Nature’s Help For Anxiety
Anxiety is all too common in our lives today. No one wants to have their work, plans, relationships, or lives in general disrupted by anxiety.
People experience anxiety for many different reasons and in a variety of ways. Whether your anxiety is a rare event when unexpected difficulties arise, or if anxiety for you is an everyday event limiting your life, there is real help available in nature.
In a previous post, Supplements To Help Ease Anxiety Holistically, we shared how helpful 5 different herbs and 3 other supplements can be in improving anxiety symptoms.
Today, we are going to look at 5 additional herbs that can help ease or eliminate anxiety symptoms without the side effects or emotional complications of prescription drugs.
CHAMOMILE
Chamomile is a flower that is frequently used as an herbal, non-caffeinated tea for help with falling asleep. Chamomile compounds can also be used to help relieve anxiety. Researchers say that inhaling a spray containing the essential oils derived from chamomile can be used to relieve anxiety as well as general depression.
The researchers also say ‘Chamomile in the form of an aqueous extract has been frequently used as a mild sedative to calm nerves and reduce anxiety, to treat hysteria, nightmares, insomnia and other sleep problems.’ The study suggests that the German chamomile variety is the one with the most benefits for generalized anxiety disorder.
LEMON BALM
Researchers gave subjects 600mg doses of lemon balm and then subjected them to a simulated stressful event. Afterward, they had them rate their levels of anxiety and stress and found that those who had received the lemon balm doses had ‘significantly increased self-ratings of calmness and reduced self-ratings of alertness.’
VALERIAN
The name valerian is similar to the anti-anxiety medicine named Valium so you can easily remember that this herb is going to be effective to help your anxiety. Valerian has been used effectively as a sleep aid for centuries and its effectiveness for reducing anxiety is also widely known. Again, avoid situations where drowsiness may cause you potential harm, for example, while driving. – Power of Positivity
Flowers That Ease Nerves And Anxiety
Many flowers have healing properties. Today we look at the power of passion flower and lavender to calm nerves and relieve anxiety.
These beautiful flowers can bring peace and calm to your mind and soul.
Passionflower
The University of Maryland Medical Center states that passionflower has shown in a few studies to work as well as some of the benzodiazepine medications that are usually prescribed for treating anxiety.
A four-week double-blind study, for example, compared passionflower with oxazepam. Results showed oxazepam worked more quickly, but by the end of the study period, both treatments were shown to be equally effective. Bonus—side effects like daytime drowsiness were fewer with passionflower.
A second study also showed that passionflower helped ease symptoms like anxiety, irritability, agitation, and depression in participants going through withdrawal from an opiate drug addiction.
Dosage: Try one cup of passionflower tea three times daily, 45 drops of liquid extract daily, or about 90 mg/day.
Lavender
A 2010 multi-center, a double-blind randomized study of lavender oil compared to anti-anxiety medication lorazepam found that both were effective against generalized and persistent anxiety. Bonus — lavender had no sedative side effects.
“Since lavender oil showed no sedative effects,” researchers stated, it could be an effective and “well-tolerated alternative to benzodiazepines” to treat generalized anxiety. An earlier 2000 study found similar results.
Dosage: Try about 80 mg/day of the supplement, or use the oil as an aromatherapy solution. – Food Matters
Do you experience anxiety often?