Having a cue to fall asleep from my body was a definite benefit from taking Sentra PM. It’s something I hadn’t regularly been getting from my body previously. I think that’s something a lot of people don’t understand about chronic fatigue; it seems a strange concept to be tired but not necessarily ready for sleep. So it was nice to have this normal feeling restored. As a result, I also found I began to fall asleep much quicker too.
A review of Sentra PM: A medical food used to manage sleep disorders
I first became aware of medical foods as a treatment for fibromyalgia a few months back via an online webinar, which had been promoted on social media. I was immediately intrigued. As much as I have moved forward in my recovery from fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, I have this niggling feeling that there is more to the story.
I was interested to see if medical foods would be a piece that fitted into my chronic illness puzzle… but I was hesitant. Did I really need to add another supplement to my health care regime? And would medical foods compliment what I already take? I felt unsure and so I put the idea on pause.
I always like to think things happen for a reason, so when an email popped into my inbox a few weeks later asking if I would like to try Sentra PM*– a medical food designed to help improve sleep– I felt like it was meant to be.
I still had my reservations of course but thankfully my questions were answered by the team at Targeted Medical Pharma. I was told that the amino acids in Sentra PM would help to improve neurotransmitter production and could actually enhance the effects of many of the supplements I already take.
Below is my review of Sentra PM and I also have a 20% discount code should you wish to purchase medical foods for yourself. Disclaimer : medical foods are intended to be used under the supervision of a medical professional. Always consult your doctor prior to beginning a new supplement or treatment.
What are medical foods?
A medical food, as defined in section 5(b)(3) of the Orphan Drug Act (21 U.S.C. 360ee(b)(3)), is “a food which is formulated to be consumed or administered enterally under the supervision of a physician and which is intended for the specific dietary management of a disease or condition for which distinctive nutritional requirements, based on recognized scientific principles, are established by medical evaluation.”
Medical foods are FDA regulated products that address the nutritional requirements or metabolic deficiencies of a particular disease. They are essentially a form of natural medication designed to help patients safely and effectively manage a chronic disease.
Medical foods have been used in clinical practice for over a decade and are prescribed by hundred of MDs in the states today. As the name suggests, all ingredients in medical foods are found naturally in food. There have been multiple clinical trials proving their efficiency over naproxen, ibuprofen and tazodone. You can find a list of clinical references here.
What is Sentra PM?
Sentra PM is a medical food that provides your body with the amino acids that are required to achieve and maintain high-quality restorative sleep. It is non-addictive, is regulated by the FDA and has been clinically shown to reduce the time it takes to fall asleep. In a double-blind clinical trial, people taking Sentra PM fell asleep 60% faster over a 14 night period.
The amino acid formulation found in Sentra PM are the precursors to the neurotransmitters GABA, serotonin, acetylcholine and glutamate. These are the neurotransmitters that are required for restorative sleep.
My experience with Sentra PM
I began taking Sentra PM back in April. I started by taking one capsule for a couple of nights and then, on noting no difference, increased to two capsules. With hindsight, I probably should have stuck to one capsule for longer and built up to two capsules more slowly as I did experience a couple of side effects initially.
I personally found that these side effects were milder than what I’ve previously experienced from traditional medications and they were also temporary and short-lived. For around one week I experienced occasional mild headaches, drowsiness in the mornings and I was generally more tired overall.
With hindsight, I could have reduced the dose so these subsided but I decided to ride it out and sure enough, these side effects disappeared and I experienced no on-going problems.
During those first few days, I tried taking the capsules earlier in the evening to see if this would alleviate the grogginess I was feeling in the mornings. However, I soon realised that shortly after taking a dose of Sentra PM my body was giving me cues that it wanted to go to sleep. I, therefore, found the best time to take the capsules was actually just before bed.
Having a cue to fall asleep from my body was a definite benefit from taking Sentra PM. It’s something I hadn’t regularly been getting from my body previously. I think that’s something a lot of people don’t understand about chronic fatigue; it seems a strange concept to be tired but not necessarily ready for sleep. So it was nice to have this normal feeling restored. As a result, I also found I began to fall asleep much quicker too.
Although my sleep scores from my ResMed S+ didn’t necessarily improve overall, I did notice my dreams became more vivid and I remembered them easily the next day. I can only assume that– even if the duration of REM sleep didn’t improve– the quality of my REM sleep had.
During the time I took Sentra PM, I also noticed I was functioning a little better in the daytime. This was a subtle change but I felt my health was more stable and that I was consistently having better days. I even managed my trip to Copenhagen far better than I imagined I would and this was during the time I was taking Sentra PM.
Despite all of the above, I felt a bit 50/50 towards Sentra PM. Like I mentioned– other than falling asleep quicker– my sleep scores hadn’t improved. As the improvements I felt had been subtle, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Sentra PM was truly helping or whether it was a coincidence? Could I have just been going through a phase of feeling better regardless?
It saddens me to say that money came into my decision process. It’s not that Sentra PM itself is an expensive supplement but rather I questioned if I could justify continuing with a supplement I felt 50/50 on, especially given I already spend a considerable amount each month on supplements. I decided the only way to know if it was helping for sure was to stop taking it and see if I noticed a difference.
Things then became muddied because I began hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). If you are an email subscriber you will know the result of that, but to cut a long story short I had to stop treatment and I have been feeling really unwell, plus more fatigued and in more pain since having HBOT (read my update here).
Frustratingly, I have been slow to overcome this setback,. It’s gone more than two weeks now since I stopped HBOT and I still haven’t got back to the level I was at prior to treatment. Previously a setback would have only taken me a couple of days at most to overcome.
I was having a discussion with my mum and we were both feeling a bit down about my situation as things had been so stable beforehand. She asked if anything else had changed beyond the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The only other thing that had changed in my routine is that I had stopped taking Sentra PM.
I’ve therefore made the decision that I want to continue with Sentra PM and I’m also going to try adding Sentra AM into my health regime as well to see if it will help to combat my fatigue. In order to take Sentra AM and PM I am having to stop taking SAM-e as sadly I can’t afford to take them all. But I am hoping that Sentra AM and PM will replace the need for SAM-e.
I think I need to remember that change happens slowly over time and improvements are generally subtle and gradual. A month probably wasn’t a long enough time for a fair assessment but it is promising that I saw an improvement in how I felt during that time. I am hopeful that with continued use I will see further benefits from these supplements.
I’m currently eagerly awaiting the delivery of Sentra AM and Sentra PM and I hope they will help me get back on track and back to how I was feeling previously. If you suffer from fibromyalgia I would recommend trying medical foods to see if they help to alleviate your symptoms. They are a safe alternative to traditional medications (and may even be able to be used alongside your current medication).
If you would like to try medical foods for yourself, you can find information on each product (that you can print off to present to your doctor) here. You can purchase medical foods directly from store.medicalfoods.com.
At the time of writing this review, a month’s supply of Sentra PM retails at $45 (approx. £30). I have very kindly been given a discount code for you to use should you wish to try medical foods. For a 20% discount, use the code DONNA20 at checkout.
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* I was kindly sent a month’s supply of Sentra PM from Targeted Medical Pharma on the basis that if I liked the product I would write a review providing my honest and unbiased feedback. All opinions are 100% my own and I intend to continue purchasing this product for myself.
In this analysis, the HF band was measured at midnight as baseline. We then measured 5 minute epochs at 15 minute intervals until 5 am with 20 epochs measured. Each of these epochs was compared to the midnight baseline for each subject. This was expressed as a percent change for each epoch. The sum of the 20 epochs was computed for each subject at baseline and at day 14. The sum of the 20 epochs has been termed the circadian index. Thus, for each of the 111 subjects, we analyzed approximately 17,000 beats estimated at a heart rate of 80 for these measurements. A total of 1,860,000 beats were analyzed for this analysis. The number of beats of each epoch as a sum at baseline was compared to the same measurement at day 14. The data of the delta was statistically compared.
Introduction
Restorative sleep is essential for a variety of central nervous system functions including mood, memory and cognition. 1 , 2 Sleep impacts feelings of depression and perception of pain. 3 – 12 Circadian rhythms initiate and induce the stages of sleep as well as promote wakefulness. Sleep is controlled by a series of neurotransmitters including serotonin and acetylcholine which are produced from their amino acid precursors tryptophan and choline. Cycling neurotransmitters determine the sleep stages including phase IV delta and REM sleep. 13 – 19 Adequate production and timely release of these neurotransmitters are necessary for the production of sleep cycles.
Many sleep inducing agents interfere with the reuptake of neurotransmitters, leading to an increase of neuron concentration in the cleft with concurrent intracellular depletion of neurotransmitters including serotonin and acetylcholine. Side effects of sleep medications include depression, daytime somnolence and memory impairment. They may also reduce or abolish REM sleep. Trazodone was chosen for this study as it is the most commonly prescribed sleep aid in the United States even though the primary indication is for depression.
The stages of sleep and circadian autonomic nervous system function can be evaluated using high resolution 24 hour ECG analysis. Parasympathetic autonomic nervous system function is assessed by focusing on the high frequency (HF) band of the heart rate variability signal. In normal subjects, parasympathetic activation and slowing of the heart rate occurs at the initiation of sleep and increases prior to awakening. The activation of the parasympathetic system during sleep should slow the heart rate which becomes more rapid with REM activity. This methodology objectively assesses changes in sleep cycles. The 24 hour ECG recording, in either the time or frequency domain, is established method for assessing autonomic nervous system activity. 20 – 27 In the time domain, two measurements are most commonly used. Total HRV is measured by SDNN, parasympathetic activity by the RMSSD and sympathetic activity by the fill in. In the frequency domain, sympathetic activity is measured by the low frequency band. The high frequency band is a pure parasympathetic autonomic nervous system measurement with no overlap to other sympathetic influences. 23 , 24 , 28 – 35
We recently described nutritional modification of autonomic activity by providing amino acid precursors and other agents to trigger timed release of neurotransmitters associated with sleep cycles and pain syndromes. Our group demonstrated that co-administration of neurotransmitter precursors with a pharmaceutical drug can preserve or enhance the efficacy of a medication at the lowest FDA approved dose. 36 , 37
Medical foods 49 are a distinct FDA regulatory category different from single molecule chemical pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements. The FDA has regulated amino acid preparations as drugs since the 1940s because they can elicit pharmacologic effects similar to conventional single molecule pharmaceuticals. The best known amino acid preparations are used to treat conditions such as maple syrup disease. An official definition and categorization of medical foods was made in 1988 as part of the Orphan Drug Act. Medical foods are regulated similarly to drugs except they do not require preapproval because their ingredients are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) and their claims are confined to the nutritional management of a specific disease. Medical food claims must be supported by recognized scientific data as determined by medical evaluation. There has been growth in the number of medical foods and in their clinical applications.
The medical food used in this study contains precursors to serotonin and acetylcholine in a patented system that promotes amino acid uptake and neurotransmitter release. The concentrations of amino acids are provided in low milligram doses. Sentra PM promotes specific neurotransmitter production. The amino acid precursors in the formulation augment neurotransmitters proven to be deficient in patients with sleep disorders. Serotonin and acetylcholine initiate sleep, elicit REM sleep and promote delta sleep. 38 – 43 Serotonergic activity increases during wakefulness and is necessary to induce sleep and serotonin deficiencies that lead to insomnia.
Serotonin is also involved in wakefulness. Acetylcholine activity is crucial in promoting REM sleep and agonist or supplementation leads to increased REM sleep. The precursor 5-hydroxytryptophan is converted to serotonin to initiate sleep; choline is converted to acetylcholine, bursts of which are essential for REM sleep.
The preparation is a patented five component system to (1) provide a neurotransmitter precursor, (2) stimulate uptake of the amino acids before deamination, (3) trigger neurotransmitter release, (4) a system to relieve the adenosine brake which slows neurotransmitter synthesis and release, (5) polyphenols to prevent receptor up regulation. The five part system allows for a substantial reduction of the neurotransmitter precursors used in the amino acid preparation and prevents attenuation. 44
In addition, acetyl-l-carnitine may lead to nausea, vomiting, headache, restlessness, dry mouth, stomach upset, or a fishy odor.
How Does Sentra PM Work?
This formula contains amino acids, which influence mood largely by increasing levels of key neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin. It may decrease anxiety levels, promote better mood, and improve sleep related to these issues.
In addition, some ingredients reduce the inflammation that could be contributing to poor sleep, and others slow down the central nervous system. In addition, Sentra PM contains antioxidants, which promote health and a strong immune system.
Improvements in daytime sleepiness determined by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), improvement in cognitive and emotional function using the Cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire – short (CERQ-Short), change in PTSD symptoms with the Primary Care – PTSD (PC-PTSD), Psychopathy Checklist- Military (PCL-M). Heart rate variability (HRV) data variation will be measured in a group of twenty subjects.
Sentra PM – Physician Therapeutics’ Targeted Pain Sleep Aid?
Sentra PM is medicinal food supplement designed to help you get the amino acids you need to hit healthy levels of rejuvenating sleep. The supplement is non-addictive and has been regulated by the FDA.
It is clinically shown to reduce the effort and time needed to fall asleep. The claims are backed by double blind clinical trials and people who take Sentra PM fall asleep 60% faster than those who don’t. The study was done over a two-week period.
How Does Sentra PM Works?
The amino acid, formulation found in Sentra PM are natural precursors to the powerful substances GABA, Serotonin and Acetylcholine as well as Glutamate. The neurotransmitters are essential for healthy, restorative, rejuvenating sleep.
Basically, the sleep aid helps you fall asleep faster, improve the quality of sleep and optimizes the central nervous system for nighttime activity so during the day you benefit from better pain relief. Improved sleep is important because studies have shown that chronic sleep loss will lead to higher pain sensitivity during the day. Sleep loss creates a type of dysfunction in the central nervous system that is directly related to pain.
Chronic pain will lead to a depletion of essential amino acids and the needed neuro transmitters your body needs to maintain healthy, natural sleep. Sentra PM provides your body or more specifically the central nervous system with needed minerals and nutrients needed to hit deep levels of rest and sleep.
It has the amino acids that will promote deep, healthy and restful sleep. Sentra PM is in no way addicting so it is more attractive than many of the harsher prescription medications.
Sentra PM is all natural and FDA approved as well. It is a dietary sleep management system designed to help with sleep disorders basically. It’s specifically designed for people with depression, PTSD and fibromyalgia.
There are 60 capsules in each bottle of the substance and it can be taken at bedtime. You’ll need to take the supplement for 3 months of continuous use to see the true benefits of the supplement.
There is a prescription required to get Sentra PM, but it’s said to be far less harmful to the body and mind than other prescription sleep aids. Plus, it’s non-habit forming which is always a plus.
The medication gives the body the right tools needed to hit deep levels of healthy sleep. And to fall asleep faster as well as stay asleep longer. Sentra PM addresses the main problem that keeps most people awake at night. And that is the increased metabolic requirements that causes most anxieties and sleep disorders.
The best part is it is done through nutrition, specifically the need for specific amino acids and uses the patent that makes Sentra PM unique. It works fast and the benefits grow over time.
There are no severe side-effects so it’s ideal for anyone who needs help with sleep. The only downside is, that even though the company claims there is no grogginess or chances for addiction some patients would argue otherwise. Although the arguments are not common, some people do claim tolerancebuild up leads to a need for higher doses which can be considered a form of addiction.
What Ingredients Are In Sentra PM?
The ingredients are a proprietary blend of amino acids, developed specifically to help with production of different neurotransmitters directly related to sleep. The ingredients are generally recognized as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.
To be recognized as safe and fit into the GRAS area, a substance must be clearly distinguished from a food additive on the basis that it is a substance for a specific intended use and is considered safe on all grounds. There can be no levels of toxicity, and it must be considered safe for widespread use.
A lot of ingredients in Sentra PM have already been determined by the FDA to be GRAS in the past. So, overall, the substance itself falls into that category.
Where Can I Buy Sentra PM?
You can order Sentra PM on the company website at targetedpain.com. And right now, for a limited time you can order it and save 30% on your purchase.