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| symptoms. Valerian will help in most cases. For some people it can be an effective mild pain reliever. |
| As one of the best gentle and harmless herbal sleeping remedies, it enhances the natural body process of slipping into sleep and making the stresses of the day recede. For people who do not need as much sleep as they once did, it also eases lying awake in bed, ensuring that it becomes a restful and relaxing experience. This is often as revivifying as sleep itself, and indeed all that is necessary in many cases. The true nature of sleep still remains a mystery. Everybody goes through stages of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, a stage where dreaming is associated with minor involuntary muscle jerks and rapid eye movements indicating that active processes are occurring in the brain. It is important not to suppress the dreams that occur during this stage. Emotional experiences are processed by the mind in those dreams, and events arising from both the unconscious and daily life are balanced and harmonized. While sleeping pills have a marked impact on REM sleep, valerian does not interfere with this process as it is not powerful enough to suppress the necessary REM phases. |
| The research into valerian confirms the traditional experience of the herbalist. One study found that patients who used valerian reported significant improvement in the quality of their sleep. Improvement was most notable among those smokers who considered themselves poor or irregular sleepers. Dream recall was relatively unaffected by valerian. When the effect of valerian root on sleep was studied in healthy young people, it was shown to reduce perceived sleep latency and decrease wake time after sleep onset. In |
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