Herbal Vegan Woman

I thought I’d tell you now about some things I don’t take for depression. These are things I used to take, that work great for depression, but the side effects were too much for me and I had to stop taking them. Other people might not have the same experience with the side effects, so I thought I’d make a list of them.

St. John’s Wort
I used this for a few years on and off. I took 1/6 the recommended dose on the bottle. It said to take two pills three times a day. I took one pill a day. It was supposed to start working in a few weeks. For me it started working in a few days. It was great. It lifted my mood. But after a while I noticed a mild headache, constant. The headache grew worse over the weeks/months. Ginger could take the edge off of it. I didn’t want to take ibuprofen or acetaminophen daily, though. Also over a few months it made me more and more agitated. Anxious. It gave me insomnia. Those are all symptoms of serotonin syndrome, where the body has an overload of serotonin. I was taking the teeniest amount of St. John’s Wort, but it was still building up in my body and causing these symptoms. I also gained a little weight with it, and found it impossible to lose even a pound when I was taking it. Very frustrating. So I stopped taking it. I took it during three different time periods, for a few months or even a year at a time, with a year or two between each phase of taking it. So I know it was the St John’s Wort that caused these symptoms. It’s unfortunate because it really was great for the depression!

Blessed Thistle
This one is fantastic for depression. It worked fairly quickly, I felt the effects the first day I took it. I took one 380 mg pill per day. Not a lot of people seem to know about this as an herb for depression. Susun Weed in her book Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year says it helps with depression. Every herb has other effects, however, and blessed thistle is also an appetite stimulant. It gets the digestive juices going. I could tolerate that for a while, it was mild at first, but the effect grew. Like it was building up in my body. I became so ravenously hungry I’d feel like I was starving right after I ate a meal. I stopped taking it, and my appetite returned to normal. Another effect is that it is energizing, so I took it in the morning instead of the evening, and that worked well. It also is a liver cleansing herb, which made my skin clearer and healthier looking. Less acne, less blotchiness, etc. It made my skin somehow smoother. Other liver cleansing herbs have that same effect on me (yellow dock, burdock root), so I still have that nice side effect. But the excessive hunger thing made me stop taking this one. I even bought a tincture so I could take a really microscopic dose, but I didn’t have the patience to try it. That might work, though, taking a smaller dose.

There you have it. I think my body is really sensitive, and these herbs might not bother another person as much as they bothered me. I think I would use them again, short term, in the future if I ever needed to.

Bye for now. ~Me.