For quite a number of preparations of herbal/natural origin in pharmacies or shops, claims are made that they have anxiolytic and/or sedative-hypnotic properties. Your textbook (Katz) discusses a number of these preparations in Chapter 64. Use that information together with a search on the internet and compile a brief report on the use of these alternative medicines in the treatment of anxiety and insomnia. You may use any search engine (e.g. Google) and keywords such as “botanicals” and “anxiety” and “insomnia”. 

The clinical use of botanical agent for the treatment of anxiety and insomnia is risky, because their safety and efficiency are not always well studied. There is a lack of adequate testing for the drug interactions with botanical agents. This is a time consuming and costly task because there are hundreds of active and inactive agent that has to be tested.

There is also a misconception about botanic agents, that it is relatively safe to use. This may not always be the case adverse effects may not always be reported and thus not always be updated. Enough clinical trails may not have been done to establish all the side effects and drug interactions.

Here is a few example of botanical agents that is used for anxiety and insomnia.

Ginseng, a herb that is frequently used in traditional Chinese medicine to improve mood and keep healthy in the western world, thus it helps to overcome anxiety. Its mechanism of action is to increase the levels of NE and 5-HT in the brain and to inhibiting the reuptake of monoamine.

Another drug that helps for anxiety and insomnia is Peony, a portion of the root of the Paeonia lactiflora Pall (Ranunculaceae). Icariin in Epimedium herbs suppress the elevation of corticosterone concentration when a person is stressed this force the patient to be less stressed (Lei, 2015).

Other agents was on the marked but is now classified as a risk to use, because of the lack of clinical studying, for example Kava-kava that was used for anxiety as well as Jin Bu Huan that was used to treat insomnia is both prone to cause hepatotoxicity.

This you should advise a patient to take exactly the doses that is prescribed on the insertion and if they experience any side effects thy should report it to help improve the safety of the products.

Reference list

Lei L., Changhong L., Yicun W., Pu W., Yuxin L., Bingjin L.  2015.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4790408/  Date of access 20 March.  2021.