Studies on chamomile have shown that it may help with generalized anxiety disorder compared to placebos. The results seem to have been statistically significant.
By Dawn Flemming
Aging is a natural process to all human beings. Yet people experience aging in different ways. For a growing number of Americans, aging is associated with an increase in anxiety. Antidepressants have been useful for people of all ages, however they haven’t come without their side-effects which are not always so nice.
Thankfully, there are some natural remedies that can help with anxiety that don’t have the side-effects that many anti-depressants tend to have.
In a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, a randomized double-blind, placebo controlled trial used chamomile capsules for 8 weeks to measure the effectiveness of chamomile on generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). There were 57 participants in this study.
So what were the results?
Compared with placebo, chamomile was associated with a greater reduction in mean HAM-A scores—the study's primary outcome measure. The difference was clinically meaningful and statistically significant. Chamomile also compared favorably with placebo on other outcome measures (although the differences were not statistically significant), and was well tolerated by participants.
There seems to have been a large gap between the effects of a placebo and the actual chamomile, thus showing that the effects of chamomile may be statistically significant. So what are the implications of this?
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health states the following:
These results suggest that chamomile may have modest benefits for some people with mild to moderate GAD. As this was the first controlled trial of chamomile extract for anxiety, the researchers note that additional studies using larger samples and studying effects for longer periods of time would be helpful. They also point out that other chamomile species, preparations (e.g., extracts standardized to constituents other than apigenin), and formulations (e.g., oil or tea) might produce different results.
The study was based on chamomile extracts, the drinking of its tea may have different results. However, there seems to have been good short term results with chamomile, but long term results remained to be seen, until a new study came out in 2016 that showed positive long term effects as well:
Long-term chamomile was safe and significantly reduced moderate-to-severe GAD symptoms
Dawn Flemming is Director of Business Services at Geriatric In-Home Care in Fresno, California.
