The latest study (5/24/05) on St John's Wort says that it may be effective for mild to moderate depression, but that it may not be effective for severe depression, and that it also may mot be effective over the long haul.
Every month a new press release seems to surface about this herb. Last month a new study said it should be a preferred treatment for major depression. Each wave of publicity is just another salvo in a hidden war between Big Pharma- the major drug companies- and the alternative health industry. At stake is the eleven (11) billion dollar anti-depressant market.
So one month St. John's Wort appears to be better than pharmaceutical anti-depressants, without the side effects. The next month St. John's Wort fails to measure up... The latest study says St. John's Wort is minimally effective against major depression, though some news outlets have expanded that statement to depression in general. The study says that the herbal anti-depressant was shown to be barely better than placebos. Of course no one mentioned that many studies have found pharmaceutical antidepressants to be barely better than placebos.
Eleven billion dollars is a lot of money, and it would be naive to assume that the interested parties are not protecting their territories. The main way they do this is by funding scientific studies, and then interpreting and publicizing the results when those results seem to support their product claims.
There have been hundreds of studies of St. John's Wort, and plenty of meta-studies sifting through the results of the other studies. I do not mean to impugn the integrity of these different studies or the researchers involved, but the bias often created by funding is well known, and the various interpretations of results can be quite confusing for the general public.
The real underlying political machinations are even darker, having to do with international treaties and legal wrangling in Europe and in the World Trade Organization. The fight is not just over the validity of different solutions, but over who will control those solutions. In the meantime, in the U.S. the press regularly publicizes conflicting stories about herbal medications.
The main effect of all these studies is to confuse people, and when people are confused they tend to become conservative in their choices. That is partially why there are so many studies.
What You Need To Know:
Whether an antidepressant treatment is pharmaceutical or natural, any patient trying the treatment for the first time needs to work with their prescribing doctor or licensed health care professional to be sure that the product is the right one for them. No product, including a natural one, works the same for everybody. The prudent choice is to find out what works for you though supervised experimentation. That is exactly what good psychiatrists do with newly diagnosed patents... try recommended solutions and then adjust them as needed until they have a protocol that works for the individual. That's the kind of care you should seeks out for natural antidepressants as well.
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