Introduction to Homeopathy and PANS/PANDAS

So when we're doing dealing with homeopathy, with these really sensitive kids, even these small doses can sometimes get a little bit of that primary action and cause and aggravation.

So first and foremost, we want to make sure we're dealing with somebody who knows how to help us in that process. We want to make sure that we're getting the best fit because there's literally thousands of remedies that are available, but you need to find the best fit for the totality of your case.

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Hi, everybody. Doctor Nancy Ohara and I am thrilled to welcome Doctor Jennifer Barr. She's the founder of Resilience Naturopathic. That's a practice devoted to pans and pandas and homeopathy.

She earned her Doctor of Naturopathy Medicine from Sonoran University, which was formerly Southwest College of Natural Ethnic Medicine. And she's on the board of directors of the American Institute of Homeopathy, the Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians.

And prior to her naturopathic medicine career. She studied physiology neurobiology at the University of Maryland and worked as an Arabic linguist in the US Navy and as a defense contractor.

I had to read that, Jennifer, because I never knew that about you. And I love doing this because not only is it great to see you, but it's great to learn more about you and just talk about this devastating but treatable disease.

So thank you. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here. I always love any opportunity. I get to chat with you and collaborate with you and learn from you and and learn from each other.

It's just a joy to you. Like we say, it takes a village and it really is good to work together. But I have to ask first, how did you get from an Arabic linguist in the U. S.

Navy and a defense contractor to a naturopathy physician who does homeopathy? You know, I mean, like, nothing is a straightforward route. Is it? So, I mean, I was going to school at Ohio State University.

I grew up in Ohio, and I was studying chemical engineering, and I realized pretty quickly I was not that interested in doing chemical engineering. But I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I mean, I don't know why we expected 18 year olds to know what they want to do, and I was, I like, I was, I was young and like, I'm a I'm a pretty smart kid.

So like I started actually as a sophomore. So I was only eight, barely 18 and I was a sophomore already. And I was just like, I don't have any idea what I want to do.

Jennifer Barru2019s Background and Path to Naturopathic Medicine

So I quit school and I joined the Navy, and that's how I ended up becoming a an Arabic translator is because I wanted to do something that was exactly the opposite, or as far opposite of being a chemical engineer that I could think of.

And that was the most opposite within the military. So it was, you know, it was just a way to give myself space and time to figure things out. And it turns out I'm pretty good at languages, so it worked out pretty well.

And then while I was in school, I was, while I was in the Navy, I was actually going to school full time to get my premed degree, the physiology in neurobiology.

That was while I was in the Navy, and it was my own personal experience with the health care system that made me say, wait a minute. I'm not sure this conventional route is the way that I want to go, but what do I do?

How do I do something different? And it was serendipity that I found out about not empathic medicine. So it was a very circuitous, personal journey that led me to that's great.

That's great. And and I so agree with you that how do we expect 18 year olds to know their path? And I, I say that to kids and families all the time. It's just, you know, so and we also have area of the country where we were born in common.

I mean, I'm from West Virginia, right over the border to Ohio. So anyway, I had no idea. Yeah, yeah. Wheeling, West Virginia, you know, I drove through Wheeling so many times as a kid on the way to visit family in Pennsylvania, too.

And I was for some reason, I felt like I was allergic to wheeling. Every time I go through, I just sneeze like crazy. I am allergic to it. I left at 17 and haven't looked back, but you know, and you could get through it in five minutes.

So hopefully the allergies didn't last that long. So anyway, so you know we we both have a passion for healing pins and pandas. And I especially like what you do in homeopathy and and you know like when you were we were talking about doing this.

You talked about healing the susceptibility to pens and pandas. So so first tell me what is homeopathy and and what isn't it. Yeah. So homeopathy is an entire system of medicine that's been around for over 200 years.

So it is founded on the principle of like cures, like where we give something that could trigger similar symptoms when given to a healthy person that someone is experiencing in their unhealthy state.

One of the things that people think about with homeopathy frequently is the very small doses that are associated with it, so that's another principle of homeopathy is the minimum effective dose.

But the dose isn't what makes something homoeopathy, it's how it's applied. So anything really could be used as homeopathy if it's given in a like cures like manner.

So, you know, we think about the medications that are used for ADHD and there's stimulants. They're used homeopathic. They're just used in very strong doses. Right.

Because we're giving something that if someone who doesn't have ADHD were to take, would look a lot like they have ADHD, they'd be really agitated, restless, etc.

racing mind everything. But when you give it to somebody who has ADHD, it slows everything down. So homeopathy is is when you use a substance based off of that, that law of nature that like cures like, and then it stimulates the body to heal.

And it can be using anything like most of most homeopathic remedies are made from plant, mineral and animal sources. So, things like belladonna, it's made from a plant.

It's a pretty toxic plant, but we use it in a very, very, very small dose. So it's really safe. So that's how what homeopathy really is. It's not just using herbs, it's not using nutrients.

It's not using things like that. So natural does not necessarily mean homeopathy. But homeopathy is made from natural things. Right? Right. And you know, I studied in pencil in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, you know, college, medical school, U of Penn.

But Hahnemann, you know, was was one of the places at least it where homeopathy got its start. So very early on in my medical career, I was learning about homeopathy and and how it works.

And I find it it really at the root, you know, when we talk in functional medicine about getting to the root cause, I feel like homeopathy does that better than any form of natural or functional medicine.

Yeah. And that's really where the susceptibility that we talked about earlier comes in that we think sometimes, you know, functional medicine gets so much closer to like the root cause than conventional medicine where, you know, conventional medicine is like, oh, you have a symptom.

Let's go against the symptom to try and make it go away. Let's suppress the symptom and functional medicine. We're looking more for what could be contributing, what's not working as well as it should.

How do we support the systems to work optimally?

What Homeopathy Is and How It Works

And are there things that we could use to help in some cases to suppress or kill if there's a known infection that we have identified as a trigger that that perhaps has been missed, and the more conventional allopathic way of thinking, homeopathy takes it one step further to say, okay, why is this thing causing these specific symptoms in this specific person?

So rather than trying to use high doses of nutrients to supplement and sort of force a biochemical pathway, that's not working as well as it should, homeopathy is is looking and saying, what can we do to nudge the body so that that biochemical pathway is repairing itself?

And so we don't have to give it as much support. And this is really one of the things that I think is a beautiful overlap between functional medicine and homeopathy, because functional medicine can help support those pathways, while homeopathy is helping address the dysfunction and helping nudge the body to heal itself and addressing that susceptibility to your unique presentation, because that's another thing that is is missing, I think, in some of the other forms of medicine is that you can have a similar pathway that's not working effectively, but it's going to have a different presentation.

And each individual depending on the totality of their case. And even sometimes if they have the exact same triggers and the exact same genetic snips, they're still going to have different symptoms.

And so they have their unique susceptibility. And that's what homeopathy is looking at. And when we give the right medicines in that the that principle of like cures like the body sort of gives an equal but opposite reaction and it starts to move itself in the right direction so that it heals.

And then we're able to reduce the need for a lot of extra supports for people. Yeah. And it makes total sense. I mean, you know, when we talk about conventional medicine, my mentor, Doctor Sydney Baker, always called it name it, blame it tainment medicine.

We're naming it this. We're blaming everything on it. We're taming it with a medication nowhere near getting at the the root causes often. And not to say that conventional medicine doesn't have its place.

It absolutely does. And I hope that my conventional medicine colleagues that are listening will understand this isn't discrediting that. But we to help our kids get healthy, need to look at the underlying root causes, which functional medicine does.

But I just feel like homeopathy goes that one step further and that like treats like you're really looking at that end of one right there, right? It's funny when we're when we're dealing with stuff with like pans and pandas that's so complex and sometimes can be really dangerous.

Sometimes we got to get like, you can't put out a fire by, you know, by throwing away the match, you know, like you have to actually put the fire out and then you can address things on, on another level.

So every single type of medicine has its place in helping people recover, getting people out of emergency, supporting the systems that are maybe weakened, and then addressing that susceptibility so that you don't need those supports long term.

Yeah. Yeah. And and what contributes to the susceptibility to Pans and Pandas or to autoimmune disease from, from your perspective. Well we can talk about this forever.

And that's exactly the thing. Like you know my podcast your podcast, it's like we're exploring all of the things right. And let you know my podcast, we're nearing 100 episodes and we're still not done talking about it because it's it's so much it's the genetic predispositions that we have.

The genetic variants that then combine with our ultra processed food, our chemical laden lifestyle, just the stresses that we have in schools, the ways that we're trying to fight mold that's making mold fit us more.

It just it's everything, right? It's like it's how we're made up, and then it's the world we live in that impact those things. And it's just like it compounds every generation.

Yeah, yeah. And and I think, you know, we talk about our canaries, you know, our, our kids that are more susceptible genetically to all of the toxins in our food in our world.

And then our kids with pans, pandas are those that are going to have that neuro inflammatory, that neurobehavioral response, that anxiety, the tics, the OCD and and they're more susceptible.

But still treatable. Yeah. Yeah, I for a long time I've really I try to walk that line between kids that are quote unquote sick versus sensitive. Right.

And like there's clearly biochemical pathways and processes happening in kids with pans and Pandas that we don't want to happen that are characteristic of being unwell.

And at the same time, all of the things that trigger this unwell state in these kids are things that are just not really good for any of us. Right? Right.

And I love the way that you and the people you work with at resilience, look at it. You're looking at each child. You know, it's not you're not treating strep even though you may give you know, you're treating the child and all the things.

Because just like when you know one kid with autism, you know, one kid with autism, you know, one kid with pans, pandas, you know, one kid with pans, pandas.

Exactly. And there are so many different triggers and and and susceptibilities within the child. Talk a little bit more about that. Like, like the difference between, for instance, homeopathy and a toxicology and things like that.

So with homeopathy I'm talking about classical homeopathy. So Samuel Hahnemann, the founder from over 200 years ago, could get a job in my practice and he would recognize what we were doing is homeopathy and he would fit right in.

And so what we're doing is something that has stood the test of time for over 200 years, and it is focused on the single indicated remedy based off of the unique symptoms that a person is, is presenting.

Because really what's happening is our symptoms that we present is the external manifestation of that internal imbalance. Right. There's other approaches to homeopathy that are not actually homeopathy.

People find some success with them. You know, I they don't seem to work at that same level of really eliminating the susceptibility and, and restoring that balance so that you can have exposures to the triggers and the expanded exposures to, to triggers and not have a relapse.

But they're trying to address very specific things. So it's more I suppose, than homeopathy. So it's not similar. It is the same. So people will give things like if strep happens to be the identified trigger, they would give us strep. No.

So it which means that it's a homeopathic remedy prepared from the strep bacteria. Or they would give a mold or would they would give mycoplasma or whatever the trigger happens to be.

I find that with these approaches, one, it's not really addressing the unique presentation that someone has, because we could have ten kids in the office who are all have strep is a trigger.

They're going to have similar symptoms, but not the same symptoms. One's going to be anxious, one's going to have really bad OCD, one's going to have restrictive food intake disorder, one's going to have rage, one's going to have hallucinations, they're going to be very different presentations.

And so the remedy that's going to address the susceptibility won't be based off the trigger. It's going to be based off of the presentation. And so homo toxicology is looking at different toxins that could be contributing different infections.

It could be it be contributing medications things like that. Trying to detox the body or desensitize the body to that specific trigger. But what happens in pans Pandas.

And I'm sure you can agree with me with this doctor O'Hara. But like it's it expands, right? I've never seen a case of pandas that doesn't become pans.

Like, there's I've never seen a pure pandas case, so we just need to drop pandas. I think it's just.

Susceptibility, Root Causes, and PANS/PANDAS Triggers

And so even if strep is the initial trigger, then it's mycoplasma, then it's chemicals, then it's mold, then it's then you find a tick borne illness. It just expands and expands because it's the susceptibility to the atypical immune response that we're having.

The atypical and misdirected immune response. That's what's actually the problem. It's not the strap. It's not the mycoplasma. It's not the mold. They're problems.

And you can help address them or like rescue an immediate type of, of of addressing. But until you address that susceptibility to the atypical immune response, you're just going to have to keep addressing those things.

You're going to find the next thing that comes along and the next thing that needs support. Right. And and I think that's such a key thing that a lot of parents don't understand.

You know, they get so bogged down in, oh my God, my kid has strep and now he has Bartonella, now he has mold and now he has viruses. And when does it end?

The idea like you're saying, it's about immune intolerance. It's about a susceptibility to the immune dysregulation. So it doesn't matter what the trigger is so to speak.

It's it's what that individual child's susceptibility is. And then how do we how do the triggers contribute to that. But how do we address it. And right yeah.

So killing the trigger is not going to to remove the susceptibility. And there's a lot of people who will come and say, you know well I need to treat this thing.

And so I need to do homoeopathy and this and for some people depending on the individual and depending on the severity of what they've got going on, if they have an active infection, it might be appropriate to use additional treatments.

In addition to homoeopathy, for a short time. But homeopathy is treating those illnesses too, like homeopathy actually has a historical like far better than conventional at least treatments when it comes to acute illness and epidemic diseases.

So homeopathy is treating the strap, it is treating the Lyme. It is treating the mycoplasma. It is helping detox your body from mold by helping your body do what it's supposed to do on its own, which is fight those things off and and detoxify, detoxify and remove the toxicants themselves too.

So homeopathy is addressing those things just in a different way. And again, for some people it is it it is warranted to do both overlapping for a period of time.

But I just want people to understand that they are treating the strap or the the Lyme or whatever it happens to be when they're using homeopathy. They not everybody who gets exposed to something gets the illness too, right?

Like our bodies fight a lot of things off. Absolutely. I tell parents all the time, look at how well they're fighting this. And and that's where homeopathy can come in.

And I think at least I see it again and again and again that the kids aren't fighting as much because we're getting more at the root. But but I so agree, as we were saying earlier, you know, if they come in, if I referred somebody to you and they're on a group of things that I feel comfortable with, whether they be herbals or botanicals or nutraceuticals or even, you know, an occasional medicine, etc., that until the homeopathy starts taking root in them, before you find the remedy or remedies that are going to work for that kid, we're not dumping everything else.

We're working together. Well, we try to help them heal. Yeah, and that is something that's a little bit different with resilience, naturopathic and our natural ethic doctor homeopaths.

Then you might find in some other homeopathic practices. I think that our medical training that we have and as not traffic doctors, helps us to really understand the importance of not putting the body into shock and recognizing how we can do these things.

Overlapping. Like, I can't tell you how many kids have come to me. We advised people not to stop anything that they're on until we can give them guidance that like, as you said, that we have confidence that their body can handle it because we don't want to put people into crisis.

And there's been people who I didn't get that message somehow, or they wanted to just get off of things or, you know, during the pandemic, there was people who had difficulty getting things, and so they had no choice but to stop.

And more often than not, it just creates a tailspin that's unnecessary. So being smart about how you combine and overlap and how you stop things too isn't great.

And every change is a change, whether you're stopping or adding. And so, you know, you you need to do things like that one at a time, whatever they may be.

Yeah, yeah. Now you and I both know you mentioned Belladonna as one, but there are a lot of homeopathic remedies we can get over the counter. We can go to Whole Foods or a local health food store.

So why isn't that the right thing to do? You know, I know why it's not, but. Yeah, why don't you tell? Well, I mean, we've talked about already like these kids with pans and pandas.

It one it's really complex condition and these kids are so sensitive that's they're like, no matter what you're doing, you don't want to start too many things at once.

Because even something as simple as a multivitamin, if it has too many methylated B vitamins and they happen to have, you know, snips that maybe we haven't identified yet that make it so that is agitating for them like a multivitamin could be a trigger for a flare for these kiddos.

So anything we do for these kiddos because of their sensitivity could make things better. Or it could make things worse and we want to make sure that even with homoeopathy, with this minimal doses, the reason we use a minimal effective dose is because we want to get as much of that body's response that equal but opposite pushback.

So like, you know, if I'm really excited and agitated, can't sleep, have headaches and everything, I might need a homeopathic dose of coffee because coffee could cause that in somebody. Right?

So we want to make sure that I'm getting the the similar action from coffee, the primary action that it can cause. So my body can push back against it with an equal but opposite reaction to calm it down.

Right. So the opposite is what our body is producing of what the medicine would cause in a healthy person. And so we want to do the minimum effective dose with these really dilute doses so that we can reduce the likelihood that that primary action of the medicine is going to show up in the body of the person, because it's really similar to what they're experiencing.

So it can make their symptoms look worse. Right. So if I'm if I'm trying to take like if I, if I need homeopathic coffee and I decide I want to take a drink of coffee instead, I'm going to get some of the coffee effects added to my already agitated state.

And it's going to make things a lot worse, right? Right. So when we're doing dealing with homeopathy, with these really sensitive kids, even these small doses can sometimes get a little bit of that primary action and cause and aggravation.

So first and foremost, we want to make sure we're dealing with somebody who knows how to help us in that process. We want to make sure that we're getting the best fit, because there's literally thousands of remedies that are available, but you need to find the best fit for the totality of your case.

So if you want to actually get to the point where we're healing and addressing the susceptible, we need the best fit for the totality of the case. Which means just because this particular remedy, Belladonna might have worked for rage for your your friend and your kid also has rage if they've got different symptoms in addition to that.

So if one has headaches and one has upset stomach and one has constipation and another has diarrhea, the remedy that's going to help for the rage is going to be different, because it has to look at the totality of.

It can also even be that they just have rage. And that's the only symptom. But one person has rage where their face gets bright red and they destroy everything around them.

And the other one has rage where their face gets white and their pupils get really small and they don't destroy everything around them, but they scratch themselves.

So it's just a different presentation. Has to find the right fit for that level of specificity.

Classical Homeopathy vs Other Approaches

And unless you've got the training, the years and years of training, and the years and years of experience, you're probably not going to find the right fit then in addition to that, like even if you do, even if you get lucky and you find the right fit with the first remedy, it's a process to heal these chronic conditions.

It takes years to really fully recover. And so you generally see 2 to 3 steps forward and one step back, another 2 to 3 steps forward and one step back, sometimes seven steps forward and sometimes ten steps back depending on exposures, new things that that are showing up in their life.

And you need to know how to manage that to get to the point of recovery. It's not something that's just like, you take this one and done. You know, you're suppressing things and they're going away.

It's a process and you really need somebody who understands. Classical homeopathy understands, especially if you're using medications. In addition to that, with, you know, a doctor like you or things that you've read or heard about on a podcast like this, you need somebody who can understand how to navigate all of those things together so that you're actually getting to the point of recovery.

Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating to me. A few years ago, I, I took a course with Paul Herr, Skew and Amy Rothenberg for a couple of years on, on homeopathy.

And two things struck me. One, first, the similarities between the way I was thinking about getting at root causes. And as you're speaking, you know, it reminds me about how parents don't even see certain symptoms as playing a role in the whole picture.

And so getting that history is so important. It's not about just the rage or not about just the tics. It's about all the other things that when they tick there, their eyes get big or when they tick, they, you know, whatever it may be.

And, and, and that granular ness that, that getting deep so important. And then the second thing that struck me when I was taking this course was, was just how much I didn't know, you know, like, like I thought, oh, you know, I'll breeze through this.

I, you know, I've been to medical school like, I, I it just it was so fascinating. But so like you said, you need a qualified professional, which I am not, you know, to be able to look at this child in that way.

It's not something that we can go. Not that you couldn't by belladonna or something else over-the-counter, but that's not the way we're going to recover these, these susceptible and ill children.

Yeah. And you're right. Like, it's like even as we get better at using Google searches and have more, you know, resources available, even with the, you know, I coming up in, in on the scene and everything, we are only going to get out what we put in.

And we need somebody who understands the totality to pull out the stuff that we need. I can't tell you how often we end up having the like. The key to selecting a remedy that's going to make a huge difference is something a parent never would have told us had we not pulled it from them.

You know, painstaking. I mean, our intakes are three hours long because we really need so much detail about everything that's going on. And the reality is that when we when we try to narrow in and say, I just want to focus on the OCD, I just want to focus on the rage or whatever.

And even using the best resources that are available online, you might find something. But if you're missing these other symptoms that are part of the bigger picture, we're just pollinating the case.

We're not getting to the point of recovery. So the goal like if you want to use homoeopathy to get go for it, there's plenty of you. It can help that way.

But if you want the results that homeopathy is known for and that we're talking about, you really have to work with a professional to get the best case, the best fit and the best management of the remedy to get you through to the finish line.

And the other thing that you were saying that I think is important to highlight a little bit is that even in the best of circumstances, you're seeing a kid, you have a great sense of which remedy it will work, and you're going to start with the lowest dose.

They can still have a negative reaction, and that negative reaction tells you almost as much, if not more, than a positive reaction. Right? Yeah. So a negative reaction is typically there's only really two ways that somebody can have a negative reaction or you know, quote unquote negative reaction.

We'll say I mean, it feels bad, but there's a reaction, right? So a negative reaction sometimes could be a therapeutic aggravation. That just means the dose was too aggressive and we need to adjust it.

Typically we see those things get worse. It's like if I were to take that drink of coffee when I needed homeopathic coffee, if I just back off for a little while, it's going to calm down and then I'm going to get better than I was before taking that drink of coffee.

If I just give it a little bit of time to let my body settle in and do what it's supposed to do, right. And so the therapeutic aggravation tends to be pretty short lived, and you bounce back and get better beyond that.

So it feels bad, but it's actually a good sign. And we just need to adjust the dosing strategies to reduce that likelihood in the future. Finding again that minimum effective dose.

Yeah. And I never know whether to call that the good bad or the bad good. But yeah you're right. The other one is is where we see some symptoms, maybe get worse, maybe intensify, maybe have a bit of a mixed response where some things get better or some things get worse, or sometimes even something like new ish shows up.

That's usually when we're looking at like a close but not quite right remedy where the body's saying, hey, pay attention over here. You need to get something adjusted, it needs to be a different remedy.

And here's some some clues to help you find the right remedy. Because again, the symptoms that we're experiencing are just clues to that internal imbalance.

And what's the right fit to stimulate the body to heal. So it's not awesome. And that's generally when we have that happen, which is possible. The only way to really get out, to get past that is to get the next right remedy to get the appropriate remedy, because that one's not the one where you're going to like, stop taking it and it's going to bounce back, because what you're seeing is the body itself pushing back with with homeopathy, it's such a small dose that we're giving people like nanoparticles, small doses.

They don't have the same like biochemical force in the body that like a full dose would of like a supplement or a medicine, like a supplement or medication.

So what we're seeing is actually the body's response to it, not something that like once it's out of your system, it's going to move away because it's right.

Creating the symptoms. Right. And and I don't know the answer to this, but is each remedy, you know, is there a period of time with which they should be watching for this window in is does it vary by remedy?

Choosing the Right Remedy and Managing Reactions

Does it vary by strength of remedy? You know, because I think it's important for families to understand, to you give this homeopathic treatment this day.

You don't want to do something else new the next day. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So we always we say we want generally two weeks between changes between remedies or any other treatment that they're going to use.

So if they're going to start a new supplement, a new medication, if they're doing IVIg treatments, anything like that, we want two weeks between. So we know if something's going wrong, we know what's going wrong and what to stop.

And if something's going right, we want to know that too, because we don't want kids taking things that they really don't need right. And so generally, if you're going to have a negative reaction to a remedy, it's usually going to be within the first dose to first few doses.

So it could either be just because the first dose was too high, or it could be because you're taking another dose too soon, which just means that the body.

Like with homeopathy, we use a lot of I use a lot of analogies, so we're not I love analogies, so we're using the body. The homeopathic remedies are a nudge to the body to heal itself.

And if we are hiking up a mountain and we need to get going, if we're if a body's already gotten the nudge and it's moving in the right direction and we nudge it again when it's already going, it might be a too much of a nudge, and then it feels like a shove or maybe if it's a too hard of a shove, it's going to knock us over instead of just getting us going.

So the window does matter. It's, you know, if you're seeing something, get worse three weeks after starting a remedy and you haven't changed the dosing frequency, it's probably not the remedy.

It's probably something else. So it's usually in that first 24 to 72 hours, usually even closer to mostly on the 24 hour side within getting a dose. So and then in dose itself like 30 C, 200 C, etc., that doesn't usually matter as much as.

Yeah. So it's not like on certain potencies you're more likely to see that happen, right? Right. Yeah. Right. And and you know we're in viral season. So so to speak.

Although flu is not a season but but there are a lot of viruses you know, how do you help your parents to deal with that. You know I took a remedy today and tomorrow they've got 104 fever.

Is it, you know, the they were exposed to their neighbor with the flu or is it the remedy? You know how do you help their families to think about that too.

So first and foremost, we celebrate fevers because so many kids with pans don't even get them. So if we get we're getting fevers, we're happy first and foremost that like they're having a more typical immune response.

So we're going to pause to celebrate and then we're going to stop and watch. Because especially if they've just started a new remedy. So with the cute and pans and pandas it's a it's pretty complex right.

And I'm sure you can agree with me here. And I'm curious maybe you can we can chat a little bit about how you manage it too. But because Pans and Pandas is a chronic condition that has acute triggers and acute flares, we have to address those acute illnesses with homeopathy because they are almost always what we call false acute.

So they're actually almost always part of the chronic condition. And so by addressing anything acute that comes up with homeopathy, I can't tell you how many times we see leaping to the next level of healing, because that has given us a window into another aspect of their susceptibility, or the next layer of their susceptibility that we're trying to peel back.

So if we see somebody got a dose of a remedy yesterday and they're getting 104 fever today, one they were probably already exposed to something. And that's why they needed a dose or a change in the remedy.

And so the flare was starting up. And then we see that they're having a fever and we're generally like Hallelujah. It's let's celebrate the fact that we're having a more typical immune response.

And now we might need to give the body a little bit more support, maybe dosing that remedy a little bit more frequently, maybe evaluating to see if the symptoms have changed dramatically.

Since the the information that we got when we recommended that remedy. But oftentimes we see that the chronic remedy just needs to be given a little bit more frequently.

And it helps them move through the quote unquote acute illness faster because like I said, these even if they have a confirmed flu, it is almost always still part of their chronic condition, chronic case.

It's fascinating. And I think a couple of things you said are really important to highlight. One, the fever effect. You know, we we as parents often get so worried about fevers and we've got to get the fever down and give acetaminophen and, and and just to remind parents that fever is a body's natural response.

Yes. We don't want our kids to suffer. But having a fever helps us to know that the body is responding appropriately to whatever it may be. And, and just suppressing it.

That goes more to, the, the, the naming it and taming it and then really getting at the underlying, you know, not that we can't put the kids in the, you know, and Epsom salts baths or, or give them good old fashioned chicken soup or everything else when they're sick.

But we don't have to jump to to suppressing it. Yeah. And fevers are fevers that feel scary to a parent. And I'm saying this as a parent heal who I'm I don't always follow my own advice.

Right. I was to remind me you feel scared about this fever. This fever. It's not scary. Like, yeah, you know, the fever that that will scare a parent is not the fever that's going to scare a doctor.

Yeah. It's so fascinating because, you know, I was a doctor before I was a mom. Went through several years of infertility, and as I was going through the infertility, would get calls at three in the morning.

So-and-so has a fever. So so-and-so has this, I mean, and some really, really whacked out ones that I would be like, you know, come on, guys. And and then I had my son and at three weeks old, you know, he has a block tear duct, not even a fever, a blocked tear duct.

And I'm like, beside yourself. I am beside myself. And I'm like, I get it. You know, it's so different. We understand where moms and dads and caregivers in general are coming from.

We're just trying to help show that, you know, we can be gentler in suppressing something like this because we know that it's it's that good sign. Really?

Yeah. And, and and I totally hear you about the that fever being a sign that it's that it's part of not necessarily separate from the underlying susceptibility, the underlying issue of the immune intolerance and seeing it that way may help families a little bit too.

Yeah. Well we actually with homeopathy in the the patterns for recovery that we see we find we I it's a phenomenon. Hartman never said that. So this is one thing I'm going to be like, what are you talking about?

And I would say, well, this is a pants panda specific thing. So like, I'm you would agree once I stop, once I explain it to you. So we see this pattern where kids.

So I mean, not all kids are panda pandas don't have fevers, but many of them don't, right. So many of them don't have the typical immune response. So they get a cold and they just have OCD and they have anxiety.

They don't get sniffles, noses and coughs and fevers. So we start to see that there's a blending where they're having flare symptoms. The neuropsychiatric symptoms and some of the illness symptoms coming together.

And then it sort of shifts and they're not having as much of the flare, but they're having all of this sickness. Like if they're if it's the worst cold and flu season they've ever had or the worst allergy season they ever had.

And so the way we conceptualize this, it's like, you know, whenever you're trying to correct a behavior, you tend to have a pendulum swing, you know, like you're tired.

It's all all the people are recording this in January. So all the people who are still trying to keep up with their New Year's resolutions that are at the gym all the time instead of like an actual sustainable amount of exercise.

So the body over corrects like a pendulum swing, and so it starts having an appropriate immune response. But it has a lot of it, and it gets every illness and it over respond appropriately, but over responds to everything.

And then it sort of settles down and has an appropriate immune response with appropriate symptoms and is fighting off a lot of it. So you're not seeing it like overwork itself every single time it's exposed to any virus, any bacteria, any mold, whatever it happens to be.

So we tend to see that's why we start to celebrate fevers is because when we start seeing more fevers, we're getting closer to the the typical immune response.

And then we might see a time and then it will settle down. And, and then you've got a kiddo who might miss school here and there, but is overall going to handle illnesses when they come into contact with them better than they probably better than a lot of their classmates.

Even. Yeah, yeah.

Fever, Acute Illness, and Recovery Patterns

And I know you've touched on this, but but maybe just a little bit more how homeopathy works with other therapies, you know. So go ahead. Yeah. So I mean it works very differently than other therapies.

And so this is really where we want to make sure that we are not cutting off anything that is supporting the body's biochemistry, that it's not working appropriately while homeopathy is helping to nudge it.

So that it can work more appropriately on its own. Right. So you can absolutely use homeopathy with almost anything else. The only thing you really can't use homeopathy with is other homeopathic remedies.

So when you're using classical homeopathy, it's a single remedy at a time based off of your unique symptoms prescribed based off of that, that law of like cures like so you're not going to use a combination remedy.

You're not going to say like, oh, I got this, this remedy from my provider yesterday and I got this fever. So now I'm going to give this other remedy for a fever that will interfere with with the remedies.

Other potent medicines will also do that. So things like low dose immunotherapy, low dose antigen therapy I find that you just can't use those with classical homeopathy because they interfere.

It's like the body's trying to figure out which thing it's supposed to push back against, and it just doesn't know. So when we're using other therapies, we want to make sure that we're really conscientious about which things we stop and when we never resilience.

Doctor Pathak, we want one thing at a time. We want especially medications. We want it slower than the person who's prescribing it, usually once. That's not always the case with you, because you have the education and training to know that you need to do this a little bit more gently with these kiddos, but especially if anybody is on psychiatric medications, low and slow has to be done because we can put people into rebound, you name it.

By stopping these medications too early because, you know, all that adaptation that happens in your brain with like the changes in receptors and receptors, sensitivity, even receptor volume, it just the bio adaptation that happens in response to psychiatric medications is just not to be toyed with.

But honestly, the remedies can help with the shift. But it's only so much because the body's going to heal at the pace that it's going, that it's able to heal.

We can't make it go faster. So that's why it's also really important to be thoughtful about any changes that you make. Because we can't make homeopathy go faster.

That's another thing to to recognize is that we can't that because it works differently than functional medicine. Adding in functional therapies won't make homeopathy go faster and might alleviate some suffering.

In the meantime. It can help take the edge off. It's not going to make homeopathy go faster, and depending on how aggressive the person you're working with is and how well they understand pans or pandas because not just because somebody knows functional medicine does not mean they understand pans and pandas.

It's definitely its own beast. That depending on what somebody is doing and how aggressive they're being, it could even complicate things with the recovery, with homeopathy, because we're getting too many things that the body's then going, what is going on?

And it can like the body's pushing back against everything we put in it and so we can create more complex cases if we're not careful about it. So working with two providers, especially if you're going to add in any other therapies or any of your providers, making sure they really understand Pans and Pandas and are taking a cautious approach will really help make sure that you have that you reach your ultimate goal as easily and as quickly as possible, but it might not.

And that's what you want, right? And I tell people all the time, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And and when I'm referring them to you, I'm saying, you know, this is going to help, but don't expect it to help tomorrow.

Right? You know, it may, which is great, you know, but but especially in our more complex kids, low and slow and and working together, you know, we all say it takes a village, but just, you know, I think in today's world we're so much, you know, you know, the quick fix the, the the sound bite.

That's not what pans or pans is. It's going to be. But homeopathy can so get you to that place where you get to the roots susceptibility, the root of the immune intolerance.

Yeah. I mean, I always say that our job is to work ourselves out of a job. And I'm sure you feel that same way, like we didn't go into medicine because we wanted people to be on our, like, client or patient list forever.

Right? We want people to heal, especially like when you move away from the allopathic realm. Like with me, I didn't even I was planning on going that direction and I moved away before I even started.

You got there pretty quickly with figuring out that you needed to take a different approach to healing, but we are. Yeah, our job is to work ourselves out of a job.

We don't want people taking anything forever. I don't want kids with bellies full of pills, and I don't want them to have to be on super restrictive diet so they can't ever go to a birthday party and eat with other kids or eating.

I want to get them there as quickly and as easily as possible. It takes time. But with enough patience and persistence and changes in intensity, frequency and duration of the symptoms over time, we will get there and we'll get it so that, like, they don't need me, they don't need you.

They don't need to be taking something regularly. Parents can, like, put patterns in their past and just focus on like the amazing things that these kids can do once they have recovered from this.

And these kids are doing some amazing things when they recover. They like, oh, absolutely.

Combining Homeopathy with Other Treatments

I am just floored. I'm like getting chills, even though I'm thinking about so many of the kids that I have worked with over the years and the things that they're doing in life now that, that they never thought was even possible, but how they have taken the challenge that they have faced and turned it into like a superpower and a calling to do something big and profound.

It's just, yeah, it's amazing. And I like to uses the wrong word, but I like to have those kids or those adolescents or young adults talk to some of the kids that are still in the throes of it and say, you know, there is hope.

There is. There are ways that you're going to get better. Don't give up. And I think that's a big message for for these kids. You know, I, I would love to talk to you about ten different remedies.

We were talking about Alice in Wonderland syndrome, you know. But but I think what's really important is the overall understanding, you know, that that homeopathy is a way to get like via like to get at the, the very underlying susceptibility and not thinking about, you know, just one symptom or anything else.

But I will pick your brain in the future. So. Okay. Well yeah. Like I said, you're going to have to come back. We're going to have to have an entire episode on my podcast here just about Alice in Wonderland syndrome, because it's it's not not everybody with hands has it, but it happens enough that, like my community, we get a lot of people asking about this specific symptom.

And there's a couple of remedies, a handful or and but, you know, I have six kids now that that, you know, we've gotten better that had had it for years and years.

But each of those six kids is totally different. Yep. So, you know, it's just like you're saying, we've got to look at the individual kid and not do a blanket for for anything.

So but tell people how they can find you. Jennifer. Well, there's a whole lot of ways you can find us. So you can visit our website, resilience, naturopathy, KGW.com.

You can connect with us in the community. There's over 25,000 people right now in our Facebook group. So it's homeopathy for Pans and Pandas. It's a Facebook group.

I'm I'll send you a link. I don't know if you're putting like show notes or anything like that will help get the link to you for that. And then you can also check out our podcast, which doctor O'Hara was gracious enough to be a guest on.

And we're going to clearly going to have her back. We're just going to keep talking to each other. Yeah, we'll just do it. Well, yeah. So that's called Mom and Doc Talk Healing Pans and Pandas.

And it's available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and on YouTube as well. Thank you for that. And it was great podcast. You guys should should go there. How many episodes. Well over 100. Right.

We're we're approaching 100 right now. Approaching 100 okay. All right. And any words of wisdom pearls last things you want to leave anybody with that you think are important for our families?

I think that the most important thing that I hear from people again and again and again is to really understand this concept that it's not strep, it's not mold, it's not mycoplasma, it's not Lyme, it's the susceptibility.

And until you address that susceptibility, you're going to be on a merry go round. And the the treatments that are offered know whether it's natural or conventional are going to just it's going to spiral and spin.

And these are they work really well together to get you to a place of recovery and to do it smoothly. But until you address that susceptibility, you're not going to be able to live in like ease whenever you get the notice that something is going around the classroom at school.

So it's not strep, it's the susceptibility. And you absolutely can recover. Yeah. Well said. And thank you Jennifer. Thanks for all you're doing for our kids, for our families.

And thanks for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. It's fun. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health.

Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website w WW dot Doctor talk.com.

Stay connected, stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks. Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

Jennifer Bahr, ND, DHANP

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