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IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

04:37    Allopathy versus homeopathy

10:00    Joette’s elevator speech on homeopathy

15:20    How to get started

20:58    Conventional medicine as needed

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

My blog

Weston A. Price, the Wise Traditions (my articles)

Quick Start Guide (decide what steps to take next as you learn homeopathy)

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

My Free Community (links to research and articles about homeopathy)

 

 

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 78 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:  Joette, a few minutes ago, we were talking about what we did this weekend and last week. We both had occasions where we had to answer the question, “What is homeopathy?” I think this is a really good question that gets asked a lot by the people that I talk to and I’m sure your students, right?

 

Joette:  That’s right, all the time.

 

Kate:  So, you had an interesting conversation with someone. I want to hear how you answered that question with this person. So, tell us a little bit about what happened, and who you met, and how you answered that question.

 

Joette:  Well, the person that was asking me the question is a very seasoned businessman, very successful. I had to do a presentation in front of a group, and I was being critiqued on what it is we do in my work. So, it was very important to me that I made it super-clear what it was but without carrying on and on.

 

It is difficult when someone has been using homeopathy — even if it’s just for a short period of time or even a longer period of time — it’s easy to get caught up on how homeopathic medicines are made because they are made so differently from conventional medicines. Conventional medicines are just … they get a substance, they mimic it synthetically, and they manufacture it in a manufacturing pharmacy.

 

Homeopathy, of course, is much different than that. So, because of that, many of us — especially in the beginning when we first learn about homeopathy — get caught on that rung of the ladder. When instead, what people are looking for is, “What is this and how can it help me?” Or, “How did it help you, and then I can decide whether or not it could help me.”

 

Kate:  It’s almost like — when I’m listening to you talk — that it’s what we learn in sales. Right? I mean, we’re not trying to sell this person on something, but we can overcompensate.

 

Joette:  Oh, yes, we are! I’m trying to sell the world on homeopathy! I want this medicine out there. I think that humanity will be much improved if we can get rid of the dependency that we so deeply have on synthetic drugs. I believe homeopathy can do wonders for the structure of the family. I think it can do wonders for the elderly and for — here’s one of my big things — for independence, because we tend to get depressed. Excuse me for going off on this tangent, but I believe that we, as humans, get depressed when we’re dependent.

 

My mother is dependent on me. (I don’t think it depresses her. She has late stage Alzheimer’s.) But when she was going into it, it was her greatest concern. It was my father’s greatest concern: “I don’t want to be dependent on you.” That’s why I think it’s so bad for adult children to stay at home too long. I think it’s so bad for people to go on welfare for long periods of time. I understand if it’s needed, in a time of need for a short period of time, but if you want someone to be a fully active, vibrant human being, they have to be independent.

 

So, if I have not sold you on homeopathy, I have not done my job! I want you to be so sold on homeopathy — not you Kate because you already are — but I want you listeners to be so sold on homeopathy that you can now sell it to others. That’s what I try to do when I explain what homeopathy is.

 

Allopathy versus homeopathy

 

So, this is what I said to this group of people. I said, “There were two kinds of medicines in North America. There were the conventional medical doctors (the AMA types that we all know today), and there were the homeopaths. Both went to medical school. The homeopaths went to homeopathic medical school — just as rigorous in those days as conventional medical school was back in those days (in the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, even long before then).

 

I’ve actually written a book on it! We had just over 100 homeopathic hospitals in the U.S. The conventional medical doctors had just under that … as I recall, it’s something like 96 conventional hospitals. All of the hospitals that the homeopaths built were big, stalwart hospitals. They were the mainstay of communities. They were big and beautiful and well-funded. Not well-funded by industry, well-funded by women’s auxiliary groups and patients who donated because they were so pleased with what occurred.

 

So, two factions: The first faction had aspirin, very strong drugs such as cocaine; they had surgery; and that was pretty much what … and mercury. And then they developed antibiotics during World War I (it didn’t get out into the market until just around World War II) and psychotropic drugs. So, with those two categories, the pharmaceutical industry that was backing them — that was right there along with them — flourished tremendously. So, with that, they felt empowered!

 

Meanwhile, the homeopaths had the same medicines we’ve had for 200 years. There was a competition. The conventional doctors got together and decided, “Now that we have this strength in these two considerable drugs …” (I might add they were quite considerable) “… then now we can get rid of the competition.”

 

It was that simple. So, they organized, put together a plan — a very well-funded (because the pharmaceutical industry was behind them), very intelligently orchestrated plan to eliminate the competition. And the homeopaths were the only competition at the time, pretty much.

 

So, the first medical association in the U.S. was a Homeopathic Medical Association. The second one was the American Medical Association. So, that medical association deemed that if any of their members sent one of their patients to a homeopath, they would be eliminated from the AMA. If any of them accepted a patient from a homeopath, they would have been eliminated; blackballed from the American Medical Association, if they played golf with a homeopath.

 

And yes, this was all written. It’s all stated. You can read about it. So, the homeopaths foolishly thought, “The cream will rise to the top!” People will understand how great homeopathy is, and that there are no side effects, and that it can be quite curative, and that it’s not synthetic, and it’s inexpensive to purchase, and it gives families an opportunity to treat their own, et cetera.

 

But that’s not what happened because the marketing from the other side was voluminous and stellar.

 

So, homeopathy died in the late 40s in the U.S. — well, North America, so Canada as well. It did not die in England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, South American countries. But it died in our country because of the strength of the advertising and the work that was done. Also, I might add, in conjunction with governmental bodies, the AMA worked very diligently and hard to get their medicine at the forefront.

 

We still see it today. Now, ask a conventional doctor about this, and they won’t know what you’re talking about because they don’t study the history of medicine. They’re studying “this” condition means “this” drug or “this” surgery.

 

So, when I finished saying what I just said to you now, one of the men in the group who I behold in very high regard said, “That’s it! Now, I get it. Now, I understand.”

 

He didn’t need to know that they were all little white pills. He didn’t need to know that they all come from nature. He didn’t need to know that they were inexpensive. (I mean, I led up to that slightly.) He didn’t need to know how they were made, that they were potentized and diluted, et cetera, and that they are not owned — there’s no patent on each one of them. He didn’t need to know any of that! But we get caught up in that when we’re learning homeopathy.

 

Joette’s elevator speech on homeopathy

 

Now, even a shorter version of the same, what I might call my elevator speech, is:

 

“What is homeopathy?”  

 

“Homeopathy is the medicine we all thought we were getting, the one that was going to cure.”

 

I also say, “You know when you go to your doctor, and you have a sinus infection time and time again, or those urinary tract infections keep coming, or that eczema is now worse than ever? Now, you can’t have gluten, and you can’t have dairy. Well, this is the medicine that uproots that. This is the one we really were supposed to be getting all along.”

Now, you don’t have much time to explain any further than that because the door opens, and they exit on the seventh floor.

 

Kate:  Right. That’s very fast!

 

Joette:  Yes, especially when you started on the fifth!

 

Kate:  Now, you’ve piqued their curiosity.

 

Joette:  Right, right.

 

“Wow! What is this?”

 

“Well, you’re interested, you can go to my website, and I talk about it and give lots of information for free.”

 

So, that’s what it boils down to. Now, if someone wants to know more than that: “Well, so do you have a medicine for …?” (That’s usually the next question.) “Do you have a medicine for … ” (And then fill in the blank — you know, gout or arthritis or eczema, whatever.)

 

“Yes, yes, we have a medicine for that.”

 

“Are there double-blind tests?”

 

Most people, if they start digging around on the internet, they’re going to find information that leads people to believe that there is no scientific evidence and there is voluminous scientific evidence. In fact, the term double-blind is actually a homeopathic term.

 

Kate:  Really?

 

Joette:  Yeah, because that’s how provings are done. The provings began in the late 1700s. Dr. Samuel Hahnemann used double-blind strategy. That’s how we learn what our materia medica is made up of. How do we know what these medicines are capable of if we don’t prove them in a proving using double-blind methodology?

 

Kate:  So, when they are doing the provings, there’s actually a group who does not take the medicine, and then a group who does take the medicine, and they don’t know which is which and they write down?

 

Joette:  Yes. When I studied homeopathy in Toronto, I was part of a proving. There were actually three groups. One group took the medicine (not knowing what it was.) The second group administered the medicine (not knowing what it was). And the third group (because I was chicken) …

 

Kate:  Now, I thought you said you were pregnant.

 

Joette:  At one point I was pregnant, but it was a five-year class — five years’ worth of these provings. I was pregnant and chicken. So, I was part of the group that did the collating, organizing, and putting it all together. Then when it was all done … and there were hundreds of people in these groupings. There were 300 people in the class — 340 people, something like that. So, 100 people actually took the medicine. Then once it was collated and organized, then we spent countless hours listening to what came of it.

 

And there were unifying threads. Out of the 100 people, 20% experienced anxiety upon waking at 4:00 in the morning because they were proving it. They didn’t need the medicine, so they were being made uncomfortable by it. That’s how we learned what these medicines are capable of. That’s one way.

 

Another way is clinically. After a while if someone hits their head time and time again — not one person, if many people hit their heads — and there’s an astute practitioner noticing that, “Gee, every time someone hits their head, and we use Arnica, it works!”

 

Do we need a proving to show that?

 

No. Clinically speaking, that’s evidence in-and-of itself.

 

Kate:  So, getting back to that question — that second question that people asked after you give the elevator speech or the history of homeopathy — you talked a little bit about going to your blog. Then we talked about there is evidence and provings and studies. But if they ask specifically, “Well, okay, but do you have a remedy for asthma?” What do you say then?

 

Joette:  The answer is yes.

 

It depends on how much time I have with this person. If it’s someone who’s suffering an asthma attack right then and there, and I’ve actually done this in airports. I see someone suffering and we’ve got hours before we catch our next flight. I actually say, “Here’s a medicine. If you’re interested, you’re welcome to take it. You don’t have to take it. Here are some of my cards so you can see that I am not a “fly-by-night.” This is something that could be of use to you.”

 

But if it’s someone I only have a few minutes to talk to, then I’m going to tell them, “Yes, there is a medicine for that, and should you be interested, just Google my name and the name of that condition, “Joette Calabrese asthma,” “Joette Calabrese high fever.” Because although I’ve authored this blog for over 10 years, I’ve also populated other people’s blogs with my articles and other people’s newsletters (Weston A. Price, the Wise Traditions, a column that I have been writing for 10 years). I have a lot of information out there that’s absolutely free for the taking.

 

How to get started

 

That’s where I like people to get started. If they find that they’re interested, then they can start thinking about, “Gee, I do want to learn more. I don’t want to just use this. I want to use this for my entire family. How do I learn more?”

 

Then they follow the guidelines on my site that teaches them how to … “Okay, what’s next? What should I consider? Should I start a study group? Should I join a study group, et cetera, so that I can learn more?” Once they start the study group … and that’s what I want them to do … I want people to get hooked just like I got hooked so that they can raise their families, or if their families are already raised, or they don’t have a family, they can utilize this medicine in place of the far-too-many synthetic drugs that we’re all swallowing on a regular basis.

 

Kate:  Joette, that’s the exact, same thing that I do when people ask me, “Is there a medicine for XYZ?” I refer them to your website, or I say Google “Joette Calabrese” plus the condition. That’s the exact, same thing that I say. We point them in the direction of your website. I also tell them that they can learn on your website what homeopathy is, specifically, if I don’t have time to explain things. Like you said, maybe we don’t even go into it. I probably go into it even too much rather than just giving them a very brief …

 

Joette:  Oh, yeah, because if you give them too much information, you can see their eyes glazing over. They have to make one step at a time.

 

“Oh, this is interesting. Yes, I would like a medicine that doesn’t have side effects. Yeah, I would like a medicine that’s not going to keep me from being able to eat foods for the next 30 years of my life because the antibiotics undid all my good bacteria and gut bacteria, et cetera.”

 

So, another area as I always say to people when they say, “Really? This is proven? I don’t know. I go to Wiki-paid-ia.” (Oh, excuse me. I mispronounced the word, “Wikipedia.”) “And it led me to believe that homeopathy was quackery.”

 

Well, I just hinted as to why I believe that is found on Wikipedia. Regardless of how many times many homeopaths have tried to correct that, within minutes, minutes, it’s put back again, and it’s eliminated. So, Wikipedia is not organic, folks. Just so you know. It’s not been organic, I think from its inception because this has been a problem not just with homeopathy but with other subjects as well. If they don’t want that information on there, it will not be on there.

 

So, I tell them go to my website. Click on resources, then on community. We have several pages of links. Hopefully, they’re still alive and well because we do check them, but we don’t check them as often as I wish we would — research and studies that have been done on homeopathy throughout the world. Many of them are done by PhDs, many by medical doctors, many of them by hospitals (not of course in the U.S. but elsewhere).

 

That will give you your basis so that you could say, “Okay, this is real. It’s not magical. It’s not New Age.”

 

It is not New Age. I cannot stress that enough.

 

Homeopathy is not New Age! It is medicine! It is regulated in our country by the FDA as a medicine because the FDA was begun with one of its great members who was a homeopathic physician. Dr. Copeland in New York State was his name … made sure that homeopathy was covered back when the FDA began. So, it’s not a supplement. It’s not vitamins. It’s not nutrients. It’s not essential oils. It does not mean holistic. It is a medicine in and of itself.

 

Kate:  When people ask you what is homeopathy, you don’t say what you just said? 

 

Joette:  I don’t go that far. It will just turn them off. In your exuberance, in my exuberance, I found in the past, it goes too far in the conversation. If you’re interested, and then I just drop it, and I just say, “Just go to my website.” Unless, you know, they have a lot of time on their hands; we’re at a family picnic or something, and someone new comes into the family and wants to know what this is. I don’t want to be the center of attention at a family picnic. I don’t want my message to be that. I want people interested, but I just want to pique it and then send them on their way and allow them to learn and discover at their own pace.

 

Kate:  I’m curious to know. This gentleman, he was interested? Or how did that conversation go afterwards?

 

Joette:  Interestingly, yes. He’s contacted the office and has scheduled an appointment. He’s very interested. He said, “I know what you mean. I’m tired of the drugs. I have a chronic condition, and I don’t want to take these drugs because they’re causing more conditions.”

 

That’s where we’ve all started out, wasn’t it? I mean no one comes to homeopathy skipping along in great health. They come crawling to homeopathy because they’ve been beaten by illness and the ill treatment of their illness, as far as I’m concerned.

 

Kate:  From what you said to me, he’s someone that could go anywhere in the world and get whatever type of help.

 

Joette:  No doubt. No doubt about it. He could go anywhere, and he has gone many places in the world to find help medically — which is so for many. Royal families have been using homeopathy for centuries. They could go anywhere. Rockefeller was a proponent of homeopathy, although on one hand he had a homeopath on his staff to take care of him, and then on the other hand, he spoke on the other side for conventional medicine.

 

Conventional medicine as needed

 

Look, I’m not here to disparage all conventional medicine. There are many aspects of conventional medicine that we need; we all may need some time in our lives. Emergency care in a good emergency room could be lifesaving. Surgery when truly needed, not when, “Oh gee, the tonsils are enlarged. Let’s just cut them out.” No, no, I’m talking about surgery that’s truly needed with the skilled hands of a good, experienced surgeon — the guy who has the gray hair at his temples, that’s the guy you want. You don’t want a young guy. You want somebody older and plenty of experience. That’s the kind of medicine that we need.

 

Diagnostics! Very, very valuable. The diagnostics that are available today to the general public through conventional medicine can be lifesaving. If someone has a lump in the breast, unless we know that this happens every month when the woman eats chocolate, we can pretty much guess that that’s not going to be something that’s cancerous. But if there’s a suspicious lump, and you don’t know what it is, and your good, graying-around-the-temples doctor says, “I don’t know what this is. We really do need to look into it.” You bet, get that test done. Find out what it is.

 

You have rectal bleeding, and the blood is black, you bet. There is a time for a test. But to go for a test just because for a good old look-see, that’s where I draw the line.

 

So, modern medicine reined in is a very good thing. Modern medicine gone amok is what I believe we see a little bit too much of today.

 

Kate:  Well, that’s really interesting. So now, this gentleman will be a client of yours, and he’ll certainly then learn what homeopathy is — firsthand.

 

Joette:  Well, it’s interesting because the people … this is a man who is a very successful businessman. I believe that often in order to be a success in anything we do in life, we have to think outside of the box. We can’t act and be like everyone else. So, he’s not unaccustomed to thinking outside of the box. We get to a certain age, and we say, “Well, I did ABCD and E and followed the narrow road — or I should say the wide road …”

 

Kate:  Right, the wide road.

 

Joette:  … the wide road and it didn’t help me. I guess I have to follow a narrower road. So, those are the people who are the most likely to be interested because of their lifestyle, because of their experiences, because of their faith, because of their choices in life. You usually know what kind of people are going to be the ones who are interested in homeopathy. They are … let’s put it this way, they’re the curious ones. Because if we go through life not being curious, we will be led down that wide path. It’s curiosity that keeps us aware and constantly learning and interesting and interested.

 

That needs to be curated. I encourage folks to curate that daily, to educate yourself and not put so much emphasis on what you can learn in the wide road — at the end of the wide road such as the universities and the post-grad degrees. It doesn’t mean that doesn’t have some value in certain circumstances, but that’s not the narrow road. That’s the wide road.

 

Everybody goes to college now. I mean I don’t want to be facetious here, but it’s the way it was when I was in high school. Everybody went to high school. It has now become too mediocre, as far as I’m concerned, unless you have a goal specific, “Okay, I want to become a lawyer.” “I want to become an engineer.” Then I get it. Now that makes sense. But we need to be self-educated, and it needs to be a daily activity.

 

Kate:  So, there you have it, a really good explanation for “What is homeopathy?” If you need to go back and listen to this podcast over and over again so that you have that history memorized and you can help explain to people how the pathway of homeopathy was shifted so dramatically that most people have not heard of it.

 

Thanks, Joette for bringing clarity to that for us.

 

Joette:  My pleasure, Kate — as always.

 

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 and nutrient-dense nutrition. Joette’s podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Pandora, Stitcher, iHeart 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 for your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.