Wednesday, September 01, 2010
It's not unusual for people living with chronic pain to also be dealing with some depression and/or anxiety. But if you're taking an opioid like oxycodone for the pain and also taking an herbal supplement containing St. John's Wort, you may unknowingly be reducing the effectiveness of your pain...
Dear Karen... Once again, your posts have gone a long way toward keeping me well-informed in pain community news. This one came as a real surprise! Although I'm not taking St. John's Wort now, I have in the past and have considered trying it again, in the hope of getting off the antidepressant I've been on for several years. It has so many side effects (most notably zero sex drive) that St. John's Wort doesn't. But since my pain clinic recently switched me from hydrocodone to oxycodone, I guess that's not an option. *sigh*
Thanks for the warning though! I might not even have thought to tell the clinic I'd started taking it again, which I can see could lead to problems trying to figure out why oxycodone suddenly stopped working!
From another Tennesseean :-)
So the St John's Wort doesn't affect hydrocodone? I would soooo hate to not take my St John's Wort as I have found it to be fairly effective and it has kept me off any type of anti depressant....