Special echinacea formula for stress and anxiety

Are you stressed? Who isn’t these days?

Insomnia? Yup, for most of us.

Do you suffer from anxiety? This is a far more serious problem that disrupts everyday life with spiraling out-of-control worry. So many of us do actually have clinical anxiety, which conventional medicine treats with prescription drugs that have terrible side effects.

Now there is a natural approach that even stops manic attacks in minutes. I’ve just published a new book that explains how a special Echinacea cultivar and formulation offers relief without side effects: Echinacea: Nature’s Best Kept Secret for Stress and Anxiety by Gaetano Morello, N.D.

I think most us know how destructive unrelieved stress is to our physical health, not to speak of our emotional well-being.

Many of us are also aware that long-term sleep disturbances have equally negative effects on our health.

There are other natural ways to address stress and insomnia, but I haven’t heard of any scientifically validated natural way of stopping a panic attack within minutes.

If you’ve been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, please DO NOT stop taking your meds! To do so could cause life-threatening harm. To wean yourself from anxiety drugs, you must be under a doctor’s supervision and withdraw from them gradually.

However, you could use this formulation of the herb Echinacea angustifolia as part of a supervised withdrawal program. Please present the information in the book to your doctor. WARNING: Conventional doctors may be difficult to persuade to try a natural formula. Perhaps your doctor can be convinced if you present a copy of the book.

If you are not taking anxiety meds (usually benzodiazepines), keeping Anxiocalm™ on hand may just be the answer to a variety of anxiety problems, including panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder or phobias. It’s certainly worth a try.

This Echinacea cultivar and formulation is not the same echinacea used effectively to treat colds and flu. Anxiocalm™ by Terry Naturally is the only product I know of that has been clinically studied and determined to be effective for anxiety.

An excerpt from the book:

As difficult and annoying as anxiety can be, it actually serves an important purpose. All of us have pre-wired (innate) responses to external stimuli, put in place to actually protect us from threats and dangers. These innate responses also allow us to better deal with events occurring in our daily lives.

For example, most people will feel anxious when they give a speech to a large audience for the first time. This anxiety actually serves a purpose: it makes you focus on the speech and makes you want to review and practice the speech over and over again to ensure it flows smoothly. In the end, the initial anxiety allowed you to perform better.

Anxiety also serves to protect you from real dangers. Near our house in Vancouver, British Columbia, there are numerous wilderness trails where my family and I love to hike. Sometimes there are “bear warning” signs telling us that bears are up and around. The signs signal us to be alert on the trail and not to carry foods that might attract them.

This obviously makes us instantly anxious, so as we go through the trail we make noises and are very alert to any type of movement in the forest. We have our eyes wide open and look in all directions making sure no bears are in the vicinity. Sometimes the anxiety might be so high that we avoid the trail all together. Again in this example, anxiety does its job in attempting to protect us from a possible bear encounter. We become more alert to the danger, we are actually moving into a fight or flight response just with the thought of a possible encounter.

We’re all wired a little differently and this is also true when it comes to anxiety responses. For example, some people might get anxious over a telephone bill payment and have little to no anxiety about the bear in the forest. We all have pre-wired startle responses, but we also develop responses through various life experiences.

If you nearly drowned as a child, you might have a strong startle response to being in a boat or even thinking about being in a boat.

Or, an example for more everyday life, if at some time, your telephone was cut off due to late payment, and the phone plays a big part in your life, you may now have developed a startle response to telephone bills. This anxiety helps protect you from experiencing the stress of losing the ability to talk to others (an important aspect of your life).

When anxiety is not normal

Anxiety in response to a real threat—even if it’s just a job interview or giving a speech–is a normal response. But sometime anxiety persists for days, months, even years. It is often a less-than-rational reaction, perhaps a fear of monsters under the bed or a phobia about spiders or a sudden panic about nothing specific. When anxiety becomes persistent, overwhelming and interferes with your daily activities, then you may have a problem and you certainly need to seek medical attention.

There are a number of different types of anxiety disorders, so let’s take a little time and review according to the medical classifications.

Signs and symptoms of anxiety disorder

Anxiety has numerous symptoms that are usually short lived. When they last longer than expected, these symptoms can become chronic and lead to anxiety disorders.

Anxiety often manifests with symptoms that originate in the chest, including heart palpitations, sharp pains around the heart, chest tightness and hyperventilating. This is why many people experiencing acute (short-term) anxiety think they are having a heart attack and often end up in the emergency room where tests usually rule out heart involvement.

Longer-term anxiety can cause sleep problems, cold and sweaty hands or feet, dry mouth, numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, nausea, muscle tension, and dizziness. Digestive disturbances are another common symptom, including urgent need and frequent need to urinate and defecate.

People with anxiety disorders often report their minds are racing; they have a sense of impending doom and a difficult time thinking positive thoughts. They frequently are physically very tense and have a difficult time relaxing.

It’s important to note here that anxiety and depression are closely linked. Researchers at the University of Texas at Galveston found that half of the adults who visited a doctor for treatment of anxiety also had depression and vice versa. A Columbia University study confirmed that 89% of people they treated for major depression also had a generalized anxiety disorder.

While anxiety and depression are not all the same thing and no one knows exactly why they often occur together, scientists generally agree that malfunctioning brain chemistry is at least one cause of the linkage between these fraternal twins of mood disorders.

Only a doctor can diagnose anxiety after ruling out other health problems. Please do not attempt to self-diagnose.

However, the following questionnaire my help you determine if your condition warrants seeing a doctor. An integrative or functional medicine practitioner or a naturopath may help you get on a natural path to relief.

Are you anxious?

This simple questionnaire will help you determine if anxiety is a serous health problem for you. Please rate each question on a 1 to 4 scale:

1: Not at all

2: Several days in the past two weeks

3:More than half the days in the past two weeks

4: Nearly every day

1. Feeling nervous, anxious or on edge
2. Not being able to stop or control worrying
3. Worrying too much about different things
4. Trouble relaxing
5. Being so restless it’s hard to sit still
6. Becoming easily annoyed or irritable
7. Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen

Your score: ________

If your score is 10 or more, you are most likely suffering from moderate to severe anxiety and should seek professional help.

Be sure to check out other book excerpts from Kathleen for more valuable information on wellness and natural living.