St John’s Wort and Prozac Compared

St John’s Wort is used as a medicine since antiquity; the Greeks called it Hypericon and placed it above a picture (hyper = above; icon = picture), warding off nefarious spells. It has been used to treat everything from burns to dysentery and breathing problems. The herb blooms around June 24, St John’s day, hence its name.

Researchers have done a comparative study of extract of the plant as opposed to placebo (meaning a compound that has no pharmaceutical ingredients at all and therefore has no physical effect on the patient) and a wide range of old and new antidepressants. It included the newer SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor) drugs, namely Prozac and Seroxat. In what was billed the most thorough study of the plant ever, scientists have found that it is just as effective as Prozac at suppressing depression. But like all pharmaceutical products it treats the symptoms and doesn’t cure the illness.

It can be foreseen that besides the pharmaceutical zombie drugs, more people will become addicted to the herbal extract in the mistaken believe of it being healthier than its artificial cousins. It has to be stressed here that herbal remedy though it is, it is still a drug and should not be taken except in dire need. Otherwise it becomes just another of mother’s little helper to drug individuals into senselessness like alcohol, dope, and all the fine pharmaceutical products to zombie millions. I therefore subscribe to the move of the Irish government to make this herbal drug prescription only in 2000. Everything else is just fuzzy thinking so common in business and politics nowadays that we really are in a mess.

The experts are not sure how the plant suppresses depression, but most believe it does it by keeping serotonin in the brain for longer. Serotonin is a chemical linked to positive moods. Overall, the effects of the plants extract was comparable to pharmaceutical drugs in its effectiveness but had fewer side effects than the artificial drugs; a nightmare for pharmaceutical marketing managers who depend on selling follow-up products to treat the side effects.

The study done at the Centre for Complimentary Medicine in Munich pooled data from 29 independent studies involving 5,489 patients to come to its findings. It has to be said, though, that these studies were undertaken with a standardised extract from St John’s Wort, and that products available on the market show a widely divergent quality in content and effectiveness covering the whole range from excellent to deplorable.

The extract has become a popular alternative to antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat. It is estimated that 2 million Britons are addicts consuming the drug in capsule, liquid or tea bag form. They constitute a small minority compared to the drug junkies on Prozac, Seroxat, or other zombie drugs.

Doctors have been admonished not to prescribe zombie drugs to under-18s because of many suicide incidents having a direct relation to the intake of one or the other of the zombie drugs. Pretending various reasons for not following on that rule, it is quite obvious that pharmaceutical companies still manage to look after their own very efficiently.

SSRI also have an effect on unborn babies who are as a direct result born with defects such as cleft palates and heart problems. St John’s Wort was also found to interfere with the effectiveness of contraceptive pills. It follows, that taking such a product on your own initiative is highly risky.

The whole study complex did not address the real issue that would have been interesting for millions of drug addicts. What will heal depression? If the money from these fruitless researches could be put to good use, then there would be found a way to secure the healing of depression instead of its suppression by drugs, herbal or artificial.

If you want to get rid of your depression, get the book Depression Free in Seven Weeks, and throw out all those junk drugs after you have changed your eating and drinking habits to what this American PhD recommends.