Babies 'can sniff out remedies they need for healing'

Babies can automatically sniff out the remedies they need to treat pain, anxiety and depression before learning to speak, an expert in animal healing has claimed.

Caroline Ingraham discovered that animals will seek out herbal remedies such as St John’s Wort; valerian, neroli or arnica when they were suffering specific physical or behavioural conditions.

Even caterpillars will change their diet to eat more hemlock when infected with wasp larvae.

And she soon realised that the effect worked on her own children as well.

^{Plants like St John's Wort can help depression}

“I found that young children select for behavioural problems like separation anxiety,” she told The Hay Festival.

“I think the common factor for young children and animals is that they don’t have language so use their sense of smell. So before a child’s language develops it will use its sense of smell to really sniff out what it needs.”

Ms Ingraham said that parents could place essential oils on a handkerchief and place it on a pillow next to their child.

“They will inhale it for as long as they need to and then they will turn their head away,” she said.

“It’s really important to let them decide when they have had enough. If you had a child that wasn’t sleeping you could put it on a little hankie and place it somewhere where they can turn away.”

^{Allowing babies to sniff out their own remedies could help them sleep}

Ms Ingraham, who founded the Ingraham Academy of Zoopharmacognosy has been called in by animal institutions across the world to help solve behavioural issues.

“No animal wants to be anxious or unwell so they have become experts in selecting what makes them better,

“Domesticated animals aren’t free to forage for what they need. I started to notice a pattern when I presented remedies to horses. Horses with separation anxiety would select neroli while horses in pain would select St John’s Wort.”

But she said homeowners needed to be careful with exotic plants which pets like cats and dogs have not evolved to know they are poisonous.

“The majority of pets that are poisoned by eating houseplants have eaten exotic plants,” she said.

“But sometimes if an animal wilfully eats something that its poisonous it is because they are trying to purge.

“We had the case of a dog that ate an onion and immediately purged every tape worm in its body. So sometimes they are actually poisoning themselves for a greater reason.”