Menopause, Migraines and Anxiety

13 August 2007

Female aged 50 – she is suffering from menopausal hot flushes, a recurrent stye, migraines, and anxiety.

The hot flushes originally were only at night, but now she has them during the day too. They are quite severe. The flush rises from her torso upwards. At night, she needs to throw off the covers, and can then get chills. She is waking every 2 hours, generally after midnight.

When she experiences a flush, she gets hot, clammy and sweaty – but not excessively sweaty. She does not become red in the face. She is better by fanning. She wakes feeling like she ‘has been doing rounds in the ring’. Sometimes she gets some slight nausea. Her sleep is very disrupted.

She has a stye on her right lower eyelid. It is a recurrent infection, is red and swollen, but is not currently bothering her.

She has been getting migraines. They are worse on the right side, and affect the vision in her right eye. She feels nauseous.

Her periods stopped 4 months ago after about 18mths of being erratic. They had been regular, lasting for 1 week.

She has been having itchy skin on her arms and the top of her torso. She had been having this before the flushes started. The itching is not ameliorated by scratching, and it generally disappears after about 20 minutes.

She has spots in her vision since about 8 months ago. They are there all the time – like wriggly lines. She has had her vision checked, and everything was OK. It is very annoying, and she has to ‘look around’ the wriggly lines to see what is in front of her.

She has been suffering from anxiety in the past 6 months, and describes her usual self as ‘not too panicky’. She is very tearful, also since the last 6 months, and cries ‘at the drop of a hat’. She is better by consolation, and sometimes better for crying.

When she was 15 years old, she had repeated ear infections, with bleeding from the ear. She then had an operation to remove some kind of growth, and as a result was left with right-sided facial paralysis, and no hearing in her right ear. This paralysis has lead to a tendency to get cysts in her eye, and other problems with the eye as it does not close properly, and becomes dry.

She had her tonsils removed as a child, and also some kind of an operation because of her teeth erupting at the wrong angles. Her left hip has been sore for some months. Tests show nothing wrong. Having done yoga for years, she now finds some of the moves and positions quite difficult. More recently, she has been getting an ache through her hips – from one side to the other.
She has lost weight in the last few months. She is of a slight build.

Her appetite is good, and she desires salads, savoury foods, and grapefruit. Spicy food heats her up, so she avoids it. She is thirstless.

Her father died when she was in her 20s, and it had a very big impact on her. She still cries easily over him, and in relating this to me, she becomes quite teary.

At the end of last year she left her job where she had been for 12 years – a new boss had come in, things changed, and people started leaving. She had some very close relationships, and still keeps in contact with them. She began a new job in January.

In the last year has had a major change in her life with her change of job. She described suffering anxiety when she had previously changed jobs. This new job is challenging for her, because she needs to interact closely with customers, and to respond rapidly to problems that arise. She has also on occasion needed to speak in front of a group, and this was very difficult for her. This all causes her considerable anxiety, and she often becomes teary at work. She gets a ‘fuzzy’ head at times, and finds it difficult to concentrate. She is a gentle person, and describes herself as very guarded.

Many of her problems commenced early in the year: the flushes, the migraines, the spots before the eyes, and the considerable anxiety – mainly regarding her work.

RUBRICS CHOSEN (Kent)

Anxiety
Weeping
Grief
Worse right side
Flushes of heat
Ear, bloody discharges

FACIAL ANALYSIS

This patient needs a yellow (psoric) remedy
The repertorisation brings up the following remedies
Puls, , Calc, Caust, Lyc, Sul, Graph, Merc, Nit Ac, R Tox, Sep, Ars, Con, Pet, Phos, Sil, Sul Ac, Chin, Cic, A Carb, Zinc, B Carb
Puls, Lycopodium and Sulph are major yellow remedies – Puls is chosen because of her tendency to weep

REMEDY AND DOSE

Pulsatilla 200C, single dose.

FOLLOW UP

27/8/07 For the first few days there were fewer flushes, both night and day, and less intense. Now, they seem to be just as bad at night, but not so often during the day. The flushes are starting at the feet and ascending.
The itchy skin has become less significant.
The stye has been changing, and looks better, but is still there.
The hip pain is less.
The spots before the eyes are the same, and emotionally she is the same.
Repeat dose.

17/9/07 Two days after the remedy she got the flu, and had it badly for 1 ½ weeks.
She has had no flushes at night, and only mild ones during the day – but she felt that these were possibly part of the flu, and not menopausal flushes.
Her eye has improved a lot. Now there is just a little redness.
No itching of the skin.
The hip-to-hip pain was bad during the flu, but is now gone.
She had headaches with the flu.
Emotionally she is feeling better, and able to cope with things better. She is not too teary.
Wait, and review in one month.

5/11/07 She is having just the occasional hot flushes, and they are not extreme like previously. She is sleeping better.
She still has itchy skin occasionally – maybe once a week.
Her hips have been aching, mainly at night.
No migraines or headaches.
She is still very emotional – but she has just gone through the illness and death of her father-in-law who she was close to.
Pulsatilla 1M, single dose.

I continued to see the patient for another 3 months. Her flushes disappeared, and all other symptoms were gone, except for the spots before the eyes which were unchanged.

This patient had one-sided facial paralysis, yet the facial analysis still yielded a good number of features which made the miasm easy to see.

During the period she was under treatment, she suffered a number of traumas in her family, and it was very pleasing to see that she maintained steady improvement throughout it all. She left her job after being there for one year – deciding that it was too stressful for her, and she decided to take some time out for herself, having never had a break of more than a few weeks in 30 years of work.

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Maria Humphries
Dip Hom Memb AHA, AROH regd
Melbourne, Australia