Natural Anxiety Remedies

Passiflora complex is perhaps one of the least known about, yet most effective natural anxiety remedies. You might know this plant better as the ‘Passion Flower’, which is a climber native to South America but easily grown in Europe too.

Passiflora complex is extracted from the Passion flower

Passiflora works for reducing anxiety specifically by binding itself to benzodiazepine receptors in the brain and automatically calming us down. There is a risk of addiction to passiflora complex as there is with man made benzodiazepine drugs, yet because passiflora is completely natural, being addicted to it is not harmful at all. It can make you feel drowsy but this often means it’s simply working well to relieve anxiety and users should choose whether they’d prefer to feel drowsy when they take it, or anxious when they don’t. Perhaps only taking this natural anxiety remedy when you know you don’t need to drive or work would be a good idea.

As well as being one of the most effective natural anxiety remedies, passiflora complex can work against depression associated with anxiety and also the exhaustion that so many of us feel after a whole day of being anxious. For anyone suffering from anxiety who is really considering prescription medication I would recommend trying passiflora complex first. According to reports it can often take the edge off anxiety and depression enough so that you can seek cognitive behavioural therapy and the courage to get to the route of your problem without risking side effects from synthetic drugs.

If you or anyone you know has tried passiflora complex, which can be bought from most health food stores, please leave a comment telling us of your experience. It seems that this is a relatively unknown natural anxiety remedy and it’s certainly one we’d like to investigate further. What does it taste like? How long does it take to work? You tell us, we’d love to know!

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Milk and gluten are among some of the foods that can cause intolerant individuals to experience anxiety

We’ve touched on the subject of food intolerance being a possible cause of anxiety once or twice before on naturalanxietyremedies.org, but never really gone into depth about it. If you’ve got a food intolerance and have experienced anxiety, depression or any other mental symptoms because of it we’d love to hear from you.

When your body is unable to absorb or digest a certain part of your food it can cause all kinds of problems. For some people they will experience stomach and intestinal cramps, upset stomach, nausea and bloating. These people often also complain of fatigue, a lack of energy, depression and even anxiety due to that chronic, unbalanced feeling. They will often seek out natural anxiety cures, never thinking that removing one particular food group or food type could be the answer. Cutting out certain foods can elicit a huge improvement in some people’s health and as the years pass it seems that more and more people are developing these conditions. As yet scientists are unsure why, but there is a strong genetic link.

Food intolerances are very hard to diagnose as a blood test can indicate a problem, but not in black and white terms as food allergies are shown. As a result a lot of doctors find it hard to give food intolerance as a diagnosis and tend to prefer to steer clear of it. All we urge you to do is be aware of your body and trust your instincts. If you think a certain food is causing you either mental or physical problems then there’s no hard in cutting it out of your diet for one or two weeks so that you can tell your doctor if it made a difference. Don’t cut two foods out of your diet at one time, because if you start to feel better you will have no idea which one to cut out forever, and which one to reintroduce.

Perhaps one of the most useful natural anxiety cures for people with food intolerances is something which essentially counteracts the negative symptoms they get when they accidentally eat the food they’re intolerant to. This could be a probiotic pill to aid digestion (freeze dried acidophilus for example), simply drinking lots of water, staying at home and getting plenty of sleep. On the other hand they may want to keep natural aniety cures nearby for quick fixes for the condition – such as a relaxation or meditation CD, yoga kits, essential oils and someone to give them a massage.

It’s well worth investing in natural anxiety cures even if you know which food you are intolerant to. A lot of us who cannot eat a certain food will have experienced going for a meal out which you assume is okay, but actually the sauce is made with tomatoes, or the gravy thickened with wheat flour.In any case, when you suffer from anxiety it’s important to look after yourself and there’s nothing wrong with having natural anxiety cures with you at all times. One day you will be able to leave them at home, but for now it’s comforting to be prepared!

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So you have anxiety and you want to try some natural anxiety cures first. Good choice! You’re already thinking about what’s best for you in the long term, rather than getting a quick fix but suffering the side effects. In general there are no rules or guidelines with anxiety cures that are 100% natural, but here’s an idea of where you can start.

Begin by changing your lifestyle. Something as simple as caffeine sensitivity that you’re completely unaware of could be causing your anxiety, so cut down or cut it out. If you’re a big drinker or smoker cut down on those too as these drugs are huge risk factors for those prone to mood disorders. Quite simply changing your lifestyle is about using your common sense and being as healthy as you can. Have a balanced diet rich in omega 3 (a fatty acid which helps serotonin and dopamine pass through receptors in the brain; elevating mood), drink enough water to keep you hydrated (dehydration can deeply affect the mood) and take regular exercise to use up excess adrenaline.

Of course, to change your lifestyle you need a routine, so plan your meals around commitments and make sure you at least have an hour to relax each day. One of the most important things you need to implement in your routine is sleep. Not getting enough sleep can mean your blood pressure is high the next day, your body has to work a lot harder to get normal things done and your heart is under a lot of extra stress. All these things link very closely to anxiety and it’s the main reason why such a high number of stressed people suffer from heart disease in later life.

From when we are babies our brains thrive on routine

Once you’ve established a routine and you’re settled into it, it’s time to bring out the anxiety cures. These don’t need to take up extra time in your routine – they can simply be added to something you already do, or replace it. For instance, if you drink decaffeinated sweet tea in the morning then substitute that cup with a mug of hot chamomile tea instead. While you exercise, burn some lemon grass oil in an oil burner and then add 5 or 6 drops of bergamot and lavender to a warm bath afterwards. Instead of watching a soap each evening, go upstairs, outside or somewhere quiet and meditate for 15 minutes. That way you’ve done something productive for your anxiety and there’s still 15 minutes left to do something else, like make a list of positive things you’ve done that day, to boost your self confidence, or any other exercise mentioned in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy books.

Okay so these kinds of anxiety cures take more time that just popping a pill in your mouth in the morning, but they’re worth it to avoid side effects and feeling unwell. Add us to your RSS feed or reader for more ideas on natural anxiety cures.

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Sometimes we aren't told of the alternatives, that could save us from unwanted side effects.

We’ve talked about a lot of the natural anxiety cures available to us, such as exercise, essential oils, crystal healing, changing diet and meditation. Yet what we haven’t discussed is why these kinds of anxiety cures are so much better than man-made, prescription drugs.

The first reason is that we know exactly where we stand with natural cures. A lot of the time these involve common sense; eating healthily, exercising regularly, taking steps to ensure our minds are calm etc., but also there are no chemicals in natural anxiety cures. Many of us might not know exactly what the physiological effects of essentials oils are, but we also know that they come from flowers, roots, leaves and fruits, which can’t harm us if they’re simply inhaled or rubbed onto the skin.
Prescription drugs, on the other hand, are often made up of many different synthetic ingredients. Things that we can’t find growing in the wild. I don’t know about you but that makes me uncomfortable.

Not all prescription drugs are bad for you, of course. Some take natural properties and simply intensify them; taking what natural anxiety cures do and making them far more effective. There are others, on the other hand, that can cause some unpleasant and unwanted side effects. The main one of these is addiction (both mental and physical). Anxiety is certainly something that we can work through and overcome – indeed sometimes it’s a by-product of a nasty (temporary) situation. So when anxiety fades, we certainly don’t want to still be taking anti-anxiety medications. Yet coming off these drugs is easier said than done and in a lot of cases withdrawal is enough to bring the ill effects of anxiety back. Some man-made anxiety cures also have long-term physical effects such as a weak bladder.

You will often find that doctors are reluctant to prescribe anti-depressants, yet in their profession it’s almost a faux-pas to recommend natural anxiety cures as well. As a result doctors often meet in the middle ground, with counseling, hypnotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy. As an anxiety sufferer who has avoided prescription medications and tried my fair share of natural anxiety cures (not all of which worked for me) I can’t recommend going to therapy enough. It might not work for everyone but it certainly did for me. The effects weren’t immediate but I learnt things about myself that would have stayed tucked away for years, causing problems if I hadn’t been.

So if you find that natural anxiety cures such as meditation, massages, acupuncture and yoga aren’t working for you; try hypnotherapy, CBT, EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) or counseling, and good luck!

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So far on NaturalAnxietyRemedies.org we’ve spoken about lifestyle, diet and exercise as natural anxiety cures, but never the spiritual side of healing. Many people will argue that it doesn’t exist and spiritual healing is ‘all in the brain’, yet part of how it works is through your level of belief in the methods used.

Jade promotes courage, compassion, balanced emotions and generosity

There are many different ’spiritual’ practices recommended for those suffering from anxiety, from meditation and crystal therapy to Reiki and Chakra healing. One of the easiest and most inexpensive natural anxiety cures is using crystals. Each crystal or ’stone’ has its own properties, unique to all the rest, due to the way that it resonates (vibrates). Every rock on earth vibrates at some frequency, due to the energy trapped within it, yet some give off this energy and can promote healing, positive feelings. Black tourmaline and hematite are ideal for helping self esteem and giving courage, whereas rose quartz helps self esteem whilst promoting calm, too. Visit a website such as Crystal Cavern to find each stone and find out what its properties are.

Reiki (which means ‘Natural Life Energy’ in Japanese) is a spiritual healing practice that originated in Japan in the 1920s. It involves visiting a trained Reiki specialist, lying down and having their hands placed on your body. They then send healing energy to you, usually for just over an hour, and patients often feel benefits straight after a session. It is possible to learn Reiki yourself, but it’s advised you do this through classes, given by a professional. Unlike many natural anxiety cures Reiki doesn’t just treat one symptom – so if you have it don’t expect to sit with someone’s hands on your head while they treat your ‘mental anxiety’. Instead they treat each person wholly, so you may find other ailments are helped at the same time.

LaStone therapy uses some of the basic concepts found in Chakra healing

Lastly, Chakra healing uses many of the ideas, methods and concepts that you might have come across before in other natural anxiety cures such as meditation and crystals. Chakra healers believe that each person has a number of Chakras within the body, for example the sixth Chakra ‘Ajna’, which lies on the brow, between the eyes and promotes clear thinking amongst many other things. It’s thought that if one or more Chakras become misaligned then the mind and body will become unbalanced and we experience negative symptoms. This is when Chakra healing should take place, through placing relevant stones on the Chakra points and meditating to bring them back into focus.

Some of the natural anxiety cures mentioned in this post might seem a bit ‘far out’, but for anyone serious about treating their condition naturally it’s certainly a path you should at least try, even if it doesn’t work out in the end. Many of these methods work through the power of the mind alone, which is where anxiety disorders originate, and where they are eliminated too. Please add us to your RSS feed for future posts on spiritual natural anxiety cures – we will be going further in depth on each subject.

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When we feel anxious it’s often because our bodies have perceived something as a threat to our survival. The physiological reaction to that is to produce adrenaline, which will ‘psych us up’ in preparation to either run from that threat, or fight it directly. This is the fight or flight response. In today’s society our bodies tend to perceive threats that aren’t actually capable of harming us and unfortunately, it is anxiety sufferers who have to deal with this evolutionary throwback.

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There is one other evolutionary throwback we’ve also kept and it’s one that acts as a perfect antidote to adrenaline: the ability to exercise. If you use up all that excess hormone via exercise there’s nothing left in your body to keep your brain in that state of fear and your body ready to run or fight. In fact, leaving your body to rid itself of adrenaline can cause problems, such as clenching the teeth (bruxism), stiff neck from tense muscles and general exhaustion.

Most anxiety sufferers find exercise one of the best natural anxiety cures and one of the most productive. Essentially you are hitting two birds with one stone in reducing anxiety and getting fit at the same time. There are absolutely no limits to what kind of exercise you do to help your anxiety, so it’s a good idea to choose something that you truly enjoy. What is important is that you feel comfortable with what you’re doing and where you are. If you’re agoraphobic then start small, inside the house and in your favourite room. This could involve an aerobics work-out DVD or yoga sessions. Gradually you could move into different parts of the house to get you used to exercising in different places. Move out to the garden and, if you feel ready, see if you can go to a friend’s house or another house where you feel safe.

Swimming, yoga, Pilates and walking are all wonderfully relaxing forms of exercise that are very much recommended as natural anxiety cures. After a reasonable period of exercise (don’t overtire yourself, or ruin your daily routine) try taking a warm bath with some bergamot, lemon grass, lavender or sandalwood oil in it and simply relax. You should find that the rest of the day is anxiety-free and you can enjoy whatever it is you want to do.

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