Valerian: what the evidence actually shows

Reviewed by Substrate editorial, Independent research collective · 2026-07-16

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

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Reuse under CC-BY 4.0 with attribution to evidencebased.info.

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}
}