Taking Rhodiola Rosea to help maintain Serotonin Levels

I've been taking this ancient plant root for over a week now but haven't really mentioned it because I didn't notice any significant changes until 4 days afterwards.

Basically, I decided to give it a try after reading an article about boosting your Serotonin levels called: '10 Quick Tips to Boost Your Serotonin' written by Mark Sisson, an athlete, that believes in keeping as healthy as you possibly can.  

Quoting from his article:

"HTP is a popular supplement, but I personally prefer rhodiola, which actually slows the process of serotonin breakdown (it also has better scientific backing)."

by Mark Sisson, that you can visit here.

If you recall, I was reading about Serotonin levels dropping steeply in response to a decrease in Oestrogen, according to our cycles, and how chaotic that invariably is for moods and PMT.  

I've always had awful PMT and now, part of that cyclical downturn, is these debilitating migraine attacks.

So there I was, taking Rhodiola Rosea for about 4 days and 

noticing nothing in particular.  

Then at around day 5, it registered, by my reaction to a stressful situation, that I was feeling different, somehow?

It was initially hard to define, but according to my packet of pills, I should be lurching into arguments and feeling totally exhausted by now?

Instead, I felt calm, my thoughts were logical, (instead of extremely emotional) and I was definitely less tired.

Considering where I am in the cycle, this is VERY unusual for me.

There is a downside though, in my personal case, because it reduces appetite.  I'm not a person with a huge appetite at the best of times and Rhodiola certainly reduces mine even more.

This figures really, as its prescribed for among other things, stress-related over-eating!  I can totally see how that would work, because quite honestly, even by 3pm I'm still not actually hungry !!

It turns out that Rhodiola Rosea is an ADAPTOGEN and that means it works out what your body is  imbalanced in e.g. you could be producing, say, too much stress hormone: cortisol.  Then it will 'adapt itself' to suppress / boost your levels, whatever the needs be.

Here's a quotation I found from a really good article about recent testing on Rhodiola:

"A Swedish trial from 2009 examined the effects of a patented Rhodiola extract (SHR-5) on 60 patients with “stress related fatigue“. The dosage used was 4 tablets of the herbal extract, providing 576 milligrams, or an equal quantity of an inactive placebo. The authors of the trial concluded that, “repeated administration of R. rosea extract SHR-5 exerts an anti-fatigue effect that increases mental performance, particularly the ability to concentrate, and decreases cortisol response”. Previous experiments, dating back up to 9 years, tend to support these findings. (4,5,6)"

Written by J P Fanton of Healthy Fellow, that you can read here. 

I'm currently taking two capsules a day (of maximum strength), during mid-morning.  I was taking it later on in the day, but I noticed it was keeping me awake.  This is not unusual and you are warned about that.  

I plan to only take it for half the month, from a few days before I start taking Progesterone.

There are countless articles about Rhodiola on the internet, and it seems its a common ingredient that's added to a lot of 'wonder drugs' for combating fatigue.  

I'll need to watch my appetite while taking this, in that I don't want to end up too weak because I eat lunch too late.  Once I start eating though, I feel fine about food again, but before that, I've noticed I'm not thinking about food, if you know what I mean?

It's going to be very interesting to see how my next migraine will turn out.  Because my aim in taking this medication was to maintain serotonin levels, but now I can clearly detect that my real problem was quite possibly the over-production of Cortisol?

Happy holidays everyone!