Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Jin Guo Lan is a herb used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for a hot, sore, swollen throat.
It is the dried tuber of Tinospora sagittata. A tuber is an underground storage root. The plant is a climbing vine from southern China.
It is also used for mouth ulcers. And it is used for hot, painful stomach upset.
It is a single drug (TCM). That means one herb used on its own, not a multi-herb formula. In practice it is often added to formulas.
It is taken as a bitter decoction, a tea made by simmering the root. It can also be taken as a powder. It is sometimes put on the skin over boils, insect bites and snake bites.
On the evidence: we could find no published human trials of Jin Guo Lan. Its standing rests on long recorded use in Chinese medicine. Lab and animal work backs that up.
Long use tells you what people have done for many years. It is not proof that the herb works. That point applies everywhere in this document.
In TCM terms, Jin Guo Lan is bitter and cold. It is said to clear heat, resolve toxicity and ease pain. That is the old way of describing a remedy for red, hot, swollen, painful problems.
In lab terms, the tuber holds bitter diterpene lactones. It also holds berberine-like alkaloids. These are plant compounds also found in goldthread and barberry.
In test tubes and in animals, these compounds slow the growth of some bacteria. They also cut inflammation (swelling and irritation).
That is a fair starting point. It does not explain what happens in a person. No human trial has shown that the root does these things in your throat or stomach.
Jin Guo Lan is sold as:
Dried sliced tuber, simmered into a decoction (a strong tea made by boiling the root).
Powdered root, in capsules or loose. It is sometimes mixed into throat lozenges or gargles.
Granules or strong extracts made up by a herbal pharmacy.
A paste made from the fresh or powdered root. In traditional practice this is put on the skin.
It also turns up as one part of multi-herb Chinese patent medicines for sore throat.
Jin Guo Lan shows up in Chinese herbal writing from the Qing dynasty onward. That includes the 18th-century Ben Cao Gang Mu Shi Yi, a supplement to the great Ming herbal. It is listed in the modern Chinese Pharmacopoeia.
Its classic job has always been the same: a hot, sore, swollen throat.
Folk use in southern China goes further. Several ethnic minority traditions use it for stomach pain, boils and snakebite.
See a doctor promptly if your sore throat lasts more than a week, comes with a fever above 38.5C, or makes it hard to swallow your own saliva. Go to hospital or call emergency services if you have trouble breathing, your neck or face swells, or you are drooling and cannot swallow.
Stop the herb and get medical advice if you vomit repeatedly, have ongoing diarrhoea, notice yellowing of your skin or eyes, or feel faint and dizzy. Anyone bitten by a snake needs emergency care immediately, not a herbal remedy.
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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