Herbs & Herbal Remedies @ Green Papaya

The active chemicals in goldenseal have opposite effects on blood pressure. Berberine may lower it but hydrastine may raise it. People with high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, glaucoma, or a history of stroke should exercise caution and not use it. If you don’t know what your blood pressure is, have your physician take a reading and give you the okay before using this drug.

Beware of Bloodroot

Because of goldenseal’s high cost, adulteration has been a problem for more than 100 years. One adulterant is bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). When fresh, bloodroot is red, but when dried it turns yellow like goldenseal and tastes equally bitter. Bloodroot has powerful laxative action. In high doses, it also causes dizziness, gastrointestinal burning, intense thirst, and vomiting. If your “goldenseal” causes purging or any of these other symptoms, stop using it. It’s probably bloodroot.

High doses of goldenseal may irritate the skin, mouth, and throat and cause nausea and vomiting. Goldenseal douches may cause vaginal irritation.

The medical literature contains no reports of serious harm due to goldenseal. But hydrastine stimulates the central nervous system, and in animals, large doses have caused death from respiratory paralysis and cardiac arrest. Do not use more than recommended amounts of goldenseal.

Other Cautions

The Food and Drug Administration lists goldenseal as an herb of “undefined safety.” For otherwise healthy non-pregnant, non-nursing adults who do not have high blood pressure, glaucoma, diabetes, or a history of heart disease or stroke, goldenseal may be used cautiously for brief periods of time in amounts typically recommended.

Goldenseal should be used in medicinal amounts only in consultation with your doctor. If goldenseal causes minor discomforts, such as stomach upset or mouth irritation, use less or stop using it. Let your doctor know if you experience unpleasant effects or if the symptoms for which the herb is being used do not improve significantly in two weeks.

Hard to Grow

Goldenseal is a small, erect perennial with a hairy, annual, purplish stem that rises from a short, knotty rhizome with yellow-brown bark and bright yellow pulp. Goldenseal has lobed leaves somewhat similar to raspberry and small, greenish white flowers, which bloom in spring and produce orange-red berries.

Goldenseal is difficult to grow. Plants may be started from seeds, but it takes five years for roots to become medicinally mature. Most authorities recommend buying two-year-old rhizomes from specialty nurseries, so you can harvest three years later.

Viable rhizomes should have a sweet, licorice-like aroma.

Plant them in early fall at a depth of I inch with 8-inch spacing. The soil should be amended with compost, leaf mold, sand, and bonemeal. Frequently, top growth will not appear until the second summer.

Goldenseal requires moisture with good drainage and about 70 percent shade. It grows best under tree cover or shade frames.

Harvest the rhizome and roots in late fall, after frost has killed the top growth. Clean the roots and dry them until they become brittle, then powder and store them in airtight containers.

Goldenseal absolutely does not prevent the detection of opiates-or any drugs-in urine. Nor is it a cure-all.

Scientists have found that goldenseal contains two active constituents-berberine and hydrastine. Berberine, the more important, is also the active chemical in barberry. As a result, barberry and goldenseal have similar uses (and similar hazards), though goldenseal is more popular-and more expensive. Those interested in a “poor person’s goldenseal” should try barberry.

Antibiotic - Goldenseal may aid in the treatment of bacterial, fungal, and protozoan infections. Berberine, which is found in goldenseal, kills many bacteria that cause diarrhea. Barberine is also effective against the protozoans that cause amoebic dysentery and giardiasis. And several reports show berberine to be effective against the cholera bacteria. In fact, in one study, Indian researchers found berberine to be more effective against cholera than the powerful antibiotic Chloromycetin. These results support goldenseal’s long history as a gastrointestinal remedy, particularly for infectious diarrhea.

Immune Stimulant - In addition to killing germs, berberine may boost the immune system by revving up the white blood cells (macrophages) that devour disease-causing microorganisms.

Women’s Health - In some animal studies, berberine calms the uterus, supporting its traditional use in stopping excessive menstrual flow and postpartum hemorrhage. But other studies show it stimulates uterine contractions.

Pregnant women should not use it. Women troubled by heavy menstrual flow might try it and see if it helps.

Postpartum hemorrhage is a potentially serious condition that requires prompt professional attention. If you’d like to try goldenseal in addition to standard therapy, discuss it with your physician.

Digestive Aid - Goldenseal may help soothe the intestine and stimulate bile secretion in humans, which would help digest fats.

Intriguing Possibility - Several animal studies show goldenseal helps shrink tumors, lending support to goldenseal’s traditional use as a cancer treatment. In the future, there may be a role for it in cancer chemotherapy.

Rx for Goldenseal

To use goldenseal as a possible antibiotic or immune system stimulant or to help ease menstrual flow, take it as an infusion or tincture.

For an infusion, use ½ to I teaspoon of powdered root per cup of boiling water. Steep 10 minutes. Drink up to 2 cups a day. Goldenseal tastes bitter; add honey, sugar, or lemon, or mix with a beverage tea to improve its flavor.

In a tincture, use ½ to 1 teaspoon up to twice a day. Goldenseal should not be given to children under age 2.

For older children and people over 65, start with low-strength preparations and increase strength if necessary.

A Potent Antibiotic

Family: Ranunculaceae; (includes Buttercup, Larkspur, Peony)

Genus and Species: Hydrastis Canadensis

Also known as: Yellow Root, Yellow Puccoon, Indian Turmeric, Indian Dye, Indian Paint, Jaundice Root, Eye Balm, Eye Root, Golden Root

Parts used: Rhizome and roots

Goldenseal is popular and powerful. That combination virtually guarantees controversy, so it should come as no surprise that many contemporary herbalists call it “one of our most useful herbs,” while several scientific authorities continue to quote a pharmacologist who wrote (back in 1948) that the herb has “few, if any, rational indications” but may cause “death from respiratory paralysis or cardiac arrest.”

On balance, there’s no cause for alarm. Goldenseal may be beneficial when used carefully, though harmful effects are possible. Informed home herbalists can use it safely.

Yellow Root

The Indians of the Northeast pounded goldenseal’s yellow roots (the source of most of its names) and used the yellow juice as a dye. They also used it medicinally as an eyewash (hence names “eye balm” and “eye root”), as a treatment for skin wounds, sore throat, digestive complaints, and for recovery from childbirth.

Early settlers adopted the plant but didn’t use it much until the early 19th century, when Samuel Thomson, founder of Thomsonian herbal medicine, popularized it as an antiseptic. Thomson disliked the herb’s Indian name, yellow root, and changed it to goldenseal.

Thomsonian medicine fell from fashion by the Civil War, but America’s 19th-century Eclectics adopted goldenseal, which they called hydrastis, and greatly expanded its use. They used it externally to relieve hemorrhoids, rectal fissures, pinkeye (conjunctivitis), eczema, boils, and wounds, and internally as a digestive stimulant and treatment for colds, tonsillitis, diphtheria, uterine problems, postpartum hemorrhage, digestive ailments, and as a tonic during convalescence from any major illness.

Poor Man’s Ginseng

After the Civil War, the golden herb enjoyed a golden age. It was an ingredient in many patent medicines, notably Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery, a popular tonic.

Demand soared, and goldenseal’s price jumped to 51 a pound, making it almost as costly as America’s most expensive Healing herb, ginseng. The difference was that ginseng was collected for export to China, while goldenseal was used in the United States. Over time, goldenseal acquired some of ginseng’s medicinal reputation as a panacea and longevity tonic, hence one popular name, “poor man’s ginseng.”

Like ginseng, goldenseal was collected to the point of near extinction. And as it became scarce, it was frequently adulterated. Today, it’s farmed but still costly, and adulteration continues to be a problem.

Goldenseal was listed as an astringent and antiseptic in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia from 1831 to 1936, when modern antibiotics pushed it out.

Sterling Reputation for a Golden Herb

Contemporary herbalists can barely contain their enthusiasm for goldenseal. In Back to Eden, Jethro Kloss calls it “one of the most wonderful remedies in the entire herb kingdom …. A real cure-all.”

Modern herbalists recommend goldenseal externally as an antiseptic to clean wounds and as treatment for eczema, ringworm, athlete’s foot, itching, and conjunctivitis. They prescribe it internally for digestive upsets and colds, as a douche, and to stop excessive menstrual flow and postpartum uterine bleeding.

Most herbalists also warn goldenseal may trigger uterine contractions and “over-stimulate the nervous system.”

Goldenseal is also a favorite of homeopaths, who prescribe microdoses for alcoholism, asthma, indigestion, cancer, hemorrhoids, and liver ailments.

Goldenseal remains a popular folk medicine. In Hoosier Home Remedies, a 1985 survey of Indiana folk medicine, Varro Tyler, Ph.D., discovered the herb was used extensively as an astringent and antiseptic to treat canker sores, chapped lips, and many other external problems.

Finally, in the late I970s, heroin addicts came to believe goldenseal tea could prevent the detection of opiates in urine specimens.