Here’s How to Use Lavender Oil to Treat Anxiety Instead of Taking Prescription Medication
Everyone feels a little anxious from time to time, the world is a stressful place and sometimes that stress can get on top of us, affecting our mood and relationships.
When a person becomes anxious to a point where it begins to affect their day-to-day life, they may be suffering from generalized anxiety disorder.
This term encompasses many other more specific anxiety disorders, a sufferer of one of these disorders can often be so anxious that day-to-day tasks become impossible, and they focus their worries on things that may not seem important to the rest of the world.
Anxiety disorders account for most of the mental illness in America. Around 6.8 million adults suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and women are affected twice as much as men. Anxiety disorders often start during adolescence and get worse at stressful periods later in life.
Signs of Anxiety in Women
- Constant feelings of worry and tension
- Worrying about simple, everyday tasks
- Inability to relax
- Unrealistic view of problems
- Difficulty concentrating
- Restlessness and being “on edge” or easily startled
- Feeling tired all the time
- Irritability and mood swings
- Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
- Frequent headaches
- Depression symptoms
- Muscle tension, aches and body pains
- Trembling or twitching
- Difficulty swallowing
- Sweating
- Feeling light-headed or short of breath
- Stomach pains and nausea
- Feeling the need to go to the bathroom frequently
Current Anxiety Medications
Current treatments for generalized anxiety disorders include benzodiazepines such as Xanax, Valium, and Ativan. These chemicals can give short term effects, but start to create problems when taken over a long term period.
The medications can be addictive, and the patient can suffer debilitating side effects when they stop taking them. Anti-anxiety medicines can also have negative effects such as feeling depressed and detached from the world.
Antidepressants are also prescribed to treat chronic anxiety and panic attacks. These medications include Paxil, Effexor, Prozac, Lexapro, and Zoloft, again these medicines come with their own list of possible negative side effects.
Lavender Oil as a Natural Alternative
People have been using lavender oil as a calming source for many years, however only recently has it been proven that it has these properties. A study published in the journal Phytomedicine, showed lavender oil was shown to be just as effective as the pharmaceutical drug lorazepam (Ativan).
As well as being just as powerful, lavender oil when used on its own has none of the side effects other anti-anxiety drugs have shown, such as drowsiness and dependency.
Lavender has been shown to:
- Lavender helps with restlessness, nervousness and insomnia
- Lavender helps with depression symptoms
- Lavender can be used for painful and inflammatory conditions including migraines and joint pain
- Lavender can help people who suffer from agitation related to dementia
- Lavender Oil for Calming Nervousness and General Anxiety
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