25-03-2012, 11:12 AM
I found a good review on the effects of hops on sleep. Most of what's in it, I already wrote here, but it does say something new about how hops affects the Central Nervous System. It binds to serotonin receptors:
http://omicsgroup.org/journals/JSDT/JSDT-1-e102.php
but the reference cited
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15636177
is a study on a hops-valerian mixture of herbs, so it's not certain that it's really the hops that is binding to the serotonin receptors.
Binding to a receptor is one thing, activating it is another. So if hops would bind to the serotonin receptor without activating it, that could explain why it's depressing. I've never heard of valerian being depressing, though. So maybe I should try that to prevent depression from hops.
http://omicsgroup.org/journals/JSDT/JSDT-1-e102.php
but the reference cited
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15636177
is a study on a hops-valerian mixture of herbs, so it's not certain that it's really the hops that is binding to the serotonin receptors.
Binding to a receptor is one thing, activating it is another. So if hops would bind to the serotonin receptor without activating it, that could explain why it's depressing. I've never heard of valerian being depressing, though. So maybe I should try that to prevent depression from hops.