i wild foraged these barberry roots at night on a new moon in late autumn.

i washed them thoroughly, cut them and tinctured them fresh in grain alcohol. 

the tincture is a bright yellow from the berberine. 

barberry is really set on living. 

you could shred 98% of the plant and find the scraps unperturbed,

restoring the bush to its former glory in no time. 

it had no issue with sparing some roots for our purposes

and is commonly considered an invasive species.

invasive species are often very important remedies 

humans have used this plant- root, root bark, leaf + berry for a very long time. 

this is an alterative, a blood cleanser and a cholagogue. 

it has mild laxative and antimicrobial effects. 

it has been used to 'clean the winter out of your system'

so to speak as an early spring tonic. 

this is a remedy of diverse utility. like most liver oriented herbs, 

it cleans out gunk throughout the entire system.

it changes the internal environment, making it less hospitable to pathology. 

it cleans gunk out of the liver, out of the guts, out of the lungs, out of the kidneys and out of the reproductive system in women. 

it benefits metabolism and catabolism and helps keep sugar stable.

there's a lot of good research on barberry. 

it's a good choice for chronic/passively festering bacterial and fungal imbalances (skin/gut/vaginal etc) 

skin conditions (especially if they're weepy)

'catarrhal conditions' (think thick stuck phlegm)  

^especially for liver/gall bladder

normalizing elimination issues diarrhea or constipation 

*side note: these issues could be from a food allergy/intolerance. if they are, we have to eliminate them. 

 but these issues are not exclusively from food issues. 

 if you find that after a month or so, barberry is palliatively relieving symptoms but they come back when you stop taking it, we have a deeper issue that needs to be addressed. 

i get a lot of inquiries about barberry

so i've released it as a public remedy.

i have used it myself several times

it is a remedy that sounds rough and gruff in old literature

but taken in low to moderate doses for short periods of time, 

i personally have experienced no uncomfortable or questionable effects.

it is a very old remedy and native americans used it quite a lot. 

it's noteworthy that they were very cool with higher doses and purging

and in higher doses barberry root is purgative, which can be not fun and maybe scary. 

i recommend low-moderate measured doses

taking great care to slowly get to know the remedy and to see how your system responds to it. 

i like to tell people, start very low: 1-3 drops once a day for a week and see how you feel. 

follow each dose with a glass of water or hot water.

if you're going to increase from there you should do so just as slowly and see how it goes.

instead of taking more per dose, you could just do 1-3 drops twice a day instead of once.

as someone who has had a lot of gallbladder sludge i can tell you that you don't want to move that kind of stuff too quickly.

it's unpleasant.