Sanguinaria canadensis (Bloodroot)
Family: Papaveraceae
Habitat/Botanical Description: The plant grown throughout North America and Canada in moist, deciduous woods. The rhizome is 1 cm diameter, 5 cm long, reddish brown and longitudinally wrinkled. The fracture is short, with a white transverse section with red latex vessels.
Part Used: Rhizome
Active Constituents:
Alkaloids (Benzophenanthridine-allocryoptopine, berberine, chelerythrine, chelilutine, chelirubine, coptisine, oxysanguinaridine, protopine, sanguinarine, sanguidarine, sanguilutine, sanguidmerine, sanguirubine)
Medicinal Actions:
Anaesthetic, anti-microbial, expectorant, smooth muscle relaxer
Medicinal Use:
1)       Sanguinaria has been used medicinally by Native Americans for hundreds of years. It has smooth muscle relaxing action, alleviating spasm in the bronchial smooth muscle. It also stimulates expectoration. It is a strong antimicrobial. These actions make it useful in treatment of chronic, congestive lung conditions with a dry, irritable cough and difficult respiration. There is a peculiar symptom of itching of the mucus membranes including pharynx, larynx, trachea, ears, vagina and rectum. It is also useful to treat pharyngitis, beta hemolytic strep induced or any other bacterial or viral etiology.
2)       Applied to the cervics. 10 minutes with the sangulnellia fluoride. “cervical .exfoliates the cervics good in stage one displasia
3)       Do not need a lot of the herb to have an affect
4)       Decoction is bitter
5)       The alkaloids are antimicrobial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory and mast cell stabilizing. Some of the alkaloids uncouple phosphorylation and intercalate with DNA, causing the antimicrobial action. It is also used in treatment of gingivitis, oral inflammation and infection, and reduce plaque. It combines well with other resin containing botanicals. The antiviral action is useful against warts of all types. It can be applied topically to the wart, avoiding other tissues, and will cause the wart to dry, darken and fall off. It is part of the cervical escarotic treatment.
Contraindications: None
Toxicity: None
Drug Interactions: None
Pharmacy:
Decoction: 1 tsp dried root/cup TID
Tincture (1:5): 2 – 5 ml TID