Best quality St Johns Wort

Hello, I’m looking for information regarding St Johns Wort and I’m hoping the good people of permies may be well placed to offer me some advice 🙂

My Wife’s doctor is trying to push a drug called citelopram (might have spelling wrong) which we are both unsure about. I am reading that SJW would be a good alternative to try first but I’m also aware that the effectiveness of herbal treatments relies on potency in the first place. So I’m wondering if anyone can recommend to me a company that produces the highest grade/potency St John Wort?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give.

In cases of severe depression, SJW doesn't work, it can even make it worse, a naturopath told me today. There are a lot of industrial medicine it can affect. I've got a list of if you care to know more. I make my own tea for the winterblues (works a charm)and collect it in summer and share it with people with no money. But if i were to buy it, it would be a tincture. I bought a top notch book ten years ago that cost me 135 euro, but boy did it save me a lot of misery. I advice you to do the same, because a lot of people just parrot each other and there is more inaccurate advice on the internet. Or visit a phytotherapist. I gave some to an acquaintaince once who told me she put it in the tea she sold, because of the beautiful yellow flowers, not aware that it reduces the workings of the birth control pill. When i told her i was being negative, it just felt good to add it. Irresponsible. If you want to know more anyway i can quote the medicine it interacts with.

Hello, I’m looking for information regarding St Johns Wort  

So I’m wondering if anyone can recommend to me a company that produces the highest grade/potency St John Wort?  

I purchased mine in bulk from Golden Bough Botanicals out of Delta, B.C., but through a health food store, not direct.  The herb originated in Bulgaria.  I'm not sure if it is "the best" but the quality seems fine.  I bought two pounds, and make tea and tincture with it.

But if i were to buy it, it would be a tincture.  

Not me.  I did buy two tinctures, but if I would be taking it via the recommended doses I would be bankrupt (or at least quite a bit more impoverished) in no time.  I make my own tincture for a fraction of the cost using the bulk dried herb and Vodka. I look forward to getting into my tincture when it is done, and it will make taking a dose much easier, particularly at work.  

I’m also aware that the effectiveness of herbal treatments relies on potency in the first place.

My tincture has nearly gone through its first round, and I'm considering boosting its potency by straining it and adding the charged liquid to more dried herb.  This process can be done a few times to increase the volume of medicine in your alcohol.  St Johns Wort can take a little while to show effectiveness.  This depends on the individual, from what I understand.  A friend of mine had an immediate effect with SJW.  For me, I did not notice a huge effect with the expensive tinctures I was taking, but when I got into making tea regularly and charging my system with it in larger volumes, I noticed a difference, as did my family, in about a week further (after two weeks with the tincture).  It could be that I might have reached the same level of awareness that it was taking effect with the tinctures if I had had the same amount of medicine from the herb actively working in my system, but to do that would have probably have been cost prohibitive.  

I have recently begun using this herb due to a crisis in my life and will decrease my dose once my symptoms have been more fully reduced and I feel generally more stabilized. I am working with a doctor in this regard.  

I did have adverse side effects when I was also prescribed a pharma-med from my doctor.  I dropped the pharma-med and went with another herb (with the advice of a herbalist) with no problems.  

Welcome to Permies, Lee Wing!

Stephen Buhner, in his book, 'Herbal Antibiotics' on page 372 in the section called 'an herbal formulary'.....

"Hypericum (St. John's wort). Tincture: fresh flowering top, 1:2. Dosage: 20-30 drops up to 3X daily.  Dried plant is useless."

He is just as adamant about skullcap and a few others.  I've been buying  dried herbs  from Mountain Rose Herbs and have been happy with their quality and freshness including that of St John's Wort and Skullcap among many others....but after reading his opinion, I'm not so sure those two anyway, are worth buying.  

I have young plants started from seed for two kinds of skullcap and a lesser quality St. John's Wort grows here...I just need to 'cultivate' some.

Again, I would repeat my thoughts that herbal medicines, and how they behave in a person's system, are going to vary greatly from individual to individual; this is much the same as diet.

The Herbal ABC's book that I have from Sharol Marie Tilgner (which i got for free from a recent promotion at Permies) indicates that skullcap is ok fresh or dried, and is recommended as an infusion.  I actually take the skullcap tincture at this time, from the herbalist I saw, and haven't got any dried yet.  Tilgner seems in agreement with S Buhner on St John's Wort being ineffective dry.  Perhaps it is just ineffective to make a tincture from the dried plant?  Tilgner seems to be adamant about it's uselessness dried, period.  

I can't say either way if it is outright effective for me.  I know that my symptoms have greatly reduced, but also they were never to the point that I was in absolutely terrible shape/clinically depressed/anxious, and I have removed a lot of the stressors from my life in the meantime.  I just need some support to readjust my system.  

My friend, however, has had great success with first charging her system with dried st johns wort infused as a tea, and later, a simple cup of tea (dried herb from the same supplier as me) at night to keep her on balance.  She never took a tincture.  This has been very effective for her, as she said she would not be able to function at all without having it.  

I take it last thing at night after supper / before bed, as well as first thing when I get up before I have anything else, and have some (at least one cup) in the afternoon.  I will continue with this type of therapy as well as the tincture until I feel that I have reached a balance, and then I will slowly reduce them.    

I have young plants started from seed for two kinds of skullcap and a lesser quality St. John's Wort grows here...I just need to 'cultivate' some.

 considering the above, I would like to make my own tincture from fresh SJW plants to see if I get much difference.  The only place that I know it is growing here, however, is by the train tracks (which is too toxic for me want to harvest).  I am considering taking some from the train tracks and transplanting it on my property and letting it spread for future harvests.