Berberine



Berberine is a plant alkaloid found in such herbs as berberis, goldenseal, and coptis chinensis, usually in their roots, rhizomes, stems, and bark. It is nutritionally helpful against fungal infections, candida, yeast, parasites, and bacterial/viral infections. Although berberine has been tested and used in diabetes, prostate cancer cell lines, cardiac arrhythmia, and leukemia, it has not been researched thouroughly with humans. Berberine is considered an ineffective antibiotic, but this perception is due to observations of its activity as an isolated compound; when tested in conjunction with other biochemical substances simultaneously by elaborated by the barberry plant, then berberine is indeed an effective antibiotic - promoted by the substances that are responsible for deactivating Multidrug Resistance pumps in bacteria and restoring the activity of the berberine. . As Lewis puts it: "Plants have faced the problem of microbial multidrug resistance for far longer than we have, and their solution is apparently to use a combination of an antibiotic with an MDR inhibitor. Emulating Nature's strategy and potentiating antibiotics with MDR inhibitors can be an effective strategy against drug-resistant microorganisms."