Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Bryonia hits the West Coast Jan-Feb 2014


We all know that the actual snow storm hit the East Coast, not the West in the last couple weeks.  However, the temperatures here have dropped to freezing briefly.  The weather is cold and dry. Although the dryness brings us bits of nice blue sky, if you have the Bryonia flu, the picture above shows what you feel like on the inside.

With a case of Bryonia, you just can't get warm.  Even when you put on a long sleeve shirt or get in bed, the usual amount of layers is not enough. Any draft is felt.  It's not quite the hot/cold fever/chill you get with Gelsemium and other flus.  You just feel cold.  And you don't feel it on your skin so much like you did in December with the Gelsemium flu. You feel it in your joints.

The joint pain can be described as a soreness throughout the body and from my experience, all the joints are painful.  Although the entire person may be cold, the joints might feel better with application of a cold pack rather than heat. But most of all, the pain is better from pressure or splinting.  What does this mean? If your neck hurts, although it may be sore to the touch, it feels better with the hand pressing on it, giving it support. Or when lying in bed, a sore back, neck or shoulder will actually feel better when laying on the side that is sore.

Part of the reason for this is that with Bryonia motion generally makes a part feel worse. For instance, if your lungs are feeling sore or you are generally feeling achy, stop breathing for a few seconds.  You will notice a reduction in pain because your chest is not moving.  This is one reason Bryonia is often used for pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining or sac between the lungs and chest wall.  Bryonia can also be used for lesser complaints such as coughing and bronchitis when splinting--or holding the chest while coughing--makes the pain decrease.  By the way, a bryonia cough will usually be dry.

Despite being better at rest--not moving--the entire body may be restless due to the pain, and the patient (or family member) with the bryonia flu will want to be still and wrapped up but will then be up and down or moving about, all the time irritable because they cannot feel completely at ease.

There have been a few people with nausea or even vomiting with this flu.  Generally liquids will go down better than solids and the patient will often thirst for large quantities of cold water.  This is because the mouth feels dry.  Dr. Will Taylor, homeopathic professor at the National College of Natural Medicine, always said "Bryonia, dry-onia".  The mucous membranes will be dry and this can result in thirst or even constipation.

In fact, dry-onia is what gave me the clue for the remedy for this flu.  I was laying on the couch wrapped in a blanket trying to be still and I kept needing to get up for a glass of water.  My mouth felt dry.  It was then that I connected the achy joints with the Bryonia flu picture.  Interestingly, I had experienced low back pain a day or so before I really started to feel sick. It had hit me suddenly in the produce section of the grocery store.  I was just standing when it hit.  It felt stitching and shooting as if my back would break, needing to be splinted--classic Bryonia.  As the days progressed, the pain has settled in the neck, always a trouble spot for me anyway, as an aching pain which is also a way for Bryonia to express itself.

I had started to become nauseous yesterday evening so I took 3 doses of Bryonia 30x at 2 hour intervals. By morning I felt better and went to work as usual with no problem. I do need to take more now for the neck pain which came back.  A higher dose such as 12c or 30c may have been longer lasting, but I did drink coffee today and it may have antidoted the doses I took. It is usually adviseable to start with a lower dose and if that works well, stick with it.  And don't drink coffee.

Also interesting to note, a Bryonia flu will bring on the most interesting dreams at night.  Bryonia is found under these rubrics:
DREAMS- unpleasant
DREAMS-vivid
SLEEP-Disturbed, dreams by
DREAMS-riots
DREAMS-many
and many other dream rubrics.  I had interesting vivid dreams two nights in a row. The type of dreams that usually come from a fever delirium--the kind you only get when you're sick.  I asked other people who have been experiencing joint pain/cold/flu starting symptoms and they also said they had very weird vivid dreams last night.  So I think Bryonia is going around.

Write in with your experiences and let me know if Bryonia helped you.