CHAPTER 5 
Although I’m sensitive to homelessness and alcoholism, I have to admit that a small part of me used to envy the drunken bum. Driving to work or strolling through a park, I would see him conked out in the middle of the day. Oblivious to the hustle and bustle of the city, his head would be curbside at a knot-wrenching, 45-degree angle. He was getting more shut-eye than I ever imagined. I wanted it, and I knew millions of other Americans did, too.
Despite the comforts of home, most of us can’t sleep half as well as a drunken bum. A century ago, the national sleep average was nine to ten hours, according to Harvard Health Publications. Today, we get fewer than seven hours of sleep per night.72 This is usually rationalized by the erroneous claim that we are getting more work done. That’s what I told myself, but I was wrong.
Our super-achiever culture frowns upon sleep while encouraging more work. Some people revel in it. Donald Trump boasts that he can get by with less sleep than “normal” people, tacitly implying that the rest of us are wimps—mere mortals who require regular deep sleep for at least eight hours per night. Others foolishly follow in his footsteps.
Lack of sleep might encourage more activity, but it depletes productivity. The extra waking hours of most “Stupor Heroes” are likely spent surfing the Internet, watching late-night television, or enjoying other faux fast-lifestyle activities. Beyond numbing your mind and reducing your productivity, the real cost of such bravado is accelerated aging, as sleep research shows. No matter what healthy habits you engage in during your waking hours, lack of rest will negate your antiaging endeavors.
But don’t lose sleep over this. You can sleep like a drunken bum without booze, general anesthesia, or even expensive and risky sleep meds. Deep, relaxing, restful sleep is less than one chapter away. Applying what you learn will guarantee increased productivity as a professional who takes pride in “doing it all” and even extend your expiration date!
NATIONAL UNREST
Americans are not rested. Studies done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveal that nearly 70 percent of adults don’t get adequate sleep. Researchers also found that more than 70 million people suffer from constant sleep loss or sleep disorders. That means almost a fourth of the U.S. population have become “waking addicts”—people in need of serious sleep intervention.
“It’s important to better understand how sleep impacts people’s overall health and the need to take steps to improve the sufficiency of their sleep,” says Lela R. Mcknight-Eily, PhD, a behavioral scientist for the CDC. I couldn’t agree more, but this message is rarely heard in the mainstream because corporate America can’t profit from healthy, natural sleep.
My investigation into the science of sleep began ten years ago. As a fledgling graduate student, I was being escorted over new scientific terrain. I didn’t want to miss any of it. I spent long days in the lab and late nights in the library. I would average five or six hours of sleep per night. Sleep deprivation was done in an effort to make more time for research. I was attempting to selectively control the synthesis of three-dimensional, amino acid conformations. Don’t let the science jargon get you hazy.
Most amino-acid chemistry synthesis resulted in a mishmash of right-and left-handed molecules. (Remember, we are in three-dimensions.) In medicinal chemistry, you can only use one. To reduce the excess junk, I wanted to design a process that would allow the production of one type, not both. My research would eventually be used in an area of chemistry known as peptide mimetics, which serves as a novel tool for modulating most any biological event like cancer, obesity, and even pain.
Every discovery amplified my previous one. This kept me in the lab and out of my bed. For my chemistry work, I was named graduate student of the year at Northern Arizona University. I thought I could carry this work ethic into my professional life. But as time passed, I learned some hard lessons about sleep deprivation. My health began to tailspin.
For me, working for Big Pharma was like living in permanent lockdown. You always had to be seen. If you weren’t present, people started asking questions. “Where were you when I came in this morning?” my peers would ask. “When did you get back from lunch?” my boss would enquire. “What time are you leaving?” my lab partners would wonder. “Would you mind typing up a report outlining your last six months of chemical reactions?” the CEO would request twice a year. Add to this the security and surveillance that comes from an insecure industry trying to hide dirty secrets, and you feel like you’re reporting to the state penitentiary. To play the game, I deprived myself of sleep. That seemed to be the only way I could keep up.
My wake-up call came unexpectedly one day. First there was work, followed by a quick trip to the gym, and then all the usual family things—fixing dinner, taking care of kids, and putting them to bed. With this behind my wife and me, it was time to do what adults do, make love—or so I thought. The fast pace was leading to some embarrassing outcomes.
My wife seductively motioned to the bedroom. I sat motionless in front of the television. I thought about it and then sighed, “I don’t know. Maybe you could rub up against me, and we’ll see what happens.” Insulted, she gasped. I was in trouble. But I was just too damn tired for sex. I had only been married a few years, and my sex drive had begun to evaporate.
This wasn’t like my usual testosterone-fueled self. What happened to my sex drive? Had my testosterone plummeted to that of a thirteen-year-old girl? Nothing gets a man thinking faster than when he questions his testosterone levels. Upon reflection, I had whittled my slumber down too far. I was dragging ass, rather than getting some.
This was so eye-opening that I vowed to get to the bottom of it all. I plunged deep into sleep-deprivation research. It didn’t take me long to learn that trimming hours off of my sleep schedule was costing me more than a few love-making sessions; it was bringing me closer to my expiration date.
ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM HORMONAL IGNORANCE?
I don’t study health at the “symptom level.” I start my research at the body’s most fundamental level, the cell. This gives me a vantage point by highlighting the biological mechanisms underlying the cause of symptoms before they develop. Monitoring cell function offers insight into our “health trajectory.” That’s far better than relying on shoddy studies bought and paid for by Big Pharma that simply study symptoms and the statistical associations that come with them.
Like mapping the flight path of an asteroid and predicting its location years from now, monitoring cellular function helps identify big health problems years or even decades before they start. Studying cellular function under sleep deprivation, I was able to map the health consequences of not getting enough sleep far before they manifested into more detrimental outcomes, like losing my libido. I uncovered some surprising results.
During normal waking hours, all cells are damaged, particularly the powerhouse of the cell known as the mitochondria.73 As the cellular engine, it keeps cells operating at full capacity. It helps them produce energizing ATP molecules, neurotransmitters, hormones, and lots more. When the mitochondria are damaged, these vital cellular functions cease to operate at full capacity. When we sleep, our cells undergo repair or are replaced by newly generated, healthier ones so that the vital functions operate efficiently. If you don’t conk out for eight hours or more, this antiaging mechanism ceases to exist. Our health tailspins due to “hormonal ignorance.”
Hormones are chemicals—made by cells—that elicit certain responses in the body. They induce sleep, alertness, fat burning, muscle growth, and anything else you could imagine. At their most basic, they teach cells how to function and communicate among each other. Ultimately, this helps guarantee proper organ function. At their most complex level, hormones are the spark of life and work by triggering receptors found on the outer membrane of cells and within them. This triggering determines how our genetic material—DNA—expresses itself. While we are graced with genetic material from both parents, our hormones play a big role in how those genes are expressed.
Proper hormone output and function is one of the most sophisticated systems of the body. Our total health—whether we live sick, or live young—is dependent on “hormone intelligence.” This intelligence exists only when the body is fully rested. Otherwise, we experience hormonal ignorance.
Hormonal ignorance is characterized by rises and drops in levels of hormones that kill and those that heal. Our fat-storing hormone, insulin, rises. The hunger-inducing hormone ghrelin heightens. The libido and muscle-inducing male hormone testosterone sinks. The antiaging hormone hGH (human growth hormone) dissipates. Our brain’s chief, free-radical scavenging hormone melatonin falls rapidly. Our fat-melting hormone leptin crashes. We essentially feel as though we have one foot in the grave. We become pissed off, fat, hungry, and depressed. This is just the beginning.
As hormonal ignorance continues, our health trajectory takes a crash course toward poor immunity, obesity, cancer, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. Those who don’t get enough shut-eye feel the early signs of this ignorance with excess stress, anxiety, and naturally, fatigue. For some, these feelings ignite a desperate quest for rest that ends in prescription drug use.
THE DESPERATE QUEST FOR REST
What if you’re like the millions of Americans who actually want to sleep a healthy eight but can’t? Hopefully, you don’t fall into the prescription-drug sleep trap like Mark did. It ensnares millions. If you thought insomnia was bad, try insomnia with a drug addiction.
Mark is a nocturnal desperado. It’s been more than nine years since he has had a decent night’s sleep. He would do anything to sleep like a drunken bum. He tried six different types of mattresses. He cut back on coffee and gulped down gallons of chamomile tea and warm milk. He underwent clinical hypnosis to “reprogram his mind.” He gulped down the overrated 5-HTP sleep supplement. He got cracked a million wacky ways by his chiropractor. Not one attempt helped him get a wink of sleep.
At forty-two years old, Mark was a restless child at night. While others slept, he was up in the middle of the night, wandering around the house, reading, watching television, and rummaging through the fridge until he finally collapsed back into bed. His days were a dreamlike blur. To avoid nodding off at the wheel during the day, he said he “pulled hard on his beard hairs” and “played his iPod at deafening levels.” It made being a real estate agent very hard.
Most times at work, his crushing waves of fatigue led to anxiety. Fear of failure washed over him. “It’s a helpless feeling knowing that you have a 9:00 a.m. meeting to show a property. I’ve tried everything I can think of to get to sleep, and it doesn’t work,” he told me in his desperate quest for rest.
Mark’s quest for rest drove him to gulp down Ambien (zolpidem). His family doctors tossed him some Ambien samples. With close to 10 million people now using a prescription to get sleep, this scenario is becoming far too common. This was just the beginning of Mark’s problems.
Prescription drugs work by blocking or triggering a target switch within the body. Unfortunately, no drug is selective for just one switch, and side effects ensue. Worse, messing with one switch usually disrupts others, causing our biological wiring to get short circuited. The drug company Sanofi-Aventis’s knockout pill Ambien is no exception. It attempts to mimic sleep by switching off our central nervous system (CNS).
Scientists don’t know everything about sleep. But they do know much of it is controlled by a family of switches known as GABA receptors. Switch these off, and the lights of our central nervous system go out. Three generations of sleep pills are based on this knowledge, and Ambien is among the most popular.
The body switches off the CNS naturally with its own molecule—gamma-amino butyric acid (hence the corresponding GABA receptor). By turning off the entire cluster of GABA switches, our natural molecules shut the lights out for natural sleep.
Ambien merely dims the lights. It triggers only a switch or two, while ignoring the other CNS switches in the family. Ambien elicits sedation, while our natural compounds induce restful, relaxing sleep. While you might get shut-eye with Ambien or other sleep pills, you’re not getting adequate sleep required to prevent hormonal ignorance. You’re getting artificial sleep at best or a mental vasectomy at worst.
A mental vasectomy occurs when your sleep-inducing molecules are cut off from their corresponding switches. Your brain is short-circuited. A portion of the CNS is switched off, while other areas are switched on. There is a thin line between reality and sleep. Ambien users, like Mike, take part in daily tasks, but eerily, are sleeping at the time.
Although Mark initially got a couple of good nights of sleep while taking Ambien, the honeymoon quickly ended and gave way to buyer’s remorse. Commenting on her husband’s mental vasectomy, Mark’s wife said:
Almost immediately, I noticed a severe change in his demeanor. He started experiencing tremendous mood swings, delusions, cursing rage, paranoid and aggressive thoughts, sleepwalking, and other activities while he was still asleep! One night he got up and ate a whole box of Hostess cupcakes and left the wrappers strewn around the house. Another time he got out of bed, walked down the street in his underwear, and started looking through the bushes in our neighbor’s yard. When I caught up with him and asked him what he was doing, he said he was looking for our cat, which I knew was still in our bedroom. When he would wake up in the morning, he wouldn’t remember a thing.
By severing his nervous system from reality, Mark wasn’t sure whether he was coming or going, waking or sleeping. The vasectomy had cut off his brain’s ability to respond and react to his naturally occurring sleep molecules. “I had no idea how much that single event of the doctor giving me the free samples of Ambien would change my life,” Mark later said.
Manufacturers of drugs like Ambien downplay the potential for serious problems that their drugs can cause. Patients are not adequately informed about the severe side effects and imminent possibility of becoming addicted when doctors mumble a few cautionary words memorized from the Physicians’ Desk Reference as they hand over their prescriptions.
OTHER JAW-DROPPING SIDE EFFECTS
If you think Mark’s experience is unique, or that this type of drug-induced mayhem is peculiar to Ambien, you’re already on too many drugs. The sleep pill Lunesta (eszopiclone) is quickly making a name for itself as Lunatic-esta.
With its maker Sepracor spending nearly $300 million last year on consumer advertising for the drug, you couldn’t miss the ads featuring the glowing, green moth gently fanning people to sleep. That’s supposed to represent Lunesta. But after reading what this drug is really about, you’re going to run to Wal-Mart and buy some mothballs to surround your bed.
Lunesta’s side effects are as loony as they get. Perhaps this is how the name was derived? There’s no hiding them. Here they are, direct from the maker’s website:
And you thought street drugs were dangerous. While these side effects are impressive, Sepracor barely even mentions the addiction that many users experience. An addicted Lunesta user comments on what can happen when you try to stop taking the loony med:
Withdrawal from sleep meds like Lunesta is primarily anxiety (like a panic attack) and resulting insomnia. As you try to stop taking the drug, your original insomnia is reinforced by withdrawal from the treatment. So you need to take more to relieve the anxiety and insomnia. As this cycle winds up, you begin having memory problems and feel depressed, more anxious, and a bit ill. Now you have to stop the meds as you are feeling really sick, not just anxious and unable to sleep. Now you really get walloped by withdrawal.… It’s a vicious cycle. I’d rather be an insomniac. Now I’m an addicted insomniac.
These commonly reported rebound insomnia-type withdrawal symptoms can cause prescription sleep-aid users to hold up the white flag and go right back to taking the drug.
OVER-THE-COUNTER SLEEP AIDS
So what about nonprescription sleep aids, the antihistamines you can buy off store shelves? Many falsely believe these are safe alternatives. They are not safer than the prescription versions. Consider the common warnings posted on the websites of leading products in the category listing side effects users may experience—blurred vision, constipation, urinary retention, dizziness, forgetfulness, lack of coordination, and continual dry throat and mouth. All these ailments and more can be yours when you reach for over-the-counter (OTC) antihistamine sleep aids.
A closer look at many popular brands reveals that these are just a few of the scary side. Other concerns about using OTC medications include rebound insomnia, dependency, drug tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, and negative interactions with other drugs or chemicals in your system.
WHAT THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: SECRET TYLENOL FACTS
The main active ingredient of Tylenol PM is diphenhydramine, an ethanolamine-derivative antihistamine. Originally designed to block histamine from attaching to the receptor sites, diphenhydramine decreases symptoms of an allergic reaction. But like many “accidental” drug discoveries, it was found that antihistamines had a bonus side effect of sedation.
Pharmaceutical concoctions like Tylenol PM work against the central nervous system’s chemical histamine to achieve sedation. Shut down histamine action in the brain, and you become sedated. But sedation isn’t the same as good sleep. The brain has many other pathways and actions—like serotonin, adenosine, and melatonin—that need to be synchronized to activate restful sleep. Ignoring these leaves a person partly asleep. “The sleep quality that results from taking antihistamines may be poor,” comments Karl Doghramji, MD, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Thomas Jefferson University.74
Just as a heads-up, other brands that contain the antihistamine diphenhydramine include Sominex, Nytol, and Benadryl. Its chemical relative, doxylamine, is a similar sedating antihistamine found in brand names such as Nitetime Sleep Aid, Unisom SleepTabs, and NyQuil. Many of the above meds, as well as dozens of other OTC products, contain acetaminophen, which leads me to something you really need to take notes on.
“LIVER DIE”
In the United States, drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is now the leading cause of acute liver failure (ALF), exceeding all other causes combined, according to the Acute Liver Failure Study Group.75 OTC sleep aids are among the biggest culprits.
The biggest danger from over-the-counter sleep aids is that they’re often combined with acetaminophen (one of the ingredients in Tylenol PM). People may unwittingly take too much in a single day, which can lead to liver damage. Acetaminophen is also in prescription pain medications such as Vicodin and Lortab (both acetaminophen and hydrocodone), Darvocet (propoxyphene and acetaminophen), and Percocet (oxycodone and acetaminophen), to name a few. Accidentally doubling or tripling your dose—or taking acetaminophen-laden OTCs in addition to pain meds—can lead to the need for a new liver (courtesy of a fresh-dead donor) or could even be fatal.
THREE STEPS TO SLEEPING LIKE A DRUNKEN BUM NATURALLY
Anyone suffering from lack of sleep can tell you that nothing can ruin a day like poor sleep the night before. Sure, there are prescription and synthetic over-the-counter solutions, which, as we’ve already seen, are less than ideal. This is where a couple of lifestyle habits and nature’s knockout sleep pill can offer relief without disabling side effects.
Each of us spends fully one-third of our lives lying unconscious on a mattress. To make the waking two-thirds of our lives a healthy, pleasant, and productive experience, we absolutely must have quality sleep. If you’re a waking addict, you need my three-step intervention.
1. DITCH THE TOXINS
Rid your diet of insomnia-inducing toxins. When I first heard Mark’s story, I suspected that his insomnia had something to do with his diet. Lack of sleep and most any ill health has more to do with what we are doing to ourselves than what we aren’t doing—or taking. This is in stark contrast to the prescribing habits of doctors who insist we need drugs, drugs, and more drugs.
Mark was still in the throes of his Ambien addiction when he contacted me, desperately looking for help. The first thing I had him do was to make a list of the foods he was eating and detail his lifestyle regimen. None of the physicians who treated him had asked anything about what he was shoving into his mouth.
I wasn’t surprised to find that Mark was a fan of diet colas. A bit round in the middle, he was thirty-five pounds overweight and exhibiting the onset of type 2 diabetes. His doctor switched him to diet soda to replace coke in an attempt to control blood sugar. Relieved that his all-knowing white coat was “green-lighting” Diet Coke, Mark was sucking down two liters a day, which meant he was eating massive amounts of aspartame.
Aspartame is a drug masquerading as an additive. It’s known technically as an excitotoxin. Mark’s insomnia was related to brain damage commonly caused by this family of molecules. When exposed to them, brain cells are literally excited to death. John Olney, MD, neuropathologist and world expert on excitotoxicity comments: “Aspartame can cause neurons to become extremely ‘excited’ and, if given in large enough doses, can cause the cells to degenerate and die.”
Once damaged, brain cells lack the ability to take part in and respond to the chemical cascade responsible for sleep. This is a complex pool of assorted chemical reactions involving gamma-amino butyric acid, adenosine, melatonin, serotonin, dopamine, and more. All work to shut the human body down while allowing for the production of cellular repair and antiaging hormones. Mark wasn’t getting the benefits of this sleep system, thanks to gobbling down his diet soda.
Once he stopped drinking the “toxicola,” Mark showed improvement within days. His anxiety smoothed out, his fear evaporated, and he began feeling like a normal human being for the first time in many years. He was closer to getting some relaxing sleep.
2. GET THE RIGHT EXERCISE
Get some vigorous exercise. This may be common sense, but most people, including Mark, miss this vital sleep link. Exercise is required for the production of key sleep activators known as cytokines. Once produced in response to exercise, these molecules trigger the simultaneous production of deep sleep and antiaging hormones like hGH as night falls.
A wimpy stroll in the park doesn’t count as exercise. When I say “vigorous,” I mean relative to your capability. Don’t kill yourself, but get your heart pumping for awhile. This may mean fast walking or jogging a few miles or a trip to the gym. Physical tiredness is absolutely essential to elicit the biological production of cytokines and the subsequent production of healthy hormones, courtesy of your body’s own pharmacy. Think “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” here. By the way, don’t exercise close to bedtime. It can be stimulating and keep you awake. More exercise tips can be found in chapter 11.
3. USE VALERIAN
Finally, use the natural knockout pill valerian. This single plant carries a mouthful of sedative compounds like valeric acid, valepotriates, acevaltrate, isovaltrate, and valtrate and the smelly, volatile oil containing valerenic acid. In addition to helping us sleep like drunken bums naturally, it has proven to be nontoxic, with absolutely zero addictive properties.76
Valerian treads close to pharmaceutical turf. It’s not only wildly effective and nontoxic, but it’s also extremely inexpensive. Therefore, many valerian studies shrug off its effectiveness. Most are nothing more than an arsenal of jargon to throw dust in the eyes of the populace. Don’t be fooled. Using valerian as I directed, Mark was able to slowly wean himself off Ambien. Most anyone could do the same. The American Journal of Medicine published the results of a large-scale review of all clinical trials done on valerian and sleep to date. Combining all the data led to this conclusion: “The available evidence suggests that valerian might improve sleep quality without producing side effects.”77
Once swallowed, valerian releases its sleepy molecules into the bloodstream where they are carried past the blood-brain barrier. Once in the brain, they enhance our natural ability to sleep without giving us a mental vasectomy. They simply enhance, rather than mimic, the molecules our body uses to induce sleep. When valerian is combined with exercise and the sunset, all those previously mentioned pathways and actions required for restful sleep are employed.
You could think of valerian as a natural sleep amplifier to our knockout switches (known technically as adenosine and GABA). When triggered, they “coach” our nervous system to begin the chemical cascade responsible for natural sleep. Unlike prescription drugs, valerian simply leverages our natural ability to fall asleep, rather than cutting off the supply to our own sleep molecules.
The proper way to take valerian as a sleep pill is to swallow it about an hour before your planned bedtime. You’ll want to take valerian root as a whole herb supplement product to get the entire array of naturally occurring compounds. For extreme problems with sleep, one 500-milligram capsule per 40 pounds of body weight will prove beneficial. (You’ll know if you’re taking too much if you don’t want to crawl out of bed.) As a regular supplement, one 500-milligram capsule per 100 pounds of body weight will help increase deep, REM sleep and the health benefits that come with it. More isn’t better here! If you take more than that, it will just get metabolized faster and leave you groggier in the morning.
After nearly a decade of sheer hell in dealing with aspartame poisoning, mental vasectomy, and insomnia, Mark is now sleeping normally and is well on his way to vibrant health. These three steps can help you do the same. Not only will you sleep like a drunken bum naturally, but you’ll also delay your expiration date.
THE OVER-THE-COUNTER NATURAL CURE TO POOR SLEEP
The Spring Valley Natural Valerian Root sold by Wal-Mart is my recommendation for a product that can effectively take you to the Land of Nod. I use it almost nightly, and it never ceases to make my head light and my eyes heavy. It costs as little as $5.00 per month. Spring Valley uses the roots and underground stems to formulate the active constituents into a potent, fast-dissolving gelatin capsule. They do not add any gluten, preservatives, or artificial colors or flavors to their product. My independent lab analysis showed it to be free of adulterants and excess fillers. Verification with the certificate of analysis can be found at my website www.overthecounternaturalcures.com.
I don’t have the testosterone of a thirteen-year-old girl anymore. My libido is rockin’ and my health trajectory is even better. I’ve slowed the aging process. That’s because I get more sleep and I’m not suffering from hormonal ignorance. Today, I don’t let anything get in the way of obtaining adequate sleep, which is nine hours or more, thanks to the use of valerian. And if I can sneak a nap in, I do. This has become habitual for me.
Your biological clock, or circadian cycle, controls the rise and fall of antiaging hormones that influence whether you feel awake or sleepy. Most people’s daily cycle has two dips of alertness, one after lunch and one after dinner. If your situation permits, listen to your body and sleep! You’ll have fewer waking hours of activity but lots more productivity. Not only will you wake up with more energy and mental clarity for the rest of the day, you’ll also be taking advantage of the best antiaging antidotes known to man, while avoiding excess stress and anxiety.
RELIEVE STRESS OF ANXIETY, BATTLE, AND MORE
Chuck got the call that no parent should have to endure. Standing in a Cape Coral, Florida, bookstore, he heard his cell phone ring. It was his daughter-in-law. “Chuck!” she screamed, “Charles is dead!”
“What the hell do you mean dead?” he yelled into his dangling earbud.
“He’s dead.” She cried hysterically.
Charles, Chuck’s son, had a three-year-old daughter and was pursuing his pilot’s license. But, twenty-four hours after Charles swallowed his prescribed dose of Vicodin and Xanax, his heart and breathing rate slowed. Soon thereafter, they came to a screeching halt. His wife and daughter found him lying on their couch, cold, stiff, nose bleeding, and mouth full of foam. That’s when Chuck received the frantic call.
Charles was following doctor’s orders. After a few minutes of explaining how he was short of breath during late-night panic attacks, how he felt tightness in his chest and a sense of dread, the doctor had handed him a prescription for Xanax (alprazolam), an antianxiety drug in the benzodiazepine class.
He didn’t tell him that Xanax can be as addictive as heroin. Each visit to the doctor was met with more prescription and drug cocktails. The pill popping didn’t last, nor did his life. Charles’ three-year-old daughter still asks, “Why didn’t Daddy wake up?”
This is not a rare case. Over the past decade, following doctor’s orders has killed and injured more than ten million people in America.79 Drugs purported to help with anxiety and depression are among the top culprits in the epidemic. There is a better way—valerian.
Valerian switches off our ability to react to and suffer from excess anxiety and stress. While it may not get our job or spouse back, valerian can help us cope without suffocating our nervous system or handcuffing us to an addiction. This benefit of valerian arose in England during World War II. Valerian was given to civilians and troops to relieve stress during air raids.
If valerian works with bombs raining down, Charles could have used it as a first line of defense to his anxiety. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan could also benefit from valerian rather than blindly taking the dangerous and addictive prescription drugs that are being doled out to relieve anxiety and battle stress.