Ever wondered how the fascinating world of homeopathy can help your body better itself, without suppressing symptoms? Or how to effectively dose remedies such as Hepar Sulph, Belladonna, and Arnica? You're in the right place! We're taking a deep dive into acute care in homeopathy, exploring the bell curve, and showcasing the benefits of having a well-stocked homeopathy kit for acute situations. We also touch on the Healing Path video by Paola Brown, which perfectly encapsulates the journey homeopaths have been teaching for centuries.
We also walk you through acute care dosing guidelines, including when to take remedies and how to dose correctly. We talk about the advantages of a 200C kit and discuss various remedies, including a little teaser about the Chelidonium remedy to be explored in a future episode. We also throw light on the Top 50 Virus Kit from Taproots, specially designed based on Melissa’s course and her acute care dosing guidelines. Monitoring symptoms effectively is crucial and we share insightful tips on how to do this. Time to unlock your body's potential, and we're here to guide you every step of the way!
Ever wondered how the fascinating world of homeopathy can help your body better itself, without suppressing symptoms? Or how to effectively dose remedies such as Hepar Sulph, Belladonna, and Arnica? You're in the right place! We're taking a deep dive into acute care in homeopathy, exploring the bell curve, and showcasing the benefits of having a well-stocked homeopathy kit for acute situations. We also touch on the Healing Path video by Paola Brown, which perfectly encapsulates the journey homeopaths have been teaching for centuries.
We also walk you through acute care dosing guidelines, including when to take remedies and how to dose correctly. We talk about the advantages of a 200C kit and discuss various remedies, including a little teaser about the Chelidonium remedy to be explored in a future episode. We also throw light on the Top 50 Virus Kit from Taproots, specially designed based on Melissa’s course and her acute care dosing guidelines. Monitoring symptoms effectively is crucial and we share insightful tips on how to do this. Time to unlock your body's potential, and we're here to guide you every step of the way!
Bri Hurlburt 0:00
Welcome back to Homeopathy at Home with Melissa. Hey Melissa.
Melissa Crenshaw 0:04
Hey Bri. I am excited to talk about acute care tonight.
Bri Hurlburt 0:10
Me too. This is going to be a good one, I think. I also like this type because it's more discussion based, which I enjoy, but also going into the holidays, hopefully really helpful and a good resource to all of our listeners.
Before we kick it off, I would like to do a review, to read one left by Vickery titled “Hope,” which is already sweet. She said, “Thank you for integrating biblical truth with your teaching of homeopathy. Your zeal to equip others is encouraging and your teaching is effective. Your confident approach gives me hope, paired with tools to learn, and I am learning. I am learning, practicing and watching the Lord use homeopathy to heal my family. Thank you.”
Melissa Crenshaw 0:58
Sweet. Thank you. Thank you Vickery.
Bri Hurlburt 1:00
So well said.
Melissa Crenshaw 1:02
I love it. You guys, if you post a review, we’ll read it. Again, it just brings it up more often so more people can find the show so if you like it, take a minute to review it.
Bri Hurlburt 1:18
Yeah. So let's kick this off.
Melissa Crenshaw 1:21
Yeah, so acute care. What is the definition of acute care? The examples are a cold, cough, flu, earache, sore throat, headache. Something that has a short life. It comes and goes on its own. It's considered acute when it's been around less than four weeks. Even if you have a lingering cough, if you've been coughing now for four weeks or more, it's become chronic, and we treat it differently than we do an acute. This episode I just want to encourage you and just teach a little bit about acute care, how to manage acutes, because they can be hard. It gets hard to manage your own acutes with your children and yourself.
There's a healing path, right? Most people come into an acute consult thinking, they're going to get a remedy, or even if you're just doing your acutes at home yourself, you're thinking I have a cough and a fever so I'm going to take this remedy and it's going to stop those symptoms. A lot of people look at using homeopathy the same way as an over the counter medicine and it's a natural way so it's healthier, but most people are looking for the symptoms to be shut down.
Let me give you an example of what does happen and should happen, and I'm just using an example of somebody that I'm helping right now. The cough was really dry and hard and it hurt and it was keeping them awake at night. We did a remedy. Now today it looks like the person is worse, because now they're coughing up all of this stuff and the nose is running. I'm like, “No, that's good.” Right? Because homeopathy is seeking to bring it out. Let's bring it out and get rid of it where if you're taking Mucinex, it's pushing the mucus back in there. Suppressing it.
Bri Hurlburt 3:50
Something I really love is The Healing Path video by Paola Brown. We share it a lot with the people who take Melissa's classes. It's meant for acute situations, but the same idea can be used in chronics. If you have time, it's called The Healing Path by Paola Brown. She draws a picture of that healing path that you're talking about. A normal, healthy body does not never experience symptoms. It doesn't mean you're unhealthy to encounter an acute illness. A healthy body moves through that and there are systems in place in our body to fight illness. When you stop that it actually inhibits true healing, like you're saying. If we did take a remedy and they did that, then there's nothing different than using over the counter medication. I think that's such an important thing to reiterate that I'm always reminding people of. And myself. The process is good. All of the normal ways the body responds is good.
Melissa Crenshaw 5:03
I love that video too, because she's so creative. The drawing is so beautiful. But what she draws is the bell curve that homeopaths have been teaching for hundreds of years.
She draws a bell. It shows you're over here and you've got the symptoms, and you're getting worse and worse. I don't know if going up means you're getting worse, but you're just going through the process. It's not that you take a remedy and it shuts everything down. It still moves you through the condition faster and easier than if you didn't use homeopathy or if you tried to shut it down with allopathic medicine. Now, you might think, :”Well, if I take Sudafed or Mucinex or NyQuil, it shuts it down and I feel better, and I can keep going and then I'm all better.” But when you suppress acute conditions, you set yourself up for future chronic conditions. You are setting yourself up to deal with something worse in the future. Let's let our bodies work in the acute.
Bri Hurlburt 6:09
Yeah, and I love what she said in there, and I'm sure this is information taught in homeopathy all over, is that the remedies give your body information to remember. When you're in a state of sickness … Or it forgets. It gets stuck somewhere, like, “I've been coughing now with the same type of cough for three days.” Your body's just stuck. The remedy just reminds it to keep moving.
Melissa Crenshaw 6:35
That’s right.
Bri Hurlburt 6:36
You've talked about this before, too. It just gives it that stimulation to your immune system to respond and that's why you see movement in the cough and not the cough going away. It's like your body was remembering it's supposed to follow this bell curve, and it's got stuck here. If you see the video, you can see what I'm doing. And then the remedy is like, “Oh no, keep going.” And it’s like, “Oh, okay, I'm going to keep going. So I'm going to cough stuff up now like I should.”
So, don't be alarmed, but that is hard, as a mom especially when we see their bodies responding. I encourage myself to say those things out loud to my boys, but also for myself, to say, “Your body's doing a lot of work. It's doing a really good job. Isn't that cool? Your body's really strong. It knows what to do. God made your body to heal.”
Melissa Crenshaw 7:29
Yep. Yeah. So like when the fever develops, “Oh, no. He's getting worse.” No. Yeah, I love that. This is what I tell people. It's not homeopathy that's healing you. Homeopathy is reminding your body, like you just said, “Wake up. Do what you are supposed to do.” And then it's your body that's healing itself.”
Bri Hurlburt 7:56
It's amazing, right? Body's healing takes work. And when your body works, and it's so simple, and I mean all of us, we know this in our minds, but when I do say it out loud to my kids. When they have a fever, I'll say, “Your body's hot. You know when you run and your body's working really hard? It’s creating a lot of energy, you get hot. Right now, your body's working really hard to fight this and it's doing it, but that's why you're hot. You're not hot because you're dying, or because you're horribly sick. You’re hot because your body is working well.”
Melissa Crenshaw 8:33
Yeah. So good. I did not lose it. I didn't lose it. Oh, I got it. It takes a level of patience to use homeopathy. When we're using homeopathy, whether it be for acutes or chronics, but we're talking about acutes, so when you use homeopathy for your acute conditions, you have to remember we're here for long term health. Think long term health. You can't rush homeopathy.
That's what it was too, that you said your body's working really hard. I want to speak to that. A lot of moms get really upset that their child won't eat while they're sick, “Well, he hasn't eaten. He hasn't eaten in eight hours. He hasn't eaten in 12, 24, 48 hours.” That's perfectly fine. It takes energy for your body to digest food and your body knows to conserve that energy to heal the acute condition that's happening, so we're not hungry when we're sick, and that's perfectly fine. They need to be drinking, right? They have to stay hydrated, but we don't have to eat. It's okay.
The other thing is the patience, the level of patience. I've done this many times, but my most recent experience that I can just share is just suddenly getting itchy on my body, which started out acute, right? Because it was a brand new thing that I hadn't dealt with before. Now it's become chronic, but it's getting very much better. I'm definitely very much better than I was two, three weeks ago. But I’m five or six weeks in right now.
I've thought about this several times. If you've been itchy for any reason, whether it be eczema or a liver thing or whatever's happening, you know how maddening it can be. I've thought about this many times, like how many people would have said, “Forget this. I'm going to the doctor. I'm going to put steroids on. I don't even care. I'll figure it out later.” And I'm just sticking with the remedies. I'm just taking them. I’m hanging in there.
The same thing with acute stuff, like a flu. Just decide, “You know what? We're going to have to stay home and rest.” And I think that's part of what people get upset about is we have stuff to do. We have parties coming up. We have this. We have that. We have church. We have all these things we want to do. Oh no, they're going to miss this child's birthday party. I do acute consults and they say, “We're going on vacation next week. She has to be better by next week.” And I'm like, “You can't rush homeopathy. I'm sorry.” Plan to be home and rest.
Bri Hurlburt 11:47
I do think over time, from what I've experienced, and the idea behind homeopathy, especially for young kids … As I was treating colds, coughs and flus with homeopathy, over the years their bodies do not take as much reminding anymore. We just currently were sick with something that was going around here through everyone, really bad sinus stuff and coughs, and now we’ve been using homeopathy for seven or eight years, most of my kids’ lives, but probably only five consistently. I first noticed it winter of 2022, so this is like the second full year we're experiencing of using really only homeopathy. And we did get it, my family and my kids, two of them. Not my oldest son, so my other two. So much more mild. It's not lasting as long. It's moving through them so it's still not just going away, but it's significantly more mild.
When I gave remedies, their bodies responded. A couple of them got fevers. They did respond, but it's not lingering like it did before. It never was crazy severe. One had an earache on one ear one night really bad. It was painful, but only for a few hours. The next night, it was the other ear for a few hours. We used the remedies. He was totally fine.
So I'm seeing it now but I do remember. Stick with it. It was really discouraging at first when we're undoing these years of using allopathic medications, even on ourselves. Our kids were born from bodies that were given all the junk.
Melissa Crenshaw 13:45
I remember that, too. I remember being discouraged in the beginning, like this doesn't work. And then now, so much faster, especially in acutes. So much faster.
Bri Hurlburt 13:57
And I can think better for myself but I would tell people have a person, or do an acute consult or something, but just have a person who tells you what to do and you just do it. Like don't try to think so hard if it's the right one or not. You trust that person before. Do it and wait and be patient. And don't worry so much if it takes some time.
Melissa Crenshaw 14:22
Yeah. We're going to talk some more about acutes and how to use the remedies and how often and all that but since you just brought it up, if you need help for an acute condition, you can't do it yourself or you don't want to do it yourself for whatever reason, go to melissacrenshaw.com under Make Appointment and fill out the acute care form. I'll get an email and I'll walk you through the condition so you don't have to try to do it by yourself. But also, you'll learn along the way when you're working with me for an acute.
I have done over 200 acute consults this year and just the experience that I've gained this year has shown me so much. That's why I wanted to do this episode to share with you how important it is to know these things, to know how homeopathy works, go into it with patience, go into it knowing that we're not trying to stop the fever and stop the cough. We're trying to move you through it easier and faster.
I wanted to share with you how to use the remedies, how to choose how often, how to choose potencies, and encourage you to get help when you need help but remembering that you can't rush homeopathy. A lot of people want to use the remedies more often to try to get through it faster.
Bri Hurlburt 16:06
Or even higher potency. If I move up and I give it the same amount of time, will that move it along more quickly?
Melissa Crenshaw 16:15
Yeah, I see that too.
Because acutes are usually physical conditions, I'm likely going to do something around the 3C, 6C, 9C, 30C or 200C. Now, when you get into the 200s, you can touch more on the mental/emotional, but in an acute situation, if you want to get 200 pretty often, it can really help. I never use above 200. I'm not saying it’s wrong. I just don't usually go there.
I remember what I was going to say a minute ago. The importance of having a kit.
Bri Hurlburt 16:57
Yes, we talked about this. Okay. And listen, I want to speak to everybody out there saying you just can't. I promise you. Ask for it for an early Christmas present or something from people. Ask everybody. I know, if you can't, you can't. What I would suggest doing is even buying a small one. A small first aid kit. Melissa has a really affordable, short Cold, Cough, Flu course. A short one. You get some of those remedies from your local store if you can get them, or order them, just a smaller amount of remedies. You don't have to get a big 50 kit if you can't, but get as many as you can, because I've spent way more money going to the store last minute when you're desperate. I’ll spend $50 on four things at the store because I need them right then and you know you want your kid to get better. Well, you're like a third or a fourth of the way to a kit and you got four remedies. Then when you do an acute consult or you meet somebody and you say this is the remedy I need, you have it. Because it happens all the time I'm sure for you, Melissa. You say, “Here's the remedy,” and they don’t have it.
Melissa Crenshaw 18:13
And I feel so bad that they have to go to the store or they have to order and wait. A 200C Kit is going to be highly beneficial in acute situations. There are a few remedies that I would like for you to have a 200 and maybe a 6C. I'm going to say Hepar sulph, Belladonna.
Bri Hurlburt 18:39
Yeah, Hepar sulph and Belladonna, I think. Gelsemium I use 30 and 200. I know you like 30. I've used both and honestly in acute situations I haven't noticed a difference. I like Hepar sulph 200 also, for a sore throat for me. Do you use 6 for sore throat?
Melissa Crenshaw 19:04
I will. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Bri Hurlburt 19:06
Okay. I just don't think I've ever used it for acute other than I have used that for an abscess.
Melissa Crenshaw 19:16
Sorry. I should have had this ready. Oh Arnica. Arnica 3C or 200 C is good. Chelidonium, which will be in a future podcast episode. You’ll hear all about Chelidonium in a 6x.
Bri Hurlburt 19:38
What do you have in front of you? What are you reading from?
Melissa Crenshaw 19:39
This is the top 50 virus kit from TapRoots. This goes exactly along with my viruses course. I have a whole full … It’s a four hour course on viruses.
Bri Hurlburt 19:57
That honestly might be a good kit to get instead of a 200. Well, if you're thinking specifically acutes, that might be a good one.
Melissa Crenshaw 20:05
Yeah, this covers it. This has everything. If you just want to take the Cold, Cough, Flu course, which is just one hour, the remedies in there are going to be covered in here, in this top 50 virus kit. There's also some combos in here that I suggest. Anyway, TapRoots made this kit based on my course and it's really useful.
I want to talk about my acute care dosing guidelines. Again, you can't rush homeopathy. People were like, “Well how do I know how often to use the remedy?” If you are on your way to the hospital, so it's that bad. That's what I mean. It’s that bad that you were like, “We have to get to the hospital. She can't breathe.” Then on the way to the hospital, you're dosing like every five minutes. Okay?
If this is a sinus infection, you're stuffy and you've got pain, but you're still going to work or you’re still going to school, you're still able to function, then we're talking maybe maybe every 8-12 hours. There's a balance there.
One thing you can do is rate your symptoms on a scale of one to 10. 1 is very mild. 10 is very severe. If you rate your symptoms anywhere between a 1 and a 4, then you're going to dose about 2-3 times per day. Even if it's a flu-like illness, even if it's a cough, it would be like 2-3 times a day, because we're giving the remedy time to act.
If you rate your symptoms anywhere between a 4 and a 7, then you'll probably dose about every 3-4 four hours. If you rate your symptoms between a 7 and an 8, then you're dosing about every 1-2 hours. And if you rate 8-10, then it's about every 5-15 minutes. Again, that's like … I mean, you don't have to be on your way to the hospital to dose every 5-15 minutes, but it's just an idea of how bad it really is.
Bri Hurlburt 22:47
Like you’re considering, “I need help.” Like this is miserable. You have to take something else, take something meaning something like a different medication or go to urgent care and get something. Like if medicine were available, would I take it? Yes. Then I'm going to do it more often.
Melissa Crenshaw 23:11
That’s right. Mm-hmm.
Bri Hurlburt 23:13
My kids have also learned my scale. They know now to tell me, except sometimes their numbers … And I want to say this too, because if you have little kids. Like one of mine said, “It's like a 7%.” He makes up his own scale. Or he makes up like 100% scale or whatever. So put it in context. You know your child. If the next time he says, “Well, it's like a .01,” you know it’s better. They can't accurately say a scale, but they're very used to ranking it and they have become so much better. I forgot to tell you this, Melissa. When he had an earache, he said, “It feels like somebody’s blasting music so loud into my ear they're trying to burst my eardrum.”
Melissa Crenshaw 24:07
Awwww.
Bri Hurlburt 24:09
But that was a really …
Melissa Crenshaw 24:11
That was so articulate. That was really good.
Bri Hurlburt 24:14
He just turned 6 and he thought to say there's somebody playing music, not somebody stabbing his ear. He knew it's like somebody's playing such loud music they're trying to burst my eardrum.
Melissa Crenshaw 24:27
Oh my goodness.
Bri Hurlburt 24:30
They'll get used to hearing your questions. Okay, this is what it is.
Melissa Crenshaw 24:36
I love it. You know what else I love is the Wong-Baker faces chart. For those of you watching on YouTube, I'm going to just share my screen and show you. You could print this out and ask your children to point to it
Bri Hurlburt 25:00
That's so smart. Why have I never done this?
Melissa Crenshaw 25:03
Because you kids are so articulate.
Bri Hurlburt 25:05
Well, now they are. I've had to work with their really fragmented information this whole time.
Melissa Crenshaw 25:12
This is a pain scale, but it doesn't have to be about pain. It can be, “How sick do you feel? How bad is the congestion?” Just have them point to what they feel like. You make a note of that, right? Maybe they point to the 6. You don't mark it. We don't want them to see what they rated it last time. You bring it again in 3 hours or … I like to re-rate the symptoms every 24 hours. You bring it to them again the next day and say, “Now where?” and if they're somewhere down here, a 2 or 4 or whatever, then you know you're on the right track. It's just an idea I got from the hospital. On the pediatric unit they had that on the whiteboard, the faces.
What else with acutes? Is there anything else you think we should touch on? Anything we missed?
How often to give remedies. Rate. You can't rush it. What to expect. Okay, well, I just barely touched on that but I want to make sure that's really clear. Every 24 hours, I reassess the situation. Whatever remedy you choose, you're probably going to stay on it for 24 hours, unless you're at that scale of 8-10, where you have to take it very often, then you're going to reassess your situation after about 4 or 5 doses and then decide.
Bri Hurlburt 26:54
I know the magic markers that we talk about sometimes aren't always for acutes, but I do think it's something to consider. You're not looking for you to give a remedy to stop a cough or to help the throat improve, and then they wake up and totally it's gone the next day, or they stop coughing. I know we've said that. But what you're going to look for then is the day before were they coughing all the time, or at least every 10 minutes? And now you're hearing it every hour. That's improvement. Or maybe their throat still hurts, but looks even better, or their demeanor is better. Just remember all those little things and rest in that. Don't give up if it's not gone in 24 hours. Look for improvement in 24 hours,
Melissa Crenshaw 27:53
Right. Yeah. So less severe, shorter in duration, less frequent occurrences. Yep. Good. That's really good information.
As a reminder, we can do an acute consult with you. Go to Make Appointment tab at melissacrenshaw.com. You can come and take a class to learn how to use these remedies. Cold, Cough, Flu or New/Old Viruses class. My Introduction to Homeopathy. My Mentorship Program is bigger. It's the biggest thing that I have and we actually focus on acutes.
I want to just explain that really quickly. The Mentorship Program is self paced. You go through it at your own pace, pre-recorded videos, but then there are 6 live calls with me. In those 6 live calls: call number 1 we focus on acute case taking, how to take a case, what to look for, examples of acutes, the process of healing, and we do a practice case. In meeting number 2, we specifically go over colds, coughs, and flu; the remedies for those; and then we practice a case. Live call number 3 is sore throats. Number 4 is headaches. 5 is sinusitis and 6 is GI disturbances. They are chock full of remedies.
Bri Hurlburt 29:30
That's where you have the boots on the ground practice in my opinion because you use real cases where it's complicated. It's not like, “Oh, my throat hurts. Use Belladonna and I feel better.” You know how you read sometimes, “Use this,” and it’s supposed to work in one dose or whatever. Or that's the only symptom.
In the real life world your kid probably, maybe they have a fever, maybe they're really congested and coughing. So you have multiple things. What's more important? Is there a remedy that covers all of them? Could you use two remedies? What potency? How often? You talk through all those things and it puts a little bit of real life scenarios in that. And I think it's really helpful.
Melissa Crenshaw 30:21
Yeah, absolutely. Good. Awesome. Well, I think we covered acutes pretty well. I hope this is helpful. You need to get a kit. Ask for help when you need it. Take a class. Know your remedies. Keep good notes. And let us know if you need help. And we'll see you next time. Thanks for being here.