HERBAL PHEN-FEN

The ingredients to Herbal Phen-Fen are: St. John wart, hypericum perforatum,
mahuang extract, ephidra sinica. Here are some of these herbs purpose and the
 reactions that they cause.

Ma Huang and Ephidra sinica are related I believe.  The herbalists in my
area warn people away from these 2 substances.  They act like adrenalins
and cause your heart to race, sometimes in a dangerous way and they put
stress on your body in all the ways an adrenalin rush would.  A kind of
odd/funny story I know is about a guy who went into the herb shop in town
looking for Ma Huang.  The woman who runs the store asked him what he
wanted it for.  He was using it to replace coffee which he thought was bad
for his health.  She talked to him for a while about the side-effects and
he decided he would just go look for it somewhere else.  He had got this
idea in his head that it was a more natural stimulant than coffee.(?)  

Still my bias might just be because I am a fairly cautious herb user and
so are most of the folks I know.  Reputations, business practices, loved
ones health and all that.  If Ma Huang has been used by Chinese herbalists
for centuries, it can't be all bad. It might just be a potency understanding.
 For example, I don't use Pokeroot.  Too powerful.  I know an herbalist who
studied with Michael Moore and she said his philosophy is that there are no
"bad" herbs just "low-dosage" ones.  She has used Pokeroot in some of her
mixtures.  It has a lot of promise and pharmaceutical companies have been
diligently studying it for a while.  All my herb books list it as POISON or
TOXIC.  I don't believe it's bad, I just respect it's power too much to mess
around with.  The same goes for Ma Huang and Ephidra in my book.