Posted by Larry Hoover on June 6, 2006, at 7:42:14
In reply to Re: Depression treatment-where to go from here? » Meri-Tuuli, posted by LizinManhattan on May 25, 2006, at 0:43:05
> Hi Meri,
>
> Thanks for your reply! St. John's Wort is definitely on my list. However, I recently found out that birth control pills can become less effective if you take St. John's Wort at the same time, so I need to do some more research on that. As for the birth control pills, I sort of have to take them for medical reasons (the contraceptive effect is just an added "benefit").
> Thanks for your reply, Meri!
> LizBirth control pills rely on a synthetic or modified steroid structure. Natural estrogen, for example, has a half-life measured in minutes, if not seconds. That would hardly be practical, to take billionths of a gram of a hormone, every two minutes, so they settled on long-lasting hormone analogs.
SJW speeds the clearance of those analogs from your body, via enhanced enzyme activity in your liver. Birth control dose would need to be adjusted, but would not necessarily be excluded. It would mean having back-up protection, and spending some energy balancing out the dose. I can't be sure, but I bet that SJW gradually increases the liver function, so to match that, you'd have to gradually increase the dose of the birth control meds.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:646450
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20060601/msgs/653538.html