Vestibular-questions about CNS toxins

[MelissaC]

Hello- I have been caring for my parents 14 year old English Springer Spaniel that had a mild case of vestibular disease back in April. In June/July the symptoms came back for a few days after getting Bravecto. Last Sunday, we applied a single dose flea/tick medication and she seemed to be handling it with no issues. The first sign that anything was wrong was some restlessness, and whining, but it would pass quickly then she would settle down. On Tuesday she went back home. Checking in on her Thursday, noticed her chronically runny eyes had dried up, but just noted it and didn't think much more about it until Friday. Because by Friday, she started to show more prominent signs that the vestibular was back, such as nystagmus (rhythmic twitching of the eyes), and a slight problem with balance. I gave her a combination homeopathic for motion sickness, and a single dose of cocculus indicus 200ck. Within two hours there was a significant decrease in the speed of the eye twitching, and her balance stabilized. We gave her a dose of cerenia, just as a preventative for nausea and she ended up sleeping for almost twelve hours.

Saturday: Once she finally woke up, she was doing fairly well until the evening. My father called around 8pm to let me know her vestibular symptoms had returned and their severity had increased too. After some thought, I realized that on Saturday her regular doses of rimadyl were given way too close together, and that this had been going on all week because of her changing sleeping patterns having just returned home. My father would have been feeding her when she woke, and then every evening by 6pm, so her rimadyl would have been less than twelve hours apart. I feel like the rimadyl's less than ideal dosing schedule, or just the added load on her liver coupled with the flea/tick meds are what brought this back on. My question is about what do you do in an instance where the symptoms can be fairly confidently traced back to a systemic toxin or toxins? Thank you in advance, Melissa

 

[Dr. Jeff]

Great question Melissa!

This is a fantastic application of the stress and strain model used in VBS.

Consider that your her symptoms are a response ("strain") to an environmental stressor.

Be it a medication, toxin, vaccine, etc.

Her exact symptom manifestations are based on her individuality.

Now's a good time, before this happens again, to look for similarity of the symptoms to rubrics in the repertory.

Especially ]remedies like Nux, Puls, Aconite, Ars, etc. in the generality-medicament-poisoning from rubrics.

 

[MelissaC]

Hello again-

So I find myself getting very frustrated as I try and narrow down remedies for Bella's vestibular issue. When she first manifested symptoms this week, I used a combination remedy call motion sickness, and it slowed the progression. However, it did not stop the progression after my father gave Bella the rimadyl-which seemed to push her into a full blown vestibular pattern the following day.

What I am struggling with a bit is where do I place my focus when going through the repertory? Vertigo as a general symptom? Or do I just look at the combination remedy, where I saw signs of improvement, and try and pull one of those out that best fits her pattern? Also, the combination remedy is a 6x, why does that seem to be more effective than a single remedy at a 30c level? Also, do homeopathics expire if they are kept in a cool dark place?

I feel like I have been through this so many times that I should have a better handle on the top three remedies to use, and then all I should need to do is choose based on the current symptom pattern. Yet, I am not getting the results I had expected.

Any specific direction would be really welcome.

Thank you!

 

[Dr. Jeff]

Great questions, and yes, there's lots of details to consider when narrowing down remedies.

New homeopaths sometimes take hours and hours to find a useful homeopathic medicine.

Partly because recurrent vestibular problems like this are only one part of Bella's internal imbalance.?

You might therefore want to take a step away from focusing on this one symptom to think about her totality.

Look especially at anything that affects her overall (which can be found in the generality section of your repertory) and modality changes just before or since the April episode.

For example, has she become clingier than usual or prefer to be inside or outside, does she sleep in different spots in the house?

Investigating the combination remedy ingredients is not a very useful strategy.

Your potency question is an important part of the answer!

The low potencies are less specific and therefore affect more individuals.

However this lack of specificity is exactly the opposite of what you're trying to achieve.

The higher the potency, the better fine-tuned the remedy is making it deeper-acting and more effective for that particular individual.

However, finding the one homeopathic medicine that matches the true gestalt of the dis-ease is the way to prevent recurrence and progression.

Since Bella's equilibrium is strongly affected by the meds, I wonder if you've read about or tried the remedies mentioned above or others from this rubric:

GENERALS - MEDICINE - allopathic - abuse of: (36) agar. agn. Aloe ars. aven. bapt. bry. camph. carb-v. cham. chin. coff. coloc. ham. hep. Hydr. hyper. kali-i. lach. laur. Lob. lycps-v. mag-s. mur-ac. nat-m. nit-ac. NUX-V. op. Ph-ac. Puls. sec. Sulph. teucr. thuj. tub. verat.

or:

GENERALS - MEDICINE - allopathic - oversensitive to: (24) acon. am-c. arn. bar-c. carb-v. carc. cham. coff. cortiso. cupr. lach. lyc. nat-m. nit-ac. NUX-V. op. phos. PULS. sabad. sep. sil. SULPH. teucr. thuj.

Here's a quick and dirty repertorization with some remedies to read up on.



Ideally, these would be narrowed down by your investigating Bella's other symptoms now or from the past.

No, homeopathic medicines don't expire (sorry Pfizer!).

Good luck, and feel free to post any other thoughts or questions.

 

[MelissaC]

I had narrowed the remedies down to gelsenium and nux vomica. Right or wrong, something in the combination remedy had worked, so I chose to go with the nux. I have seen slight improvement, but whether or not it is the nux it is too soon to tell. Thank you for your input!

 

[Dr. Jeff]

Great choices Missy.

Nux would have been my choice as well.

Redose if needed based on no change, or improvement then relapse.