Wise Traditions Winter 2015

Homeopathy For Women

Joette Calabrese, HMC, CCH, RSHom

Published in Wise Traditions, Winter 2015, “Homeopathic remedies for women's health”

Nearly every time I mention that I gave birth to my babies at home, someone credits me with bravery. Bravery?! No, I say; I wasn’t brave. In fact, I was a chicken. I was much more afraid to have my babies in a hospital because that’s where the dangers lie, not in my bedroom.

I had my first child in a hospital. Not because I wanted it that way, but because the doctor who agreed to a home delivery backed out at my eight-month mark and I couldn’t scramble fast enough to find an alternative attendant. Today I would be able to find someone, or would consider doing it alone with only my husband present. After all, birth is not normally a medical event unless, of course, it is intended to be.

None of what I did was inspired by courage. It was pure, unadulterated fear. I could actually muster a full-blown panic attack by just imagining myself and my precious child in the hands of hospital staff, hooked up to IVs filled with who knows what, and MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) lurking in the bowels of the hospital. I knew that if I was going to fend off these thoughts I was going to have to read, study and crack the code myself.

When the attending doctor realized how long I had been in labor, he became more nervous than my poodle when the mailman arrives. I had been in labor for about fifteen hours. The staff commenced setting up an IV, despite my protestations that I did not need it. I chewed on ice chips instead. The doctor insisted on pitocin (a drug designed to speed up the labor process), but I fought back with, “No IV and no drugs, thank you.”

I knew even then that it wasn’t about courage as much as it was about being informed. It wasn’t bravery that I possessed, but rather a keen interest in researching every facet of my child’s first moments. I also knew that it’s not just about turning over one stone, but every single stone in the quarry until the answers are revealed. Once you gather all the facts and make note of who’s offering them (the pharmaceutical industry’s “facts” are biased to the industry), the decision becomes apparent.

HOMEOPATHY FOR LABOR

Had I known then what I know now, I would have employed Caulophyllum 30 every hour or two, which would have moved the baby along in short order. Not having this information, however, I just remained pig-headed stubborn. I knew from having read several books on the subject of midwifery that I could deliver without intervention.

I accepted it as my duty. Childbirth is one of the most important stages of a woman’s life. The decisions a woman makes at this time will determine not only her fate, but the fate of her children and even her grandchildren. Remember, one round of diethylstilbestrol, commonly known as DES (the synthetic form of the hormone estrogen), has been shown to exert adverse effects upon three generations.

To illustrate my point further, allow me to share how homeopathy addresses two more stages of a female’s life. I call them “The Three Fates of Feminopathy,” with pregnancy listed as the second fate. Let’s start with the youngest fate, or first phase of a woman’s life, which centers on a girl’s transition into womanhood.

HOMEOPATHY FOR SKIN PROBLEMS

Pippa is a plucky fifteen-year-old, distraught and embarrassed by her appearance. Her skin had been lovely and clear until she turned fourteen. Now her face is red with blemishes, and her complexion has become her allconsuming obsession: she was certain everyone was eyeing her. Pippa was on daily antibiotics and prescribed facial scrubs. More recently her doctor had recommended birth control pills in addition to her other meds as a means of attaining the clear skin she so desired. His argument was almost reasonable because it promised to alleviate her menstrual pains as well, but taking birth control hormones didn’t sit well with her mother and father. They believed there had to be an alternative way to treat her teenaged skin without resorting to such extreme
measures. Did Pippa really need daily doses of synthetic hormones?

Because appearance and self-esteem are so important in the life of a teen, resorting to questionable medications and hormones as quick fixes might be tempting, but Pippa’s mother knew that toying with the body’s regulatory systems was a dangerous game, particularly at such a tender age. Have doctors forgotten this, or did they just never learn it?

Pippa’s parents didn’t fall for the easy fix. In fact, the doctor’s recommendation made her mother quite angry. Their job was to protect their daughter from reckless advice.

Enter homeopathy. Homeopathic remedies are by far the most reliable method for the removal of recalcitrant acne and painful menses. Homeopathy is gentle, safe, has no side-effects and is not habit-forming. Most important, it protects young women from dubious, age-inappropriate drugs.

Homeopathy restores the body to health and unearths the predisposition for particular problems, often in spite of diet or lifestyle. Pippa was happy to hear this, because it affirmed she wasn’t willfully doing anything to cause her condition.

The homeopathic method known as the “Banerji Protocol” for acne is Hepar sulphuris calcareum 200C mixed with Arsenicum album 200 C. Upon learning this, Pippa’s parents refused the birth control drugs, stopped the medicated scrubs and eliminated all antibiotics.

Within one month, instead of red, painful, cystic lumps on her face, Pippa was left with only a smattering of smaller blemishes on her forehead. This improvement restored her confidence, while her vivacious personality began to reemerge. Over the next two or three months, Pippa watched her pimples slowly dissipate, becoming nothing more than a memory of those difficult days in the past.

Today she is a happy teen, free from dependence on patented prescription drugs that didn’t work anyway, and some that could have hurled her endocrine system into hormonal upheaval.

POST-MENOPAUSAL CONDITIONS

The post-menopausal phase, or Third Fate of Feminopathy, often includes something Fay (Pippa’s mom) suffered as a result of manufactured drugs. At fifty-three, Fay suffered from hot flashes that were debilitating. She had seen her doctor and submitted to tests. While at the doctor’s office her blood pressure tested high so anti-hypertensive meds were prescribed along with hormone replacement.

But Fay was not happy. In fact, she began to suffer from anxiety attacks and headaches. She was lately beginning to suspect that the drugs were causing more problems than they solved. She had always made it a general policy to avoid meds, as they often made her conditions worse, so she expressed her fear: “But Doctor, I never had these headaches and anxiety attacks before taking the blood pressure meds.” Her doctor shrugged and explained that Fay had no other choice, and that it might take some time before the drugs “settled” in her body. When she echoed the same problems again a few months later, it provided her doctor the necessary justification for choosing yet another drug to add to Fay’s regimen. Yet Fay was certain that taking a medicine ought not to result in a new disease
requiring more drugs, and she was by now ready to reconsider this model of prescription medications altogether.

When I teach homeopathy and work one-on-one with my clients, I urge them to sharpen a pencil with a good eraser and on a long sheet of paper construct a timeline of their past ailments and treatments. Without this crucial step, many drugs and their side-effects go unnoticed, particularly symptoms that are easily dismissed as “normal.”

Fay had documented her health history and so she saw that her head pain began near the time she started taking the blood pressure medication. The alarming arrhythmia and panic seemed to start then, too.

This is why I urge you to embrace the value of fear. To this day, Fay cannot precisely recall the moment when clarity dawned for her, but she does recall tapping into the fear of how much damage conventional drugs were causing both her and her daughter Pippa. Following her epiphany, however, she set her jaw and began to read, study, and take courses. Her own father had imparted to her from childhood that the most successful people in life are those who invest in their education. She had not considered her family’s health and her own to be a matter of study until events rather forced the issue.

Once she did, learning how to treat herself and her family became her womanly mission. She first chose homeopathic medicines to begin treating herself in lieu of drugs for each of her conditions. Her schedule of homeopathic remedies looked like this:

1. Camphora officinarum 200 used as an antidote previously ingested prescription drugs.
2. Lachesis mutus 200 for heart arrhythmia that appears at menopause, as well as unrelenting hot flashes.
3. Sepia 200 for headaches, particularly those that accompany menopause.
4. Aconitum napellus 200 for high blood pressure.

Ignatia 200 could have also been included for her frequent panic attacks, but once Fay decided to invest in her education, the plaguing thoughts disappeared.

While the pharmaceutical drugs had steadily caused new and more sobering ills, the homeopathics returned her original sense of well-being and eliminated previous symptoms like the un-spooling of a thread. As though on cue, her head pain was conspicuously and happily absent. After many months of nauseating “medications,” she found the turn of events extraordinarily satisfying.

FEAR: MOTIVATOR OF CHANGE

I hope Fay’s fear of patented drugs remains active. Fay’s journey not only carried her through her own health challenges, but also those of her daughter, and most certainly will light the way for the following generations of her family as well.

Julia Child once said, “Every woman should own a blow torch.” This, my friend, is ours. Light up your blow torch of self-determination and education and let’s set our world on fire.

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Winter 2015