Helpful Hints from Halloween

Halloween offers insights to remedies that can help you prepare for all the events of the year - holiday feasting, stress, anxiety and winter's cold included. The candy indulgence reveals just what your family's tummies need in time for the cornucopia of sugar cookies and pumpkin pies.

The annual repertoire of scary movies plus the anticipation of the event lets you know what to keep on hand for frights, shocks and anxiety throughout the year. Combining these with the increased susceptibility to colds and flu, we hope the following clues will help you build the best medicine chest for your exact needs.

Things that Go Bump in the Night

First they can't sleep because they're too excited, then they can't turn off the scary movie, then Halloween arrives and between the spooks and sugar, the sandman does not have a chance. All of these non-habit-forming, non-addictive, remedies with no drowsy side effects are absolutely safe, even for kids. They simply give our electricity a gentle nudge in a restful direction.

Combination Remedies

Blending the powers of different single remedies to bring you a range of relaxing relief.

Calms Forte 4 Kids: Whether ghosts have them too restless to sleep at night or too frenzied to focus during the day, this absolutely safe, non habit-forming remedy can help your children find a natural balance.

Hyland's Calms Forte: This extremely popular addition to our Apothecary has helped many wearied, frenzied, anxious nerves find the restful healing sleep they need.

Sleep #173: Not a sedative, not addictive, safe for kids and adults alike, this remedy can help you calm those nervous, excited, tired, stressed out nerves and sleep!

Nervous Tension - Tissue P: This cell salt combination offers structural, mental and emotional support anytime stress catches up with you.

Tranquility #74: A gentle calming combination to lighten your day or night.

Anxiety #320: This master calmer for restlessness and irritability day or night covers sudden frights, anxieties, worries, coffee jitters, nightmares and more.

Flower Remedies Single or combined

Bach remedies offer a simple and natural method of gaining equilibrium and harmony for the personality.  Here are a few to quiet the spookiest spooks:

Bach's Rescue Remedy is a combination designed to produce positive, calming, stabilizing effects in a wide range of stressful situations.  Halloween included!

Bach's Spook Relieving Singles:

Bach's Aspen: Seized by sudden fears/anxieties; feelings of unexplained anxious anticipation, foreboding, dread. BF02

Bach's Rock Rose: Suddenly alarmed, scared, panicky... can cause them to feel frozen, helpless with fear. BF26

Bach's White Chestnut: Persistent unwanted thoughts. Pre-occupation with some worry or episode. BF35

Of course if you need more choices, you can always visit the Mental/Emotional Balance and Sleep Restored sections of our website anytime.

Single Solutions

Need More Spirited Sleuthing? Homeopathic Repertories are texts which match symptoms to single remedies. While critical tools for finding good matches, they are usually quite lengthy and somewhat cryptic in style. Robin Murphy's 2000 page book, "Homeopathic Medical Repertory", gives us these options for symptoms Halloween might help bring out. (Lists trimmed down to most prominent listings.) Under the symptom, "Mind, fear, in children, at night," this repertory lists these singles most prominently: Aconite, Arsenicum alb, Borax, Calc carb, Phosphorus Under "Mind, fear, of ghosts," you find:

Aconite nap: "Great fear, anxiety and worry accompany every ailment. Fears the future, a crowd, crossing the street. Forebodings and fears death.... Nightmares, Anxious dreams, caused by fear, fright or anxiety... restless tossing about."

Arsenicum alb: "All-prevailing anxiety, exhaustion and restlessness with nightly aggravation, are most important...children upset about disorder, dirt, germs" This and other books add "anxiety prevents sleep; frightful dreams involving the dead; fears being alone, death;

Carbo veg: "Aversion to darkness. Fear of ghosts. Indolent. Anxious. Irritable. Sluggish.... The patient faints easily is worn out and must have fresh air. School girls and boys are sluggish, ... suffer from night terrors, will not sleep alone or go to bed in the dark."

Lycopodium: Indecision. Timidity. Loss of self confidence. Constant fear of breaking down under stress... Stage-fright. Averse to undertaking new things, yet goes through with ease. Apprehensive.... Anxious dreams of fatal accidents. Awakes terrified." Others add "Dislikes being contradicted; being alone; company."

Phosphorus: "Anxious, fear of being alone at twilight, of ghosts, about future, of thunderstorms. Fearfulness, as if something were creeping out of every corner. Sleepy by day, sleepless before midnight." Others add "lively, affectionate, excitable, vivid imaginations conjure up ghosts and monsters...."

Pulsatilla: "Mild, timid, emotional and tearful. Changeable moods. Easily offended. Weeps easily. Craves sympathy. Fear of abandonment. Fear to be alone, of dark, of ghosts. Dreams, frightful." Others add: "Sleep restlessly. with twitching arms and legs, and have anxious dreams and nightmares. Wake frequently... over-active minds."

You'll Awake with  a Tummyache

Sugar highs and tummyaches torture children, parents and teachers for weeks after Halloween. Fortunately, we have a long list of safe, fast-acting, ways to bring them down to earth before they crash, ease the tummyaches, and minimize the moodiness related to sugar.

Combinations For Tummyaches

Tummy Aches #179 - Safe relief for a range of tummy troubles from teething to too many Halloween treats.

Acidity - Tissue C: This very popular cell salt remedy offers the most fundamental support for taming acids and acid-related flatulence, headaches, gas and tummyaches.

Wise's Gas Tabs - #413: Whether the gas, burping, hiccups, heartburn and discomfort are related to candy, excitement, stress or weak digestion, this one offers fast relief.

A Sugar High Story

One of our employees tutored a red-headed boy in fourth grade who could not read but seemed intelligent enough to learn. He was so restless, she barely got him through a game of concentration much less a list of words. One day she asked that he drink water instead of the 'after school soda' he usually drank and the difference was amazing. He got so excited by the number of card games he won and soon by the number of words he could read that he took himself completely off sugar - which saved him many headaches as well. She suggested to his parents that they look into giving him Nat phos then Phosphorus and try to compliment, instead of criticize, his teacher at least once a day. He was soon out of special ed and by 7th grade he was on the honor role and stayed on it all through high school.

Singles For Sugar

#1 Nat phos: Since its source, sodium phosphate, helps us digest acids, fats, sugars and more, this remedy is perfect for Halloween candyaches and related gas, heartburn, indigestion, colic, sour diarrhea,... Also great for children with "sugar highs" and related headaches.

As for conditions aggravated or caused by sugar consumption, several remedies stand out in the Repertories:

Lycopodium: This worrier's remedy aids stomach and abdominal pain with colic, bloating, gas, and constipation from over-eating, sugar and/or stress.

Ipecac: A leading remedy for vomiting, stomach flu or the kind of nausea that leaves your body miserably undecided about whether to keep the aggravant or not.

Phosphorus: With all the energy issues this remedy specializes in, it is not surprising to find its best patients sensitive to sugar.

Pulsatilla: While fatty foods aggravate most often, sugar can set off the same headaches, moodiness, and burping, bitter indigestion.

Sulphur: When sugar accentuates the irritable, impatient side and brings on indigestion with rotten egg flatulence, sour belching and burning pains, this might be perfect.

Others you might check on are Belladonna, Calc carb, Chamomilla, Ignatia, and Merc viv.

Avoiding Ghostly Colds and Ghastly Flus

Why do chidren, colds, flu and Fall always come together about this time? Maybe the abrupt change to cold, often wet, weather that hits (at least here in the midwest) on or just before October 31st has something to do with it. Add the stress, excitement and sugar and you have a bundle of susceptibility. Beyond the set-off-by-a-cold-wind master remedy, Aconite, we have plenty to help you stock up against the season.

Combinations to Suit Your spook

Colds Solutions with Zinc #399: Plenty of relief for light to medium cold and congestion symptoms plus an extra dose of prevention.

Hyland's C-Plus Cold Tablets: When your child starts to sneeze and sniffle, you don't have to feel helpless.

Colds Tissue J: Let the cell salts activate your resistance anytime. Security against and support for fighting sniffles, fevers and coughs.

Throat Tissue K: Is she hoarse from saying, 'trick or treat,' or from that cold coming on? Don't wait to find out.

BHI Heel's EC Nasal Spray: Keep nasal symptoms from going anywhere else with this remedy's fast healing relief.

Hyland's Complete Flu Care 4 Kids: This combination's two-phase action helps kids head off the flu early, or relieve the symptoms if the flu develops.

Boiron's Oscillococcinum: This popular remedy is so good at helping the early stages of flu that some of its fans take it once a month throughout the flu season - just in case.

Singles Are Many Varied, but this will get you started

Aconite: If ghostly frights or chilling winds start your child sniffling or feverish this is probably the remedy you need ASAP.

Belladonna - If it's sudden, hot and restless, don't wait to take this remedy - the master fever-tamer.

Chamomilla: Whenever kids, fever, ear pain or night cough are in the picture, this remedy should not be overlooked especially if illness accentuates their contrariness.

Ferrum phos: This anti-inflammatory cell salt boosts resistance before and lends support throughout simple fevers and colds.

Hepar sulph: If you catch colds too easily when weather turns cold, this might give you and your drippy sneezy cold a needed break.

Nux vom: When the stress of the event leaves you or yours restless and chill-ridden, don't wait until the cold or flu catches up with you.

Pulsatilla: When sleepless nights lead to lingering colds and flu with must-sit-up coughing fits, yellow mucus, much sneezing and a need for fresh air.