From a very young age 8 year old Luke had always been moody, irritable and defiant. The moodiness and irritability his parent could handle. But it was his defiant behavior that caused his parent to bring him to see me. Almost without fault when his mother asked him to do something, whether it was to pick up his toys or hurry up and get ready for school Luke would emphatically say “no”. No matter how nicely he was asked his response was a loud and defiant – “I don’t want to”, or “I’m not doing that”. This invariably would lead to the parents having to raise their voices in order to get him to reluctantly do what was asked of him.
The psychiatric term for this type of behavior is Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). His parents not wanting to go the route of psychiatric medications tried counseling, thinking it was their parenting skills that was contributing to this attitude as his teachers never complained of him being defiant. But no matter what parenting techniques they tried it made no difference in his actions.
Along with this oppositional attitude Luke was plagued by an intense anxiety and fears. His most common anxiety was concerning his health. If he experienced a symptom such as a headache he immediately began obsessing on what illness this might be. In addition to this illness anxiety he had fear of the dark, intruders, and ghosts that caused him to have trouble falling asleep. And once he was asleep it was not uncommon for nightmares to wake him. It was this combination of irritability, defiance and anxiety that led me to suspect that Luke had a physiological imbalance in his zinc, copper, ceruloplasmin and even possibly pyrroles. On testing all four of these factors were found to be markedly out of the normal range.
On initiating Dr. Walsh’s protocol (discussed in previous newsletter) to restore these imbalances to normal the defiant episodes gradually decreased and falling asleep became easier. In addition to using Dr. Walsh’s protocol I treated Luke homeopathically to address his underlying phobias which eliminated these irrational fears. At first the changes were imperceptible but as weeks turned into months Luke’s symptoms melted away.
Terry Pfau DO, HMD