Has anyone used herbs/supplements with any success??

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Hello! I am new here! I have an almost 16 year old son with AS. He is not on any medication. I feel he suffers from seasonal affect, anxiety, some mood swings and possibly slight depression. I don't want to put him on prescription drugs, but I feel it may be time to try something. His main teacher feels his anxiety gets in the way of his learning. Has anyone tried St. John's Wort with any success?? Or any other herb/supplement/vitamin with any success for depression/anxiety?? I already have him on a multi-vitamin, fish oil, and Vitamin D. I was also looking into Seredyn for anxiety and Amoryn for mood. Has anyone ever tried those? I would love to get any advice on this as I really do not want to put him on prescription drugs with their side effects, but I would love take the edge off of some of those symptoms. I greatly appreciate any feedback!! Thank you!! ! Tom's Mom

It's not an herb or supplement, but regular exercise can help battle those things too.

herbals can have side effects too.

my parents put me on a bunch. they didn't do anything for me. the only one I can vouch for is melatonin. st john's wort made me worse. "a little" depression might be worse than you think.

Thank you so much for your advice! We bought him a 3 wheel bike and try to get him out to ride and go on trampoline and walks as much as possible. With the nice weather now, he'll be more active. And I'm hesitant with the St. John's Wort - I've heard mixed things with it now. It's so hard to decide what to do. Thank you!

exercise has no side affects and medicine is a terrible idea for autism. i won't bore you with the details here but it ain't what you want to do.

I've been giving my son Loki 'superfood' smoothies all natural probiotic
http://www.sunwarrior.com/products/sunw ... rmusgreens this is the one I give him now, also marine phytoplankton has been awesome for Loki.

hi,
I am a mother of a possible 5 year old aspie son. I have just started an advanced diploma in naturopathy, and traditional chinese medicine, if i come across anything relevant i will post it for all to read. I am sure we all can use as much useful info as possible.

Kel x

St. John's Wort is only effective for minor depression and it has the side effect of photosensitivity - extreme sunburn with minimal exposure.

There are several individual herbs that are excellent 'nerve tonics', usually used to calm occassional anxiety. I'd recommend looking into passion flower, skullcap, vervain and oat staw. Oat straw specifically is very gentle with no side effects that I know of. Passion flower can make one drowsy at higher dosages. Skullcap and vervain are very effective at calming nerves but also can cause drowsiness and other effects at too high a dosage. Most public libraries have some selection of herbal books to research from as well as wealth of information on line.

If you can find any one of the number of books written by Penelope Ody I'd suggest buying one for your home library if you prefer to go the natural route first. Many years ago I tackled my own anxiety problems with herbals and found them highly effective.

As always, do your research, double check with your GP and remember to start small. Hope this helps you along your journey!

A few you may want to look into:

L-glutamine: normally associated for sports use but research has shown that targeting precursors of neurotransmitters with the amino acid l-glytamine eliminates depression,stress and anxiety. It is also beneficial for ADHD for memory & concentration.

My 5yo son is on this supplement daily, his dosage is a teaspoon which is over the recommended dosage but he is under medical supervision and had a complete biological profile done so we knew his starting levels. Ask your Dr but if you want to give it a try, maybe start at the recommended level then increase it. You should see results almost immediately within 20 mins, we had to adjust l-glutamine before we got it right, too little did nothing you should see a calming effect when you get it right. It stops among other things (as my husband & I call them) his constant silly hand gestures.

SAMe: Google search SAMe depression or autism. If your son has bipolar don't try it. Our son was given this not for depression but to increase his homocysteine levels. We started with very low dosages and noticed effects immediately. This one we could never get the dosage right it seemed to work wonders in the first few days but had a very excitedly effect that made him too happy lots of excited screaming noises which he couldn't come down until the drug wore off (which was usually only a few hours depending on the environment) but if we gave him too little nothing. If seemed to have an accumulated effect for my son so the dosage was tricky. He is not on these now because his homocysteine levels corrected.

Vitamin B: There are many forms of vitamin B and then you have activated and unactivated Bs. Our son cannot take the unactivated Bs which are the usual ones you pick up on the health-food self. I would do more reading on this because this is very individual depending on where you are in the cycle. A blood test will tell you if you are lacking and which B to increase. I know for me if I just take a regular vitamin B multi it also works to heighten my mood.

Still given all the above I would discuss with your Dr and maybe start with a blood test. My son is on many forms of vitamins which has worked wonders for him but we are targeting his ASD traits and gets regular tests to ensure we are keeping his levels within normal range. He started off all over the place now and it took a few months to get things right but now most of his major ASD traits are controlled but obviously we are using the supplements along with a lot of other methods. I just know that the above ones also target depression which you may want to look into further.

Hope this helps, good luck.

nb I can't do links because I am a noob to this forum, you will need to Google search the key word with depression sorry