Tapering self slowly off valium

[mothermold]

Would green or chamomile tea aid my brain in producing it's own natural GABA?

[Paxiled]

While much research is ongoing about probiotics and their connection to mental health, the effect on GABA will be extremely slight if you're suffering from an existing illness.  It won't be valium, and it will take a long time to manifest any improvement if at all, given they don't yet know which organisms are responsible for this connection.  Yoghurt does not generally contain any live organisms; it is more a prebiotic, a food for probiotics, although some very good companies found in health foods stores do add in some live organisms after pasteurization, which destroys the organisms used to culture the milk.  It's a great area for ongoing research and is a very hot research item and bodes well for the future, but it isn't responsive to the question asked, which is how to replicate valium without taking it in someone with an anxiety disorder right now.  Good info, and useful, but to the poster, don't expect by taking a supplement you'll get the effects of taking a benzo or an herb directly targeting GABA.

[gymdandee]

A proof-of-concept study found that women who regularly ate yogurt containing beneficial bacteria had improved brain function compared to those who did not consume probiotics.
Research has also shown that certain probiotics can help alleviate anxiety by modulating the vagal pathways within the gut-brain; affecting GABA levels; and lowering the stress induced hormone corticosterone.
What you eat can alter the composition of your gut flora. Specifically, eating a high vegetable, fiber based diet produces a more beneficial composition of microbiota than a more typical Western diet high in carbs and processed fats.
Limiting sugar, eating traditionally fermented foods, and taking a probiotic supplement are among the best ways to optimize your gut flora and subsequently support your brain health and normalize your mood.
The featured proof-of-concept study, conducted by researchers at UCLA, found that probiotics actually altered participants' brain function. The study enlisted 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55 who were divided into three groups.
The treatment group ate yogurt containing several probiotics thought to have a beneficial impact on intestinal health, twice a day for one month
Another group ate a fake product that looked and tasted like the yogurt but contained no probiotics and the Control group ate no product at all.
Before and after the four-week study, participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, both while in a state of rest, and in response to an emotion recognition task.
For the latter, the women were shown a series of pictures of people with angry or frightened faces, which they had to match to other faces showing the same emotions.
"This task, designed to measure the engagement of affective and cognitive brain regions in response to a visual stimulus, was chosen because previous research in animals had linked changes in gut flora to changes in affective behaviors," the researchers explained.
Compared to the controls, the women who consumed probiotic yogurt had decreased activity in two brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation:
The insular cortex which plays a role in functions typically linked to emotion (including perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience) and the regulation of your body's homeostasis, and the somatosensory cortex, which plays a role in your body's ability to interpret a wide variety of sensations.
During the resting brain scan, the treatment group also showed greater connectivity between a region known as the 'periaqueductal grey' and areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with cognition. In contrast, the control group showed greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion- and sensation-related regions.
The fact that this study showed any improvement at all is remarkable, considering they used commercial yogurt preparations that are notoriously unhealthy; loaded with artificial sweeteners, colors, flavorings, and sugar. Most importantly, the vast majority of commercial yogurts have clinically insignificant levels of beneficial bacteria. You would be better off making your own yogurt from raw milk especially if you're seeking to address depression through diet.
SOURCE:  Dr. Tillisch

[Paxiled]

No.  Nor do you want to do this while you're tapering off the valium -- you want to successfully complete this process before naturally working on GABA.  When you're done tapering and past all withdrawal effects, if you want to naturally increase GABA, taking GABA supplements won't do it -- they seldom pass the blood/brain barrier.  So you take the things the body uses to manufacture GABA, primarily taurine and B6.  There are many herbs that have an effect on GABA like benzos do only with obviously much less strength.  The best is probably kava, but it may have some ill effects on the liver in its standardized form.  I'm not convinced by the small number of cases, but if you want to avoid that just take it in its non-standardized form -- Eclectic Institute makes a good kava juice in a capsule.  Passionflower is a good overall systemic relaxant.  Valerian, hops, lemon balm, a host of herbs really at least in part target GABA.  It's also good to work on your adrenals, and ashwagandha is the one that most approaches one that works on GABA.  Holy Basil works more on cortisol, as do most adaptogens, which is what is produced by the adrenals that makes us have anxiety attacks.  A good primer on this is Natural Highs by Hyla Cass, a psychiatrist at UCLA.  There are a lot of good combinations that might work for you; Serenity by GAIA, for example.  Lots to learn here.