Personally I was prescribed Rhodiola to lower blood pressure by my GP around May 2020: it didn’t help enough for this, so I needed to take blood pressure meds for a year. In the meantime I’ve seen from research that it is mainly used for its anti-inflammatory fx and will be helping the amino acids I’m using. Due to my supp combination (not nec. the rhodiola) I no longer need to use blood pressure meds, as I was getting too low blood pressure. At the moment I’m trying out increasing the dose to the maximum recommended dose which is 3x what I’ve been taking.
I’d already referred to rhodiola in a post on my thread about amino acids
including
this review (by a Chinese/Tibetan TCM university, Wei-ling Pua et al., 2020)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0753332219329671?via%3Dihub
(W.-l. Pu, et al.Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy 121 (2020) 1095528)
which concludes about Rhodiola / rose root / golden root / rose wort / Sofren injection / Hongjingtian:
Rhodiola rosea L. extracts, preparation and purified compounds have been proved to exert anti-inflammatory activity in various pathological conditions, including cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic disease, arthritis, cancer etc…
Compared with commonly used clinical anti-inflammatory preparations, the anti-inflammatory action of Rhodiola rosea L. preparations or extracts and active compounds may be relatively weak, but the systematic regulation and protection of the body is better or its advantages of multi-targets. Commonly used anti-inflammatory preparation[s have] a clear target and thus strong effects, but [are] also prone to side effects and adverse reactions (such as liver and kidney damage, and gastrointestinal reactions). Whereas … there are few toxic or adverse reactions of Rhodiola rosea L. reported, except for the occasional heart rate increase. [It thus] has an advantage for long-term use. Clinical studies have shown that Sofren injection and Hongjingtian {TCM name} capsule[s] have an excellent anti-inflammatory effect as well as protective effects on the cardiovascular system, with less toxic and side effects. However, clinical safety research is still insufficient. The active compounds in the preparations are not completely clear, which may be one of the important reasons for safety problems. For Rhodiola rosea L. extracts and compounds (mainly salidroside), both in vitro and in vivo experiments confirmed the immune-regulation effects via various inflammatory mediators (such as TNFα, IL-6, IL-1β, NO, COX-2 el al.),and signaling pathways (NF-κB, AP-1, STAT3, PI3K/ATK). However, the present experimental research[ was] mainly focused on inflammatory mediators.
More details and specific molecular mechanisms [are] needed for further research. Furthermore, the anti-inflammatory effects of Rhodiola rosea L. need to be verified on different animal models closer to human pathological conditions. Finally, the dosage, toxicity and safety research of the active compounds are also important issues.