| smithclayriley |
01-30-2009 05:15 AM |
St John's Wort is effective after all
I was surprised when I read that St John's Wort was actually effective. It was hyped for a while and then I read it was ineffective. Another case of "big pharma" lying to make money. The makers of Zoloft, who are huge in anti-depressant sales is the guilty party. Wow, the more you read the more it says to me........go natural if you can. Think of the money you will save until the Government gets involved and they are well on their way to that end.
Hypericum, the active ingredient in St John's wort, appears to be an effective mood-brightener and anxiolytic - by today's standards at least. Its side-effect profile and efficacy in mild-to-moderate depression compares favourably with its synthetic counterparts. Hypericum's blend of serotonin-reuptake inhibiting and (mild) MAO-inhibiting properties (not a combination otherwise to be explored with potent synthetics: the risk of the potentially fatal serotonin syndrome is too great) contributes to - without wholly explaining - its generally benign effects. Once again, much more research is needed, preferably not bankrolled by the makers of lucrative competing products. Thus a German trial published in the British Medical Journal in February 2005 reported that a proprietary standardised extract of hypericum/St John's wort was more effective and a better tolerated treatment of moderate to severe depression than the SSRI paroxetine (Paxil). This runs counter to the negative findings of the 2001 U.S. trial sponsored by the makers of the SSRI sertraline (Zoloft) - which concluded that for moderate to severe depression, St John's wort was no better than a placebo. Faith in the integrity of biological psychiatry would be greater if the single strongest predictive factor in the outcome of any published clinical trial wasn't the identity of the funding body. A Cochrane Review published in October 2008 found that hypericum extracts used to treat major depression had similar efficacy to standard antidepressants but fewer side-effects.
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