subject: Homeopathic Remedy Cimicifuga [print this page] This is a remedy that is useful in a great many women's complaints, but it is not as well known as it should be. The woman needing it is gloomy and morose, she has a strong sensation of a heavy could descending on her. She can suffer great depression with dreams of impending evil. She has all sorts of terrible fears, is afraid that something is going to happen, that she is going to die, that she will be poisoned or that she will go insane. She can talk incessantly, changing from one subject to another like Lachesis and she is nervous, fidgety and excitable. She sighs a lot.
She is markedly chilly and generally worse for the cold. Pains are often neuralgic, shooting pains: the top of her head feels as if it might fly off and she has shooting pains in her eyes. She suffers from some pre-menstrual tension but the worst time for her is during the periods. All her symptoms are worse then: the greater the flow, the greater the pain. The flow is characteristically heavy, dark, coagulated, offensive, she has backache. She suffers from sharp labour-like abdominal pains which make her double up. Between periods she is exhausted. They are always irregular. In the menopause these symptoms may be exaggerated: she may have flooding, flushing, headaches (terrible migraines) and severe mental depression. Her anxiety level is particularly strong in pregnancy (not without reason, as she has a tendency to miscarry).
She suffers from shooting, flying pains during the later months and sore bruised pains in the joints and lower back. She has nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. Labour is also a difficult experience: her whole body feels sore and bruised and sensitive to touch, she has shooting flying pains. Labour is weak rather like Caulophyllum or spasmodic with faintness or cramps. There are after pains with great sensitiveness and intolerance of pain: nausea and vomiting. The remedy may be highly indicated after childbirth when the loquacious and agitated depression may get very strong. She may feel suicidal or want to kill the baby. The remedy's other main area of usefulness is in rheumatic pain: there is stiffness and pain in the neck as if her head were pulled backwards. The rheumatic pains are worse in the cold damp weather, worse at night and when associated with menstrual problems. They tend to shoot downwards.
Better:
Warmth, open air, pressure, continued motion.
Worse:
Damp, cold, during periods. Cimicifuga' is severely depressed and loquacious, is chilly, has rheumatic and neuralgic pain and everything is worse during periods and labour. If the general symptoms agree, it may be indicated in after pains, headaches and migraine, labour, morning sickness, muscle and joint pain, period pain, post-natal depression, stiff neck.
