Posted by bleauberry on June 28, 2018, at 14:17:00
In reply to Re: Paxil not as good as St Johns Wort in this study, posted by Christ_empowered on June 27, 2018, at 17:29:49
> I've considered SJW. ssri and ssnri drugs make me very apathetic and oddly...moody, too. Not good. my limited experience with tca drugs has been...not so great, although they do help agitated depression.
Yeah all meds did that to me but SJW didn't.
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> are there any currently available extracts I can actually trust? I'm big on vitamins, but I"m wary of herbals. what about drug-drug interactions?I don't know. There is a professional brand used in clinical studies available on the market. But honestly, the best response I ever had was from a cheap bottle I bought at Walmart or Rite Aid. It was standardized but it was a cheap brand. I actually had more difficulty with the more expensive brands.
I think the thing with SJW is it needs time. The usual 6-8 week thing is no good. Herbs have dozens of chemicals and dozens of mechanisms - SJW does reuptake inhibition, mild MAOI action, anti-inflamatoruy, anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-biotic, anti-pain, wound healer, burn healer, and a lot more. Herbs tend to work gradually and build up over time. For example if there was no response at 6 weeks, there could be remission at 12 weeks. You gotta stick with it and at some point maybe try a different brand if things aren't going as planned.
As a Lymie I had great difficulty getting started on SJW. Very sensitive. I had to start with half a pill, and over several weeks worked my way to 3 pills, and even then I felt bad, headaches, nervous, more depressed. But I somehow hung in there. And then whammo one day in the 8 week area I just popped into feeling totally normal almost overnight.
With the benefit of hindsight I can see clearly that feeling more depressed in early treatment, and feeling the sensitivity side effects, that was Herxheimer reaction (Lyme die-off). My best guess is that as soon as the population levels of lyme bacteria, viruses or fungi were lowered enough by SJW, it was at that point I felt good.
My personal opinion is that it is not the reuptake or the maoi that works against depression, but rather, all the other stuff SJW does - antimicrobial , anti-inflammatory, pro-neuroprotection, pro-healing of damaged nerves.
Drug-herb interactions can happen because SJW inhibits the CYP3A4 liver enzyme. Any med which is metabolized by that enzyme will likely have increased blood levels in the presence of SJW.
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> Thanks. :-)
poster:bleauberry
thread:1099311
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20180521/msgs/1099326.html