Have a happy homeopathic Christmas

The Hub’s homeopath Sue Leach offers some tips on homeopathic remedies to help with the Christmas juggling, whether that’s too much to do in too little time, kids hyper with excitement, or one too many during Christmas lunch… Sue wishes you a happy homeopathic Christmas

There’s a certain inevitability about Christmas. The lights have been up in town for two months, yet you’re still dashing around town before everything shuts up shop on 24 December. You run yourself ragged list-making, planning, trailing around heaving supermarkets and sweating for half a day over a meal that everyone wolfs down in half an hour – then you slump in front of the TV repeats feeling bloated, bored, overheated and heady from the compensatory one too many.

And if the excessive eating, drinking and feeling not quite so merry about your January bank statement aren’t enough, the kids are so hyper they’re horrid, the parents drive you round the bend with their predictability, then you feel that telltale rawness in your throat… that means you’re going to wake up with a cold.

There’s no happy pill to transform Christmas into less of an assault to the system. But arm yourself with a few homeopathic remedies and at least you can be prepared for some of the stresses, both physical and mental, of this time of year. Better that than the 11pm dash to the pharmacy.

Kids running riot

There’s always a point with young children when the excitement gets too much. They’re so full of the joys of Santa that they can’t sit still, let alone heed a word you say. When you feel you’ve lost it with them and it’s all going to end in tears, coffea cruda will calm children so they’re back being themselves. Give it to them when they can’t get to sleep on Christmas Eve, and have it by your bed in case they bounce in at 4am Christmas morning.

Frazzled, tetchy and tired

The turkey’s ready an hour before schedule but the potatoes are still hard as bullets; you’re juggling sausages, sprouts, broccoli and mash, then you realise you’ve completely forgotten the bread sauce or the turkey spits all the way down your prize new blouse…

No person contemplating taking on the big family roast should be without Rescue Remedy. It’s a combination of five Bach Flower Remedies (clematis, rock rose, cherry plum and star of Bethlehem) that have been put together to soothe and restore us at these fraught moments. Buy it as a spray to spritz direct onto the tongue for almost instant de-frazzlement.

Alternatively, try Lotus. Think the lotus position in yoga: calm, meditative and unflustered – that’s the effect of this remedy. It’s described in the textbooks as the ‘modern-day Rescue Remedy’ (for me it transcends the Bach Flower mix) and some even advocate putting it into the water supply as a ‘universal healer’. I’ll drink to that!

As the Christmas meal falls to the lot of a woman in most households, I make no apology for mentioning a remedy that is specifically for mums at the end of their tether. Sepia is for times when you’re feeling so knackered, downtrodden, ugly and tied to the kitchen sink that no one can do anything right. You hate the lot of them, most of all hubbie and offspring. You want to clutch the worktop and scream – and as for yuletide conjugals, well, forget it!

Put it on your Christmas list (and if you’re still in a sepia state of mind in the New Year, book yourself in for an appointment).

Digestion up the creak

Arsenicum album is the number one homeopathic remedy for nausea, retching and vomiting. It spans the whole dodgy stomach spectrum from hiccups to food poisoning. Wherever the pain is in the digestive tract it is burning, usually accompanied by intense thirst. A sure sign you need arsenicum album is you’re so queasy you can only take drinks at a sip.

Lycopodium is excellent if you suffer after eating. After Christmas lunch it’s the one that kicks in over the Queen’s speech. Take it when you feel boated, windy and can’t stop belching. It’s a homeopathic antacid, for heartburn, acid reflux and nervous/gurgly tums.

If you’re digestion’s uneasy after eating or the morning after the night before, you’ll need nux vomica. This remedy is Gaviscon, Alka-Selzer and Nurofen all rolled into one. It’s great for hiccups after overeating, bloating, and weight and pain in the stomach that can range from mild dyspepsia to being so bad you have to be sick – which may well make you feel better but not get rid of gnawing in the belly. Nux vomica is also the homeopathic hangover cure… read on below.

Cold on the way

As soon as you experience a twinge of rawness in the throat, fullness in the nose or that giveaway headachy heaviness that says cold on the way, think aconite. Take two to three doses right away and it should nip the cold in the bud.

Through winter I also recommend The Hub’s Immune Boost Mix containing echinacea, astragalus and sambucus. Take it until the end of February (three weeks on, then one week off each month) and you’ll fend off infection, or if and when you do succumb not go down as heavily as everyone else.

Homeopathic hangover cure

Nux vomica is made from the poison nut and, as the name suggests, it’s our top ‘sicky’ remedy. Hangovers, bulging midriff after too much Christmas lunch, burpy and bilious after days of overeating or overly rich food, head booming the morning after the night before… this should be in every bon viveur’s Christmas stocking.