Wise Traditions Spring 2016

Healing “Intractable” Digestive Distress

Joette Calabrese, HMC, CCH, RSHom

Published in Wise Traditions, Spring 2016, “Homeopathic remedies for digestive disorders”

Domenica and her husband own a successful Italian sports car dealership in an upscale part of Rome. She’s polished, poised, chic and cosmopolitan. Domenica is “all put together” and exudes sophistication, yet something deep in her viscera is unhappily unsound. She “discovered” this when she complained to her doctor that she
suffered abdominal bloating and frequent urinary tract infections. Lab tests revealed an inherited marker for an inability to uptake B vitamins. The medical “sentence” of a genetic defect sounds scary and even permanent.

This sobering news hurled Domenica into a diet obsession in hopes of correcting her heretofore unknown family flaw. She can eat this, but not that. Although her passion had been gourmet specialty cheeses, she was directed to abstain. Not only that, she could no longer eat crusty baguettes, clotted cream in her fine coffee, or her beloved occasional Italian chocolate. In lieu of her epicurean, but always careful diet, she had to take handfuls of supplements, including probiotics and vitamins. Restrictive and unappetizing, her diet became the antithesis of her accustomed practices.

Domenica’s story is not uncommon. In fact, I work with clients the world over who suffer ills that are related to gut problems. A large percentage are on or have been on restrictive diets. If the food itself were indeed the culprit, we would expect sweeping dietary changes to correct their conditions. Yet for many they only provide partial recovery. What remains after their proscriptive dieting is what I call the niggly 40 percent. That is, about 60 percent of their
health problems improve, but then improvement halts. These individuals have made their entire existence about food, yet in spite of their meticulous choices, their sufferings persist.

I hear the stories of those who so very much want to drink raw milk, homemade kefir, and similar foods (many are even dairy farmers) but in spite of their special diets, still can’t get past being unable to take even a small drink of the stuff. In other words, we’ve gotten to a layer of the population that is so damaged that even pristine food, perfectly prepared, is not enough. For others the healing process takes too long or they are mothers run ragged and becoming food phobic with all of the dietary restrictions for their children.

It was this conundrum that originally drove me to work in India for three years at the Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation. The first year my intention was to learn how gut-related illnesses are treated employing homeopathy alone. In Kolkata, many people have religious dietary restrictions, which are so varied from one group to the next that the subject is simply not approached by the foundation doctors. Yet nonetheless we observed impressive results in healing digestive disorders.

In a sense practicing holistic medicine with one hand tied behind their backs, these physicians nonetheless cure food intolerances, gut diseases, and the entire fleet of illnesses related to the gut. Given that adherence to a strict diet is not a reasonable therapy option for their patients, the good doctors don’t blink an eye. They simply jump right over the question of diet and land happily on the medicine they know has a history of curing the most vicious and tenacious of diseases known to mankind: homeopathy. They employ a method of homeopathy that has been shown to correct food intolerances, despite what the patient eats. To some in the Western world, this seems unlikely given our inexorable dietary conversations about right and wrong food choices. Hence vitamin uptake does not come into the equation. Instead, the focus is on the name of the condition (such as ulcerative colitis) and the symptoms, regardless of how or why the problem arose.

Indeed, food intolerances and vitamin deficiencies can present in many ways, causing frank gut issues, such as bloating, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome or GERD. However, these problems with the gut can also cause seemingly unrelated illnesses such as ADD, depression, insomnia, menstrual disorders, asthma, and chronic fatigue. With the method I have learned to use and now teach, each of these conditions must be addressed as well as their etiology. If we don’t uproot the cause, the condition may reappear.

Food intolerances or vitamin deficiencies inevitably result in symptoms. In homeopathy, symptoms reign supreme as they represent what is occurring on a deeper level. Although always interesting, the cause or reason for the illness is not necessary to know. It can be superfluous, even damaging, for it can cause obsessions. Instead, with a simple, conventional diagnosis based on a few well-chosen, noteworthy symptoms, we can assign a homeopathic protocol to be taken over a period of weeks and frequently witness a lessening of symptoms. However, we do not seek only to alleviate symptoms. The goal is always to read the symptomatic picture, which indicates the complete correction of the condition.

For example, when food intolerances, leaky gut and inability to absorb nutrients present as bloating, gas, a feeling of being overfull, and belly rumblings, the combination of Lycopodium 200 mixed with Arsencium album 3 taken twice daily for approximately six to eight weeks will correct the condition fully or partially. If there is only a partial correction (as indicated by the degree of remaining symptoms) then the protocol is repeated for another several weeks and assessed once again. This process is continued until complete amelioration is realized. At this juncture, the homeopathic medicines are halted.

In Domenica’s case, she was at first swerved into the wrong lane with the information she received from her genetic tests. In fact the distress this information caused her lasted about four years. During that time she experienced less bloating as long as she adhered to what she called her “sad little diet.” Yet it was finally her meager regime that prompted her to search for another way to approach her food sensitivities and vitamin deficiencies. She learned that the problem was not so much the food or raw materials going into the assembly line of her gut, but the factory itself. This didn’t mean that her gut was permanently misaligned—it was capable of correction, in spite of any inherent misfiring.

She also came to recognize that her gut was likely deranged from having taken antibiotics. It dawned on her that her bloating and gas developed within months of having taken an antibiotic for a urinary tract infection. She concluded that she needed to reverse engineer her health. And she did this by employing the homeopathic protocols listed above. Within four months her bloating, gas and burping diminished enough that she added an occasional few bites of her favorite cheese, caciocavallo podolico, made from the raw milk of a rare breed of Italian cow. Given the price of this gourmet luxury, no more than that much was warranted anyway. Within about six months and continuing the protocols, Domenica was able to safely enjoy spreading it on sourdough bread every few days. She discovered that as long as she included a fermented beverage or food, she could make this a bi-weekly treat. Each week she’s been able to add in piccola quantita (a small amount). Once her symptoms abated and she began adding in her treasured foods, she was on her way to genuine food freedom.

In advance of any future challenges, Domenica has purchased homeopathics specific for urinary tract infections so that she will not only be able to treat an infection, but simultaneously protect her gut from antibiotic poisoning. Antibiotics have a way of exposing hereditary weakness that heretofore had not manifested as disease. The genetic characteristic would simply remain in the background, quietly dormant. Only with the stimulation of suppressive drugs do these kinds of inherited genes “turn on” and express disease.

Now when she develops a urinary tract infection, Domenica employs a homeopathic protocol that she’s had to use only once. It worked within days. It is Cantharis 30, taken twice daily, and Medorrhinum 200, once daily. This combination has a history of correcting most urinary tract infections. Using this method has freed Domenica from dependency on a drug that was directly associated with her long-term, chronic condition.

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2016