Podcast 26 – Chicken without a Head

In this podcast, we cover:

05:23 Facing fears through education

11:55 Sticking with the chosen remedies and respecting the protocols

20:40 Being organized, consistent, and having distance

25:47 Homeopathy is relatively safe

29:56 Classical training and combination remedies

36:10 A case of suppression

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 podcast number 26 at joettecalabrese.com. Here is what we have coming up.

Hi, it’s Paola here. I’m really looking forward to Joette’s podcast today. We’re going to look at two important subjects. The first one looks at selecting a remedy and learning how to commit to that remedy. In other words, we’re trying to avoid running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Then the second subject we’re going to talk about is really important. It looks at whether or not Joette’s practical homeopathy, the Banerji Protocols and other protocols like that, whether or not they are safe when you compare them to classical homeopathy. This is an important subject because you really want to be confident and comfortable when you’re doing Joette’s style of homeopathy.

Okay, so here we go.

Hi. I’m excited to be here with Joette again. Hi, Joette. How are you?

Joette: Hi Paola, very well. How about you?

Paola: Good, good, and good. Alright, so we’ve got another podcast today for you guys, another homeopathy nugget that we’re going to learn and discuss today. Today’s subject is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I think it’s Lara that first coined that term in one of the classes.

Lara is the gal that Joette teaches the classes with. So, go ahead and jump into that, Joette. What does Lara mean by that?

Joette: Well, I think what she’s talking about, I think this is what we’ve all been subject to especially as mothers and grandmothers is that we try a homeopathic medicine, or we try a certain food, or we try whatever modality we’ve decided we’re going to start with and we don’t see instant relief.

Say it’s our child. Because we’re so closely connected to our children and grandchildren, we can’t help but want instant relief. It’s horrible to see our children suffer.

So, we want something to happen now. Instead of waiting the prescribed certain amount of time for a homeopathic medicine to act, we say, “Well, maybe it wasn’t that.” We second guess ourselves. “Maybe it really wasn’t Hepar sulph. What if I was wrong?

What if it really was Arsenicum album?” So then, we go to Arsenicum album. We never gave Hepar sulph a chance. Let’s talk about it as an acute situation. So, let’s say for sore throat. So, we automatically go to for example, Hepar sulph, which is a very good choice for many kinds of sore throats.

If we don’t see a reaction, we think, “Uh-oh, we’re doomed. We got to go to something else.” We say, “Okay, I can’t stand it. The child is crying.” Here’s what I urge mothers, grandmothers, parents to do. Take a chill pill. Calm down.

Paola: By chill pill, you mean probably an Ignatia, right?

Joette: Probably. I’m giving it to you rhetorically. Take a chill pill. Calm down. If the child is not dying, if they’re not hemorrhaging, you’re not rushing on the way to the hospital, and all it is is a sore throat or an ear pain or teething, or sleeplessness.

I realize how horrible these can be on a family when somebody in that family is not well or they’re out of sorts. But you have to learn how to assess what is really dangerous and what is not. I harken back to Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, his book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor. He was not a homeopath. He was a pediatrician. He died some couple of decades ago.

Buy his book. I repeat this book all the time because this is where you get your guts, spunk and moxie or another way of putting it, of calming down over every little thing the child has.

Let me bring it in from my counter perspective. Have more kids because if you only have one, every little thing is a catastrophe. I see it all the time. I know how it was for me when I had one child. The more kids I had, the more it rolled off the back of my back.

Because it was something that I’d seen enough times now, croup didn’t scare me anymore. Ear infection didn’t frighten me. Teething didn’t freak me. I got accustomed to it. But if you don’t have the advantages of having more than one child, then by all means, you want to read Robert Mendelsohn’s book. I don’t mean once. Keep it by your bedside. Read it time and time again.

Because if you are freaking and you’re acting like a chicken with its head cut off, you’re going to make poor decisions. Your decisions will be made out of fear. You will jump from remedy to remedy, modality to modality. In the end, you’ll have a mishmash. In Italian, it’s called a [0:05:00], a mess.

Paola: Right. Well, there’s a little quote here that I pulled up real quick by Eleanor Roosevelt. She said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. ‘”

Facing fears through education

Joette: Well and as Dr. Mendelsohn says, “The danger to children is not in childhood diseases.” Not anymore, we don’t have polio anymore in our world. We don’t have cholera anymore. We don’t have tuberculosis. I’m not saying we never have it at all ever. But I’m saying it’s not a looming threat.

What is a threat to most children’s wellbeing are accidents. So, it’s the accidents that cause the most devastating of all conditions that can happen during childhood.

So, if you understand and you read in advance what chicken pox looks like and what to expect, if you know what a cough looks like and you read in advance and you learn some of these methods, homeopathic methods, using good nutrition, taking soda pop out of their lives at an early age so that they’re not saturated with something that does them no good and can even do some harm sometimes.

So, you want to educate yourself. We have to do that. The only way to address fear face on is education.

Paola: You’re right. I mean, I think the thing that I read into the most when I’m helping friends with homeopathy is a huge, huge amount of fear with fevers. But if you read Dr. Mendelsohn’s book, he lays it out right there. Keep him hydrated, you’re going to be fine.

I mean, that’s what it comes down to. My daughter had a fever this week. I didn’t even give her homeopathy until later when I saw, oh, she’s kind of getting an ear infection. So then I gave her Pulsatilla which is actually a Banerji Protocol, Pulsatilla 30 for the ear infection, Chamomilla 30 every 30 minutes when there’s SOS, acute pain.

But her ear infection never got that bad. She was just kind of like I feel something in my ear. So we did the Pulsatilla.

Anyway, it’s that knowledge in keeping them hydrated and that’s all you got to know. I remember the first time my kid had a fever, my little middle child loves fevers of 105, Joette, 105. I had diarrhea. I was so stressed out about it. I was taking Ignatia. I even think I took Gelsemium because of the diarrhea, anxiety.

Now, after I’ve got through that first 105, the second one was a little scary but it was fine. I didn’t do Tylenol. I just kept him hydrated. I was reading Dr. Mendelsohn’s book like it was my bible. Now, I’m just like, “Oh cool, you have a fever. Just go drink some water and lie down.” I even gave him a remedy.

Joette: Yes, right, exactly, exactly. So, when we say read Dr. Mendelsohn’s book or read the blog that you get that from, from me or from whomever else it might be, don’t just read it and say, “Okay, well that’s the information.” And assume that it’s stuck in your brain. If you’re freaking, you better underline that in that book.

Now, put a paper clip or a little tab on that page in that book and go back to it and read it again and again and again.

Paola: I give that book at baby showers. If one’s having a baby, I give them Dr. Mendelsohn’s book. It’s used. I write them a little note in there, “You’re welcome.”

Joette: Yes. Great gift, Paola.

Paola: Thanks. Yes, I like that one.

Joette: I’ve written an article called Get Your Kids High. So if you want to just Google that, I talk about fevers and the importance of fevers being a curative aspect of being sick for children.

Paola: You’ve actually spoken a lot about fevers, not just in that Get Your Kids High. I think even before you started doing the Banerji Protocols. That was one of your biggest things. So, I remember my friend’s daughter had a fever. She actually went to medical school. Not complete, because she realized that it was basically selling drug school, not so much medical school. So, she quit.

But she inherently feared fevers. I think it was part of her education. I remember she was freaking out one night about her kid’s fever. I just sent her three articles written by Joette Calabrese on fevers, fevers, fevers. She said she read those articles over and over again that weekend.

It just helped calm her down. She got through it for the first time without any Tylenol. Now, she’s so much more comfortable with it.

Joette: Here’s the thing. I wonder if doctors, pediatricians believe that children should be given Tylenol for fevers nowadays because the American Academy of Pediatrics says -.

Paola: Finally.

Joette: Yes, finally. It’s taken a long time. They have declared, I think it was about two years ago, that fevers are curative or they can be curative.

Perhaps, they’re more careful about their verbiage. They have made it, I think, abundantly clear that it’s the mother who’s forcing the pediatrician to give something. Now, they’re blaming the mothers but I’m going to take the blame off the mothers. Even though I do believe that we, mothers need to get a grip and learn how to treat our children ourselves without running to the pediatrician for every little thing.

But I believe that the reason that mothers do that is because they’ve been trained by the pediatricians to go to them when their children have fevers. What do the doctors always give? Tylenol. What did they give in years past? Aspirin. So they’ve been training mothers and grandmothers and even older than that to go to the doctors.

As soon as there’s a problem, just go to your doctor. He’ll know what to do. That’s what was done. Yes, the mothers are asking for it now but it’s only because they’ve been well-trained.

Paola: Right, right. I think that’s what I like even about the Essential Oil’s Movement aside from the fact that they’re useful is because it’s finally given moms something to busy themselves with.

Joette: Yes.

Paola: Just let the people know.

Joette: Absolutely, absolutely.

Paola: Keep them hydrated. I feel like we’ve kind of gotten off on a tangent about fevers but it really does relate to running around like a chicken with the head cut off. So, if your kid is burning a fever, we’re talking about an acute illness right now. But this will apply to chronics in a minute.

You don’t give them, oh it’s a fever of 102, Belladonna, Belladonna. Oh wait, shoot, shoot, shoot, I shouldn’t have been using Belladonna. That’s not high enough of a fever for Belladonna. So, I’m going to go to Ferr phos, two doses of Ferr phos.

Oh, but she’s really, really clingy and whiny and whimpering and wants me to hold her. So, I’m going to switch to Pulsatilla now. It was like I’ve heard of people doing five remedies in one day, Joette, for an acute. I’m like, “No.”

Sticking with the chosen remedies and respecting the protocols

Joette: Stick with it. Make your decision and stick with it. At least give four doses when it’s an acute.

Paola: Yes, we say three to five in the study group classes. Yes, at least four doses. I think that’s important. People will come to me a lot of times. I’m sure you get this too. My kid is sick. I started them on Hepar sulph, whatever reasoning they came to Hepar sulph. I started them this morning on Hepar sulph. Do you think I’m right? Should I switch to

Do you think I’m right? Should I switch to Pulsatilla or whatever? My answer is always no. You started it. So now, we’re going to stick with it. We got to get to those three to five doses and see what happens. Is that right?

Joette: Generally speaking, I would say it’s right unless the child’s much, much worse. Every time you give the Hepar sulph, the child gets worse than ever then you might want to question it. But you want at least what was your rationale. Did it go away? Is the child different now or is your thinking different?

Paola: What if the child’s exactly the same? No better, no worse, they’re just the same?

Joette: Keep going. Keep going. Stay with it. Stay with it. You got to give that homeopathic a chance to act. It’s not like aspirin where you’ve taken aspirin for a headache and it goes away. It can be like that. I have seen it act like that. But if it doesn’t, give the homeopathic a chance to fully act. It could take several doses to do that.

Paola: Going back to the subject of fevers, I have to tell people, this remedy isn’t going to make the fever go away. So don’t expect that. Very new people to homeopathy, the child has a fever of 104 and they’ve given two doses of Belladonna. The fever is still here. Well, it’s not Tylenol. This is going to usher, assist the fever to complete the illness.

Joette: Yes, but it can abort the fever. It can do that. Yes, yes.

Paola: But that shouldn’t be the expectation?

Joette: That’s not the goal. We’re not trying to necessarily, for an acute childhood illness, we’re not necessarily trying to get rid of a fever. We’re trying to get the child well because the fever is just a symptom. It’s not the disease. We don’t say the child, actually, we do say that in our society.

Oh my gosh. He (I love this term) spiked a fever. You have to emphasize these words because it’s talk that emphasizes – the importance of the word spike. Spiking a fever is a very positive thing in most circumstances for childhood illness. We want that fever to cook it off.

Paola: We should say he bloomed a fever. I hate to cut that emotional -.

Joette: Yes, blossomed.

Paola: Right, blossomed a fever.

Joette: Yes, blossomed a curative symptom. Oh what symptom is that? Oh the fever. That is a part of the curative action.

Paola: If you think it’s just about the wording we’re using, that is really the problem because it ignites fear. So, connotation is the emotional undertones that are associated with the word. Slender is better than scrawny, right?

Joette: Yes, right.

Paola: I would prefer to be called slender, not scrawny. We need to think of fever -.

Joette: [0:15:09] as you’re obese.

Paola: Right. Voluptuous, right, exactly.

Joette: Voluptuous, right? Ample.

Paola: So, we just need to change our rhetoric. What did you say?

Joette: Ample.

Paola: Oh yes, very good. I like that.

Joette: We could keep going with this.

Paola: So, when we talk about normal childhood illness, change the way you think of it.

Joette: We do use common sense but the problem is common sense has been distorted. So we have to rearrange that thinking. We have to adjust our thinking. This is new for a lot of people. This is a different way of thinking. You can’t just say, “I think I’ll think differently.”

No, no, no, no, no. You have to educate yourself with this kind of thinking. You better read. You better study. You better learn. Start with Dr. Robert Mendelsohn and go from there. Read these blogs that I put out that are free. Take courses. Get more books.

Paola: As you pick your remedy, stick to it unless they’re worst.

Joette: On the full, three to five doses over the prescribed period of time.

Paola: Yes, exactly. Sometimes that takes a lot of fortitude to stick with it.

Joette: Oh, you have to be a cowgirl.

Paola: Yes.

Joette: You have to be able to buck the system. You’ve got to be able to lasso that cow and bring her down. You’ve got to have guts, spunk, and moxie back again.

Paola: In this case, cow is fear. The cow is your fear.

Joette: Yes, that’s right. That’s right.

Paola: Yes, and it is a wrestle school.

Joette: That’s kind of coyote medicine.

Paola: Right. I like it. It’s true. It does take guts. Oftentimes, people who I see that don’t follow through with protocols or succumb to the antibiotics, sometimes there’s a good reason for it.

Joette: Yes. I also want to make that clear too, Paola. That there are certainly are times in which we use conventional medicine. If you absolutely don’t know what to do and it looks dangerous, of course, you get yourself to a doctor. Let’s not be foolish here.

Paola: Right. If you want a full discussion on that, listen to the podcast on discernment that Joette and I had because we do want you to have that discernment. But basically we’re saying, I find that people that do what I thought maybe wasn’t so serious, it’s because they haven’t wrangled their fear and taken control over it.

Running around with a chicken with your head cut off is a fear-based, knee-jerk action trying to do it and you’re doing it wrong.

Joette: Well and I’ve also seen many parents and people for themselves as well go from doctor to doctor to doctor to doctor to doctor, modality to modality, naturopath, and chiropractor, and acupuncturist, and conventional doctor, and functional doctor, and homeopath.

They’re just going all over the place desperately looking for a method that’s going to cure them. I believe that if you stay in one modality, you’ll probably find some good answers.

They’re just going all over the place desperately looking for a method that’s going to cure them. I believe that if you stay in one modality, you’ll probably find some good answers.

Paola: Right. Okay, really what we’re talking about here by not jumping from one remedy to another remedy especially when you’re dealing with protocols for an illness is respecting the protocols.

Joette: I love that word. Yes. Because if you’re saying, if you have a little classical homeopathy training, “Well, but my child really seems more like Phosphorous because he’s sparkling. He’s got a twinkle in his eye. He’s artistic. I don’t think I want to use that protocol.

I’m just going to throw Phosphorous in there. I don’t think that my child can handle a 200 potency even though the Banerjis say to use a 200. I think I’m going to use a 30.” I would urge people not to do that.

When you say we should be respecting these Banerji Protocols, it’s based on knowledge of these doctors, the Banerjis and their colleagues seeing 100 patients per day. There are 12 of them that are working in this clinic. That means there are 1200 patients per day.

At the end of the week, they’ve seen over 7000 per week. They’ve been doing this approximately. They’ve been seeing this many for 150 years collectively.

Paola: Yes, six days a week, yes. Do you know what this reminds me of? I have always had this keen awareness when I was a young mom, pregnant with my first baby. I have this awesome mother in law. My mom is awesome too. My mother in law has had 10 children.

Boy, that’s like a weight. That’s like a knowledge and life experience that I know I don’t have. So when she would give me advice, I was really careful to listen to her advice because I knew where she was coming from. I knew that she had information.

But then I see some of my other friends dismiss the advice like, “Oh no. I know better.” I look at them. You just have like one kid. We have mother’s intuition. I respect that too. But look at all the knowledge.

Joette: The data, just the data.

Paola: Of our grandmothers that we’re dismissing here, of our mothers.

Joette: Yes, that’s 10 children everyday for all those years. Your mother in law, it sounds to me from what you’ve told me, had a lot of innate knowledge.

Paola: Yes, she did. I just think, “Don’t be naïve.” That’s embarrassing. 10 years from now, you’re going to be embarrassed. Don’t be naïve to not respect the protocols.

Joette: Right, right.

Being organized, consistent, and having distance

Paola: Then another aspect that’s important about this not avoiding, running around like you’re a chicken with the head cut off is being organized and consistent.

Joette: That requires writing down what you see, what you saw when it started. When your child started getting the fever, what time of the day was it? What remedy you chose, what you observed. It was a fever plus diarrhea. How frequently were the movements?

How severe was the diarrhea? Was it loose stool or was it explosive and watery? Those are things that you will forget especially if you see three children and they’re all getting sick. Who had what when? So you want to jot it down. Now, you don’t want to jot down absolutely every little thing but those that are noteworthy should be noted.