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What is it?

The berries of Vitex. itself a small, long-lived shrub with densely packed branches that produce whorls of violet flowers followed by the fruits, which are then dried and used in medicine.

How has it been used?

Vitex has a rich and colourful history in herbal medicine and is no less a subject of interest and widespread use today. The old names Monk’s Pepper and Chasteberry instantly give you some appreciate of at least part of how it was understood to work. The Monks of the middle ages would liberally use ground Vitex as a pepper on their food (it has a distinct but not unpleasant peppery taste) they were using it partly for the taste but mostly because it significantly decreased their sexual urges!

Vitex is almost exclusively used for women today. Various animal and human experiments have shown that is has complex, notable and reproducible hormonal actions, I will not attempt to describe these hormonal effects in detail here but for practical purposes will simply say that this is a herb that, when taken correctly, definitely causes hormonal balances to change.

When it is the right herb for the right woman, Vitex can be remarkable at helping with pre-menstrual tension, reducing the risk of miscarriage, improving fertility, improving the production of breast milk, helping with menopausal symptoms, helping with severe and cystic acne, helping withdraw from the contraceptive pill, reducing mid-cycle bleeding and helping to re-establish a healthy cycle in general.  

You can see from the above short list of what it can do why Vitex has become so hugely popular with women around the world. But, sadly it is not so simple. There are also plenty of women for whom taking Vitex makes them worse, not better. Or for whom Vitex initially helps only for their problem to come back worse after a few cycles. There is an art to using it wisely!

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Personal experiences

I must have given Vitex to well over a thousand women over the course of my practice thus far, mostly it's been great, sometimes not so.

How to know when to use it in the first place is tricky. Sometimes you just have to try it and see but the perplexing aspect of this is that problems will often temporarily worsen in the first month of using Vitex, a period gets heavier, the PMS is worse, but by the second cycle things start to greatly improve.
Sometimes I try to listen to the body by giving a drop or two of Vitex on the tongue, feeling the pulse and observing any other knds of reactions before and after. I would never pretend that this was a fail-safe method but there seems to be some kind of uncanny body 'intelligence' that talks back and it often seems to help.

Vitex seems to combine particularly well with Raspberry leaf for heavy bleeds and spotting, Cramp bark for painful or excessive periods and Licorice and Paeony root for premenstrual tension.

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Historical notes on Vitex from herbalist Christopher Hobbs.

The ancients valued vitex highly for many health problems, Pliny, the great writer and compiler on natural history, said the seeds taste like wine when a drink is made of them, and were taken to reduce fevers and stimulate perspiration. The drink was used in similar ways common today in European herbalism: to promote menstruation, "to purge the uterus" and to promote the free flow of milk in new mothers. According to Pliny, vitex was highly revered as one of the most useful medicines of the times. Because of their hot nature, the seeds of Vitex were taken to dispel "wind" or flatulence from the bowels, to promote urine, check diarrhea and greatly benefit dropsy and splenic diseases. A tincture of fruits, or an herbal wine seem to be an effective way of taking vitex, as the oldest and best-studied vitex product is a liquid tincture.

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