Valerian: what the evidence actually shows

Reviewer and governance status are shown on each atomic claim below.

What it is

Valerian is tracked as a health intervention in this evidence graph. Also known as: valerian root, Valeriana officinalis, valeriana.

Studied forms and doses

No form-specific catalog record is available. This does not mean all forms are equivalent.

sleep: 300–600 mg; form not reported.

Mechanisms

Mechanistic plausibility is context, not proof that a clinical outcome improves.

No structured mechanism is recorded.

⚠ Safety in context

No interaction or contraindication record is modeled for this intervention. This is an unknown coverage state, not evidence that none exists.

Products and verification

No product label snapshot is mapped in this released catalog. Ingredient evidence does not establish any bottle’s identity, potency, purity, availability, or value.

Evidence by outcome

sleepgrade Clow certainty— evidence is genuinely mixed: some low-quality trials report small improvements in subjective sleep quality, but the most rigorous reviews find no significant difference from placebo. Considered safe; not reliably effective.

People say · Evidence shows

“valerian is a natural sleeping pill”

aheadmodestfolk

Grade history

2026-07-16C → CCorrection by Claude (valerian evidence reconciliation): live Postgres source drift replaced with the verified seed source set [pmid-1714523 details →
2026-07-16C → CCorrection by Claude (gold-standard provenance sweep): live Postgres source drift replaced with the verified seed source set [pmid-17145239] details →

Re-review cadence: every 6 months (Grade C+) · next scheduled by 2027-01-16 · methodology v1.

By outcome — the money pages

Valerian for sleep — Grade C, low certainty

Compare

Is Valerian hype?

sources: PMID:17145239 · PMID:17517355

Cite this page

Citation is encouraged. The proposed reuse license is CC-BY-4.0; status: pending-governance-ratification.

Plain-text citation

Substrate. Valerian: what the evidence actually shows. https://evidencebased.info/interventions/valerian. Updated 2026-07-16.

BibTeX

@misc{substrate_nterventionsvalerian,
  author = {Substrate editorial},
  title  = {Valerian: what the evidence actually shows},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://evidencebased.info/interventions/valerian},
  note   = {evidencebased.info}
}