- Berberine is an alkaloid compound
that you find actually in a lot of different herbs.
Some of them being an Indian barberry, goldenseal
and certain kinds of turmeric.
Now, barberry, Indian barberry is the one
where it's most commonly sourced
from when people are making berberine supplements.
But it's but it's also found in other things
like coptis and phellodendrum,
which are two herbs that have been traditionally used
in China for thousands of years for treatment of diabetes.
So you find it all over the place,
but mostly you're gonna be looking
at getting it in a supplement form,
isolated from Indian barberry.
It tastes horrible by the way,
so don't ever make the mistake of getting it in powder.
It's like, it's one of the worst tasting things out there.
Even when you get it in capsules,
like small amounts of the powder
will make its, you know, sneak out of the capsule.
And so you're gonna taste it a little bit
when you're just taking the capsules, usually.
It's gross, but this stuff is so good
for so many areas of health that it's worth it.
So one of the first things we wanna look at here
is how it affects insulin resistance
and blood sugar balance.
So there was a three month study
and this is what's talked about the most,
this specific study where they found
that it controlled blood sugar and lipid metabolism
as effectively as the prescription drug Metformin,
which is the most commonly prescribed drug for diabetes.
And this is when people were taking berberine
as 500 milligrams, two to three times a day.
500 milligrams, three times a day
is the most common recommendation
because berberine has a very short metabolic half-life
in the body.
So it doesn't hang around for that long.
And it's also working on other things,
it's helping with high blood pressure,
it's helping with cholesterol as supported by the research.
And how is it doing all of these things, right?
'Cause if it's helping so many areas of health.
It's sometimes interesting to see, okay,
is there something upstream that it's really improving?
Like when we look at things like, you know,
like NMN or nicotinamide riboside,
you see that these, okay, these are increasing NAD,
thereby making the mitochondria work better
and producing more ATP and that's
how everything works better.
Well, what's happening here with berberine
is that it's able to activate,
what's called AMPK.
This AMP K is what it's also called.
This is an enzyme that is often called
the metabolic master switch that boosts
fat burning metabolism in the mitochondria actually,
and helps to regulate the way your body
is using blood sugar.
So when you can activate the AMP K enzyme,
you're making serious moves in pushing your health
in a positive direction.
So other things that you see in the research,
and this is likely resulting from what's happening
with the blood sugar management and the AMP K pathway,
is that it has protective effects for cognitive decline.
You often hear about Alzheimer's these days
being now understood to be kind of like type three diabetes.
So no wonder something that is gonna
manage your blood sugar very effectively
is gonna help prevent Alzheimer's.
Now, another area that we can look at
in terms of how berberine is working
is that it appears to very effectively
kill off bad bacteria while leaving
the good bacteria unharmed and really shift the balance
in the gut microbiome.
So it is also shown to really be helpful with SIBO,
which is small intestinal bacteria overgrowth,
because of the way it's able to kill off the bacteria there.
'Cause you don't want a lot of bacteria actually growing
in your small intestines.
You wanna kill those guys off and get everything pushed
back into the large intestine.
Now it's also just in some other research,
it's been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects
and it's actually shown that it helps
to mitigate some of the damage,
it's not the same as not smoking,
but it's helping to mitigate a lot
of the inflammatory damage inflicted by smoking cigarettes.
Now that's again, not an excuse to say it's okay
to go smoke cigarettes as long as you're taking berberine,
but it's reasonably worthwhile to say, okay,
if you have a loved one who will not quit smoking,
at least have them take berberine, you know,
do something in a positive direction
to mitigate some of the damage there.
And so you mentioned in your question PCOS as well,
of course, in a lot of PCOS situations,
insulin resistance is a huge factor.
So berberine is a great thing to be taking
and to be aware of.
And also, you know, side note,
make sure you're really getting high quality sleep
because sleep is a huge factor
in blood sugar regulation as well.
But specific to this, berberine actually was shown
to improve insulin resistance,
and improve fertility and live birth rates
in PCOS affected women.
So you're on the right path here.
Berberine is a great herb to be looking at.