Does St Johns Wort actually work for anxiety and depression?
St. John’s Wort has some mild anti-depressant effects. Mild being the key word here. It was only somewhat effective in MILD cases of depression. The GP probably mentioned this since you were complaining about Paxil, which as far as anti-dpressants go, is pretty mild in the ’emotionally numbing’ effect. I’m on Paxil as well and this emotional numbness is disconcerting sometimes, but there isn’t really an alternative that works as well as it does for me. I’ve tried Zoloft (same effect, but stopped working after several years), and a few others (Wellbutrin and Effextor kept me from sleeping, probably because of the norepinephrine reuptake inhibition… or so I guess). St. John’s Wort will probably do the same thing, but the problem is that the active ingredient in any of the products is not a controlled dosage. So when you take two pills of this stuff one day and two pills the next, you may get different dosages. Or even different dosages between Lot #s. They don’t have to QC herbal suppl
