Actually, that's when a placebo is MOST needed; when the effect could conceivably mostly/entirely attributed to such effect, that is.
Sorry, I was making sense only in my own head. I was referring to the difficulty of determining whether the difference we are seeing is caused by the supplement, environmental changes (summer, no school, etc) or the actual placebo effect (she thinks the pill is "doing something" and/or so do we). So really, we'd also want to try her off of ALL pills, including placebo.
Unfortunately, not a lot of the pharmacognosy/ethnopharmacology work from the former Soviet bloc is... er... reproducible, let's just say. Hard to know if it's just the placebo effect or not. I presume that you've done sufficient hunting down of adverse effect and toxicology hypotheses regarding Rhodiola, yes?
I've hunted around and find nothing indicating any dangers of toxicity. FWIW, the depression study is not from former Soviert bloc countries.
Re dosage, I said 500 mg/day but realized that is incorrect. It is a 250 mg capsule. Dosage recommendations seem to really be all over the place. She has not noticed any side effects at all, btu she is not sensitive that way.
