Why Is Summer Hard on Your Nervous System?
In summer, the Earth is at peak vitality, abundance, and activity. Yet for many people, it can be the season of peak exhaustion.
Longer days, increased social and physical activity, travel, disrupted routines, and prolonged exposure to heat all place additional demands on the body and nervous system. This can leave you with summer fatigue: feeling depleted, overwhelmed, or unable to recover from stress.
An Energetic Perspective on Summer Fatigue
This pattern is associated with the wind/tension and heat/excitation tissue states described in Western energetic herbalism.
Initially, prolonged stress creates a wind/tension pattern marked by muscular tightness, restlessness, overstimulation, and difficulty slowing down. Over time, this tension can generate additional heat and excitation in the nervous system, like winds fanning a fire, contributing to summer fatigue. You can recognize the heat/excitation pattern through feelings of warmth, redness, excess sweating, irritability, or explosive headaches.
Just as heat rises in the natural world, excess heat in the body tends to move upward, showing up as racing thoughts, hot or explosive headaches, tension in the neck and shoulders, difficulty sleeping, or sensory overwhelm.
If this pattern of heat coupled with tension persists, the nervous and endocrine systems can be depleted, resulting in deeper exhaustion, loss of resilience, and what many people commonly describe as burnout.
Constitution and Heat
Seasonal influences tend to amplify what's already present in the body, so not everyone responds to hot weather the same way. Someone with a cold constitution may find warmth and increased activity help their health issues. But those who have a hot constitution may find the seasonal heat aggravates existing imbalances, resulting in summer fatigue. Pitta dosha, choleric humor, or people with an excess of fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius), Mars, or the Sun are much more prone to constitutional agitation in the summer.
Nervine Herbs for Summer Fatigue
Nervines are herbs that support the health and optimal functioning of the nervous system. Most are energetically cooling, helping dispel excess heat. Their cooling influence draws overstimulated energy downward, allowing both the body and mind to relax.*
Two categories of nervines are particularly useful for summer fatigue: nervine relaxants and nervine trophorestoratives.
Nervine Relaxants
Nervine relaxants help when summer fatigue presents with issues marked by heat, tension, and overstimulation.*
Energetically, these herbs tend to taste bitter, sour, or acrid, flavors associated with clearing heat and tension. They calm excessive nervous system activity and ease agitation when mental and muscular tension leads to irritability, headache, upset stomach, or difficulty falling asleep.*
Blue Vervain aerial parts (Verbena hastata)
Blue Vervain is cooling, drying, and very bitter. It has an affinity for the nervous system, liver, and digestive tract.*
As a nervine relaxant and antispasmodic, it unwinds mental and physical tension, especially in the head and neck, calming agitation and allowing relaxation. Its bitter-acrid taste makes it highly useful for easing “Liver-Wind” patterns, or muscular tension, spasm, and constriction.*
Chamomile flower (Matricaria recutitia)
Chamomile is cooling and drying with a mildly bitter, sweet taste. It acts on the nervous and digestive systems.*
A nervine relaxant, antispasmodic, and gentle bitter, it eases tension, irritability, and nervous overstimulation while soothing stress-related digestive discomfort. It’s ideal for those who become impatient, whiny, act childishly, or get wound up and reactive under pressure. Matthew Wood likes to jokingly say that Chamomile is specific for “babies of any age.”*
Holy Basil leaf (Ocimum sanctum)
Holy Basil is warming with a pungent with a slightly sweet taste. It affects the nervous, digestive, respiratory, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems.*
With nervine, adaptogen, and anxiolytic actions, it quiets a racing mind and soothes digestion while helping the body adapt to stress and build resilience over time. It’s helpful when summer fatigue is accompanied by overwhelm, mental fatigue, or emotional depletion. Because it’s warming, it’s best combined with cooling nervines for hot constitutions.*
Skullcap leaf (Scutellaria lateriflora)
Skullcap is cooling and drying with a mildly bitter, slightly sweet, earthy taste. It has a strong affinity for the nervous system, with secondary effects on digestion and circulation.*
Its nervine relaxant, anxiolytic, and trophorestorative actions make it calming for nervous overstimulation, unwinding held physical and mental tension. It helps rebuild depleted nerve tissue, making it especially valuable for stress-related exhaustion. It’s specific for people who tend to get rather irritable, frustrated, or downright angry when they get stressed (or even just overheated).*
Nervine Trophorestoratives
Trophorestorative herbs help nourish, strengthen, and restore nervous system function. They’re gentle and best used for long-term support rather than immediate relief.*
These herbs work best when summer fatigue is marked by depletion rather than excitation. They gradually rebuild a nervous system worn thin by prolonged stress. They often taste sweet and tend to be nutritive, tonifying, and rebuilding, supporting recovery and resilience.*
Milky Oats seed (Avena sativa)
Milky Oats is moistening and neutral with a sweet, grassy taste. It affects the nervous and endocrine systems.
As a nutritive nervine and trophorestorative, it nourishes and rebuilds depleted nerves, restores resilience after prolonged stress, and supports focus, mood, and restful sleep. This herb is especially valuable when ongoing stress has left you exhausted, frazzled, and running on empty.*
St John's Wort flower (Hypericum perforatum)
St. John's Wort is drying with a bitter and slightly pungent taste. It acts on the nervous system, liver, urinary tract, and emotional heart.*
As a nervine, neuroprotective, and trophorestorative, it helps rebuild depleted nerves, ease nervous tension, and support emotional resilience. Think of St. John’s Wort when stress has diminished your energy level and vitality. It is also one of our most specific herbs to support nerve specific pain.*
(Learn about St. John’s Wort in greater detail in this blog post.)
Wood Betony aerial parts (Stachys officinalis)
Wood Betony is cooling and drying with a mildly bitter taste. It benefits the nervous system and digestive tract.*
As a nervine relaxant, restorative, and cerebrotonic, it helps settle mental overactivity, ease nervous headaches, and restore a sense of groundedness. This herb supports prolonged fatigue accompanied by overthinking, tension, and feeling scattered or disconnected.*
Lemon Balm leaf (Melissa officinalis)
Lemon Balm is cooling and drying with a refreshing sweet and sour taste. It acts on the nervous, digestive, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems.*
As a nervine, anxiolytic, and trophorestorative, it helps regulate stress and thyroid hormones to relax tension, calm digestive upset, and uplift the spirits. It’s helpful when feelings of overwhelm and physical tension eventually result in exhaustion and a melancholic disposition.*
Cooling Infusion Methods
If you’re feeling hot, tired, and irritable from summer fatigue, the last thing you might want is a hot cup of tea. Fortunately, several infusion methods work without heat, making them ideal for the warmer months.
Solar Infusion
This method uses the warmth of the sun rather than direct heat to extract herbal constituents. Simply place herbs in a glass jar with water, cover, and let them infuse in sunlight for several hours. This creates a mild, refreshing herbal infusion that’s also known as sun tea.
Overnight Infusion
In this method, you pour boiling water over the herbs, then steep for 4 to 12 hours to extract a broader range of minerals and nutrients. This method works well with nourishing, trophorestorative herbs intended to support long-term restoration and recovery.*
Spagyrics for Summer Fatigue
Our spagyrics contain the chemical constituents, energetic signature, and mineral salts of the plant, making them well-suited to trophorestorative herbs intended to support restoration.*
Spagyric essences are particularly valuable when exhaustion extends beyond physical issues and affects emotional and psychological well-being. By working with both the material and energetic properties of the plant, they offer support for the whole person.
If you'd like to learn more about nervines with cooling energetics for summer and how to choose the right herbs for your constitution, be sure to download our free video and ebook guide.
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