Pregnancy and beyond

This program was produced by and first broadcast on Radio Kidnappers, a volunteer-based community access station. For more information go to www.radiokidnappers.org.nz. Thanks to New Zealand On Air for making this program available through funding the Access Internet Radio Project. YouTube to Radio Kidnappers, the voice of Hawke's Bay. This is Home Neuropathy On Air. It's our pleasure as always to have in the studio Heidi Beck from Thrive Home Neuropathy. And Nathan, how are you going, Heidi? I'm good, Ken. Thank you very much for having me again. Our pleasure as always. And of course, now you are star off stage and screen, because welcome to YouTube. Yes, our first YouTube, so bear with us. Just before we get into today's topic, which is homeopathic remedies for pregnancy and beyond, just remind our listeners where you are. Okay, so my clinic or business is called Thrive Homeopathy and it's number one, Lampton Road, Hospital Hill in Napier. And you can contact me on 021-33-5233. And when I come and see you, you take a holistic approach to seeing me, don't you? Absolutely. You don't just say, come on in 15 minutes later, get out. No, homeopaths are holistic health practitioners and it is about incorporating your whole lifestyle. So we will advise about some lifestyle choices that you're making that might not be so good. Hanuman, the founder of homeopathy, he already said that it is about hygiene, bed rest, nutrition, stress levels, the life that you lead, the people that are around you, what you do for your physical health as well as your mental health. So all that is incorporated and part of a homeopathic consultation to find the right homeopathic medicine or remedy that matches you because that is the difference. We treat the person with a dis-ease as opposed to finding a diagnosis and treating the disease. So if I've got a sore stomach, I come and see you. You don't just give me something for my sore stomach. You delve into the problem. Exactly. When did it start? What caused it? What makes it better? What makes it worse? Why did you even get it? How are you reacting to the pain? Are you more whiny and miserable and want everyone to bring you a cup of tea and a hot water bottle? Or are you the kind of person who gets very irritable and says, leave me alone. I'm angry. I've got this complaint. So yeah, we take everything into account. So I would say that's very holistic. Absolutely. And how long have you been involved in the industry? Well, I have my clinic since 2011 and I'm a registered classical homeopath since 2012. Since you started, have you noticed a growth in the amount of patients that come to see you? Is it much more accepting now to go and visit a homeopath than it was, say, 10 years ago? Well, I think, yeah, it is changing because people are now starting to be a bit more aware, are a bit more dissatisfied with conventional medicine, which is just about maintaining or suppressing symptoms, but not really dealing with why you're sick or even curing. And so lots of people are just saying, well, I'm accumulating more and more drugs. I'm not getting any better. So there's got to be something else. And then you have one family member or a friend that comes, has a successful experience of healing or just overall well-being. They send friends, family, and so it just, yeah. Yeah, it grows for me. It grows. And I think no greater evidence of that since we started putting chlorine in the water. Everyone's up in arms about putting drugs into your body. Exactly, yeah. Well, last month, we spoke about chlorine and fluoridated water and, yeah, got some good feedback on that. And we do have to, everything we put in our bodies will have some kind of effect. A really good article the other day, though, and it was, would you rather have the alternative, which might be sitting on the toilet for two days because you've got some bug out of the water rather than have a little bit of chlorine in it? Well, again, I mean, personally, my approach is the viruses, the bacteria, the bugs aren't necessarily the culprits. Because when we look back and have, not everyone gets sick, right? It's about the immune system that needs to be strengthened. The stronger your immune system, the better you can cope with the virus. And we'll never get rid of all the viruses and bugs no matter how much chlorine and whatever we do. Yes, we do have to eliminate or reduce the quantity, but we're doing that by keeping our pipes and, you know, where counsel has to step up. But we had that last month. But I actually wanted to talk about what's up this month. And that is that we have World Homeopathy Awareness Week. And that is also about making homeopathy and complementary holistic health care more available and more understood to people. So this is a group that was founded in 2008. And every year at Hanuman's birthday, which is on the 10th of April, there is Homeopathy Awareness Week and a different motto. This year's motto is about pregnancy and childbirth and how homeopathy can help in that phase of your life. And I have so many. And I think that's the best time to start. And that actually is when people become aware because they have a responsibility for another life, not just their own. When you're young and healthy, you just throw in another pimmel and soldier on. But if you're carrying another life inside of you, you think, wow, whatever I do to my body, I'm doing to this unborn child. And that's when young women and fathers alike start looking outside the box. Is there something else that we could be doing to help? And so I think it's a very good topic to have. Okay. Talk us through the process. So we decided as a couple that we're going to have a baby. Now, we often talk about homeopathic remedies. So I guess we're presuming that if we're coming for a remedy, we've got something wrong with us. Yeah. Now, when we're talking about getting pregnant and having a baby, there's nothing wrong with us. How should we be conditioning our bodies homeopathically for the nine-month journey? Well, the first thing is that unfortunately today, more and more people are having conception problems, various reasons. Some could be really stress-related, nutrition, dietary supplementation might be required to get the sperm up to count or balance hormone levels to help women with ovulation to get that a bit more regular. Because so many women have been on contraceptive medication, which is influencing your hormone cycle, mucking it up. If you do that for 10 years and expect to stop and then the body's back to normal, often doesn't work like that. So homeopathy can help you ovulate on time and properly. And I've had so many women come with infertility problems and have conceived. So that's the first thing that could go wrong, not conceiving. Then when you are pregnant, it's definitely not an illness or a disease, but you do sometimes have some symptoms which can be physical. For example, morning sickness. It's not something that you have to put up with. And most women think, oh, first three months I'm sick, that's normal. No, I wasn't sick a day in my life. I have two children. I didn't have any problems. Some people might just say, oh, you're lucky. Well, maybe, yeah. Maybe no. But with homeopathy, there are plenty of remedies that will actually help. It is a hormonal thing. Help rebalance those hormones and take away the nausea. Let's just want to talk back a little bit. You mentioned that homeopathic remedies might be able to help us if we're having trouble conceiving. What are some of the remedies that you might recommend for that? Well, we actually have oferinum and folliculinum, which are remedies made from hormones. And we take them on certain days of the cycle to actually help mature the follicles and then to make the egg actually leave and wander down the fallopian tube. If that doesn't happen, sperm has nothing to go to. So we have to make sure that the ovaries mature properly and then actually expel an ovum. So that's one thing to do. The other remedy, once I gave a woman staphysagria, which is a remedy about indignation. And the thing was that she had a baby one and a half years prior. Everything that could go wrong went wrong and she felt very poorly treated. So there was a lot of indignation, but also a lot of anxiety about having another child. But she wanted one, had no ovulation. So I gave her this remedy for indignation. It lifted her whole mental and emotional state. Two days later, she had the first period after two years. A month later, she conceived and now she has a child. So that goes to show it's not always just about what's going wrong hormonally. It can be something mentally, emotionally where you're stuck. Some people or some women have problems conceiving literally for years and years and years. Is a homeopathic remedy a surefire answer to that or not? Nothing is sure. It really depends on what is the issue. Sometimes you're very unlucky. It's a combination of everything. You've got poor sperm count, poor sperm motility. You might be already quite old and you don't have that many more eggs. Or they're not maturing. There are so many different problems. And I guess it depends on what the issue is. But that's where I love to work together with the doctors. Have their diagnosis. Know exactly what we're dealing with. There could be scarring from endometriosis. There are so many different issues. How long is a bit of strain really? Exactly. The case you mentioned, that was almost a miracle, wasn't it? That it happened so quickly. Do you get many of those cases? If you get that right match, homeopathic remedies can really magically shift. And I think that's the main difference to drugs. Drugs will do something to you or with you. Like force the body into some kind of action, suppression, control. Homeopathic remedies are quite the opposite. They sort of give you the kick in the butt to sort yourself out again. That's what we do innately, naturally. We heal. We recover. We rebalance. But sometimes we're just stuck. And that's what the homeopathic medicine can do. It can get you to sort of rebalance and heal. I guess the great thing about homeopathic remedies is that there's no side effects. Yeah, well, I would say, let's put that in parenthesis. If you take the wrong remedy that's not indicated for your symptoms and for you as a person, you can actually prove those symptoms. So it's not really a side effect. It's the effect of a wrong medication. Just like if you take the wrong drug, you know, you die. Potentially, right? That's not going to happen with homeopathy. For example, I took a remedy, sulfur, which is great to cure piles or hemorrhoids. I took it. It's also a great remedy for allergies. So I took it for allergy. This was like 30 years back when I was just playing around, hobby-wise. And I created hemorrhoids. I stopped taking the remedy. Three days later, the hemorrhoids were gone. I've never had them since. So it's proving, but yeah, it's a side effect. So you do have to be very cautious what you do there. Okay. So through your own pregnancy, for instance, if you wind the clock back, not that I would know what I'm talking about here, but I mean, once you get pregnant, obviously your whole body changes. Yes. And now talk us through some of those changes. So you mentioned nausea, but there must be other things. There are other things. I had bladder infection. You go to the doctor, what's going to happen? You'll get antibiotics. And as I said, whatever I do to my body, I'm doing to this unborn child. Antibiotics will basically destroy your whole gut flora and weaken your immune system. So it's really not the first choice. And I took some homeopathic remedies that were indicated that matched the symptoms of my bladder infection and I was able to nip it in the bud and that was really good. Often there's a lot of pulling and strengthening and weakening of tendons and ligaments. You're getting fatter and fatter and heavier and heavier and your back aches. So there are lots of good remedies that can help there when the tendons stretch and the tummy gets too heavy. Also tissue salts is something that I would recommend taking. It's sort of like a mineral supplementation that you can do. So yeah, those are all situations where you can be helped with homeopathic medicine. So while you're pregnant, you might be taking several remedies all at the same time. So you've got the bladder infection, we've got nausea, we've got aches and pains. Sounds awful, doesn't it? Yeah, it could be that you're taking a few. Ideally, you really find one remedy because often, for example, nuxvomica might be a remedy for your indigestion, the heartburn that starts because you're getting fatter, your stomach is being squashed, heartburn is a big one. So nuxvomica is a remedy for that, but it's also a good remedy for constipation, which again could be a problem at the other end, right? You're not digesting properly. So that would actually fix the two things in one go. It also might be a remedy that matches your personality of being like an A-type worker and very stressed and thinking about work because you're still a working woman. So that might help you there and with your sleep issues. So to answer your question, it could be that you take two or three different, but again it's only for a short period of time until your problem is resolved or it might be one remedy that will be fixing three, four different complaints that you have. So if we are taking two or three different homeopathic remedies at the same time, do they cancel each other out at any stage or something else happens? Well, homeopathy is a little bit complicated in that regard. First of all, we have to choose the right potency. So the potency is the strength of the remedy. We tend to choose a lower potency. Those would be the X potencies. So there'll be a number if you have a remedy that you get from a pharmacy, there will be the name of the medicine, like Noxvomica, for example, a number, and then a letter. And the X would be a 10, so a low potency, working more on physical symptoms or if you're a bit weak. Then we have the higher potencies, for example, 200C or 1M. Those are things that I would not recommend Joe Blog get off the shelf. Yeah, that would be when you consult a professional because then we're getting into the mental emotional picture. So that is then a bit more difficult to match correctly. Is the most common ailment the morning sickness that people come to see you for? Does it have to be in the morning? You call it morning sickness. Is there any afternoon sickness? Some poor women, they're sick 24-7. Yeah, that's awful. Some only for certain smells. So again, that would decide which remedy. So unfortunately, I can't say morning sickness, take this remedy. There are several and it depends on how severe it is and what triggers it, what makes it better, what makes it worse will indicate which one you're going to go for. So out of your 4,000 remedies plus and growing every day, are there like half a dozen remedies that you might choose and you say, look, try this one first, try this one next week? Yeah. That's how it works? Yeah, probably. You narrow it down. It could be that one, it could be that one. Maybe because the person isn't so self-aware yet and hasn't observed and can't give that much information. So it could be this remedy or that. Then you try with what you feel is the most suiting. If it doesn't work after a day, then try the other one. Yeah. And to your question earlier, there are some remedies that cancel each other out and some that complement each other. So if you go to a homeopath, the homeopath will know that is the acute remedy like Ignatia. If the woman is very weepy and whiny and crying and everything triggers, very emotional, it might be an acute situation of Ignatia. But if there's a deeper chronic grief or sadness, maybe about bonding as a mother with a child, letting go of your fears because you've had an abortion, then that is something that sits a bit deeper. Then that might be the nap mirror state. Sure. So those are complementary. My next question actually. So we've come through the birth. We've got a beautiful baby. You hear so much about it, postnatal depression. Yeah, unfortunately, yes. For some women, major. And there are a couple of remedies out there. One would be sepia. It's a very common one because it has about that hormonal imbalance. And there's a lot of exhaustion there. There's a lot of struggle for the woman between mothering and also the career that you've built. And you've created this business persona and all of a sudden the mothering and you want to put it together. And sometimes that's a little bit hard. So sepia is a very common one. It could be the nap mirror. It could be that the birth went wrong. The baby was a cesarean, taken away. Then we might even give oxytocin if it was very traumatic. That's a great remedy as well. What happens when you're treating someone for the likes of postnatal depression when it can last for months, sometimes even years? Is there a point in your treatment of someone that you might say, you might need to go and see someone else? Or as a homeopath, do you think you can get someone right through the whole thing? Again, often it normally wouldn't last for years. Hopefully there would be some intervention before then. It does rebalance itself eventually in most cases. I mean nothing is written in stone. But a right remedy really can, because it's shifting you to heal yourself. And in my experience, the women that have come to me with these issues, within a very short time, over a month, they were really back to feeling very good. And I think every healthcare practitioner, professional, should realize your own limits and boundaries. And if you feel it's too risky or you're not able or experienced enough, then you should always seek help. And I'm sure 90% will do that. So yes, I have referred to other professionals where needed. Just about out of time, are you a bit like a midwife? Do you have a client for the duration of the pregnancy? So from the beginning right to the end? Yes, I do. And we can also put together a birthing kit. So it can be either an individual birthing kit that matches that woman, because you know her pretty well and you know sort of the common issues that she has. Is there a lot of anxiety and anticipation about birthing? You know, be sure to put in some jalcemia maybe, or what's her past history of postpartum depression or miscarriage. So all those things we can put into a little kit and go through them very clearly with instructions and then have the partner or the mother, whoever is going with the woman, or the midwife. Luckily, there are so many midwives out there that support homeopathy and they're willing to help and administer homeopathic medicines, even during labor, to ease it, to make it better and quicker and also to promote the healing, the cramps afterwards, the bleeding afterwards. So yes, we do help right all the way through and then the whole lactation and all the problems of mastitis, everything that happens with that. We can help. We can help. Now before we get back to work, Heidi, just a reminder, our listeners want to come and see you about anything homeopathic. Where are you? Okay. So number one, Lampton Road. Beautiful clinic, I'd say. Indeed. Very relaxing and yeah, that's on Hospital Hill in Napier. And you can contact me on 021-33-5233. If you have any comments or questions, want to make a booking, and check out the website, thrivehomeopathy.co.nz. Can I end on a song? What is it? A song, yes. I thought we've been speaking about mothers and children. What about the dads out there? What about us dads? There's a lovely song, Father and Son, Cat Stevens, and I think that would be great to balance and harmonize the whole topic. Before we get to that song, what's your book for the week? Well, there's no one good way or no one perfect way to be a mom, but millions of ways to be a good one. Well said. Look after yourself. We'll talk to you at the same time, same place next time. Absolutely. My pleasure. If you want you to marry, look at me. I am old, but I'm happy. I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy to be calm when you've found something going on. But take your time, think a lot. Think of everything you've got, for you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not. How can I try to explain? When I do, he turns away again. It's always been the same, same old story. From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen. Now there's a way, and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go. I know I have to go. I know I have to go. I know I have to go. It's not time to make a change. Just sit down, take it slowly. You're still young, that's your fault. There's so much you have to go through. Find a girl, settle down. If you want you to marry, look at me. I am old, but I'm happy. All the times that I've tried, keeping all the things I knew inside. It's hard, but it's hard I do ignore it. If they were right, I'd agree. But it's them they know, not me. Now there's a way, and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go. I know I have to go.