Hydrastis Canadensis is a very effective and useful homeopathic medicine. Hydrastis Canadensis 30 & 200 are the most commonly used potencies of this medicine. This article will explain the Hydrastis Canadensis uses, dosage, benefits & side effects in detail.
Hydrastis Canadensis (Goldenseal) is also known as orange root or yellow puccoon. Its roots and leaves are used to treat a variety of inflammation and infections.
The root is traditionally used to treat wounds, ulcers, eye and ear infections, and digestive problems. It is also used as a laxative, diuretic, and tonic.
It is also used in females to regularize the flow in those suffering from the irregular cycle and heavy bleeding.
Hydrastis contains alkaloids hydrastine, berberine, berberastine, hydrastinine, tetrahydroberberastine, canadine and canalidine.
Berberine, hydrastine, and canadine are found in high concentrations. Therefore, the bioactivity is mainly due to these compounds. These alkaloids possess antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
Berberine is the most active component which helps fight infections caused by bacteria and viruses, especially those responsible for a common cold.
In addition, it is useful in case of urinary tract infection, where berberine prevents the bacteria from sticking onto the bladder, thereby preventing infection.
Berberine is also capable of stimulating the production of interleukin-12, which is used to treat allergies.
Berberine has activity against parasites like tapeworm, virus, yeast, etc. it is also known to stimulate the immune system. Hydrastis is known to reduce the effectiveness of certain antibiotics like doxylamine.
Hydrastis was chiefly used for inflammation of mucous membrane and also in infection of urinary tract infection. It’s a valuable remedy for ulceration, inflammation of the cervix.
Hydrastis Canadensis Mind Symptoms
The patient is full of depression. He is sure of death and desires death.
The patient is also very forgetful. He cannot remember what he read or spoke about.
They are very irritable and disposed to be spiteful.
The patient is very gloomy and disagreeable.
They moan with occasional outcries from pain.
Hydrastis Canadensis Uses
I will take you through all the body parts from toe to head.
You can match the symptoms and when you feel these symptoms are matched then you can take Hydrastis Canadensis–
1-Head Complaints
The patient suffers from neuralgia of the scalp and neck. Neuralgia is stabbing, burning, and often severe pain due to an irritated or damaged nerve.
They also suffer from eczema on the forehead along the line of hair, which worsens after washing. Eczema worsens after coming from cold into a warm room.
The patient has a soft pressing frontal headache usually connected with constipation and pain in the hypogastrium and small of the back.
The patient experiences pain in the vertex every other day, which begins at 11 am with nausea, retching, and anguish.
2-Eyes Complaints
The patient has inflammation of the eyes with thick yellow mucous discharge.
There is a profuse secretion of tears, leading to smarting and burning of the eyes and lids.
Lids get agglutinated in blepharitis.
In ophthalmia, there is a thick green discharge with or without ulceration.
3-Ears Complaints
The patient has otorrhea (drainage exiting the ear), which is a thick mucus discharge.
The patient can hear roaring sounds in the ear-like machinery with a high-pitched voice.
They experience deafness from eustachian catarrh.
The patient has pain in the right ear which disappears, and immediately there is fullness in the forehead and pain in the left eye.
The patient has sharp pain at the back of the right ear, which passes to the shoulder.
4-Nose Complaints
The patient develops sinusitis after coryza and keeps blowing the nose all the time. The discharges are watery and excoriating.
They have post nasal dripping. Thick tenacious secretions from posterior nares go into the throat.
The inhaled air feels cold in the nose to them.
Atrophic rhinitis(ozena) is very common in these patients. In this condition, the bony ridges and the mucous membranes of the nose waste away.
The nose becomes sore and bleeds, and also bloody crusts are formed.
5-Face Complaints
The face of the patient is thin, hollow, and yellow in appearance.
They develop erysipelatous eruption, which is rapidly spreading cellulitis caused by streptococcal bacteria. Flushes of heat follow it.
6-Mouth Complaints
The patients are prone to cancer on the lips. Bleeding painful cancerous growth is also seen on the hard palate. The tumor on the hard palate is very painful to touch, hard, elastic, disposed to bleed, and produces offensive discharges.
The tongue is white, yellow, dirty, swollen, large, flabby, slimy with imprints of teeth. There can be ulceration in the tongue with fissures towards the edges.
The tongue feels scalded (as if it is burnt due to the consumption of hot liquid). As a result, the mouth tastes bitter or peppery.
Inflammation of the mucous membrane of the mouth is common in nursing mothers and weak children.
They even develop aphthae which are small ulcers occurring in groups in the mouth or tongue.
The patient develops stomatitis after excessive use of mercury and chlorate of potash.
7-Throat Complaints
Follicular pharyngitis is very common in these patients. They hawk tenacious yellow mucus.
The patient experiences raw, smarting and excoriating sensations.
In children, this tenacious postnasal drip wakes them up suddenly from sleep.
The patient develops ulcers in the throat after the abuse of mercury. These ulcers are cancerous which develop inside the throat on the left side.
8-Chest and Respiratory Complaints
It is an excellent remedy for bronchitis in old exhausted people.
The cough is loose, bloody, or thick. They raise much mucus, which is thick tenacious, and yellow. The chest feels raw, sore, and burning.
They tend to have frequent fainting spells with cold sweats all over.
Breathing for them gets difficult on lying on the left side.
The patient has pain from the chest to the left shoulder.
It is also indicated in tuberculosis with goneness in the stomach, emaciation, and loss of appetite.
9-Heart Complaints
The patient develops palpitation from slowly progressing weakness.
The patient has palpitation with faintness. Next, they get palpitation and pain from chest to left shoulder with numbness of the arm, irregular and sometimes from labored action.
The patient develops suffocation on attempting to lie on the left side. They get violent long-continued vibrations, especially in the morning.
10-Stomach Complaints
The patient has weak digestion. They have gone feeling in the stomach or feeling like a sharp lump is present in the stomach with an aversion to food.
There is a sore feeling in the stomach, which is almost constant.
They tend to vomit all the food, and only water or milk is retained in the stomach.
They cannot eat bread or vegetable.
They are prone to develop painful epigastric tumors with pulsations.
These patients develop a condition called atonic dyspepsia. There is a loss of tone in digestive organs with little or no appetite, often with an aversion to food and nausea.
11-Abdominal Complaints
The patient experiences cutting pain from the liver to the right scapula, which is worse on lying on the back or right side.
It’s a great remedy for atrophy or cancer of the liver.
It also gets indicated in jaundice, and stools are lumpy, coated, or mixed with mucous.
Pain in groins is as if sprained. They also feel dull dragging pain in the right groin with a cutting sensation into the right testicle.
The patient has burned in the navel region with faintness feeling in the epigastrium.
A loud rumbling is heard in the abdomen with dull aching pain in the hypogastrium and small of the back, which is aggravated by movement.
There Is sharp pain in the spleen region and dull pain and burning in the stomach and bowels.
12-Rectum Complaints
In hemorrhoids, even slight bleeding leads to exhaustion of the patient.
The female patients are prone to obstinate constipation during pregnancy, especially after purgatives. A dull headache and dyspeptic cough accompany constipation.
The patient has raw smarting pain in the rectum during stools and also remains long after that.
The patient faints after passing soft stools. Flatus is very offensive. The patient passes profuse light-colored, soft, acrid, and greenish stools.
13-Urinary Complaints
The patient has dull aching pain in the kidney region.
Urine has mucus in it with a putrid odor and gleety, thick yellow discharge.
The urine smells decomposed and is of neutral reaction.
In the catarrh of the bladder, there is thick ropy mucus sediment in urine.
14-Male Organs Complaints
Hydrastis is indicated in males for gonorrhea second stage, where the discharges are thick and yellow.
They develop debility after spermatorrhea (involuntary loss of semen).
The patient has severe dragging pain in the right groin to the testicle, then to the left testicle, and again to the left groin.
15-Female Organs Complaints
Hydrastis can remove the tendency to the habitual adherent placenta.
Hydrastis is indicated in cancer of the breast and in fibroids which leads to profuse menses and metrorrhagia.
Hydrastis is indicated in an erosion of the cervix, which leads to thick, acrid, yellow, ropy leucorrhea.
It is noted that leucorrhea is worse after the menses. Itching of the private part is noticed with profuse leucorrhea with sexual excitement.
The private part is sore after coition, and it bleeds after that. The patient experiences pain in the right breast on sneezing.
In nursing women, the nipples are sore, retracted, and cracked. Again, Hydrastis will ease the pain.
During menopause, there is a hot watery discharge from the uterus. And the patient has pain in the small of the back.
You can correct uterine troubles with debility and digestive disorders with the help of Hydrastis.
16-Back Complaints
The patient has dull dragging, heavy pain with stiffness across the lumbar region.
They have to use the arm to raise themselves from a seat.
17-Hands Complaints
The patient has pain from head to shoulders with aching in both hands but more on the left side.
They have rheumatic pains in the elbow, forearm, right shoulder, and first finger of the left hand.
Limbs are tired and ache with coryza.
18-Legs Complaints
The patient has harp shifting pains in the lower limb from the middle thigh to the middle of the leg.
They have pain from right hip to knee while walking.
Legs and knees feel weak.
They have aching in the sole of the left feet, which is not relieved by a change of position.
Atonic ulcers develop on the legs.
19-Skin Complaints
The patients develop smallpox-like eruptions.
Cancerous ulcers are very commonly seen in these patients.
They develop atonic ulcers following the removal of tumors. An Atonic ulcer is a lesion on the skin accompanied by the formation of pus and necrosis of surrounding tissue, usually resulting from inflammation or ischemia.
20-Sleep Complaints
The patient is awakened from sleep due to backache and dull pains in the navel and hypogastric region.
Their sleep is restless, and they get tiresome dreams.
The patient finds it very difficult to wake up from sleep.
21-Fever Complaints
Heat alternates with the chill. As a result, they tend to profuse perspiration.
It’s a great remedy for gastric, bilious, or typhoid forms of fever with gastric disturbance or jaundice followed by great prostration.
CHILL STAGE: The patient feels chill morning or evening, especially in the back or thighs. The pulse is slow during the chill.
HEAT STAGE: The patient gets heat in flushes. There is a great heat in the whole body.
The patient experiences constant dull burning pains all evenings.
General Characteristic/Keynote Symptoms
- Modifies the course of smallpox when given internally and applied externally.
- There are frequent faint spells with profuse perspiration.
- Ulcers are shallow.
- Small wounds bleed and suppurate.
- Clothing feels uncomfortable about the groins.
- Indicated in a cancerous and pre-cancerous state before ulceration occurs and pain is the prime symptom.
- Goiter of puberty and pregnancy.
- Sense of raw burning.
- Tendency to bleeding and ulceration.
- Catarrh (a thick liquid that forms when you have a cold) may be anywhere in the throat, stomach, uterus, urethra.
- Catarrh is thick, yellow, acrid, ropy discharge.
- Mucus is found in stools, in urine, and the patient hawks up mucus.
- Weak muscular power, poor digestion, and obstinate constipation are marked.
- Lumbago, emaciation, and prostration are always found in the patients.
- Cancers, hard, adherent and skin is mottled and puckered and cutting pain like knives in mammae.
- The pressure of the hand relieves the head.
Hydrastis Canadensis Modalities
Modalities are the factors which, increase or decrease the complaints in a patient.
They are categorized as aggravating factors and amelioration factors.
Aggravating factors make the condition of the illness worst, while the amelioration factor makes the condition of the disease better.
It can be time, any part of the day, season, position, or any applications, etc.
Aggravated By–
The conditions or factors that aggravate or worsen the symptoms and sufferings of the Natrum Mur are
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Inhaling air
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Cold air
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Dry winds
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Open-air
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Slight bleeding
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Washing
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Touch
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Old age
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Motion
Amelioration By–
- Pressure
Hydrastis Canadensis Relationship with Other Medicines
In Homoeopathy, the medicinal actions of a drug can be influenced by other Homoeopathic drugs such as medicines that can complement, antidote, follow each other.
Antidoted By
Sulphur: especially head and sciatic pains.
It Antidotes
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Mercurius
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Useful after too much use of chlorate of potash for sore throat.
Compare
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Hydrastinum muriaticum: locally, it can be applied to the aphthous sore mouth, ulcers, ulcerated sore throat, ozaena.
It is a uterine hemostatic and vasoconstrictor in conditions like metrorrhagia due to fibroid tumor and hemorrhages from dilatation of the stomach. And is indicated in chronic digestive disorders.
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Hydrastin Sulphur: – It is indicated in hemorrhage of bowels in typhoid.
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Marrubium: – It is indicated in chronic bronchitis, laryngeal and bronchial affections, cold and cough and dyspepsia, and liver disorders.
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Cancer nodulated tumor of the tongue:
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Xanthorrhiza apifolia
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Conium:
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Ars iod
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Phytol
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Gallium
Action on a mucous membrane
Pulsatilla: Mucous discharges are profuse, bland, thick, and yellowish-green. Symptoms rise to a certain pitch and then ceases suddenly.
Antimonium crud: The patient is a gross feeder and eats beyond his digestion capacity and without discrimination. This leads to disturbance of mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal tract.
Ammonium Mur: When the mucous membranes are affected, there is increased secretion and retention, especially in the chest and gall ducts. Many groups of symptoms are accompanied by cough or profuse glairy mucus discharges with liver trouble.
Kali bichromicum: Mucous membranes of the air passages, nose, pharynx, stomach, and duodenum are affected, producing adhesive, sticky, stringy, tough, lumpy, or thick discharges. Disease condition progresses slowly but deeply.
Action on lower bowels
Aloes: Abdominal veins are affected, leading to congestion and relaxation in the rectum, liver, colon, and pelvis. There Is a sensation of fulness in the affected parts. There is a sensation of heavy dragging as of a load. Discharges from the rectum are gelatinous, and there is a sense of insecurity.
Collinsonia: Pelvic and portal congestion is marked, leading to hemorrhoids and constipation. Arterial tensions are decreased, and there is an atony of muscular fiber.
There is a sensation of weight and constriction with venous engorgement in the lower bowels.
A sensation of sharp sticks in the rectum is marked. Because of constriction, feces are dry.
Sulphur: Bearing down pain against the rectum. Pain, urging, and itching are marked in the rectum.
Sepia: Rectum is constricted and powerless. There is constant oozing from the anus.
Pains shoot up in the rectum.
Gastric catarrh of alcoholism
Nux vomica: Alcohol has a severe effect on the patient as the patient craves alcohol. It leads to heartburn, waterbrash, and gastralgia.
In gastralgia, the pain goes to the back and chest with violent vomiting.
Gastroduodenal catarrh involving bile ducts
Berberis vulgaris: Pain from the gallbladder to the stomach, which is worse by pressure. Biliary calculi are present.
Digitalis: Gall-bladder is enlarged, sore, hard, and painful.
Gelsemium: Gripping pain in the gall bladder with calculus.
Hydrastis Canadensis Dosage & Potency
Homeopathic medicines are prescribed based on the similarity of the symptoms. The symptoms presented by the patient are matched with the symptoms of the remedy.
Depending on the extent of symptom similarity, the potency and repetition are decided. The more significant number of symptoms that match, the higher is the potency used.
Similarly, if a smaller number of symptoms match the remedy, then a lower potency is used.
Other than this, one major factor in deciding the dosage and repetition is peculiar and rare symptoms. These are the seemingly irrelevant symptoms to the pathology, and they appear to have no relevance to the case whatsoever.
Indeed, these are the ones that, more often than not, maybe dismissed as a joke and not taken seriously. But these are the ones that define the person.
These symptoms are the ones vital to a homeopathic prescription as they are the ones that help us understand the person suffering from the disease.
So more the number of these peculiar and rare symptoms higher should be the dose used, and lesser should be the repetition.
Homeopathic remedies are powerful and profound acting. They have to be prescribed with utmost care and judiciousness.
Hydrastis Canadensis 30 Uses:
It can be used in conditions like catarrh, constipation, corn, fistula, hemorrhoids, jaundice, menorrhagia, metrorrhagia, nail affection, postnasal catarrh, rectum complaints, ulcers, etc.
4-5 pills twice or thrice a day can be administered to the patient.
Hydrastis Canadensis 200 Uses:
It can be used in conditions like asthma, cancer, chancroid, ear complaints, faintness, gastric complaints, gonorrhea, leucorrhea, lumbago, lupus, mouth sore, adherent placenta, syphilis, sore throat, etc.
3-4 pills twice a day till You can administer improvement to the patient.
Hydrastis Canadensis 1M Uses:
It can be used in conditions like alcoholism, eczema, noises in the head, sciatica, neuralgia, etc.
Four pills thrice a day till improvement is seen, and then You can taper the dosage as per the state of the patient.
Hydrastis Canadensis Side Effects
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Persistent headache
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Easy bruising/ bleeding
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Nausea
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Vomiting
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Severe abdominal pain
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Mood changes (nervousness, depression)
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Low blood sugar due to berberine
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Cold sweat
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Blurred vision
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Dizziness
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Shaking
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Increased heartbeat
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Tingling in hands and feet
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Rash
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Itching/swelling especially face tongue, throat, etc.
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Severe dizziness
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Trouble in breathing
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Consumption of Hydrastis over a long leads to poor absorption of vitamin B12.
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It would be best if you avoid it in PREGNANCY AND LACTATION with gastrointestinal disorders.