From Pharmacy to Homeopathy: One Woman's Journey to Holistic Healing with Neela Prabhu

When conventional medicine falls short, many of us begin searching for alternatives that address not just our symptoms, but the root causes of our discomfort. In this enlightening conversation, former pharmacist turned homeopath Neela Prahbu shares how she transformed her career after realizing pharmacy was the only non-holistic aspect of her life.

Neela brilliantly explains homeopathy as an energy medicine based on the principle that "like cures like." Through diluted natural substances that would normally cause symptoms similar to those being treated, homeopathy stimulates the body's self-healing mechanisms without side effects. Unlike conventional treatments that often suppress symptoms only to have them emerge elsewhere, homeopathy aims for true healing—addressing the whole person rather than isolated complaints.

Through fascinating case studies, Neela reveals how physical ailments connect to emotional states. We learn why eczema, asthma and hay fever are expressions of the same gene, how bowel function relates to skin conditions, and why some joint pain responds dramatically to dietary changes like reducing nightshade vegetables. She explains how our modern disconnection from nature and exposure to global traumas through media overload contribute to rising anxiety and depression, especially among younger generations.

What resonates most powerfully is Neela's compassionate approach. "First, patients feel supported. Second, they feel heard and believed," she explains, highlighting why many turn to complementary medicine after feeling dismissed by conventional practitioners. By combining homeopathy with Bach flower remedies and Traditional Chinese Medicine principles, she creates personalized healing paths that address not just symptoms but their emotional and energetic foundations.

Whether you're curious about natural alternatives, struggling with chronic conditions conventional medicine hasn't resolved, or simply interested in understanding the connections between emotions and physical health, this conversation offers valuable insights into a gentle yet powerful healing approach. Ready to explore how homeopathy might support your wellbeing? Check out Neela's group program covering everything from sleep issues to children's ailments.

Neela Prahbu

neela@homeopathicharmony.co.uk

https://homeopathicharmony.co.uk/

http://homeopathicharmony.co.uk/homeopathic-courses/

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My new novel The Red Magus has recently been published in conjunction with the Unbound Press.  An entralling mystical adventure set across time and space, where past and current lives converge.  Find it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Neela: From Pharmacist to Homeopath
• 5:50 What is Homeopathy? Energy Medicine Explained
• 11:04 Treating Eczema Holistically
• 17:17 Connections Between Symptoms and Root Causes
• 25:12 Mental Health and Homeopathic Approaches
• 35:52 Complementary Tools and Chinese Medicine
• 42:52 Aging, Arthritis and Food Connections
• 44:48 Neela's Group Program and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:30

so welcome everybody to another episode of balm to the soul, and my name is natasha price. I'm your host. I'm a solicitor, an energy therapist, an author and, obviously, a podcaster. And, um, today we've got a lovely new guest, uh, called nila prabu, so welcomeela. Thank you so much for supporting the podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:55

Thank you for having me, Sasha.

Speaker 1: 2:58

So Neela has got 20 years experience as a pharmacist, but she has gone on to train to be a homeopath and that's a really interesting mix for me. I like to see the sort of the corporate traditional and then mixed with a bit more of the complementary. So why did you decide to study homeopathy?

Speaker 2: 3:28

So, yeah, I get asked this question quite a lot because it's kind of opposite ends of the spectrum, it's kind of 180 degrees different from what I used to do. And the truth of the matter is, pharmacy was the only side or part of my life that was not holistic. And, as it took me far too long to realise that this wasn't just a bad day or a bad week or a bad month, it was actually no, this is the career. It's bad and it's like, ah, okay, right, because I, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't happy and I was only working part time, 20 hours a week, but, you know, part time. So then it was kind of like, oh, I don't have a plan B, now what do I do? So I spent some time, kind of, you know, taking my time thinking about what I wanted to do, and actually it was my homeopath who suggested that I become a homeopath and I thought, maybe. But then I sort of wrote a pros and cons list, you know, and I spoke to my sister, who's also a business owner, and she goes, oh, I think I had like 12 or 13 pros and like two or three cons. And she goes, oh, you can't have those cons. And I said what do you mean? She goes. Well, every business owner has those cons. And I was like, oh, oh well, I guess I'm doing this then.

Speaker 2: 4:49

So I spent a year retraining um, which was, uh, it's meant to take a year, but I sped through it in like 11 months because it just sat also so well with me, um, you know, and it was online learning, which was great. I didn't have to do as much because I'd already got a degree in the medical sciences, so there was no anatomy and physiology to learn um. And then I had to build up 100 hours of clinic work, um had to present um three case studies, long-form case studies, and write um a big thick book, basically essentially um, which I still have on my folder over there, um, so those are all part of passing my course, um, um, but yeah, and that was about six years ago. So, and you've not looked back since Absolutely not. No, I haven't regretted the decision, not once, um.

Speaker 2: 5:42

And it fills me with so much joy when you know I'm speaking to a client and they've had a positive result or something that was really bothering them, as just you know, I read from my notes and say, well, this was bothering you last month and they're like oh, I forgot, that's gone away and it's just. I can't describe that feeling. It's just amazing, um, and to have multiple people say you've changed my life or my child's life is lovely. They didn't get that in the pharmacy, so you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:11

I've, um, I've quite recently done homeopathy and I found it incredibly successful, so it's a really, really good option for people to explore um yeah sorts of things. Well for everything really isn't it.

Speaker 2: 6:26

Yeah, and I think that's one. Well, there's many misconceptions, but one of them them is that it's only for physical things, which yes, it is, but it is a complete medical system. It can be used for mental, emotional, you know, as you say, everything. So, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:47

So let's just explain for the listeners, if you can, what is homeopathy, because it's quite an energy based isn't it.

Speaker 2: 6:56

It is. And most of the time when I you know, people say, what do you do? Or you know what is homeopathy? Most people will try and have a guess or what they think it is, and it's normally, oh, it's herbs, and I'm like no, it's not herbs. Or they'll say, oh, it's oils and I'm like no, that's an aromatherapist. So you're right that homeopathy is an energy medicine. So I normally sort of compare it to Reiki or acupuncture, because people have heard of those forms of energy medicine.

Speaker 2: 7:23

And how it's administered is the tiny little sugar tablets which are very palatable, you know, and it can be used from newborns all the way through to the elderly, on animals and on plants. No side effects and you know, the worst thing that can happen is nothing happens basically. So the main principle of homeopathy is like cures, like so, for example, we would use belladonna, which is deadly nightshade, to cure a fever. But if you have belladonna, you know the black berries as a physical plant. If you were to ingest some of those berries you would have a very hot, flush face, you might have a slight fever, you would have dilated pupils. It's actually what 16th century, 17th century muses for the artists you know, when they were, you know, botticelli chicks were sort of, you know, paint me and they would ingest some of these berries because it would give them that sort of look of, you know, being in love or besotted, because your pupils dilate, never mind the fact they were slightly poisoning themselves you know we'll ignore that.

Speaker 2: 8:27

So, obviously, if you were to then consume a few more of those berries, you know it is toxic, you know it would kill you. So that's what we use in super diluted forms to actually treat a fever, and that's where the the light cures like is, as I say, the main principle of that. So yeah, yeah, fascinating.

Speaker 1: 8:50

And your daughter also. You were able to help her with her eczema, weren't you? Which is very common, unfortunately, thing that a lot of children suffer from especially, but also adults. But she had a very successful result, didn't she?

Speaker 2: 9:09

Yeah, so I've got two daughters. My eldest she's 16 now, um, she's doing her GCSEs, um, but when she was a baby she had, um, eczema in the crook of both of her elbows, um, so I was like okay, so I started to use a very mild steroid cream. It was bleaching her skin. Uh, myself and my husband are both of Indian origin, so obviously she has Asian skin, and I was like not very happy about this. So I then found my homeopath, who's actually still our homeopath today. She fixed the problem. It's never come back and you know, to me that is true healing it's not just putting a sticky plaster on a broken leg.

Speaker 2: 9:49

My, my target, what I'm aiming for with my clients, is to actually fix the problem and for it not to come back. And you're right that eczema is common. So hay fever, eczema and asthma is the same gene, or their expressions of the same gene, but it's a dominant gene. So to me that's the hand of cards that you've been dealt. You know if you're playing a poker game, but homeopathy can help with how you play. I mean, if you're a really good poker player, you can win with a pair of eights, you know, um, so kind of a more of an example of that is.

Speaker 2: 10:22

So I've never suffered with any of those conditions, but my husband does. So he has slightly dry skin. He sometimes suffers with eczema now and then um suffers terribly with hay fever, which I have to listen to because he refuses for me to treat him. So he walks from one end of the garden to the other and honks and blows his nose like a goose, and it's enough, for god's sake, um. But the children don't suffer with hay fever. They've both experienced eczema at different points, which has been dealt with with homeopathy. But to me that's know. It doesn't mean that you have to then suffer. There are things you know. Homeopathy can help to change what happens. Yeah, so yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:01

And it's not always the case that they grow out of it, because often people say that don't they yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:08

Yeah, which is to me that's not very helpful in the the moment, and that's the bit where it's a bit like having an allergen and saying we'll just avoid it. It's like it's not always that easy. So for me I would want and you're right that some children do grow out of it. But what happens is if they've used a steroid cream, for example, and you know, the eczema magically disappears, let's say. And then the parents go okay, great, great, they're cured Some years later because it's still the same gene. They will develop asthma because what's happened is that imbalance in. You know, our bodies are self-healing organisms. They like balance. They're trying to talk to us and say, hey, there's something wrong here that has been suppressed into a deeper organ. So it then presents in the lungs.

Speaker 2: 11:53

So a few years later and I've seen this in the pharmacy where we're obviously dishing out the drugs, the children who have eczema a few years later they present with asthma and then in the summer guess what? There's a load of antihistamines to go with that for the hay fever. So eczema is your body trying to get rid of the toxins, but it's coming out through the skin instead of through the three lines of elimination where it should come out, which is the bowels, the urine and sweat, and when I'm taking an eczema case, I will always ask about the bowels. I ask all of my clients about their bowels because if you're slightly constipated or there's something going on, that's not quite right. You know, I had a case um not quite excellent, but it was in Patago um a little seven-year-old boy this was last year.

Speaker 2: 13:38

He had just from underneath his eyes, so the sort of the top of the cheekbones, all the way down his cheeks, his face, past his chin, going all the way down his neck and up to sort of you know that upper t-shirt line, bright red, very itchy, driving him crazy. Mum didn't want to use antibiotics or steroids on his face. He'd previously suffered, but mum was not keen. He was only seven. Six days he was 80 better with my homeopathic remedies and 12 days it was completely gone, and that was a year ago. It hasn't come back and one of the main reasons was he wasn't going for a poo every day.

Speaker 2: 14:14

So I said to mum right, we've got to get his bowels moving and that's really important um so yeah yeah very important, obviously because in Chinese medicine the skin, the lungs and the bowels are all different sides of the same triangle and the bowels are all different sides of the same triangle and the emotion is grief. So one of my other clients who had constipation she was eating well, she had enough fiber, she was drinking plenty of fluid, she was moving her body, all the things that we would say to help with constipation and yet she was driving her children to school, um, which was an hour's round trip because she lives in Dorset. She was thinking, oh, I mustn't have any fluid before I go, because she was like, well, I can't stop for a wee. But it wasn't her bladder control, it was the fact that she was constipated and that was then pressing on her bladder physically.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Prior to her speaking to me, her mum had suddenly passed away and she was very close to her mum and all of that. So that was grief. As soon as we solved that grief, her quote was my poo is perfect and you have unlocked me. And she then went on. She didn't have confidence before, but she's now gone on to train to be a Reiki practitioner and she absolutely loves it.

Speaker 2: 15:25

So it's, you know, yeah, it's much bigger than just, oh, I'm suffering with this physical thing.

Speaker 1: 15:33

it's, it's, you know the ripples, so yeah, and sometimes you don't know what it is, because I went to a homeopath because I had every now and again, very intermittently, I'd have a very sore nostril, but it was up up the not nostril, so it's not enough to stop me going to work or doing. Yeah, it was one of those really irritating things and it'd get really scabby and you know. And then I discovered that I had, um, I went to the opticians and they said you've got a membrane growing at the back of your eye. Okay, see it in. About five percent of people don't know what it is. There's nothing you can do about it. The hospital said they can't do. You know they wouldn't do it any because it's not affecting my eyesight.

Speaker 1: 16:20

I came away and I thought are they connected here? Went to see my homeopath and she I tested positive for an infection up my nose which I must have had for quite a long time. But while doing that and that completely cleared up, bless her, and when I went again to the optician the membrane had gone, been absorbed back into the body. So clearly that's what my eye was trying to protect itself. Yeah, but testing for that was one particular infection. But I also found out I had other infections in my gut which I wasn't aware of, and that really shocked me a bit because I thought, wow, you know, they're just sitting there, the body isn't getting rid of them, probably because it was trying to cope with this. Yeah, I'd pick them up. So you didn't get that. You get, you know, clients come and they. They find that they test positive things that they've not come for in the first place. I suppose it's all part and parcel of the picture, isn't it, that you build out yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily ask my clients to do testing routinely.

Speaker 2: 17:29

Um, and there are a lot of homeopaths mainly more sort of, I would say, either functional medicine or naturopaths tend to do that where they kind of work a lot on gut parasites and things like that.

Speaker 2: 17:40

Yeah she uses kinesiology as well, so it's obviously Sure, yeah, again, a lot of homeopaths use kinesiology as well, and this is where for the client it can become a little bit confusing because they're like, well, I think she's a homeopath, but oh, hang on, she might be a naturopath and they may not know the nuances or the differences, which is fine. You can obviously ask From my point of view. If someone is having issues with their gut, I will look at that. If there is other things going on, I will look at that area. But I wouldn't necessarily. I'm not trained, I haven't done any you know, sort of reading, lab results and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 18:18

We have got remedies to help expel parasites? Of course we have um. One of my clients was having recurrent worm infection which was then causing her to have um. She picked it up from her children, but it was just going round and round and round and she was getting really sick of it because it was for her. It was causing a very itchy vaginal discharge which was keeping her up at night. She was scratching herself to pieces, um, and of course the the doctors would just keep giving her anthelmintics, which is, you know, obviously you know anti-parasite drugs to kill the live worms, um, but it was more than that, and we've got her to a place now where the discharge is a hell of a lot less.

Speaker 2: 18:57

She's got a remedy from me to help with the itching um, and we have also noticed when it was occurring. So one of our main worm remedies is called sena, which is made from wormwood, and it's worse at the full moon. Okay, oh yeah. So, and that is exactly when hers was happening. We tracked it because she was saying I don't know if my my period is affecting it or my ovulation, I'm not sure. So we got some dates and we got some data and we're like, ok, what is the moon doing? And it was always worse around a full moon.

Speaker 1: 19:33

How extraordinary you wouldn't think to factor that in as well.

Speaker 2: 19:37

But it's the same for animals as well, that when dogs and cats have, you know, worms or parasites or whatever, it's always worse around the full moon, and in fact, one of one of the full moons is called the worm moon. Okay, um so it's. It's just kind of sometimes it's sort of picking up all these pieces of the puzzle and putting them together, um so yeah, yeah, fascinating.

Speaker 1: 20:03

And you mentioned previously and I didn't realize this either that you can use homeopathy on plants. Oh, yes, yeah yeah so for.

Speaker 2: 20:15

So, for example, if you had, you know, a aphids on your roses and they were covered and you didn't want to use pesticides and whatever, you could take one of the aphids, so one tiny little aphid, make that into a homeopathic remedy. So you know, sorry, yes, we're killing one aphid and make that into a liquid preparation and then spray the rosebush with that homeopathic remedy and all the other aphids would then go okay and they'd all just crawl away. It's, yeah, it's, absolutely fascinating. Or when you're repotting a plant, you would then give it remedies for shock, so arnica or aconite, because it's the shock of being, you know, replanted, type thing. Similar with, you know, animals.

Speaker 2: 20:58

So you know, dairy farmers have used homeopathy for years. You know, if you have your dairy herd, you know you want to protect them from mastitis. Obviously it's a very common problem. Rather than paying the vets an extortionate amount of money and then having to give them you know medicine each individual cow and it's, you know, expensive and annoying they can just have one homeopathic remedy. They just put it in the drinking water. The cows don't even know that they're having it. And not just that, the cows then get better from the mastitis, Year on year they then have less cows, who then suffer with mastitis because the cows are constitutionally getting better, they're becoming more robust. So the farmers are like yeah, let's do this, you know, um, so yeah fascinating.

Speaker 1: 21:43

I love that idea. And let's talk about mental health, because, um, that's something that's very, um important, obviously, but it seems to be um becoming more and more with younger generation struggling with that. But homeopathy can also help with mental health, can't it?

Speaker 2: 22:04

yeah, absolutely. I've had quite a few cases of depression or anxiety that have come through, you know, uh, through my books, and the case studies are on my website. Um, one of them was a gentleman who, I mean, you know it's a privilege to hear people's stories, but I do acknowledge that you know that some people have come through and they've had, you know, horrendous things happen to them. He'd suffered with depression for 45 years. So you know, that's a pretty, you know, long time. And it all, excuse me, had started. His mum had passed away when he was about 13. She'd unfortunately had bowel cancer but she'd got a bed in the front room and he would go and sit and talk to her and it was very close to his mum. Um, his dad unfortunately worked nights and he was also ex-military, so it was not very, uh, comforting to his son. Let's just say, yeah, um, and it was I.

Speaker 2: 22:55

I wanted to reach back in time and just give that 13 year old boy a hug.

Speaker 2: 22:58

You know he's now obviously a fully grown man, but so we worked together to release, you know, you know the remedies to help, to kind of him, to overcome that grief. Um, but even after our, just our chat, our initial consultation he messaged me and he said he had a big cry and he said I feel so much lighter, just actually just talking to you and just telling you what had happened. Um, and after the as I work in three month packages, he had taken himself off quite a few of his medications or he was sort of cutting them down because he goes, I don't think I need these anymore, I don't want to take them anymore, and it was just yeah. So I know that's not young people, but, um, I think I mean I've been through mental health journey myself. I had um severe post-natal depression after my second child. But in terms of younger people or the generation now, I think there is a lot more demands on them and pressure and it's we are so far removed from nature.

Speaker 2: 24:05

That's, that's the biggest thing. So, unfortunately, we have spent thousands of years being cavemen or cave people, right where you know, killing the dinosaur, or hunter gatherers, and we've spent and that's what our biology has evolved to be, but then we spent a blink of an eye. Then suddenly we're modern people who live in houses, with electricity and wi-fi, we can go to the moon and all these sorts of things, and our biology hasn't caught up yet. So this is why you then have a child who's perhaps not had a very stable childhood. Their neural pathways for adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol are wider, so they're like a motorway compared to a country lane if someone has had a stable, happy childhood. So you then take that child so they will have a bigger reaction to those chemicals being produced, because a lot of that was how they grew up. Those pathways had to be wider because there was a lot of stress going on in their childhood. You then bring that to, I don't know, a meeting in a boardroom of a company and the boss has, you know, shouted at someone or he's gone a bit mad and everyone's kind of gone. Oh, okay, the boss is, you know, all right, okay, and there's one person who then runs off and has a panic attack about it and then everyone else is going well, hang on a minute, what's wrong with Joe or you know whatever? And it's because if you then look back, they may not have had a stable childhood. So they're almost re-traumatizing by having that person shout at them or their adrenaline, or adrenaline is kind of, you know, it's kicking off. Their cortisol is going. There's a saber, toothtoothed tiger in your face. You've got to run, you've got to do something. Your fight, flight or freeze, you know is is triggered so quickly because we've got our monkey brain and our human brain. But the monkey brain keeps us alive. It's kept us thriving. It's said, oh, don't go into that dark cave, there might be a tiger and they're waiting to eat you. So we might not have been happy, we might not be thriving, but you're alive and that's essentially the.

Speaker 2: 26:04

You know you've got a mismatch going on. Basically, you've got your modern life going well. I'm not being physically attacked. I've got a very full, you know, email inbox and you know, yes, it's raining and, oh god, there's traffic and but all of those things. You're not physically under attack, but your brain doesn't know that it doesn't know how to cope. So you have this mismatch and this is why then people end up with either having a panic attack or having anxiety or just not being able to cope very well.

Speaker 2: 26:36

And as you then get older, you may have developed tools that you used to cope with as a child. You know that worked for your six-year-old self. But if you've not had a look at that toolbox and then you get to 26 and you're still using those tools, it's like okay, we need to upgrade these tools now we need to. You know you can go back and parent that six-year-old girl or boy and say, hey, it's okay, we're going to make it, you know, but no one wants to or necessarily wants to unpack all of that and I think for me that's.

Speaker 2: 27:10

You know what's going on and it's not natural. For example, you know social media. You know bang that drum. But it's not just social media, it's the news. So if you listen to the news or you turn on the news even if it's the two minute radio news and you're hearing about things on the other side of the planet, on the other side of the world, horrendous, it's never good news, is it? Horrendous things.

Speaker 2: 27:32

We, when we were hunter gatherers, we would know about 150 people, even if we were living in villages in you, villages in medieval England or whatever, that's what we would know and that is all our nervous systems can cope with. So if we're then being exposed to thousands, millions, billions of all these other people's stories, we are then left with this oh God, what do I do? How do I cope? How can I help? That's horrendous. When actually, as you as a single person, you're going, I don't know what to do and again this is causing so the body starts to release stress hormones because you're worried and it does that make sense? It's sort of yeah, makes perfect sense.

Speaker 1: 28:12

Yeah, absolutely so. What sort of remedies do you use for that? Because would you use like for like again you?

Speaker 2: 28:19

know if somebody was very socially anxious or whatever yeah, so our, our remedies are in in pictures, or caricatures is how I describe them. So much like Mickey Mouse is is a mouse, but he's not an anatomically correct mouse. That's how I describe them. So, um, arginit so that's silver nitraterate, the kind of caricature of that is a very anxious, nervous person. They're very fearful, fearful of going to the dentist. It's anticipatory anxiety. You know, if they've got a dentist, oh God, you know they're really fearful. The other side is they also love sugar. So arginine are big sugar consumers. They love their sugar. But it's's just one of the the remedies we have. So my basic book of remedies, um, I've got about 1400 remedies and that's just scratching the surface. So we have my. My job is to get the information from the patient and then pick the most appropriate remedy. A single well-chosen remedy will do more for that patient versus you know, oh, you're going to have one remedy for eczema, one remedy for your eyes, one remedy for so. So, yeah, that's that's my skill in choosing that, because we've got remedies for shock. But it's not just one remedy, we've got plenty of remedies for shock.

Speaker 2: 29:39

Yeah, you know this man that I described with his mum passing away. It was abandonment for him because he felt abandoned by his mum. He was missing his mum, obviously, but then wasn't supported by um, his father as well, um, and actually had a horrible maths teacher scream in his face. He'd been off school for three weeks and nobody had told the maths teacher. This was obviously in the late 50s, early 60s, um, and his maths teacher just came and you know, very close to his face and screamed in his face and said where have you been for three weeks? In front of the whole class and I just thought, oh, my god, that's horrendous. You know. His dad then went in and, you know, had a word with the school, obviously a very loud word, but I just thought this poor boy you know, yes, it's, it's an adult sat in front of me, but it was.

Speaker 2: 30:34

So, yeah, in answer to your question, um, I'm also a backflower remedy um practitioner, which I know we can talk about. The backflower remedies are purely for emotional issues. So most of the time I use homeopathy. If it is appropriate, I will recommend a backflower remedy and I obviously have custom blends of those as well. But they can act quite quickly and they are purely for emotional support. Obviously, physical things can be caused by emotions. So you know there is a link. So yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:05

I'm glad you mentioned that. Thank you for that, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because you've also studied the Chinese five element system nutrition, yeah, the chat system and the back, yeah, fascinating, all of that's fascinating. So so presumably is it sort of a bit of an eclectic mix. When people come yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:28

So I describe those things as tools, basically much like a carpenter would have a hammer, he would have nails, he would have, you know, a saw. This is how I use all these things as tools. It's not that um, it's taking someone's case and then going okay, how does this pan out? What is the root cause? And it's always emotional. Is it grief, is it abandonment? Is it humiliation? What is that deep rooted cause?

Speaker 2: 31:55

You know the emotion and then going about, going okay, how do we then help the body to address that underlying cause? But also, actually, they're in pain, or they're crying, or you know they're suffering, you know in some other way that the, you know the skin is itching. We've got to provide some relief for that. So it's kind of on. You know multiple layers, because we're all onions and sometimes there's a remedy, and I think not. Yet we need some other remedies first to do their work and then we'll come to that. One um and I did a, I think I said to you I did a postgraduate in um, tcm, so traditional chinese medicine, and I was very lucky to um be taught by a homeopath who she's retired. Now she's on a boat sailing around the world with her husband, which is brilliant.

Speaker 1: 32:45

You know why not.

Speaker 2: 32:48

She spent 40 years being a homeopath at a very busy clinic in Kent, but prior to being a homeopath, she was an acupuncturist, so she obviously has knowledge of both. And this is what she was teaching us in terms of not just diagnostics, but how certain remedies are liver remedies or spleen remedies and how does the liver and gallbladder are paired organs and why is that and what's the emotion behind it. And when I describe these things and I've got blogs obviously on my website describing it but when I describe these things to my patients, their jaws tend to drop and they go oh, my god, that makes so much sense. Yeah, and it's because when you have conventional medicine, um, you know and I'm not certainly not blaming the people in the NHS, it is the system um, they have been taught to diagnose a condition, you know, a textbook condition, put that person in a box, give them a label and then prescribe a pharmaceutical product for that. If you do not fit into that, their limited, blunt toolbox, they kind of go. Well, they shrug their shoulders and go well, that's it. You know. Well, this is your life. You know if you've got, if you've got back pain and they give you a painkiller that causes you to be drowsy, um. They'll say, oh, but you, but you're not in back pain, you haven't got any back pain anymore, tick. And then you're like, well, yeah, but I'm asleep all day and I've got children and a job to go to. And this is not acceptable. And that's when people start looking for other things.

Speaker 2: 34:10

Whereas if you look at the CAM tree or the Complementary Alternative Medicine tree, homeopathy is one of the branches You've obviously got, as we said, reiki, acupuncture, reflexology, crystal healing, lots of other branches, but all of these paradigms agree with each other. They will say, yeah, that's throat chakra. Yeah, that's grief. They might treat it in a different way, slightly different, but they all pretty much agree with each other and it's 180 degrees different to what conventional medicine says.

Speaker 2: 34:37

So when people come to me, it is, first of all, they feel supported. Second of all, they feel heard and believed, because that's the other thing. Don't get me started on females not being believed when they go to the doctor, because they know they're living in their body, they know their own body and it's. It's then going actually, yeah, ok. And then when I can actually say why it's happening, because if they get given a diagnosis of something and they're like well, okay, now what? Oh no, we haven't got anything to help with that, that's just your label, whereas if I can say well, actually this has happened, because this happened in your life and then this happened, and then this happened, and then there was grief here and there was, they kind of go, oh, oh, okay, and that just that understanding and being heard, can it? Just it means a lot to people, means it means a lot to everybody. And then the last part is okay, let's try and fix this now yes, yeah, beautifully explained nila.

Speaker 1: 35:34

Thank you. All the points that, um, you know most people moan about and why people are looking further afield for answers, and you know answers for the way that they live their lives definitely, yeah, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:52

And it's one of my bugbears is when doctors say, oh well, it's your age and I. I really ticks me off, because my grandma, um, when did she pass away? God, jasmine was three, so 13 years ago, she was almost 95. This, this lady, was an ox. Nothing was killing this lady, okay, um, even in hospital, when we she was there for one month, her, um, her kidneys were failing her and you know um, heart failure, you know this sort of thing. Her mind was as sharp as a pin. She did not. There was no dementia, there was no Alzheimer's. And when you look at it like that, you think, well, actually, the human body is not really designed to last 100 years. You know, it's no wonder that her kidneys were failing and her heart was failing and whatever, but her mind was all still there, she knew exactly who we all were. She was still making jokes with me.

Speaker 2: 36:45

When doctors say this, or patients come and tell me, I say, well, that's a bit of a cop-out, because we're all getting older, there's nothing we can do about it. It's not like you can say, oh right, okay, well, I'll just stop the aging process. I refuse to believe that it is just old age and it is looking at what is acceptable for that person. What do they want to achieve? What you know? If they want to continue doing yoga or dancing or riding a horse or whatever it is they want to do, how can we help them to do that and manage their symptoms? They might not be 100% pain-free, but if we can dial that down and they go actually 100% pain-free, but if we can dial that down and they go actually, this is much better than I was before. Yeah, one of my clients I mean, she's not particularly old, she's only just turned 50, but she has an arthritic hip and she said oh, I really love running, but I've had to give it up because of my hip, and you know, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 37:37

I listened to a podcast and there was a marathon runner, a coach I guess, and I sent her this podcast. She goes oh, my God, it's about posture and what she said, and you know, but equally, because she'd had her 50th birthday, she'd had some boozy weekends celebrating with friends and all this sort of thing. And I said so our joints, our muscles and our tendons are governed by the liver, energy, chinese medicine, and the emotion is anger and resentment. Okay, so I said if you, if you have the alcohol, does it make your hip worse? And she goes, yes. I said okay, that's fine, because of course the liver detoxes alcohol as well as a lot of other toxins.

Speaker 2: 38:19

And the other other thing I asked her to do was to decrease or cut down for a week her nightshade vegetables. So that's tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes and aubergine. She goes oh, I love tomatoes. I said, okay, just for a week, just one week, just try it. And she said that her pain did go down. I said, okay, so now the choice is yours. If you choose to have alcohol or eat tomatoes, you know that your hip pain is going to be slightly worse. And she noticed this because she would walk her daughter to school and back, you know, see her again. And she said no, it's much better when I don't have tomatoes or when I don't have alcohol. So I would again, it's finding out these. It's not for everyone, not. You know, if you've got arthritis and you cut, not everyone is going to notice that but for some people it does make a difference.

Speaker 1: 39:10

Yeah. So, fascinating and it only needs someone like you to point that out that people try it and then think, oh, that was easy yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:20

And it. It's not that she's, she's not completely pain-free, but she has the knowledge now to choose. You know that. Okay, yes, all right, alcohol calls a hangover, we all know that, but it's. You may not be thinking about your hip in that way. You might just be thinking, oh god, I'm getting old and you know my hips hurting. But actually she's not that old, she's only just turned 50. So so, yeah, yeah excellent.

Speaker 1: 39:44

That's fascinating. I eat a lot of tomatoes actually, so that might be something I need to cut down on well, this is the thing, and this is where you know you get this blanket thing of.

Speaker 2: 39:54

You know tomatoes are good for you or tomatoes are bad for you. They're not. No food is good or bad, it's just what it does for you tomatoes. Tomatoes are inherently healthy, you know. It's well technically a fruit, as my 16-year-old keeps pointing out to me, but you know, a vegetable, cooked tomatoes, because they have lycopene, are really good for men's prostates, you know. So that's another good thing.

Speaker 2: 40:15

But if you are suffering with any inflammatory condition, mainly joints, so arthritis or you, or you know tennis, elbow, those types of things, you know, try it and see, even if it's just for a week, um, if it makes a difference to your pain. Now you know I'm not saying don't ever eat another tomato, because again, this same lady had cut down on fresh tomatoes and then one week she'd made a chili con carne and she goes I don't get it, my hips hurting. And her daughter pointed out she goes oh, but mummy, we put, you know, chopped tomatoes in a can in in the chili con carne. She goes oh yeah, I forgot about that. So, yeah, it's not about I don't like telling people to avoid certain foods, um, but it's exactly yeah, but it's them knowing that that can cause pain like I.

Speaker 1: 41:02

Yes, that's, I'm going to try. That can cause pain like I can say that. So I'm going to try that definitely and see, because I do have a bit of joint pain my knees every now and again, so especially with gardening as well. So yes yeah, I might try that. So, um, neela, tell us about your group program, because you have a group program at the moment, don't you?

Speaker 2: 41:23

Yes. So I wanted to share, you know, 25 years worth of health knowledge, but in bite sized chunks, those quick things. A they actually work. And B I know from experience, having had, obviously, my two children, that you know these things will genuinely save you time and money. So each month we have a theme and then I break that down into four weekly, you know, sessions. So I have a 10 minute presentation from me and then, obviously, a chance to ask me questions or interact with the group, and then that is then recorded because it's online and I'm now doing an audio version so if someone's walking their dog, they can then listen or catch up because you know, or driving, or you know doing something else where you can't.

Speaker 2: 42:04

You don't always want to watch something, you want to listen to something, and so some of examples of some of the topics so sleep tips, menstruation, menopause this month at the moment we're doing children's minor ailments. We've got the backflower remedies are coming up next month and then september is going to be homeopathy and giving kind of a history, but also teaching you about my basic 18 remedy kit, which covers 80 of what you go to the pharmacy for um, and and it heals you quicker. So that's what I want to give to people, because it's, um, you know, rather than trying to learn all of these things, you know, most busy people are just wanting to have that knowledge, but they or they, or they want to treat their children in a certain way. They don't want to keep, you know, giving them drugs or whatever they're like. Well, actually, I don't know any alternative. So what do I do?

Speaker 1: 42:54

um, and I've used can people click in and out and then just do a month? They can.

Speaker 2: 43:01

Absolutely yeah. So one of my ladies doesn't have any children and she said she didn't want to do the children's minor ailments, which makes sense, but she did. She did do the menstruation, the menopause, because that was obviously relevant for her. So yes, you can dip in and dip out. I've also got an offer If you, if you sign up for the whole 10 months, you get two months free. So August and December are I'm not running anything, because you know holidays and Christmas. There's no point. But the rest of the 10 months I am and it is, or you know, obviously, the previous months that we've done. If someone said, oh, I missed the sleep tips, I'd really like that. That's fine, it's all recorded, it's all there they can have access to that.

Speaker 1: 43:44

So so, yeah, excellent, right. So, um, at the obviously under the episode, I will put up your website so people can go and have a look and always contact you if they have any questions or or whatever. Yeah, fabulous. Thank you, nila. It's been such a pleasure to thank you to you. You explain things so beautifully that you can understand, but it's been fascinating. I find it really, really interesting the whole field. You know and, like you say how it, how it is part of the complementary therapy, yeah, yeah so I found that very interesting.

Speaker 2: 44:22

Thank you very much no, you're welcome, thank you absolute pleasure.

Speaker 1: 44:27

So, um, if you've enjoyed listening to Nila and I having a chat, please um like and share it. Share the podcast around. You can also subscribe and um, I will talk to you all soon.