Posted by bleauberry on December 14, 2010, at 17:18:41
In reply to Re: berberine, posted by linkadge on December 12, 2010, at 20:27:28
> I really don't undertand it. I would think that if berberine was patentable, it would probably make a more effective antidepressant than most currently available agents.
With plants, there is no single isolated ingredient that does the work....it is the synergy of them all. Berberine in its natural state...whole plant or extracted coptis, oregon grape root, etc...is going to possess a lot more healing activity than isolated berberine. In the book Healing Lyme by Stephan Buhner, I was amazed to see that each plant has probably 20 to 40 different ingredients in it, all of which are doing something beneficial to each other.
The magic of plants is a whole different ballgame than single molecule medicines. Willow bark for example is great pain killer, of which they isolated aspirin from it so as to make money....but the whole plant itself is far better than aspirin....but, no patent and no profit, so no deal.
Mother Nature has been at this a lot longer than we have.
You know the game.
Still though, I was totally unaware berberine had antidepressant qualities. I guess if someone is infected with something they don't realize, it will not feel good....Herxheimer die off reaction. Berberine has tested potent against a wide range of pathogenic bacteria, fungi, and viruses. If a person can perservere through a Herx reaction, days or weeks sometimes months, recognizing for what it is and not mistakenly saying its a "bad reaction" then for sure there would be green grass and happy times on the other side. Call it antidepressant maybe. I would call it healing the body of what was causing the depression.
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> I contend that modern psychiatry really has no inclination to actually seriously treat clincal depression. IF they did, there would be serious study of these agents. There are other agents too like reveratrol (with dual reuptake / MAOI action), which is highly potent in animal models of depression. Oh, with the side effect of possibly significantly reducing co-morbidity.
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> When I see agents like this, which get zero clinical airplay, I often wonder who actually cares about getting patients well.
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> Linkadge
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poster:bleauberry
thread:973251
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20101202/msgs/973568.html