Starwest Herbal Fluid Extracts are made to exacting standards, such as those of the German Pharmacopoeia, with a Certified Organic grain alcohol base.

Starwest Herbal Extracts are convenient to use, an excellent alternative to herb tea or capsules. Made by a cold process method that extracts the maximum amount of vitamins, minerals, and active constituents of the herb.

Our extracts have a herb strength of 1 to 1 and a 30% alcohol content; the fresh extracts are a 1 to 2 ratio with a 50% alcohol content.

Our extensive line of herbal extracts are mostly Certified Kosher, including some Fresh, Responsibly
Wildcrafted (WC) and many Certified Organic - all grown in compliance with the National Organic Program.

The 1997 Commission E on Phytotherapy and Herbal Substances of the German Federal Institute for Drugs recommends Passionflower herb for 'Nervous restlessness.'

'Daily dosage: 4 - 8 g of herb; equivalent preparations. Mode of Administration: Comminuted herb for tea and other preparations for internal use.'

Passion flower acts like a sedative. It lowers blood pressure, gives relaxation and is a very mild hallucinogen. Passion flower is nature's sleeping pill, very helpful for insomnia, producing no narcotic hangover. It is an effective antispamodic, helpful with seizures, hysteria, asthma, nerve pain and Parkinson's disease.

Passion flower contains harmine, harman, harmol, harmaline, harmalol, and passaflorine.

For many years, plant researchers believed that the group of harmane alkaloids were the active constituents in passion flower. Recent studies, however, have pointed to the flavonoids in passion flower as the primary constituents responsible for its relaxing and antianxiety effects.

The European literature involving passion flower recommends it primarily for antianxiety treatment; in this context, it is often combined with valerian, lemon balm, and other herbs with sedative properties.

'A few years ago, several friends and I boiled down about five pounds of Passiflora incarnata vines and leaves and drank the decoction. Within about 20 minutes, we all began to experience some profound behavioral shifts, all of us acting in a more 'primal' manner. We were also quite energized and 'up', with some slight distortion of colors. This very fun state lasted about three hours or so, followed by a very deep sleep in which all involved experienced quite profound dream states.'

Grieve's classic 'A Modern Herbal': 'The drug is known to be a depressant to the motor side of the spinal cord, slightly reducing arterial pressure, though affecting circulation but little, while increasing the rate of respiration. It is official in homoeopathic medicine and used with bromides, it is said to be of great service in epilepsy. Its narcotic properties cause it to be used in diarrhoea and dysentery, neuralgia, sleeplessness and dysmenorrhoea.'

King's 1898 Dispensatory: 'The clinical application of passiflora has been with most observers satisfactory. Its force is exerted chiefly upon the nervous system, the remedy finding a wide application in spasmodic disorders and as a rest-producing agent. It is best adapted to debility and does not act so well in sthenic conditions, although not contraindicated in such. It is specially useful to allay restlessness and overcome wakefulness, when these are the result of exhaustion, or the nervous excitement of debility.'

'It proves specially useful in the insomnia of infants and old people. It gives sleep to those who are laboring under the effects of mental worry or from mental overwork. It relieves the nervous symptoms due to reflex sexual or menstrual disturbances, and the nervous irritability resulting from prolonged illness. We have employed it with good results to allay the restlessness of typhoid fever, although its action appears to be slow, but sure.'

'The sleep induced by passiflora is a peaceful, restful slumber, and the patient awakens quiet and refreshed. A further study of the drug will undoubtedly give us a better guide to its adaptation as a nerve sedative and hypnotic. An atonic condition appears to be the keynote to its selection.'

'Passiflora is a remedy for convulsive movements. One of its first successful applications in medicine was for the relief of tetanus, both in man and the horse. If given in full doses in epilepsy when the aura gives warning of an approaching attack, the remedy is said to be of considerable value, but after the convulsions have begun it has little or no effect.'

'Passiflora is a remedy for pain, particularly of the neuralgic type. Thus it has relieved neuralgic and spasmodic dysmenorrhoea, rectal pain, cardiac pain, facial and other forms of neuralgia, many reflex painful conditions incident to pregnancy and the menopause, and other forms of pain accompanied or not with spasmodic action. Sick or nervous headache, the headache of debility, or from cerebral fullness are often relieved by passiflora. All such cases show marked atony of some part or function.'

'Specific Indications and Uses.—Irritation of brain and nervous system with atony; sleeplessness from overwork, worry, or from febrile excitement, and in the young and aged; neuralgic pains with debility; exhaustion from cerebral fullness, or from excitement; convulsive movements; infantile nervous irritation; nervous headache; tetanus; hysteria; oppressed breathing; cardiac palpitation from excitement or shock.'

American Materia Medica, 1919 (Ellingwood): 'In the convulsions of childhood it is a most reliable agent. The writer has given it at the onset of the spasm when the approaching symptoms were unmistakable, and has had the satisfaction of seeing all the symptoms disappear so promptly, that confidence has become established. It has controlled severe spasms while the irritating causes yet remained, and after all antispasmodics except anesthesia have been ineffectual. It can be relied upon to hold the spasms in check while the causes are being removed, and reduces their force and character. In epilepsy it lessens the number of the paroxysms, but to ward off the paroxysms the attack must be anticipated by a full dose of the remedy. When its approach is unannounced, the full effects of the agent are not obtained.'

'Passiflora has hypnotic properties which differ from other agents of this class in that the sleep produced is normal in all its characteristics. The patient goes to sleep naturally, can be awakened as usual at any time, to fall into a quiet, natural slumber. He awakens at the usual time rested and refreshed, with no disturbance of the cerebral functions, no languor, dullness or other disagreeable sensations.'

'If given in doses sufficiently large, it may be relied upon to assist in the relaxation of the tonic spasm of meningitis, and local tetanic spasm. It has relieved a few cases of general tetanus. It has cured tetanus in horses. It may be given as an antidote to the spasms of strychnine poisoning, but it must be given in doses of from one-fourth to one-half ounce and frequently repeated. As an anti-spasmodic in cases where there is engorgement of the nerve centers, it is applicable. It has relieved tonic, and clonic spasms, and the spasms of sthenic as well as asthenic conditions.'

'In the treatment of hysteria the agent should be persisted in. It may be given in conjunction with cimicifuga, gelsemium and pulsatilla, and if there be pain, due to menstrual or other disorders, it may be combined with cannabis indica, or Jamaica dogwood, in appropriate and properly regulated doses.'

'Dr. Roth believes that passiflora is a direct stomach sedative. A number of physicians have confirmed this opinion. One patient who had been on a spree for days suffering from persistent hiccough, took a teaspoonful of the tincture every hour. This gave him freedom from the hiccough and in a short time a quiet, natural, continued sleep, waking in the morning in nearly a normal condition.'

'One of the attending physicians in the tuberculosis wards of Cook County Hospital told this author that passiflora was his reliance in the sleeplessness of tuberculosis, especially controlling the cough. He would add two drams of passiflora to three ounces of water, and give a dram every half hour, the latter part of the day or early evening and during the night, and very seldom failed to secure satisfactory results. Other forms of cough can be relieved by it.'

'The agent is not known to possess injurious or poisonous properties. It has been used in erysipelas both externally and internally, and in acute inflammatory skin disorders with nervous elements and nervous complications.'