Are there natural sleep aids?

Often it is already effective enough to pay attention to sleep hygiene. This includes:

• Early rise in the morning, even if you didn’t sleep much.
• No sleep during the day (Power Naps are taboo)
• No consumption of stimulating substances (such as caffeine) after a certain time
• The bed only for sleeping, hanging on the sofa
• Don’t go to bed too soon
• Sufficient physical activity during the day

It takes several days/weeks until sleep hygiene shows its effect. If this is not enough, medicamentary help comes into play.

Valerian calms the nerves. However, this is not effective enough for medically relevant sleep disorders. Because sleep is exactly a chemical process in the brain. If one wants to influence this artificially it needs ergo substances that intervene in this process (psychopharmaceutical).

There is a wide range of drugs used in sleep disorders. Classic sleeping agents originate from the group of benzodiazepines (e.g. lorazepam) and Z-drugs (e.g. zolpidem). These act very admissible and have close to no side effects. However, the problem of these drugs is that they make it difficult to rely on when used too frequently.

For the longer-term medicamentous treatment of sleep disorders, medicaments of other active substance groups are, so to speak, intended to be alienated. It is therefore possible to utilize the sleeping side effects of certain antidepressants (for example Mirtazapine), antipsychotics (for example Quetiapine) or H1 antihistamines (for example hydroxyzine). These drugs do not depend, usually have more side effects.

In principle, all effective sleeping agents are prescribed. There are exceptions, however. For example, the H1 antihistaminic agent is diphendydramin apotheken- but not prescription-only. It is the strongest freely available sleeping agent, but compared to the prescription medicines the effect is moderate. Diphenhydramine is generally well tolerated.

Hope you could help.