Herbal Medicine and Traditional Approaches to the Treatment of Sleep Disorders - Pharmacological and Translational Evidence

Among the most common health issues worldwide, sleep disorders, and insomnia, in particular, have a strong effect on the everyday functioning, psychological wellbeing, and long-term cardiometabolic outcomes. Although traditional pharmacological treatment can be effective in many patients, its long-term application is often limited by side effects, tolerance, dependence, and symptomatic incompleteness. In a wide range of cultures, traditional therapeutic systems, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, Kampo, and other ethnomedicinal systems, have been traditionally used to improve the quality of sleep and reduce symptoms of insomnia. These modalities still remain popular in the modern day settings, particularly in integrative and complementary medicine. Still, their wider integration into contemporary healthcare is not as extensive as there are gaps in mechanistic knowledge, inconsistency of clinical evidence, safety issues, and difficulties with translational integration.This Research Topic takes a clinically grounded, practical view of insomnia and sleep disorders, recognising their overlapping nature and shared mechanisms, while remaining relevant to both research and clinical practice.Herbal and traditional medicines usually work through multiple components and pathways, and their effects are often broader than any single clinical category. Limiting the topic to one specific insomnia subtype would therefore not reflect how these therapies are actually used in practice, nor how they function biologically. Instead, this Research Topic encourages mechanistically informed, clinically grounded studies, inviting authors to clearly describe the sleep-related features or patient context under study while thoughtfully connecting traditional knowledge with modern pharmacology and translational research.We welcome contributions across experimental, clinical, and translational domains, including but not limited to:· Experimental studies (animal, cellular, or in silico) investigating sleep disturbance, insomnia, and related neurophysiological processes· Research on ethnomedicinal and herbal preparations influencing neurobiological pathways involved in sleep, mood, and stress regulation,· Studies linking sleep-promoting, calming, stress-reducing, or neuroprotective effects of herbal medicines to underlying mechanisms,· Clinical trials and observational studies evaluating herbal or traditional therapies for sleep disorders,· Translational research bridging ethnopharmacological knowledge, experimental findings, and real-world clinical outcomes,· Systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and critical overviews of herbal and traditional approaches to sleep disorders, highlighting knowledge gaps and future research directions,All submissions must adhere to best-practice guidelines for pharmacological studies on plant and fungal extracts and natural products, including the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology and the ConPhyMP statement (Front. Pharmacol. 13:953205). Detailed documentation of material origin, extraction, and processing is essential; manuscripts lacking this information will be desk-rejected. The full guidelines and ConPhyMP self-assessment tool are available at: https://ga-online.org/best-practice/. Topic editors: Mun Fei Yam, Ruiling Zhang, Morten Georg Jensen Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78665/herbal-medicine-and-traditional-approaches-to-the-treatment-of-sleep-disorders---pharmacological-and-translational-evidence