Secrets to Curing Sun Headaches
Quote of the Week
What is a Good, Natural Sunblock?
Sprouting Your Own Food
How Good is Breastfeeding?

I’m going to focus on headache remedies over the coming weeks, as headaches are very common and account for a huge consumption of analgaesics.

This week’s headache remedy is called Natrum muriaticum, or Nat mur for short.

Before we get started, I want to mention that it is one of our polycrest remedies - it’s a very commonly prescribed remedy for all sorts of ailments. So if you have been prescribed Nat mur and don’t suffer from headaches, it doesn’t mean it was a bad choice.

Polycrest remedies, mostly the ones I talk about in these eletters, have an enormous range of ailments and their causes and often work when they don’t exactly match the symptoms. Hence their use in home prescribing. You don’t have to be a super efficient homoeopath.

Nat mur is the Latin name for sodium chloride, common table salt. Nat mur comes from the sea, so there are links here, as you’ll discover.

The sensation of a Nat mur headache is as if there are a thousand little hammers in your head, all beating away at once.

The headaches of Nat mur are characteristically worse during the day, when the sun is up. And being out in the sun makes them worse. Even light, especially sunlight, makes them worse.

There can be many causes of the headaches, such as after a grief, a big disappointment, a fright, concussion, sun stroke.

You would expect to find an aspect of salt in a salt remedy, and Nat murs usually have a huge appetite for salt - typically sprinkling their food with salt before even tasting it - they just know nothing is salty enough.

Anything that has a water connection tends to have a connection to water in the body too - from dry mucous membranes, dry mouth, an inability to cry, to oedemas, those water filled baggy areas, and a big thirst.

Another affliction Nat mur is so good at treating is hay fever, colds, flus where there is a lot of sneezing and watery nasal discharge.

Your eyes may water a lot in the open air or wind. And your eyes are very sensitive to the sun, you really need to wear your sunnies when outside.

Then there’s oral herpes or mouth sores or canker, call it what you will. Those blistery sores or skin cracks around your mouth, often with a crack especially in the middle of your lower lip.

A headache is generally considered to be a migraine when it is severe, is often one sided and involves nausea or vomiting. Sometimes there are flashes of light, too, just outside your field of vision.

Nat mur doesn’t have huge stomach symptoms or bad visual disturbances, but the headaches can be very severe.

Anyone who gets benefit from gargling with salt or using a saline solution, in a netty pot perhaps, is likely to find their symptoms improve with Nat mur.

The keynotes of Nat mur are;-

• headaches, migraines, can be blinding
• sensation of lots of hammers
• worse daytime, sun, light, reading
• ailments from the sun, sun stroke
• cause can be grief, fright, disappointment, concussion, sun stroke
• desire salt
• dry mucous membranes, dry mouth
• oedema, thirst
• hay fever, colds with sneezing and watery discharges
• eyes sensitive to sunlight, with copious watering
• oral herpes, cracked lower lip

On a deeper level, Nat murs are often introverted, quiet, are not known for a demonstrative nature. You may internalise a lot and can’t see or express your emotions. Anyone trying to be console you are often pushed away - you don’t dare let your feelings in as then the dam may burst.

You are easily suppressed - a typical by-product of ‘civilisation’. Children may be too well-behaved, too responsible for their younger siblings. These are the children whose sensitive vulnerability lures them to drug and alcohol abuse, which helps numb the pain.

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Quote of the Week

It’s a really powerful thing, not to tell people what to think.
Matt Harding

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If sunscreen block is so bad for you, how do you protect yourself from the sun, naturally?

You eat your sunblock!

There are naturally occurring foods which contain carotenoids, which protect you against excess sunshine.

Carotenoids are typically found in yellow, orange, red or green food - such as apricots, cantaloupe melons, carrots, sweet potatoes, yams, pumpkin, tomatoes, eggs, salmon, leafy green vegetables, broccoli, chlorella, spirulina, blue-green algae, such as the one detailed in the right hand column.

Eating your sunblock means not only that you don’t expose yourself to any harmful chemicals found in sunblock cream, but you can safely go out into the sun for your daily dose of vitamin D, knowing you’re not at risk from skin cancer.

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One of nature’s most nutritious foods is sprouted seeds. All the nutrients contained within the seed are available to you

One of the quickest and easiest sprouting seeds is mung beans. Just sprinkle some on a flat dish, cover with water, place in a cupboard for 2 - 5 days, depending on the temperature (checking the water daily) and viola - a healthy, eat-any-time, nutritious food.

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Breastfeeding: Why doctors are so wrong about solids
Doctors are keen to introduce solids as early as possible as a supplement to breast feeding – and they couldn’t be more wrong.

Babies who are exclusively breastfed for the first three months at least – and sometimes for the first 12 months – have better cognitive abilities and general intelligence by the time they are six.

Compared with children who were fed solids early on, breastfed babies registered far higher scores for verbal IQ, performance IQ and general IQ when they were tested at six-and-a-half years.

Researchers made the discovery when they assessed the cognitive development of 13,889 children who were exclusively breastfed for a prolonged period.

(Source: Archives of General Psychiatry, 2008; 65: 578-84).