Bach Flowers: Health Benefits and Medicinal Uses

Healing powers from nature stand for gentle effects without side effects – a trend that more and more doctors and pharmacists are following. Bach flowers are also finding more and more followers. They are named after the physician Dr. Edward Bach and help with anxiety, jealousy or insecurity, i.e. negative states of mind. According to Bach, these are the deeper causes of physical and mental illness.

Panic, despair, despondency – emergency drops in the medicine cabinet.

Have you ever heard of the emergency drops (rescue drops)? Quite a few people swear by them: before exams, before going to the dentist, when the children come into the house with chafed knees or after nightmares. If you ask in pharmacies today about this perhaps most commonly used remedy from Bach Flower Therapy, you will certainly not be looked at incredulously. The emergency drops are an aqueous extract of five flower preparations:

  1. Impatiens (glandular balsam).
  2. Star of Bethlehem (Doldiger milk star)
  3. Cherry Plum (Cherry Plum)
  4. Rock Rose (Yellow sunflower)
  5. Clematis (White Wood Vine)

They are intended to provide first aid and calm in case of panic or shock. But they also have a preventive effect. The visit to the doctor to treat wounds, for example, they do not replace, however.

Bach as a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine.

Edward Bach (1886 – 1931) is considered a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine. Behind his teachings is the principle that all physical illnesses have underlying psychological causes that can be positively influenced in a preventive way. Bach was convinced that it is not the ingredients of the plant, but its “vibrations” and “energies” that are helpful to humans. The Bach flowers include a total of 38 different essences, which are assigned in groups to seven different emotions. For example, yellow sunflower – see Emergency Drops – is assigned to anxiety, forest aspen essence (Wild Oat) to insecurity, and larch (Larch) supports self-confidence. The “tolerance flower” Red Beech is said to help hypercritical people to be more empathetic and compassionate.

Unusual extraction

If there were not in the meantime so many convinced supporters of the Bach flowers and the alternative therapies at all, one could think, the procedure, from which the essences would be won, came from the manual of a herb witch. Essences of plants are prepared according to this ritual: Before nine o’clock in the morning, the flowers of the plants must be picked on a sunny day and placed in spring water for three hours. The liquid is preserved with cognac or brandy and diluted in a ratio of 1:240. These stock solutions are then bottled – so-called stockbottles. In further dilution stages, they are then used to make the Bach flower remedies that patients can take. Essences from trees or shrubs are obtained by boiling out the stems and leaves.

Mental support through Bach flowers

Bach flower therapy is used not only for self-medication, but also by professionals such as psychologists, holistic medicine-oriented doctors or alternative practitioners as a spiritual support of other therapeutic options. Very individual flower mixtures come out of it depending on the character picture and symptoms. Interestingly, Bach flowers are also used in veterinary medicine. The Bach flower concentrates are to help to harmonize mental maladjustments. Particularly good successes are achieved – this assures above all animal welfare practical men – with the treatment of acute psychological disturbances, for instance fears and aggressiveness, behavior disturbances such as uncleanliness, with emergencies of all kinds and as psychological support in difficult situations such as the veterinary surgeon attendance. What Bach flowers definitely can not do is cure severe and chronic diseases – they are not a substitute for conventional medical procedures.

No scientific proof of the effect

So far, there is no scientifically proven evidence for the effect of Bach flower therapy. Bach flowers are also not recognized as medicines and therapies are not paid by health insurance companies. In several studies, the effect could not be proven. Chemically, the various Bach flower essences can not be distinguished, because the few plant ingredients transferred into the spring water are extremely diluted. Professor Edzard Ernst of the British University of Exeter conducted such a study a few years ago.He administered the emergency drops to selected students under exam stress. Half of the participants took Bach flower essences according to a precisely worked out therapy plan, the other half received a placebo. Stress was measured before and after the intake. The result: all participants were about equally stressed the night before the exam. “However, we have certainly not shown that all Bach flower essences are ineffective for all medical applications,” Edzard Ernst qualifies the results. And: undisputed and x-times scientifically proven is the placebo effect, which works according to the principle “faith moves mountains”.