Dysprosium metallicum: problems with sugar

Case
I would like to present to you a case of a thirty year old woman who visited me for the first time in January 2004.
Her main complaint was having problems with the intake of sugar. She called it hypoglycemia.

The classical known symptoms of hypoglycemia are:
paleness, trembling, perspiration, feeling of weakness, rapid heartbeat, hunger, agitation, irritability, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, blurred vision, temporary loss of consciousness, convulsions, coma.


Her main complaints after using sugar: she was very tired the last months of 2005 and she had troubles concentrating. There was an aggravation on these points when she used sugar. She was using a diet since an electro-acupuncturist noticed the hypoglycemia in 1992. She often had headaches on both sides of her forehead with blinding pain, aggravation with light, amelioration by pressure on her forehead, nausea - but not always vomiting, without any prodrome (sign that the headache was coming): so she suffered of migraine-like headaches.
The problems with her concentration were accompanied by amnesia such as, forgetting appointments, forgetting what she just saw on television or just read in a book or newspaper.
Her hands were trembling and she had weak arms and legs, as if “they didn’t wanted to do what I did, they stayed behind”. She was very aware of having extremities and her hands and feet felt cold. She perspired.
Her eyes were sensitive to light and her contact-lenses seemed to be blurred now and then and they gave her a burning sensation.
High need of sleep: she could stay in bed for 2 days continuously.
Emotionally she felt more unstable: people could convince her more easy than before.
Frequent urination after the use of sugar. Sometimes the feeling of having a flush of heat after sugar-use.
After using sugar she got a mycosis, a vaginal infection.
When she eats sugar, the complaints specified above started 2-3 days later.


Compared with the classically known symptoms of hypoglycemia, my patient didn’t suffer of a rapid heartbeat and the more severe symptoms like convulsions or coma.
The extra symptoms she mentioned after using sugar were a migraine headache, frequent urination and a vaginal infection.

Why did she have an aggravation around the time she came to me for the first consultation?
In 2001 she went to the USA where she stayed for 2 years. In the USA she got a sort of overdose of sugar because all the American food-products contain sugar. You can hardly buy any food without sugar added to it. So she developed a lot of symptoms at that time.

In August 2003, back in Holland, she fell in love and started to live together with her lover. In November 2003 they broke up and her ex found another within a month and still lived in their former home. She was very angry at him and only shortly before our first consult in January 2004 was she on speaking terms with him again on neutral subjects. She balanced on the edge of a depression and had a few consults at a psychologist she knew.

In January 2004 she thought: “I will fight for myself” and decided to take care for herself. She had the feeling nobody else would fight for me, something she was used to from her youth. Again she had to look after herself alone, she had to do it on her own.
She is rather ambivalent to her ex: on one hand the feeling that their relation will be OK, but on the other hand the knowledge that he told so many lies about her, that it’s impossible to expect that everything will be OK again. So she chose her own way, starting to look after her own interests.


About her mind: She is an autonomous woman, sometimes a little bit stubborn/obstinate. She can’t stand authorities. She is a strong woman; knows what she wants. Always has the spirit to overcome problems no matter how heavy they might be. Has a sense of humor. She likes to do everything as perfect as possible. She is open and communicative. She is spiritually interested. She knew a lot of homesickness in the USA, probably by the hard work she did there with shifts of 16 hours. (She was working in a home for Mentally Handicapped People and was asked to be supervisor of that home in her second year, so she had the capacities of a leader.) She suffered from homesickness as a young child, but grew out of it, she thought.

Desires: She likes the autumn and eventually winter. She loves the seaside. She loves thunderstorm and stormy weather.
Fears: She is afraid of birds, especially doves and crows (big black) because of the flapping of their wings.

She is a thirsty woman and has no aversions to food or drinks. Desire for bread, cheese, diner, cookies, sweets, salt, sour and eggs. Aggravation from alcohol, fruit juice, sweets and sugar.


Background:
Father, mother and brother who was 3 years older. Her brother was a problem child because he had difficulty learning at school. She lacked attention from her parents because of his difficulties. When she was 20 years of age she left home and started to study. She is sexually abused by her brother on the age of 12 years. Her parents didn’t know it at that time. From then on she had to take care of herself.
Later on she told it to her parents. When her mother asked her to take care for her brother when her parents couldn’t do it any more, she refused and explained what had happened. From that time on when she is at her parents home, her brother is somewhere else.

Mother: A warm woman with possibilities of talking about emotional items. She works as a case manager for students in order to help them to finance their study. She is a smart woman, but never got the chance of studying because her father left the family when she was ten years of age and left her mother with 4 little children. Mother was the eldest.

Father: Was also the eldest of 4 children. His father died when he was ten years of age. Fathers mother was a cold, heartless woman, but father himself is a good-natured chap who is not very talkative. He has an own business in office machinery. He is very introverted, but can show his affection for his daughter without words; arm around her shoulder.

Schools: Primary school was fine, one of the best students; learning was fun. Lots of friends. Secondary school: Average student, at first fighting at it to be the best like at primary school. Later on, especially after the sexual abuse of brother, she felt OK with her position and had a less prominent presence.

Work in 2004: Group Worker within a psychiatric ward for young ones in a big psychiatric hospital. Nowadays: Group Worker within a ward for young ones with a mental handicap combined with problems in their behaviour. She is the co-ordinator of a residence where about 10 mentally handicapped youngsters live.


Differential Diagnosis:
What is the main problem? There are several ways of looking at this case:
When you just look at the physical symptoms of the problems with the intake of sugar, you can think of Saccharum album. A clinical way of looking at it.
When you look at the childhood of both her parents, you see a shortage of love and care, so you can think of Natrium muriaticum.
When you look at her anger toward her brother because of the sexual abuse, you can think of Ammonium phosphoricum.
When you look at her furious anger at her former boyfriend you could think of Ammonium sulfuricum.
When you think of her way of dealing with her surrounding, with the world around her, you can think of a Lanthanide. Because of her autonomous way of being, her strong will and her spiritual interest. Also because of her eye symptoms and migraine headache.

The first time I gave her Saccharum album MK with a reasonable effect:
- Reached her old weight. Didn’t achieve it since she broke up with her former boyfriend.
- All her symptoms were less and when she used sugar, the duration of the hypoglycemia-attack was shorter.


Later on it seemed that the symptoms were suppressed by the Saccharum album because the good effect didn’t continue and she was extremely tired again and had regularly headaches, migraines like as before.

At that time she was busy fighting to keep love and attention from her parents. She had an enormous fight (discussion) with her mother because of the way she was treated in the house of her parents, like the little girl she used to be. She had to fight to hold the attention because her parents were used to giving more attention to her elder brother even when he wasn’t in their house at that time.


So I switched to a Lanthanide:
(This picture shows you Gadolinium, one of the Lanthanides, being triturated in dehumidified Argon environment. It shows how difficult it is to handle with the Lanthanides.)

Because she told me she was fighting to stay with herself, to maintain to herself, I gave her Dysprosium metallicum. After this remedy she improved a lot.
She ate a lot of sugar (relatively) during her holiday without it bothering her. She had to work real hard, but it was no problem. She had no mycosis after the use of sugar which she had regularly before (so she told me at that time). She felt better emotionally in her mind. She was OK, she was tired, but it felt as a healthy sort of being tired from hard working and not the exhaustion from the use of sugar. She had faith in coming through problems with financing her new house. She even had a better understanding with her brother.
This was a breakthrough. It happened in the summer of 2004 and in January 2006 she told me: the hypoglycemia is over.

Nowadays: She had ups and downs in her relationship with a man during 2006 and in her work with the mentally handicapped youngsters. Especially in her work she had a problem with authority, she had an incompetent chief and fought to stay with herself again. Her own standards were the most important.


That brings me to the discussion around the confirmation from the symptoms to the remedy:
First: Why a Lanthanide?
Autonomy: Goes her own way, aversion to conventions. For example: She was invited to the wedding of her nephew, very high class with a special dress-code, gala or full dress. “No way”, she said, “I’ll choose my own clothes: a fine pair of blue jeans with a neat blouse will do.” She can hardly stand authority, when her chief says right, she will try left first, for example. She doesn’t accept anything for granted.
Spiritually interested; reading spiritual books and discussing them with friends.
Among the symptoms around the problems with sugar there are problems according to the eyes (blurred vision after sugar-use) which fit into the Lanthanides.
Also the migraine headache fits into the Lanthanides.

Why Dysprosium? Stage 12 is a stage in the periodic table of the chemistry which stands for fighting to retain, to hold something. She was fighting to retain herself, fighting to stay with her own self, to stick to herself.

Why metallicum and no salt? She is busy with herself, not with mother or father or brother or work.


So the main remedy which helped her was Dysprosium metallicum.
A remedy I learned from the book Secret Lanthanides by Jan Scholten.

Klitsie, A.
Homeopathic Doctors Centre Utrecht
email: jannemiek49@hetnet.nl