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Efficacious Herb...
Your article "St. John's What?" [MEDICINE, April 30] tells of the millions who take St. John's wort, most of them for mild depression or the occasional blues. The new study you wrote about included 200 subjects, all of whom suffered from "major depression." Perhaps before discounting the herb's effectiveness, researchers should target folks having mild depression. St. John's wort seems to work for me--but heck, I also occasionally take ginkgo biloba to increase mental agility and clear thinking! MEL DAVIS Addison, Texas
With Nobu, New Yorkers' palates and vocabularies expanded. A decade ago, when Tadashi Ono became the executive chef at the renowned La Caravelle, the owners omitted any mention in the menu of ingredients like yuzu, a tart citrus fruit, and shiso, a mint-like herb, because the exotic terms intimidated diners. Today, at Ono's own restaurant, Sono, waiters proudly tout the yuzu cosmopolitan and shiso margarita...
...German government classified it as an MAO inhibitor, on the basis of in-vitro studies, and approved its use as a mild, natural antidepressant. Sales took off both in Germany, where St. John's wort easily outsells prescription drugs like Prozac, and in the U.S., where concoctions of the herb, sold under such labels as Mood Support and Brighten Up, became flagships of the booming alternative- medicine industry. Before last year's warnings that St. John's wort could interfere with other medications--notably AIDS treatments, antibiotics, cardiac drugs and oral contraceptives--yearly sales had reached $310 million. Even today...
...Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Richard Shelton, a psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University and the study's lead author, says flatly that he wouldn't recommend St. John's wort to any of his patients. As for the 30 or so earlier trials showing that the herb had some therapeutic value, he--like many other scientists--dismisses them as badly designed, inadequate or otherwise flawed...