Pyroluria Diagnosis in Melbourne

For those looking for a pyroluria diagnosis in Melbourne, Australia, I have begun seeing Joanna Hickey in Clifton Hill. She is one of a group of practitioners who follow the Walsh protocol (William Walsh, who was  an ally of the late Carl Pfeiffer) for treating pyroluria.

I've just started seeing her, but so far so good.  I mean, a doctor knowing what pyroluria is is good enough, right, but then on top of that she actually knows how to treat it.  The first visit takes about an hour and a half.  Consecutive visits aren't as long.  But a word of warning ~ it's a little exey.  For the first consultation and the numerous blood tests required, you will be looking at somewhere between $400-$600.

It's an expensive place to be, on the wrong side of the health fence, that's for sure.  The good thing about pyroluria is that once you've got the initial diagnostic stuff out of the way, treatment is all nutritional, via vitamins and minerals, and if your situation is straightforward you need only spend 20 bucks or so a week to keep yourself on the up.  But supplements can be expensive too.  I am taking a range of things to help deal with the copper detox symptoms.  I counted 22 separate tablets I took this morning.  It gets tedious, and it gets expensive.  But I'm glad I'm on the right track.  Some of those supplements I will be able to ditch after a while.  But in the meantime ~ hooray for iherb.com, is all I can say.

I'm not sure where to suggest for you to go if you are just wanting a barebones diagnosis.  My holistic GP that I usually see knows nothing about pyroluria, and while he was happy to refer me for a blood test, it turned out in the end to not be the best one to have.  Dr Hickey would have liked me to have had the test done that gives a baseline measurement of my level of pyroluria.  I was interested in having this done myself too, but an extra 70 bucks plus the fact that I would have had to have stopped both the B6 and the zinc for three days meant that I passed that over in favour of keeping some extra dollars in my wallet.