Know Your Remedies: Nux Moschata (Nux-m.)
Common Name: Nutmeg
Remedy Source
Nux Moschata (Nux-m.) is a homeopathic remedy prepared from nutmeg, the ground powder and culinary spice of the Myristica fragrans tree.
What Is Nux Moschata (Nux-m.) Used For?
Nux Moschata is a remedy for dreamy, drowsy, or confused states. This state may be a chronic and unrelenting problem or follow an acute, short-lived illness such as nausea and vomiting or diarrhoea.
Mental-emotional and physical symptoms arise or worsen during menstruation or pregnancy. The entire personality may change with the appearance of out-of-character emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, excitement, dullness, or alternating laughter and tears.
The person often complains of chilliness and feels worse in open or cold air. Dryness throughout the gastrointestinal system leads to digestive problems.
Symptoms
Mental-Emotional
- Alternating moods – laughter or crying by turns.
- Dreamy. Spaced out.
- Confusion and drowsiness.
- Thoughts wander or vanish. Absent-minded or forgetful.
- Thoughts vanish on reading.
Head
- Giddiness or fainting.
- Fainting from pain.
Eye
- Dryness of eyes.
- Eyes so dry that it’s hard to open or close them.
Gastrointestinal
- Dryness of mouth and tongue – ‘cotton mouth’ sensation.
- Tongue so dry that it sticks to the roof of the mouth.
- No thirst even though mouth is dry.
- Nausea with fullness or diarrhea.
- Bloating and distension of abdomen.
- Stubborn constipation.
- Constipation so severe that the stool has to be removed manually or by an enema.
Sleep
- Sleepiness that is worsened by eating particular foods.
- Sleepiness with a fever or chills.
- Overwhelming sleepiness – fights to stay awake (narcolepsy).
Where Do I Find It?
Nux Moschata (Nux-m.) is available from our online store as a single remedy in either pills or liquid, and as part of the following Complex (combination remedy): Brain Fog.
Home Treatment Guidelines
Acute, Self-Limiting Conditions
Chronic Conditions
How to Take the Remedy for Acute Conditions
- Take one pill or five drops of the remedy. The frequency depends on symptom severity. As examples:
- For life-threatening symptoms, take every 1 minute and seek emergency help immediately.
- For mild symptoms, take every 4 hours.
- Stop taking the remedy once you feel better. Resume if symptoms return.
- If no improvement after four doses, choose a different remedy or consult a professional homeopath.
- For more details on dosing, refer to: How Often to Dose with a 30C Homeopathic remedy.
- For information on the different potencies, read: Guidelines on which potency to use
Additional Notes From Past Masters
Homeopathy is a 200-year-old system of medicine.
Early homeopaths recorded detailed notes on how remedies worked, including initial tests, remedy relationships, and their experiences. These writings were shared to improve homeopathic practice and now offer fascinating insights into past uses of homeopathy.
Here’s an example, edited and modernised for clarity, from Leaders In Homoeopathic Therapeutics (1898) by E. B. NASH M.D.:
Leaders In Homoeopathic Therapeutics by E. B. NASH M.D.
Nux Moschata (Nux-m.): Keynotes
- Stupor insensibility, unconquerable sleep; sleepy with most all complaints.
- Excessive dryness of the tongue, mouth, lips and throat; no thirst.
- And < cold damp weather, getting wet, or washing; after eating (bloating); > in room, dry weather.
- Changeable humor; one moment laughing, the next crying.
Nux Moschata (Nux-m.): General Notes
The nutmeg, though frequently used for its peculiar flavor in common cookery, is nevertheless a powerful poison, hence a valuable remedy.
The mind and sensorium are profoundly affected by it, as shown by the following characteristic symptoms: “Stupor and insensibility and unconquerable sleep.” Again “Vanishing of thought while talking, reading, or writing.” Again. “Weakness or loss of memory.” Again, “Fitful mood, changing from deepest sorrow to frolicsome behavior; now grave, now gay.” Again, “Absence of mind, cannot think; has to collect his thoughts before he can answer simple questions.”
Many more symptoms appear among the provings that show the action of this drug upon the brain. The effect upon the brain, while producing a sleepiness and dullness almost equal to that of Opium, is of an entirely different character, the Opium being seemingly due to fullness of the blood-vessels and pressure, while that of Nux moschata seems to be a benumbing of the very nerve substance itself.
It is interesting to notice the sleepiness of Opium, Nux moschata. and Tartar emetic, and to study these drugs in comparison. Opium and Tartar emetic are often remedies for pneumonia, but the concomitant symptoms are very different.
Opium and Nux vomica in typhoid fever, but the choice, notwithstanding, this symptom of stupor common to both, is not at all difficult. All three of these remedies in bowel complaints of children have this symptom in common, but it is not hard to choose between them.
Another very characteristic symptom of this remedy is excessive dryness of the mouth. Mouth so dry that the tongue sticks to the roof, yet no thirst.
The tongue, lips and throat are all dry. Of course, there are other remedies having this dryness without thirst, such as Apis, Pulsatilla and Lachesis, but in this respect Nux moschata is the strongest.
Then again Nux moschata is greatly troubled with flatulence. The abdomen is enormously distended, especially after meals. Where are two remedies which have pain and distress in the stomach immediately after eating, even when the patient is still at the table. They are Nux moschata. and Kali bichromicum.
With Nux vomica and Anacardium the pain comes on an hour or two after eating. With Nux moschata, everything they eat seems to turn to wind (Kalium carbonicum, Iodine), and fills the stomach and abdomen so full as to cause pressure upon all of the organs of the chest and abdomen.
Again there is diarrhoea with this remedy. It is very efficacious in cholera infantum, when the above mentioned sensorial symptoms are present.
I once had a very severe case of typhoid fever of the nervous stupid variety. On account of the stupidity, the yellow watery diarrhoea, and rumbling and bloating of the abdomen, I thought surely Phosphoric acid must help; but it did not.
I finally discovered the excessive dryness of the mouth, which had escaped my attention before. This completed the picture of Nux moschata. Under the action of the 200th potency, the patient rapidly improved unto complete recovery.
So we must “watch out” when the seemingly indicated remedy does not cure, for it may not be Sulphur, Opium, Laurocerasus or Psorinum that will have to be given, as we said when writing on Opium and Sulphur; but we have not, no matter what the “seemings,” chosen the homeopathic remedy at all, and, as in this case, some symptom may appear that will change the prescription entirely.
Now we will notice in detail the mind and sensorium symptoms that we have given, by way of comparison. I will add to the comparison made between this remedy and Antimonium tartaricum. and Opium, Apis mellifica, which has soporous sleep; but it is interrupted by piercing screams, especially in brain diseases, where the sopor is generally found. None of the other remedies have these screams (cri encephalique) so prominently.
“Vanishing of thought while talking, reading or writing” may find their similar under Camphor, Cannabis Indica and Lachesis. “Loss of memory” under many remedies, but notably under Anacardium, Lycopodium, Bryonia album, Sulphur and Natrum muriaticum.
The “fitful, changing moods and disposition” is found under Aconite, Ignatia, Crocus and Platina.
“Absence of mind,” Anacardium, Kreosote, Lachesis, Natrum muriaticum. and Mercurius.
I notice that those remedies that are oftenest similar to Nux moschata in its mind and other symptoms are often found among the so-called hysteric remedies. And why not? For Nux moschata is one of our best in this hydra-headed complaint. Taking together all of the symptoms we have been over, and adding to them that other one, “easy fainting,” where can you find a more complete general picture of the average hysteric?
I will not use more space here for this remedy, but recommend to every careful student, and practitioner, who does not already understand it, a careful study of this certainly valuable drug.
That it has not received the use in practice that it should is due, I have no doubt, to the fact that it is used so frequently in foods, that many think it cannot be much of a remedy.
