VFNW Spring2014 Transcript Lesson81

By Donna Powers RCSHom, CCH, RSHom (NA)

VACCINE FREE: Now What?

CHICKEN POX & SHINGLESCall #8 Transcript

DONNA POWERS, RCSHom, CCH, RSHom(NA)Homeopathic Healing Art Practitioner

Donna Powers: Welcome to the Vaccine Free: Now What? 12-week teleseminar course. This is class eight, where we will continue talking about the infectious childhood illnesses. And these illnesses are the ones where conventional vaccines are used as prevention in childhood, school-aged children, teens, adults and now, when we are talking about shingles or herpes zoster, into our senior population as well. Today's illness being discussed is chickenpox, also known as varicella and shingles, which is known more formally as herpes zoster.

DP: So this is an opportunity right now. Are there any questions from any of the previous seven weeks on any of the illnesses, homeopathic remedies? Anything that you've been wanting to ask? Okay. I don't see any hands up. So I'm going to continue with the material today.

DP: So chickenpox. It's from the family of viruses. So this is a virus, not a bacteria, and your bacterial illnesses are your diptheria, your tetanus, and your pertussis; your whooping cough. And then the viruses are your measles, mumps, rubella, and now chickenpox and shingles.

DP: Okay. So continuing on with the What is chickenpox? So, it's from the herpesviridae family. And there are the ones, your HSV, so your herpes virus one which are fever blisters or cold sores and these are the ones you will get under stress, sometimes sun blisters we think of them as. And then the HSV-2 is the genital herpes and it's sexually transmitted. And so in that same family of herpes viruses, you have chickenpox and shingles, so the varicella. Also included in this family of viruses is the Epstein-Barr virus or mononucleosis. In the UK, this is called glandular fever.

DP: Normally, when you have the infectious illnesses like measles, mumps, rubella, your body and their viruses and the viruses are dumping the toxins into the bloodstream. And so the body's immune system is creating fever, and it's creating discharges to remove the viral toxins out of it.

DP: So with this particular virus, this chickenpox virus, and if you think about even fever blisters or cold sores, and even genital herpes, they keep recurring sometimes. And what the body does with the chickenpox virus is, to store it safely within the body and in the spinal column. Later on, under stress, sometimes what happens is it's the same herpes virus then gets expressed as shingles. So there's a very close relationship between chickenpox and the herpes virus, chickenpox and the herpes zoster virus.

DP: Now, this is one of those TORCH. Remember we talked about the TORCH? These are the viruses that can cross the placental barrier. So again, this is some of the information that the medical system will promote to encourage women, mothers, to

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vaccinate is that chickenpox, this herpes virus, can cross the placenta and you can get things like neonatal herpes. It's a transplacental, so across the placenta viral transfer. And like measles, there can be congenital defects and sometimes, intrauterine death. And the neonate can also get the illness during delivery if the mother is actually having a genital infection. So this is more with the genital herpes.

DP: And the herpes virus... This particular family, they are held at bay within the body by the cell-mediated immune response system. So, again, just a little bit different than how some of the other viruses are dealt with in the body, and then you have long-term immunity.

DP: So, the virus, the chickenpox virus is what's called a latent virus, and it's just simply hidden in the sensory ganglions. So, when you see those pictures of the spine, they have the nerve cells coming out from the spine, and this is where they're stored. And when we talk about shingles, we'll talk about why the rash is the particular way that it is, and it's because it is hidden inside the spinal column in these particular nerve cells.

DP: So, I'm going to talk a little bit about the signs and symptoms of chickenpox, the disease. Now, my boys actually had chickenpox even though they were vaccinated for DPT, polio, and MMR. The chickenpox vaccine was not introduced at this point. So, it came a little bit later in the whole history of vaccinations. The one that came next that I think I only vaccinated one of them for was the Haemophilus influenzae B, and we'll be talking about that next week. So, I remember my boys having this, and I remember the mother wisdom that had said to me, "Your firstborn probably won't have it so bad, and the second one will have it quite badly."

DP: And in fact, that was true. And fortunately, I happened to be staying with my mother and father. We were there on a family holiday. It was over Christmas time. And I had dealt with the chickenpox with my oldest first in Calgary, and while we were away, my second son, my younger son who's three years younger, broke out with it. So, it was almost to the day where they tell you where there's infectious, that whole period where you can be susceptible to it. So, in fact, they were almost clinically exactly what is described in the book.

DP: So, I'll just tell you the personal story with them. Both of them spiked very high fevers in the middle of the night. And at that time I didn't know any better, so I had used children's cherry-flavoured Tylenol to suppress the fever, but it turned out that they both got the spots. The first on not as bad, and the second one, he really had a lot of spots. Now, at that time, I didn't know about homeopathy, so, and I'm sharing that simply as a way to say to you that despite having chickenpox, despite me using the








Tylenol, they recovered from that. So, the advantage that you folks have now is that you know about letting the fever run its course, and you also know how to use homeopathic remedies to help support healing when they do get an infectious illness like chickenpox.

DP: So, again, Hilary Butler is like the go-to woman for any information on infectious childhood illnesses, and true also with the chickenpox. And you can find her articles on the whale.to website, and just put in chicken But... Chicken Butler... Chickenpox Butler and you'll be able to find all the articles she has written on that.

DP: One of the very important things that I learned from her articles was the whole purpose of fever, or one of the purposes of fever, especially in an infectious illness like chickenpox. When the fever is produced, again with just a bit of a review, two things happen. One is that the fever creates an environment that is too warm for the virus or bacteria to reproduce or replicate itself. And the other thing a fever does is call into action a cascade of responses that normally are just very quiet in the body. But when a fever is present, then these whole systems are triggered into a response.

DP: One of them, with the fever in chickenpox, is that when the fever breaks, it lays down on the outer skin on antibiotic that will prevent any infectious staphylococcus aureus or streptococcus. And these bacteria are on the skin normally, any time. And what's important about this is that one of the complications that is promoted as a reason for getting the chickenpox varicella vaccine with the MMR or separately is that one of the complications is staph infections. So, the children scratch and scratch and scratch and then they get a staph infection. And then it can go septic in the blood and then you have a very serious complication.

DP: And if there's this kind of bacterial infection in the blood, what you are then, the potential for is bacterial meningitis because it's in the blood stream, then it will potentially cross the blood brain barrier and then you have your meningitis and encephalitis. But, if you allow the fever, and the fever breaks, the sweat comes out, the skin is covered, so always it's important to wash the bed clothes, wash the night clothes, wash the bedding, but don't wash your child until they are starting to get past their itchy spots... Is what we'll call them. Because what's laid down on there is an antibiotic on the skin that will prevent these secondary skin infections.

DP: So, at the beginning, it's just going to look like flu symptoms, runny-nose, runny-eyes, possibly a little bit achy. And once the fever breaks, you'll start to see these rash of spots, and they'll look like blisters and these are very contagious. Some kids will have a fever, some abdominal pain, possibly sore throat, headache, or a vague sick feeling a day or two before the rash appears. The fevers can range between 100 to 102








degrees Fahrenheit or in Celsius here in Canada, it would be 37.7 to 38.8 degrees centigrade. My children's fever before they broke out in spots was a bit higher than that, it was about 39 degrees which seemed high to me because I didn't know then what I know now.

DP: The children can be contagious from about two days before the rash appears and last until all the blisters are covered over. So there's quite a period of time when children are contagious, so similar to measles where we're having this outbreak here in Calgary, children are being quarantined or asked to stay at home for three weeks at a time. So it would be similar for chickenpox as well. So again, sometimes parents hear about chickenpox, and so they get together and have a chickenpox Party. Ironically, sometimes some parents can take their children four or five times, they never get chickenpox, and part of that is, that they're just not susceptible at that particular time.

DP: Again, allowing for natural illnesses, your children have an experience of an infectious disease when their body seems to meet that experience of it. When we vaccinate, it's an imposed infectious illness that is being triggered through the skin.

DP: Now this particular piece of information said they should be kept out of school until all the blisters have dried, usually, about a week, but sometimes that's longer. And siblings will start to show symptoms two weeks after the first child. That was exactly what happened in my situation with my boys.

DP: So people who haven't had chickenpox can also catch chickenpox from some with shingles. But they can't catch shingles itself. That's because Shingles can only develop from a reactivation of the zoster virus in someone who's previously had chickenpox. Sometimes with the introduction of this herpes zoster or shingles vaccine in the elderly population there is some shedding of virus. There's some... And plus children are getting shingles at a much earlier age, and that's been since the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine.

DP: Again, the body in its wisdom is putting this virus in a latent state. And the vaccine for chickenpox is not allowing for this cell-mediated immunity to be able to store it. So it's possible they will be coming out with another kind of chickenpox vaccine to address that particular issue of whether it's at the TH1 or TH2 immune system response.

DP: So I wanted to let you know... Also, Dr. Dorothy Shepherd, Homeopathy and Epidemic Diseases, she was practising medicine in emergency wards in the UK, in England in the 1960s. I have not checked my historical documents. But, in her book, Homeopathy and Epidemic Diseases, she talks about the importance of being able to








physically diagnose the physical signs or symptoms of chickenpox as opposed to smallpox. Now, we just don't see smallpox here in North America anymore. There are occasionally, outbreaks of smallpox in developing countries.

DP: I wanted to give you this information if, for no other reason, so that you know the physical signs and symptoms of chickenpox. But the whole history of vaccinations is based itself on the infectious disease called smallpox. The single best book I can recommend for you is by Jennifer Craig, PhD, so Dr. Jennifer Craig, and it's called Jabs, Jenner and Juggernauts. Jennifer Craig was in her working lifetime, paid working lifetime, a nurse. And when she retired, she started investigating and looking into the history of vaccination. And what she found really amazed her. So in reading that book you will learn about smallpox and you will learn about the history of vaccinations and what the whole science has been based on, and it's quite remarkable.

DP: It's a very good read. It's a delightful read actually. It's very easy. It's a small book and she's used some artistic methods of giving you the information, for instance, setting it up like a play with characters. So Jabs, Jenner and Juggernauts, the Jenner being the person who really started the whole idea of vaccination. So what Dr. Shepherd is saying is that severe chickenpox has often been mistaken for smallpox and vice versa. An error of judgement, not devoid of serious consequences. So smallpox is a much more serious infectious illness than chickenpox, and in fact, chickenpox, even when you read the Merck manual or anything online...

DP: So, anything you read in the Merck manual or anything on infectious diseases and illnesses is that it's a very mild, mild illness. And we'll go into some of the reasons why it was so heavily promoted as a vaccine. So what you're wanting to look for with the chickenpox? So you're going to have to see the first, and you're going to want to help support the body to either maintain the fever or to use your homeopathic remedies in the fever, individualize it as much as you can.

DP: So again, you're going to think of aconite belladonna, possibly Ferrum Phos and you're going to allow the fever. And when the fever breaks, you will have the perspiration, the sweat and contained within the sweat is the antibiotics that will be left on the skin. So just leave that on, and then what will happen is, the eruption will be on the trunk, most sickly on the chest and back. Then it will spread to the shoulders, upper arms, and it will be more on that part of the body that on the wrists and hands. And it will be more on the thighs than on the legs, feet and soles.

DP: So just getting back to where the eruptions will appear, mostly on the chest and back. It can spread to the face and arms, but it's more on the body than on the face and more on the shoulders and upper arms than on the lower part of the arms, the








wrists and hands, and it's more on the thighs. So it's quite central to the body and what Dr. Shepherd tells us is that smallpox, on the other hand, is more on the face.

DP: So if you even Google smallpox, when you find these pictures, they look quite gross, actually, and you'll see the smallpox more on the face and scalp than on the body, and there'll be more on the wrists and palms and forearms, and more on the feet. So that's just a little differential for you. So that when you maybe do need to go to emergency with your child, maybe there's a risk of some other kind of infection with the chickenpox. You'll be really confident knowing that you know the signs and symptoms for chickenpox.

DP: Now, the other thing that happens, and I watched this with my boys, there's fresh crops of spots appear every two days, and they are either just before or with a rise of temperature. So it's like you got this continuous series of spots and blisters that will be very itchy. They'll scab over and then, gosh, two days later, you have a whole other crop of them. And the temperature, the fever may be before or happen during these news stages, these new blisters. They're are also called vesicles, and they look like drops of water. They just lie on the surface of the skin. And they can vary in size. They can be, some of them are bigger, some of them are smaller.

DP: What gets very painful for children is when they start to be in the mouth and the ears, or if you've got little girls, in the vaginal opening. Or sometimes the little boys, it can end up on these warm parts as well, so around their scrotum, testicles and then it can be very bad, very painful. So you can have dried up crusts and scabs at the same time that you've got eruptions coming out at the same time that you have these watery ones that are starting to discharge. In smallpox, there are going to be pox eruptions that are there all at once, all at the same time.

DP: And there's none of this continuous eruptions. In chickenpox, the spots are soft to the touch and so you'll see these all at the same time. The rash is very, very itchy and irritating. If you have all of those pictures, then you know for sure your child has chickenpox. Now, when I was a parent, the children every once in a while would have these fevers and they might be sort of rashy and I would think, "Oh maybe they got chickenpox. Maybe this is chickenpox that they've finally got."

DP: And in fact, when they finally had chickenpox, it was really chickenpox. So remember there's a lot of what we call the "eruptive fever illnesses." So Rubella might look that. It might just look like a slight fever, a slight rash and you might think, "Oh maybe they had chickenpox." Chances are good they've either had German measles or Rubella or they may have had hand, foot and mouth disease. Again, these are fevers with the eruptions that come after.








DP: So we'll talk a little bit about the conventional or common sense treatments. Oatmeal baths. In my day we used something called calamine lotion. It was this pink lotion and my mom slathered it on us when we had a lot of mosquito bites. Those were the days when they didn't fog. And you just spent the summer, you either had sunburn, mosquito bites or you had both at the same time. And so that we weren't scratching and itching on a sunburned skin, we were slathered in this calamine lotion. I wouldn't recommend it these days, again partly because you might possibly be suppressing the expression of the discharge of the body.

DP: Common sense, Cold, soft bland food. Chickenpox can be in the mouth. And if you have babies who have chickenpox or even kids, toddlers, you might want to put mittens on them and that just prevents the child from scratching in their sleep. And this is where the potential for a secondary bacterial infection is the concern. But if you've allowed the fever, then you likely have this layer of antibiotic on the skin that will help prevent that secondary bacterial infection as well.

DP: So the recommendation is, if the fever lasts more than four days or goes above 102 Fahrenheit or 38.8 centigrade to call the doctor. Here in Calgary, in Alberta we have something called The Health Link. And chances are very, very good if you go through the symptoms and what the picture is, they'll just tell you to keep your child at home anyway. And at four days of a high fever, yeah, probably going to be some cause for concern, so watch for your other signs and symptoms of possible meningitis or encephalitis.

DP: And that is the head starting to tip back or painful if the chin is pulled down toward the chest. So, severe cough or trouble breathing. My short way of saying all of this, anything with blood, breathing, bones and breath, breathing you're on your way to the hospital, whether you're sure it's chickenpox or not. You really need to be on the way to the hospital. And keep track of your child's fever, what you've done, what you've given homeopathically, how things have progressed and that's good information for the doctors and nurses who will be seeing you in the emerge.

DP: Severe headaches, again, this is an indication of possible brain inflammation and swelling which will come with meningitis or encephalitis. Unusually drowsy or trouble waking up, trouble looking at bright lights, any kind of difficulty walking or if they seem confused, very ill or vomiting, or a stiff neck, again you will recognize from all the previous classes that what you might possibly be looking at are encephalitis or meningitis.

DP: So I am going to talk just briefly about some of the complications that are extremely rare in normal, healthy children, but it's good to know what might be








possible. Again, Hilary Butler is the go-to person on chickenpox, as she is with many of the infectious illnesses where you are weighing potential benefits and risks with vaccine and with the illness.

DP: So some of the complications, possibly pneumonia and the usual cause in adults who get chickenpox is the staph aureus. So again, staph and strep are on our skin. We've learned how they are in our nose, throat, in our mouth. They are there populating and they are actually feeding on the toxins that our cells are producing. And it's only when we're in a stressful situation where there's an overload of toxins in the bloodstream that these staph and strep bacteria start to reproduce and in numbers that the immune system can't keep up with. So that's when we start to develop these fevers.

DP: So just know that pneumonia is a possible complication, bacterial super infection, which is what we're talking about with the infection on the skin with the strep and staph. They are now having to use with strep and staph infections, third-generation cephalosporin antibiotics, which are very quickly becoming... These virus and bacteria are quickly becoming antibiotic resistant, even to the newest antibiotics. So this is where you get the MRSA, the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or the necrotizing fasciitis. So this is when you get sepsis in the blood, and the antibiotics are not helping.

DP: You would see these kinds of things, again, in children and/or adults whose immune systems are really compromised. The other problem is Reye's syndrome and that's associated with the use of aspirin to control fever and pain. That was more in my mother's day, so we're talking about the 1960s and, in fact, we were given baby aspirin. We did not have the complication of Reye's Syndrome, so there you go. We do the best we can with what we have and that's what my mom did in her day.

DP: Another possible complication is otitis media or ear infections. Now, the extremely rare complications are anything "itis" would be an inflammation. So the necrotizing fasciitis, this is the necrotizing methicillin-resistant strep or staph infection. Guillain-Barre syndrome, which you can also get from a vaccine, this is where the central nervous system is affected, and there's weakness and numbness post-influenza, post-chickenpox, post any viral illness is a possibility. And Guillain-Barre is also post-vaccination complication.

DP: The inflammation, because it ends up in the blood, can affect the heart, can affect the eyes, and septic arthritis is another complication. Any time you hear septic this means that there's a blood poisoning or abscesses, kidney problems and on it goes. So, I tell you those just so you know the likelihood of it is very remote that it would ever








develop into that.

DP: So, from Neil Miller, remember I was going to mention to you why the chickenpox vaccine was introduced. And it's a reality, in this day and age with my son and daughter-in-law, they both work full-time. The whole economic climate and buying a house is such that they need both incomes. So often when a child is sick with these kind of infectious childhood illnesses, there is an economic consideration. For both my kids, they have benefit plans at their work where they can take time off for a sick child and also when they are sick. This isn't true for everybody and not everybody comes from a two-parent family.

DP: In our situation, my husband and I are both self-employed, so we all take turns. So we have a setup where our granddaughter can be sick with an infectious illness if needed. So something I would probably recommend is start developing your communities of vaccine-free parents, so that if you're choosing to have your child have an experience of an infectious illness like chickenpox and you are a full-time working parent who cannot take time off work, maybe you will have a friend or neighbour who can step in and help you with that or another family member.

DP: So from Neil Miller the chickenpox vaccine was introduced in 1995 and called VARIVAX. It was very quickly added to the list of mandatory shots in several states in the US, And the vaccine he quotes, "is predicted to save $5.40 for every dollar spent on a vaccination program when the indirect costs of missed work and school time are factored in." In other words, the vaccine was not being promoted as essential, but rather as cost-effective because mums and dads would no longer have to stay home, an average of one day to care for their sick children.

DP: So Hilary Butler couldn't leave that alone. That's the kind of person she is. Got to love her. So she actually sat down and did the math for a treatment for chickenpox and the potential costs. So whenever I'm talking about chickenpox, also remember we can be talking about shingles as well because they are so inter-related. So because chickenpox is a virus, vitamins A and C are the treatment of choice and just check on our Facebook for the Vaccine-Free, Now What? participants, and there's been some really good posts on vitamin A, D, fermented cod liver oil and product names, and vitamin C.

DP: And just a standard is vitamin C until the stool is loose if you don't want to follow... It's just an easy rule of thumb to go by even for children. So the dosages required depend on the individual child, but Hilary Butler figures the total cost would be no more than $50. So her suggestion, keep the skin clean and cool. Now, I would leave that skin okay until the eruptions are coming out, but she does recommend baking soda,








lavender essential oil in the bath water and rubbing the juice from fresh stems of aloe vera can also help the itching.

DP: I would probably prefer that you go with a homeopathic remedy because once you find a good individual chickenpox homeopathic remedy, you will find one of the first things to go is the itching. A lot of rest, plenty of fluids, and important to keep children home. And part of why you want to keep them home as well is because having them around elderly people can possibly trigger a case of shingles in any elderly person who... I think elderly is so funny. I hit 60 this year and it just doesn't... I don't clue in at all to this whole seniors and elders business.

DP: Aroma therapy, she recommends. So many of you more familiar with essential oils than what I am, but she recommends tea tree oil, chamomile, lavender, bergamot, rose water or chamomile tea and apply to the spots. So again, I would prefer you probably to leave off the oils until you're well past the fever stage and everything is starting to heal. Chances are good with a good homeopathic remedy, you will find that the itching will decrease.

DP: So adding up the costs, the essential oils, and she just recommends 100% pure essential oil and I know all of you are really well informed parents and you probably have a good source for pure essential oils. She just simply says, don't buy fragrant oils. So I'm assuming that you know the difference. So please post on Facebook if you've got a favourite essential oil product line that you like to use. She figures the cost will be around $20 for say, a lavender oil.

DP: Homeopathic remedies are very inexpensive to use. We will be going through each of these remedies and again, what is true for chickenpox will be true for shingles. So antimonium tart, T-A-R-T, or you might see it as ant, A-N-T, tart, T-A-R-T, or you might see antimonium tartaricum. Some of these are just abbreviations of the name, these are sometimes longer, so it's all the same one and that can be confusing when you're first starting to buy homeopathic remedies or helping other people figure out what if that's the same remedy, if ant tart is exactly the same as antimonium tartaricum, it is.

DP: The other remedy we'll cover is Pulsatilla and you know how wonderful, you've got this in your kit. If you've only got a five remedy kit and you've got Pulsatilla in there along with your belladonna and aconite and possibly Arnica, you're really going to be able to do a lot of good work with these infectious childhood illnesses. So we'll go into more of the symptoms of Pulsatilla again, cause you can never hear it enough, quiet honestly. I am always checking my book still after a number of years of practising now.

DP: Rhus-tox and again, you might see it as Rhus-T or Rhus toxicodendron, which is 11

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homeopathic poison ivy. So if you think about the signs and symptoms physically that we've just talked about, these little blisters that have a watery discharge, it looks almost exactly like poison ivy. So we'll go through the symptom picture of Rhus-tox for that. Sulfur, and this is a remedy you might need more at the end of the chickenpox episode. There is also a homeopathic nosode, which is made from the infectious disease, chickenpox.

DP: Hilary Butler recommends not to use it during the disease, which I have no experience with, so she is obviously speaking from some kind of experience and you could also use it as prevention, but once the chickenpox is broken out or if there's just never been, well really since having the chickenpox, which is possible sometimes with these infectious illnesses, you could use it in that kind of a situation.

DP: So the other thing that she mentions are the cell salts. So I've posted a little bit on Facebook about the tissue salts, these are also known as Schuessler tissue salts or cell salts. Probably the best article you can find is on Miranda Castro's website, and it's just mirandacastro.com, and she's written a lovely article on using the cell salts, and some people, this is all they use. And the difference between cell salts and regular homeopathic remedies in potency is that the cell salts are based on a whole different philosophy and you can get them up, I think, to a 12X or a 12DH, but generally you use these tissue cell salts with a 6X, a 6DH, or 6CH. A DH is one in 10 times dilution as is the 6X and anything with a CH is centesimal or one in a 100 dilution. You can ask me about that on Facebook if you have more questions on that.

DP: So of course, one of the cell salts is Ferrum Phos or Ferrum Phosphoricum. And you know about this in your fever section. This is the child who maybe... We went over the signs and symptoms of chickenpox, this is the child that just seems a little bit a runny nose, a little bit sore eyes, seems fine in the morning, you send them to school without even knowing that they're contagious because they have chickenpox, but the spots haven't come out yet. You might be wanting to use these cell salts. There's another cell salt called Kali Mur, these will be in your hand out as well, so Calc Sulph, Kali Sulph. And her point in this, in terms of doing the cost assessment, they're usually $5 to $10 per bottle. And again, these are some that you might want to keep on hand anyways, these cell salts. Now, Highland's sells the complete 12 tissue salts in one, 12 in 1, and they call it Bioplasma.

DP: And sometimes, I have some parents who use that instead of a multivitamin, which has all kinds of things, other ingredients in it. With the cell salts and tissue salts, I would only ever recommend giving them two, three weeks at a time and then stopping them for another two or three weeks. Again, with homeopathic remedies you can't overdose or give too much, but one of the things that can happen is that you start to



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develop, or your child will develop the very symptoms that you are trying to support healing with.

DP: So if you were to give Ferrum Phos every day for, say, six weeks and a tissue salt, it's quite possible that you would start to see things like a runny nose by the end of the day, just not feeling well, maybe a lot of phlegm in the throat. That would be the only caution I would say with the tissue salts and with any homeopathic remedy. If you give it for extended periods of time without the symptoms being there, you can actually create the symptom picture.

DP: So, treatment for chickenpox is similar to the treatment for shingles in conventional medicine. They will give you an antiviral called Acyclovir. The cost for that is $170 for five days. For those who are immune-compromised, Zovirax for seven days intravenously is $3,300, and Zovirax resistant virus, Foscavir, it's not FDA approved and it's $2,100 a day for 10 days. And what's often recommended are antihistamines to prevent the inflammatory response, which of course we know and understand to be an important part of the process. Tylenol and sometimes corticosteroids are used and Prednisone. So these would be in the babies and children and adults where they're having a huge inflammatory response.

DP: And those are all very expensive, and I would advise reading the product monograph for any antivirals. And that includes Tamiflu. So there's been interesting information about Tamiflu coming out, an antiviral for influenza, and the complication side effects and lack of safety with those particular antivirals. And mostly, the antivirals are not that effective. So overall... Let me see... So if you haven't got a comparison or else I've missed that, I lost my whole PowerPoint presentation today, which is just part of my day, which has been very interesting. So, I don't have a total break down of cost, but you can start to see how a single homeopathic remedy for $8.50 or cell salts and a few essential oils is considerably cheaper than the pharmaceutical medicine.

DP: Now, we move from chickenpox into shingles. So I've briefly mentioned that when you have chickenpox, the immune system deals with it, not by eradicating it because it can't, but by hemming it into the bundle of nerve cells in the spinal cord or the cranium, which is the brain. And since the immune system cannot function here, the virus can safely stay dormant for decades until the immune system is suppressed, either through stress, age, pregnancy, cancer treatments, aids, some kind of immune compromise, then the virus can reappear. And sometimes it reappears as chickenpox, but more commonly it appears as shingles.

DP: And some of the research says that two out of every ten people who have had chickenpox will get shingles. My husband ended up with shingles about eight years








ago, he was in a very stressful work situation. I never got shingles, I had chickenpox as a child. So again, it has to do with susceptibility. And the name shingles actually comes from a Latin word, which means a belt or a girdle, a singulum, which kind of looks like shingles, because the common presentation is a band of large blister-like welts on one side of the body, on the stomach, back, chest, or in some cases, on one side of the face.

DP: So when my husband developed it, he developed it on his waist, just below the rib and across. And it kind of spread up a little bit higher, not quite high enough toward his chest, nipple area. It was extremely painful, and we got him on a homeopathic remedy right away, bumped up his vitamin A, his vitamin C as well. And so again, it looks like there is blistery rash and sometimes it kind of all belongs together so that it looks quite sore, red, raised and extremely painful. Sometimes it can be so sensitive that even the brush of your clothing against it is painful or cool air or a draft, but again, we've got homeopathic remedies that actually have those modalities on it.

DP: Now what happens is because it's in the nervous system in the spine and brain, if your outbreak starts on the right side, if it moves to the face, it's going to show up on the left side, and it all has to do with the hemispheres of the brain. Now, this becomes a concern when the shingles starts to show up on the face because again it is so close to the blood brain barrier.

DP: And my husband, it also went up to his face, and he was fine. There was no complications with it. I don't recall him having a big fever with it, actually, now that I'm thinking of it. Often there is a sensitivity to the light, so again when you think of measles, the rash, the eruption, the itching, and the sensitivity to the light and possibly ear pain as well. A lot of tiredness and the itchiness is what can drive people crazy, and in adults, shingles can leave excruciating pain, which can last for years.

DP: I actually have a name for that and my sister-in-law, who now gets her shingles vaccine every year, she had an outbreak of shingles, and she chose to go with the antivirals. She chose to go with the creams. She had a tremendous amount of nerve pain that has continued to linger long after that, so that's how she chose to deal with it.

DP: Children rarely experience severe pain or systemic symptoms, and Hilary Butler has never heard of residual pain when shingles is treated with vitamins C and A. So again, vitamin A becomes very, very important. These viral illnesses will deplete the vitamin A stores in the body. What is happening now, though, and it's Dr. Mercola's article on chickenpox and shingles, and shingles has been diagnosed more often in children now.








DP: So I want to mention one other site, the University of Maryland Medical. The link should be in your handout, but if you go to www.umm.edu and even just do their search box for shingles and chickenpox. What I like about it is, they're promoting vaccines, but what I like about it is is they've got nice illustrations. It's really well-presented information, so it's just a good one to go to. They also give, interestingly enough, alternative and complementary medicine suggestions, so I like them for that. They present it all.

DP: So Dr. Mercola's article is excellent and again, before the live virus chickenpox vaccine was licensed most children acquired a natural long-lasting immunity by age six, and for 99.9% of the people it's actually a very mild illness without any complications. So again, Neil Miller has a really good description. His book is called Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Families and Health Practitioners, and he's written what actually is in the VARIVAX vaccine. So again, really encourage yourself, family, friends to read the product inserts before thinking about even having the chickenpox vaccine.

DP: So again, because it's a virus, an RNA virus, it has to be grown and it is grown on human embryonic lung cell cultures. And then they use embryonic guinea pig cell cultures, and then it's finally grown and propagated in the human diploid cell cultures, which are the fetal tissues, the aborted ones. So to be aware that there is sucrose in it, hydrolysed gelatin for anybody, that's your bovine, sodium chloride, MSG as a preservative, and there are often residual components of this MRC-5 cells, including DNA and protein. Neomycin, if anybody has antibiotic allergies, and the antibiotics are included to prevent secondary bacterial infections.

DP: So Neil Miller, in his book, also talks about a Dr. Gary Goldman. He's an expert chickenpox research analyst hired by the Center for Disease Control to collect data and monitor trends with the newly introduced chickenpox vaccine. And what he says is "the universal varicella chickenpox vaccination program in the United States will leave our population vulnerable to shingles epidemics. In fact, there appears to be no way to avoid a mass epidemic of shingles lasting as long as several generations among adults."

DP: And this is really, really important information because many of you likely have parents, and the shingles vaccine is being advertised on TV. Like I said my sister-in-law and brother-in-law both get it every year, and my brother-in-law now has severe shaking that looks like Parkinson's, and they have ruled out all possible diseases. And it's this inexplicable hand shaking that he has. So you know, what to do, what to say.

DP: So it's mostly adults who get chickenpox who probably have more complications 15

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then children do, and then shingles later on in life. I would highly recommend going to Whale dot to for Hilary Butler's chickenpox article because there you'll also be able to download in PDF form, her free chapter from her book From One Prick to Another on chickenpox, and specifically chickenpox and fever. It's a really delightful chapter because she was invited to speak to a group of medical residents and she was listening to one of the medical presentations, changed her talk completely and addressed all of the misinformation they were receiving.

DP: And at one point, one of the young doctors said, "where did you get your medical training?" And she laughed. She was a mom, just a mom. So any questions, comments, anything you would like to share at this point about chickenpox or shingles?

DP: And we don't have any hands up, so I'm going go ahead and talk about the homeopathic remedies. So at the beginning with the fever, if it's in the middle of the night and it's very sudden and it gets high fairly quickly and if your child is quite fearful you can always start with aconite. The biggest indication for belladonna would be, you hear your child crying, you go in you see them flush, they're red. You can see their temples or their neck pulsating, the veins there. You turn on the light and whether it's aconite or belladonna, they're probably not going to want the bright light.

DP: But what will happen with belladonna is that normally when the light comes on, the pupils or the black part of the eye will dilate, get smaller. But in a situation of a fever where belladonna is needed that black part of the eye will stay open. And it will look like when you go to the eye doctor and they put atropine in the eye, and it's to make that black part get bigger, that's to make the pupil bigger, so that they can have a good look to see what's going on inside the eye. Atropine is the active ingredient in the herbal belladonna.

DP: Homeopathically prepared belladonna is not a poison anymore and what you have is the essence of it but you will get this symptom of this dilated pupil. You can almost take that one to the bank. Give it to them and what is ideal is if when the fever breaks, they have a sweat, and you'll know you're on the right track. So it's possible that you'll use the belladonna at the beginning with the fever or the aconite and then as the eruptions starts to appear you may need to switch or change remedies according to the remedy picture and the symptom picture of your child.

DP: We talked a little bit about the Ferrum Phos indications for that. This will be the child that's maybe comes home from school and you think "gosh they got... " Parents know about sick eyes. They don't look well, they're tired. Normally they want to play after school and they're not wanting to do that. You might start on the Ferrum Phos








tissue salt. You might give it for 2, 3 days and then lo and behold the fever breaks and there you are with the spots.

DP: So those are probably going to be your three top fever ones for that. But with chickenpox and with any of the remedies we've talked about, we're looking for the individual pictures. What is characteristic about the remedy and what's characteristic about your child? And when we can get the remedy to match the child's symptoms then you know that you're really on the right track. So what you're likely going to do is... It's not going to prevent chickenpox, but you're going to be able to help support the body to heal much more quickly and without secondary complications and likelihood of reducing the itchiness quite quickly.

DP: So when I talk about a characteristic symptom or sometimes you hear in homeopathy, it's called Strange, Rare, Peculiar of each remedy or SRP is an abbreviation that's sometimes used in some articles. What you're looking at is the fear, the kind of fear. So, we've talked often about how you recognize aconite fever, a belladonna fever, a Ferrum Phos fever. And then you'll want to look at what things make your child feel better overall. There will be things like comfort. Do they want to be rocked? Do they want to be carried? Do they want to be warmed? Do you find that they're chilly? Or do they want fresh air? Do they not want you to touch them? Do they not want you to look at them?

DP: These are all going to be indications that will help you choose a remedy that has the same kind of picture in it as what your child's behaviours are. So is that clear for everybody? You have a question about this idea of characteristics, just please feel free to ask.

DP: So, when I go through our Homeopathic Repertory, which is a book of symptoms, where chickenpox is part of it, there are different rubrics I can look up. So there's skin eruptions, chickenpox, and then there's a whole list of remedies. And you have, at the beginning, aconite, antimonium crud or antimonium tart, belladonna, Pulsatilla, Rhus Tox, and sulphur.

DP: Those are the ones you most often think about and they're going to be useful in 75% of the situations, 75% of the time. So if the only thing you've got in your little kit, if you're away or visiting, can get to a pharmacy that carries homeopathic remedies, if you have belladonna and Pulsatilla, chances are very good to be able to do some kind of good work with that.

DP: Now, if you happen to have chickenpox, your child has chickenpox, but they've got stomach complaints, you may want to think of Pulsatilla or antimonium crud or








antimonium tart. So, you're going to watch what is happening with the skin eruptions. In homeopathy, we call these concomitant symptoms, when you have something at the same time as something else. If you also have a lung infection at the same time, the remedies you're gonna be looking at are aconite, antimonium crud, antimonium tart, belladonna and Pulsatilla. So, can you see that, in all of these situations, we're starting to get a very similar group of remedies coming up?

DP: Now there's another one that might be the clincher for you, and you have gone up, your child is there, you see a spot and, I don't know why we do it as parents, but right away we've gotta touch, at least I do. Now if, on touch and pressure, it's very painful, there's only one remedy in our Homeopathic Materia Medica, and that's antimonium crud. So I'm going to go through each of these remedies and their symptom pictured, just so you know what it looks like. So, antimonium crud also, these children don't want to be looked at, they don't want strangers looking at them, they don't want siblings looking at them and they think people are staring at them, or watching them, or something.

DP: And they can be quite irritable. Oddly enough, children who have antimonium crud, who need it maybe even constitutionally, have a craving for cucumber. Cucumbers and pickles, these are your sour pickle kids or they just can't get enough even of raw cucumbers. I actually have a child like that in my practice and the mum will plunk him down with a big bowl of those little baby cucumbers and that he's happier, then I'll get out, she can get her dinner made.

DP: So, now I would like to go through each of these remedies and just... I'll show you, or hopefully teach you some differentiations, so that you've got... So if you given Pulsatilla because that's the only thing you have and you realize it's not helping, it's not helping, then we'll go through each of these pictures just so that you have an idea of what you can possibly use. Aconite, we've talked about, it's a lot of fear in aconite and a lot of suddenness, coming on very quickly, often in the middle of the night and your children will often say things like, "Am I going to die?" So that will be more at the beginning.

DP: The antimonium crud or antimonium crudum, or ant C, I've mentioned a little bit. So these are the children who don't want to be looked at, not by anybody. They'll cry or shriek and scream when somebody does look at them, or they might even say things like... I've had children say to me, "Don't look at me!" and so then, of course, I look at them to see what happens and then they get very upset. They will likely crave cucumbers or pickles, unless they have a digestive upset. They cough, for antimonium crud and antimonium tart, can sound very similar, and it's a loose rattly cough.








DP: So, often with these eruptive fever illnesses, you will get these coughs. Antimonium tart, how you will be able to distinguish between whether it's antimonium crud or antimonium tart, are the food cravings. Antimonium tart typically are craving apples and apple juice. And again, it's a take to the bank situation. Belladonna, we've talked about. The throbbing, the pulsating, the lot of heat, the dilated pupils. Pulsatilla children are often the ones who are weepy, clingy, they want to be held.

DP: They feel better when they've got you. But if they get overheated, even when you're holding them, they will start to get very upset, and their skin eruptions will even get worse from becoming overheated. These are the babies that you realize, "Oh, I have to go pick up the other child at school," and you go out and it's much cooler outside. They will probably do better overall. So, it's a clue, it's the fresh air, cooler air. Or maybe it's a hot summer day when they do have chickenpox and you go into the air conditioning and you notice that they're less whiny, less clingy. This is the Pulsatilla picture.

DP: The concern with children and babies needing Pulsatilla is that they're generally thirstless. They're not thirsty at all, and these are the kids and babies that you will wonder if they're getting enough hydration, if they're getting enough water, enough liquid. And we've gone over the signs of dehydration: The skin standing up when it's pinched, dry diapers, crying without tears, watch the soft spot on the top of babies' heads, sticky lips, dry lips, all of that. And then you'll know that you need to get some hydration.

DP: So if you have an emergency situation where you suspect that this is what's happening, you can give Pulsatilla and then when you go to the hospital, just say, "I know my child just needs vitamin C, vitamin A and hydration intravenously". And this is scary stuff.

DP: I've had my situation today where a newspaper journalist has contacted me because of my recent blog post on measles here in Calgary. So, I used it as an opportunity to really stay with my feelings of fear and panic. It comes up, and so I reminded myself, "This is what parent's are facing every day who are choosing to be vaccine-free when you need to access medical help and you are a vaccine-free parent".

DP: So that's Pulsatilla. Now, Rhus tox... So, again, remember these are the pictures you can use for shingles as well. Now, Rhus tox, I have used very successfully in a number of cases with adults who have shingles. Rhus tox tends to be more on the right side of where it starts, and Rhus tox is made from poison ivy. So if you've had poison ivy, you know that typically it's worse, the itching is worse in the evening. It's worse








from cold air and actually feels better for warm things put on it, on the rash. So, the same with a sore throat. Rhus tox, people who need Rhus tox as a sore throat remedy tend to want hot drinks, even though the pain might be a burning kind of pain.

DP: What else can I tell you about Rhus tox? They can be weepy for no reason, they'll be worse in the evening, and worse for being cold and chilly. So, they will want to be warm and might not necessarily want fresh air. A very unusual symptom of Rhus tox, and it may show up on children, or it may show up in children, is a craving for cold milk and also they're very, very restless. And you'll find that you as a parent might be wanting to encourage them to lay still because you've read this but when somebody needs Rhus tox, they can't. They have to move, they have to move. And even if they can't move, the eyeballs are moving and there's this restlessness, this agitation and the itchiness. So you can do a lot of good work with Rhus tox for chickenpox and shingles when these are the symptoms that are most prevalent.

DP: Sulfurs... These are going to be your hot children. Hot, hot, hot, and extremely itchy. Sulfur often is overused or routinely used in situations of eczema or skin problems where the person is overall a hot person and they become worse when they get overheated, which might make you think of Pulsatilla. I tend to use sulfur at the end of viral illnesses. It's what I consider a good clean-up remedy especially if anything is lingering on.

DP: Those are your top remedies. I would also possibly consider something like Merc. Sol., or Mercurius Solubilis or Mercurius Sol, sometimes it's sold as Merc Cor or Mercurius corrosive. Only if they are really worse at night and the symptoms are really up and down, and if there's any drooling, and the breath will smell quite bad, or if the eruptions, the little vesicles or blisters, if they happen to get any infection in them, Merc might be a good option. But at that point, you might be wanting to contact your homeopath because, again, there are other remedies. These are the remedies I'm telling you of that you can keep in your kit, you can do a lot of good work at home on your own, but if you get stuck, then know you can call your homeopath and then your homeopath will be able to help you assess whether this is an emergency situation where you're off to the family physician or the doctor's office or emergency, or if there's actually something you can do at home different than what you've already tried.

DP: So again, just in terms of giving a remedy and nothing happening, repeating the remedy and nothing happening, and your child is getting sicker. Chances are very good that what is happening is that the remedy is not correct. Now, one other things I do want to tell you about just in closing before we open it up for any conversation is, it's really important for these eruptions to come out. If you have a child who have had, and you know as you know that this is chickenpox, but you're going "This is kind of weird.








My child has only had one or two chickenpox."

DP: Before you start thinking "Oh, good! We got off easily," I want you to consider, contact your homeopath, but possibly what is happening is that the eruptions are not coming out, and the concern with this is the secondary complication, in that, it can result in a stroke or meningitis or encephalitis. It's really important that these toxins find their way out through the skin.

DP: If the situation is that the eruption is not coming out, your go-to remedy, the single remedy that we have in our Homeopathic Materia Medica is Antimonium tart. And what will happen is there could possibly be convulsions. So, even at that stage, you can just gently put in the Antimonium tart on the inside cheek or between the gums and the bottom lip, and you're on your way to the hospital. It's just... That's what you need to do because then it's affecting the brain. So, remember blood, brain, bones, and breathing. You're on your way to the hospital. But remember Antimonium tart for that.

DP: For Shingles, quite possibly, you might need the homeopathic remedy Arsenicum. This is a good remedy to have in your kit anyway. It's probably the number one go to remedy in food poisoning. These are very chilly. Babies, children, adults, they'll want to be warm all the time, and there will be burning pains with the itching, but similar to Rhus tox, they'll want the heat on it. So, if you've tried Rhus tox, and you're pretty sure that's what it should be, but, you know, weird. It's not helping. Consider Arsenicum, especially if there's any digestive symptoms with that. It's going to be a really important remedy for shingles or the herpes zoster. Arsenicum like Rhus tox will be very restless, chilly. Arsenicum won't want to be left alone, but they're also okay if there's just somebody in the room next to them. Like aconite, there may be a fear of death, as well.

DP: What else can... Arsenicum will probably be craving hot drinks, so these are you've, be a children maybe who usually have drinks with ice in them or want cold drinks from the fridge, and you'll hear them asking for things like tea and maybe some tea with honey in it. So, they'll want warm drinks, so this may be a clue for you that Arsenicum is the remedy that's needed. And certainly in Shingles for adults what they're drinking, if they're drinking cups and cups and cups of very hot tea and having hot blankets on them, restlessness, you may want to consider Arsenicum for Shingles for adults. So, that's mostly what I wanted to cover today. Are there any questions? Anything anybody wants to share?

DP: And if somebody's not getting better in Shingles, then you know that the homeopathic remedy is not quite right. So, again, it's hard because people often... You want to help them with the homeopathic remedy, and what they are giving you for








symptoms are what is common to Shingles. So, itching is common. Burning pain can be quite common. But, what you're going to be wanting to ask them: "But, do you want hot on your rash or do you want cold? Is it sensitive to air and wind?" One other remedy I'll tell you about because it's just come to mind is Hepar sulph. Now, this is one that you may or may not have in your kit, but you can eventually add it because it's got very specific, clear symptoms for sore throat.

DP: It feels like that there's a sharp stick in the throat, but for shingles, these are extremely irritable people. So, where a Pulsatilla person is very mild and possible loopy and a bit clingy, your Hepar sulph person is going to be very irritable and the slightest air on the rash whether it's chickenpox or whether it's shingles, they are going to be touchy. So, they don't want touch on their sores. They don't want clothes against their sores. They don't want the wind against their sores. Everything is excruciatingly painful, and they're very, very angry and irritable. So, you can see there's a whole different picture.

DP: With Hepar sulph and Pulsatilla, so this is what you will want to individualize so you can help your family members. So sometimes if somebody has opted to get a chickenpox vaccine for their child, you have elderly people, there is such a thing as viral shedding from a vaccine and so, and some grandparents I know, they go for the shingles vaccine and the parents, grandparents also know that the grandchildren are vaccine-free and they do not want to shed virus for the vaccine-free children or babies so they quarantine themselves.

DP: So again, it's about being respectful about the choice and about being with somebody whether you have the illness or it's vaccine shedding. So that's pretty much it for today. One last time, any questions? Any clarification needed? Okay, well thank you everybody for being on the call today, and we'll see you next week where we're going to study Haemophilus influenza B which is known as your HIB vaccine. Thanks, take care, have a great week. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.







VFNW Spring2014 Transcript Lesson81

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Transcript of VFNW Spring2014 Transcript Lesson81