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I wanted you to have this podcast as quickly as possible the transcript is below.

Warmly,

P.S. If you want to jump ahead, download Skinderella, my infographic and read more about Skin the Ugly Truth Course: Safe, Effective Treatment of Skin Ailments, Chronic or Acute, with Homeopathy –Click here and simply follow the prompts

 

IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

 

01:02     Swimming and blepharitis

06:44     Skin allergy remedies

14: 25    The need for Sulphur

16:42     Suppression

23:20     Skin, The Ugly Truth

24:05     Getting sick is inevitable

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

 

Facebook Live (referred to in this podcast regarding my eye)

Sulphur 200

Antimonium crud 6 and Arsenicum 200 (Banerji Protocol)

Skin, The Ugly Truth

 

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 76 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:  It is summertime right now, and we are enjoying the weather outside. I know I am. I’m here with Joette.

 

Joette, you have a new hobby that you’ve been doing this summer. Tell us a little bit about what you’ve got going on.

 

Swimming and blepharitis

 

Joette:  Well, I’m now in Southeast Florida, and so it’s summer all the time here. Since I’ve moved here, I have found swimming again in my life because there is this pool right at my patio. I mean, literally, I open my gate from my patio out into the little common area, and I could dive into the pool right from there. There are only six units in our complex, and I’m the only one who uses this pool.

 

Kate:  It’s like your private pool.

 

Joette:  Oh, my gosh! It’s fantastic. Then I see my neighbors once in a while, and it’s really nice. I’ve been swimming in this pool 45 minutes a day, and it has really limbered me up, and I’m sleeping better, and everything is really great … but then something started to happen.

 

I started to break out, and my left eye got swollen. I had blepharitis. First, I thought it might have been conjunctivitis, you know, infection. But no, no, it didn’t feel like an infection. It was just, as I said in my Facebook Live, my eye looked like a puffer fish that was pregnant with octuplets and had just finished a meal that was highly inflammatory.

 

Kate:  Oh, my gosh!

 

Joette:  I mean, my eye, around my eye was so edematous and so swollen that it turned inside out. The lid turned inside out! I was looking at the inside of my lid as I looked in the mirror. It was so gross.

 

Kate:  I was trying to picture that, Joette, as I was listening to you on the Facebook Live. I mean, I don’t even know how that’s possible.

 

Joette:  I mean, I’m laughing now because I’m better. But it got so “fluffy” below and above, and the bridge of my nose widened. I mean I looked, really … I didn’t even look human anymore. Then it got so full and edematous that it just — “poop” — just popped open. Plus, it was cracking. Oh, my gosh, it was a mess! I was obviously in allergic reaction now.

 

I had an allergic reaction similar to this in seventh grade when my parents got a new car, and we drove down to Florida from Buffalo in this brand-new car. I remember feeling really sick and soporific (is the best way to describe it). I just couldn’t stay awake. I slept the whole time. I felt out of it, drugged even.

 

We realized later that it must have been the brand-new car. But when we got to Florida two-and-a-half days or three days later, this is exactly what happened to both my eyes. They got very swollen and puffy. My parents were beside themselves. They didn’t know what to do.

 

But it didn’t bother me that much. I was in seventh grade and life was fun. We were in Florida. It was our first vacation ever, and it was really fun.

 

Then I didn’t have it again until a few weeks ago.

 

So, I was in denial as I often go into — as we all do, but I do it a lot. I did not want to accept that it was the pool, that it’s the chlorine in the pool or something in the pool. I don’t know what it was, but I really was thinking pretty much it was the pool.

 

I stopped wearing all makeup. And, I don’t wear a lot of makeup. I wear a little bit of eyeliner pencil and some lipstick when I go out. That’s it.

 

So, I stopped that, so then I looked ugly on top of ugly. I looked unkempt on top of ugly!

 

Kate:  I’m sure you didn’t.

 

Joette:  Oh, my gosh, it was horrible!

 

Kate:  You just talk about it.

 

Joette:  So then, I went out with sunglasses. I wore sunglasses wherever I went because there were times when it looked so bad, people would stare at my eyeball. So, I wore sunglasses, and then I would wear a lip gloss. Actually, it was coconut oil, to make me look a little kept … or kempt I should say. (Not kept, I was not a kept woman! I was a groomed woman.)

 

You know, I’ve got this philosophy about grey hair. I’ve got a lot of grey hair. Now, my hair is mostly white. My philosophy is that it will make a woman look haggardly unless she wears earrings and puts a little makeup on. That’s what changes the whole thing! That’s it!

 

If you’re dressed nicely, and you have your nails look nice, and you have earrings on, you have a little makeup on, and you’ve done a little something with your hair — you don’t just let it hang there and look kind of like you did in the 60s, but if you do a little something — then that’s what makes grey hair look beautiful, as far as I’m concerned.

 

Kate:  I think that’s true. I mean, I know we’re going off on a little tangent here, but as you know, I’m in a nursing/rehab facility with my mom. These little, old ladies that are in their … there’s even a man here, 103. (I should sit down and interview him.)

 

Joette:  Yes!

 

Kate:  But the only change — the ones that look really sharp — are the ones that have a little bit of lipstick on and maybe a bandanna.

 

Joette:  Yes, a little something. You’ve got to just look like you’ve put something into yourself.

 

Kate:  Some effort.

 

Joette:  Yes, a little effort goes a long way.

 

So um, so, where were we in the story? I forgot.

 

Summer! We’re back to summer.

 

So, I’ve been swimming. And so, I was in denial, and I said, “I’ll be darned. I’m going to swim.”

 

Now, I don’t put my head in the water necessarily, although it does inadvertently go. But I’m doing the backstroke, and the sidestroke, and the breaststroke. So, water gets on my face, but that wasn’t the issue because it was affecting my skin all over my body. I had outbreaks of eczema that, again, I have not had since I was in seventh grade.

 

Now, let me just put this into perspective. Seventh grade was 1965 … just so you get an idea.

 

Kate:  That is a long time.

 

Joette:  Seventh grade was not 15 years ago!

 

Kate:  But you’re not old though!!

 

Skin allergy remedies

 

Joette:  No, not at all.

 

So, I did not want to stop, and I wanted to use homeopathics. But even in the beginning, I said, “Ohhhhh! It will just go away. I’m not even going to bother using anything. It’s just a little nothing.”

 

And it got worse and worse and worse, and then it kept me up at night. I was scratching, and the itching was maddening. So, I used Argentum nitricum, and I used Syphilinum, and I used Apis. I used, oh my gosh, I’ve used them all. then I used Sulphur 30.

 

Then two nights ago, although I was slightly improving … I was using Bovista and Calc carb for allergies …

 

Kate:  How about Antimonium crud?

 

Joette:  I used Antimonium crud. Arsenicum was helping for a while. Bovista seemed to be helping for a while. Even those were not just getting to it fast enough. It was helping a little. I have to admit that it wasn’t quite as severe. My eye didn’t look like a pufferfish any longer. Now, it looked like a pachyderm.

 

Kate:  You changed species.

 

Joette:  Different species, a land species now, in Africa, in dry dessert of Africa — after the elephant or the rhinoceros was in the muddy water and had been away from the muddy water and now in the dessert for the last 10 years. You can imagine all the cracking around their ankles and all … that’s the way my eye looked.

 

Kate:  Was it painful?

 

Joette:  At times it was. It was burning and prickly. Burning, burning, burning, and burning. The reason I say that it’s not that it was burning an awful lot, but I’m pointing that out because it is an aspect of the medicine that we’re going to talk about here.

 

Because the itching had now gotten way past my eye and my face, it was on my scalp; it was on my back; it was on the flexors of my elbows. I mean you name it, and I’m not going to. Any place in my body — that I’ve ever noted — is now a place of itch. Then I said, “I’m going to take Sulphur 200.”

 

Now, I had taken the 30. It had done nothing.

 

But I took Sulphur 200, one dose and it went — hold your ears — BAM!

 

Within an hour, not even an hour and a half, I was instantly better! The swelling in my eye went down. The itching was completely gone all over my whole body. I felt this peace come over me. I also felt energized and happy. I was kissing my husband and my son who’s in town. I was kissing. I was so happy. I felt so good. I said, “Okay, let’s make dinner, then lets’ go for a walk on the beach. Let’s devour life.”

 

Up until that time, I had been just kind of slogging along, just barely getting my jobs done. So, I knew I had hit it.

 

Now, I’ve taken it for a couple of days.

 

Last night and the night before — because this was actually two days ago — I had the most delicious dreams. They were so much fun; I didn’t want to get out of bed. They were such happy times. My parents were young, and my brother, and my friends, and our old neighborhood. And then we went to another chapter. You know how dreams can seep from one part of your life to the next, but they were all lighthearted, joyous dreams.

 

So, I know I’ve hit it. So now what I’m doing is I’m taking it twice a day.

 

Now, I had also taken — because I want to talk about this other remedy because I’m not going to tell people that they need to use Sulphur any time they have an eruption like this. But it was kind of screaming Sulphur all along. I had just thought, “Well, I’m going to try everything else first, and I’ll put Sulphur on the backburner.”

 

Let me also say, let me go back and say, parenthetically, I’ve always known that Sulphur would be a very good medicine for me at some point. Because the eruptions that I had had as a child had been suppressed for so long, because my family is Sicilian, and Sicily is known for Sulphur mines. I’m kind of drawing from all of that.

 

But I’ve seen a lot of Sulphur characteristics on both sides of my family — my mother’s and my father’s side of the family — that I believe many members of my family would have been benefitted by the use of Sulphur.

 

I was kind of waiting for a skin eruption to re-present, and it took all these years for it to re-present. Why didn’t I go to it sooner? Well, because I guess I was in denial because I wanted to swim. I guess that was part of it.

 

The other part of it was when I repertorized — and I did repertorize, and I also used protocols — Sulphur always shows up. When you repertorize, you go into any repertory, and you look up anything of the skin, you’re going to find Sulphur. Some say it’s over-represented in the repertory. So, you have to kind of put it aside and say, “Yes, we get it. Sulphur is in there somewhere possibly.” So, you put it aside and then try everything else and then when nothing else works, then you go to Sulphur. That was basically my philosophy.

 

Kate:  But Joette, you did use Sulphur in there during that time. Was it once or twice?

 

Joette:  I only used one dose, and that’s really not a good indicator. I did it half-baked — kind of half-baked effort. What I mean by that is I took Sulphur, and then I went ahead and took Antimonium crud and Arsenicum as well. So, I really would not have had much of an indicator of which ones were acting.

 

Kate:  As we’re talking about this, I want people to understand. You’re not just taking one dose of Arsenicum, one dose of Sulphur, half an hour later, a dose of …

 

Joette:  Thank you for saying that. No, no, no, you have to commit to it. When I was in a real acute state, I was taking these remedies approximately every three to four hours. As it backed off and wasn’t as severe and my eye was no longer flipped inside out (my eyelid), then I was able to open it up and take each one of them maybe twice a day.

 

Kate:  So, give us a more in-depth picture, Joette. Because maybe you took Arsenicum album, every three or four hours, and then you would switch to another remedy? Or did you take Arsenicum album and then Antimonium crud?

 

Joette:  I actually took Antimonium crud 6 and Arsenicum 200 simultaneously.

 

Kate:  Because that’s a protocol.

 

Joette:  It’s a protocol. I decided on Antimonium crud 6 because it has a unique aspect to it, and that is itching everywhere. Not because there’s a rash everywhere but it’s just here an itch, there an itch, everywhere an itch-itch.

 

Kate:  Now, that’s confusing to me because I thought the Antimonium crud was for the rash or the eczema (some skin condition), and then the Arsenicum album was to take care of the itching.

 

Joette:  That is so, except that Antimonium crud is also useful for itching and particularly when the itching is here, there, and everywhere. Those two, Antimonium crud and Arsenicum album are very interchangeable in many ways.

 

So, that’s what did it. I mean, now my eye looks a little funky, and the other one looks not so great. But I don’t look like there’s something wrong with me. I look aged by about eight years, before it was 15 or 20 years. Now, I’m in my 70s according to my eyes!

 

Kate:  So, when you say that’s what did it, it’s the Sulphur that did it.

 

Joette:  Oh, my gosh, the Sulphur did it. There’s no doubt about it.

 

Now, how long will this hold up? I don’t know. We’ll find out. I’m going to be using it for the next many days until this has completed. So, I’ll be taking Sulphur 200C, twice daily probably for another week or so.

 

I’ve not been swimming in my beloved pool. I’ve not swum much in the ocean because the ocean where I live right now is just loaded with seaweed. I mean not just a little bit; I mean you’re covered in it. You can’t swim in it very easily without it just covering you. So, I’ll wait until that passes, and then I’ll get back into the ocean. Then I’m going to try the pool again. I’ve got to find out whether or not it’s the pool.

 

The need for Sulphur

 

Kate:  So, Sulphur, to just recap, is a great medicine for skin …

 

Joette:  … eruptions, especially when you’ve tried many others, and nothing is acting. There’s itching everywhere — and especially if you can rationalize it with a history of the need for Sulphur all along. In other words, the skin issue is likely presenting from a history of suppressed eruptions.

 

I’ll go back and explain that I had eczema from the time I was 6 weeks old until I was about 13. I didn’t have just a little patch here or there; I was literally blanketed in it for the most part. We used steroid ointments. You name it, we used all the drugs that were available at the time in the ‘50s and ‘60s. There were plenty of drugs to use.

 

So, when we see that kind of a picture, then we, again, put Sulphur in the backburner because it is so ubiquitous when we look up skin conditions in the repertory. We keep it kind of at bay, unless it’s screaming. If I had been super-hot — these are characteristics of Sulphur, of the need for the remedy Sulphur — if I had been super-hot which I wasn’t; if I had been sloppy.

 

My desk is kind of sloppy lately, but I mean really sloppy. I keep a very tidy house. Sulphur is usually messy. They have a sloppiness. They are very intellectual. (I don’t think I’m that intellectual. I think I’m more involved with people than I am with the intellect.) But if you see a lot of that, then you move a little more towards that. Diarrhea can also be present, that kind of thing.

 

Kate:  And maybe an odor?

 

Joette:  Yes, if there were odors. Now, no one in my family reported anything like that, so I’m going to assume that I was okay in that department.

 

Or there can be odors that are detected by someone who needs Sulphur. In other words, they are someone who is sensitive to smell, sensitive to chemicals and perfumes, and bad odors — the odors of a dirty dog or garbage dump or something. And I do have that. There’s no doubt about it. I am sensitive to odors. Nothing like I used to be, but I still have that. So, that did fit as well.

 

Suppression

 

Kate:  Someone might say to you, “Joette, you’ve been taking all of these remedies. You’ve tried all these different remedies for the skin condition. Well, now, what is going to be suppressed because of the different medicines that you’ve used?” I think you’ve mentioned that to me recently that you’ve heard people talking about medicines can be suppressive.

 

Joette:  I say to that, ‘Oh, pshaw.”

 

I’ve heard a couple of people talk about that recently, and I’ve heard it of course through the decades. In my estimation, it is a classical homeopathic way of looking at using homeopathic medicines. I fear that there is something behind that when classical homeopaths instill in their clients, and/or patients, or students that they should not be using these homeopathic medicines on their own, and that they are instilling a weariness that is uncalled for.

 

We need to be able to treat ourselves.

 

Now, let me say, I’m going to put that juxtapositioned to the other side of the story that is: you don’t want to just willy-nilly take remedies, one after another, after another, after another. It may have sounded like that to you when I’ve described this to you earlier. That’s not how I did it, and I suppose I could go into a little more detail, but …

 

Kate:  And this has been over weeks that you’ve done this.

 

Joette:  Yes, yes.

 

We don’t want to be sloppy. We don’t want to choose our medicines from fear and from angst saying, “I got to do something! I got to do something. I’ll do this. I’ll do this. Okay, no, then I’ll do that. Oh wait, maybe this is it. Maybe that’s it.” I discourage that greatly. That’s what I teach against — that behavior — in my courses and on my blog, too. (I hope I come across that way on my blog as well.)

 

But on the other side of it, we do need to learn how to use these medicines. What I mean by that is, how do you learn to use them if you don’t use them? You’ve got to. So, by my using the wrong “homeopathic medicine” does not mean that I will strip myself of the ability to get well because it was wrong. It is not, I believe, suppressive. I believe that it will, in fact — as you take the incorrect medicine, and you find out that you have — now you’ve got something more to read.

 

Of course, we’re always reading symptoms. So, what we’re reading now is the next set of symptoms that may have come as a result of having taken the previous incorrect medicine. So now, what’s presenting more than ever?

 

Well, now more than ever, after taking Arsenicum and Antimonium crud for example, and I also took Petroleum earlier on, I found that the itching was worse than ever. I’d had the itching around my eyes, but now the itching was en masse because my entire body was itching. So, that’s what then led me to the idea that I should consider the remedy that was sitting on the backburner — and that was Sulphur.

 

Kate:  Let’s talk about that fear, too. We were talking earlier about “don’t just jump from one remedy to the other out of concern for the situation or the person.” We want to be thoughtful in our remedy choice. But also, you’ve talked many times about if you take an incorrect remedy, taking the correct remedy will antidote the incorrect remedy.

 

Joette:  That’s right. That’s absolutely right.

 

Kate:  I think we need to know that you did — I think I remember you saying in your Facebook Live — you did take Camphora 200 one time in this process?

 

Joette:  Yes, I did. I don’t remember what was happening, but I felt worse. But in the beginning when my eye was as swollen as I described it, Apis seemed to make a lot of sense. After taking Apis, some of the edema went down, but then under my eyes started to crack. I was forming fissures under my eye and above my eye. There was darkness all around it. It was starting to occur in the other eye as well. It was exuding liquid.

 

I said, “Oh, my gosh! This is the remedy Petroleum.” We were going to talk about Petroleum today. The indication for the use of Petroleum is when we see cracks, especially if there happens to be some oozing of clear fluid. So, that came next, and so, I took Petroleum. Petroleum got rid of the fissures.

 

I still wasn’t finished with what was going on with my eye. Apis took down the extreme edema. Petroleum took away the cracking fissures. Antimonium crud 6 and Arsenicum 200 helped a little bit with the itching but then caused greater itching all over.

 

I know I’m missing a couple of remedies in there, but that’s the crux of it. It was around that time that I realized I really did need to take Sulphur 200. Which brings me, Kate, to a very important aspect of this, and that is knowing the potency. Potency matters.

 

Sulphur 30 would not have done it. I took one dose; I saw no change. I took one dose of the 200, and it was life-changing. I was brought back to myself after, I don’t know, three weeks of this business.

 

I believe that this would have carried on, Kate. Because although it was acting like an acute situation, it was actually an old symptom that I’d had as a child. So that it was a chronic, underlying, bubbling-under situation that all I needed was a little impetus, a little stimulus caused by perhaps — I still don’t know for sure — but perhaps the chemicals in the pool that I was swimming in daily that brought it out.

 

So, I think this would have gone on for a long, long time. If I had gone back in the pool, it would have started all over again. Well, that’s yet to be found.

 

Kate:  So, you’ve been staying out of the pool now?

 

Joette:  I have. I look at it lustfully.

 

Kate:  That’s sad.

 

Joette:  Wistfully … just look at it from my patio.

 

Kate:  So, now you have to find a new form of exercise again.

 

Joette:  Oh, yes. I got a bicycle, but it’s hot. You know, when it’s 95 degrees, I don’t care how early in the morning it is … you don’t want to be riding a bicycle. I don’t know.

 

The thing is what I love about swimming is that I’m gaining skills. It’s more than just exercise and pleasure. I’m gaining skills. I’m tightening up my strokes. I’m becoming more efficient. So, it just feels like fun to gain some greater ability, but I’ll find another way.

 

Skin, The Ugly Truth

 

Kate:  So, all this talk about the skin … people are dealing with skin issues in the summer oftentimes. So, if you want to know more about the skin issues, Joette, you have a course. It’s called Skin, The Ugly Truth. People can look below this podcast in the notes, and we’ll give you information if you want to learn more about skin conditions and how to help them with homeopathy.

 

Joette:  Really, there are very few people on earth who don’t end up with some skin condition at some point in their lives. What better time to clear that up than in the summer when you’re wearing sleeveless and bathing suits, and everybody sees everything?

 

Kate:  Yes. Then you can tell if it’s working or not because in the winter if you don’t have those issues, you can’t tell if the remedies are doing anything necessarily.

 

Joette:  Right.

 

Getting sick is inevitable

 

Kate:  So, we’ve covered a lot today Joette. We talked all about the skin. Is there anything else that you want to cover in the podcast today?

 

Joette:  Well, the only thing I want to say is that I want to point out that we’ll all get sick. We will all have injuries. Homeopaths get sick. Everyone gets sick.

 

People have said to me, “You get sick? I thought you were a homeopath.” That has nothing to do with it. I’m still on this earth. I’m still susceptible. I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and it all comes back at you at some point to a certain degree. So, we’re all going to get sick.

 

But the way to engineer yourself out of it is to learn homeopathy and to step aside from that mediocre — excuse me for being so derogatory — from the mediocre medicine of just slapping on an ointment made of steroids that just forces the body to react in a way … it doesn’t know really how to react properly. It throws that condition often to the future which is precisely why this has happened to me now, in my estimation. This is one of the understandings of homeopathy is that when you suppress symptoms of old, they will come back in the future, perhaps in a more sobering way. Thankfully, it’s not more sobering for me. It’s simply eczema again, and blepharitis, and et cetera, but it did not turn into red skin syndrome, for example, which is a very scary condition.

 

So, in spite of the fact that we all will suffer, I mean that is part of the human condition, that’s what it’s all about being on this earth. In spite of that, we have the tools to be able to get ourselves out of — not every situation, not perfectly — but we do have the tools to engineer ourselves right out of a lot of what we’ve already done, or what we’ve got ourselves into, or what life has handed to us.

 

It is an upper, actually, to think of it that way. So, instead of using something that suppresses symptoms, we can use something that corrects them on a much deeper level, so that when I go back into that pool — and we don’t know what’s going to happen — but when I go back in that pool, I will, hopefully, have a medicine that I can use so that I can, and I will not suffer from it.

 

Kate:  All right, there we have it. Thank you, Joette, for sharing your story with us and giving us more tools that we can use to deal with our skin issues.

 

 

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.