I cajoled Elaine into being the June Homeopath In The Hot Seat; afterall, June 20th is her birthday and, remember, I have those piano strings still… Wires, they’re piano wires! Oh God, somebody call my agent! Kelly, at this point, nobody remembers the piano wire bit! Neither
I cajoled Elaine into being the June Homeopath In The Hot Seat; afterall, June 20th is her birthday and, remember, I have those piano strings still…
Wires, they’re piano wires! Oh God, somebody call my agent! Kelly, at this point, nobody remembers the piano wire bit!
Neither do I; but, I think everyone here would like to know more about you.
Kelly, there’s actually no one here.
Could you please, just for once, not be difficult? How does a musician become interested in homeopathy? What inspired you or made you look at alternatives to standard medicine?
That’s a very interesting question.
Could you possibly answer it?
I don’t think so. Alright, if everybody is going to become hysterical! Sheesh!
Ahem!
I discovered that only at a place called “The Health Food Store” could one buy vitamin C in capsules, crystals, powder and other things that you could actually swallow! At the health food store (Au Naturel, family owned, they were so nice to me there!) I was always given a free magazine at the check-out counter, the contents of which I found fascinating!!!! Did you know that what we eat, what’s considered “normal”, can kill you? What an incredible culture this is, where the diet is actually lethal!
Well, I just, frankly, couldn’t stop reading! I started buying books from there too; I bought all of Adele Davis’ books–Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, etc.–and especially those by the majestic, marvelous and suave Carlton Fredricks! Does anybody remember Carlton Fredericks? If you do let me know and we’ll start our own Carlton Fredericks Admiration Society!
I don’t know who he is!
Really? He had a radio show in New York, which I could barely get in Philadelphia without a lot of static, but it was worth it!
What was he like?
Words to describe Carlton Fredericks: aristocratic, scholarly, debonnaire, urbane, witty, with an unabashed aversion to stupidity!
Sounds like my kinda guy!
Same here! His audience loved him so much that he used to say, “I can’t die, my audience won’t let me!” Here’s what happened when he offered a showing of a short film to the public, as he describes it in his book Eat Well, Get Well, Stay Well:
“Dr. Francis Pottenger had sent me his cat movies, showing in three generations of the animals the progress of degenerative changes we see (but count as normal because they’re average) in the faces of human beings when they are products of pregnancies in which all the [food is] cooked. I decided to show the film after my evening broadcast in New York. It seemed unlikely that many listeners would attend at the dinner hour, and I didn’t require tickets for admission. This was palpably a mistake, for we had but 500 seats and some 4,000 people jammed the street and the lobby, with the police barring them from the elevators. Mrs. Fredericks, who had planned a quiet restaurant dinner for two after the event, fought her way through the crowd, telling the police, who were blocking her way, “I am Mrs. Fredericks!” A policeman shook his head. “You’re the fourth Mrs. Fredericks tonight, and you’re not getting in either!”
Ha! I love it!
Later in the evening a radio listener interrupted Dr. Fredericks’ dinner with the incredulous observation that he wore glasses! “I pleaded for mercy,” he explained, “on the grounds that my mother refused to take dietary advice from me when she was pregnant.”
I’m gonna do an Amazon search for him right away! So, what did you learn from him?
What I learned from him: The average American’s diet is overwhelmed with sugar (104 pounds of sugar a year) and white flour, which is essentially the same thing, as white flour turns to sugar in the stomach. These two “foods” not only have no actual food in them, and exist only to benefit the food industry as their shelf-life is infinite, but, moreover, they are actually “anti-nutrients” as they leach vitamins and minerals out of the body. This is because they have none of their own–they lack the nutrients required for their own digestion and must rob the body for this purpose!
Yikes!
If you have patients/clients/friends who are depressed, anxiety-ridden, phobic, have a tendency to faint, complain of headaches, insomnia, blurred vision, lack of energy, shakiness, muscle aches, dizziness, sweating, getting sick often, who are over-weight or underweight, look pasty and unhealthy; it’s not enough to prescribe a homeopathic remedy for these people, you must ask them what they’re eating as this may be the whole problem!
There’s hidden sugar in every packaged food in the supermarket–food where you wouldn’t expect to find sugar at all, like peanut butter and ketchup and mayonnaise.
Even “wheat” bread is not whole wheat bread, as you might expect, it is simply a fancier way of saying white bread; it’s only a whole grain product if it says so.
Oh, I’ve seen that plenty of times! “Wheat Bread”! I’ve always been suspicious of that; and “multi-grain” too–doesn’t mean it’s whole grain!
Oh, yeah, “multi grain”, that’s another good one!
There is often not only sugar in the products you buy, but usually more than one kind of sugar–high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin and so on and here’s why: If you spread the sugar out by different names, it doesn’t turn up as the main ingredient in the product on the label! The first ingredient listed is the main ingredient. By all rights, sugar should be the first ingredient listed in almost every packaged food, but, if you add it by different names, then it comes in as maybe the third, fifth and seventh ingredients instead of the first one! And some of these names for sugar you’re not going to recognize; so, you can add all this sugar to food and basically no one will know! Why do they do it? Because packaged food companies tend to use the cheapest ingredients, so the food doesn’t really taste that good without added sugar; secondly, they’re trying to addict you to the food so you’ll become a regular customer! Explain to your clients and friends that the only food that won’t make you sick is actual food that is grown and comes out of the ground and available at produce stands or the produce aisle in the supermarket. A good dinner, for example, is a salad and a baked potato or a stew you actually make yourself with actual vegetables.
Ask yourself, what would we have been eating many moons ago in our natural habitat? Whatever that is, that’s the food our bodies were genetically programmed to accept; namely, mostly fruit, nuts and seeds; more fruit than vegetables. If we could eat just 50 percent of our diet that way and throw out the junk food, the packaged food, the white flour products like “macaroni and cheese”, we’d be reasonably healthy. Hey, you can make macaroni and cheese, but make it with whole grain pasta and real cheese! As for meat, this is another problem! We’re not really meat-eaters as a species, we’re fruitarians, really; but, if you must eat meat, buy meat from pasture cows and free-range chickens. Grass is a cow’s natural food. For that they have to graze. Factory farms don’t let cows graze and don’t let chickens pick up their seeds and bugs and other things they eat! Too expensive, too much land required. So the food these animals are eating is unnatural and inappropriate, plus they’re adding hormones and antibiotics to their “feed”; so, shop at the health food store, the farmer’s market, or Whole Foods if you have to eat meat.
How about you, have you been reasonably healthy all your life?
Oh my God, no! Absolutely not! I used to be in very bad health! I used to eat this junk too, you know; I once lived at Dunkin’ Donuts, for all intents and purposes! (mmm…donuuuts!!!) I had dizziness, I had frequent headaches–terrible headaches, anxiety, depression, agoraphobia, irregular heart beat, sciatica, constipation, couldn’t gain weight, very thin…. Oy! Did I mention insomnia?
What did you do?
Well, I was reading these articles and books I got from the health food store, like I said. It was a simple matter of switching over to real food, putting packaged food and fast food out of my life, stopping the junk food, switching to brown rice and whole wheat bread, whole grain pasta, etc.; and when I changed my diet, even my dog’s health improved because she ate what I ate!
What about other family members, besides the dog?
My mother was diagnosed with emphysema in the mid 1980′s. She had to come stay with me; she had to come home from London because of her health. She was trying to find an apartment in London, she wanted to live there. She spent the whole first week after she arrived here in bed without ever getting out of her nightgown, that’s how debilitated she was.
Based on all the things I had read over the years, I gave my mother a decent diet of whole foods; plus, I gave her raw milk with a tablespoon of mint flavored cod liver oil stirred in it twice a day, a protein milkshake with a banana and lecithin and vitamin C blended in raw milk in the morning, carrot juice in the afternoon, B-complex and vitamin E supplements, an herbal combination for the lungs, calcium and magnesium supplements; I didn’t know homeopathy then, but in three months, my mother moved out and moved into her own apartment! You see, Kelly, homeopathy is not the entire answer when there’s a maintaining cause, namely the diet. A year later she moved to Arizona; (this is an incurable disease, right?) two years later she moved to England; then at some point she moved to Texas (well, I think you get the idea that she got better).
Emphysema sounds really serious! I’m surprised your mother didn’t go right to the hospital from the plane!
It’s a good thing she didn’t, Kelly! What would they have done for her? It’s shocking, really! They think they’re supposed to give someone like my mother a drug! In the absence of that, their hands are tied; they say, “There’s no cure for this!” What they mean is, there’s no drug, and they don’t have the imagination nor the creativity nor the curiosity nor the inclination to look for other solutions because the only thing they’re taught in medical school is prescription medicine!
They don’t acknowledge much of a role for food or nutrients in a patient’s care; if they did, how could they justify their so-called “hospital food”, which no one can eat and no one wants! Dr. Robert Mendelsohn (do you know him? Because I’m perfectly willing to start another fan club for him!) says the following about malnutrition in hospital patients:
“Many studies have since discovered malnutrition in anywhere from twenty-five to fifty percent of patients in American and British hospitals. … Malnutrition is one of the most common causes of death among old people in hospitals. … Malnutrition obviously puts a person in the worst possible state to fight off whatever disease brought him to the hospital in the first place. … Why are people malnourished in hospitals? As bad as most hospital food is, if it were eaten it most likely would prevent most of the protein-calorie malnutrition these studies turn up. The problem is that it is not eaten. Nobody sees to it that the patient eats. At best, the tray is brought in and set beside the bed on a table. And there it sits. At worst, the hospital schedule and staff gang up on the patient to keep him or her from touching the food: time for lab tests, time for therapy, time for drugs, time for this and that. Plenty goes on in the Temple of Modern Medicine simply to make you lose your appetite.” (Confessions of a Medical Heretic, p. 74)
I would add to this the sheer number of tests and proceedures before which the patient is actually asked to fast! They’ll even tell emaciated patients to fast in order to take a test. The patient’s vitality is ignored because it’s not something that can be measured in a diagnostic screening. Test numbers are all that matters.
Do they really expect a drug to restore vitality?
It’s bizarre. Why would anyone think it was a good idea to put some synthetic substance into his or her mouth that can’t be digested or metabolized? How is your body supposed to digest something that’s unnatural and foreign? No wonder all these side-effects occur, the stuff is inorganic, the body doesn’t recognize it and tries to reject it!
I never thought of that, but, of course, only food can be metabolized!
The reason we have these drugs is not because it’s the best way of healing that there is, but because of the ability of them to be patented and make a profit from them! You can patent an invention. That’s what these drugs are– inventions; they’re formulas!
Carrot juice, vitamin C, vitamin E, cod liver oil, herbal combinations, raw milk, orange juice (made from actual oranges), etc. are part of nature, they’re not going to make anyone rich and, in fact, they’re even costly, there’s a disincentive to utilizing them because raw juices can’t be stored, they go bad, real food goes bad as soon as it’s cut open. They would have to be made fresh constantly; look at all the man-hours, look at how labor-intensive this is? They’d have to hire people, so forget about it! You’re stuck with packaged, denatured “food” that saps the energy out of a patient’s body and is quite useless to someone who’s sick and trying to recover.
So, we’re stuck with a “health” system that can’t cure a single chronic disease–seriously!–and relies entirely on synthetic substances that are toxic to the organs of elimination in order to restore a person’s health, who most likely lost it due to poor nutrition in the first place! Good luck! I rest my case! Are you still there, Kelly? Because I sense that I’ve been going on and on and on…….
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….Oh! Sorry. So, after gaining what seems like a huge amount of information on nutrition and natural healing, you went a step further and began studying homeopathy?
Well, Kelly, as I said, I kept reading because what I was learning was definitely paying off with my own health! I also took a course in herbology with Dr. Christopher–John R. Christopher, a famous North American herbalist. Herbs solved a lot of my problems! Did you know that garlic oil will get rid of cysts? You can order it from http://www.herbsfirst.com/ . Rub the oil on twice a day, give it two weeks or so.
Any more herbal helpful hints?
Did you know about Hawthorn Berry tincture for heart disease? It’s such a specific; a food for the heart, as Dr. Christopher used to say. When your clients have damaged organs, you have to rely on nutrition and herbs and possibly low-potency homeopathic prescribing–remedies known to have an affinity for the particular organ that’s gone awry and that also best match the case as a whole.
You may need a high potency in an acute attack of some sort, but in a chronic case, such as heart failure, you’d want a wholesome diet as described above, herbs like Hawthorn Berry, supportive supplements like vitamins E, C, and Co-Q10, and a heart remedy that matches the case in low potency, because it’s not a one shot deal, it will have to be repeated daily for some time; remember the organ is damaged and shouldn’t have to deal with an aggravation from a high potency remedy.
As Rajan Sankaran says about treating organ pathology in his book, The Sensation In Homeopathy:
“…there are cases where there is no peculiar local sensation even where one should be found. In such cases there is usually severe local or organic pathology. … Such cases need to be given the remedy in very low potencies….” (p.328)
I learned about homeopathy slowly over a decade. It started with the cell salts. The health food store only sold the cell salts and that was it! I probably read about them in one of those free magazines. My first use of them was Ferrum Phosphoricum 6X every 15 minutes at the start of a cold. I got such good results from this that Ferrum phos 30C now has a permenant place in the drawer beside my bed!
My dog, Larry, was cured of cirrhosis of the liver with Arsenicum 30X given once a day by our homeopathic veterinarian in Yardley, Pennsylvania. Larry had stopped eating when we started treatment and he totally bounced back from what was certain death!
It generally takes a long time to become a convert to homeopathy–it’s so unlike what we’re used to; but, once you get into it, it’s like a black hole, it’s like being sucked into another dimension, another reality!
I know what you mean, there’s no coming out, there’s no going back!
The fascination just never ends! The implications, the need for a better understanding, it just goes on and on; and the odd thing is that the more you study homeopathy, the less you’re sure of! Every well-trained homeopath will tell you this! So, I actually know nothing! Is there anything else you want to know?
So the more you learn the less you know? Well, as a newcomer to homeopathy, I can attest to that!
This is alot of information to digest. While I attempt to do so, can you tell me about your first “official” case as a homeopath? What about your favorite case or maybe least favorite?
Before I do that Kelly, I just want to say, for the record, that I’ve done a lot of drug-bashing here today; and the reason I feel justified in doing this is because homeopathic remedies can actually take the place of most of these drugs and do a better job, because what homeopathic remedies do is activate YOUR OWN PHARMACY, the body’s pharmacy, which knows exactly what to do and when to do it–how much and how little. We’re a society so dependent and enamored with drugs, we tend not to appreciate what our immune system actually does and is capable of!
So, why doesn’t our “inner pharmacy” just fight our diseases then and get it over with if it’s so great? Well, if it wasn’t so bombarded with toxins and denatured food, I suspect it might! But consider this also: Viruses, for example, are often in disguise, hiding in our own cells, undetected! But a homeopath can give a remedy which takes the form of a caricature of the disease–an over-blown “image” of it, and the immune system will go for it! When the immune system can see what’s wrong, it can act! This is the beauty of homeopathy. The remedies are catylists; they’re mobilizers; it’s your own immune system that jumps into action, and in that sense, it’s totally natural and without side effects.
Ok, my first official case:
I took this case online in 2000 on a homeopathy bulletin board. We call them discussion boards now. Anyway, his name was … oh, I should probably make up a name … Tom. He had a serious prostate problem due to stress at work–a promotion he didn’t feel he was ready to take on, he was only thirty-something. Tom’s grandfather had prostate cancer; so, he inherited a weak prostate apparently. It was giving him trouble, frequent trips to the bathroom and pain; it was affecting his work; there were problems at work anyway, he was in high finance/banking; he wasn’t sure that he knew what he was doing, was afraid of making a fool out of himself in front of clients. He was anxiety-ridden about the whole thing. The MD’s were getting nowhere with his prostate problem. This guy’s life was on the verge of ruin as it didn’t look like he’d be able to handle the stress of work and his poor health much longer. I recommended Lycopodium 6C three times a day, in water, with 10 succussions before each dose.
The improvement was almost immediate and in perfect accordance with Hering’s Law of Cure. He said, “I still have the problem, but, it doesn’t really bother me, I don’t get upset about it.” (Healing takes place from the inside out–Hering. So, the first thing the remedy caused was relaxation, even though the physical complaint was still there; so, this was a good start!). Soon the local symptoms began to go away too. He wound up eventually at 30C, with 12 and 15C in between. He not only recovered, but he quit his stressful job! Now that shows his judgement also improved!
Nice job, Elaine! Thank you for being in the Hot Seat this month! How can people get in touch with you?
I take online cases and can be reached at LEWRA@aol.com. (And let’s not forget there are still seven shopping days left ’til my birthday!)
Kelly Young
