Using The Art and Science of Homeopathy with Your Complex Clients with Dr. Ginger Nash, ND

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here as we dive into today’s episode. As always, innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. We have such a great conversation for you today. Today. I’m excited to introduce you to one of my friends and colleagues, doctor Ginger Nash. She’s been a practicing naturopathic physician for 25 years now, and she specifically focuses on women’s health conditions from infertility, endometriosis, pelvic and period pain, dyspareunia, perimenopause, menopause, all the hormone issues. And she’s especially focused on working with people with complex chronic illness that are very sensitive.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:01:37 So if you’ve been working with clients who’ve kind of traveled through the Western Medicine maze and the functional medicine maze, and they’ve done tons of aggressive protocols and they just seem to be getting worse and worse and worse. Doctor Nash has a really different perspective, and it’s very gentle. It comes from the original homeopathy developed in Germany over 200 years ago, but it’s grown and evolved and is modernized to take into account the modern complexity of stressors, of infectious landscape, of, you know, environmental toxins, of blue light exposure and emfs and just our work pressures and busy working women pressures. So sometimes the system needs a much more gentle approach to slowly come to that deeper level of healing and stability and resilience. So we’re going to talk about how to do that today and how you can learn more about integrating this within your practice, because I really think that one of the things I’ve learned from all of my naturopathic medicine colleagues and my colleagues in clinical nutrition, now that I’ve been doing this, you know, nearly 25 years as well.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:02:59 There’s there really is an increase in complexity that we’re dealing with among our patients and clients and the world and the terrain, the environment in which we live in is just more complex. And what, you know, 15, 20 years ago, conditions that might have been dramatically improved with simple nutritional changes or more gentle lifestyle changes need a much more skillful approach. And of course, we dig into that in all of our courses. But homeopathy is something that I think is a tool that is very well matched to the complexities of modern life. So enjoy this conversation and I’ll see you on the other side. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m here this week with my dear friend and colleague, doctor Ginger Nash. And for those of you who have already dived into our Perimenopause and Menopause certificate program, you will have seen and, Doctor Nash will be a familiar face for you because she talks in that program about using homeopathy, specifically in the perimenopause and menopause transition. But we’re going to talk about even more widely from a homeopathic perspective and a naturopathic perspective, when homeopathy can be valuable, how it can support everything else that you’re doing and how it really is a full system reset tool.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:04:45 So welcome, Doctor Nash.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:04:48 Thank you Jessica. And you can call me Ginger, obviously. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. Great to be here. You have an excellent community of really great practitioners and people. So I always enjoy our conversations.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:05:03 Yeah. So because primarily our podcast is designed for professionals, although anyone can listen and improve your own bodies health knowledge. but we’re free to get a bit nerdier because we are primarily talking to practitioners. So tell me a bit about how homeopathic homeopathy, kind of the perspective of homeopathy. How do you see that generally fitting in for our women clients through any age or stage where they have hormone disruption?

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:05:37 Yeah. Great. Great place to start. and even to back up a little bit further. I think I need to say at the outset that my homeopathy is not traditional or constitutional or classical homeopathy gets a lot of different names. I’ve started calling it complex homeopathy because I use really innovative and unique formulations and products that have multiple substances in them. It’s not the same as constitutional homeopathy or classical homeopathy, where the the practitioner typically takes a really long, you know, three hour interview and gets into every aspect of the person’s mind, body and spirit and then really tries to find the one single homeopathic remedy that will address all the myriad of symptoms across those, you know, physiological systems.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:06:37 So because of the world we’re living in today, which I know we’re going to get a lot more into as we have, this conversation is so much more complex. It’s my belief that we really need to use medicines that address that complexity and address the different levels of what needs to be supported for people to really come back to a place of balance. So I like to call myself a heretic amongst heretics. Homeopathy is a pretty controversial field, but when you get deep down into the biochemistry and more of energetic medicine and some of the more subtle bio field research, and the properties of water specifically, homeopathy can be a phenomenally powerful tool to use in a therapy to use especially for people that are so sensitive and that is so many more of our patients. I’m sure everyone listening, every practitioner knows that things are getting more complex and the viral landscape is more complex. The bacterial landscape is more complex, we have more mold exposure, all the various environmental, stressors and then the internal physiological effects of chronic stress and the modern lifestyle.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:08:02 So we’ve really got we’ve really got to come at things in a more unique and innovative way. So homeopathy, for those that don’t know anything about it, is based on two fundamental principles, which is similitude and dilution. So the dilution is substances which can be plants, animal substances, minerals, organs and tissues, which I use a lot of, especially when it comes to endocrine balance and women’s health, that are diluted to the point where, sometimes there’s some molecules present, but sometimes they’re diluted to such a degree that there’s no. Molecules, but there’s an energetic imprint in the water because of a process called succession. And then that imprint or resonance, matches a person’s imbalances in the subtle physiological changes that can be happening. So it is really subtle medicine. And I can understand why, you know, traditional or mainstream medicine that really has a more mechanistic view of the way the body works, you know, scoffs at it or turns up their nose, because it is it is a whole different paradigm shift.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:09:27 and what I really love is that, the patients that I see haven’t really been served well by a more traditional, aggressive, if you will, approach. Not to say that drugs and certainly surgery isn’t necessary At times, but just to understand how those things are working differently than something that’s going to work with your body. Hence the name homeopathy homo with similitude similar like so, it creates a resonance to create balance in various organ systems, tissues and cellular functions. So it’s really like a whole world unto itself. Where did you said whole system of medicine?

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:10:11 Where does it come from?

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:10:13 It comes from Germany, from, you know, over 200 years ago. So yeah, like to try to practice medicine the way Hahnemann, Samuel Hahnemann, the doctor that, you know, really founded this whole system practice 200 years ago would be foolish. It would be antiquated. And and even he at the end of his career, at the end of his life, changed the remedies much more frequently. so, so the way that I, you know, teach this material is really, much more grounded in the development of homeopathy into complex homeopathy or sometimes drainage, homeopathy, which is looking more, at the terrain of the individual and clearing out the terrain.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:11:01 So this is work that has been built upon mostly by European biological medicine doctors. there have been some North American, homeopaths. But really a lot of this medicine, this particular school of homeopathy comes from Europe.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:20 Okay, excellent.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:11:21 Yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:11:21 So I know that from having experienced this and from collaborating with you on a number of clients, you know, one of the key perspectives that you bring is like, first you talked about terrain. Like, first we have to open and we I call it open the windows and doors, you know, like drainage.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:11:40 Yeah, yeah. Open the elimination pathways of the body, which is a natural process which is different than detox. And this is why we often see people that, you know, sign up for any number of the detox programs that you can find online or whatever, and they can be way too aggressive. They can push the liver pathways and push the detoxification pathways too quickly. And then we get either an aggravation or they get worse. Or in the worst case scenario, you can get, you know, toxins being driven in deeper to the system and create more confusion in the body’s response.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:12:21 So among neurology is the science of opening the windows and doors. I love that analogy. opening the drainage routes of the body, opening the elimination pathways. And this is why this is such cool medicine, because you can start that process with anyone, no matter what their diagnosis, no matter what they’re dealing with everything from endometriosis to, you know, cancer or, PCOS or dementia or any, any issue, chronic sensitivities, viral issues. Because as you do that, you’re helping the body naturally and gently eliminate toxic waste products from the cells. And this is, again, you mentioned the lymph, why the lymphatic system is so important to because it’s the waste management system of the body. And then once you open the windows and the doors and you get things cleared out, you can actually get to see and evaluate more clearly the root cause drivers of the disease. And you clean up a lot of these garbage symptoms. So people, you know, sometimes that’s all people need. They their migraines go away or their gas and bloating goes away, their digestive system regulates.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:13:43 you know, probably not for a lot of the people we see with deeper issues like endometriosis or MCAS or things that are really more or autoimmune disease that are, you know, we need to go after some of those deeper causes. But but getting rid of those garbage symptoms, first of all, makes the patient feel better to some extent, and then also just allows you, as a practitioner to really identify and target more of the deeper drivers.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:14:13 Well, and I think MCAS is particularly interesting. So for professionals who aren’t too familiar with that, it’s mast cell activation syndrome, which essentially can be triggered by any imbalance to the immune system, where the immune system due to almost any stimulus can be heat, can be pressure can be viral, infection, can be fatigued, can be stressed, will activate or make kind of more shaky. It’s called granulation. The mast cells and the. So they’re releasing histamines and other inflammatory cytokines and other, communication molecules that trigger this inflammation that feels like it’s out of nowhere and it feels like it’s in.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:14:59 Well, it is it’s expressed in multiple systems. So what I like about, this process of first opening the windows and doors, using gentle homeopathic support of the lymph and the other detoxification pathways is that it’s almost like with, with MCUs or other things that are full system, chronic, inflammatory. I think endometriosis is another really good example. You can’t address anything else because the person is so sensitive and it’s like their symptoms just keep moving around.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:15:31 Yeah, they’re so dysregulated. I mean, I often describe my work at the intersection of the immune system, the endocrine system, and the nervous system. And those three systems, all each one of them is so unbelievably complex unto itself. And then if you have, you know, like you said, any little trigger, I mean, I really think of MCAS as basically a sequelae or an after effect of any number of things. And like a lot of functional medicine practitioners, they’ll do a lot of testing for cytokine levels or taste levels. All this stuff, you know, is that really necessary or is it just like, let’s gently open the systems up, get you back to a better place of balance, and then really try to understand, you know, does this person have chronic Lyme issues? Have they been living in a moldy building? Did they have Covid four times? You know, like what? Whatever the trigger may be.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:16:32 Or were they in a car accident? And they used to be an athlete and had a history of concussions. And now they’ve got neuroinflammation because they’re triggered a signature that’s locked into that nervous system. physiology. And that’s one of the concepts that I really like to talk about, too, which is very different and something that I try to educate my patients on a lot as well, is that, you know, some of these things like, yes, there is the concept of viral persistence and in long Covid or, you know, chronic Lyme, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve got an active infection. You’ve got the signature, the patterns locked into, the nervous system or the endocrine system or, you know, even the gut, can become hypersensitive to because, you know, we know that there’s so much lymphatic, Emphatic, aspect in the gut. And when that gets overwhelmed, then any little food that irritates the gut lining or whatever can trigger this overwhelm in the lymphatic system. but yeah, it’s really it’s really complex.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:17:47 And so it’s always good to just pull out and start with something very simple. And I know for myself, especially when I was a newer practitioner, I would want to get everything done in the first two visits, you know, and like when people have been sick for so long and there is so much complication, like just just start simply, you know, with some gentle support, and just really work with your patients to understand that this is a longer process and that, the gentle way forward is, is probably going to give them the longest lasting results.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:26 Well, and I think that’s really important Because what I often see with people who either have MCUs or other sort of long term, complex chronic illness. One of the one of the things that maybe has kept them stuck there for a while, and I think one of the unfortunate kind of rabbit holes that functional medicine has gone down is that we do. There is this sort of aggressive approach, right? Even though it might be using herbs instead of medications.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:56 You’ll take a very aggressive antimicrobial approach or, like you said, detox approach where people are using very high doses of antimicrobial herbs. And the clients that you and I see most commonly are very sensitive. And so one of the things I would love for you to talk about is a lot of what I learned from you in terms of homeopathy is that there are kind of different aspects of how people present. And one of those is that like, their system has been shaken up. Yeah. And sometimes it’s because of the treatment. But it could also have been because of medical gaslighting or trauma or just because of how severe their illness was. And then when you try to add kind of our Western, you know, our, our Western mindedness about everything is like, go hard, go harder. Yeah. Be more restrictive with your diet. You know, push through, take more drugs, more herbs, more whatever. Like more is always better. But I think a lot of women, particularly in either the postpartum transition or the perimenopausal transition, they’re already shaken up.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:20:11 So from a homeopathic perspective, where do we start?

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:20:15 Yeah. So that’s a great point. And again like what we really want to do is help create resilience and flexibility in the system. we don’t want to back ourselves in a corner where we’re restricting so much with our diet or, you know, the bulk of our nutrients are coming from 50 different supplements that we’re taking. You know like yeah that aggressive approach is really like, you know, and and and this can be patient driven. So it’s hard for a practitioner to like put the brakes on. You know, I have some patients where I’m like, please do not take this many pills a day, you know, but they’re like, but I need this for this symptom and I need this for that symptom. And they they end up taking a Band-Aid approach. and this is why what you’re asking about is, is so different, because it really is about like, you know, thinking of things in phases. And when you meet somebody and their system is totally dysregulated and confused, you’ve got to stabilize them first before you’re going to really get to any ability to understand what even is the deeper root causes, you know? so a lot of times that’s why I’ll start with, you know, something like for the HPA axis, like something to address the adrenal axis, you know, which is obviously so dysregulated when somebody, reacts to every stressor.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:21:43 and then also the lymphatic system. So depending on there’s a concept called miasma in homeopathy. So depending on how the person eliminates and this is related to what we were talking about earlier with drainage and opening the windows and the doors, the way you open the windows and the doors is different for each patient. And there’s a concept called miasma, which can help you more quickly identify how that person tends to react. it’s also called in French, the reaction mode or the diagnosis. So so for example, if somebody come in and and you get that sense that they’re so sensitive, they’re so overwhelmed. They’ve tried 15 different diets, they’ve tried 10,000 different supplements. You know, you just you really want to work on the nervous system first. And they probably have anxiety. so you really want to just work on, you know, balancing the stress hormones gently approaching the adrenal axis, which, you know, relates to inflammation as well. And it’s not that I’m blaming the patient, right. Because these chronic illnesses that rev up your cytokines and all these immune factors, those literally cause, you know, anxiety in the brain and the nervous system.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:23:05 So many people are struggling with that kind of pattern. then you’ve got the person that’s like more likely to suppress everything and turn the toxins inward. And those people are the people that you really. I wouldn’t say more aggressive, but you may need to work longer at getting the windows and doors open. Those might be the kind that you need to use. you know, maybe not a crowbar, but just, like, a longer, you know, like, maybe just really work on the liver, the gut and the lymph. for a long time before you’re going to try to use an antimicrobial. Or maybe you won’t even use an antimicrobial. You’ll use, you know, a home record of a particular pathogen, which, you know, is a lot of sort of phase two in working with these complex homeopathic is using homeopathic medicines, diluted and psychotic medicines that go after to disrupt those signatures and those patterns that that are in the system. What I find so fascinating with regards to women’s health, and I know, you know, you do so much work with endometriosis is the connections between chronic pathogens, chronic infections, and the way they can.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:24:25 Those signatures can actually disrupt the whole HPO axis, the hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis. So we know that there’s a lot more research coming out about this now too, which is great. but we know that, you know, not just Covid, but cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, influenza virus even can really, create such inflammatory states in the body that it can affect the ability of the hypothalamus and the pituitary to regulate women’s cycles. Of course, it up regulates inflammation. Of course, there’s a connection between, certain infections and the development of endometriosis. So there’s just really all this crossover between, the kinds of stressors were exposed to and the ability of these really innovative medicines to to go after some of that. So, that’s where I think this medicine has the most possibility is to really, address those signatures that, you know, people that don’t want or can’t tolerate the antimicrobial protocols or the antivirals or, you know, the hardcore autoimmune protocols or they’ve been on the IP diet, you know, for ten years, and they still can’t, you know, eat a piece of, you know, regular food without having some kind of major reaction.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:25:57 so you’ve got to disrupt those patterns. And that’s really an energetic thing. It’s not it’s not an antibiotic approach, you know.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:26:05 Yeah. I think that’s a really important point that I want to solidify for a second that right now we’re in this environment of chronic infections, right. Everything from flu to Covid to CMV to Epstein-Barr. To all the herpes viruses.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:26:19 I can’t control virus. That’s going crazy right now.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:26:22 I can’t tell you how many people with shingles I’ve seen who are in their 30s, you know. Yeah, yeah. So but I think that’s a valuable point. Like, one strategy is to use antimicrobials or antivirals, antibacterials or antibiotics medically or with herbs. But doing that doesn’t always kind of sometimes it’s valuable to kind of almost like it’s almost like endometriosis, excision surgery. Right. Like you take some of it off the body. Right. But it doesn’t get rid of that energetic imprint of all of these viruses. And some of them you really can’t get rid of. They just go dormant.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:27:07 Yes. And they can still be problematic. And what’s interesting, particularly in perimenopause. So what you’re saying is like this this anti this microbial or infectious environment we’re in. Is triggering the inflammation in the brain that that’s then impacting the HPO axis. But also especially if our clients are in postpartum or perimenopause that low hormone state is also in pro-inflammatory. So there’s this problematic forward feedback loop. And so give me an example of let’s say you have the my ASM type client who, you know, she maybe has had endometriosis her whole life and has just been kind of taught to like put up with it and power through. So she’s internal. She internalized this thing. She doesn’t detox. Well, she’s that brand of my ASM, if you will. And then she’s stuck in a, let’s say, post EMV or, EBV pattern.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:28:13 Right?

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:28:14 Right.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:28:14 And she’s like we know affects the adrenal glands as well. So that can be particularly like fatiguing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:28:20 Yeah. So now she’s 43 and just exhausted. She’s kind of gaining weight.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:28:28 She’s getting migraines. She’s having brain fog. These perimenopausal symptoms seem to be ramping up.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:28:34 Periods are coming every 21 days instead of every 28 or. Yeah yeah I know it’s very common.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:28:41 So you have this kind of case study. What’s your what are you thinking. Like what would be your protocol if you will.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:28:49 Yeah. So starting like we said already you know opening the eliminations, supporting the gut of course making sure that the microbiome is as balanced as it can be and finding out more about dietary and, you know, lifestyle habits, the basics. but then certainly for somebody the, the, my ASM That’s like turning in the toxins and somebody with chronic inflammation that doesn’t really know how to eliminate very well. I would support the main organs of elimination. And those are the liver, the kidney and the lung. Now for some people, and this is where it gets into the individual picture and clinical history. For some people with reactive airway disease, you have to support the lung most effectively.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:29:35 Like, you know, it may be triggered by a dietary stuff or sensitivities, but then that’s having an overflow effect. And they’re eliminating or having struggles eliminating from the lung tissue. for most women, especially the kind that you describe, it’s going to be more the liver. And the liver, of course, dumps into the gut. So for example, I use a number of different, complex homeopathic that work on the liver, on helping support gently not detox, but just gently, plants and minerals and even some, lymphatic support, you know, that will just open the liver and support the lymph and just help them start to eliminate more effectively. I may want to use some nutrient nutrients to manage the inflammation for sure. because if the inflammation is, you know, really causing a lot of, anxiety or stress or insomnia, then I use complex homeopathic that work on the neurological system. and I really, really love, there’s a brand called nucleic acid doctor Paula Rochelle. Her whole practice is focused on neurodegenerative issues and neurological stuff.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:30:54 And so, she’s making some really, really unique, products for the stress axis, the HPA axis, different parts of the brain. You know, if somebody has, more issues regulating their emotions. you can use stuff for the amygdala. So really learning about like, which physiological system. And so there’s some individuality. But in terms of somebody that’s got more, you know, pelvic pain and hormonal issues that exacerbate like the perimenopause. I mean, the big deal with perimenopause is that everything is fluctuating so much. Right? So and and you will emerge into a new baseline where things are more stable. But it’s that period of time which can last years for some women where you’re having an ovulatory cycles and progesterone is so up and down, that you, you know, have this imbalance in estrogen and progesterone that’s so profound. so really, in that case, I would want to just make sure that the liver is metabolizing the hormones that the gut microbiome is eliminating them, that you’re eating, you know, in such a fashion that you know you’re not building up like toxic metabolites from the hormones.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:32:15 and in some cases, you know, I will use specific drainage medicines for estrogens or progesterone. And I certainly a huge part of my work. And actually, lately I’ve just had a bunch of patients tell me how their cycles have been completely regulated. They don’t have PMS. They don’t have, you know, the crazy immune dysfunction that happens before they bleed, etc.. and for perimenopausal women, yes, it’s like you’re going to have to go through this period of, of fluctuation. It’s just can we minimize the amount of symptoms, you know, can we minimize the hot flashes? Can we minimize the anxiety? Can we minimize the insomnia. And really depending on the individual All. We would use the complex homeopathic to address those various, organ systems. You know, depending on what their chief complaints are or memory. You know, that’s another huge one. Brain fog and low estrogen causing lowering, estrogen causing, you know, memory issues, brain fog. I can’t tell you. You know, one of the main things that I use for perimenopausal women is, lymphatic drainage.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:33:33 So lymph support for the brain, and it just really helps you, you know, when we sleep and when we go into deep sleep, we our brain actually shrinks, and we’re supposed to eliminate the waste products from the brain and the central nervous system overnight. So one of the things I use a ton of is just to help that process along. And that can help with insomnia indirectly. So it’s not like this is a great example. It’s not like give a bunch of L-theanine or Gaba or Cassandra or whatever to try to calm the person down, which can be helpful to some degree, but it’s really more about if you just eliminate the waste products that are, you know, sometimes challenged because of these hormonal fluctuations. then you can go into a deeper sleep rhythm.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:34:24 So yeah. Yeah. And, and I think this is what we have to start talking about more with our patients, that there are ways to kind of really support through the challenges of, you know, modern stressors. And it’s not just infectious, it’s environmental chemicals, it’s chronic stress.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:34:46 It’s too much exposure to phones. And, you know, this is a double edged sword. Yes. Totally. but that’s probably not going to change overnight in most of their lives. So we have to think about what are some sustainable ways we can support those systems over time. So the last thing I would love to touch on before we wrap up is, you know, you and I having I have MCAS and have been navigating that. But sometimes it can feel very overwhelming, especially in the mold world where it’s kind of like, okay, you’ve got to totally move out of your house.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:35:27 And yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:35:27 Yeah, yeah, but yeah, you can’t move into any other house because 60% of them have mold. So I actually had a colleague who was talking about sleeping in a tent for months. And okay, like I don’t disagree with that if that’s what she wants to do. But I think there’s a much gentler way.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:35:44 Yeah. And especially if you’ve got somebody who’s, you know, living with several other people or family members and none of them are sick, it’s like, obviously you, you know, yes, if there’s black mold growing on your walls, you’ve got to get away from that for sure.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:35:58 And in some places, some people, for some environments, it’s just too overwhelming. Yeah. But this goes back to the idea of, you know, working with your own bodies, resiliency and, you know, one of the things that I know that, you know, you’re familiar with and wanted to talk about is low dose immunotherapy as well. And that, is another way that you can first clear out the terrain and then use very specific antigens, be it lime. One of the things we haven’t talked about much is yeast, which is so profound for so many women too, especially with pelvic issues. but, you know, you can go after those specific sensitivities, and I use, ones for mycotoxins as well. It doesn’t mean that you can’t use binders or, you know, open the windows and doors and maybe some of the symptoms will go away. But, you know, really doing the drainage for the brain and the central nervous system and then desensitizing them to various antigens, you know.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:36:59 Be it mycotoxins or yeast or Lyme bacteria or foods. then you’re really creating a tolerance. And that’s the whole idea, right? Is that you want to make the person more tolerant. You want to make them more resilient because the world is not getting any cleaner. As we know, there’s not going to be less mold. you know, so we have to do everything we can. And something you said to, reminded me, I wanted to say, like, what’s what’s, sustainable. And that’s one of the other things I love about this approach is that these remedies are meant to be used for a period of time, and then your body should really rebalance. Like once you clear the terrain and once you, you know, really work on lowering your body burden and supporting the healthy rebalancing of the physiological Systems. You don’t need to stay on all this stuff forever. Not even close. So that’s another thing that I really love about it. So, it’s a very different, paradigm than a lot of the practice practitioners we see even in the functional medicine world.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:38:13 So yeah. Yeah. And I think once we kind of gently open the windows and doors, if you will, and then using low dose immunotherapy is a form of homeopathy that essentially gives a very, very, very light exposure to whatever it is that your body is reacting to. And you only need to do it about once every two months. And sometimes you only need to do it once, you know, kids easier than perimenopausal women.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:38:42 You know, less toxic overall, so. And just less dysregulated, hopefully. So. yeah, that’s a whole other area, though, that people who work with a lot of children can’t believe how much sicker young people are nowadays, too. Which is really sad. That’s true. But yes, I like to think of LDI as sort of the laser pointer. You know, after you’ve, and it’s not technically homeopathy because it’s not sarcastic. And it does come from traditional allergy medicine. Like it, it grew out of allergy shots.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:39:13 Okay.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:39:13 Yeah, but allergy shots were obviously shots, injectables and meant to sort of block one aspect of the immune system.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:39:22 LDI is far more dilute, like, you know, ridiculous numbers of zeros like you, you know, to the sun and back kind of thing. and you don’t have to inject it. You can just put it under your tongue and then it, you know, works on the immune system, but it’s so subtle. It’s so in the energetic realm, nobody can really say exactly what the mechanism is. But, you know, for clinicians who use it and see the results, it can be pretty dramatically wonderful and healing for people. Yeah, it’s just finding the right antigen and then finding the right dilution that resonates with your system. But yes, once you do that, you only need to take the medicine, you know, once every 7 to 8 weeks. And then sometimes you just have to take it, you know, 2 or 3 times and then you’re done. Or like, I have chronic Lyme patients who now only take their LDI dose like once a year. So it really is cool that you can see people get better over a longer periods of time and not not become dependent on supplements or complex homeopathic or any of it.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:40:33 You know, that’s really the idea.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:40:35 Well, and I think one of the innovative things you brought to the LDI world is starting with that lymph drainage strategy and the lymphatic drainage drainage strategy. There was a paper just published, I think it was last week in long Covid, basically showing that one of the mechanisms of long Covid. Is the fact that essentially the lymphatics shut down.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:40:55 Oh, I totally want to see that.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:40:57 Yeah. And so I’ll send you that. I just saw it. And you know, when you have that sluggishness in the brain, there’s a whole subcategory of long Covid called neuro pask, which is essentially neuro long Covid. Yeah. Post-Acute SARS-CoV-2. And so when you open up the drainage first, because, you know, having experienced LDI, there is a flare of symptoms. It is a lot like a vaccine or an allergy shot in the sense that you get a small energetic dose of whatever it is you’re irritated by. But ideally, that flare is very short lived. And in kind of the earlier versions of LDI, it could be months of flare.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:41:44 Now when you do the drainage first, the flare flares, maybe.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:41:48 Yeah. Two days flare at all. And that’s the thing. Like. It’s really like. Do you get a little aggravation for the first 24 to 48 hours? A lot of people do. But like you’re saying, it’s very mild, but some people don’t even aggravate at all. They just get better. That’s great. But I do want to out myself. I just had a patient new patient recently, severe food sensitivities, and was just desperate to be able to eat more foods really came to me specifically for LDI, so we jumped in. I didn’t use a very strong dose, but she had an aggravation to because I didn’t do the drainage first. And I’m just like, I’m not going to do that with anybody anymore. I don’t care how eager they are. It’s because now she’s in a flare. Now I’m like, oh, now you need an oil and this for the blow.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:42:39 Now you have to calm everything.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:42:41 Right now I’ve got to like, work backwards for several weeks, which just really stinks. You know. So. And and you know, she’s actually very intelligent and she gets it. But like, I’m just kicking myself, like, I’m not going to do that anymore. And I know, like, I remember listening to somebody who does a lot of neural therapy. And it’s like, if you don’t prepare the body for that neural therapy, you can give somebody such a wicked aggravation and, you know, you just have to have your clinical chops before you use the laser pointer, you know? And that’s why the drainage is so great. And yes, like if you just support somebody’s lymphatic system, you know, they’re going to just get better, stronger, more resilient regardless of what they have. So yeah.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:43:30 Yeah, yeah. Well and I think this goes to you know there’s a frustration among patients. And and I get it like they’re often coming to practitioners in some extent, to some extent much better educated than they’ve ever been in the past.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:43:45 And they’re just like, I just need this tool and I get it. And they’ve gone to. They’ve tried 20 other tools, but I think as practitioners, one of the things we need to do is sometimes take a breath, slow our patients down and be like, okay, there’s never going to be just like one tool that completely solves your problem. So we have to think about what is really going on. Kind of taking that coaching perspective of this is going to feel slower than you want it to be, but it will be a lot more effective with a lot less, drama.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:44:22 So yeah, absolutely great points, Jessica, thank you for sharing your personal experience as well.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:44:29 And, you know, I think that just comes from learning and experience as practitioners like, you know, we all do things and we’re like, oh, I should have done that. But you know there’s a lot, there’s a lot. And I wish it existed that it was easier to have these magic wands, but really, there aren’t any in the integrated world or the, you know, Western medical world.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:44:53 There are really valuable tools, but we always have to put them into context. So.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:44:58 Yeah, so everything is so multifactorial at this point that you have to come at things from a multifactorial perspective. So yeah, I’m not a zealot. I don’t believe like you should never take an antibiotic. You should never do a drug. You know, just like what is going to work and what makes the most sense to really support that person overall health.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:45:19 So so speaking of that, you also educate practitioners. And I love your homeopathic homeopathy classes. I’ve done several of them myself. I think if you want to learn homeopathy, it’s actually a very different system than anything you’ve learned in functional medicine, in integrative medicine, in Western medicine, and any level, Because you do have to really take into account sort of the energetics of the individual. But I think that’s really the magic of it too.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:45:49 It is. Absolutely. You really have to understand the way the cells and the system becomes intoxicated, which is, you know, the science of human toxicology and then really learn how to do the drainage and think about individual miasma and temperament.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:46:03 And it’s really fun.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:46:05 And it is really fun. And and you can’t learn it from this podcast episode alone. So I strongly suggest that you join one of Ginger’s classes. So how can people find you, Ginger, if they’re like, okay, I’m ready. I have all of these, all of these very sensitive patients and I need another layer of tools.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:46:28 yeah. Well, perfect timing because I just, started making the course available. I’ve ever greened it. I have all the recordings available, but then people can, book in one on one sessions with me to answer questions, and I’m really building a community of like minded practitioners. So there’s going to be grand rounds, approximately once a month. And, it’s a really great group of people. A lot of seasoned practitioners have come through the course training already. I’ve taught it live three times, so I think it’s gotten a lot better and more robust. and, you know, even for practitioners who are familiar with homeopathy and complex homeopathy and drainage, there’s a lot of innovative stuff that’s presented.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:47:13 And I have some guest lectures with people from different companies that are doing some really, really cool, products. So, yeah, you can just go to my website. There’s a training page on my website. and I’m sure you can make that available in the show notes here. And you can also just email me if you have specific questions. I’m pretty accessible, so, my email will be provided as well?

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:47:38 Yes. Just check the show notes. We’ll give you her her website link her email her where you can, the page where you can find her course. So thank you so much Ginger.

Dr. Ginger Nash 00:47:48 Thank you Jessica. Always great to talk to you.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:47:51 You too. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with doctor Ginger. So if this is something that sounds like resonates with a lot of the people that you’re working with and your practice, I do recommend taking Doctor Nash’s course, even if you don’t feel like you’re going to use homeopathy a lot in your practice. I think the perspective of it really changed how I work with people.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:48:28 First of all, I do in my own practice now do a ton of drainage. I think that drainage piece Is is essential, you know. We just our clients cellular are really having trouble moving through the the huge volume of environmental and stress toxins on all levels energetic, actual, pathogenic, you know, environmental toxins, microplastics, that drainage piece. If you get nothing more than that out of it, I think you’re going to really see an acceleration and healing for a lot of your clients. But the second piece I would really encourage you to learn from her is just that idea of the my asms. I think it’s helped me to really slow down and listen to my clients, because even if I’m not using a lot of the homeopathy tools to address this, I think it applies to everything. You have some clients who just are very unstable in their physiologic response to stressors. You have a lot of clients who are energetically turning toxins and stressors and, you know, irritations to the physiologic system inward in the same way that some women struggle with expressing their emotions and tend to turn them inward.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:49:51 there are lots of different ways that people can fall out of balance, and once we understand those, we will think about taking a little bit of a different approach. So if someone is really shaken up, how we can how can we support her with a really firm, you know, the the compressive cashmere blanket therapy, deeper rest if someone is turning toxicity more inward and more deep, how can we help them feel safe to open, to release, to share, to journal their thoughts, to have better bowel movements? Like, I think this applies when we when we go back to the original All thought process around root cause medicine and functional medicine. We think about it from a cellular perspective, all the way out to a community. Max, you know, not just minimalist cellular perspective, but macro perspective of how well is a community supporting itself and each other to be in flow, to not be too afraid to express, to not be expressing all over the place, you know, abnormally, to not be too scared to even participate in the community.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:51:11 And so when we think micro cellular all the way to macro community, how you think and homeopathy has a similar perspective, and I think stepping back into that and grounding your practice in that idea of, of micro to macro will make your practice that much more resilient and give your clients that much better results. Thanks so much again for joining me this week. I look forward to seeing you next week. Have a wonderful week. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.