An Herbal Formula for Hemorrhoids

I always like to say that every client you see is a chapter in your experiential book of learning herbal medicine. And that is the very best book you can get to learn about how to use plants effectively.

Recently, I was blessed with the opportunity to treat a condition I’d never treated before… hemorrhoids.

This can be a bit of an embarrassing condition for people, and they might dance around what’s really going on with them and not outright say it.

While I had learned about what hemorrhoids are in school and knew what main herbs are commonly used to treat them, I literally had no idea how painful, uncomfortable, and challenging they can be for people!

This person had been using conventional over-the-counter treatments to try and alleviate their discomfort, and they worked (a little), but the condition just kept getting worse. This is because they focus only on topical treatment, rather than working on the body from the inside out.

Something like a hemorrhoid is an external manifestation of a deeper level of imbalance within the system, what the old doctors would refer to as a “relaxed tissue state.” This ecological imbalance within the tone of the tissues is treated with a single primary herbal action: astringents, which help to tighten up and tonify tissues that have become overly loose, lax and weakened.

Here you’ll learn the specific formula I used for this person and how powerful it was to turn around their condition, bring swift symptomatic relief, and most importantly, correct the underlying physiological imbalance that was the ultimate root cause of the symptom. I was actually amazed at how quickly this formula worked, especially after conventional treatments had been used for weeks to no avail.

Okay here's that formula:

• 30% Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) circulatory stimulant and astringent. Warming/drying
• 25% Red Root (Ceanothus cuniatus) tonifies portal vein, astringent, bitter tonic. Cooling/drying
• 20% Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium) bitter, disperses liver and portal stagnation, astringent. Cooling/drying
• 20% Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) sedates heat and inflammation, increases venous circulation, astringent. Cooling/drying
• 5%  Ginger (Zingiber officinale) warming, circulatory stimulant, disperses blood stagnation. Warming/drying.

Thus we can see this formula has a wide range of medicinal actions. But the net quality of it is to astringe, tighten, and tonify the pelvic region, liver, portal vein, intestines, and vasculature. It will effectively drain fluid stagnation and circulate stagnant blood. The Ginger is added to help warm the formula up as most of the other remedies are cooling energetically.