Ooh La la! If you have ever had a valium to help with anxiety, or muscle relaxing, or just to stop you from going over the edge that day, you know what a blessing an occasional help like this can be. Well now there has been a new discovery for us, although the Chinese have used it for thousands of years, to help with anxiety and stress. Recent studies now show that the beautiful flower Magnolia can calm the nervous system even better than Valium. But you don’t get the groggy feeling! How great is that?
Scientists say that they know of two active compounds called magnolol and honokiol which they think are responsible for the action in the brain helping to reduce stress, anxiety, and amazingly, even depression! These two compounds work on mood regulating transmitters in the brain and thereby help with stress management.
Sometimes, stress may even become chronic, leading to problems at work, in our social lives and even lead to disease. Did you know that every day one million Americans are absent from work because of stress-related disorders?
What are the symptoms of stress. Well most of us experience it everyday. Most experts agree that it can cause many and varied symptoms. Some of which are feelings of fatigue, hopelessness, depression, and extreme sadness, and insomnia . Stress can contribute to things like headaches, weight gain, excessive weight loss, muscles pain and spasms, stomach pain and ulcers, increased blood pressure, impotence, heartburn, and many more. So it is important to keep the stress levels in our lives down as much as possible.
Most health experts agree that stress is a major contributor in disorders and diseases such as certain types of arthritis, ulcers, headaches, asthma, herpes, hypertension and yes even heart disease. Plus there are many more.
Magnolia extract as we have mentioned before have the two phytochemicals, honokiol and magnolol, which zap stress while producing a calming affect. Dozens of animal studies indicate that Magnolia extract is also non-addicting and non-sedating!
It is a anxiolytic substance which means it is an anti-anxiety and anti-stress agent and it does not appear to require high doses to be affective. So that is a huge plus! The photochemical magnolol appears to be the one that helps with depression.
