Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is Frontier Co-op Organic Valerian Root.  Before we continue due to the content below I have to give a disclaimer, I am not a doctor, I don’t even pretend to be one on TV.  While I am a life time user of herbs, I am also not a certified herbalist, nothing I am about to say should be seen is medical or nutritional advice.  It is just my personal experience.

So about two years ago I set out to create a “bed time tea”, my goal was a tea that would set the mind at ease and get you to sleep fast.  I built this tea on valerian root for many reasons.  You can find a wide range of Valerian’s uses at Web MD, chief among them though are insomnia and relaxing muscles and relieving aches and pains.

Now there are a ton of teas out there with Valerian in it, but I like to mix my own teas, simply put buying herbs in bulk saves money and you can make custom blends.  Last week I mentioned in my interview with herbalist Cat Ellis that I had a “night time tea that tasted like gym socks but would knock you flat out” and that resulted in a ton of requests for the recipe.

So I decided to feature Valerian today and give away that recipe, all but one ingredient can be purchased at Amazon, I’ll give a few sources for it in the P.S. below.  Note that the parts below are by volume, not weight…

• 3 Parts Valerian Root
• 3 Parts Damiana leaf
• 2 Parts Passion Flower
• 2 Parts Peppermint
• 1 Part Mugwort
• 1 Part Rose Peddals

I make this tea at about 2 heaping tablespoons to the cup, note that this doesn’t taste good.  Frankly it isn’t that bad, I am setting the expectation bar low however, unlike my other teas you are not drinking this one for the flavor.  I do sweeten this one with honey.

I can’t explain this but if you want this tea to work my best results seem to come from going to bed within 30 minutes or less of consuming it. If you wait much longer the effects seem to change to relaxed but alert.  However, if you go strait to bed you generally crash and sleep solid though the night, at least I do.

It also for me seems to increase the vividness of my dreams.  Note that I am a long time student of lucid dreaming and have trained myself to recognize dreams and awaken within them.  This is beyond the scope of this review but there is lots of info online about doing it.   I will talk just a tiny bit about it in today’s on air IOTD segment.

So if you want to give this a try, you can simply mix it up and give it a go, but I will caution that I take no regular medications and I don’t know what interactions these herbs could have with pharmaceuticals.  So please check with your doctor before using these are any herbs if you have any physical conditions or side effects.  Again I am not a doctor or certified herbalist, I am not giving medial advice, I am just telling you my personal experiences.

So check out Frontier Co-op Organic Valerian Root today.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com

P.S. – The herb you can’t get on Amazon for some reason is Damiana Leaf.  You can make the tea without it, it will still work.  That said it is a wonderful herb that in my view really enhances this tea.  If you skip the Damiana increase the Valerian to 4 parts to rebalance the recipe a bit.

• Sources of Damiania
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  • Source One
  • Source Two

P.S.S.  – Here is a simplified recipe if you just want to give it a try without all the other herbs.  Go with 2 parts of Valerian to 1 part of mint.  This will be a quite sedative tea and aid in falling asleep for many people.  Again I recommend hitting the pillow no more than 30 minutes after consuming it.