Positive Health Online

Jane had always had premenstrual problems. As a teenager, she had been very tired and moody for a few days prior to her period; natural enough in an adolescent. However, after her two children were born in her early twenties, the situation began to deteriorate.

When she first came to me in 1994, she was having seven to ten days of "hell".

Jane's symptoms were mostly of a psychological nature. She would begin to feel low and tired about ten days after her last period and these feelings would escalate such that, by the time her bleed was due, she would be really struggling to cope. She described it as feeling as if she just wanted to run away from everyone and everything. In tears, she related that she felt as if she did not care about her children and would push them away if they came to her. This worried her terribly, in case there would be lasting effects on the children from being rejected in this way.

Her relationship with her husband was becoming strained as a consequence both of her low mood and also of a complete disinterest in sex which had developed over the same time scale. This was particularly troublesome, as Jane could not take hormonal contraception due to having had a thrombosis in pregnancy. The very time when‚ she could perhaps have felt like sex coincided with mid cycle and ovulation, when her fear of conception was greatest. Thus, although Jane's husband was a good and understanding fellow, she felt sad and guilty that things were not better between them.

Unfortunately, the problems in her marriage were compounded by her emotional state when the premenstrual syndrome "kicked in".

Whereas she was rejecting and dismissive towards the children, her attitude to her husband was more like rage. She would seethe and fume all day, on her bad days, and as soon as her husband came home, he would be greeted by a tirade of cursing and insults such that, of late, he was often going straight out again and not returning until after Jane was in bed.

Hearing Jane's story, I felt that her case would respond to Sepia, the homoeopathic medicine which is derived from the ink of the cuttlefish and which has tremendous power in the treatment of symptoms arising form hormonal imbalances, such as premenstrual syndrome. I prescribed a single dose at mid-cycle for three months. One often has to wait longer in these cyclical complaints in order to assess the action of a medicine. I was treating Jane in general practice and, as she did not return, I could only hope that the situation had improved.

It was over a year later when I saw Jane again. She had brought in one of her children with a viral infection, so I enquired as to how the Sepia had worked. Sadly, it had not helped at all and Jane had decided that homoeopathy was probably not for her, and battled on as well as she could. The premenstrual symptoms had become even worse in the intervening months and Jane looked very tense and drawn. I offered to spend some more time with her a few days later in order to retake the case and she agreed, somewhat wearily. She seemed to have given up hope of ever solving this problem.

It transpired that the main feature of Jane's problem had become her temper. She described her feelings during the premenstrual week as "pure rage". She had no patience whatsoever and as a result, her family avoided her company altogether on her bad days. She had also developed tremendously sore breasts. They were so tender that she had to splint them when walking and even a very firm bra did not give a great deal of ease. It was then that she gave me the vital clue which would lead us to the correct medicine.

"Its very strange", she said. "I don't get both breasts sore at the same time. It tends to be either one of the other."

Eureka! The medicine Lac caninum, which was originally derived from dog's milk, is another, slightly less well-known, medicine with a strong action on the female hormonal system. Its keynote is that the symptoms frequently alternate from right to left or vice versa.

Thus a blocked nose, sore throat, sore joints or irritable bowel pain that alternated regularly from side to side will often respond to Lac caninum.

I soon was able to extract some confirmatory symptoms from Jane. She was troubled by forgetfulness which she had been frightened to mention because she was terrified that she may be developing dementia. She had become terrified of spiders and insects and also found that she could not lie on her left side because the feel of her heart beating made her anxious and she would get palpitations. All these symptoms can be covered by the medicine Lac caninum so I prescribed a similar course to before with one dose at mid-cycle for three months but with the instruction to take no further medicine once an improvement had set in.

This time Jane did return for follow up, after two months. She came to report that things had improved dramatically. Although not by any means perfect, her mood swings had decreased very significantly. Her breasts were now back to normal and she felt altogether much better. In fact, since that time I have seen Jane on several occasions over two years and she has had no recurrence of the severe symptoms of before.

This case was very instructive for me and I now keep Lac caninum in mind for the most aggressive of my PMS sufferers and have used it with success on several occasions. It is also a good example of how a single keynote can lead one to the medicine, as long as one knows what to listen out for!