• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Has anyone whole Sophora root instead of oxymatrine for enterovirus related CFS?

Messages
59
Oxymatrine is a compound that is extracted from a herb called sophora flavescens that is supposed to be antienteroviral and immune modulator which is the main ingredient to Dr Chia's equilibriant. Seeing as I live in the UK it's not possible for me to get equilibriant so I can't take pure oxymatrine. However I have found an chinese medicine practitioner who stocks the herb itself.

Could I get any benefit from taking the root in it's whole form seeing as it will still have oxymatrine in it, just not in the pure/extracted form?
 
Last edited:

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Dr Chia's equilibriant. Seeing as I live in the UK it's not possible for me to get equilibriant so I can't take pure oxymatrine

You can certainly order Equilibrant from Dr Chia's website and have it delivered to the UK.

You can also buy:

Alternative Medicine Solutions oxymatrine (300 mg oxymatrine per capsule) from here:
alternativemedicinesolutionbetterlifealchemistlaborganicpharmacyamazon

White Tiger brand oxymatrine (200 mg oxymatrine per tablet) from here:
chineseherbsacuatlantanaturalnutritionalsgoldenneedleonlinemaxnaturebiomedonline (Netherlands)

I found the White Tiger brand (which contains both matrine and oxymatrine) caused dizziness for an hour or so after taking each tablet, whereas the Alternative Medicine Solutions brand (which contains only pure oxymatrine) did not cause this side effect.

Note that Dr Chia says oxymatrine is not recommended for people with autoimmune tendencies or seizure disorders.


If you want to use Sophora root instead, note that this contains 2% oxymatrine, so to get 200 mg of oxymatrine you'd need to take 10 grams of Sophora root (unless the root is a concentrated extract, eg, 5:1 extract, in which case it will contain a higher percentage).

People following Dr Chia's oxymatrine protocol usually slowly work up to taking around 6 x 200 mg oxymatrine tablets a day.
 
Last edited:

Jenny

Senior Member
Messages
1,388
Location
Dorset
Oxymatrine is a compound that is extracted from a herb called sophora flavescens that is supposed to be antienteroviral and immune modulator which is the main ingredient to Dr Chia's equilibriant. Seeing as I live in the UK it's not possible for me to get equilibriant so I can't take pure oxymatrine. However I have found an chinese medicine practitioner who stocks the herb itself.

Could I get any benefit from taking the root in it's whole form seeing as it will still have oxymatrine in it, just not in the pure/extracted form?

It is one of the things in the Chinese herbs that I take. I think they have been helpful over the years.
 
Messages
59
Do you eat the root after you boil it or do you just drink the water that you boil it in? I don't want to throw the root away after making the drink as I don't want to waste the oxymatrine
 

Jenny

Senior Member
Messages
1,388
Location
Dorset
Do you eat the root after you boil it or do you just drink the water that you boil it in? I don't want to throw the root away after making the drink as I don't want to waste the oxymatrine
I boil the herbs for an hour and a half, drink the liquid over 2 days and throw away the herbs. That's the classic way of taking Chinese herbs.
 
Messages
59
Thanks for your help. I tried it for the first time last night and it made me feel really dizzy and funny, but I will persevere
 

JES

Senior Member
Messages
1,320
Yeah, the dizziness comes from some other ingredient of the herb and it seems to happen to most of us. If you want to avoid it, the Alternative Medicine Solutions brand that was mentioned in post #2 contains pure or at least purer Oxymatrine, which will not cause any dizziness in mine and others' experiences.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Thanks for your help. I tried it for the first time last night and it made me feel really dizzy and funny, but I will persevere

Dizziness can be problem with Sophora root / Ku Shen. As JES mentions, an ingredient in the herb (probably matrine) causes dizziness.



For UK buyers here is a further alternative supplier of Sophora flavescens tincture, dried herb, or powder.

http://www.bristolbotanicals.co.uk/pr-1099

Yes, I've bought many herbs from Bristol Botanicals, they are quite good, and they have a lot of concentrated extracts. In this case they sell a 5:1 Sophora concentrated extract. The 5:1 just means that it contains 5 times the amount of active ingredients compared to the natural herb (so if the natural Sophora root contains 2% oxymatrine, the 5:1 extract will contain 10% oxymatrine).