Valerian Root Dosage for Sleep, by Preparation
The dose of Valerian, Valeriana officinalis, for sleep is 2 to 3 grams of the dried root in infusion, or 2 to 5 millilitres of a 1:5 tincture in 60 percent alcohol, or 300 to 600 milligrams of a standardised dried extract, taken thirty minutes to an hour before bed, with a second dose earlier in the evening for the person who is tense before bedtime. These are the figures the Commission E, ESCOP, and the British Herbal Pharmacopoeia record, and the working herbalists use them. Valerian is a nervine relaxant and mild sedative, warming and drying, and it suits the cold, tense, restless sleeper better than the hot one, in whom it can excite instead of calm.
The plant
The part used is the rhizome and root, dug in autumn of the second year and dried, when the characteristic smell of isovaleric acid develops; the fresh root is nearly odourless. The constituents that matter are the valepotriates, which are unstable and largely lost in a dried root and a tincture, the sesquiterpenes of the essential oil, valerenic acid among them, and a group of lignans and amino acids. The tradition holds that no single constituent accounts for the effect and doses the whole root.
Culpeper gives Valerian to Mercury and lists it for the head and nerves. Galen, Dioscorides, and the medieval herbals knew it as phu, and used it for the bladder and for cramps more than for sleep; the sedative use rises in the eighteenth century and is settled by the nineteenth. The Eclectics gave it for the nervous restlessness of the person who is exhausted, and Weiss describes it as the sedative of the German tradition. Its energetics are warm and dry; its actions are nervine relaxant, sedative, antispasmodic, carminative, and hypotensive.
Dose by preparation
| Preparation | Strength | Dose for sleep | Dose for daytime tension |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dried root, infusion | 2 to 3 g per cup, steeped covered fifteen minutes | one cup, thirty to sixty minutes before bed | one cup, up to three times daily |
| Cold macerate | 2 to 3 g in a cup of cold water, six to eight hours | one cup before bed | the same |
| Tincture | 1:5 in 60 percent alcohol | 2 to 5 ml before bed | 1 to 3 ml, up to three times daily |
| Fluid extract | 1:1 in 60 percent alcohol | 0.5 to 2 ml before bed | 0.3 to 1 ml, three times daily |
| Standardised dried extract | 3 to 6:1, usually 0.8 percent valerenic acid | 300 to 600 mg before bed | 100 to 200 mg, three times daily |
The cold macerate preserves the volatile constituents that a hot infusion drives off and gives a stronger preparation from the same weight of root; it is the older method and the one the Commission E lists beside the infusion. The tincture is made at 60 percent alcohol because the oil needs it, and a folk tincture in 40 percent vodka is noticeably weaker. Doses are given as single evening doses because valerian's use for sleep is a use at bedtime, and a person who takes it steadily for two to four weeks reports more from it than one who takes it once; the monographs agree that the effect builds.
Whom it suits
Valerian is for the sleeper who is cold, tense, and wound tight, who lies awake with the muscles braced and the mind running, and for the person whose sleeplessness comes with cramping, palpitations, or a nervous stomach. In a hot, flushed, agitated person it can produce the opposite of its intention, a restlessness and headache the herbalists have long noted, and Matthew Wood's practice gives such a person a cooling relaxant, Passionflower, Passiflora incarnata, or Lemon Balm, Melissa officinalis, instead. A few people are excited rather than calmed by valerian at any dose, and for them it is simply not the plant. Hops, Humulus lupulus, is the classical partner for sleep and is paired with valerian in the German preparations; Skullcap, Scutellaria lateriflora, is the partner for the mind that will not stop.
Cautions and interactions
Valerian adds to the sedatives: benzodiazepines, the sleeping drugs, barbiturates, opioids, and alcohol deepen and lengthen its effect and it theirs, and it is stopped before anaesthesia for the same reason. The monographs list no other interaction of consequence. It is not given to children under three, and the literature gives no dose in pregnancy or lactation, so it is not used there. Its smell is not a fault. A morning heaviness after a large evening dose means the dose is reduced, and a person who has taken valerian nightly for months tapers rather than stops.
Not medical advice.