I can tell you this....I have never used an antidepressant that worked as well as St. John's wort. I have never used an antidepressant that had as few side effects as St. John's wort. And I went off it, thinking I didn't need it, and it never worked the same way again.

There are two big strikes against herbal treatments. One, herbs are completely unregulated *in the United States*. Other countries have brought in regulations that force herbs to be marketed under similar quality-assurance provisions as those for pharmaceutical drugs, but only the U.S. market (among major Western governments) remains totally unregulated. Why?, you might ask. Follow the money. The pharmaceutical companies are the only ones who could profit from the lack of credibility that unregulated herbs now possess; it is currently not even a crime to sell an herb with no active ingredients (i.e. outright fraud), except for the civil crime of fraud itself. Heard of any prosecutions for herb fraud lately? It could probably be a RICO case.

The second challenge for herbs is a media system that is controlled by money. I remember the headlines that ensued when a JAMA article found no effect in a study of SJW against treatment-resistant depression. The thing is, the active comparator, Zoloft, also had no effect whatsoever. I think that was bigger news, but you only heard about the SJW. I could show you that this particular study was meaningless, but I don't want to waste too much time here. But, consider this: two recent studies had SJW beating established SSRI meds in head-to-head trials, but I bet you didn't hear a whimper about them. Here's SJW beating Prozac: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=16160619 And, here's SJW beating Paxil http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=15708844

I bet you didn't ever hear about those studies.

The biggest issues for using SJW effectively are: a) finding a quality product; and, b) taking a high enough dose.

As I mentioned, quality products are not necessarily the norm in the United States. Kira and Perika are German pharmaceutical grade products, and HBC Protocols is an American pharmaceutical grade product. Kira is the one that beat Prozac.

The other thing is dose. There is no known overdose syndrome to worry about. The "standard" dose of 900 mg/day SJW may not be enough for all people, just as the 20 mg/day standard dose of Prozac is often not enough. I saw one study where people received 22,000 mg/day SJw (not a typo), with the only adverse effect noted being sun sensitivity. So, if you try SJW, treat it like any other drug. Start low, and slowly increase the dose until either one of two endpoints is reached: a) you have achieved remission from depression; or, b) side effects are intolerable. The most common side effects of SJW are digestive upset, headache, and malaise. These are usually mild, and fairly quickly disappear. Also, sun sensitivity may occur, but everyone uses sunscreen already, right?

SJW has recently been shown to produce at least 2 distinct and novel antidepressant effects. It is not like any other antidepressant out there. You should also realize that SJW is a powerful modulator of liver enzyme activity. It can cause oral contraceptives to fail, for example. It has the exact opposite to the grapefruit effect, so if you take a med that is affected by grapefruit, SJW will do the opposite. I'll help anyone understand that part better, if you have specific questions.

I recently wrote a fairly detailed post on the subject, with many many abstracts included. If you check it out, and have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.su...e=source&hl=en

Lar