Homeopathic Ramblings - Mini Episode

Hi, this is Rita Hogan and welcome to the Dogs Are Individuals podcast. I'm a clinical canine herbalist and I've been practicing for over 20 years. This podcast is all about your dog through an herbal lens. So let's get to it and dive right in. Hi everyone, this is Rita Hogan, host of the Dogs Are Individuals podcast. This is one of our shorts. We are gonna talk about the difference between homeopathy and herbalism. This was a question that was brought to my attention through the contact on my website for the podcast. If you have a question, please write in and I'll answer it here on the podcast if I can. First, I want to introduce you to a new sponsor of my Dogs Are Individuals podcast. This is Real Dog Box. And I'm just gonna just quickly tell you about them and then in upcoming episodes, I'm going to go over what they do more and more. We might even have some coupon codes. The world is our oyster. So Real Dog Box. It's awesome. Real Dog Box. So Real Dog Box is a subscription box community that offers treats and chews. And I learned about Real Dog Box about a year ago when their lovely owner Ruby asked me to be on her podcast. And I didn't even know about them and I was just, I felt cheated. I really did. They are so awesome because they have like a treat and shoebox, a treat box, a chew box. They have a mini treat and shoebox for tiny dogs. And they have these things called meatballs that I absolutely love, am just crazy over. And they've got some other products too, but that's the gist of it. And you get it in the mail every month. And a different type of chew. You can customize your boxes. It's awesome. So check them out at Real Dog. Okay, let's talk about the difference between herbalism and homeopathy. So I've been into herbalism for a very, very long time and I've had a full time practice for close to 15 years. I've been working with dogs and their people and it's just kind of, you know, gotten. It's snowballed and gotten bigger and bigger. I've been doing this for over 20 years and I love herbalism, but I also love homeopathy. And a lot of poisonous plants are made homeopathically. And homeopathy is energetic medicine. You're using very minute vibrational amounts in many cases of the poisonous plant to stimulate healing in the body. And it's basically on the premise of like, cures, like. So one of my favorite remedies in homeopathy is a remedy called arsenica album and it's made from arsenic. And if you tested it, you wouldn't find any arsenic in it. But it is so wonderful for anxiety, stress and stomach upset from food. So I use it, I keep it in my bag all the time. And when I eat something that upsets my stomach, I take one to two doses of that and it always does the trick. Another very popular homeopathic remedy is arnica. Now arnica is a poisonous plant. If you take it internally, it can make you very sick, it can make your dog sick. But homeopathic arnica is fantastic. It comes in different potencies. So and that is basically how many times the, the remedy is diluted. And I use what's called a 30C. So basically this is the gist of homeopathy. Say that we have one drop of arnica in ten drops of water. So we would mix that together and then we would take a drop from that mixture and put it in another 10 drops of water and then we take a drop from that mixture and put it in another 10 drops of water and then we do that 30 times. That is a 30C to my understanding. I'm not a homeopath, but that's the gist of it. And I use arnica all the time when I get an injury, when I get a bruise after surgery, it really helps the body recover quicker. It's good for arthritis, it's good for pain, it's good for inflammation. With homeopathy you tend to quit the remedy when you're better, so you have to know how to dose it. And there's a lot of really good homeopaths out there. Like Dr. DeBlanco has a wonderful educational website. Dr. Todd Cooney is a just amazing homeopathic vet. Then there's like Sarah Griffith. She works with horses, dogs and cats, I believe. I'm not sure about people. Julianne Lee is a wonderful homeopath and different homeopaths, they, they practice differently. Homeopathy was started by Samuel Hahnemann in the 1700s. He basically understood that if you give a small amount of a poisonous substance that what can cause can cure. And he did this clinically and he had what's called approving. And he proved his theory over and over and over again. And he understood that the more you dilute the remedy, the actual, the stronger its effect. A lot of people don't believe in homeopathy and I'm just not one of those people. I absolutely love it. I've used it for so many things and I think it's very valid for a lot of animals. It's a very good supportive holistic practice. And that's the gist of it. Okay, we could have like many, many, many, many podcasts about homeopathy and. But if you have a lot of questions, go to Dr. D. Blanco's website. You will love it. Or look up Julianne Lee of Adored Beast. She has a lot of good homeopathic information on her website. There's some on dogsnaturally.com I believe there's probably some information on Dr. Couney's website, on Sarah Griffith's website. So, you know, look them up. Sarah Griffith works with Adored Beast on horses, so you can find her information through their website adoredbeast.com herbalism works on kind of a law of opposites versus like yours, like so if you're too warm, you're gonna get cooling herbs. Too cold, you're going to try to warm your core up and warm you up. If you're too damp, we're going to dry you out and find balance. Herbal medicine involves using, I would say full plant tinctures, dried herbs, flower essences, which is a lot, you know, is, is vibrational like homeopathy. Essential oils, glycerates, infusions, decoctions, different things like that make up herbal medicine. And so again, you're using different types of plant extractions to work on the opposite of what is happening in the body. I hope that answered your question. Now, herbalism is a lot older than homeopathy. Herbalism is, you know, it's the first medicine of our evolution. Plants have been around forever and we've been using plants forever. And I think that plant medicine and homeopathy can share the stage together in holistic medicine. Right. And we can use them in both forms. I love homeopathy because it gives me access to use some of these poisonous plants in a non toxic way and a very beneficial way. I've seen homeopathy work miracles on dogs and I've also seen homeopathy work miracles on people and I've seen herbalism work miracles on dogs and herbalism work miracles on people. And for any of you out there that are thinking about the placebo effect, which is, you know, the brain believing that a substance is working, I'm for that. Right. In fact, it is a proven fact that the placebo effect is almost higher than 50% in pharmaceutical based medicine. So if herbalism has a placebo effect, I'm fine. If homeopathic medicine has a placebo effect, fine too. And if pharmaceutical medicine has a placebo effect, that's good too. So just wanted to address that because I usually always get that kind of comment or someone will email me about the placebo effect. And I love the placebo effect. My mom, the placebo effect is so high in my mother, I can give her just about anything and tell her what it does and she believes it so strongly that it happens. So I'm okay with the placebo effect very, very much. And homeopathy I do not believe is 100% placebo. It is a wonderful form of medicine that has been around for a very long time and basically the late 1700s and before Western pharmaceutical medicine came to the forefront, there were over 3,000 homeopaths in the United States before modern medicine took over. Just a little fax on file. Okay, that is the answer to the question that was written in and I appreciate you writing into the podcast. Again. If you have any questions, go to canineherbalist.com, scroll under the menu. You'll see the podcast contact and just send me a question and I will answer it here if I can on the podcast. Again, thank you so much for listening to my shorts. Thank you for my new sponsor, Real Dog Box, and we will be talking about their deliciousness in future episodes. Thanks for listening to this episode of Dogs Are Individuals. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app. And don't forget, sharing is caring. So if you love Dogs Are Individuals podcast, share it with your friends and family who love dogs. This will help me so much. And remember, as a listener, I appreciate you much. Thanks to Resonant Media, my podcast production team. This podcast is produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. Any questions, email the show, go to k9herbalist.com, click podcast contact in the menu and then fill out that form and I'll answer any questions here online. Okay, so thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dogs Are Individuals Podcast and I'm going to talk to you in our next episode.