Also it can have some antidepressant, nerve toning, and mild sedating effects. Then some good research reinforced the idea that it could help with mild depression. The known active ingredient Hypericin was mistakenly identified as the important marker of anti-depressant activity, but recent research shows it more of an immune supporting ingredient and some other portion of St. John's Wort aids depression. Given the bias of post war reductionist medical mindset, this would mean St. John's Wort should not be used to treat mild depression until the specific active ingredient is isolated. Herbalists in the past focused on the quality of the herb and its fingerprint as a match for its effectiveness and not its separation into certain components for activity.
Herbs are extremely complex and incapable of being reproduced in a laboratory.
In 1989 when we opened the Berkeley Vitamin Express, I brought in a selection of products that I knew were good, and invited our new East Bay customers to tell us what else they wanted in the store. Within a month nearly a dozen people requested HerbPharm Super Echinacea . We already had a good selection of products we knew to be very effective, including Gaia Herbs Echinacea and Zand Insure Herbal . Many of our customers had used these products with good effect but they still wanted the HerbPharm product. They could feel a difference.