Natural Stress Management with Homeopathy

According to the Mental Health Foundation, nearly half of all adults feel stressed every day. Worryingly, 18% are reaching for the bottle, and 10% the cigarettes to alleviate stress. Of course the survey doesn’t ask how many are self-medicating with sugar and caffeine. What’s interesting though, is only 6% are going to their GP about it, perhaps because they don’t want to take anxiety or depression medication, which are so often prescribed, because anxiety and depression are two common effects of stress. In my last article, I discussed The Hidden Causes of Stress. I covered the biological basis of stress, how it affects us day to day, and the hidden causes and effects – both psychological and physical. In this article I will discuss Adrenal Fatigue – a universal outcome of stress – and natural stress management with homeopathy.

Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome
Although the effects of stress are very individual, there is one thing we all suffer from, given enough stress – Adrenal Fatigue. Stress triggers our adrenal glands, (that sit atop our kidneys), to produce stress hormones. When the stress is frequent, these glands get tired and erratic, which can lead to Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS) – a syndrome as yet unrecognised by the medical profession. The symptoms of AFS are many and varied. But just to give you a taste, they include:
– Constant tiredness
– Real difficulty waking up in the morning
– A strong desire to sleep around 9 or 10 pm, which is often resisted, resulting in a second wind, and then trouble getting to sleep when eventually going to bed
– Craving sugar and caffeine
– Frequent respiratory infections
– Inability to lose weight
– Feeling anxious or fearful often
– Back, neck or headaches

The trouble is that AFS is not a recognised diagnosis by doctors, who often prescribe anxiety / depression medication for it. But this is like removing the bulb when the oil warning light is flashing on your car’s dashboard. It doesn’t go to the root of the problem.

Homeopathy for Stress

Homeopathy is a form natural stress management. It’s a way of stimulating your body and mind to heal itself. When treating stress, I use remedies to address both the immediate symptoms e.g. exhaustion, insomnia, anxiety etc, as well as the underlying cause e.g. grief, perfectionism, shock etc.  An example, is Alexandra, as I shall call her, who came to me with panic attacks, insomnia, digestive problems, back pain, headaches, joint pains, and exhaustion. She had the difficult combination of being both a perfectionist and a pleaser i.e. someone who suppressed her own needs to keep others happy. To get to the root of the problem, I prescribed her a remedy for her perfectionist / pleaser tendency. Another remedy calmed her whole nervous system, and supported her adrenals, giving her immediate help with the anxiety, while the first remedy did the deeper work. After the first month, she was sleeping better and feeling much less anxious. By the end of the third month, she had started managing key relationships better, by saying “no” more often, and talking to her boss about her workload. She no longer experienced anxiety, and her digestion, headaches, back and joint pain were all better.

If you suffer from stress, and would like to find out what your level of adrenal fatigue is, then take this free Stress Test.