Cocoa Pods
Podcast - Cocoa Pods Series: A feature of the Birth Center Foundation.
We discuss all things' women, all things' pregnancy, all things' after. Reasons why women fall very sick ( morbidity) or die (mortality) before pregnancy (adolescent girls and young adults),during pregnancy and after are discussed in this maternal morbidity and mortality reduction academy; especially with an emphasis on minority women, all over the world; and ways for all involved in care to work together collaboratively and mitigate and or eliminate risks in women’s health.
Cocoa Pods
The Art of Naturopathy for Vibrant Health
Unlock the secrets of naturopathic medicine with Dr. Jessica Patella, whose expertise in homeopathy and exercise physiology shines a light on alternative approaches to health and wellness. Embark on a journey from her formative years at Florida State University to a pivotal meeting with a homeopathic doctor that forever changed her career path. This episode peels back the layers of naturopathic educational rigor, paralleling traditional medical training while fostering a profound connection with natural healing practices. We delve into the world of 'like cures like,' a fundamental homeopathic principle, and discuss the crucial steps naturopathic doctors take to become licensed, ensuring that patients receive care from qualified professionals prepared to treat a variety of conditions with holistic precision.
Step into the healing gardens of naturopathy, where nutrition, botanical medicine, and homeopathy converge to craft a preventive lifestyle brimming with vitality. Dr. Patella shares how expectant mothers can find solace in homeopathic remedies for the myriad nuances of pregnancy, easing everything from nausea to labor pains with gentle, natural solutions. Then, stir your curiosity as we explore the ginger root's dual life as a kitchen staple and a potent botanical remedy. By simply steeping slices of this fiery root, discover how you can create a therapeutic elixir that calms your stomach and invigorates your senses. Join us on CocoaPods podcast for an enlightening session that promises to enrich your understanding of how naturopathic medicine seamlessly integrates into daily life, fostering health through the bounty of nature's apothecary.
Hello and welcome to CocoaPods podcast. My name is Dr Bola Sogade. I'm the curator of this public education podcast with a twist to maternal health and all the things that surround maternal health. So for this Alcoco podcast episode, we're very fortunate to have with us a naturopathic doctor and that's how you say that, right Naturopathic.
Dr Jessica Patella:Correct.
Dr Bola Sogade:Okay, naturopathic doctor, dr Jessica Patella. So, dr Patella, can you introduce yourself and your background in naturopathic medicine to our audience out there?
Dr Jessica Patella:Absolutely. I'm so happy to be here with you today on this podcast and my background is in naturopathic medicine. So my undergrad was from Florida State University in exercise physiology and I was pre-med and then I ended up kind of getting to this point and having to decide what path that I was going to take. And I spent a lot of time in London with a homeopathic doctor, which is really what kind of veered my path from the traditional medical route, and he was amazing and spent all this time with me during his workday and he didn't know me at all. I had another mentor in my life that recommended that I meet with him and he said if you like homeopathy, you have to apply for naturopathic medical school when you get back to the States. And he said if you like homeopathy, you have to apply for naturopathic medical school when you get back to the States. And so that's what I did and there's four schools in the United States and it just happens that the one that I ended up at is one of the strongest programs in homeopathic medicine.
Dr Jessica Patella:But naturopathic medicine as far as like for people that aren't familiar with it, our first few years.
Dr Jessica Patella:It's a four-year medical program. The first two years are very similar to what you would get in a traditional medical school with full cadaver lab and doing all of your anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and then sitting for your first board exams and then the second two years is where it starts to differ. So you have that traditional pharmacology, so you understand how the drugs work, but then you focus on the natural and holistic methods of treating first and, depending what state you're in, you can use pharmacology, so your prescriptions that doctors will use, but all of the education is focused in trying to kind of find and treat the cause of the illness and do that with methods that are as natural as possible. And then you sit for board exams again after those last two years, so total of four years. So my education and background is from Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, which has now grown into Sonoran University, and I really spent most of my rotations in homeopathic medicine and nutrition. So that's what I focused on when I graduated.
Dr Bola Sogade:Now do you guys have residencies and fellowships, like in allopathic medicine Now?
Dr Jessica Patella:do you guys have residencies and fellowships, like in allopathic medicine? We do have residencies and that's where I feel like there needs to be a little bit more growth there, just because there's not as many opportunities as there are students that graduate. But that is growing. So there is that opportunity to do residency and then to do more focused study, for, like a lot of my colleagues that are interested in and their practice is oncology, they have a whole separate thing that they do just for that. So it kind of depends what path you take or if you're focused more as primary care medicine.
Dr Bola Sogade:Well, thank you. So you know. Thank you for that introduction. So what is homeopathy or homeopathic remedies?
Dr Jessica Patella:hundred years to Samuel Hahnemann, and he was a medical doctor based out of Europe and he did a lot of writing, a lot of medical writing, and the treatments of course a few hundred years ago are arsenic and mercury and bloodletting, and so he's seen all these patients get sicker and sicker from his treatments and so it really led him to try to find a different method. So basically he created homeopathic medicine, which is where you take the medicine that you're going to use and you. It's a process of dilution, so you dilute it and then you succuss it, which is a shaking, and then you continue to dilute it and succuss it, and dilute it and succuss it, which is a shaking, and then you continue to dilute it and succuss it, and dilute it and succuss it, and so then you get this medicine that is very powerful but it's not harmful to the patient because it's so diluted. And homeo means we use our words to break down right. So homeo means same.
Dr Jessica Patella:So the idea with homeopathic medicine is you want to find the remedy that causes the same reaction in somebody that is healthy and is very, very sensitive to homeopathic medicine. So we call those people provers and when they get the remedy and they kind of list, all of the symptoms that they get. Then that's what you want to try to match with the person that is in a state of disease and the symptoms that they're presenting. So you want to try to match that remedy in as many categories as possible to their illness. So you're treating like with like, which is a huge, huge paradigm shift from you know using the antibiotic or you know the antiparasitic. So you're doing the opposite. It's it's very different.
Dr Bola Sogade:Wow, Wow, Thank you, you know. So if a lay woman is considering consulting with a naturopathic doctor, she might want to know several key pieces of information to make an informed decision. Some questions she may have are what is the naturopathic doctor's educational background and training and I know you spoke to your training specifically she might want to know what conditions does the naturopathic doctor typically treat, and is the naturopathic doctor licensed or registered in the relevant jurisdiction? Or and there's a second part to this question which I'll ask after you answer this oh good, because that's going to be a lot to remember to answer all your questions.
Dr Jessica Patella:So I think one of the most important things is for that woman to check and find out where the naturopathic doctor has graduated from.
Dr Jessica Patella:So because naturopathic doctors are regulated by the state, it's going to depend what state that woman is in. So currently naturopathic doctors are licensed in 26 states and so in a licensed state, essentially they have more protection because they know that person has gone to a four-year medical program, has passed their board exams and has an actual license. When it comes to some of those states that are unlicensed, that's where you have to be even more careful and I would recommend checking to make sure that that doctor graduated from one of the accredited schools. So there's only four accredited schools in the nation. The other route you can go is going to our national organization, which is the AANP, the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, which is naturopathicorg, and there's a find a doctor there. So some of the doctors are registered on that as well. So there's a kind of two different routes to make sure, again, if you're in a licensed state, you would know that if somebody has ND or NMD after their name, that they did graduate from an accredited program.
Dr Bola Sogade:And you know how does the naturopathic doctor approach healthcare Like? What modalities or therapies does the naturopathic doctor commonly use in management of people, patients?
Dr Jessica Patella:The great thing is we have so many things in our toolbox, essentially, or our doctor's bag, so kind of the baseline, and every naturopathic doctor will be a little bit different because you know we all connect with things right. Like you obviously are passionate about women's health and you chose obstetrics and gynecology, so within naturopathic medicine you'll see doctors that kind of are drawn to certain modalities. Like I love homeopathic medicine. Not all naturopathic doctors do, but we're all trained in it. So overall, the idea is kind of the basics of of creating like a healthy lifestyle.
Dr Jessica Patella:So we all have countless hours in nutrition and so focusing on what's coming into the body, right, I tell my students that I teach all the time that you know what you eat literally becomes the cells of your body, and so that's why it's so important to try to do the best that you can and what you're taking in.
Dr Jessica Patella:Obviously, when you're younger you have a little bit more forgiveness and as we're getting older you know there's a little bit less forgiveness there.
Dr Jessica Patella:And then we're all trained in botanical medicine, so using different herbs and different plants in a tincture form, typically, or as teas or powdered in capsules and things like that. And then there's homeopathic medicine, which, again, those are the little pellets, so I brought some. I know that not everybody can see us, there's mostly just hearing, but so the homeopathic remedies are typically found in these kind of little vials, and then you rotate them and that's the little tiny pellets that the homeopathic remedy is on, and then so our main focus typically is preventative care, preventative wellness, and then some people kind of just focus on certain areas like women's health or chronic disease. We tend to be the doctor for the person that just is really into health and wants to try to prevent as much as possible, or for the people that have tried everything else and nothing else has worked, and so we tend to be that last, either first resort or last resort, just overall, in the type of patients that typically come to naturopathic doctors.
Dr Bola Sogade:Now you mentioned a tincture. What is? What is that? Can you tell us a little bit?
Dr Jessica Patella:Yes, so I yes, I want to clarify that tinctures are different. So this is like a botanical medicine, so it is going to be extracted, typically with an alcohol, and it has the dropper, and then you'll just you would fill, like the dropper with that tincture and either take it or or put it in a water to take that way if it's a little bit easier. So the tinctures are usually more for the botanical medicine and then again the homeopathic medicine is on little little pellets for that medicine. So they're two very different things. So I just want to make sure that we clarify that, since I know we're going to talk about some remedies for women today on the podcast, but the homeopathic remedies are very different than a botanical remedy. So, just making sure everything all the remedies I'm going to speak about today are homeopathic remedies.
Dr Bola Sogade:Okay, so the tinctures how are they different? What is the main difference? Is it in the packaging pellets and liquid, or what exactly?
Dr Jessica Patella:Great question. So the tincture is going to be you're getting a lot of the constituents of that plant. So that would be. You know, let's say you're taking echignasia, right, and they'll take the actual echignasia, the flower, the stem of the plant, they'll put it with a combination of alcohol and water and it will sit in that for a certain amount of time and then you'll basically strain that out and that is a botanical medicine For homeopathic medicine.
Dr Jessica Patella:You are going to take that, essentially that breakdown of that plant or that animal, and then you're going to dilute that, like one bit of that one to a hundred, and then you're going to shake it in solution and then you're going to take one drop of that solution and put it into the next hundred and shake that, and so you keep diluting it. So most of the dilutions are to the point where there's very little of that actual original thing left, and so it's more of the. If we go to physics with wavelengths, it's almost like that is, has the physics of that wavelength on that medicine, but not very much of the original form left.
Dr Bola Sogade:And so the advantage of diluting is you can predict If you give too much, if it's going to adversely affect the person. Is that why you dilute things out several times?
Dr Jessica Patella:Yes, and some of them are hundreds and hundreds of times diluted, and so that helps with the side effects. And what we have found in homeopathic medicine is actually sometimes the more diluted is, the stronger the healing power is to that remedy, which is kind of counterintuitive, I know.
Dr Bola Sogade:Wow, thank you for that. Well, let's go to my field. You know, pregnancy has common pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, fatigue and mood swings, and I'm looking at how homeopathy could help. Are there specific homeopathic remedies that are safe and beneficial during pregnancy? Are there homeopathic remedies that may assist with maintaining a healthy pregnancy and preventing complications?
Dr Jessica Patella:Yes, yeah, I have a great list to go over with you today, from kind of the beginning stages of pregnancy and into labor. For as far as finding the remedies, they're usually at health food stores. You can find them. If there's a local health food store, they're usually a good source to find the remedies. And then I would say, just if they can find a homeopathic doctor to kind of check in with as far as like potency or how often to take the remedy, that would that obviously would be helpful. But most of these are over the counter that the that the mother could get at a health food store.
Dr Bola Sogade:And you know how. Can homeopathy support a smoother labor and delivery process, and are there specific remedies that alleviate discomfort during the various stages of pregnancy?
Dr Jessica Patella:Yes, yes. So I wanted to start with some of the ones that are for kind of usually typically that first trimester with a lot of nausea that can come along with pregnancy. So one of the first remedies during that time period that may help a mother is sepia, which is S-E-P-I-A, and sepia can help with the nausea that occurs with. Pregnancy tends to be like more typical of having the nausea more at the beginning of the day. Typically, if somebody needs sepia they tend to be better outside exercising in the sun and they're kind of drawn to that. It helps them to feel better. So if that kind of describes that, mother sepia would be a good remedy to try in those early stages when there can be nausea that comes along with pregnancy.
Dr Bola Sogade:In our upcoming episode.
Dr Jessica Patella:Ginger would be more of the botanical medicine, right? Or just food as medicine, where you can actually take the ginger because it can be calming to the stomach and you could just slice some fresh ginger and put it in hot water and just make your own ginger tea. So that would be more of like a food as medicine or even a plant medicine that you could use.
Dr Bola Sogade:Thank you for listening to CocoaPods podcast.
