Words: Dr Naveen Kumar BOGGARAPU
DP, a thirty-year-old physiotherapist, was distraught with her hair loss. She had tried various potions, shampoos and prescriptions that ‘vowed’ to regulate her hair loss for over two years.
The result, however, was a disappointment. To top it all, she was detected having polycystic ovarian syndrome [PCOS], and anaemia, the two likely causal factors, a few weeks before she consulted me for hair loss.
I found that DP had dandruff with thinning of hair along the partition. She reported that her dad, also uncles, had receding hairline — and, they were just short of complete baldness.
DP’s food and other habits were okay. She loved non-vegetarian food, aside from eggs, sweets and spicy food. She looked stern — although she expressed frankly that she had a propensity to guard her feelings and not share them with others, including her parents. She spoke just a few words. She did not evoke a sure-fire, self-confident trait, but she said rather dispassionately that he wanted to make it big in her field — a typical attribute that led me to the homeopathic Lycopodium clavatum personality.
I prescribed her the said remedy, in the 30C potency, based on her presenting and other symptoms. What also clinched the prescription was her sense of skulking fear, including agoraphobia, unwanted anxiety about health, the dread being alone at night, of death and survival — all Lycopodium characteristics.
She started showing progress, although gradually. In due course, her hair loss stopped. It took about a year for her to feel good about her ‘new’ look — a head full of hair. Her other health concerns — PCOS and anaemia — too responded satisfactorily, in terms of subjective and objective symptoms, as also clinical parameters, a little later.
Case-2
RJ [31] presented with seborrhoeic dermatitis. He had taken conventional medicines for over 8-10 months, with no tangible relief. The affected sites were primarily his scalp, chest, nasolabial folds and eyebrows.
When I began to take his case, I was puzzled by his quick recall. He said he’d respiratory infection, when he was 16, aside from jaundice at age 12. There was a definitive family history of asthma, also diabetes. He laughed and said there were no ‘baldos’ in the family, although what troubled them the most was premature greying of hair. His other complaints were the usual, also recurrent, cold and cough with every change of season, besides hyperacidity, and a mild pain in the knee joints.
Seborrhoeic dermatitis is a skin disorder affecting the scalp, face, and torso. It often presents with scaly, flaky, itchy, and red skin. It predominantly affects the sebaceous gland. The symptoms appear slowly; the first signs are flaky skin and scalp. Symptoms occur most often on the face, behind the ears and in areas where the skin folds. Flakes may be yellow, white, or greyish, in colour. Redness and flaking may also ensue on the skin near the eyelashes, the forehead, the sides of the nose, chest and upper back. In severe cases, yellowish to reddish scaly pimples may also appear. By and large, such patients experience mild redness, scaly skin lesions and, in some cases, hair loss. It may also be said that symptoms of seborrhoeic dermatitis may last from a few weeks to years.
I prescribed DP the homeopathic remedy, Calcarea sulphuricum 200C. This was fundamentally because of his classical symptoms — distinctive skin symptoms and dandruff, nasal discharges with thick, yellow-coloured phlegm, or mucous, with cold and cough. I also noted his temperament of being shy presented only on the exterior, while he was aggressive from the inside — as his close friend, who accompanied him, put it. It took about eight months for RJ to feel significantly better. It did not, thereafter, take long for his other health issues to get resolved.
