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One Smell to Cure Insomnia
Why You Can Reach for Lavender
It shouldn't be this way. Insomnia is the most common sleep complaint, but we still don't know enough about it. Often, sleep-deprived people yawn their way through the months and years, without any real answers. In this respect, every little bit helps. Some things help, such as drinking valerian-root tea, developing a sleeping routine, avoiding stimulants, cutting down on stress or trying melatonin supplements, but the frustrating thing is that sometimes nothing truly works. You still wake up at 2:00 a.m. and can't get back to dreamland. Wide awake and nowhere to go. Well, there's some news on the horizon, as researchers decided to address this often-overlooked issue and see if the smell of lavender-one of the hallmarks of aromatherapy- could help people beat insomnia.
They turned to this style of treatment because conventional hypnotic drugs have "potential for serious adverse reactions." They decided to look more closely at lavender oil, which has been proposed as useful by smaller-scale and unsubstantiated evidence. Researchers used sweet-almond oil as placebo, and the lavender oil was used in a special device that diffused the smell into the air. A total of 10 volunteers, five men and five women, completed the month-long study. Lavender led to an improvement in overall insomnia-and, importantly, whether or not people believed in complementary and alternative medicine did not matter. (Sometimes, study volunteers want to believe that something works.)
The researchers noted that women and younger adults experienced the best improvement. Aromatherapy is a branch of herbal medicine. In essence, it's a different way of using plants rather than taking them in supplement form. Lavender is far and away the beststudied and most reliable "essential oil" in aromatherapy. You can likely find it in any health store. Follow package directions. Two new studies have discovered that insufficient levels of vitamin D can lead to two things. One is poor blood-sugar control among people with type 2 diabetes. The other is an increased risk of developing "metabolic syndrome." This condition means that a person has several risk factors for the heart. On the diabetes front, researchers found that more than 90% of 124 patients had vitamin-D deficiency or insufficiency. Only six percent were taking vitamin-D supplements, showing that these pills might be of great use to diabetics. The other study found that of 1,300 adults over 65, nearly half were deficient in vitamin D, and 37% had metabolic syndrome. These are just more examples of the power of the world's most important disease-preventing nutrient.
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