Holy basil

[csjc]

Hey everyone like most of you I am so fed up with modern medicine and doctors at least the system anyway. I have severe anxiety and started taking holy basil. It seemed to help and then I got what felt like a horrible pulled neck muscle. I read too much holy basil can cause neck pain. I was taking 1600 mg when the bottle says on to two I took 4. I have also read if you have late adrenal deficiency it can make your cortisol drop even lower. I am doing the spit test to see. Is that reliable test? Also is my neck pain is from the holy basil any thoughts

[csjc]

Wow thank you so much for the info
I need to be more careful

[Paxiled]

Just because some works doesn't mean more works better.  I don't know exactly how holy basil could cause neck pain directly.  However, holy basil doesn't just reduce cortisol in some people -- nothing works the same in everyone -- it also can reduce blood sugar.  In fact, many adaptogens can do this, including American ginseng.  There's also no point in taking more than a recommended dosage -- a I say a rather than the recommended dosage because dosage depends on many thing, including whether you're doing this with a health professional's guidance, whether you're using a standardized herb or in its traditional form, whether you have a blood sugar problem, etc. -- with this herb because cortisol doesn't cause anxiety, it's a result of it.  Holy basil is a symptomatic relief that, as part of a regimen of several remedies targeting different areas of your body that affect anxiety and lifestyle changes such as meditation, exercise, dietary changes, and therapy, can help.  I suffer from great anxiety, but I only use holy basil when I need extra relaxation, such as when I have to face something serious.  The two adaptogens I take regularly to balance my adrenals are eleuthero and ashwagandha.  You can choose to do it differently.  But with natural medicine, often it's not the dosage but the frequency with which you take the substance that determines its effectiveness.  While it is believed that messages from the amygdyla in the primitive brain play a large role in anxiety, ordering up more cortisol production, that largely occurs during an anxiety attack, but not might be happening any other time.  It takes several remedies to make a formula that might work.  If you don't know natural medicine all that well, you might try finding a herbalist or naturopath or practitioner of integrated medicine to help.  Holy basil is most known as part of ayurvedic medicine, and there are physicians who practice that.  Some use Chinese medicine, which has an entirely different take on what causes and treats anxiety.  It's complicated out there.  

[Paxiled]

By the way, when I say a regimen, just as an example, it might include holy basil at recommended dosages, something that affects serotonin more directly, something that affects GABA more directly, etc.