 This herb has one of the most powerful chemicals on the planet for type 2 diabetes and blood sugar issues. Now in this video I want to talk about the benefits of berberine, something that is very trendy on the internet but most of the internet does not know that some of the earliest evidence for berberine comes from my profession, traditional Chinese medicine. So let's talk about what berberine actually is, what it does, and most important to me, what herbs and what formulas are high in berberine and what conditions they really treat. Hey guys I'm Dr. Alex Hine, doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book Master of the Day. So before we jump into this video there's two very important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide, four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine and the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine you can reach out to my private practice and clinic with the link below this video. So what is berberine? Let's jump into this nerdy little paper in the literature. So this paper is called berberine protects against high fat diet induced dysfunction in muscle mitochondria by inducing blah blah blah. I want to zoom down to this little quote here about the history of it because it says berberine has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. Multiple pharmacologic effects of BBR have been reported including anti-inflammatory, anti-hypertensive, anti-proliferative actions. Moreover the beneficial effects of it on insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance have shown promise in the treatment of metabolic disorders such as hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia. So high blood sugar and high blood lipids. Now berberines most often known basically do support these two things healthy blood sugar and making insulin more sensitive. But on top of that it's really treating insulin resistance which is at the core of many health problems today like fatty liver, high triglycerides, high blood pressure, etc. Now on top of that anything that helps really attack this insulin resistance will be good for your weight loss generally too. So very commonly these traditional formulas that we use high in berberine are often used to treat for example hypertension so high blood pressure, high blood sugar they're used for weight loss for example a lot of these herbs will actually decrease appetite interestingly enough. But let's jump into the traditional Chinese medicine point of view because really this is where lots of these plants high in berberine come from right mostly if you go to a functional doc or your MD or whoever's giving you something that's a berberine supplement it is an active extract but in our profession these formulas high in berberine are often in a compounded formula of five to ten herbs that work synergistically and also protect you against the side effects of two high levels of this. So berberine in traditional Chinese medicine is commonly found in herbs like huangchun scutillaria and huanglan coptis rhizoma. So these herbs are very very yellow and very very bitter they are super potent antibacterial antifungal antiviral herbs. Many of them are the formulas that we use from an acute up respiratory point of view acute colds flus that kind of thing and on the other side we use them in internal medicine for acid reflux, high blood pressure, indigestion, inflammatory disorders involving heat like gout and fungal issues and gut dysbiosis like SIBO even you can use it to treat acute inflammation or acute infections like urinary tract infections we commonly use these herbs for because they're super potent antibacterial. In general they're associated with three organ systems the shayang organs gallbladder triple warmer and the liver right lots of these herbs are used to treat also cirrhosis of the liver inflammatory issues with the gallbladder and the liver called cystitis colithiasis gallstones sluggish gallbladders gallbladder attacks gallbladder sludge all that kind of stuff and the two formulas that are some of the highest in these two of berberine these two herbs huangchun huanglan scutillaria and coptis rhizoma are often xiaochaiutang minor buplarum decoction and bansha xiexantang bansha purge the heart decoction so xiaochaiutang is used commonly for upper respiratory infections right sore throat tonsillitis strep throat that kind of thing and bansha xiexantang is often used more for internal medicine disorders primarily upper gi issues is the most common or hypertension very commonly people have both but these two produce a very distinct bright yellow color that will stain your clothes even in the cup when patients decoct these herbs and those are typically these herbs that are high in berberine huangchun and huanglan