Colitis

A New Style of Casetaking

John was a 34 year-old factory worker with a family to support. His ulcerative colitis was really cramping his style, not to mention his bowels. We took his case using a new casetaking method that focuses on examining the patient's chief complaint in detail in order to determine the vital sensation that runs through the entire case. The vital sensation helps to determine the kingdom and family from which the correct medicine may be found.

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This method has been in development by Dr. Rajan Sankaran of Mumbai, India over the past few years, Studying it during live case seminars in Mumbai, and applying it in our practice, has allowed us to arrive at homeopathic medicines that we could have never before prescribed. Using this method, the words of the patient are examined in detail, asking him to define and redefine the significant words, expressions and gestures that he uses while recounting his symptoms.

John's Case in His Own Words

"My ulcerative colitis started three years ago. The doctor recommended Prednisone and Asachol. I have not been on Prednisone for eight months and it is terrible right now. I stopped the Prednisone because it made me fidgety. I've lost 30 to 40 pounds since stopping. I have also tried treatment with two other homeopaths without any results, and some herbal teas. I have been avoiding spicy food, but my diet doesn't seem to matter. I try not to eat much so I don't have to go to the bathroom all the time. My stool is loose, but not as watery as it was originally.

"This colitis is really getting me down. It's really hard for me to handle. Usually, at work, I will go to the bathroom four to six times a day. When I have to stop my work to go to the bathroom, it's inconvenient and slows me down. I'm down to using vacation days for sick days. All I can do is go to work. I can't really even go to my kids' baseball games. The colitis has tied me down completely. I have to have a bathroom nearby, or I just don't go there.

"It is very hard for me to hold in a bowel movement. My stool can be so urgent, I might have to go by the side of the road. I get pain through my mid-section and stomach area. It's like a sick feeling, like an upset stomach, but lower down. Sometimes it gurgles before I have a bowel movement. It's like my colon is being squeezed or wrung out. Could it be bloating putting pressure on the outer walls? It feels wrenching, like it is squeezing or bulging.

"It feels tight and sore in there. My colon is damaged. It feels like it has been bruised or something. The bruised feeling starts before or during stool, but can hang on afterwards as well. The right side of my stomach also feels cool to the touch before or during a bowel movement.

"When I am pushing, I feel like I am pushing up against a block wall, like it is plugged. When I try to quit pushing, it is hard to stop. It gets pretty painful down there. It is so intense that it makes me bend over. It's like someone is punching you in the rectum, and I feel it the whole time I am pushing at the end of the bowel movement. It is like it is plugged, and I just have to push. Then a few more drops come out, and I'm finished. Sometimes my rectum clinches at the end. It is really annoying. Sometimes there's mucus or blood in the stool.

"My stool is explosive. The gas is like a whoopee cushion going off! Then I get the pain. It is like I am pushing up against nothing, but it is blocked. I'm trying to do two things at once, push the stool out and stop it at the same time. The pain in the midsection comes when I try to hold it back. The squeezed or wrung-out feeling comes on during the stool and occasionally afterwards. When I'm pushing and nothing comes out, I get brief chills or goose bumps from the pushing, either all over or just on my arms and legs.

"My stools haven't been normal in a year. When it first started, I figured I had the runs, but it got worse and worse. It seemed to start after a dental cleaning where I swallowed a bunch of stuff. Shortly afterwards, the colitis started. At first, I just had a little blood here and there. The colonoscopy showed that the walls of my colon are damaged on the right side, where it hooks to the small intestine and the left side of the transverse colon.

"I feel very weak. It is draining on my body. I don't have any energy at all. I feel so weak that I don't even want to leave the house. Yesterday was a very good day, but I felt sick this morning and couldn't get going. When I try to get going in the morning, I feel like I could sleep for another five hours. My sleep is disrupted by having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night to pass stool.

"My wife and I were not getting along at the time the colitis started. Her counselor told her I should move out. I even thought she had a boyfriend at the time, and I thought of moving on to be with someone else. I felt pretty terrible. I was very nervous about it. This was my second marriage, and I didn't want to split up for the sake of our two young kids. It was very hard on me the first time. When my first wife left me, all I had was my drinking. When I met my present wife in a bar, I resolved to quit drinking and marry her.

"I have a bad temper and I used to drink. I get angry driving the car sometimes. It doesn't take much to put me into 'road rage,' but I never get out of the car. I used to get physical when I was drinking, but not anymore. If something pushes me over the edge, I'll yell and take it out on the kids. I don't feel good about spanking them. I used to get a whuppin' from my dad every Sunday. I'd do something wrong at church and I'd think, 'Here we go again.' What my dad did to me I would never do to my kids. One day when I was ten, my mom and dad fought, and he got the shotgun to kill himself. I was so scared when the cops came to take him away. I haven't been seriously mad for a while. I try to stay calm. Being mad probably makes my condition worse.

"I don't remember things really well. Sometimes I don't listen to my wife and she calls me on it. I forget who called on the phone. It's like I have a selective memory. At work, a lot of people don't speak English and it is hard to communicate with them. I don't even want to go to work anymore. I'm embarrassed that I'll have to go in my pants there and I won't be able to control it. It wouldn't hurt my feelings if they fired me.

"I don't have any self-esteem. The way some people look at me like they were thinking, "Why do you work for that company?" The town blames the company for bringing in all the foreign workers. People look down on you. They think they are better than you.

"The colitis has really put my life on hold. I just don't do anything anymore. I don't have any energy to fix up the house. My wife complains I'm on the computer too much. I like to play paintball, but I've only done it four or five times this year. I like the exercise, the rush and the skill of it. I also like to hunt and fish. Just getting out in nature is good for me. I like the adrenaline rush when the bird flushes out of the bushes. I have to know there is a bathroom or I don't go. It's embarrassing if I poop in my pants, but thank God no one has found out about it.

"I don't remember my dreams very much, I have a recurring dream sometimes where people with no faces try to pull me into the water of the lake where we have a cabin. I try to run, but I feel like I'm frozen. It really scares me. As a kid I sleepwalked a lot. I'd get up and start running. My brother and sister were afraid I would fall down the stairs. I also used to talk in my sleep."

Case Analysis Based on Plant Family and Miasm

Fortunately John expressed the vital sensation early on in the case. Understanding the sensation led directly to the homeopathic medicine that created a remarkable improvement in his bowels. So, how did we find the medicine? Unless you are familiar with Rajan's recent material on plants, it is unlikely that you would come up with this small medicine.

John's description of his bowel movements was quite graphic, a rich mine filled with sensations. He described his bowels as though they were being squeezed or wrung out, a wrenching feeling. Sore and bruised. Several plant families are suggested by these sensations including the Rutaceae family which contains Ruta graveolens for the squeezed or wrung out sensation, the Asteraceae (Compositae) family, including Arnica montana and Bellis perennis for the bruised sensation. The tight sensation being covered by the Anacardiaceae (Anacardium, Rhus toxicodendron) and the Euphorbiaceae (Croton tiglium, Hura brasiliensis) families.

The sensation that carried the most energy, however, was that of the bowels being plugged or blocked. "I feel like I am pushing up against a block wall, like it is plugged ... and I just have to push.... It is like I am pushing up against nothing, but it is blocked." This sensation is typical of the Cruciferae family of plants including Sinapis alba, Sinapis nigra Raphanus, and Cochlearia. This family of plants is known for feeling a sense of obstruction, with the normal flow feeling stuck or blocked, or even dammed up, similar to John's feeling of being blocked and plugged.

Once the plant family is determined according to Sankaran's method, it is necessary to determine which of his ten miasms is the correct one for the case. In this case, the well-known sycotic miasm was selected. John was embarrassed by his condition and did his best to not let anyone at work know about his problems, with particular care not to suffer a bowel accident in public. In the sycotic miasm the patient feels like he has to cover up his weakness and learn to live with his illness, without much hope of getting over it. John felt that the colitis was ruining his life, and had little hope for recovery.

According to the chart of plant families and miasms in the newly published Sankaran's Schema, the medicine in the Cruciferae family associated with the sycotic miasm is Cochlearia armoracia, commonly known as horseradish. Before using this newly developed system of case taking and plant family categorization, it would have been quite unusual to prescribe such a little known and rarely-if-ever-prescribed homeopathic medicine. In studying the materia medica of Cochlearia, we found it to be a medicine useful in colitis and bowel problems, with considerable tenesmus and straining at stool, mucus from the rectum, and up to twenty bowel movements a day.

A Positive Response

Six weeks after receiving Cochlearia 200C, the urgency and frequency of John's stool were less, and the bleeding and mucus had subsided. The patient could sleep through night most of the time, without needing to get up to pass stool. The stool was more formed and not so watery. Happily, John reported, "It's improved, big time!"

Other than very mild stomach discomfort, the feeling of pushing against a wall was gone, as were the chills or goosebumps.. The sensations of being squeezed, wrung out, and bruised had improved dramatically. John was able to eat a lot more food and, to his delight, could even enjoy pizza now and then.

Eczema had improved greatly as did the headaches. "I feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel now," John affirmed. Now able to go places with his children, he had not taken even a single sick day. Energy was so much better that John was able to move and begin painting his new house. To relieve the stress of moving, John had begun to play paintball again.

John continued to progress well, needing another dose of Cochlearia after minor surgery on his leg. At his follow-up appointment three months later, John reported with a great sense of relief, "I'm feeling a whole lot better. My stools are only once or twice a day and mostly formed. It can be urgent at times, but I have no problem controlling it. My colon is not feeling bruised, squeezed, or wrung out anymore and the stomach pain is pretty much gone. I can eat pizza and just about everything I want. The diarrhea is gone, too, except for once after a seafood dinner. The eczema had resolved as well. I haven't needed any medication."

John has continued to do well in the six months since his original dose of Cochlearia, and has needed no further visits. We have found with this method, as has Rajan, that the response is often more immediate, within the first week or two after taking the medicine, and unquestionable.

Try Out These New Methods Yourself

We encourage any serious homeopath to investigate Rajan's newer methods of casetaking and analysis. When performed correctly, they hold a remarkable potential for finding homeopathic medicine inaccessible in any other way we have found. We are more excited than ever about our practice, which is great for any doctor of 20 years to be able to say.

Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman and Robert Ullman are licensed naturopathic physicians board certified in homeopathic medicine in practice for over twenty years. Authors of seven books, including the bestselling Ritalin-Free Kids, they have also written Prozac-Free, Rage-Free Kids, Whole Woman Homeopathy, Homeopathic Self-Care, The Patient's Guide to Homeopathic Medicine, and Mystics, Masters, Saints, and Sages, their newest book, A Drug-Free Approach to Asperger Syndrome and Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Homeopathic Medicine for Exceptional Kids (Starfish Spectalty Press), will be released in July. The doctors practice at The Northwest Center for Homeopathic Medicine in Edmonds and Langley, Washington as well as treating many patients by phone. They can be reached at 425-774-5599 or through their website at www.healthyhomeopathy.com. Judyth and Bob teach internationally and are available to offer professional seminars in beautiful and exotic places.

by Robert Ullman, ND, DHANP and Jodyth Reichenberg-Ullman, ND, DHANP

131-3rd Ave.North * Edmonds, Washington 98020 USA

Phone 425-774-5599 * Fax 425-670-0319

www.healthyhomeopathy.com

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