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IN THIS PODCAST, WE COVER:

 

01:14   Symptoms

07:14   Fatigue

11:54   Medical Tests

15:55   Alternatives to Homeopathy

21:57   Influenza

24:58   Sprezzatura

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

My blog, podcasts, Facebook Live events and courses

Gateway to Homeopathy: A Guided Study Group Curriculum

 

Kate:  This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast Episode Number 96 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:  Hi, I'm Kate, and I want to welcome you back to the Practical Homeopathy® podcast. I'm here with Joette today, and we are going to be talking about “keeping it simple.”

Joette, you wanted to share with your listeners about the idea of symptoms, and how sometimes, they can actually be side effects from some things that we might be taking. So, why don't you expand upon that today?  

 

Symptoms

 

Joette:  Sure, let me start with this. That is that symptoms are key in homeopathy — not because we want to treat them, but because we honor them, and we use them. They are our gifts.

 

I know that's hard to believe when someone's suffering. The last thing you're thinking of is that this headache is a gift. But in a way, it is because it directs us to which homeopathic medicine will help correct it.

 

Symptoms are just representations of something that's going on deeper.

 

Now, let me say parenthetically, we needn’t know what it's representing. That's not the job of the homeopath or the person who's using homeopathy. The job of the homeopath is to use that information.

 

So, if there's itching in the middle of the night only, that's different than itching after taking a shower. That's a symptom that matters!

 

If we are treating symptoms with drugs — steroids, for example, for that itching, or magnesium (gross magnesium), or whatever else we might be taking — it can cause trouble.

 

It might relieve that itching in the middle of the night, but that's not what necessarily we're looking for.

 

Now, that sounds really ridiculous for someone who is new to homeopathy.

 

Kate:  Right.

 

Joette:  But the problem is that steroids don't cure! Homeopathy has the ability to do such.

I'm not going to tell you it's going to cure every case or how far it will go. But steroids   don't cure; they actually suppress.

Suppression of symptoms is a naughty word in homeopathy. We don't want to suppress anything.

Those steroids might indeed get rid of that itch at that time. But later on, now the itch, my guess is — and it's an educated guess because I've seen it happen many, many times — now the itching is not in the middle of the night. Now the itching is first thing in the morning and in the middle of the night. Now the itching is not just on the scalp. Now the itching is on the flexors and on the belly and on the nose.  

So, it gets worse and worse, and we need stronger and stronger steroids to hold it down. It's like pushing down on a water balloon, and then it bulges up somewhere else. And you press down on that bulge, and it bulges somewhere else.

So, symptoms are very, very important in homeopathy. We use them; don't treat them. Symptoms can be caused by a myriad of substances.

 

And so, when someone tells me that they have a condition — or they only have symptoms, they don't even have a name for the condition necessarily — my first question is, “What are you taking?”

 

Always.

 

“What are you taking?”

 

They think that “natural substances” will not cause trouble, but I totally disagree. So, it can be natural substances such as vitamins — although I don't think they're all that natural, and we'll get into that too in a minute — or supplements, food supplements, et cetera.

 

Drugs will most definitely cause symptoms. They're called side effects. There is no such thing as a drug without a side effect. If you're taking a drug, you're going to get a side effect.

 

End of discussion.

 

It may not be what you expect, but you will get a side effect — unless you get on it for a short period of time, and you're done, and you get off it quickly enough. But if there's ever a chronic condition or a chronic use of a drug, just count on it. That's what it will cause.

 

But I also warn people that homeopathy can cause symptoms, too, if it's used incorrectly. So, many times, people say, “Well, yeah, I take cell salts every single day. I've been taking them for years. And now I've got these hangnails all the time, or I'm getting whitlows, I'm getting infections on the tips of my fingers.”

 

I always say, “Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! You're taking homeopathic medicine for years! Not that we would never ever, ever consider that. That certainly is a potential. Sometimes we do need to use homeopathic medicines over a period of time. But if you're taking it just willy-nilly because you're thinking, ‘Oh, well, it's just a cell salt. I can just take these lower level potencies forever and not have any problems,’ well, you might be mistaken.”

 

I would urge people to assess what it is they're doing.

 

A lot of what we suffer is extrinsic. Not everything! We have hereditary conditions. We have conditions that come from events earlier in our lives, injuries, et cetera.

 

But a lot of what happens to us is our over-intellectualizing and trying to find a solution and adding them all up. So, I meet many times with folks — students and clients — who tell me that they have a condition, and I ask, “So, what are you taking?”

 

They tell me the list of supplements. Sometimes their lists of supplements are so long that I can’t … my fingers get tired writing them all down on my keyboard!

 

Then my next question is, “So. Are they helping?”

 

Well, obviously, they're not helping, or they wouldn't be asking for help from me!

 

Then the question is, maybe shouldn't you consider the possibility that these supplements and vitamins — which by the way vitamins are almost always synthetic. If we know that, that changes things. We think vitamins are, “Well, vitamin D? Yeah, that's natural.”

 

No. It's natural if it comes from food or sunshine. It's not natural if you're taking synthetic vitamin D.

 

Then the question is, “Is the vitamin D helping you with that fatigue?”

 

“No. I've been taking vitamin D for a year.”

 

So, okay. That tells me that we need to consider the possibility that, number one, it might not have been a vitamin D deficiency in the first place that caused the fatigue. It might be hormones. It might be psychological. It might be an old cold that was never resolved.

There are so many causes of fatigue. Don't assume that just because your vitamin D level is low that that is the cause, the etiology, of your fatigue. It's a guess that that's what causing your fatigue. Perhaps it's an educated guess on someone's part, but it's a guess.

 

Instead in homeopathy, we don't try to figure out the etiology of the cause, we look at fatigue.

 

Fatigue

 

All right, what are the medicines that are specific for fatigue, and how does this fit into the person's picture?

 

What kind of fatigue? Are we talking about gobsmacking fatigue? Are we talking about mild fatigue? Is it someone who's studying all the time? Could it be having to do with using the brain so much? Could it be instead that the person has a food intolerance, and every time they eat gluten unknowingly that they're getting fatigue? Could it be that they had the flu six months ago, and that fatigue has still not released them? So, it has something to do with a virus?

 

So, there could be many causes, but we don't need to necessarily know what the cause is.

 

Getting back down to our idea of keeping things simple, what I want to make clear is that if you're not feeling well, and you've been taking these vitamins and the supplements and even the homeopathics and the essential oils, maybe it's time to stop everything. Halt it all and reassess and see where you really are. Let's see the real you without you being propped up by those Ziploc baggies full of pills.

 

Kate:  Ziploc baggies.

 

Joette:  That's how people do it. I know because I used to do it myself some 40 years ago: Ziploc baggies. You take two of these before you eat. You take four of these after you finish eating. You take these in the middle of the day.

 

Oh, my goodness. If you've got to take a number of them before you eat, you almost have to muscle down your meal because it ruins your appetite.

 

Kate:  Joette, you mentioned having low vitamin D. What do you do if you actually do have a test that confirms that you are low in vitamin D?

 

Joette:  Well, I don't have a test. I don't test. I'm not a medical doctor. I don't diagnose.

 

But people come to me with their tests in hand and this is what I find — not always — but I find it far too frequently. They're low in vitamin D, so they start taking it. They’ve been on it a year. The vitamin D levels are improved, yet they still have the fatigue.

 

Now what?

 

Or, here's another second scenario. They're low in vitamin D. They take vitamin D synthetically. The vitamin D levels don't change.

 

It makes me question the test. I question a lot of these kinds of tests. Because before we started studying vitamin D or using these tests for vitamin D, we were doing tests for other vitamins and other blood levels. I find that there are “tests du jour,” and they're not across the board. Some practitioners use this kind of test; some practitioners use another kind of test. And so, we're getting uneven information. We're getting skewed information.

 

What I find is that homeopathy doesn't treat “low vitamin D.”

 

Instead, we look at what is the condition? What's the problem? Before you went into the practitioner who declared that you have low vitamin D levels, what did you go in for? What was the condition? Was it fatigue?

 

Okay, as I said, let's use a homeopathic medicine that's specific for fatigue regardless of the cause.

 

Or did you go in because you had bad skin; it was dry, cracking. When the test showed up that you were low in vitamin D, there might be an assumption that it must be that you need vitamin D in order to bring the skin up to snuff. But now, that person's been taking the synthetic vitamin D all these months and maybe years, and lo and behold, the skin is no better.

 

So, why don't we just use the medicine — the homeopathic medicine — that is specific for skin that’s dry and cracked, especially in winter, especially around the fingertips and heels?

 

So, here's the thing. We started homeopathy in the late 1700s before there were any of these tests. Microscope was only just invented around the same time. They still didn't know how to use it really — certainly not the way that we use microscopes and these kinds of tests now. And we were still able to deal with fatigue, and dry, cracking skin, and brain fog (another condition that is declared to be related to vitamin D).

 

Kate:  Joette, when we do our Study groups, we talk a lot about the Banerjis and the fact that they're medical doctors, and they rely upon tests and also diagnoses.

 

Can you just reconcile that for us, because I know those are important things when we're taking protocols? We want to be sure that we do have that particular condition that we're taking the protocol for. But on the other hand, we're saying we don't necessarily rely on the tests.

 

Can you just talk about that for a minute?

 

Joette:  If there's low ferritin or high ferritin then we want to know that. That's an important test.

 

Kate:  Maybe thyroid, although that's not necessarily accurate either.

 

Medical Tests

 

Joette:  Thyroid tests — that can give us information, there's no doubt about it — MRIs, all of those. We depend on conventional medical tests.

 

But when they get to the point where we're testing whether or not this or that vitamin is high or low, that's when I draw the line.

 

I'm not saying — for a minute — that this will never be of any use. I'm just saying that so far, in my experience — especially in the last five years, and I see a lot of clients and a lot of students every week — that I find that these tests that show low vitamin D, as an example, are not as reliable as we would like them to be.

 

Thyroid tests, pretty much we know when the thyroid is low. But it's not a bad idea to get that tested. We know because there's hair loss; there's fatigue; there's dry skin on the shins; and we could keep going on what happens when someone has hypothyroidism.

 

But if there's a test that shows it, and it's pretty clear, then by all means, let's use the homeopathic medicines that are specific to that.

 

Kate:  Even those tests cannot be super-accurate.

 

Joette:  Yes, absolutely. There's no test that's 100% accurate.

 

Same thing with x-rays. A lot of x-rays never show bone infections. Well, now what? Does that mean there's no bone infection or does it mean that we keep asking questions and keep looking?

 

Any doctor worth his or her salt will tell you, “Our tests are not conclusive.” Which is                                                             why they use two and three and four tests. Because if this doesn't work — doesn't give enough information — then we go with this one or that one or this one or that one.

 

That's why homeopathy is so valuable because I encourage people to get tests. Not over the top! I think tests can be superfluous — grossly superfluous — in our world today: that you just go for a mammogram just because you've hit a certain age or a colonoscopy because you've got a colon. I mean, it's over the top.

 

So, I think that’s …

 

But if you need it, but if you need it … you've got something wrong … then by all means, I urge people to use their doctors and go for tests — conventional doctors for their tests. It can be very revealing.

 

But once we got the tests, and there's still a problem (in spite of working with those tests and using a method that reflects the information that we've gotten from that test), if the problem still resides in that person, then obviously that test — not obviously — it may be that that test didn't reveal what we were looking for.

 

Then we can depend on this method where we use the symptoms to determine the medicine regardless of what the etiology may indeed be believed to be in place.

 

Kate:  I think this gets back to when you said, “Stop everything that you're doing, take a break,” also the importance of keeping notes and writing everything down. What are those symptoms after you are off of all those things?

 

Joette:  Yes, but, let me also throw this caveat in there: I would never tell anyone to get off their drugs. So that's different.

 

Kate:  Right.

 

Joette:  If someone just hops off their drug injudiciously, it can cause a boomerang effect.

 

Again, I will say I'm not a doctor. I would not have prescribed that drug. It's always better to use the homeopathic alongside — in tandem with — the medication that's being used for whatever it is.

 

Let's say it's a hypothyroidism. Then the person goes to the doctor and says, “You know Doc, I think I'm doing a little bit better.”

 

Then they see how things are going and then they can back off of the Synthroid, for example, with the guidance of the doctor or the pharmacist.

 

That's not my realm.

 

My realm is to use the homeopathics so that the drug becomes superfluous. And once that happens, then the person goes to the doctor and says, “What can we do about this? I guess I don't need this so much anymore.”

 

Or, “Do I need this so much anymore?”

 

Or, “Now I'm going into hyperthyroidism because I'm using a synthetic drug to take up the slack, and I'm using a homeopathic to make the correction. Apparently, something is working. So, let's back off of the thing that is the most synthetic.”

 

Since homeopathy is not synthetic, it might be prudent to consider that possibility.

 

Alternatives  to Homeopathy

 

Kate:  Joette, let's talk about what you take other than homeopathy? I would like to hear what you use besides homeopathy. Because I know for myself once I found homeopathy, I really don't use many other things at all. Like right now, I'm actually taking some elderberry juice just to boost my immune system, but that's not a supplement. That's a fruit.

 

Joette:  It’s food.

 

Kate:    Yes, it’s food. What about you Joette, what do you use besides homeopathy?

 

Joette:  Well, I have a cold right now. You can probably tell by my voice. I sound so “deepened.” “Authoritarian.”

 

Kate:  Yes, you do.

 

Joette:  I don't take anything. I eat garlic when I go through something like this, and I use my homeopathy.

 

Now, last night, I felt pretty sick. I felt very weak. My chest felt congested and heavy and weak. I took my homeopathic medicines, and I got rid of it. I took it again this morning. I'll take it two to three times a day. That will clear up this cold.

 

But I'm working all day. I don't feel fatigued now. My chest feels fine. I don't have a problem except for how I sound. That's fine with me.

 

But no, I eat garlic because I love it for one thing. Anytime I have an excuse to eat raw garlic, I'm on it!

 

Kate:  I wish there was an excuse to eat chocolate.

 

Joette:  You bet. I know.

I'll drink extra bone stock.

 

But no, I don't take anything. I'm trying to think. I use essential oils — not for my health. I put some essential oils in the unscented dish soap that I use. I put mint in there, essential oil of mint, because I like the smell. It makes my kitchen smell fresh.

People worry about mint with homeopathy, but it is nothing to worry about if it's just mild like that. It's not as though I'm opening the mint bottle and putting it up to my nostrils and inhaling deeply. That could antidote a homeopathic medicine.

I take things more with a grain of salt as I age, as I use homeopathy. I just take things with less concern, with less worry.

I know that homeopathy will take care of this cold or whatever it is that I've got — this cough, this lung issue. To be honest, I think I probably have bronchitis — or a mild case of it because the homeopathic medicines have not allowed it to get too deep, to get too trying, too sobering.

 

I eat food. I get out in the sun; I've got a tan right now. I live in Florida. I love it. I walk on the beach. I sit in the sun.

 

What else do I do? I spend time with my husband, and when my children are in town, spend a lot of time with them, little time with friends. I have a very, very busy life. I work a lot. I work well into every night.

 

But my husband and I go out to dinner on date night every Saturday night. Sometimes we go on Wednesday nights, too — especially if it's a very busy week, and we can get away and talk about what needs to be done next in our lives or help our children or work on my practice and teaching and the courses, et cetera.

 

I have a busy life. I don't know. It's a purposeful life. It was more purposeful when I had my mother to take care of. That changed everything when my mother passed away — and before her, my father.

 

Having purpose in life is absolutely huge. I can't think of a better purpose to have in life than to take care of your parents — your elderly parents — your young children.

If you don't have either one of those categories in your life, then you go to who else you can help; the little bird on the lawn that has a broken leg if you can help wildlife, your pets, livestock if you live out in the country, neighbors, churchmates. That's our pleasure in life. That's our joy. That's where we get … the reason for living is to help others in need.

That's where (got to bring this right back down to homeopathy) … and that's where homeopathy comes in — because we can help so many.

But you’ve made a good point, Kate. Once you get to homeopathy … and I might say that we didn't just come to homeopathy after being freshly born or just after allopathic drugs, we come circuitously. We've come from diets (vegan, macrobiotic — that was my background some 40 years ago … I was using those methods, each one, for many years), vitamin therapy (we've used, I used that for years), supplement therapy, chiropractic, (which I still think is a very valuable method. I like chiropractors. Make sure you've got a good one that has lots of good experience. “Gray at the temples” is the person you’re looking for).

 

Once you get to homeopathy, it trumps everything! This is the cadence to the symphony. This is where we land.

 

Kate:  I don't know about you, Joette, but I see people that are newer to homeopathy. They get a cold. They're taking their homeopathics. They're also taking vitamins and they're taking … I can't think of what else it might be … but they're taking a number of things in addition to the homeopathy.

 

Do you see that as well with people that are newer, like they want to hold on to those other things?

 

Joette:  I do see that, but I'm not going to slap them on the back of the hand because they don't have the confidence in homeopathy yet. If they put the time into it, they will gain the confidence and the comfort level to know, “I don't need any of that.”

 

You know, I had asthma years ago, and I used to have Benadryl. I never took it. I bought it and had it in my medicine cabinet. It took a very long time for me to feel comfortable that homeopathy would take care of this asthma that I had.

 

So, I didn't throw it out for many years. It just sat there. Every time I went to my medicine cabinet, there was … a glaring evidence that I had asthma.

 

But as the years went by and the asthma fell to the wayside — just completely melted away — I finally had the gumption to throw it out. I did! I threw it out! And I haven't had asthma in, I don't know … my youngest was an infant; he's now 24. So, 24 years ago. Not even a whisper of it.

 

Even with this potential bronchitis that I might have — this cold, whatever it is that I have now — I don't get asthma. I feel heavy in the chest, but I don't get the sensation of inability to breathe in or out.

 

Influenza study

 

Kate:  Joette, I wanted to bring up an interesting study that was published and is on the pubmed.gov website. I was reading this today when I was looking at different things for influenza.

 

There was a study done in 2009 to 2010 for people who had influenza-like illnesses by homeopathic and allopathic general practitioners in France. And the conclusion of the study which was interesting (it wasn't unexpected to us who use homeopathy), it says that, “In France, homeopathy is widely accepted for the treatment of influenza-like illness and does not preclude the use of allopathic medicines. However, patients treated with homeopathic medicines only are more satisfied with their treatment than the other patients.”

 

So, that was interesting.

 

Joette:  Go on.

 

Go on!

 

What a revelation!

 

Well, of course, they're more satisfied, and that's really the answer. Was the question, were you cured? No, they were more satisfied.

 

Because if you take a drug for influenza, it might keep you from coughing a little bit. It might suppress your cough. It might keep you from vomiting. It might keep you from getting diarrhea. But then the flu lasts for two months, or now you've got a cough that's chronic, or … or … or …

 

Because drugs always have side effects. Always, always, always.

 

Satisfaction is what we're really looking for. In the end, how do we feel about how we were treated?

 

Plus, I have to say that homeopathy is much more humane. You never hear a homeopath saying, “Don't worry your pretty little head. I’ll tell you what you need to take.”

 

I certainly hope you wouldn't.

 

Instead, any homeopath worth their weight in salt says, “This is what we're using. Go ahead and read up on it,” because it's teamwork between the homeopath. (It should be! If it isn't, then you're with the wrong homeopath.) But it's teamwork.

 

You're working with the person who's proclaiming that the condition, who’s describing the symptoms, who has perhaps used a homeopathic medicine and found that particular one wanting, so that we can move together on to the next idea. It is a pas de deux. We need to dance together and come up with it — the homeopath and the client.

 

Unfortunately, it's often not like that with modern medicine. Perhaps not at the fault of the medical doctor, but at the fault of the system because they're required to see so many people in a day. They've been trained to just throw a drug at it readily.

 

But they are overworked often, depending on what kind of practitioner we're talking about. But they're often overworked, and they may not be able to listen for 30 minutes to get to the essence of the problem. Plus, they don't need to. They've got a drug that treats that particular symptom. So, that's where they go with it.

 

Sprezzatura

 

Kate:  Joette, let's summarize and just talk again about keeping it simple.

 

Joette:  I don't want people to think that I'm saying stop everything, especially the drugs. I really want to emphasize that. That could be a dangerous practice for someone to just drop it. You need to work with your doctor if you're going to slowly back off of it.

 

But I do caution people to not get into too many paradigms. Too many paradigms will confuse things, and every rabbit hole causes more confusion. So, try to keep it as simple as you possibly can.

 

But there's something else about simplicity.

 

One of my favorite words in Italian is “sprezzatura.” The meaning of sprezzatura is to do something that looks very simple in its application or in its results … by doing something, by taking, by learning something, by approaching a problem or a condition or a subject with a lot of forethought, but looking as though you've done it with great simplicity so that it looks simple and elegant in its presentation … is the meaning of sprezzatura.

 

And that is homeopathy.

 

We've gotten 250 years’ worth of the great masters — the great homeopaths of our past, medical doctors who were much greater thinkers than I am — who have put together our materia medicas and our repertories and have given us (such as in Dr. Samuel Hahnemann’s case) the whole layout of what it means to use homeopathy. What homeopathy is, the aphorisms, the theories and even beyond theories, the rules, the laws of human health.

Get all of that and concentrate it, put it all together. Then allow me to get that information and pass it along to mothers and grandmothers and others who are interested in a very simple fashion.

It looks like homeopathy is really simple often because if you've got this; you can take that.

If you've got a head injury; you can take Arnica.

 

If you've got joint pain in your knee; you can take Arnica and Symphytum. It makes it pretty simple.

 

But in the end, when you look back and look at how complex this medicine is and how complicated the human body is, then we realize that the essence of the word “sprezzatura” is homeopathy.

 

It gets what's complex and complicated and hands it to a person and says, “This is how you do it. Here's the medicine, here's the potency, and here's the frequency.”

 

We don't need all the superfluous stuff that people use on the way to finding homeopathy. It's okay that you do it for a while. But learn enough homeopathy, and you won't even think of using it any longer. You'll just depend on your beautiful sprezzatura homeopathy.

 

Joette:  As I hope you know by now, on my blog, podcasts and Facebook Live, I offer as many protocols for simple conditions as I can — for free, without affiliates or advertising.

 

But let me be clear. When it comes to more complex conditions, it’s key that you learn how to use these medicines properly. I want you to be well-trained. So, I save discussions of the more involved methods for my courses in which I walk students through each method with step-by-step training.

 

With the proper training, you, too, can nurture and protect the health of your family and loved ones with Practical Homeopathy®.

 

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 Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Play, Blueberry, Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, and iHeartRadio.

 

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.