Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Bikh-e-Sarphoka is the dried root of the plant Tephrosia purpurea. Unani and Persian doctors use it as a single drug. "Bikh" means root.
In English it is often sold as wild indigo root. In Ayurveda, the same plant is called sharapunkha.
Unani doctors have used it mostly for problems they linked to the liver and spleen. They also used it for coughs, fevers and urinary trouble.
It is most often taken as a decoction (a drink made by boiling the root in water). Dried root powder is the other common form.
Here is the honest summary of the evidence. This plant has a long, well-recorded place in traditional practice. But almost all modern research is lab and animal work.
Long use tells you that people valued a remedy. It does not prove the remedy works, or that it is safe. Nothing here should be read as a promise of a result.
One warning about names. "Wild indigo root" is also used for a quite different plant, Baptisia tinctoria. Check the Latin name Tephrosia purpurea on any label before you buy.
No one has shown in people how this root works. So what follows is a theory, not a finding.
Lab and animal studies point to two groups of plant chemicals: flavonoids and rotenoids. These may lower inflammation (swelling and irritation in tissue). They may also lower oxidative stress (chemical damage inside cells).
Animal studies have looked at liver injury. They report less damage when the extract was given first.
In Unani theory the drug is hot and dry. It is said to open blockages of the liver and spleen. That is a traditional way to describe the drug, not measured biology.
Bikh-e-Sarphoka is sold and made up in a few simple ways.
Dried cut root, boiled into a decoction (a drink made by simmering the root in water).
Dried root powder, sometimes taken with honey or warm water.
Compound Unani formulas, where the root is one part among many.
Water-and-alcohol (hydro-alcoholic) extracts and capsules from herb sellers. These rarely state a strength.
Avoid the seeds and the seed oil. Seeds of Tephrosia plants are used as fish poison in several countries. They are not a food or a medicine.
Tephrosia purpurea is a scrubby legume of dry ground. It grows across South Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa.
It is written up in both classic Unani and classic Ayurvedic texts. That is unusual for a minor herb.
Unani sources place it among the drugs for blockages of the liver and spleen. Ayurvedic sources call it sharapunkha and give it much the same role. They also use it for fever and cough.
In the same regions, people used the plant as a fish poison. They also grew it as a green manure crop.
Stop taking it and see a doctor the same day if your skin or the whites of your eyes turn yellow, your urine turns dark, or you get pain in the upper right side of your belly. These can be signs of liver injury.
Get urgent medical help if you have a racing or irregular heartbeat, numbness or tingling in your hands or feet, severe vomiting, or you feel faint.
Also see a doctor rather than continuing on your own if a fever lasts more than three days, if your belly is swollen, or if the problem you are treating is not clearly better after two to three weeks.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Bikh-e-Sarphoka is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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