Do you occasionally take Valium? I bet you know people who do? People take it โonly occasionallyโ during plane travel, or when sleep is really being a nuisance.
However Valium,ย akaย Diazepam, is actually not good for sleep, or stress, or anxiety. At all.
Valium belongs to a class of chemicals called benzodiazepines, which are used as both tranquillisers and sleeping pills. These substances were greeted in their day as revolutionary. At the height of its immense popularity,ย Valium was said to account for a whopping one-quarter of all new prescriptions written in USA!
The job of a benzodiazepine is to activate the brainโs GABA receptors โ which provides a sedative effect for stress, sleep and anxiety.
Interestingly, studies in Europe showed certain peptides (proteins) in cowโs milk also activate the brainโs GABA receptors. This is why good olโ fashionย Ayurvedic Golden Milk,ย just like grandma used whip up for you, and which is now a fad (however hipsters are replacing cows milk with other โmilksโ which donโt have these peptides), is a potent sleep tonic and stress reducer.

But back to Valium. It is now known:
- It isย addictive.
- It producesย sleep irregularitiesย of its own (interfering with stages of sleep).
- Seriousย withdraw symptomsย occur after prolonged use.
- Studies in the UKย show it produced dramatic negative changes in humanโsย micro-biome.
- Valium out-competes the bodyโs own neuro-chemicals and takes over their receptor sites. This kind of interference confuses the nervous system which actuallyย worsens anxiety and stressย in the long run.
- The monocytes of the immune system are attracted to valium,ย affecting the immune systemย and adding more confusion in the body as unknown messages are being sent into the immune system. This is very risky in a time where cancer incidents are on the rise and having a strong immune system is vital.
- Valium is the second most deadly drug inย Scotland, responsible forย 32 percentย of drug-related deaths in 2011.

Nature has already provided our bodies with an exact internal analogue to Valium, which means that we are clumsily reproducing something that already exists in nearly perfect form.
Ayurveda teaches us how to awaken our natural bio-chemical, hormonal and enzyme function, proper immune function and nervous system stability.
If you attempt to duplicate natural events with a drug, the results are nowhere near as precise, orderly, and beautifully orchestrated. In fact, they are chaotic.
Related video:ย The Vedic View On Drugs by Maharishi Thom Knoles

