Supplements are a funny business to get into. None of it is medicine, none of it can be said cures a problem you have, if we could say that it wouldn’t be a supplement it would be be a medicine and you would need a prescription for a lot of it. A lot of the stuff that shows up in supplements may or may not work for you. Valerian, for instance, has been used since ancient Greece to reduce stress and help people sleep. Anecdotally. Now, there are studies which have suggested valerian helps you get to sleep faster and enjoy a quality of sleep which is much better, however there are other studies which don’t show that. They show it no better than a placebo, or they show that the improvements it makes are not statistically significant.

One could take this and say “see, pseudoscience, none of that herbal stuff works.” But I always think of peanuts. Peanuts are delightful. You can make butter out of them you can put that butter in the middle of cups made of chocolate, they’re terrific, what could possibly be bad about peanuts? I could get a study together right now that says “peanuts make people happy” because, damn dude, peanuts are good. But if my friend Zeke eats peanuts, he will die. He will not be happy, you see, because he will be dying. He has a very different reaction to peanuts than I do.

Whenever anyone tries to act like a certain diet is the best for everyone or a certain supplement or medicine is a panacea for all ills everywhere, I think of peanuts. Everyone’s system is different. So Valerian. Valerian anecdotally worked for us and a lot of people we knew. When the D20 bros were whippin up brews (bro brews) to test formulations, we felt valerian was an essential part of the conk you out for some sweet dreamy times recipe. Some studies disagree. But our bodies disagree with those studies, as do the bodies of a bunch of folks. So we left valerian in here while also knowing we put a LOT of stuff in here, if valerian isn’t something that works for you maybe the lemon balm, or the magnesium, or the melatonin, or the 5 HTP, or the etc. etc. etc. will.

But none of it will kill you. The FDA wouldn’t let us sell you that. Little death, that’s all, dreamy death. Not, like, DEATH. Oh god, should the lawyer read this one first?

SOURCES:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19865069

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2678162

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25495725

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Valerian-HealthProfessional/#en13