great! You were at the grocery store looking for how to help your daughter with warts. You came across this homeopathy section, and it said, “Warts,” on the side of the bottle — the Boiron bottle — and you thought, “Well, I’m going to give it a try.” You just did what it said on the bottle.

 

Sara:  Yes, I did. I thought, “Well, I guess I’ll just give it to her until the wart goes away. It says it makes warts go away. So, I’m just going to give it to her until the wart goes away.” And I took a picture at the beginning just to see if it was a figment of my imagination if it was going away or not. So, I just stopped giving it to her once the wart went away.

 

Kate:  How long did it take, Sara?

 

Sara:  Three to four months.

 

Kate:  In that time, she was making enough progress that you thought, “I’ll keep using this.”

 

Sara:  Yes. It seems like at first, I didn’t notice anything in the size of the wart. Then I feel like at some point, we reached such “momentum,” perhaps, with the remedy that it felt like within a couple of weeks it was drastic changes. Somewhere after maybe like six weeks of taking it, it seemed like it just started disappearing, and it only took another six weeks.

 

Kate:  Sara, this is really helpful, I think. Because so many times, we can become impatient when we’re treating chronic things like that, and you stuck with it. I think that’s key, because what if you had quit after the first week?

 

Sara:  Yes, and I have another great example of that dealing with my son’s asthma which I’m happy to share later on.

 

Kate:  Oh, yeah, I would love to hear. First, I would like to know at what point did you decide to switch to 30. Can you tell us a little bit more information about that?

 

Sara:  Yeah. I just went back to the store and was kind of browsing and looking at the options that Boiron offered and thought, “Well, maybe 30 means ‘stronger.’”

 

Kate:  That’s so awesome!

 

Sara:  I’m thought, “Well, let’s get the ball rolling.” Maybe that’s why in the beginning, it didn’t feel like progress was really happening. Maybe it was the 6, or maybe it was slower progress than I wanted to see. So, I thought, “Well, let’s just move it to 30.” I thought, “If it doesn’t seem to be going in the direction I want it to go, then we’ll go back to 6, or we’ll just try something all-new together.”

 

But at that point, I had no other options. So, I was willing to give it a really good try.

 

Kate:  Okay. That’s so great. I love that story. So, patience. We have to have patience. Also, it’s good to — like you did — take a picture because we can think that something isn’t changing, and it might be. But it just might be in very small increments, and we don’t notice it. So, yeah, just documenting, having patience, that’s great. I love it.

 

So, your daughter … with all of her other symptoms besides the wart that went away, did they go away permanently or did you at some point have to give the Thuja again? What did you see with those satellite conditions?

 

Sara:  I saw them go away just as I did the warts. I did question whether they were starting to come back. First of all, her UTIs have not come back. She still doesn’t bite her fingernails, and it’s been like nine months since … I guess it was a year ago or so that I started giving her the Thuja remedy. But she hasn’t had UTIs since then. She’s only cried about knee joint pains one time. She has not gone back to biting her fingernails at all. The tearful and sobbing comes and goes, but the getting distressed over getting hot or sweating has not returned at all either.

 

So, I would say maybe just the tearful and sobbing has been maybe the only symptom that has come back to a degree. But it’s not even close to the degree in which it was before.

 

Kate:  Okay, good. So, they just went away and have, for the most part, stayed away. That’s really good.

 

Sara:  Yes.

Joette’s column and thyroid nodules

 

Kate:  Okay, so let’s backtrack just a little bit. I would love to hear a little bit more about your journey since the grocery store (you know, seeing these random homeopathic medicines) and how your progression of learning about homeopathy happened.

 

Sara: … I don’t know how I never discovered her columns in there before. But on this oYeah. So, I have hypothyroid and thyroid nodule and Hashimoto’s. I subscribe to the Weston A. Price journal called Wise Traditions. Joette writes a homeopathic article in there. In the winter of 2017ne, it really stuck out to me because she talked about how she had a client who had nine thyroid nodules, and they had all gone away after the use of some homeopathic remedies. So, when I saw that — that someone’s thyroid nodules went away after the use of homeopathy — I thought, “Who is the author of this column, and she has to be on my team.” So, that’s when I started consulting with Joette.

 

Kate:  So, you contacted her office, and did you take any of her classes or study groups or anything?

 

Sara:  I have taken one of her classes, but that’s more recent. I have been consulting with her for a while now. I read her blog, all of her information over and over again and can’t get enough of it.

 

Kate:  Yeah, there is so much information for free on her website and podcasts and Facebook Lives. Do you watch her Facebook Lives?

 

Sara:  Oh, I do, yes. Yes. Even if I can’t be there live, I go back and watch them.

 

Kate:  Right yeah, we can watch them at any time after she records them. So yeah, it’s great. I love them as well.

 

Okay, so, you found Joette. And you’re learning; you’re reading; you’re studying, I would imagine, all kinds of homeopathic information. What other issues have you worked with homeopathically?

 

Sara:  Let me talk about myself first. When I started about a year ago, I had really bad arthritis in my hands and my hips. I had multiple chemical sensitivities where I would have to cover my face to into Target and breathe into a shirt or jacket.

 

Kate:  Oh, my gosh, Sara! That’s major!

 

Sara:  It was debilitating! It was debilitating … anxiety that was crippling, insomnia, and Hashimoto’s, hypothyroid, very low energy, and a thyroid nodule. Currently, today after using homeopathy, I have no arthritis in my hands. It’s 95% gone in my hips. I used to limp from hip pain. My multiple chemical sensitivities are mostly gone. I’d say 95% gone but it’s livable. I don’t have to avoid places.

 

Kate:  Within one year, Sara?

 

Sara:  Yes, within one year.

 

Kate:  Wow!

 

Sara:  Yeah. My insomnia is mostly a thing of the past. I do still have some bouts of sleeplessness, but overall, I mean, this past year I’ve had more sleep than probably in the last decade.

 

Kate:  Oh, my gosh! That must feel great!

 

Sara:  Yes, it does! Yes, I recommend sleep to everybody.

 

Kate:  Highly recommended to sleep.

 

Sara:  My energy is a lot better. I am off my thyroid medication. While I have not been back to check on my thyroid nodule or my thyroid numbers, but my energy is good, and I’m off my thyroid medications.

 

Kate:  Sara, this is amazing! I mean, I can’t even imagine how thrilled you must be.

 

Sara:  Oh, I am really thrilled, yes! I mean there are some still lingering things that I need to work on like hair loss and red, itchy scalp. But overall, I mean, I’ve come leaps and bounds in one year.

 

Kate:  Yeah. I mean, it’s only been a year. Imagine where you’ll be two, three, four years from now.

 

Sara:  Exactly, exactly.

 

Kate:  Do you help other people? Do you bring this up to your friends or family? Do you talk about what’s happened to you?

 

Sara:  You know, I don’t yet because I feel very focused right now on my son’s chronic problems that I feel like I just have to keep reading and learning and sinking it all in. That’s been my focus really, more than sharing. I would like to get to the point of sharing.

 

Kate:  Yeah. Well, you have an amazing story to share. I mean I just can see the future where you’re sharing all about how you are healing your family and helping other people as well with those issues. So, that’s the great thing about when something happens to us — when we go through circumstances — then we can take that, and we can turn it around for good in other people’s lives and help them with those things and the information that we’ve learned. So, I’m excited to see.

 

You should lead a study group.

 

Sara:  I did recently try to start one. So, we’re supposed to be getting started in the next month or so.

 

Kate:  Yay! That’s fantastic!

 

Sara:  I have the materials all ready to go.

 

Kate:  Oh, good! I’m going to talk about that for just a moment before we move on to your son. How are you going about finding people to join your group?

 

Sara:  Well, I tend to be very introverted. So, I just kind of keep my ears open if anybody seems to be interested in more natural approaches to healthcare or helping navigate motherhood without being on a leash at the doctor’s office. If somebody has already expressed interest, that’s how I invite. It’s not, like, an open … you know.

 

Kate:  Okay, yeah, you’re not advertising it anywhere.

 

Sara:  No.

 

Kate:  Nice. So, you’re going to have a group of local women.

 

Sara:  Yes, local, yeah.

 

Kate:  It’s great because you sit around the table. You get to know these women, and then that becomes your support group, and you guys help each other. So, that’s exciting! I can’t wait for you to …

 

Sara:  Yes, I’m very excited.

 

Kate:  Let’s talk about what you’re going through with your son, and how you’re handling that.

 

Asthma

 

Sara:  My son has severe asthma and is on and off of inhaled steroids, and occasionally oral steroids, and often the nebulizer, if needed. If he’s not on that, then he will need his rescue inhaler frequently throughout the day.

 

One thing that I realized reading Dr. Dorothy Shepherd’s book over and over again (regarding respiratory diseases) is that some remedies are to abort an existing asthma attack, whereas some are more longer-term to prevent them from happening in the first place.

 

So, recently my son caught the flu, and his asthma started tanking fast. I knew this was going to be really bad news, and he was going to go down hard. So, I consulted with Joette. My goal was to … at this point, he was requiring the nebulizer every 10 to 15 minutes. Which if you have a child with asthma, you have it “under control” if it’s every three hours.

 

Kate:  Wow, okay.

 

Sara:  At this point, it was every 10 to 15 minutes. So, I started administering these remedies for his asthma every 10 minutes. We were able to push off his nebulizer for one hour.

 

I mean, we went from 10 to 15 minutes to one hour!

 

So, I continued to do that, and the space between in which I’d give him the remedies continued to grow. I even considered 12 minutes growth (from 10 minutes). It’s like micro measurements here.

 

Kate:  So, were you using a couple of different remedies or just one?

 

Sara:  Yes, I was using two remedies.

 

Had Joette not urged me to push past the idea that “only 10 is enough,” I’m pretty sure I would have given up and resorted to other options.

 

Kate:  So, over that 48 hours, you were able to use the nebulizer less and less?

 

Sara:  Yes. Basically, I went from using the nebulizer for about 10 minutes every 15 minutes, to once an hour about four minutes, to eventually three hours for only a couple of minutes, over the time of the 48 hours. Yes.

 

Kate:  Wow, okay. So, some people might not think that’s a win. They might say, “Well, you’re still using the nebulizer!” But you know what could have happened, and where you could have been. Like, it could have gone into pneumonia, ended up in the hospital … right?

 

Sara:  Well, first of all, he was already experiencing side effects of the nebulizer. They were giving him the jitters. His heart was racing. It makes his head pound. There’s a lot of side effects of using the nebulizer. Those side effects were subsiding as we were having to use the nebulizer less. So, on top of his asthma already being bad, now he’s experiencing less and less side effects on top of his asthma. So, that to me was worth it alone. Giving him these remedies so that he wasn’t going to experience side effects from his allopathic medicines was enough for me to keep going.

 

Kate:  I know other people who have dealt with this kind of a situation, Sara. So, that is why I am really digging in to find out how you did it, and how you didn’t give up hope. Because a lot of people like I said before, they would think, “Oh well, it’s not working,” or they didn’t see enough progress to keep going. But you pushed past that, and you did see the positive benefits of it — even though you still used the nebulizer, but it was on a less frequent basis with less side effects.

 

Sara:  I did continue using allopathic medicine side-by-side. It was just less frequency, less intensity, fewer side effects.

 

Kate:  Okay.

 

I was going to ask you this question later, but I think I’ll ask you now. So many people ask, “What do you recommend as far as deciding between the courses that Joette offers and consulting with Joette?”

 

What is your take on that?

 

Sara:  I felt with the degree of my own health problems and the degree of my son’s health problems, I thought, “I don’t think I can expand my homeopathic knowledge fast enough to accommodate those needs.” That’s why I started consulting with Joette versus taking her courses.

 

So, I’ve been consulting with Joette for about nine months. But I just bought my first course from her within the last month — because I don’t feel like we’re on a complete downwards spiral. I don’t feel like we’re in total emergency mode with my health. I feel like I have the time and capacity to expand my knowledge enough to deal with … just through using a course.

 

Kate:  That makes sense. So, you feel like you needed to get a grasp on these situations right away. Now, once you’re feeling better, you can take the time to learn.

 

Sara:  Yes, exactly.

 

Kate:  Okay. Sorry, we can get back to your son. Was there more?

 

Sara:  No, the virus ran its course through his body, and his asthma naturally subsided with that. So, he carries his remedies with him to school and takes them when he has an asthma attack.

 

Kate:  Oh, that’s great that you were able to get that under control, and that your son knows what to do when he has an asthma attack.

 

Dr. Dorothy Shepherd

 

Kate:  You were talking about Dorothy Shepherd’s book and how that’s really helped you to know how to handle your son’s asthma. Joette really appreciated how many times you actually read through her book. And so, I know that there’s something that you can share with us about just digging in and finding information. So, talk about reading her book a little bit.

 

Sara:  I read Dr. Dorothy Shepherd’s books over and over again. She offers so many cases and insight into her experience. It’s just a wealth of knowledge. She has a particular section on respiratory diseases which affects my son. So, I have probably read that portion of it eight to nine times.

 

And on the eighth time, I thought, “How did I not see this the first seven times I read it?”

 

I think reading it over and over again helped with a couple of things:

 

One is I was able to realize that there are remedies for stopping an asthma attack, and there are remedies that you take longer-term to prevent the asthma attack from even happening or even needing the remedies for an asthma attack.

 

The other one is that the more I read about her cases, the more comfortable I felt with the different doses that she was giving, and the strength of doses, and how she was identifying what it was that she was giving, and why she was giving it. I think reading it over and over and over again helps cement into my head how to better care for my son’s asthma.

 

Kate:  Okay. So, which book are you reading? We never talked about the title.

 

Sara:  I have all of her books, but the one I’m specifically talking about is called More Magic of the Minimum Dose.

 

Kate:  For those people who don’t know about Dorothy Shepherd, she actually grew up in a family that used homeopathic medicine. Then she decided she wanted to go to school for allopathic medicine, and she did, and she became a physician. She was a surgeon, actually. She spent a lot of time doing surgery. And then she remembered about her childhood and the books that she read. So, she decided to really look into homeopathy again. She’s written a number of books.

 

They’re all really good, aren’t they?

 

Sara:  Very good, so much wisdom.

 

Kate:  So, she’s an interesting story for sure.

 

Sara:  Yes.

 

Kate:  Well then, she spent the rest of her life using homeopathic medicines after that.

 

Sara:  Yes, yes, for good reason.

 

Kate:  Right. We all are on a journey. It seems like our path isn’t just a straight line; it’s a lot of twists and turns. Then so many people talk about homeopathy and that road that we’re on. We find homeopathy and can’t believe that we haven’t gotten here sooner. But that is life. Right?

 

Sara:  Yes.

 

Kate:  I think the point that Joette was excited about is that you took your time, and you kept reading and going through this material over and over again. Finally, you gleaned some information. Well, I shouldn’t say, “Finally,” because you, I’m sure, learned a lot the first seven times you read it. But the point is that you didn’t stop. You kept reading it and letting that soak in. Even if you didn’t learn something new, it was still solidifying in your mind.

 

Sara:  Well, according to studies, every time you read something, you only retain about 10% of what you read. So technically, you should read something ten times over, right?

 

Kate:  There you go!

 

Sara:  Yes.

 

Kate:  Well, that’s fascinating. I did not know that statistic. That’s great. So, do you do that same thing with Joette’s blogs and her information?

 

Sara:  Oh, my gosh! Yes. Every time my kid gets a cold or a flu, I’m looking at her chart again. So, that’s at least 25 times. Yes, I go and Google the same stuff on her blog every time thinking, “Why can’t I remember this simple thing?” But yes, I read her information all the time.

 

Kate:  Yeah, there is so much information now on the internet and Joette’s website for free that you can learn just a lot without having to spend a lot of money.

 

Sara:  Oh, so much. You can learn so much. I’ve employed some of her recommendations on the website.

 

Cold and flu stories

 

Kate:  All right, so Sara, tell us more.

 

Sara: I have a couple more that I’ll share with you. One is about my son. He’s a kindergartner. He was coming down with a cold. So, I started giving him a remedy that Joette had recommended off of her blog. He seemed to be improving.

 

He woke up in the morning, and it was still lingering. So, I gave him another dose. And I thought, “Well, I’m going to try sending him off to school with an extra dose at lunch time.”

 

So, this is my kindergartner. I just put pellets in a little Ziploc bag.

 

Kate:  Oh!

 

Sara:  I gave it to him. (He knows how to take it.) And I said, “You take this at lunch.”

 

He said, “Okay.”

 

I thought, “Well, if it doesn’t work and if it’s not enough, and they call me because he’s sick, then I’ll just go pick him up. No big deal.”

 

Kate:  Yeah. Yeah.

 

Sara:  But the whole school day goes by, and I go pick him up at the end of the day. I said, “Did you take your remedies at lunch?”

 

He said, “I did mom. I put it under the table so nobody could see me.”

 

I said, “Oh, you can just act like they’re little candies. You know?”

 

But it was just the five pellets, and he took it. But yeah, the cold was gone. He had no symptoms or anything.

 

Kate:  My fear is always that the school is going to think they’re drugs or something.

 

Sara:  Well, it looked like little sugar balls, the ones that I have for him.

 

Kate:  That’s awesome. What a cutie! Oh, my gosh!

 

Sara:  Yeah. Yeah.

 

Then another one was after my other son got the flu; I was coming down with it. We were about to go to my husband’s birthday party, and I could feel like the fever coming on and over me and everything. I did not feel well at all. We ended up canceling my husband’s birthday party and staying home. I took what Joette recommends on her blog which is the Aconite/Bryonia.

 

Kate:  So, that’s Aconitum 200 mixed with Bryonia … 200 did you do? Or 30?

 

Sara:  30.

 

Kate:  Okay, so taken together.

 

Sara:  Yes, I took them together at the same time. Within two hours, I was laughing and joking around with my husband. And he goes, “I thought you were getting sick!”

 

I stopped and thought, “I was!”

 

Then I waited for the three hours after the first time I took it, and I thought, “Well, this is going in the right direction. I’m just going to do at least one more dose to make sure we’ve put this away for good.” So, I took one more dose — after the last dose I took three hours previously — just to make sure that we were really nipping it in the bud. I woke up the next day and had no signs of flu or fever or achiness or anything.

 

Kate:  Is your husband on board with the homeopathy?

 

Sara:  He is.

 

Kate:  Oh, that’s good.

 

Sara:  Yes, I can’t say he’s always been there, but he is now.

 

Kate:  Okay. At first, he thought you were a little crazy … or what?

 

Sara:  He thought I was a little crazy for some time now, yeah.

 

Kate:  Well, he’s come around to know that it’s helping your family, so that’s good.

 

Sara:  For sure, yeah.

 

Kate:  Good. So, Sara, as we come to an end of this podcast, share with the listeners any words of wisdom that you might have to help us on our homeopathy journey.

 

Sara:  I think it’s easy to become “unfocused” in just reading everything that homeopathy has to offer. If it becomes overwhelming, I would just recommend focusing on one thing. Like I started with my daughter’s warts and just focused only on that. Then that opened up a whole new world.

 

Kate:  Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences and your knowledge with us, Sara.

 

Sara:  Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a delight.

 

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.

 

 

These Moms with Moxie podcasts are designed to be inspirational, not specifically educational. No Remedy Card is provided.