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Start From the Beginning
My innovations:
Gaian botanicals hypnos tea
I often wake up in the middle
of the night, do some reading, listen to a podcast or just meditate on
the previous day.
Some people would call this
insomnia, but I rarely feel tired the next day. I think I've settled
into a rhythm where I only need 4 or 5 hours of sleep per night
compared to most people I know who feel grumpy with anything less than
8 uninterrupted hours.
Most nights I relish the time
when the rest of the world is asleep. It just feels more calm at 3 in
the morning then it does when the sun is out and everybody is going
about their day.
Sometimes I'll get into a new area of research or an exciting book that
gets the wheels in my mind turning so fast that it makes going back to
sleep a challenge. Most of the time I just skip the morning sleep
interval and stay up, which can sometimes put me under the minimum 4
hours. It's times like this that a good natural tea with the right
herbs can really help coax you back into the land of dreams.
I've recently been
experimenting with different types of sleepy teas to see if any of them
work for me. So far my favorite is the one I most recently added to the
night time tea collection. It's a signature
blend from Gian Botanicals called Hypnos Tea.
Just pinch out a heaping
teaspoon into a coffee maker and wait for the heat to release all of
those wonderful, sleepy herbs alongside the water molecules. I like to
add a spoonful of honey. The taste is nothing to write home about,
but the all natural,organic effect is worth the effort.
See older posts in the archives.
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These ingredients sound quite harmless. Nevertheless one should be careful and at least look up the ingredients online. A problem there is that the descriptions used are often imprecise. E.g. there are many different kinds of skullcap and hibiscus.
There've been warnings here in Europe about Chinese herbal "medicines" containing aristolochia and mercury compounds (both toxic). If you see the words "cinnabar(is)", "calomela" or "Hydrargyri Oxydum Rubrum", they're all names for mercury compounds that are best avoided.
In Italy an ayurvedic medicine that supposedly contained plectranthus barbatus was probably contaminated with atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade)! [1]
The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority has found very high concentrations of lead in some ayurvedic medicines. In one case (the herbal mixture "Pushapdhanwa Ras") contained so much lead that using the recommended dosage resulted in 300 times the acceptable daily dosage of lead. At least one person had to treated for lead poisoning after using it. They have published a list (in Dutch) of traditional asian herbal ingredients that contain high levels of mercury, arsenic or lead.
A common problem of natural substances (be it wood, natural fibers or herbs) is the quite large variation in properties (wood, fibers) or level of active substances (herbs) that can occur due to growing conditions and/or curing. While this isn't a big problem in e.g. chamomille tea, in something used as a cure for a real ailment that is problematic.
(As an anecdote; once I tried a herbal tea that was supposed to assist with weight loss. Unfortunately one cup was sufficient to keep me awake most of the night and give me nightmares for the rest of it! Thinking that this result might be a fluke, I tried again two weeks later, with similar results. After that I threw it away! I later learned that it could have been a reaction to the valerian used in this tea.)