Herbs can have a positive effect on women's stress levels, moods

• He mentioned Donna Walls, a practicing herbalist in Kettering, as someone she might contact.
• After about a year of herbal therapy, her mood might not be out of a '50s sitcom, but it's picked up considerably from Roseanne.
• Besides a patient's physical and emotional symptoms, she asks about family history, other illnesses and exercise and nutritional habits.
• Headaches, for example, often stem from hormone imbalances, especially if a woman recalls how they seem to come on three or four days before every menstrual period.
• Besides using the right herbs to bring the hormones back in balance, she sees her job as helping a patient eliminate whatever threw off the balance in the first place.
• "She obviously had some kind of immune deficiency, but it was only by talking about her job that I found out she had worked for a long time with heavy metals.
• She worked in a dental office, and the exposure affected her immune system."
• For others, Walls said chemical exposures are as handy as the plastic container in the microwave.
• "If you put a pliable plastic wrap on top of your food to cook it, those chemicals just leech into your food."
• Even dietary supplements that proclaim themselves as herbal can disrupt hormones, Walls said, if they're manufactured synthetics or if they strip the herb down to what has been deemed its "active ingredient."
• Plants have to balance their chemicals, too, so isolating the beta carotene from other carotenoids or the hypericum from St. John's wort creates an entirely different product than the original herb.
• "There's a 1-800 number on the label.
• Walls is more conservative than some herbalists, sticking with standbys that have long and good track records.
• And she's more holistic than some, supplementing herbs with advice on nutrition, exercise and stress management.