There is something about living in the Scottish Highlands that makes you very aware of the seasons. Winter here is not a mild inconvenience — it arrives with purpose. The light is low by three in the afternoon, the wind comes off the Moray Firth with a particular insistence, and from October onwards, most of us spend more time indoors, closer together, sharing germs and sometimes, if we’re honest, a certain amount of seasonal gloom.
After more than twenty years in practice, I’ve come to think of autumn and winter as the busiest, most interesting time of the clinical year. What follows are some of the patterns I see most regularly and the remedies I find most helpful.
The First Colds of Autumn
The first cold of the season — often arriving in October, when children go back to school and the temperature drops — tends to come on quickly, with a sudden onset of high fever, flushed face, and dry skin. There’s often restlessness. The patient is better for fresh air but worse in a warm room.
The remedy I think of first in this picture is Belladonna — one of homeopathy’s great acute remedies, made from deadly nightshade and remarkable for its ability to settle sudden, intense, hot fevers in people who otherwise tend toward robustness. For adults and children alike.
If the cold comes on more slowly, is preceded by chilliness, and involves aching limbs and a desire to lie absolutely still (because any movement makes everything worse), I’m thinking instead of Gelsemium — the flu remedy par excellence, and one that proved useful during several of the major influenza seasons I’ve practised through.
Coughs That Linger
The coughs that follow a winter cold and simply won’t leave — the ones that persist into January, that wake you at night, that embarrass you in meetings — are some of the most common complaints I see in this season.
Drosera (sundew) is a remedy I prescribe regularly for a particular kind of barking, spasmodic cough that comes in fits, is worse after midnight, and often has a vomiting quality to the end of each cough spasm. If there’s a sensation that something is tickling low in the chest, almost below the voice box, that picture only deepens.
For a looser, rattling cough in someone who feels chilly, pale, and exhausted — particularly in the very young or elderly — Antimonium tartaricum is worth knowing. The chest sounds full but the patient can’t quite shift what’s in there.
The Winter Blues
I want to spend a little time on this because it is, in my experience, both very common and very poorly addressed. The shortened daylight hours of a Scottish winter affect many people more significantly than they realise. For some it rises to the level of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD); for others it is simply a heaviness, a flatness, a loss of motivation that lifts reliably come March.
Homeopathy has a thoughtful approach to emotional and mental states, and it’s worth consulting rather than trying to self-prescribe here, because the remedy that helps one person through seasonal low mood will not necessarily help another.
That said, I am very fond of Aurum metallicum (gold) for a certain kind of winter heaviness — particularly in people who are conscientious, hard on themselves, driven, and find the loss of productivity especially difficult. There is often a quality of taking everything very seriously, of feeling that things that once brought joy no longer do.
Ignatia is a different picture — grief, loss, the sigh that comes from nowhere. If there has been a loss earlier in the year that has not been fully processed, it can arrive with force in the depths of winter.
Natrum muriaticum — common salt in its homeopathic form — is one of the most commonly prescribed remedies in constitutional practice, and I see it frequently in people who find winter lonely, who withdraw, who would rather cry alone than be comforted, and who have a strong longing for things past.
Practical Suggestions for a Homeopathic Medicine Cabinet
If you’d like to keep a few acute remedies at home for the winter months, here is what I’d suggest as a starting point:
- Aconite 30c — for sudden fright, shock, or the very first stirrings of a cold or fever, especially after exposure to cold dry wind
- Belladonna 30c — for sudden, intense, hot fevers with flushed face
- Gelsemium 30c — for flu-like states with aching, heaviness, and wanting to lie still
- Arsenicum album 30c — for the anxious, chilly, restless cold; often with burning discharges
- Pulsatilla 30c — for the weepy, clingy cold, especially in children, with thick yellow-green discharge and an improvement in fresh air
- Drosera 30c — for the lingering, barking cough
One important note: the above are for acute, short-term conditions. For anything ongoing, recurrent, or complex, constitutional treatment with a trained homeopath will always be more effective than self-prescribing from a kit.
If you’re in the Highlands and would like support through the winter months — whether for physical illness or the quieter, harder landscape of low mood — do get in touch. I see patients in Nairn and via video call, and winter is one of the times I feel the value of this work most keenly.
Take good care of yourselves.