The best herbal all natural sleep aid is made with Traditional Chinese Herbs. Try Chinese herbs they are a true natural sleep aid, you can’t the way you feel the day after.

Why Sleep Is Important Medicine

Posted by Cathy on

Clinicians and scientists from around the world gathered in Boston for a conference on SLEEP just recently. I had no idea sleep had turned into an annual conference attended by thousands of experts from around the world, but apparently this premier event blends the most current sleep research with the best clinical practices.

natural sleep aids

I wonder if they talked about Chinese herbs known to help sleep for over 1000 years?  Seems logical right, considering their history, safety rating and usage by billions of people everyday.  (laughing)  I’m guessing it wasn’t on the agenda since the conference was sponsored mostly by pharmaceutical giants with a huge stake in the sleep aid drugs they produce.

 

Anyway, I thought sleeping was something we were all born knowing how to do. When we are babies afterall, we are all pretty good sleepers. In fact most newborns are asleep more than awake in a single day. So what happens to us as we age? When did we become a society of sleep derived, sleep aid dependent, looking for the next caffeine jolt zombies? 

 

It's time to upgrade the way you sleep! Try iSleep Herb Pack!

 

I think some of us simply don’t want to sleep more than a few hours a night. There is just sooo much to do. Some of us want to fit more awaid minutes into a 24 hour day.  The problem with this attitude is historically we didn’t have electricity and entertainment into all hours of the night via the internet, television etc. So when it was dark, we slept. Seems are bodies are kinda programed that way after millions of years. 

 

Why does this matter?

 

All this matters because a long term study presented at the SLEEP2012 conference.  This study says not sleeping elevates your risk of stroke and at younger ages even if you are relatively healthy. For optimal function, sleep specialists recommend anywhere from 7 to 9 hours. The study, which lasted three years, examined 5,666 adults who were aged 45 and older. They reported their sleep habits and duration every 6 months. The investigators recorded daily health habits, risk factors for stroke, any symptoms of depression, demographic information, health related behaviors, and onset of first stroke like symptoms throughout the study period. However, the are quick to point out this is not proof of a cause and effect relationship.

 

According to data available from the National Sleep Foundation only 28 % of adults sleep 8 hours or more per night, down from 38% in 2001. It is unclear what why shortened sleep cycles were wide spread with those who suffered strokes, but the possibility of an elevated level of cortisol, a key stress hormone, may be ultimately responsible. The take home message here.. get a good night’s sleep every night. Sleep eight hours and don’t skimp on yourself.

 

Staying in bed longer might just be a lifesaver.

Chinese Herbs To Build Bone In Menopausal Women And Help Sleeplessness

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Menopausal women who are concerned about osteoporosis and bone loss may have a new ally. The Chinese herbs known as Mu Li, concha ostreae, concha margarita or oyster shell has been found to prevent change of bone mass in rats.  Oyster shell is often ground into a fine powder and cooked with other Chinese herbs in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).   You can find Mu Li in our iSleep Herb Pack because this shell is well know for its calming properties and ability to help with sleeplessness.

 

In Geneva, Switzerland on May 29, UPI reported a  treatment with bisphosphonates — drugs that offset bone loss associated with menopause — may be linked to femur fractures.  Dr. Raphael P. H. Meier and colleagues from University Hospitals of Geneva and Faculty of Medicine in Switzerland evaluated the association between bisphosphonate treatment and atypical femoral fractures in 477 patients age 50 and older who were hospitalized with a subtrochanteric or femoral shaft fracture at a single university medical center.

 

Compared with patients without fractures, use of bisphosphonates was associated with a 47 percent reduction in the risk of classic fracture.

 

"We have demonstrated that the association between bisphosphonate treatment and the occurrence of atypical fractures of the femur is highly likely and that the duration of such treatment significantly correlates with augmented risk," the authors said in a statement.

 

Oyster shell calcium, when prepared in a Chinese herb formula maybe an easy and inexpensive answer for women as they age.

 

The above findings were published online in Archives of Internal Medicine.

References:

 

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/05/29/Bone-loss-drugs-linked-to-femur-fractures/UPI-18641338265055/?spt=hs&or=hn
 
 

Largest Herbal Medicine Garden In The World

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The Guiness Book of World Records has a new entry.   The largest medicinal garden in the world has now been entered into the Guiness Book.  Where else would the largest garden of herbal medicine be located?  China, of course.  China uses more herbal medicine to keep its 1.3 billion people healthy, than anywhere else in the world.

China is also home to the oldest recorded medical system in the world, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).  TCM has been practiced and perfected for over 3000 years.  The new botanical herb medicinal garden is a perfect way to celebrate the medicine the Chinese have given the world.  TCM is practiced in just about every country in the world and the herbs used in TCM have a long and rich history of providing the world with some of the most effective natural medicine known to man. 

Ginseng is one of the 6000 herbs growing in the garden.  One hundred of the medicinal plants are endangered varieties and over 30 of the herbs are new varieties. 

The garden also has 100,000 medicinal plant images.  Its objective is to cultivate, collect and save medicinal plants along with conducting research. The garden is also expected to be an advanced international medicinal plants conservation base and a center for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) culture and science.

The garden is in a rural area of China that grows many of the herbs in the garden.  The new garden is certain to bring more interest to Guangxi Zhuang, an area known for growing a large variety of Chinese herbal medicine.

Ambien Side Effects Same With Intermezzo Sleep Aid

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FDA just approved a sublingual Ambien for “insomnia in the middle of the night followed by difficulty returning to sleep”

It has taken a few years, but the FDA has now approved Intermezzo, a low dose drug with the same active ingredient as Ambien.  Zolpidem tartrate will now be in a sub-lingual tablet form rather than the sleeping pill, Ambien. 

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, said Shakespeare and in this case Intermezzo is still Ambien and the side-effects are the same. 

For people who have difficulty staying asleep and can’t fall back to sleep we recommend an herbal sleep aid that has been used for centuries, safely.

If you are looking for completely safe and natural herbal sleep aids that can be taken in the middle of the night and works without side-effects you owe it to yourself to try Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine.  The herbs in our iSleep Herb Pack have been used safely and effectively for hundreds of years and clinically tested on thousands of patients worldwide.

Sleeping pills have serious side effects and this issue has been raised by the FDA regarding Intermezzo. In fact, the FDA told manufacturer of the drug, Trancept previously that it was concerned about patients being too impaired to drive the day after use.  Their answer was a revision of the warning label,  “patients should have at least 4 hours of bedtime remaining”.  The common side effects listed for this sleeping pill including headache, nausea and fatigue.  As with Ambien and other prescription sleeping aids,  Intermezzo can cause a person to get out of bed while not fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. Reported activities while under the influence of sleep medicines have included driving a car, making and eating food, having sex, talking on the phone, and sleep walking, without knowing at the time or remembering later. Chances of such adverse activity is increased if a person has consumed alcohol or taken other medicines that make them feel sleepy.

Herbal sleep aids have no side-effects. If you’ve tried Chamomile and Valerian and they haven’t worked for you, try out iSleep Herb Pack.  It does not contain valerian or chamomile rather a combination of herbs that has worked for billions Chinese for over 800 years. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Do Chinese Herbs Grown in a Hostile Environment Make Better Medicine?

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Today’s blog I’m looking for some feedback, because, people on all continents, for thousands of years have used the power of herbal remedies.  After all these years of use, and thanks to modern chemistry, we know which plants produce what compounds that makes it effective as an herbal sleep aid, an herb for energy, an antimicrobial or for whatever therapeutic results is intended. Today we farm these herbs all around the world, including in California as my last post described the growing of Da Zao, the Chinese herb well known for digestion. 

But, is there a difference between an herb (Chinese herb or Western herb) which is farm raised compared to one which grows naturally in the wild?   Wild crafted herbs were historically the only ones used for healing benefits.  Agriculture is a fairly recent event in the 60,000 years since Neanderthal man.   Plants growing today in nature obviously live in a more hostile environment than those living on a farm.  Farm raised herbs are protected by the farmer because the farmers depend on the crop for their livelihood. Greenhouses are constructed, watering systems, fertilizers etc. etc.  

On the contrary, herbs growing in the wild are exposed to their world 24/7.   It is exactly this exposure of temperature extremes, water deprivation or flooding, wind, rain and even predators trampling them or eating them that give an herb its strength.  A weak plant will not survive harsh elements of nature and dies without reproducing.  A strong plant will produce the chemical compounds it needs to survive and often, these are exactly the compounds we know have the healing benefits.  Does farm grown valerian produce the same active chemical constituents as valerian that was once harvested only in wild fields?  Ginseng, for example is one of the highest priced herbs when found in the wild and is officially recognized as wild grown with a government certificate declaring the exact location of origin.  Farm raised ginseng, on the other hand, fetches nominal prices in comparison.

Darwin’s theory, “survival of the fittest” makes sense in the plant kingdom just as it does in the animal kingdom. 

Where do YOUR herbs come from?  Are they wild grown or wild crafted herbs or are they grown in a comfortable farm where they are fed, watered and looked after.   Are wild crafted herbs better?  What do you think? Is your herbal sleep aid more efficacious when it is produced from herbs grown in their native environments or is farm raised just as good or better?

 

Sleep is Hard Work, Sheding Light on Natural Sleep Aids

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You have the best pillows, mattress and sheets and yet still can’t sleep.  You invest in a quiet room with the right temperature and room darkening shades. Still sleep alludes you. You investigate the sleep aids on the market, the choices are endless.  melatonin, chamomile tea, prescription sleep aids, no luck.  Why has something as natural as sleeping become so expensive and such hard work?    

Are we the first generation to experience sleeplessness. or does mankind have a history of insomnia?

One Third of Our Lives are Spent in Bed

Sleep is vital to our health. It’s the time our body repairs and rejuvenates itself.  Falling asleep or “crashing” at the end of a busy day is not the problem for many of us. It’s sustaining that sleep, getting a deep, restful sleep.

Tossing & Turning                                         

More often than not, millions of us can’t stay asleep. Tossing and turning is old school. Today there is so much to entertain us through the wee hours of the morning  We check emails on our phones, shop on line, watch movies,  text our friends who are also not sleeping and hang out on facebook with other insomniacs.  You’ve heard about relaxation techniques, stretching before bed and staying away from caffeine in the evening. Eight hours of straight sleep is still a pipe dream for so many.  

Sleep in a Pill

The standard American indoctrination is better sleep through chemistry.   The pharmaceuticals knock us out like a bulldozer.  Even half a sleeping pill can often do the trick. Who cares if we sleep walk, eat or even have intercourse while we are drugged to sleep.  We don’t need to remember, we slept and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

The history of insomnia may be able to teach us something.  Knowing that history repeats itself I ask, what did our ancestors do when they couldn’t sleep?  Certainly they had stressors that kept them awake at night.  Whether it was staying safe from wild animals, worrying about the next harvest, taking care of their families or dealing with life threatening plagues, every generation of mankind has experienced sleepless nights.  I’m certain our ancestors probably laid awake thinking and ruminating, playing the same type of scenarios in their minds that we do today.  They, too, fell asleep the second their work day was over only to find at three o’clock they stared off into the night, wide awake but without wifi to entertain themselves.

Have we forgotten the drugs of today began as plants?

Our forefathers had their own version of pharmaceuticals.  The all came from Mother Nature.  For thousands of years all drugs came from plants, animals and minerals found in nature.  It’s only been a snippet in time that pharmaceuticals, synthetic sleep aids in the form of bottles of chemicals have become mainstream.  As history repeats itself, the knowledge of our ancestors is revisited.  The ancients knew what plants could help the restless mind.  A small seed called zizyphus jujube is one such sleep aid.  Traditional Chinese Medicine has used this seed to calm the anxious mind and provide help with night sweats.  Modern chemistry shows this tiny seed has natural sedative properties.

Maybe you are not familiar with this Chinese herb. Chinese medicine has NOT been the predominant form of medicine in the U.S. for the past 200 years but this does not negate the fact that over a billion people on the earth depend on this medicine  and have for centuries.  The hundreds of years of continual use of Chinese herbs as sleeping aids give it both a safety and success record unmatched by other sleep remedies.

Chinese herbal medicine perfected herbal formulas through thousands of years of use.  The same formulas are still used today and they are still effective.  Not as a single ingredient extract, because nature never intended for us to use just one small chemical in any plant.  Plants are complicated and contain many chemicals.   Removing  one nutrient or chemical  from a plant is not what nature intended.  Our bodies recognize plant chemicals and have for millions of years, when we use them whole.

Chinese herbal medicine has a rich history throughout Asia and has been embraced in the 21st century by the governments of China, Taiwan, Japan and others.  By “embraced”  I mean these governments include Traditional Chinese herbs and herbal formulas in their national insurance coverage.  Imagine, botanicals covered by insurance without receiving a patent.  Now that’s a crazy thought.  Yet it’s happening now for over a billion people on the planet.

Two caveats to keep in mind.  I’m the first to admit that plenty of herbal products are not worth the bottle they are packaged in.  So please, do your research on the manufacturer and only buy from those who test their herbs for contaminants. Stay clear of companies who are not transparent about who makes their products or where their raw ingredients are sourced. There are plenty of unscrupulous companies to choose from, remember “Buyer Beware”.

 Choose products that do not contain synthetic chemicals. Science does not build a better mousetrap or sleep aid.  Many of the supplements people are popping today are never fully used in the body and simply get excreted.  Our bodies function best with whole foods and whole herbs containing all the phyto-nutrients are bodies have recognized for millions of years. Look for natural ingredients that contain plant names, not chemical derivatives synthetically made that our bodies won’t recognize. 

Our ancestors found herbs to help them sleep and then perfected the use of mixing certain botanicals together. We don’t need to recreate the wheel now, we just need to know how to use it.

 

Million and millions of tons of zizphus jujube seed and other Chinese herbs are harvested and sold each year.  Millions of people don’t use a pill in a bottle, they use botanical sleep aids. They use formulas of herbs from their grandparents, and great, great grandparents.  Tried and true formulations passed down.  It has been said, “It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.”  – Henry James.

 

Sleep Aid Medication Not Safe Enough Says FDA

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Regulators at the US Food and Drug Administration have denied for a second time, a sleep aid drug over safety concerns.  Trancept Pharmaceuticals formulation of zolpidem tartrate (the same drug used in Ambien) has been trying to get approval for a sublingual tablet they hope to market as “Intermezzo”.  This sleep aid would be marketed towards those who wake in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.  

The problem is regulators have doubts over safety.  Taking a dose of this drug with less than 4 hours of sleep time may result in severe morning drowsiness.  The stories of sleep driving, sleepwalking and sleep falls have all been documented and are receiving attention. 

Driving While Drowsy is Unsafe

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowsy driving contributes to an estimated 100,000 motor vehicle crashes and about 1,500 deaths each year.

In fact,  in 2007, FDA regulators requested that all manufacturers of sedative-hypnotic drugs include stronger product language warning of the potential risks because of the rising number of sleep driving incidents.

Waking in the middle of the night is a pattern is a sleeplessness that is one of the most common problems today. If you saw the Dr. Oz show on Chinese Medicine (you can see it here) you probably heard that jujube seed is an herb which can help with this sleeplessness. 

This 100% natural herbal sleep aid that has been used for thousands of years throughout Asia, yet is little known in the West. It is effective and safe!  Research has proven its ability to calm the mind and stop the repetitive thoughts that so often keep us awake at night.  It is one of the main herbs in iSleep Herb Pack.   iSleep can be used sublingually before bed or in the middle of the night. There are no harmful side effects and no morning drowsiness.  You can find iSleep Herb Pack here and at many fine health food stores.

Calm Down Your Liver and Sleep Better is The Chinese Medicine Way

Posted by Cathy on

 I enjoyed this article from China Daily and thought it contained enough common sense to help with a good nights sleep. Sometimes we overlook the simple answers to healthy sleep habits. . So here it is.

Since one third of our lives are spent in bed, it is hard to overlook the significance of sleep.

Tips to improve sleep, from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theories to clinical practices, can therefore benefit your life.

TCM practitioners believe that spring and the liver have the same property of "mu" (wood), thus the liver tends to be over-active, making people touchy.

The stomach and spleens have the "tu" (earth) property and is the opposite of "mu". If the opposition between these two properties becomes too strong, people will feel uncomfortable.

"Obviously, being angry and uncomfortable makes it hard to fall into sleep," says Dr Li Haicong, director of the Office of Geriatrics at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, who is also an experienced TCM practitioner.

The solution is to calm down the activity of the liver, and to reduce the burden on stomach and spleen, which can be fulfilled by a light diet and gentle exercise.

"Do not have too much strong-flavored food. Avoid intake of stimulating food or drink, such as pepper, alcohol and coffee," Li says. He strongly recommends foods such as  fish, pork, duck, lily root, Chinese yam, asparagus lettuce, lotus seed, apples and bananas.   Chicken, mutton, beef and oranges are not advisable in spring.

"Aerobic exercises, such as jogging, playing badminton and swimming, are also beneficial to good sleep," Li adds.Aerobic exercises will improve oxygen consumption and will prepare the body for peaceful sleep. But it should be done at least three hours before going to bed.

Taking a nap between 11 am to 1 pm, a traditional practice in China, is healthy, too, although many people have dropped the habit due to their faster-paced life.

"A nap should not be too long. About 15 to 30 minutes is enough," Li notes. "The quality of sleep is more important than the length."

For the elderly, who often have insomnia, perhaps due to chronic diseases, a good night's sleep is extremely important.  Li and his colleagues have found that a restful sleep will improve the condition of patients, which will in turn improve the sleep. And vice versa.

"If patients cannot sleep well, taking some TCM will be helpful, but that must be conducted under a doctors' guidance," Li says.


Chinese Medicine and Insomnia Symptoms

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no insomnia with chinese herbs

Insomnia, whether for a prolonged time or a short duration is a dreaded cycle that can drive us to the brink of insanity. There nothing worse than being so tired all day long that we just can’t think straight. When you finally hit the pillow you sleep only a few hours  and can’t get back to sleep. People cope with insomnia in different ways, some start their day at 4 AM  because “there is just no sense in staying in bed” others rely on prescription drugs. Regardless of how you decide to cope with the lack of sleep here’s a quick look at insomnia from the Chinese medicine perceptive. This little insight or different perspective,  may help you change whatever is going on in your life that’s affecting your sleep patterns

 

Chinese Medicine, practiced continuously now for over 2000 years, categorizes insomnia into 4 main groups.  

1.       Insomnia due to over-thinking or disharmony between work and rest. When it’s time to sleep your mind should not be thinking of all the days plans, all that worries you or what needs to be done tomorrow. Your mind should simply not be talking to you. Your mind should be active during daytime hours and quiet at night.  There are many techniques in Chinese medicine to help you quiet your mind such as Tai Qi, meditation, exercise and other stress reducers.  A proper discussion of these techniques will be addressed in another article. Herbal medicines can help stop these over thinking habits and help quiet your mind without being addictive. 

2.      Insomnia due to sickness or advancing age. When we are extremely weak and/or recovering  from an illness it is not uncommon to have sleeping difficulties. During this time both qi and blood are deficient which nourish our heart, kidney and spleen channels of Chinese medicine. Rebuild and replenish yourself with a proper diet and supplements and this pattern will subside.

3.        Insomnia due to panic, anger and excessive worry will gradually lead to chronic insomnia. This pattern is especially worrisome because of  it’s chronic, (ongoing) nature. Emotions that are buried and not addressed during the daytime hours may in a sense, haunt us at night. These emotions cause a deficiency of heart qi  and transform and flare up disturbing the mind at night. Dealing with emotional problems during waking hours will prevent this type of insomnia.

4.    Insomnia due to spicy, fatty, raw and even cold food late at night. This type of insomnia is the easiest to change. Simply stop eating 3-4 hours before going to bed. Over eating from a Chinese Medicine perspective  leads to phlegm and  heat and both interfere with restful sleep. The body cannot optimize digestion late at night. Your body needs time to process the foods eaten during the day and clean itself out.

These four patterns cover the gamut of sleeping problems in Chinese medicine. Some people suffer from just one pattern, (typically # 1)  others suffer from a combination of them. Once you identify your pattern you can take steps in your life to make the necessary changes to give your body and your mind the rest it needs.

Tackling Sleep Disorders in The Work Place

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Pac Herbs natural sleep aid iSleepNeed something to keep you from dragging through your day? Want something to inspire you so the boss will notice what a great asset you really are?    We all have those days where we are just dragging our butts to the office and sleep walking through our work day.

Here are a few tips I use to keep me going when the all I really want to do is go back to bed.

#1.  Coffee works for a while, but I prefer natures superfuel, a straight up ginseng drink. It perks up my mental focus and gives me the energy to make it through the evening commute.  Ginseng is one of the most studied Chinese herbs, it’s used world wide for treating stress, helps improve mental clarity and alertness.

#2.  Fresh Air! Get your butt outside at lunch time and walk. It’s sounds easy when the weathers nice but no one’s going out there in the middle of winter.  So hit the stairwell’s or the company gym treadmill if you have one. No-body is meant to stay sitting all day.

#3.   Power Nap on your break!  Take 15 minutes with an ipod and a eye mask and get away from it all.  If you don’t have an ipod there’s plenty of great meditations on line or find some soothing music on Pandora.  If all that fails, ear plugs are easy and cheap.

#4.  Early to bed, early to rise, may not fit everyone’s lifestyle, but it does make for good advice if you’re trying to impress the boss and stay awake on the job.  Try it a couple of times, you never know, it might just grow on you. 

#5.   Stay hydrated. Don’t reach for a soft drink or another cup of coffee which will dehydrate you even more.  Your best bet is green tea.  Green tea contains natural catechin polyphenols, particularly epigallocatechin gallate  (say that one 5x fast)   (EGCG) a powerful anti-oxidant.  What sets green tea apart is the way it is processed. Green tea leaves are steamed, which prevents the EGCG compound from being oxidized.

Thanks for reading!! Drop us a comment with your suggestions.


Sexy New Natural Products like Sleep Aids through Science

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We can create better nutrition through science, right?  We can isolate green tea extract and mix it into our processed cereal to create a heart healthy product, right?  We can remove the curcuminoids from curcumin (which originates in herbs like turmeric) and add it to a chocolate bar to help reduce cholesterol, right?  Through chemistry we can isolate every health polysaccarides, saponin, polyphenol and trace mineral and put them into a drink, a food bar or any other new product formulation and call it a "natural product", right?

Technically speaking the answers to the above questions are yes.  But are we missing the forest from the trees.  We have no long term historical use that eating chemically extracted and combined super foods is actually good for the human body. 

Scientists/product developers are continually trying to improve upon nature for new natural product formulations for sleep, energy, hot flashes, well being, or … you fill in the blank.    But maybe, just maybe, our bodies don't know how to handle this new nutrition.  Does anybody stop and consider this is the first time in the history of man's diet that people are eating this way? 

Do our genetics change overnight to process these nutritional supplements which we've never ingested before?

What's lost in the process is the human bodies response to this myriad of natural chemical components that maybe, just maybe were never meant to be together in the first place.  Maybe a blueberry was never meant to cross paths with a chemically created biotin because the chemical components would never be found together in nature.

What I love about Chinese herbal medicine natural supplements is the lack of artificially created chemicals.  Chinese herbs combined together with other Chinese herbs, have already passed the test of mans digestive system.  The record books on Traditional Chinese herbal medicine far exceeds anything Guiness Books can duplicate, Chinese herbs are proven effective sleep aids, energy boosters, immune enhancers, the list goes on.  They don't need science to extract their individual active components and marry them off to a vitamin supplement or other extracted ingredient.  They have already been proven effective, no need for science to tell us which individual active ingredient works best with another. Natural ingredients work best synergistically together as whole foods for the whole body.

Before the microscope and before chemistry could explain which flavonol worked best with which gingerol, Chinese herbal medicine perfected the marriage of combining whole roots, barks, fruits, seeds etc. through thousands of years of use. They learned which plants worked best with each other. Not as a single ingredient extract, because nature never intended for us to use just one small chemical in the apple. Nature provides us the whole apple to eat and enjoy as a whole. When we piece meal the phyto-nutrients from the juice or the skin, we no longer have what nature intended.  How can our bodies possibly know what to do with a single chemical when it's spent millions of years eating it whole.

The message here is easy, when your looking for a natural sleep aid, energy drink or hot flash natural treatment, look for ALL natural ingredients that contain plant names.. not chemical names.

The Importance of Rest, Sleep Better Tonight

Posted by Cathy on

herbs for sleepThere's a great website devoted to women over fifty called faboverfifty.com. It's a place for women to share ideas on health, fashion, their changing bodies and well… all the facts of life.  Recently they held a little contest.  They wanted answers from their readers on this question:

"What do you do when you're having trouble falling asleep at night?  

Here's the winning post…(there were about one hundred different answers, many desperately wanting a good nights sleep.)

"When I can't sleep it's always because I have toooo much in my head. I know I should stop working before trying to sleep. But when I don't… a little lavender essential oil drops on my pillow and behind my ears starts the dreamy process. If I wake up with my head buzzing with ideas, deadlines, projects etc. then I visualize. Each thought in my head is released on a kite string as I sit on my favorite beach in Hawaii watching the most beautiful sunset. As the sun sets, so do I. My thoughts that were keeping me up are safely attached to the kite, retrievable if I need them the next day. "

Yours truly won the contest.  I didn't plug iSleep Herb Pac but I love a packet before bed when my head is buzzing with ideas. It's clear a lot of women (and men)  in those posts would also benefit from our natural sleep aid and these Chinese herbs have such a gentle action you just fall asleep naturally.

I couldn't agree more with what my colleague posted about the importance of sleep, see below.

by: Kath Bartlett, MS, LAc,

I am researching lymphoma, a type of cancer. One of the books I am reading discusses the importance of getting enough rest. This issue cannot be overstated, not only for cancer treatment, but for any type of disease or injury prevention.


Getting adequate rest includes resting during an illness, rather than trying to work through it. Overwork impairs detoxification, so that the chemical toxins we are exposed to in our environment accumulate in the body. The build up of toxins can lead not only to cancer formation, but atopic (allergic) and autoimmune conditions.

Sleep is essential for detoxification and for the release of growth hormone needed to repair and rebuild damaged tissues.

Poor or lack of sleep leads to yin deficiency. Yin deficiency is a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) concept. Yin is a broad category that includes fluids, substance & blood, cool/cold temperature and quiescence. When yin is deficient, heat develops in the body (yin is cool/cold) and the toxins (a heat process) draw deeper in the body. This is why atopic and autoimmune conditions are difficult to treat.

If you are under-employed due to the recession, use this time as an opportunity to improve your health, by getting enough sleep, eating well balanced, home cooked meals and getting adequate exercise.

There was an interesting New York Times article showing that during recessions people are healthier because they work fewer hours, have more time to prepare their own meals & eat less restaurant food and have more time for exercise.

Be careful not to overwork when you are sick. Take the time to nurse your illness and recuperate so that you do not cause the disease to travel deeper in the body.