Exploring Natural Remedies for Effective Anxiety Support

By Samantha Imbert, Clinical Naturopath

Taking a natural approach to anxiety considers more aspects of your health than you might expect. Even in the simplest case, we’ll want to understand your sleep, diet, allergy symptoms, gut health, reproductive hormones, family history—and often, so much more.

Understanding How Anxiety Shows Up

Anxiety doesn’t always appear as worry or panic. It can present in many ways—mentally, emotionally, and physically. You might feel a constant sense of unease or a racing mind that makes it hard to concentrate or sleep. Emotionally, anxiety can show up as irritability, overwhelm, or a sense of dread without a clear reason. Physically, it may look like a racing heart, muscle tension, digestive upset, shortness of breath, or even frequent headaches. Sometimes these symptoms are fleeting, and other times they can linger and impact your daily life. Understanding how anxiety uniquely shows up for you is the first step toward addressing it with care and clarity.

One of the first questions we ask is: When did these symptoms begin? Some clients describe feeling this way since childhood, others during their teenage years, and for some, it’s a more recent experience. For women, the timing of symptoms in relation to their menstrual cycle often provides important clues—patterns they may not have noticed until we look at their cycle together over several months.

The Role of Nutrient Deficiencies

Nutrient deficiencies are an essential piece of the puzzle. Low levels of iron, vitamin D, magnesium, folate, selenium, zinc, alpha-lipoic acid, Omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamins B6, B12, and E can all impact mood regulation, stress tolerance, and overall nervous system function. When the body lacks what it needs to function smoothly, it’s no wonder that the mind and emotions can become unsettled.¹

Histamine and Hidden Stress Triggers

One surprising contributor to anxiety is excess histamine. While we often associate histamine with allergy symptoms like sneezing or itching, it can also affect the nervous system. Elevated histamine can show up as a racing heart, loose bowels, migraines, trouble handling stress, or a strong reaction to alcohol.² Estrogen plays a role here too—histamine levels can rise during ovulation, in the lead-up to your period, and significantly during perimenopause when estrogen may be unbalanced.³

Genetics and Family Patterns

Your genetic makeup—and your family’s health history—can provide insights into how your body responds to stress. If anxiety has been with you since puberty or for as long as you can remember, it may be linked to the way your body processes stress chemicals like adrenaline and noradrenaline, or how it handles histamine and reproductive hormones. Through genetic testing, we can identify variations in key enzymes like COMT and MTHFR, and use that information to personalise your treatment plan with the right nutrients and herbs.⁴⁻⁶

The Gut–Mind Connection

As naturopaths, we often come back to gut health—and for good reason. A disrupted gut can increase food sensitivities, raise inflammation, and impact the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which play a key role in brain health. The gut produces many of the neurotransmitters that regulate mood, so when it’s out of balance, it can significantly influence anxiety and emotional well-being.

When you sit down with a naturopath expecting a simple “anxiety remedy,” what you’ll often find instead is a thoughtful, layered approach. We begin with foundational support—replenishing key nutrients and using calming herbs to ease symptoms and restore balance. But if you’ve already tried the basics and still feel stuck, it may be time to dig deeper and uncover what’s really going on.

Anxiety is never "just in your head." It's a whole-body experience, and healing it often requires a whole-person approach. The good news is, there is a path forward—and you don’t have to walk it alone.