Posted by bleauberry on March 7, 2008, at 18:19:11
In reply to Natural sleep aid to help with effexor, posted by Markwell on March 4, 2008, at 12:01:10
I'm always a little hesitant mixing natural things with pharmaceuticals, though I have done it a lot. Even with heavy research and digging you never know for sure how something is going to react a drug.
Natural sleep aid potential:
Magnesium glycinate or citrate.
Inositol.
Passionflower herb.
Herbal tea for sleep. These have a lot of ingredients, but the major players are chamomile and passionflower.
Skullcap.
GABa supplements.
Valerian Root.None of these will have the knock out power of pharmaceutical sleep aids, but they do work.
If the cause of insomnia is cortisol/norepinephrine related, which you wouldn't know without taking a 24 hour 4 sample saliva test, phosphatidylserine will calm the adrenals down when taken at bedtime.
Though all of the above supplements have helped me at one time or another, yeah, even skullcap and passionflower helped me sleep decent when weaning off zyprexa, for a catch-up-on-sleep night I really need something like Benadryl or Lunesta. I avoid the heavy hitters that drag down the entire next day, such as remeron or seroquel.
You could go to a health food store that has someone knowledgeable and ask them for suggestions. They may have a good idea that I forgot to mention or that I am not aware of. For example some of the adaptogenic things can help sleep over time, such Ashwagandha herb and Reishi mushroom. There are a variety of herbal combination capsules and tinctures from various companies.
poster:bleauberry
thread:816124
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20080110/msgs/816772.html