Chamomile: Herbal ally for the Nervous & Digestive systems 💛
Chamomile~ herbal ally for the nervous and digestive systems. These sweet flowers are blooming in my garden right now so I thought a gentle reminder of the many uses of this small but powerful plant could be useful for a lot of people given the circumstances.
🌱We often experience symptoms across the digestive and nervous systems simultaneously (think “butterflies in your tummy” or “going with your gut”) as these two systems are intrinsically linked and communicate back and forth with each other via the central and enteric nervous systems.
🌱I find the many powerful actions of Chamomile to be often overlooked/dismissed as it is such a safe and gentle herb, known to be safe and effective for children and to assist with sleep. While this is certainly one of her beautiful actions, the volatile oil constituent, Azulene, has been found to exert particularly effective anti-inflammatory actions too.
💛Look to Chamomile to ease pain, tension, digestive inflammation, colic, indigestion, motion sickness, cramping etc. as well as in arthritic and inflammatory skin conditions.
Alongside this we of course have the better known actions of inducing a sense of calm, reducing anxiety, easing stress and promoting sleep.
💛Chamomile is therefore a truly effective ally for the physical manifestations of anxiety that can impact our entire body. I have found the tea to be particularly helpful to ease the symptoms of sympathetic nervous system dominance (fight/flight) and bring you back to clearer, easy to process thoughts and emotions, reducing tension and distress. Think panic attacks, stress, nervousness, trauma and anxiety.
🌱As a side note..Enjoy the botanical illustrations in this old herbal text I bought in an op shop about 10 years ago. Theres some really beautiful herbal medicine in these illustrations including Marshmallow, Cramp bark, Elderflower, Hawthorn, Californian poppy (pictured) and lots more. The previous owner had pressed a lot of plants within its pages, which is so nice to see too 🤎
