This is the case of a 65-year-old woman with difficulty staying asleep. She wakes nightly between 1 and 2 am and can not fall back to sleep for up to three hours. She is irritable and fatigued from lack of sleep.
Her insomnia began when her partner was dying of cancer and did not resolve when her partner passed away many years later. She has not dated since her partner died.
She has a history of depression that began at age 16 and would come and go based on her life circumstance. She has a persistent feeling of loneliness and lethargy with a sense of being ‘on the outside’ and isolated from others. She is also quick to anger and is easily irritated. She loves animals and feels deeply the suffering in the world.
She came to me wanting to get off the prescription medications she was taking for depression and insomnia. She had been on both medications for many years. Every time she had tried to wean off of them on her own, insomnia would return and the depression would worsen.
In addition to insomnia and depression, she had a history of Irritable Bowel Syndrome with alternating constipation and loose stools, sensitivity to dairy from birth with abdominal cramping and diarrhea, heartburn and postnasal drip both of which had contributed to her voice becoming quite raspy over the years.
I gave her a single dose of homeopathic Nitric acid 200C. She told me that the night she took it she slept better than she had in years.
She began to wean off of the sleep medication but her insomnia returned and had to go back to the full dose.
At that point, I switched her to Nitric acid LM1 and had her take 1/2 tsp daily.
After 3 months of taking the remedy daily, she was able to wean off both medications without side effects. It has been a year since our initial meeting and she continues to sleep well and her mood is balanced without any prescription medications. She has also begun to feel interested in dating again and has made many, positive life changes moving toward the life she wants to live!
