Hey everyone, I started taking Rhodiola Rosea 3 days ago, and I thought it would be a nice idea to write a diary here explaining my personal experience with this herb.
What is Rhodiola Rosea?
It's a perennial flower plant that grows in cold climates like the Arctic. Its main active ingredient, rosavin, acts as a natural anxyiolitic and antidepressant. The mechanism of its antidepressant effect is monoamine oxidase inhibition (MAOI), although logically, since it's a herbal remedy its MAOI effects are rather weak compared to those of a man-made drug.
What doesn't it do, and what does it do?
For me personally, it does not:
* Eliminate negative thoughts. This is something you will always have to do by yourself.
* Completely eliminate anxiety.
* Sedate me.
* Solve my problems completely.
However, it does:
* Make me not care as much about these negative thoughts.
* Lift my mood, it makes me want to do stuff and go outside when I have the time, and enjoy my day.
* Give me an alert calmness, similar to L-Theanine's effect.
* Help me to solve my problems.
* Give me a slight general happiness feeling.
Side effects?
The only small side effect I have is a very slight insomnia. It's not full-blown insomnia though. Usually I'm a person who sleeps 8 hours in one go, I go to sleep at 11 pm and wake up at 7 am, however for these past 3 days I've been waking 1 or 2 times in between. This is also likely to be because I drink a lot of coffee, so if you want to reduce the risk of this happening just reduce your caffeine intake and make sure you take the Rhodiola first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.
It also makes me more "hyperactive" and raises my heart rate a bit, but that's a good thing for me, and it is what it is supposed to do. If it's a big deal for you though, it's something to take into consideration.
Can everybody take this?
Everybody who's not on any meds, sure. If you're on blood pressure or heart rate medication, ask your doctor first. If you're on synthetic antidepressants, do also ask your doctor. If you're taking MAOI antidepressants, DO NOT use Rhodiola. Also if you naturally tend to have tachycardia and full-blown insomnia, I would advise against using it too just to be safe.
My experience so far
First I should explain my personal situation regarding anxiety a little bit. I've suffered with HA and GAD for 3 years. The first 2 years were pretty bad, but thankfully, with a combination of reassurance and knowledge I managed to put my anxiety under relative control, as in, it doesn't take over my life anymore, and while it's still there, it doesn't disable me anymore and I can live my life in a, more or less, normal way.
I tried Rhodiola a long time ago, more than 5 years ago, and by that time it didn't do much for me but of course I wasn't anxious or depressed back then so it's understandable. I decided to give it another chance 3 days ago, and so far the results are pretty good.
As I said before negative thoughts are still lurking, but Rhodiola helps me react differently to them. For example, I've been having some jaw pain lately, probably due to clenching my teeth at night, and some negative thoughts pop up every now and then like "what if it's serious? what if it's cancer?" blah blah, the usual. Without Rhodiola I would just ignore these or try to think logically to keep them under control, like "the chances of this being serious are negligible, the pain is explainable, I'm young and fine" ... Now, interestingly, with Rhodiola these negative thoughts are actually transforming into positive thoughts "I'm not afraid of being sick, even if by a remote chance it was cancer I'll just beat it, whatever, no point in being worried about something that doesn't exist" ... and inmediately disappear so I can just continue doing what I'm doing, instead of remaining in my head, which I appreciate a lot to be honest, and it's an important change for me.
For now I'm happy, I'll keep you updated and if you decide to start taking it too, feel free to leave your results here.
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