Show notes
In this podcast, we cover: 0:38 All-natural foods that you can use on your face 7:16 Uprooting the problem versus suppressing it 21:35 Homeopathy’s proven efficacy for over 200 years 27:26 Joette’s personal battle with eczema and other health issues 31:36 Joette finally finds homeopathy Would you eat Diazolidinyl or Imidazolidinyl urea? Doesn’t sound appetizing, but these are two common preservatives used in moisturizer creams. Yes, urea is an organic waste compound, and the body excretes it through the skin (in the form of sweat), but the urea in your common moisturizer cream is synthetic. That means it is made in a lab, and the synthetic raw materials are ammonia and carbon dioxide. Would you be comfortable spreading them on a slice of toast? Consider this, the moment you put anything on your skin it is absorbed into the body. Hi folks, this week’s blog is a little different because I am using it to announce a new feature here at JoetteCalabrese.com. I will start podcasting every two weeks with the help of my friend Jendi. We will post the podcasts here, and later you will be able to find them on I-tunes and other websites that archive podcasts – my favorite is Stitcher radio. Whatever service you choose, I promise you’ll find these short 30- minute or so recordings to be informative and an easy way to teach your kids, whether they’re still at home or across the country, to turn friends and relatives on to homeopathy and, of course, to continue your homeopathic education and ultimately your health independence. As you might have expected, this week’s podcast is on the subject of skin. That’s because we are right in the middle of the launch of my newest course Skin, the Ugly Truth: Safe, Effective Treatment of Skin Ailments, Chronic or Acute, with Homeopathy. This week’s Podcast at-a-glance: What I recommend folks use on their skin. What if you have already used drugs like prednisone or Accutane to treat a skin problem? Remember, your past need not control your future. Why is suppression so bad with skin problems? Why homeopathy is the medicine you hoped you were getting from your doctor. Why skin problems should be considered a representation of what is lurking below. (Hint-hint: The goal should be to get rid of the problem within, not simply try to cover it up or scrub it away on the surface.) A quick and simple way to learn what may have caused your skin issue that will likely lead to a revelation of monumental proportions. Why we look better but in many ways we are worse off or even sicker. 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. Jendy: Hello! This is Jendy and I’m here with Joette from JoetteCalabrese.com. Today, we’re going to talk about Skin, The Ugly Truth. Hello, Joette! How are you? Joette: I’m doing well, Jendy. Nice to talk with you, as always. All-natural foods that you can use on your face Jendy: Let’s jump right into the topic. What do you use or recommend people use on their skin? Joette: I urge people to use only food. And I don’t mean ketchup and relish. I mean food such as ointments and oils that are made that are actually from the kitchen. So coconut oil. Now, some people can’t use coconut oil. And it turns out that sometimes, it’s folks whose families originate from Northern Europe. So Germany and Sweden and those parts of the world often can’t use coconut oil. It’s uncomfortable for them or they actually have allergic reactions to them. And I think it’s because coconuts are from around the Equator. So coconut oil is one of my first choices but if that doesn’t work, butter. Yes, but without salt. Because if you have any cracks or abrasions, then of course, salt is going to hurt. But butter is so available. There it is. It’s right in the kitchen. In the old days, they used to say if you have a burn, you put butter directly and, of course, it’s salt-free butter. But one of my favorites on skin besides butter is tallow and/or lard. So lard is the fat that’s been rendered from a pig, and tallow is the fat that’s rendered from the fat of beef and you can make it yourself. Now, it’s hard to find this in grocery stores but if you happen to be purchasing your own meat directly from a farmer, then you ask for the fat and you render your own. It’s very easy to do. And then if that doesn’t work, you can often purchase it online. Also, another product that can be used on the skin is cod liver oil. So that sounds like it would smell really awful. However, there’s a wonderful product that Radiant Life sells and it’s cod liver oil that’s made into a product without the preservatives, etc., etc., that doesn’t have a strong odor. So cod liver oil is another good one. Saturated fat is what it’s boiling down to. And then, of course, the reason we don’t use other products that are manufactured on the skin is because they cause trouble in the long run. They may cover up, they may make things a little more comfortable for a short period of time, but in the end, you don’t put anything on your skin that you wouldn’t eat because the moment you put it on your skin, it’s absorbed into the system. And the way that I know this, besides the fact that this is a known fact, is that I learned years ago when my oldest son was a little boy and it was before I knew enough about homeopathy to treat his colds and flus and sore throats, etc., with homeopathy. So I used essential oils and herbs and things like that. So I knew that if you put garlic and you mix it together with olive oil, you mash it all up, and you put it on the bottom of someone’s feet who has got a cold or an infection of sorts, it will absorb into the skin and deal with the infection at hand. So he was about maybe 2, 2-1/2 years old, and I had this mixture of garlic and olive oil and I said, “Okay, lay down here on the bed.” I put an old towel under his feet and I said, “I’m going to rub your feet up with this garlic oil and you stay very still,” because I didn’t want his feet to touch the covers and ruin the blankets, etc. So I went off, went into the bathroom, washed my hands of all the garlic that I had on them, got some old socks, got another towel to wrap up his feet with as well, came back, put the socks on, wrapped his feet up, put the covers on him, and kissed him. And within those five minutes, his breath smelled of garlic. That’s how fast what we put on the skin is absorbed into the body. So we always want to use the most pure items on our skin that is worthy of our entire body. The skin is not hermetically sealed. It is an organ that is a part of the entire system. So nothing but food. Jendy: So that kind of rules out a lot of makeup. Joette: It does rule out makeup. However, I have a little caveat. Because we women want to be lovely, it is important to use a high-quality makeup, to use as little as possible. I wear eyeliner. I wear lipstick, not on a day-to-day basis but when I go out. So I buy the highest quality that I can find. And if you’re going to use a foundation, then you want to try to find something that is the cleanest and the purest. Now, I’ve done a lot of reading on this through the years. I don’t use foundation personally but I know many women who do, and one of the companies that I like is Dr. Hauschka but I don’t know that I’m going to stand behind that product. I’m just going to tell you that I use their lipstick and I use their eyeliner. So I do know that they have foundation and I’ve not researched deeply into what kind of foundation ingredients are involved. But you want to read those ingredients and if there’s anything in there you can’t pronounce, I would think twice about it. Jendy: When you say about the saturated fats, that’s for lotion and cleaning, like a cleanser at night. Is that what you use them for? Joette: No. For a cleanser at night, I would use baking soda and water. I would use raw vinegar and water. I would use a high-quality soap. I like Kirk’s soap. It’s just coconut oil. I don’t remember what else is in it but you can get unscented and I like that. But that’s only if you feel you absolutely must wash your face. I don’t wash my face. I’ll be honest with you. I can’t remember the last time I got soap and scrubbed my face. I just don’t do that. I put water on my face. And whatever comes down from my shampoo, then that’s useful, too. But I use coconut oil and sometimes butter and/or tallow or lard on my face and my body in general most every day, even just a little bit. I put it on my neck and all around my eyes and it feels good to me. My skin is not dry but sometimes it feels slightly tight, and that feels very comforting to me. Uprooting the problem versus suppressing it Jendy: I’ve been trying to find something for my daughter who’s struggling with acne. I know she needs to keep her face clean, so will the coconut oil help her with that? Joette: Yes. I believe that keeping clean and then coconut oil afterwards or lard or tallow, one of those. It flies in the face of what most people would believe is problematic with the skin and that you have to get rid of the oils. But I believe it’s not the oils that necessarily are causing the trouble. It’s what’s going on inside. So when we talk about this course that I’m about to present on skin, acne is covered in it, and so we use remedies that are specific for acne, homeopathic remedies, and it’s not something that you take for the rest of your life. It’s not like something such as an antibiotic. The goal is to root out the pathology, to root out the skin condition. Acne is one of the easier ones to get rid of. I find that psoriasis is more difficult. That’s more entrenched and usually longer lasting for most folks. But the idea is to get rid of the problem that’s at hand, not cover it up or to scrub it away. Because it’s only presenting on the skin. It really is a representation of what’s lurking below, which, of course, is then why we want to make sure that what we’re putting on our skin is worthy of our entire body. Because it does go directly into the body and it does have to be processed by the liver. It can affect the gut. We have to be so careful not to use antibiotic soaps, one of the worst ideas that these companies have come up with. But it’s based on the pop culture, common medical information that’s out there that says we have to stay scrupulously clean. I don’t buy that. I don’t think it’s a matter of staying scrupulously clean. I think it’s a matter of from the inside out and making sure things are dealt with in a systemic level rather than a localized level. Jendy: What if somebody has already used the antibiotic drugs or prednisone or Accutane? Joette: Well, that’s a great question because I don’t know anyone who hasn’t. You know what I mean? That’s the world in which we live. Everyone’s used antibiotics. I mean, I think there are very few people in this world who’ve never had antibiotics. And if they are even in existence, their parents had antibiotics, and that changes the gut flora for them as well, potentially. So once you’ve had these injuries or insults to the body, now we want to do the best we can to be certain that we keep it as pure as we possibly can now and try to help the body to undo it on its own. But if you use homeopathy and, of course, that’s what I’m teaching in this course, it will uproot that. If we had to look at life as, “Well, we’re doomed; we took antibiotics, we took those birth control pills, we used those steroids, there’s nothing left, we’re just doomed,” then I might as well just crawl into a hole and die because that’s really a depressing way of looking at life. The beauty of homeopathy is that it is the savior medically. It is the medicine we thought we were getting. It’s the medicine we all hoped we were getting without knowing, of course, the name of it. But every time we went to the doctors, dermatologists – and I had terrible skin all my childhood life – every time, we all hoped this was going to do it, this doctor was going to do it, and not only didn’t do it, it made it worse. Everything that was used on me covered it up for a short period of time, and in the long run, it bankrupted my account of health, so to speak. It’s like if we use something on the skin that’s superficial from the drugstore, from the dermatologist, we see a little bit of benefit. And the benefit is really superficial. It leads us to believe that, “Wow, this is really working. This is great.” Give it some more time and it will boomerang. It will come back with a vengeance and cause new problems. Sometimes, seemingly unrelated problems but in the end, it turns out that the problems then can go to the gut. We actually see people going to depression as a result of suppressed skin eruptions. So suppression is a really bad word in homeopathy. We don’t want to suppress anything. Because if we’re suppressing, it’s as though we’re unscrewing the smoke alarm in the ceiling when there’s a fire ablaze on the stove. All it’s doing is taking away the sign that something is wrong. So if you’re outside and there’s a flame on your stove and you run in, you hear the smoke alarm, you say, “Oh, that darn smoke alarm. Let’s get rid of that sign, that signal that something is off.” They unscrew it and they throw it in the garbage and they walk back outside again. Well, wait a minute! You haven’t gotten to the issue. The issue was the fire on the stove. And so in the beginning, it appears as though you’ve come up with a solution because you don’t have to hear the loud, annoying sound of a smoke alarm screaming at you but eventually, you’re going to have to face the fact that there’s a fire on the stove. And often, with skin, the fire is related to the gastrointestinal tract. So if somebody’s had an antibiotic, even one round, or they’ve used birth control pills, even just a few months, or they’ve used steroids, even just a round of it, a couple of months, a month, what those drugs do is they suppress the body’s natural ability to resolve the problem, and then it shows up, depending on what is your weakest link in your body, often on the skin. So in uprooting the skin problems, we’re not just going to say, “Oh, let’s just use this ointment and we’re on,” or even, “Let’s just use this tallow or coconut oil or cod liver oil on our skin and just be done with it.” No, no, no, no, no. It’s a representation of something that’s going on on a deeper level, and that’s what I want to teach or what I’m teaching in this course – How do you get to the bottom of it? Now, let’s look at what preceded this. What I tell people is, “Look, you want to know what’s really going on? You want to really get an idea of what has caused the skin issue?” Get a pencil. Make sure it’s sharp. Make sure it’s got a good eraser on it. Get a nice, long sheet of paper and lay out your life in a timeline. The only part we want to know about your life is all of the health issues. So start now and go back two months ago or a year ago or six months ago and look at, “Well, I had bronchitis a year ago.” Now, we don’t want to know just that you had bronchitis. We want to know what was the treatment for that bronchitis. Oh, antibiotics. Okay. You write down bronchitis, 2013, November, and the antibiotics. Okay, now, you go back further. What was before that bronchitis? “Oh, there was another bronchitis three years prior to that. Oh, 2011. Here we go. What do you know? Look at this timeline. I remember I took antibiotics for that, too.” And you go back and you go back. And you can go all the way back to croup as an infant, the vaccines that were given, the steroids that were used, and you lay it all out. And the reason I say you need a good eraser is because you’re going to change things around. And you may not remember exactly everything as you approach this little task within that…
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