Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Xanthoxylum fraxineum is a homeopathic remedy. It is made from the bark of the prickly ash tree. The Latin name of the plant is Zanthoxylum americanum.
It is a single remedy. That means it comes from one source, not a blend. Homeopaths have used it for nerve pain and for painful periods.
The bark is diluted step by step, with shaking at each step. At 30C, a common strength, none of the bark is left in the pill.
Trials do not show an effect beyond placebo, a dummy pill. Long use in a tradition is not proof that a thing works. Read this page as history plus an honest look at the evidence.
At 30C there is nothing of the plant left, so a drug-like action is not plausible.
Homeopathy teaches that shaking and diluting leave a trace or imprint of the source. No accepted science backs this idea. Tests cannot tell these pills apart from plain sugar pills.
Most doctors see any benefit as placebo. Symptoms such as cramps also ease on their own with time.
You will see it as small sugar pellets or tablets that melt under the tongue. Liquid drops in alcohol are also sold.
Strengths run from the mother tincture (the raw plant extract) through 3X and 6C to 30C and 200C. The higher the number, the more it has been diluted.
Only the mother tincture and the low X strengths still hold plant material.
Prickly ash grows in eastern North America. Indigenous peoples chewed the bark for toothache, which is why it is called the toothache tree. Settlers and Eclectic doctors later used it for cramps and cold hands and feet.
Homeopaths proved the bark in the United States in the 1800s. A proving is a test where healthy people take a substance and write down what they feel.
It has stayed a small, second-line remedy in homeopathy since then.
See a doctor if period pain is severe, is getting worse, or stops you doing normal things. Get checked if you have pain, numbness or weakness in a leg or arm that is new or spreading, or if toothache lasts more than a day or two.
Stop the mother tincture and call your doctor if you bruise easily, bleed from the gums or nose, or see blood in your urine or stool.
Call emergency services for sudden chest pain, trouble breathing, face drooping, slurred speech or a sudden very bad headache.
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 Xanthoxylum fraxineum 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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