Praise Passionflower

I've always been a light sleeper, like my mother, and have slept with ear plugs for over half my life to dampen the noise of close-quarter city living. Ear plugs were a breakthrough. So was not eating dark chocolate more than two days in a row, a hard-learned lesson. The topic of this post is my latest bedtime breakthrough: Passiflora incarnata, aka passionflower.

The flowers and leaves of Passiflora incarnata drunk as a tea or tincture produce a relaxing and sedative effect and have been used in herbal medicine for at least 500 years. I first learned about passionflower from the Weedy Garden episode below.

Video sourced from YouTube here.

Curious, i bought some of the dried herb from my local bulk food store, and tried it for a week as an infusion (cup of tea) an hour before bedtime. It helped me fall asleep more quickly both at the start and middle of the night, but all that liquid also made me pee at night, so i switched to the extract, which only requires a 2--8 mL dose. I've been using it now for the last eight weeks and heartily recommend it.

As the Wikipedia article linked above says, Passiflora incarnata is generally safe, but it might induce contractions in pregnant women and might interact badly with sedatives, anticoagulants, and monoamine oxidase inhibitors.

Making your own passionflower extract is easy and much cheaper than buying it in shops. Here's a recipe taken from the book The Modern Herbal Dispensatory: A Medicine-Making Guide by Thomas Easley and Stephen Horne.

1. In a glass jar, mix 1 part (by weight) dried and finely cut Passiflora incarnata flowers/leaves with 5 parts (by weight) 50%-ABV alcohol.
2. Keep in a dark place and shake daily for 4 weeks.
3. Strain through a muslin cloth and put the finished tincture in a brown glass bottle.
4. Take 2--8 mL one hour before bedtime.

Sweet dreams.