Is this Siberian Genseng I'm taking going to mess with the BCP?

Factual Questions
1

Genseng contains plant testosterone - most gensengs are not recommended for women (red, Korean, etc).

However, I have the go ahead from my pharmacist, Dr. and herbalist to take the Siberian stuff - the amount of testosterone is lower.

BUT - is this stuff gonna mess with the effectiveness of the birth control pill? My first inclination is no, because testosterone occurs naturally in woman in differing levels, and presumably the BCP is designed to deal with these differences.

Anyone have any thoughts?

(Just to be safe, Mr. Wonderland and I will be using condoms as a backup.)

2

I doubt anyone knows. I doubt studies have been done. Heck, we don’t even know if the penicillins affect birth control pills and they’ve been used by millions of women also using the pill. There are warnings out about use of bcps with antibiotics, but there are no studies out to say if any of them (except rifampin) really do affect the effectiveness of the pill.

One can postulate about theoretical interactions between medicines and the pill, but until one actually tests for them in a systematic way, the real world answer is “noone knows for sure”.

QtM, MD