Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Ammonium bromatum is a homeopathic single remedy made from ammonium bromide, a salt of bromine. Its Latin name is Ammonii bromidum, and it is also sold as Ammonium bromide. Homeopaths choose it mainly for a raw, tickling throat with hoarseness and a dry cough that is worse at night.
It is also given in homeopathy for long-running catarrh (a build-up of mucus) in the nose and throat. The remedy is made by diluting the salt over and over, shaking it hard at each step. At common strengths such as 30C, none of the original salt is left in the pellet.
Low strengths such as 1X or 3X are different, because they can still hold real bromide, and bromide builds up in the body. That is why the safety section below matters even though this is a homeopathic product.
There are no human trials of this remedy, and trials of homeopathy as a whole do not separate it from placebo (a dummy treatment). Its standing in homeopathic practice is genuine, but traditional use is not proof that a remedy works.
There is no accepted explanation for how Ammonium bromatum could act once it is diluted past the point where any of the salt remains.
Homeopathy works from the idea of "like cures like": a substance that causes symptoms in a healthy person is given in tiny amounts to treat similar symptoms. Practitioners also believe that diluting and shaking the mix leaves behind an effect. Neither idea is supported by chemistry, biology or pharmacology (the science of how drugs act).
In material amounts, bromide salts do have a real drug effect. They calm the nervous system and were once used to quiet coughs and control seizures (fits). That effect belongs to the raw salt and to very low dilutions, not to a 30C pellet.
Ammonium bromatum comes in a small number of standard homeopathic forms.
The usual ones are sugar pellets or tablets that dissolve under the tongue, and liquid drops in an alcohol and water base. Strengths on the label run from low decimal potencies such as 1X and 3X up to 6C, 30C and higher.
Some homeopathic cough and throat mixtures list Ammonium bromatum as one ingredient among several. Check the strength on any label, since low X potencies carry real bromide.
Ammonium bromatum entered homeopathy in the 1800s, when bromide salts were widely used in regular medicine as sedatives and seizure drugs.
Homeopaths tested the salt in "provings", where healthy volunteers took doses and wrote down what they felt. The throat and cough picture that came out of those reports is still the one used today, and it appears in nineteenth-century American materia medica texts.
Regular medicine dropped bromide salts in the twentieth century after long use caused bromism (bromide poisoning). Homeopathy kept the remedy as a minor, narrowly used one rather than a mainstay.
See a doctor if a cough, hoarseness or sore throat lasts more than two weeks, or keeps coming back.
Get medical help the same day if you have trouble breathing, chest pain, a high fever, you are coughing up blood, or a child has a barking cough with noisy breathing.
Stop the remedy and speak to a doctor straight away if you notice a spreading spotty rash, unusual sleepiness, slurred speech, unsteady walking, confusion or low mood. These can be signs of too much bromide in the body.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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