Podcast 25 – Moms with Moxie – Meet the Arnica Mom!

In this podcast, we cover:

04:33 Barb’s introduction to homeopathy and the Arnica basket

14:10 Joette’s influence with Kali carb for asthma

21:09 More Arnica experience: uterine fibroid

24:51 Using remedies on horses and tips on how to administer them

31:51 Childbirth and labor

You are listening to a podcast from joettecalabrese.com where nationally certified American homeopath, public speaker, and author, Joette Calabrese, shares her passion for helping families stay healthy through homeopathy and nutrient-dense nutrition.

Paola: It’s another podcast at joettecalabrese.com. Today, we’ve got a new episode for the Moms with Moxie miniseries.

Joette: All the way from my desk in New York, I get to see how homeopathy is transforming lives all over the globe. Some of my students have really caught my eye. Some of you have done all you can to learn how to cure those around you using homeopathic medicines. Your successes inspire me and they’re glorious and powerful. I can’t keep your successes a secret any longer. So with help from my roving reporter, Paola, we bring you this mini podcast series that I call “Moms with Moxie.” It’s actually grandmoms, too but it’s moms with Moxie. See how regular mothers and others, average people who want to cure those around them have gone from freaking to fabulous with homeopathy.

Paola: Hi. I’m excited to have another “Moms with Moxie” interview. Today, we have Barb Rigelhof, hailing from the state of Washington. Hi, Barb.

Barb: Hi. It’s nice to see you, Paola.

Paola: I know. I’m so glad to be chatting with you. I love doing these little interviews because I want others to see and Joette wants others to see that normal moms, if you study this, you can become pretty awesome. I’m excited to hear your stories. Tell us about how you came to find natural medicine and homeopathy.

Barb: Right. The natural medicines came about because I’m blessed and cursed at the same time that regular medicine doesn’t tend to work on me. I get side effects and no results. At some point, I started looking into natural medicine. I have a science background so I looked at herbs. I looked at sort of everything except homeopathy because homeopathy being energy medicine, so I was kind of woo-woo. And so, being a science snob, I was like, “Oh, that’s just perfect. Whatever.” So I didn’t look at that.

It was when a friend of mine who dragged me to a talk by a homeopath back in Montreal where I’m from, she took me to this talk and this homeopath just blew me away. She had been a nurse for 35 years, and also French-Canadian lady, awesome, awesome speaker. Just what she was talking about just blew me away. So, I started thinking, “Okay. Maybe I do need to look into this homeopathy stuff.” It was in my face all the time. I kept putting it aside. So, I did start working with that. When I started trying it out, it was first on my dog. There’s no placebo effect on animals. That’s one of the things they always talk about with homeopathy. Oh, it’s the full effect.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: Yes. Try telling that to a dog. I don’t think you can convince a dog that what you’re doing is going to help them. They just either get better or they don’t. I had some great results. So then I started using it for myself and this was before I had kids. By the time my kids came along, I was really starting to get much more proficient with it. So, my kids were raised largely with homeopathic remedies.

Paola: Oh, I’m so jealous. That is my dream story, that I found homeopathy before I have my kids, practiced on some animal, got comfortable with it.

Barb: That’s just because I’m older than you, Paola. I found it and then I had my kids. That’s all.

Paola: Well, that’s wonderful, I think. I meet moms even today that have just one tiny baby. I’m like, “Oh, you’re so lucky you met me and I get to share this with you.” So that’s great. I like that you had a science background. It is funny how we just dismiss homeopathy until we realize that maybe we don’t know it all.

Barb: Yes, exactly. Yes, it’s that science indoctrination. Really, we’re not even looking at evidence. We’re just going with what we’ve been told.

Paola: Right.

Barb: We just spoon feed it along and now at some point, you go, “Oh, wait a minute. Well, I actually don’t know anything about this. Maybe there’s something to it.

Paola: Right. I think that’s why people do the herbs and the essential oils first because in our heads, it makes more sense.

Barb: Most allopathic medicines come from herbs or plants or something. We know that. So, using the herbal form is less of the mind shift.

Paola: Right. I think the biggest thing that people need to grasp with homeopathy, just step one is understanding we’re not trying to kill the infection, which a lot of times garlic, herbs, and antibiotics -. I was kind of thinking along those lines. We’re thinking about changing the terrain so that your body can’t host the illness anymore.

Barb: Exactly. We’re not suppressing. We’re actually helping the body to rally its troops and deal with it.

Paola: Tell us what happened with your dog then.

Barb’s introduction to homeopathy and the Arnica basket

Barb: Oh, okay. Yes. So, this was a number of years ago. So my dog, within a space of six months, he had two surgeries. The first one, I didn’t know about homeopathy yet. So, he came back from that surgery. He was in quite a bit of pain. I gave him pain relief. You could see it in the eyes. I saw how he dealt with it. But the second surgery, I knew about homeopathy and I decided to give Arnica a try. So, I had dissolved some Arnica in a dropper bottle. I had that ready with me when I went to pick him up. When I went to pick him up, he was very excited to see me. He was having, it was debulking of a tumor that was on his jaw. So, he smacked his jaw when he saw me. He was so excited. It started bleeding. I could see the pain in his eyes. Blood was gushing everywhere. Fortunately, I had it already. I gave him the drops right away. Literally, within 30 seconds, his eyes cleared and the bleeding stopped. My pet went like, “Wow!” I kept giving him the Arnica and I didn’t have to give him any pain relief medicine. When you know your animal, I mean, I could just tell by his eyes especially having experienced a previous surgery, and just the way it kept everything under control and how quickly he recovered. It was a real eye-opener. That’s when I went, “Okay, this is something.”

Paola: That’s what’s so cool about treating animals and young children or babies is they’re so uninhibited. They will let you know if there’s improvement. You can observe and see that shift so clearly.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: I was teasing you. You are like the Arnica mom. You’ve really found a lot of great uses for Arnica.

Barb: I have. I even have another little story since we last talked. For Thanksgiving, we went to our neighbor’s house. There were few other families there. Everyone was sitting around the table. They went around and said, “Let everyone say what you’re thankful for and also what you’re known for.” So, when it was my turn, I said, “I’m known for BBs,” which I call them Barb’s bombs. It’s these little chocolate, homemade chocolate truffles that I make that I always brought to any of our events, right.

Paola: Oh, yummy!

Barb: So, I was known for those. Everyone was like, “No, you’re like the Arnica.” Anytime we’re injured, you’re on the doorstep with the Arnica and the instructions on what to do.”

Paola: Oh, I love that. You have like an Arnica basket.

Barb: There’d be other remedies too depending on the injury. But yes, I’m known as – and sometimes the kids would come to me and say like, “Barb, I hurt myself. My mom said I could come for some Arnica.”

Paola: Oh, that’s so awesome. They trust you. They know. That’s great. I love that. I know it’s so funny. I think sometimes when I’ve learned homeopathy even more, I get them all jumbled up in my head and sometimes the answer is so simple, Arnica or even Aconite and Arnica.

Barb: Those are certainly for an injury or an emergency because one of the things I love about Arnica is how good it is for shock. It’s amazing for shock or just getting your head straight. I mean, I took it one time when my daughter injured herself. I was fine. But I took it just because she cut the end of her finger and she was really young.

Paola: Oh, my gosh!

Barb: Yes. I’m not squeamish but when it’s your kid, it’s a whole different thing. So, I was feeling faint, just so like, “Oh, my God!” I said to my husband, “I actually took the Arnica before I gave it to her.” It’s a little of that airplane thing where you put the gas mask on first.

Paola: Yes, that’s exactly what I thought.

Barb: I was worried that I was going to be sick.

Paola: Right.

Barb: I got to keep it together so I can help her.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: Yes. It’s a life-saver for so many things.

Paola: That’s awesome. I love that. So, you have how many kids? Tell me what that was like raising them having known homeopathy from the beginning.

Barb: Right. So, I have two children. My oldest is 17. My youngest just turned 14. So, I’ve been doing this for a while.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: You can tell. I got more proficient as I went along. I didn’t have a lot of childhood illnesses. We didn’t have a lot of stuff. But I did have the crying baby and the fevers and all of that. My kids have never had a suppressed fever in their life. They’ve always had their fevers treated homeopathically. I’ve never had an elevated fever for more than 12 hours using homeopathics

Paola: Wow!

Barb: So, I’m not afraid of a fever. I mean, we’re so indoctrinated in this fear of fever. I mean, a fever is a wonderful thing. It’s your body burning up whatever is in its system that shouldn’t be there. So, it’s not something to be afraid of. But if you can help it along and help it do it more effectively and get through the disease more effectively, then great.

Paola: I think that’s such a big thing that Joette has talked about so much. But it seems that I still can’t get away from it no matter how much -. She has blogs and podcasts about fevers. Young moms are still so stressed out by it. I mean, I think it’s coming from three areas. I feel like part of that is because the doctors are, “So, you need to give them Tylenol. You need to give them Tylenol.” Then you fill in the blanks.

Barb: They’re burning up. They could get out of control.

Paola: Right. Then the second thing is I feel like our mothers and grandmothers aren’t passing down that knowledge for whatever reason. Maybe we’ve a lot of doctors who supersede and take over that role for us. Then it’s just that lack of experience. I guess what made you feel comfortable to never ever suppress a fever?

Barb: I think part of it was the gift of having children a bit later than I expected to. I think I watched all my friends go through it. I mean, I had one good friend who had a daughter who, this wasn’t a fever situation. I think she had strep throat or something. This poor little kid ended up on the couch for two months on various antibiotics after antibiotics after antibiotics. She was all of three or four years of age. When you see a listless kid on the couch for a couple of months at that age for something pretty normal, I mean, it’s just an infection, I was mortified. I just said, “This is not the way to treat kids.” You just see that it’s just more and more suppression, suppression, suppression.

I also had an incident myself where I worked at a bank and I got a paper cut on my finger that ended up with some funky herpes virus. So, I ended up with this funky infection on my finger that had to be lanced, opened. Anyway, I took antibiotics for that. Well, after that course of antibiotics, I ended up with a bladder infection. I was given antibiotics for that. Then I ended up with a kidney infection. At some point, I just went, “Okay, so I’m going from one infection to another because I’m going from one set of antibiotics to another.”

Paola: The merry-go-round.

Barb: A pattern. I saw that in myself. I saw it in people around me. I just went, “No, this doesn’t work.”

Paola: So, maybe the takeaway here is observe. Observe those around you that are doing everything that Joette is saying to be careful about.

Barb: Right. When you see people who are preaching all the other stuff, are they really healthy? How well are they doing? Are their kids truly healthy? Are they popping pills all the time?

Paola: Yes, are they propped up?

Barb: Yes, exactly. That’s one of the things that I’m good at. I see the big picture in things. Some people are very good at looking at specific things. I’m not so good at that. It’s hard for me to really focus in on things. I see everything. I’m pretty good at picking up patterns around me. I saw that pattern in so many people and just thought this is not how we go.

Paola: Which is very science-based, observation, kind of referring to your background, I think that’s great. Observation is incredibly powerful. It’s how we’ve come to know a lot of things.

Barb: It’s the first step to any valid science. If you’re not observing stuff, I mean, that’s how you start studying this, observation.

Paola: Back to raising your children with homeopathy, tell me more about that.

Barb: When I was looking at how to best raise my kids, I was so lucky to start it with dogs. It’s less stressful, honestly, when you’re looking at pets first as babies and everything. I learned a lot. This dog that I told you about with the two surgeries, he ended up having cancer. So I started really looking into what’s going on with cancer in dogs because those rates are going through the roof.

Paola: Yes, they are. I heard today, it’s one in every two dogs are going to die from cancer. That’s a lot.

Barb: It’s crazy. It’s crazy. I had a friend, a very good friend who was talking to me about how she was stopping to vaccinate her dogs. I was like, “Really? Why were you doing that?” She said, “Well, they’re showing a link between all these increases and all these medications and everything and all these diseases that are coming forth. There’s a concern that there might be a link between that and cancer or just what it does to the immune system and therefore, more diseases and everything.” I’m not trying to say that vaccines cause cancer but just vaccines will harm your immune system. So then, you’re just going to expect more things to come up, whatever.

Paola: It compromises the immune system.

Barb: Exactly. So I started looking at all of that. It just all came together in a picture for me. It’s not that I won’t do things allopathically but why would you for things that it doesn’t work well in?

Paola: Joette calls this being a consumer of medicine. Like if you’re going to go shopping and you’re a consumer for like an outfit, you’re super critical about how it fits, how it looks, how it feels, the price, everything, the risks, and how much money you’re going to spend, and going to debt or whatever for this if you’re putting it on the credit card. We don’t do that with allopathic medicine and that’s exactly what you did.

Barb: This is the indoctrination that we’ve been given. It’s amazing because when you look around, people are not getting healthier. Certainly, children are not getting healthier.

Paola: Right.

Barb: You want to question what’s going on. It’s not, I mean, the intentions are good but let’s open our eyes and look and decide what we think is best for us and our families.

Paola: Tell us how has Joette influenced your journey because that’s going to be more recent.

Joette’s influence with Kali carb for asthma

Barb: Yes. Well, because of course, when you’re trying to treat your own family, it’s really hard. It’s really hard with your kids. It’s hard, first of all, to really see the picture of what’s going on because you’re influenced by your perceptions. I mean, most doctors don’t treat their own family members either.

Paola: Right. Right. That’s true.

Barb: That’s difficult. It’s also hard too, sometimes when you’re dealing with something that’s a little more chronic to really have the patience to follow it through and know you’re going in the right direction without a fresh set of eyes and they’re saying, “Hey! Yes, this is the right thing.” So, I consulted Joette for my daughter. She had some exercised-induced asthma that was building up. She was playing soccer. She was quite young, just six or seven, probably about seven. She hadn’t been formally diagnosed but I could certainly see. Her color would just get – she’d get very pale and just have a hard time catching her breath. That was starting to get worse and worse. Then eventually, I did take her to my naturopath and she said, “Yes, it looks like she’s developing asthma.”

Paola: It’s just typical at that age. Usually, you don’t get it until about seven or eight. Did she have eczema before?

Barb: A little bit but not bad. I didn’t use cortisone and do all those nasty things that would have made it bad. She had a pretty bad cradle cap as a newborn. Yes, yes, that I remember quite well.

Paola: And Joette says that that can sometimes be food intolerance, a manifestation. Yes.

Barb: Yes, exactly. So we treated her for that. Within about six months, she was just pretty much – it was pretty much better. We just had to give her. Kali carb is the remedy for her which is the one for wheezing and all that kind of stuff.

Paola: What is it, Kali carb 200, every other day?

Barb: Yes.

Paola: Okay, because I know they’re going to want to know, the people, the folks listening.

Barb: Oh, my gosh! She was on a few others because she had a few other things going on. But that was the balm for the wheezing.

Paola: Okay.

Barb: Every now and then, when she’s had a chest cold since then, I’ll still give her a couple of doses because first of all, I mean, it helps clear up the chest cold and just because that seems to be her remedy for anything that goes to her chest. But my daughter does not have exercise-induced asthma. She has no issues now. She is a pretty heavy-duty equestrian right now. So, she trains hard and she has no breathing problems at all. There’s not an herb or a drug out there I think that can do that.

Paola: Wow! That’s amazing

Barb: Yes.

Paola: Oh, just to give her that freedom to live. Oh, that’s great.

Barb: That I could not have done on my own.

Paola: Right.

Barb: I do have some training, not just an independent training but I have a bit of formal training in homeopathy. I would not have been able to follow that through with my own child on my own because I was second guessing myself. I would be just like, “Oh, I don’t think it’s working or now, this has popped up, maybe I need to shift it.” You know, we wouldn’t have gotten there.

Paola: Yes. We are so lucky to be able to have consults with Joette.

Barb: Yes.

Paola: That’s a huge thing. Tell us about your training, your background education with homeopathy and then the shift into the Banerji Protocols because that’s a question that’s been coming up is comparing the difference between the two. So you have classical training. Go ahead.

Barb: Yes. I have a certificate from the British Institute of Homeopathy. I’m not a certified homeopath but I have a certificate in homeopathy. So it’s the first step. I was doing that classical training. That was my first exposure to homeopathy as well. It’s always the classical method. So, you’re looking at one remedy for the problem. You’re taking one dose. You wait a month. Then I had consultations with classical homeopaths. That was always the process is you figure out which is the best match. You take that dose. You go back in a month to see where you’re at, to see if you need to do things differently. It can be of course extremely effective. But if you’re not finding the right remedy, first of all, it’s very time-consuming, taking the case especially for someone like me. I’m an onion with many layers. So, it can be really hard to take the case for me because I have so much stuff. Then other people are a little more cut and dry. But I’ve found some frustration with that. I had some great successes. But I also found, again using it for my family, using it myself was really frustrating because I’m not going to sit down with my kid for an hour and a half and take the case the way a classical homeopath will.

Paola: Right.

Barb: So then, once I started consulting with Joette, she was just starting to get into these protocols. When she started using those, it was just like ding, ding, ding. The light went off. Just having things that are more, you have this situation, well then chances are this protocol will probably work. You don’t have to do this complicated case-taking.

Paola: Yes. It’s practical. It’s practical. Moms want straightforward and practical.

Barb: Especially with treating your own family.

Paola: Yes.

Barb: You need to know if your kid has this, this or this. Well, you know what? Start with this. When it doesn’t work, it’s going to be this and that’s probably going to do it.

Paola: Yes. I love that.

Barb: You don’t have this open book of well, it could be one of a hundred remedies. Let’s see. Do they feel better at night? You go through all of this. Oh, my gosh! It’s so – I hate it.

Paola: Exhausting.

Barb: Yes, exactly.

Paola: Yes.