I'm the daughter of an herbalist and grew up with herbal medicine. When used it should be treated like any drug - taken for a short time and then done.
I only use herbal remedies that are edible on any regular basis, like calendula, peppermint, etc, and only use non-edible herbals if they have been potentized according to homeopathic practice (small doses of 3x, 6x, 3c, etc). St. John's Wort is not what I would consider an edible herb and I didn't think it was safe except as a salve. If my goats can't eat it, I'm not gonna eat it.
Thanks so much for your comment SW! Goat's can be an excellent source of common sense! The problem is likely to get greater when people look for alternatives to prescription medicines, post-covid, when they have not be brought up with the knowledge they need.
That's true, although they can also eat Virginia creepers, so it's a mixed bag.
Oddly enough, natural almost needs to be approached with more respect, research and foreknowledge. Through several accidents (did you know hibiscus tea can lower blood pressure? I learned this the hard way), I have learned that the only case where natural = safe is true is with food, although even excess in that can cause problems.
Unfortunately , when people have bad experiences, those bad experiences are sometimes used against the causes of health freedom, and I would not want herbals regulated out of existence because they can be powerful and useful and should not be controlled by ignorant and profit-minded bureaucracies.
Another problem people may face is the source of the herbal remedy. Because supplements are unregulated, the consumer has to go through extra steps to make sure the product is safe and grown appropriately by investigating the practices of the company. Herbal products can be contaminated or may not contain what they claim to contain. However, what you had sounds like St. John's Wort. The homeopathic of St. John's Wort is called hypericum, which is used primarily for nervous disorders and nerve damage. A rule that applies to botjh homeopathy and herbals is that they can cause whatever they treat.
While I am unlikely to use material St. John's Wort except in a salve, I use homeopathic hypericum all the time because it helped with symptoms from my vaccine injuries when I was a child. However, I have been using homeopathy for 15+ years, and I can take any of the different potencies, whereas people new to homeopathy are often more sensitive to it. Unfortunately people who try homeopathy (sadly true of other alternatives as well) go out and immediately get the most powerful one they can find and then take it too often. People often expect a dramatic and immediate response of some kind because they are used to the way they feel from pharmaceuticals.
In the words of Samuel Hahnemann, "The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles."
And I'm truly sorry for what happened to you. The things that have helped me are often attacked and I get upset because the bureaucracies are very smug whenever someone is injured over an herbal remedy and are always eager for any excuse to take away access for everyone.
Such a well thought out and informed comment - many thanks, SW! I always turn to Mother Nature as the first port of call when trying to understand these things. This is something going into my next book for Wiley:
“The Paradigm Shift
The suggested approach begins with the assumption that a person is a hugely complex system, the internal workings of which are way beyond our understanding. Health is determined by the body that Mother Nature bestowed upon us at birth. The less interference there is with Mother Nature’s creation, the better. If illness does come our way, the body has its own way of dealing with it in the majority of cases, if left to its own devices. Hence the doctor’s Hippocratic Oath: “Primum non nocere” or "First, do no harm."
We assume that a clinician’s role is to focus initially on maintaining the health and wellbeing of prospective patients, aimed at preventing health issues. If a person’s health does not appear to be resolved by the body, diagnosis of a possible illness is the next stage. The quality of that diagnosis rests with the clinicians and the diagnostic tools available to them. The importance of advances in the diagnosis of disease is therefore paramount. A remedy for a patient is useless if they do not know they have a condition that needs medical attention.
Following diagnosis of a health condition, doctors normally have treatment alternatives. If the diagnosis uncovers lack of one or more vitamins or minerals, then a functional medicine route would likely be most appropriate. That will allow a treatment regimen to be identified and the patient’s progress monitored. An excellent text that covers this topic in depth is The Diagnosis and Treatment of Common Functional Illnesses.
If intervention with a medicine is considered appropriate, the clinician might suggest an over-the-counter remedy, or prescription drug. The drug may be licensed to be used for the indication, or it could be prescribed off-label if the clinician believes a drug could be effective, based on clinical experience (off-label means that the drug is not approved for the indication).
The clinician is most likely to prescribe a drug off-label if it has a long and strong history of safety. As happened during COVID, off-label prescribing of existing generic small molecule products, such as Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, became widespread, but these products were not approved for the indication. That would prevent many clinicians having sufficient confidence to copy peers prescribing off-label. However, a clinician may have a database of real-world data and evidence to support the decision. That evidence could be a valuable resource for other clinicians and could lead to a previously unknown treatment being available under product license.”
There really has been a remarkable paradigm shift toward working with nature and the body. When I was a kid 'holistic approach' or 'supplement' were practically bad words.
if that would be the case you would not be the only one! and I am sure what you said is nonsense :) there is absolutely no way st Johns could have done this to healthy person!
St. John's wort can be obtained in many forms: capsules, tablets, tinctures, teas, and oil-based skin lotions. Chopped or powdered forms of the dried herb are also available. Most products are standardized to contain 0.3% hypericin.
of course this could not have been from St. John's wort! it was coincidence! feeling depressed is very common symptom before stroke! it could have well been that it saved you from bigger disaster, although that seems unlikely but this is so beyond any proof :)
"Hyperforin is present in an amount of approximately 5% of the dry weight in the flowers and leaves of Hypericum perforatum, but, due to its chemical instability, the content of hyperforin in improperly dried products might decrease drastically"
John's wort may have these benefits: Muscle relaxant. It's used to ease menstrual cramps. Mild tranquilizer.
St. John’s wort reaches peak plasma concentrations in approximately 4 hours and has a half-life of approximately 9 hours. There is disagreement as to the relative clinical effectiveness of St. John’s wort despite evidence of an antidepressant action in mild to moderate depression. In some studies it rivals fluoxetine. Some of this variation may result from poor quality herbals or outright frauds sold as St. John’s wort. Commonly noted side effects include gastrointestinal upset, fatigue, dizziness, dry mouth (but less than with other antidepressants), and restlessness. The drug seems to be relatively free of the typical autonomic side effects associated with TCAs. Rare, but possibly dose-related, toxicities are phototoxicity and cataract formation.
Drug interactions are a concern with St. John’s wort and can result from multiple mechanisms. Hyperforin induces P450 isozymes (e.g., CYP3A4), synthetic enzymes (e.g. uridine 5′-diphosphoglucuronosyl transferase), and multidrug-resistant protein (e.g., p-glycoproteins). At higher than therapeutic doses, St. John’s wort may block MAO-A and MAO-B.
you could have been vommiting from this, but stroke would have happened this way or the other way, dehydration maybe helped a bit, but st. Johns is not doing this to healthy people, your stroke was already in you
Yes Transcriber B - it was horrible. The company was very supportive however, and the drug, frovatriptan, was eventually approved by FDA. Things have got very much worse in drug development these days, I'm sad to say :O(
This is really interesting for me. My husband suffers from vestibular migraine for which he takes a beta blocker as a preventive and triptans as treatment. We take lots of supplements; one of them being ‘sea buckthorn’. We got the latest batch from a company who advertise using words such as ‘gold standard’ and ‘pure’, 100%unrefined, and the product was from Russia. My husband started to get more attacks of vertigo and vomiting and it wasn’t until we went on holiday when we were lighter on the supplements, that I started to wonder if they were causing his attacks. After being back home for three days - and two attacks later, I threw them away. The company states the product is 100% wild grown, therefore no pesticides or herbicides, but that there could just conceivably be some cross-contamination from other oils produced from the same production plant. I wanted to know what was triggering his attacks, and that just maybe, by identifying that trigger, we could reduce or eliminate them.
Thanks for the comment, Margaret - your husband has been having a tough time - so sorry to hear that. As you have worked out, promotional words mean nothing when it comes to medicines - the more oulandish they are, the worse they probably are. I'm not an expert on drug interactions, but I do know it's a minefield. In my experience, it's the patients themselves who have to find out the hard way. It doesn't help either that supplements are not regulated for good manufacturing practice. Hope you get to work it out, and maybe other subscribers would have some ideas?
You are very welcome Laura. The same applies to buying drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine from unknown sources over the internet. Countefeit and adulterated drugs have been rampant in the pharmaceutical supply chain for at least 15 years - I tried to advise people of that during the plandemic, but not sure how many listened.
The solution is not more regulation which becomes susceptible to corruption. It’s better education. I’m an herbalist and alternative practitioner of 35 years. If you want to use herbs, reading an ad and then gov8ng it a try is the worst way to go. See someone trained in some alternative diagnostic skill set as well as when and how and then how long to use an herb or herbal formula. In my practice people often came in with a sack load of drugs and supplements and they did not always leave with any herbs from me. Not until we had weaned off and worked out a schedule for eliminating unnecessary drugs; redid the supplement use; started dietary changes; and looked at other reasons for disease causes than those declared by some lab which then wants you to buy a drug to manage. Much of the time the “scientific” cause of disease is just plain wrong.
We don’t need a nanny state to manage our more foolish tendencies. We need to educate ourselves and learn to use trained and educated practitioners outside of a system that is clearly broken and often wrong. Your story is indicative of poor judgement in your part vs a need for corruptible regulations and standards. The herbal industry does have some problems regarding adulteration and corrupt sales of things that aren’t what the bottle says is in there. Based on our Oates vaccine fiasco, so do regulated, supposedly standardized drugs. You would be best served to go find a granny who has used her repertoire of herbs from her garden for various things. Or take some herbal courses from the many reputable teachers in our country. Or just a read a few books on herbal medicine within the context of a system of some sort that diagnoses and then teaches their use.
the possibility is also that you could have suffered the same issue even without taking st. Johns wort......we can not know this, can we? :) we can only speculate what has happened. these things happen on their own, and feeling depressed! is very usual sign before any stroke!
This is a great story. There are so many well meaning physicians in the freedom movement selling spike detox formulas and herbal remedies with the assumption they work and are safe.. So far there is no proof as they are going on preliminary findings.. One well known individual in the freedom movement is blind in one eye as a result of taking a spike support formulation. Hopefully this individuals eye issues will resolve over the next few months.
I'm the daughter of an herbalist and grew up with herbal medicine. When used it should be treated like any drug - taken for a short time and then done.
I only use herbal remedies that are edible on any regular basis, like calendula, peppermint, etc, and only use non-edible herbals if they have been potentized according to homeopathic practice (small doses of 3x, 6x, 3c, etc). St. John's Wort is not what I would consider an edible herb and I didn't think it was safe except as a salve. If my goats can't eat it, I'm not gonna eat it.
The main problem is of dosage and ignorance.
Thanks so much for your comment SW! Goat's can be an excellent source of common sense! The problem is likely to get greater when people look for alternatives to prescription medicines, post-covid, when they have not be brought up with the knowledge they need.
That's true, although they can also eat Virginia creepers, so it's a mixed bag.
Oddly enough, natural almost needs to be approached with more respect, research and foreknowledge. Through several accidents (did you know hibiscus tea can lower blood pressure? I learned this the hard way), I have learned that the only case where natural = safe is true is with food, although even excess in that can cause problems.
Unfortunately , when people have bad experiences, those bad experiences are sometimes used against the causes of health freedom, and I would not want herbals regulated out of existence because they can be powerful and useful and should not be controlled by ignorant and profit-minded bureaucracies.
Another problem people may face is the source of the herbal remedy. Because supplements are unregulated, the consumer has to go through extra steps to make sure the product is safe and grown appropriately by investigating the practices of the company. Herbal products can be contaminated or may not contain what they claim to contain. However, what you had sounds like St. John's Wort. The homeopathic of St. John's Wort is called hypericum, which is used primarily for nervous disorders and nerve damage. A rule that applies to botjh homeopathy and herbals is that they can cause whatever they treat.
While I am unlikely to use material St. John's Wort except in a salve, I use homeopathic hypericum all the time because it helped with symptoms from my vaccine injuries when I was a child. However, I have been using homeopathy for 15+ years, and I can take any of the different potencies, whereas people new to homeopathy are often more sensitive to it. Unfortunately people who try homeopathy (sadly true of other alternatives as well) go out and immediately get the most powerful one they can find and then take it too often. People often expect a dramatic and immediate response of some kind because they are used to the way they feel from pharmaceuticals.
In the words of Samuel Hahnemann, "The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles."
And I'm truly sorry for what happened to you. The things that have helped me are often attacked and I get upset because the bureaucracies are very smug whenever someone is injured over an herbal remedy and are always eager for any excuse to take away access for everyone.
Such a well thought out and informed comment - many thanks, SW! I always turn to Mother Nature as the first port of call when trying to understand these things. This is something going into my next book for Wiley:
“The Paradigm Shift
The suggested approach begins with the assumption that a person is a hugely complex system, the internal workings of which are way beyond our understanding. Health is determined by the body that Mother Nature bestowed upon us at birth. The less interference there is with Mother Nature’s creation, the better. If illness does come our way, the body has its own way of dealing with it in the majority of cases, if left to its own devices. Hence the doctor’s Hippocratic Oath: “Primum non nocere” or "First, do no harm."
We assume that a clinician’s role is to focus initially on maintaining the health and wellbeing of prospective patients, aimed at preventing health issues. If a person’s health does not appear to be resolved by the body, diagnosis of a possible illness is the next stage. The quality of that diagnosis rests with the clinicians and the diagnostic tools available to them. The importance of advances in the diagnosis of disease is therefore paramount. A remedy for a patient is useless if they do not know they have a condition that needs medical attention.
Following diagnosis of a health condition, doctors normally have treatment alternatives. If the diagnosis uncovers lack of one or more vitamins or minerals, then a functional medicine route would likely be most appropriate. That will allow a treatment regimen to be identified and the patient’s progress monitored. An excellent text that covers this topic in depth is The Diagnosis and Treatment of Common Functional Illnesses.
If intervention with a medicine is considered appropriate, the clinician might suggest an over-the-counter remedy, or prescription drug. The drug may be licensed to be used for the indication, or it could be prescribed off-label if the clinician believes a drug could be effective, based on clinical experience (off-label means that the drug is not approved for the indication).
The clinician is most likely to prescribe a drug off-label if it has a long and strong history of safety. As happened during COVID, off-label prescribing of existing generic small molecule products, such as Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, became widespread, but these products were not approved for the indication. That would prevent many clinicians having sufficient confidence to copy peers prescribing off-label. However, a clinician may have a database of real-world data and evidence to support the decision. That evidence could be a valuable resource for other clinicians and could lead to a previously unknown treatment being available under product license.”
There really has been a remarkable paradigm shift toward working with nature and the body. When I was a kid 'holistic approach' or 'supplement' were practically bad words.
Sorry to here that happened to you I took st John's wort years ago for a few months I felt it was ok Sorry again
It's all about the quality of the manufacturer c m - thanks for your kind words :O)
if that would be the case you would not be the only one! and I am sure what you said is nonsense :) there is absolutely no way st Johns could have done this to healthy person!
St. John's wort can be obtained in many forms: capsules, tablets, tinctures, teas, and oil-based skin lotions. Chopped or powdered forms of the dried herb are also available. Most products are standardized to contain 0.3% hypericin.
of course this could not have been from St. John's wort! it was coincidence! feeling depressed is very common symptom before stroke! it could have well been that it saved you from bigger disaster, although that seems unlikely but this is so beyond any proof :)
"Hyperforin is present in an amount of approximately 5% of the dry weight in the flowers and leaves of Hypericum perforatum, but, due to its chemical instability, the content of hyperforin in improperly dried products might decrease drastically"
John's wort may have these benefits: Muscle relaxant. It's used to ease menstrual cramps. Mild tranquilizer.
St. John’s wort reaches peak plasma concentrations in approximately 4 hours and has a half-life of approximately 9 hours. There is disagreement as to the relative clinical effectiveness of St. John’s wort despite evidence of an antidepressant action in mild to moderate depression. In some studies it rivals fluoxetine. Some of this variation may result from poor quality herbals or outright frauds sold as St. John’s wort. Commonly noted side effects include gastrointestinal upset, fatigue, dizziness, dry mouth (but less than with other antidepressants), and restlessness. The drug seems to be relatively free of the typical autonomic side effects associated with TCAs. Rare, but possibly dose-related, toxicities are phototoxicity and cataract formation.
Drug interactions are a concern with St. John’s wort and can result from multiple mechanisms. Hyperforin induces P450 isozymes (e.g., CYP3A4), synthetic enzymes (e.g. uridine 5′-diphosphoglucuronosyl transferase), and multidrug-resistant protein (e.g., p-glycoproteins). At higher than therapeutic doses, St. John’s wort may block MAO-A and MAO-B.
you could have been vommiting from this, but stroke would have happened this way or the other way, dehydration maybe helped a bit, but st. Johns is not doing this to healthy people, your stroke was already in you
Thank you for sharing your story. What a dreadful thing to have happen!
Yes Transcriber B - it was horrible. The company was very supportive however, and the drug, frovatriptan, was eventually approved by FDA. Things have got very much worse in drug development these days, I'm sad to say :O(
This is really interesting for me. My husband suffers from vestibular migraine for which he takes a beta blocker as a preventive and triptans as treatment. We take lots of supplements; one of them being ‘sea buckthorn’. We got the latest batch from a company who advertise using words such as ‘gold standard’ and ‘pure’, 100%unrefined, and the product was from Russia. My husband started to get more attacks of vertigo and vomiting and it wasn’t until we went on holiday when we were lighter on the supplements, that I started to wonder if they were causing his attacks. After being back home for three days - and two attacks later, I threw them away. The company states the product is 100% wild grown, therefore no pesticides or herbicides, but that there could just conceivably be some cross-contamination from other oils produced from the same production plant. I wanted to know what was triggering his attacks, and that just maybe, by identifying that trigger, we could reduce or eliminate them.
Thanks for the comment, Margaret - your husband has been having a tough time - so sorry to hear that. As you have worked out, promotional words mean nothing when it comes to medicines - the more oulandish they are, the worse they probably are. I'm not an expert on drug interactions, but I do know it's a minefield. In my experience, it's the patients themselves who have to find out the hard way. It doesn't help either that supplements are not regulated for good manufacturing practice. Hope you get to work it out, and maybe other subscribers would have some ideas?
If a product has a claim, the claim should be provable and fit for purpose. Basic quality control.
Can't say any fairer than that, Charles!
Thanks Hedley, this is an excellent case report
You are very welcome Laura. The same applies to buying drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine from unknown sources over the internet. Countefeit and adulterated drugs have been rampant in the pharmaceutical supply chain for at least 15 years - I tried to advise people of that during the plandemic, but not sure how many listened.
The solution is not more regulation which becomes susceptible to corruption. It’s better education. I’m an herbalist and alternative practitioner of 35 years. If you want to use herbs, reading an ad and then gov8ng it a try is the worst way to go. See someone trained in some alternative diagnostic skill set as well as when and how and then how long to use an herb or herbal formula. In my practice people often came in with a sack load of drugs and supplements and they did not always leave with any herbs from me. Not until we had weaned off and worked out a schedule for eliminating unnecessary drugs; redid the supplement use; started dietary changes; and looked at other reasons for disease causes than those declared by some lab which then wants you to buy a drug to manage. Much of the time the “scientific” cause of disease is just plain wrong.
We don’t need a nanny state to manage our more foolish tendencies. We need to educate ourselves and learn to use trained and educated practitioners outside of a system that is clearly broken and often wrong. Your story is indicative of poor judgement in your part vs a need for corruptible regulations and standards. The herbal industry does have some problems regarding adulteration and corrupt sales of things that aren’t what the bottle says is in there. Based on our Oates vaccine fiasco, so do regulated, supposedly standardized drugs. You would be best served to go find a granny who has used her repertoire of herbs from her garden for various things. Or take some herbal courses from the many reputable teachers in our country. Or just a read a few books on herbal medicine within the context of a system of some sort that diagnoses and then teaches their use.
the possibility is also that you could have suffered the same issue even without taking st. Johns wort......we can not know this, can we? :) we can only speculate what has happened. these things happen on their own, and feeling depressed! is very usual sign before any stroke!
This is a great story. There are so many well meaning physicians in the freedom movement selling spike detox formulas and herbal remedies with the assumption they work and are safe.. So far there is no proof as they are going on preliminary findings.. One well known individual in the freedom movement is blind in one eye as a result of taking a spike support formulation. Hopefully this individuals eye issues will resolve over the next few months.
hahaha no he is blind becasue of covid 19 and not becasue taking some spike support formula, that has done nothing for that covid 19