3.1.1 Natrium lacticum, Case 1A 15 year old girl is brought in by her mother to see me. The mother tells me that the girl is becoming more and more withdrawn, she doesn’t do anything or say anything anymore, she only speaks a few short words in a sort of telegram style.
She has always been a bit quiet, but it has become much worse in the last few weeks. She doesn’t participate in class work at school anymore, she doesn’t even answer questions from other children. All she wants is to hang around her mother all day, or sit on the sofa giggling with her sister. Her brother is beginning to dislike her intensely.
She is afraid to be alone and needs her mother to be near her. She doesn’t want her mother to shut any doors in the house, in case she can’t see her anymore. In the past she used to bang on the windows every time her mother went out. When she was a toddler she used to grab her mother’s face between her hands forcing her mother to look at her all the time. She likes sitting on her mother’s lap too. When she went to playgroup for the first time she yelled and screamed and pulled her hair out and later on when she went to primary school and her mother dropped her off in the morning she wanted to be kissed a hundred times before she let her mother leave. A possible cause for all this kind of behaviour was the fact that her parents had their own business to run and there wasn’t much time for the children.
She is a very sweet child who is often the odd one out. She likes playing with dolls: she takes her dolls and the dog about for a walk together. When she was younger she used to spend whole days doing nothing, just sitting there.
She suffers from frequent colds with swollen glands in the neck. This happens after drinking milk. Milk also causes her to have foul-smelling diarrhoea with stomach pains that make her bend double.
She used to get migraines from drinking milk.
When her mother was expecting her it was the third pregnancy within a very short time. Her mother felt very alone in the place they were living, as her father worked in another town so they did not see each other very often. The mother breast fed the baby for 5 months and this went very well, but when she changed her to bottle feeds the problems started. The child got a bad cough, starting at 6 every morning, her head swelled up and she got dark rings under her eyes.
Now as a teenager she often eats little snacks between meals and she takes a long time chewing her food.
GeneralsWeather: coldish, cold hands and feet; fear of thunderstorms.
Time: < 6 am.
Desires: sweet (3), chocolate, egg, milk, chicken.
Aversion: spices, buttermilk, lemon.
Food: < milk.
Sleep: light, wakes up from the slightest sound.
AnalysisA silent girl is a key phrase in this case, which immediately gives us a clue to the remedy
Natrium (silent) Lacticum (girl). The silence is obvious: her answers are short, she hardly talks at all, she shuts herself off from friends at school. She is also a real girl, not only because of her age, but because of her overall behaviour: she likes to play with dolls and she hangs around her mother all day.
The pregnancy came too soon after the previous ones and the mother felt very alone during this time. These are typical
Natrium Lacticum symptoms. Other Lacticum symptoms: << milk, diarrhoea after milk, << changing from breast feeding to bottle feeding, -> sweet (3) and milk, eating snacks in between meals, <- buttermilk. The light sleep fits the Natrium picture.
ReactionOne month after
Natrium Lacticum 1M everything is much better. She has started doing her homework again and her marks are improving. She now plays football outside with the other children. Her colds have stopped, although she has the occasional runny nose still. Her glands have gone down, she can tolerate milk and eats fewer snacks in between meals. Her mother says that she is not nearly so emotionally dependent anymore. A year has passed since and she is still doing well.