Nutrition Nutz, with Philip Pappas Ph.D.

2025 EP 1 Homeopathy Remedies to Personal Self-Care with Christopher Merville

• Philip A. Pappas Ph.D. • Season 1 • Episode 1

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This episode of Nutrition NUTZ explores how homeopathy addresses everyday health concerns by considering the full experience of the individual. Dr. Phil speaks with Christophe Merville, DPharm, Director of Pharmacy Education and Development at Boiron, a world leader in homeopathic medicines. They discuss how people with the same complaint, such as stress or sleep difficulties, may each benefit from a different homeopathic medicine. The key is in how each person personally experiences their symptoms. Listeners will gain a fresh perspective on how to think more critically and intentionally about self-care. Homeopathy offers a gentle, personalized option for addressing common health complaints in a thoughtful way.

 

Guest: Christophe Merville, D. Pharm

Bio: Christophe Merville, D. Pharm is the director of education and pharmacy development at Boiron, world leader in homeopathic medicines. In this position, he creates training programs, both online and in print, for pharmacists and retailers on homeopathic medicines used to treat common health conditions. Before his more than 35-year career with Boiron, Dr. Merville was a university hospital pharmacist in France’s Loire Valley where he obtained three years of clinical experience. Born in France, Dr. Merville completed his pharmacy doctorate in Nantes in 1985. He is a sought-after expert on homeopathic medicines and its practical uses for consumers as well as medical experts, and a frequent guest on radio programs across the U.S.  Dr. Merville has also co-authored several published works and has presented homeopathic topics at scientific meetings.

 

Topics

  1. You’ve worked as a pharmacist and educator in both conventional and homeopathic settings. What first got you interested in homeopathy?
  2. For listeners who might be new to the idea, how would you explain what homeopathy is and how it differs from herbs, vitamins, or other holistic products?
  3. What kinds of questions do you hear most often from people who are curious but unsure about trying homeopathy?
  4. Let’s say someone walks into their local health store or pharmacy and feels overwhelmed by the selection. How do you recommend they choose a medicine or get guidance?
  5. Can people use homeopathic products on their own, or should they always consult a professional first?
  6. What are some everyday situations where homeopathy might be helpful? For example, things like work stress, travel fatigue, or disrupted sleep?
  7. Are there medicines people often use incorrectly, or situations where homeopathy isn’t the right fit?
  8. A lot of our listeners are already into clean eating, mindfulness, and more holistic approaches to care. How does homeopathy fit into that kind of lifestyle?
  9. Can homeopathy be used alongside supplements, herbs, or medications? Are there any interactions people should be aware of?

 

Use coupon code "NUTZ" (in your cart) for 15% off your entire order of featured products on our sponsor's website: HollyHillVitamins.com.

Speaker 1:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nutrition Nuts, where we explore the latest information on nutritional science, wellness trends and information on cutting-edge supplements. This is where you will hear experts in clinical nutrition, healthcare practitioners, researchers and supplement industry experts discussing today's most important health care issues. I'm your host, dr Phil Pappas. I'm a certified clinical nutritionist, cognitive researcher and psychologist. We would like to thank our sponsor, holly Hill Health Foods and hollyhillvitaminscom, the place for great selection, service and great pricing. Use coupon code NUTS that's N-U-T-Z for 15% off and remember, restrictions may apply, all right. So today we have a great guest who's going to be talking about homeopathy. Now, if you don't know much about homeopathy, this will be a very I think, really good introduction, because our guest has spent 35 years working in homeopathy.

Speaker 1:

So let me just give you a bio on our guest, dr Christopher Merrillville. He's a PhD in pharmacy and he's director of education and pharmacy development at Boron and the world leader. They are a world leader in homeopathic medicines. In his position, he creates training programs, both online and in print, for pharmacists, retailers and other healthcare professionals on homeopathic medicines and how to use them in common conditions. Before his more than 35-year career with Boron, dr Merville was a university hospital pharmacist in France's pharmacist in France's Loire Valley, where he obtained three years of clinical experience. He was born in France and Dr Merville completed his pharmacy doctorate in Nantes in France in 1985. And he's a sought-after expert. You'll hear him on radio shows, podcasts, and he's a frequent guest on other podcasts not just ours, of course, but we're very glad to have him here. So welcome, dr Merville. I'm going to open up the mic to you and if you have a few comments before we start, some questions, go ahead.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and it's a great opportunity also to inform about homeopathy, because there are a lot of misconceptions and some people think it's very complex. In fact, it's very simple, so I'll do my best to enlighten your audience Before you came.

Speaker 1:

I actually it was coincidental, but I just happened to look up a couple of homeopathic double-blind studies. I won't say what they are necessarily, just because we do a lot of homeopathic type things here. So this is real science and we want to make sure people understand this and what you do. And this is pharmacy. And, um, when I was out at your plant uh, your facility, um, it reminded me of my days when I worked for um pharmaceutical companies and I capped and gowned and I did all those things and, yes, it was, it was quite a facility and I enjoyed it a lot, so we're always glad to get out there. At this point, I really want to start asking you some questions to get an idea about homeopathic medicine and how you use it. So you've worked as a pharmacist and educator for quite a few years. What first got you interested in homeopathy?

Speaker 2:

Well, my first contact with homeopathic medicines was when I was a teenager and I was plagued with allergies and my mother conducted me to a physician who was practicing homeopathy a physician who was practicing homeopathy and the frequency and intensity of my hay fever episodes decreased dramatically. I could at that time take antihistamines, but I didn't want because at that time they were very sedative. They make you very drowsy, and when you are 14, 15, 16, you do not like that.

Speaker 2:

So, as an observation, I started to see that I was using them less and less. That was my first contact. Second contact came a little bit later, when I was in pharmacy school, where I had to go through, to go through 36 hours of homeopathy and the teacher was very bad and it was like learning the yellow pages, medicine after medicine after medicine, and it stayed in my mind that there should be another way to learn. So that was a second contact. During my years in the hospital I had very, very few occurrences of, you know, using homeopathic medicines, but I knew they were there because they are present in every of the 23,000 pharmacies in France.

Speaker 2:

And then, after my military service, I decided to change a little bit my trajectory and I started working with Boiron, the company I am working today, and I was fortunate to meet one of the founders, Henri Boiron, who was in his 70s at this time and, being a little bit of a skeptical and young pharmacist who thought, you know, he knew everything.

Speaker 2:

I started to ask difficult questions like how does it work if it's so diluted?

Speaker 2:

And his answers were so scientifically grounded, so honest in saying this is what we know and this is what we are trying to know better. That convinced me that it was an interesting field and lastly, I was fortunate to be with homeopathic physicians during consultations and see the results on patients and see the results on patients. But I think what convinced me was the first time a farmer close to the branch came to the branch and asked for a combination of medicines for his turkeys and I followed him. I wanted to know how, why, and he said if I don't give that powder to the turkeys in the water they die from the bird flu and if I don't use the medicine I have 90% rate death rate, but if I use it it falls down to 10%. So I think Turkey's placebo effect may be, but unlikely. And I started to learn a little bit more and that's where really got me very interested in knowing more and France, of course, is the home of Boron, is it not?

Speaker 2:

Boron has been founded. Yes, in 1932 in France, in Lyon, which is one of the places in Europe where homeopathy was really well taught.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so for a customer that comes into a pharmacy or a health food store, what would you say to them if they have a question? Say, you know, why does this work for me, or what should I try? These pretty typical questions. What would you usually give as basic advice for the customer, for the patient?

Speaker 2:

So, the first thing is absolutely obvious, but we don't talk about it enough is what exactly is your problem, is your question, what kind of relief do you seek? Some people will say, oh, my stomach hurts, but in fact it's a stress problem. So, without dwelling too much into it, it is very important for everybody to know themselves and to try to see exactly what is the root of the problem. So the second thing and that is not specific to homeopathy, of course, but it's important the second thing is there are limits to self-medication. So if it's a condition that is chronic, for example, if it's a condition that falls into one of these categories where self-medication is not indicated, it's better to seek professional advice.

Speaker 2:

But, that said, there are many opportunities in our lives where we, of course, once we have adapted our lifestyle and so on, we need a little boost, a little help, and we can do this two ways. We can try to counteract the symptom or we try, we can also find a solution that stimulates our resources, stimulates our resources, stimulates our capacity to heal ourselves, because we have that wonderful capacity. I was talking to someone two days ago who says oh, I like biology because it's like I understand how my mechanics are working and I say you're far better than that because you can heal yourself. No mechanic can heal itself and homeopathy helps you, stimulates you to heal yourself faster. To resume it, I would say you go through your disease faster and with less symptoms, and with less symptoms, less intense symptoms. So it doesn't counteract or prevent the normal process of repairing, which sometimes may be uncomfortable. It just helps you to go through it faster and with less intense symptoms.

Speaker 1:

So you kind of answered some of these questions, but I'm just going to throw it out there anyway. Okay, A store might have herbs, it might have vitamins, it might have other products. Holistic products and homeopathic products are yet different. They're not herbs, they're not vitamins. It's a different approach.

Speaker 2:

It's a different approach to a certain extent. But, to be simple, it's true that a lot of people don't know what homeopathy is, so let me try to be a little bit more clear. First of all, homeopathic medicines. Some of them are made from herbs. Some of them are made from chemical substances and salts and even metals. Some of them are even made with animal parts. Those were the drugs that were used at the very beginning of the 19th century, when homeopathy was discovered, and so homeopathic medicines are different from herbs. The second thing is that, using homeopathy, really you are using a medicine that is prepared in such a way that, as I said before, it is not counteracting a process that your body has a symptom that you develop, for example, a very dry cough, develop, for example, a very dry cough. But it helps your body, it sends a message to your body, let's say, to restore the health, if it's possible, if the symptoms can be reversed. The symptoms cannot be reversed. Homeopathy is only palliative, can provide some comfort, but cannot really get you back on full health. So the key now is to know how homeopathic medicines are made. What is their substance.

Speaker 2:

When you choose to take an herb, you can take an extract you can. You know you're looking for the compounds of the plants standardized and you take it in capsule, you take it in drops and so on and so forth. Same thing for vitamins. We know what vitamins are. You can usually take them in tablets and so on. What are homeopathic medicines? And that's when we understand how they are made. A lot of questions become very, very clear and answered.

Speaker 1:

So what I've noticed about the homeopathic products that we're marketing right here at Holly Hill Health Foods is that you do address conditions on the package. To some extent we know which one's the allergy one, we know which one is trauma and that type of thing, and that's very helpful for the customer. If they're not getting guidance necessarily, they can still do a lot when they come in and look at homeopathic products, still do a lot when they come in and look at homeopathic products. Also, you have a lot of written material, guidance-type material that we keep with the homeopathics. So it seems to me that you do a lot of that type of educational marketing.

Speaker 2:

So the very important thing about homeopathic medicines is that they are drugs. In the US Since 1938, in fact, the same act that founded the FDA defined homeopathy as drugs, and for us there are two consequences. The first one is there must be a clear indication on the packaging. It means it's not just joint support, immune support, better mood. It's really more like arthritic pain, allergy, hay fever, warts and so on. So that's one advantage. The second fact is that the manufacturing of homeopathic medicine must comply to the same type of regulation as conventional medicine. It means the quality is very high compared to what is required from supplements and herbs. When you visit a manufacturing, a homeopathic manufacturing company, it is, it should be, and it is really as clean and controlled as a conventional manufacturing company.

Speaker 2:

And it is, and I've experienced both, so I know what to do, and even more because two things we are dealing with extremely small quantities, so we are fighting contamination like hell, and the second is it's very difficult to control the final product, precisely because the medicines are diluted, so we need to make sure and validate the process. It's got to be very exact To prove to, for example, the FDA that they are manufactured the way they should be.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so we have Dr Christophe Merville and I'm asking him some questions, and now I'm going to ask you something very specific what about the safety of homeopathic medicine?

Speaker 2:

So at Boron I'm a member of the Drug Safety Committee. This is a committee of five people who meet every month and we are looking at what we call adverse drug events. That means if one of your customers takes a medicine and experiences something that is unexpected oh you know, I took it and I had nausea. I took it and I got a rash they can contact they must, they should contact us, because that's the law and tell us the story, what happened with the lot number and so on and so forth. So what we observe is this. So what we observe is this First of all, compared to conventional medicines, adverse drug events we're far less compared to what we sell. So I would say every month we have barely 20 reports If you compare to conventional medicine, that is, it's more like 2,000 that they have per month. So that's one thing.

Speaker 2:

The second thing is when we look at the symptoms that patients report for a specific medicine, usually they are not the same. There is no trend. It seems like it's a coincidence. Or they take some people say, oh, I took a silococcinum and I developed flu-like symptoms. That's just because they didn't live enough time. They were maybe concerned that the medicine would give them the symptoms that they were experiencing. So there is a little bit of confusion and we try to explain that Sometimes the medicine doesn't work instantaneously. You need to wait one or two days and if you have flu-like symptoms, if you take a C-dose for the flu and you still have remaining flu-like symptoms. It is expected. But we welcome every report. We analyze them. We are not judgmental. You know it's an opportunity for education, for our education and for the patient's education.

Speaker 1:

All right. So our guest today, dr Christophe Mervaux. I just want to mention hollyhillvitaminscom. Mervo, I just want to mention hollyhillvitaminscom. If you want to buy a boron product off of hollyhillcom, hollyhillvitaminscom, excuse me. There's a code, coupon code nuts for 15% off. So keep that in mind. And, dr Merville, I want to actually go on with another question. There are some big conditions, you know, common conditions that people walk in every day for. Throw a few of those at us and tell us maybe what the product might be that you might recommend for them. And you mentioned the silococcinum. That was a good one, right off the that you might recommend for them. And you mentioned the psilococcinum.

Speaker 1:

That was a good one right off the bat, that's for flu.

Speaker 2:

There is a large number of homeopathic medicines addressing a vast number of conditions, and I'm talking about conditions that you can expect to relieve by going to Holy Hills and taking a homeopathic medicine. But one of the specific characteristics of homeopathic medicines is that, as we said, they treat the patient more than they treat the disease, and that's a little bit sometimes confusing. So if I have the flu, I will have fever, chills, body aches. If you have the flu which I hope you never have you might have less fever than I do or more body aches. So your body will react to the flu virus a little bit differently and that makes it your flu. So homeopathy takes in account the way you express your symptoms. For example, if people are stressed out, some people will be more inhibited, they will tend to be less active, try to isolate themselves, and also they will have symptoms like headache, difficulty focusing their eyes, trembling, sweaty palms. Some people will, on the contrary, become more excited. They will think they don't have enough time. They don't have enough time, they'll try to cut the lane and they will suffer from stomachache. Those two types of reactions correspond to two different homeopathic medicines and what we try to do is, in very simple terms to help people choosing what is their medicine, what corresponds to their condition. The second way we overcome that difficulty is to create combinations where we put together the most common medicines for a condition. So we have a medicine called StressCalm that combines several different individual homeopathic medicines, enlarging the spectrum of symptoms that are relieved by the same medicine.

Speaker 2:

Because one of the beauties of homeopathy is like it's like having many keys. You need one to open the door and if you have the others, well, they are just there. If you take a homeopathic medicine you don't need, nothing happens. If you take a conventional medicine that you don't need, you'll have the side effects. So that is a big advantage and that allows us to create combinations. Chances are that in the combinations you have one or two medicines that really will work. The others you may not need or they will correspond to a stage of the disease that you have not yet reached, but they will not harm you. So homeopathic medicines to answer your first question are probably the safest way to treat many conditions.

Speaker 1:

Okay, with that said, you rang a bell up here in my head. I'm a chain sneezer. I just sneeze for five, 10 minutes and I experimented and I was putting histaminicum I guess it is Histaminum, yeah, histaminum under my tongue and hoping that would stop it. But what I found was your allergy tablets actually did a better job and that's probably something in that combination worked for me. So it was a bit of an experiment and maybe I did the right thing. I hope I did. It does seem to break the sneezing thing for me. So that was my experience with that type of thing and it actually worked out fine. So I was pretty happy with that.

Speaker 2:

So, for people who are not familiar with homeopathy, starting with a combination is a better way. Okay, because precisely, we try to put several medicines and the chances for the medicine that works, for you to be in the medicine is higher. That works, for you to be in the medicine is higher. So it is possible to go with the individual Bluetooth with the individual medicines. That requires a little bit more help and we have tools for that. But taking a combination is probably because the indication is very clear on the label, very simple, it doesn't require lots of research. You can. Very clear on the label, very simple, doesn't require, you know, lots of research. You can do it on the shelf. You see, exactly, and I'm sure Lee Hills personally is very competent to help you.

Speaker 1:

Otherwise, and just for the people listening, the safety of those products isn't really something you need to be concerned about, and I'm going to throw this out. What about drugs that someone is on that wants to take a homeopathic product? What should be?

Speaker 2:

considered there.

Speaker 2:

So the answer to this question leads us to talk about how homeopathic medicines are made, are manufactured, and, to answer directly your question, we are using what we call extremely small amounts or very high dilutions.

Speaker 2:

So the quantity of active substance that is in a homeopathic medicine is far less than what you have in conventional medicine and at this dilution level it looks like they have a different type of action, more like a stimulating action rather than a counteracting action. So if you have a chronic treatment, for example, if you treat your diabetes or if you treat a heart condition and you want to relieve your allergy with a homeopathic medicine, chances are the dilution that we use in homeopathic medicine will not interfere with your main treatment In most cases. There are very, very few cases and they are indicated on the packaging. And especially if you use a topical, if you use something that you put on your skin, you shouldn't put any other medicine on your skin at the same place at the same time. It's quite common sense, but this is probably the only type of interactions we have On the skin.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, on the skin, that's the one to be the most concerned.

Speaker 2:

That's the one that I would say could happen. Other than that, if you take a homeopathic medicine, the one that we sell on the market, the risk of interference is so low that I would not even bother with it.

Speaker 1:

So you wouldn't use Arnica cream with Benadryl or with steroid cream. You want to keep those separate.

Speaker 2:

As a rule, whatever you put on your skin, don't mix it with anything else.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So with that in mind, let's go more internal. Any issues with herbs, vitamins, minerals, mushroom-based product with homeopathic medications.

Speaker 2:

The only issue is, or the only rule, I would say, is common sense. If you want to take an herb that keeps you very vigilant, keeps you awake, it doesn't make sense to take a homeopathic medicine that tends to calm you down. It's common sense but it's important.

Speaker 2:

What exactly do you want to do? That said, homeopathic medicines are very good to relieve acute conditions. They provide short-term relief I mean short-term. They work fast as opposed to herbs and supplements that are more for long-term support. So it's a good idea to try to relieve the symptoms, like I would say, using stress calm, which is a combination for stress If you really are agitated, you had the bad news and your days are miserable because of that. But on the long term, choosing herbs or vitamins that are more supportive for long term effect of stress and have both of you know the best of both worlds Short term relief with homeopathy and long term support with herbs, vitamins, supplements homeopathy and long-term support with herbs, vitamins, supplements.

Speaker 1:

Okay, with that in mind, I'm using a homeopathic product let's say it's for allergies and I want to use a little more because I'm really sick. I'm having a lot of allergies.

Speaker 2:

Is there an issue? In fact, this is how it works. You address the change in intensity of symptoms. That means sometimes you have intense hay fever episodes, sometimes less intense. The way to address this with homeopathic medicine is to change the frequency. The more intense, the more frequent, and as relief occurs you decrease the frequency and you stop, and should the episode come back, you can take it with the appropriate frequency, which usually is mentioned on the packaging. But there is no risk of over-dosing with homeopathic medicines. Their nature is more like a signal. It is useful to consider them more as information, as a signal, rather than a quantity. That might not be absolutely true, but it is a very good analogy that explains a lot about how to take homeopathic medicines.

Speaker 1:

So I notice in the silicoxenam it comes in little tubes that you put under your tongue and I think it's a treatment of three a day, is it, I believe, or is it a pack?

Speaker 2:

of six. I'm confused. We know that if you take ocilococcinum at the very beginning of flu-like symptoms, chances are that after 48 hours, if you take the treatment every three hours, a little tube every sorry every six hours, sorry Every six hours. So if you take six tubes total, your chances to recover or have a clear improvement or symptoms after 48 hours are 63% okay, as opposed to 48% if you do nothing. So usually six or eight tubes are enough.

Speaker 2:

But like with every homeopathic treatment, it is a very good idea to take them at the onset of symptom. With conventional medicines, or sometimes even with herbs, we tend to wait until we are sick enough to take something to justify taking something because it's expensive, because the side effect, because we are sick enough to take something to justify taking something because it's expensive, because of side effects, because we don't want to, etc. It's not a good calculation with homeopathic medicine because they work better at the onset of symptoms and that's very logical when you think about their stimulating nature. If there is less to stimulate to go back to health, that's when you need to act. So take Ocelot at the very onset of flu-like symptoms. Take Allergicum for allergy when you know the pollens are around or the allergen is around. You visit the neighbor's cat and you know that you will sneeze because the cat is there, so take the medicine just before visiting the neighbor. It is a good strategy to avoid the episode or reduce its intensity.

Speaker 1:

So we're approaching. We're a little way out, but flu season's around the corner and you need to be prepared for it. Some people may take the flu vaccine, others may not, but having the acylo to me is very important, because I'm exposed to people all day, and the minute I think something's wrong, I use it. I don't know if I'm doing that correctly, aren't I?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's basic common sense, Even if you are vaccinated. The flu vaccine unfortunately is not 100% protecting, and I hope in the future we'll have better vaccines, of course. But that said, some people cannot be vaccinated. They are immunocompromised or they're in a condition where they cannot receive the vaccine. Some years the flu virus is a little bit different than the one that is used to create the vaccine and more people will get the flu even when they are vaccinated.

Speaker 2:

So, for all these reasons, having Osilo on hand is important, and when I say on hand, that means you can take it right away. It's in the middle of the afternoon. You start feeling that fever increases. You know that the night would be miserable, and the next you start feeling that fever increases. You know that the next the night would be miserable and next morning you'll be sick. This is when you take Osilo, when you start feeling the beginning. Remember, because there are no, we don't expect any side effects from it. There are no interactions. It's easy to take. They melt in your mouth, what we call sublingual absorption. That means it goes directly into your bloodstream through the mucous membrane of your mouth, which is very thin. So there is no reason to delay.

Speaker 1:

And if someone comes in and we give them a homeopathic and it says three doses per day, they might take those three doses.

Speaker 2:

Even though it's five o'clock in the afternoon, they could take those three doses before they go to sleep that night, of course, you know, if you take it three times a day and it's for six hours hours, but even if you take it after five hours in order before going to bed, not delaying going to sleep because you need to take the dose.

Speaker 1:

That's common sense.

Speaker 2:

Okay, it will work. You don't have to wake up in the middle of the night to take your dose of the C-Log.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I just want to re-enter right here that if you're interested in homeopathic medications, we have a 15% discount for you at hollyhillvitaminscom on all our boron products. And at this point I just want to thank my guest, christophe. Thank you very much for coming in and I hope our listeners have really learned something from this podcast. So I just want to say thank you to our loyal listeners. I want to thank our sponsor, holly Hill Health Foods and hollyhillvitaminscom. You can reach out to me at Holly Hill with any questions or comments and we're going to be glad to answer them for them. Once again, christophe, thank you very much for coming in. Dr Christophe Merville thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks a lot for having me and I hope it shed some light on homeopathic medicines. I'm sure we did.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, thanks to our loyal listeners and thanks to our sponsor, holly Hill Health Foods and hollyhillvitaminscom. Don't forget to use coupon code NUTS N-U-T-Z for 15% off. You can reach me with questions and comments at 215-361-7770. Until next time. This is Dr Phil Pappas, wishing you good health.