Homeopathy is an alternative medicine that uses diluted natural substances to enhance the body's ability to heal itself. This episode of The Goodnight Show delves deeper into the theory behind The Goodnight Co's best-selling product, our Deep Sleep Drops. On this episode, Shea is joined by Jane Lindsay, a registered Homeopath and member of the Australian Homeopathic Association, to tell us more about it and how it works it's magic for our sleep, and many other health concerns.
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Keen to learn from Jane but haven't had the chance to listen? Read the interview below!
Shea: Hello and welcome to The Goodnight Show. I'm really excited for today's episode as we dive into a topic I've been wanting to discuss for a while, and that is Homoeopathy. If you have found us through The Goodnight Co. You would be very familiar with our best selling Homeopathic Deep Sleep Drops. But you may not know what Homoeopathy actually is. It is an alternative medicine that uses diluted natural substances to enhance the body's ability to heal itself. Jane Lindsay, a registered homoeopath and member of the Australian Homeopathic Association, joins us today to tell us more about it and how it works its magic for our sleep and many other health concerns. Hello and welcome everyone. I am so excited about this podcast today because it is a topic that I absolutely love. I'm a big believer in Homoeopathy, and at The Goodnight Co one of our biggest selling products are our Deep Sleep Drops. And today I welcome Jane. So Jane Lindsay is a Homeopathic clinic based here in Brisbane. And so, Jane, I'd love to welcome you. And the question I like to ask all guests is, how did you sleep last night?
Jane: Shea I slept exceptionally well. We've just had four days on North Island. And so I went to sleep back here in Brisbane, still hearing the sound of the waves and the gentle breeze and some rain. And that is just like a lullaby soothing you to sleep. It's as if it's been imprinted in my head, and I hope it will last for several months yet. But yes, I always sleep well. We have good sleep practises in our homes.
Shea: So you know what you're doing to get a beautiful night's sleep - how wonderful. Well, Jane, why we've got you here today is because, as I mentioned earlier, our Sleep Drops and our range of Homeopathic formulas are really working so well with a lot of our customers here. And I'd love you to explain a little bit about who you are, how you got into homoeopathy and what you do so that we can kind of delve a bit deeper into. You know, sometimes I feel that this topic can be a little bit controversial, as I think you can appreciate. So I'd love to break it down for people to understand a bit more about it.
Jane: So yes, quite correct. I'm a homoeopath and an integrated health professional over the last 20-25 years, as well as training as a classical Homeopath initially in the UK and then with my post grad studies in Calcutta, where I worked in slum clinics and in hospitals alongside regular medical personnel who were also Homeopaths. So at a very early stage, I had incredible insight into the power, the possibility and the potential of our Homeopathic medicines. Um, here in Brisbane, Yes, I'm at the Bardon Counselling and Natural Therapy Centre, and I practised from my home clinic, and I also work with a beautiful range of flower essences called the Living Tree Orchid essences and I've incorporated and integrated herbal medicines because sometimes that can be very useful as well. I came to Homeopathic medicine, really, one says by chance. But I think serendipity is never by chance. There's always something greater behind it. My first child was born with beautifully clear skin, but by the time he was six months old, he was covered from head to foot in eczema with no history of skin disease in the family, and this was a complete puzzle to me, I've been a businesswoman in corporate life in London. There was always a solution to everything. But my GP could only offer me steroids, which I knew within the skin or would ultimately not necessarily clear the issue. We saw a Homeopath. I was very sceptical, and after an hour and a half, she gave me three or four little pills and told me to come back next week. And I looked at her incredulously and at the pills, and I said, 'Are you joking?'. I've told you my life, history and that of my child and you give me three pills. This is ridiculous.
And she very calmly reiterated the principles of Homoeopathy and that I should come back the next week and I did. And low and behold, there had been some initial significant changes. It did take nearly three months to clear completely, and I was just amazed and curious and like Alice in Wonderland, that led me down this sort of rabbit hole of what is homeopathy. How does this work? And Homoeopathy was subsequently able to help me with some personal issues, which was also interesting. And I went on to have a second child perfectly naturally at home, with my husband delivering her. But I think Homoeopathy took away some of the phrase post traumatic stress disorder. I've had a very, very complicated first birth and was hospitalised for several weeks as a consequence of blood loss and things. So it restored my faith in the body's ability to right itself, to come back to homeostasis at a physical, mental and emotional level. And those are the three sort of principles on which we work with Homeopathic medicine. So that's a little bit about how I came to her neuropathy. And when we moved from the Yorkshire in the north of England, I had the opportunity to train at the Welsh School of Homoeopathy and come out and share, which was an amazing four or five year journey, during which time I also was instrumental in setting up mama anxious group of friends of Chernobyl's Children, together with a colleague. And that was a five year health improvement project for Children. The same group of 20 Children would come each year from Belarus with various ailments, most of them second generation post Chernobyl, but from very poor, humble homes with very difficult health.
And our group was the only group in the UK which incorporated Homeopathic medicine. And we saw some phenomenal results in the health, the resilience, physically and emotionally of those Children as they grew up. And our first young man, Vanya, is now 28 years of age, married with three Children, still not speaking great English, whereas most if you did, um but yeah, it's just lovely and very satisfying to see families and Children grow and develop in the best healthiest, healthiest way.
Shea: And so, for people that don't really know what Homoeopathy is, maybe you can, you shared a beautiful story with me before we pressed record around the history of of really, where Homoeopathy started and then what that journey has been to here. So maybe maybe sharing that information will really help people understand the deep cultural background of where it came from.
Jane: Yes, I'd love to share that with you. I think Medicine was founded by a gentleman called Samuel Hahnemann over 250 years ago. He was born in in Mason, which is, uh, known for its pottery in Germany. And he went to university and studied chemistry and physics. He was also a linguist, a very bright, educated man from a very humble family. Um, and he practised as a physician, possibly eight or nine years, but gradually became fairly disillusioned because in those days, if you can imagine, they had only highly toxic substances such as mercury to cure syphilis and arsenic, which, if the dose was wrong, would kill you. And certainly Mercury. We know the phrase mad as a hatter. It does send you send you mad. Basically, he gave up his practise. He performed operations without anaesthetic. There was no anti septic or antibiotics in those days, and he started using his linguistic skills to translate various things, including its recorded a herbal pharma copia, in which he came across a plant called Cinchona and being a physicist, insist he decided to take some of the bark and the twigs and leaf and grind it all up in a pestle and mortar. And he said it. We don't know why, but he was always experimenting, and he developed the symptoms of malaria, hot and cold fevers and body wriggles. And he figured, if I in myself, a well person can bring on these symptoms of a tropical disease such as malaria, perhaps in an unwell person with such symptoms, this may be curious, Chief, and so, lo and behold, he did. He experimented on his friends and colleagues coming back from Tropical India and other far flung places of the world. And he found that, yes, some did get better, but some got violently worse and then better, and some got a little bit worse and better.
So he decided to dilute the substance in water and circus it to shake it vigorously. He felt that by doing that, the medicine would be stronger in its action, even though it was more diluted. So from that we get the two principles the founding principles of homeopathy like curing like, and the greater the dilution was stronger than medicine. The latter took me nine months to accept and argue and debate in college. How on earth can something that's so diluted really stronger? This is ridiculous, I said, however, the light curing like if, for example, I have somebody come into my clinic who has red eyes, runny nose, Uh, maybe hay fever or allergic rhinitis. The remedy we might give is allium cepa, which is taken from a red onions. And if we were sat together and I was to cut an onion right now in front of us, what would happen?
Shea: Runny eyes.
Jane: As if you've got a cold. So that which you know well, person can bring on symptoms in an unwell person has the potential possibility to bring about homeostasis and balance. And that's the light curing like principal and another one which I could raise. Now I guess we're going to come on to talk specifically about sleep later. But do you do you drink coffee Shea?
Shea: I do not drink coffee. I am one of the few people on this planet that don't drink coffee.
Jane: Good for you. But why do some people drink coffee? To keep awake, to stimulate. Um, and some people just like the taste and the smell. And I must admit, I like their own with the smell. But I'm not a great coffee drinker, although I have been known to drink coffee occasion, but never after two o'clock in the afternoon, because we know what what that will do. Coffee. Coffee is a stimulant. It is used as a stimulant. But guess what? In Homeopathic potency it does. It's been calm, the over excited child on Christmas Eve waiting for Father Christmas.
Um, and if we're over excited and we can't sleep for fear is one of the more what we call acute remedies that has the possibility of helping the mind to switch off and for us to drop into the parasympathetic and get a really, really good night's sleep. So the second principle this greater the dilution, the stronger the medicine. This is perhaps the most controversial area, and in more recent days and years, we've actually now got substantial evidence that shows through quantum studies that when we dilute something in water and circus. I shake vigorously. Something in terms of information gets transferred from the original substance in the water. And we know that because we can see molecular structural changes in that water from the substance.
So, yeah, The greater the dilution, the stronger. The medicine also means that things like mercury can be used in Homeopathic form. And indeed, Mercury is a very good remedy for certain throat conditions and certain other issues. Arsenic to is a fantastic remedy. There was a seven year long longitudinal study done by Dr David Spence. It was David Spence at the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital in the UK about 15 years ago now, and one of his elderly patients was interviewed and the headline in the newspaper over there was Dr Thank you. Keep giving me the arsenic. She'd had long term bronchial issues. Um, and it was a remedy that does have an affinity at a constitutional level for certain breathing disorders and asthma. But she was also a very anxious woman, anxious about her health, anxious about when she went to bed, she'd be thinking, Have I not the door? Did I turn the iron off? Have I got the cat out? Is the dog in its bed and arsenic? Um, album has all this constant mind chatter, and so, at a very deep constitutional level, has sleep improved as well as her breathing as the consequence of taking that remedy. But in the short term, she might have been given a remedy to help sleep with different.
Shea: And in your practise, are you able to share any examples that you've had with your patients around? You know, using homoeopathy to help cure or improve sleep problems? Insomnia, Um, and you know, as you and I know that it's really stress and anxiety plays such a big role in this. So around all of this, is there a case that you can share with us?
Jane: There are hundreds of cases I see patients day in, day out with stress related insomnia and stress related and anxiety issues. Be that you know, teenagers with exams or, in this last 18 months, not being able to attend school mothers trying to work from home and educate Children of different age groups. Uh, the stress of many being in very small, confined spaces. And really, it has been quite intolerable for many, um, so specific cases. There really are a lot in each case. I guess what would be useful is for me to explain a little bit about constitutional treatment and acute treatment and how and how Homoeopathy works. It works not just at the physical level, but the mental and emotional level. So it's yes, it's a three in one. It looks the totality of the individual presenting. So I do run a Children's clinic and I see many cases of extra. Every child that comes may have excellent exactly the same places, the common areas of the arms behind the knees, under the armpits, well, sort of top of the skin and face, Um, but each child coming in to see me might be entirely different. Some will be very shy and hide between their mother's legs or carrier bags. or whatever. They're coming with the cram. Others will leap into my clinic room, start taking the toys out, the books off the shelves, jumping up and down on the sofa. Um, every child is different in the way they present, but also in their likes and dislikes for food, the quantity of sleep that they need their thirst, how they sleep, whether they sleep on their back, their side, their tummy, all these things we take into account. So that's why an initial consultation can take an hour and a half or two because we ask a lot of questions.
And there's a lot of information we need to to actually identify the appropriate remedy at that moment in time for that individual. Neuropathy, at its best, is deeply individualist and deeply constitutional. And that is what usually gets the most, um, successful and profound response in terms of long term chronic sleep issues, for example, in the meantime, we might give something acutely, like a flower essence or herb. Well, one of the many, many, um, acute remedies for for sleeplessness, including the coffee that we mentioned passive flora. We have scrutiny area your own sleep drops have a combination of things, which is which is beautiful, because that covers many possibilities and will work for a lot of the population. Um, but I guess in clinic we always look for the individual remedy. Yeah, and to be as precise as we possibly can.
Shea: And this is the same with sleep. And this is a common thing that we talked to people about our community is that one size doesn't fit all. And your it is so personalised. And this is something that, you know, you and I touched on this before, but you need to know you and your body and your emotional state to know what you need. And your doctor is there as a guide. And I fully encourage, you know, seeking, you know, having your practitioners and to help you. But really, you know what you need. Um, And if you can tune into that more and more, you can find the right solutions. And that is then maybe going and having a consultation with you, um, to uncover that at a deeper level.
Jane: Absolutely. And really examining our habits and our routines. And I know I will show you. You've talked about sleep hygiene and no technology, uh, in the bedroom and winding down at least an hour before bed, so that when you actually get into the bedroom, it's a sacred space, and it's a place of peace and tranquillity, not where there's music blaring or televisions or anything like that. And it's a sanctuary for sleep and the use of flower essences, plus essential oils. We use a lot of lavender, and certainly when my Children were little, I used to massage with Cameron and things. So it's about developing that individualised routine that works for you. Some people find a deep, long hot Basque were predicted to have a very wet winter, so we can probably justify using water for bathing. Whereas magnesium salts, we know magnesium and muscle relaxant, and it helps the mind switch off. It helps bring the body into rest. So we help people to explore the broader perspective of their health as well. If they wish to share that.
Shea: So there are some people who may feel that homoeopathy could be placebo. What are your thoughts around this? And if you have any information you can share on that topic?
Jane: Well, Placebo is really, really interesting. Really interesting subject because it's used in medical and scientific circles as well. They've actually in America. They did some operations where they prepped. Everyone gave the anaesthetic open knees up for new surgery, and some of them had their knees scraped out and sorted and others didn't. They were just stitched back up, Um, and the ones that have the placebo operation actually felt better than those who didn't right.
And there's a lot of study now into the neurological pathways to the brain and the impact of the suggestion of placebo or non placebo. Um, so placebo has a role both in what we call Western medicine and pharmaceutical, and also within whom you. Obviously I cannot deny that. But it cannot be accounted for when we're giving herds of cattle who have mastitis, Homeopathic remedies and their mastitis clears up quicker than with antibiotics. And there are studies in the UK to demonstrate that, likewise with litters of pigs, um, there's all kinds of studies. I think there was. Yes, there's an experiment with tadpoles on the thyroid gland, and that also demonstrates significant changes from being given the Homeopathic remedies and also babies. They have no concept of placebo. Uh, an infant, um, is as pure as as they come. They do not know that word. And yet I will have people come to my workshops. We've run homeopathy of the home for first aid cost called general ailments and first aid workshops. Well, outside, outside covid, we do. And you know, there was one mother who came to the baby that being constipated for 10 days. And whilst we were doing the intros, I gave the baby a remedy. Uh, we repeated it 10 minutes later, and suddenly the room was full of the pungent smell of of, of a rather large nappy. Um, and that's fine. And but we continued the remedy for a few days to make sure that the personal take action of the infant was re established. So when the body becomes bound up like that, we need to develop the, um we need to repeat the remedy for a little bit to get that ball moving regularly. Yeah.
Shea: Yeah. So maybe maybe some of these studies and things, um, you know that people can refer to because, you know, we talk about in medicine. Um, it's talked about all the time around the placebo, um, in the testing phase is and things like that. So it's really no different.
Jane: Precisely. And we do have random controlled trials which are double blind placebo trials, but also demonstrate the efficacy of homeopathy for specific conditions. And I can possibly send a couple of those to do with menopause. And, yeah, there's many trials that that I could send, But I'll try and pick a few that might be meaningful to your listeners.
Shea: That would be fantastic. And, you know, the other thing is another sort of topic that often gets talked about the difference why you might use Homeopathy versus sleeping pills. You know, conventional sleeping pills.
Jane: The reasons for me are fairly obvious that you're not waking up in the morning feeling you can't get out of bed. And you know you can't even wake up because the sleeping pills that sometimes can be prescribed can make you feel horrible for days.
Yes, I mean, there there is a place, obviously, for pharmaceutical medications and for inducing sleep where necessary. The problem with a lot of routine prescription sleeping pills is that they are highly addictive. Um, and that is an issue. And yes, you're right. They leave you dizzy, drowsy, sometimes unable to operate machinery. And if that's your work, or you've got to drive, drive your kids to school. That's not great, either. But there's increasing evidence also linking the use of them on a regular routine basis to depression and cognitive dysfunctions generally. So that would be another reason to use them in an emergency, but not on a routine regular basis.
Shea: Yeah, and that's that's going and seeking your medical practitioner getting that advice from them. And if there's a major crisis or trauma that's going on in your life, and you need that for that period of time. But as you say to not hopefully rely on it from a long term perspective, I guess the nice thing about using sleep drops, our sleep drops and anything that you would prescribe is that that's the benefit of using Homoeopathy is that there are no um, contraindications. I guess when it comes to using other medications as well.
Jane: Absolutely, right. There's no side effects. They don't leave your drowsy or drugs. They're not addictive. They're perfectly safe for babies, infants, animals, animals, elderly. And they work alongside any conventional medicine that might be being taken.
Shea: And just on that point. So the recommended usage for Homoeopathy does it become more effective if you're using it regularly, or, um, as we've just sort of talked about, it doesn't really matter?
Jane: I think I touched on chronic and acute describing. So in acute illnesses, anything that comes, it's usually fairly violent in its nature, whether that's a fever or some sleep issues, and it should be gone within four or five days. If it's not, if it slips into 7, 10 days, weeks, months, it's then a chronic condition. So in an acute sense, we would only prescribe for up to five or seven days. But in a chronic case of long term insomnia, we may well have to give remedy over several months or years. It would just depend, and the dozing and the potency of the remedy will depend on the individual. So some people with chronic insomnia. I may give something to take every day, Um, and something additional at night. Others they may be on a weekly dose of the remedy and then an acute remedy for a period of time to support the main remedy. So remember these kind of coming families, and there are certain remedies that worked really well together. But usually we will give the best indicated deeply acting constitutional remedy to to address the totality of the symptoms. And as you've identified a lot of people with sleep issues, it is because of stress and anxiety and concern. And yes, we know through this pandemic epidemic situation, the amount of stress has risen hugely amongst individuals, families and right across the board and the study that we did the first Australian study into Homeopathic medicine why people come for Homoeopathy. This was done in 2000 and 19 by the Orion Project and identified that. Actually, about 33% of people seeking a homoeopath do so for stress and anxiety and mental health issues. So so that's interesting in terms of our profile and what homoeopathy is particularly useful for.
Shea: Yes. Lovely. Well, thank you so much for all of your wisdom today, Jane. It has been absolutely fantastic, and I think really just shedding that light on how people can use homoeopathy. And we're not here to suggest that you don't need to use the traditional medicine that you might still want to use, but this is a great thing to help support what you are doing.
