Know Your Remedies: Aesculus hippocastanum (Aesc.)

Common Names: Horse chestnut; conker tree.

General Information

Aesculus Hippocastanum (Aesc.) is a remedy for venous congestion and sluggish circulation with a feeling of fullness or heaviness. Varicose veins or haemorrhoids will be present. The portal circulation may be affected and occasionally, enlarged veins in the back of the throat will be seen.

The person may complain that the rectum feels dry, raw, or burn and the sensation of “sticks in the rectum” is a defining symptom.

Symptoms tend to worsen during or after sleep and improve with vigorous exercise, vivid conversation or intense thinking.

Gastrointestinal (Digestive) Problems

• Haemorrhoids – large, painful, internal or protruding.
• Pain from haemorrhoids that radiates to the small of the back or hips.
• Discomfort or pain as if the rectum is full of sharp needles or sticks.

Back Problems

• Lower back pain in the lumbar, sacral, or sacro-iliac region – either from arthritis or the referred pain of haemorrhoids.
• Back pain that is worse for walking and stooping, or rising from a seat.

 Leg Problems

• Sciatic pain worsened by walking, stooping or rising from a seat.
• Varicose veins with fullness and heaviness.

Where do I find it?

Aesculus Hippocastanum (Aesc.) is available from our online store as a single remedy in either pills or liquid.

Important

While above self-limiting or acute complaints are suitable for home treatment also contact your healthcare provider during emergency situations or if symptoms worsen or fail to improve. Chronic or persistent complaints, which may or may not be mentioned above, require a different treatment and dosage protocol so are best managed by a qualified homeopath for good results.

Dosage Instructions (suitable for babies to adults)

For the home treatment of acute and self-limiting complaints take one pill or five drops of the remedy every 1 minute to 4 hours (1 minute for intense or emergency symptoms (plus seek emergency help), 4 hours for milder ones). Once an improvement is noticed, stop dosing and repeat the remedy only if symptoms return. If there is no improvement at all by three doses, choose a different remedy or seek professional guidance.

Note: Chronic symptoms or complaints require a course of professional treatment by a qualified homeopath to manage the changes in potencies and remedies that may be required.

More Information

Guidelines on which potency to use

From Past Masters

Homeopathy is a 200-year system of medicine. Early medical homeopaths recorded initial provings, remedy relationships, and their early experiences with each remedy in great detail.

These writings were then shared with others to advance homeopathic knowledge and practice.

Today, these same writings give a fascinating insight into the symptoms and clinical conditions for which each remedy was used.

The following extract, with minor editing, is one example.

Leaders In Homoeopathic Therapeutics by E. B. NASH M.D.

Aesculus hippocastanum (Aesc.)

Sense of fullness and pulsation in various organs and veins (especially plethoric), as if too full of blood.

Constant dull backache across sacrum and hips; < walking or on stooping (piles, leucorrhoea, displacements etc.).

Sense of fullness, and as of sticks in the rectum (haemorrhoids).

Mucous membranes of mouth, throat, rectum are swollen, burn, dry and raw.

Coryza; thin, watery, burning; rawness and sensitive to inhaled cold air.

Frequent inclination to swallow, with burning, pricking, stinging and dry constricted fauces (Apis., Bell.).

* * * * *

This is one of the remedies that is not so remarkable for its wide range of action as it is for positiveness within its range.

Almost all its usefulness, so far as known, centres in its action in the lower back and pelvic region and ever prominent is this characteristic: Constant dull backache, affecting sacrum and hips, much aggravated by walking or stooping.

It is one of our leading remedies for haemorrhoids, and in addition to this backache there is a feeling of fullness, dryness, and sticking as if the rectum was full of sticks.

There is not the tendency to protrusion or prolapsus that there is in Ignatia, Aloe, Podophyllum and some other remedies, and the backache is often greatly out of proportion to any external evidence of piles.

This feeling of fullness seems to be a sort of general characteristic of Aesculus, but is especially prominent in the pelvic cavity.

These symptoms are often found in conjunction with other affections besides haemorrhoids, such as uterine displacements, and inflammations; and some very bad forms of leucorrhoea have been promptly cured by this remedy.

There is another quite valuable symptom in these pelvic troubles, viz.: throbbing or beating sensations, that calls for Aesculus. I have seen equally good results from the use of this remedy in the 3d, and the potencies.

I used Aesculus with great results in coryza and sore throat.

The coryza is very much like the Arsenic coryza, thin, watery, and burning, but what characterizes Aesculus here is sensation of rawness: sensitive to inhaled cold air. In the throat it has the same sensation of rawness, both in the acute form, and also in chronic follicular pharyngitis, for which it is often a good remedy.

It may be that age and use will develop more uses for this remedy.