Buhner Herbs - Powder vs. Tincture - Most Effective?

Hi, Gary, and welcome!

Some herbs are fine to take in powder form. I have always used Japanese knotweed in powder form. I also used cat’s claw and ashwaganda in powder. The powders are cheaper, too.

There are some herbs that Buhner recommended only in tincture form. My memory is fuzzy, as it’s been a few years since I cracked open the book. It seems like Red root is one.

You may have already seen this, but here’s an online reference to some of the protocols. https://buhnerhealinglyme.com/the-protocols/

my feeling is also that the tinctures are more effective

i think the reason for this is that the solvent - ie alcohol - are often better at extracting the non-water soluble constituents of the herbs - and the time they have to act on the herbs is much longer in tincturing than it is during digestion. ( note: from the research I have done glycerites are really no substitute for alcohol when it comes to performance as a solvent)

some constituents of some herbs are very much more soluble in alcohol than they are in water - this is generally hard to come by info - as there is little money to be made from such research - but there is some recent research showing high alcohol concentration tinctures of things like knotweed, skullcap and cryptolepis being active for many lyme group bacteria - but not so much the high water content ones

the degree of this effect is often not known for each herb - but you can often see some sign of it when the typical dosage for the powdered herb is much larger than the amount of tincture that would equate to the same weight of powder - some times this effect is 5:1

when comparing the real cost of powder vs tincture this multiplier should be taken into effect
an example is knotweed
buhner full dose is
30g per day powder
30ml per day pf 5:1 tincture
so there is a 5:1 ratio of knotweed used - 5x more in powder form
i think - even after buying the alcohol - the tincture approach was actually about half the price or less of the powder approach - if you make your own

this factor - combined with the fact that i feel tinctures are more effective in my own trials - and the convenience that they can all be mixed into easy to use combination formulas and dose controlled easily with measuring spoon or dropper makes them a clear choice for me

i did use to take knotweed as a paste that i divided into small soft pellets to swallow - it worked - but it was messy and i needed to make a batch every few days - so i have changed to 70% alcohol tincture and it seems to work better for me

one final consideration is fibre content
i have gut issues caused by lyme/bart and am intolerant to starches and fibre and so eat a carefully controlled diet with v low carb and controlled amounts of fibre - however the amount of fibre in 30g of knotweed was considerable - probably 50% of my daily intake - and i seem to function better after the change to tincture

This is all very interesting!

I got my strongest reaction from Japanese Knotweed (capsule form - extract).
On my next rotation, I'll have to give the tincture version a try.
It will be interesting to see how my body reacts to it.....

Rob

gary2400 said...

@Garize - Thanks for the great write up. Great points! You make a very strong case for making my own tinctures with the herbs when I receive them. The fiber point you brought definitely hits home for me as well as when adding up all the herbs I would be taking, the fiber content would be very significant when stronger doses are taken. How long do you typically let your herbs soak for when making your tinctures?

i typically follow Buhners advice - use his recipes and alcohol ratios and instructions - which are normally 4 weeks - kept in the dark, at room temperature and shaking thoroughly to mix up the herbs and liquid each day - as they settle out otherwise and reduce absorption. at a push this can be reduced to 2-3weeks if you have to - for instance if you would run out otherwise but i try to do the full 4 weeks - especially with anything that is only coarsely powdered ( bigger particles = less surface area - and so take longer to release their constituents )

its a bit of a process and it takes a little organisation to keep everything going over months without running out - but its working for me so i am happy to do it

I'd vote for tinctures as well. They are just so much easier to take.

I have been making my own for a while now.
Happy to pass on any tips i can if it will help.

as Paul says - It is really pretty simple and common sense mostly.

Working out how much alcohol and how much water to use for a given final % alcohol is about the trickiest bit

I work out the weights and then just weigh it into the jars with the herbs with a kitchen scale.
But none of this is hypercritical.

I just figured that since i was spending so much on herbs and investing the effort i may as well optimise everything as best i could.

Pressing is the other bit that can cause minor issues.

Its fairly easy to get 75-80% of the tincture out by squeezing the filter cloth full of herbs by hand.
After that it gets a bit harder and some type of press would be ideal. But 80% is still enough to do the job.

I use pure cotton sheets with a 400 or 800 thread count for filtering. That is fine enough to let the liquid through quickly enough but will stop all but a trace of plant material. Before that i used old cotton work shirts. That worked fine also

I would advise against the use synthetics fabrics unless you want to ingest microplastics

happy tincturing!!

hi Gary

it depends on where in the world you are located as the tax/duty rules on alcohol vary

i am in the UK - and initially i sourced 40% or 45% vodka - and even 96% polish vodka ( basically pure distilled alcohol) for the high alcohol mixes - but it was working out very expensive.

after some research i found there is a duty free spirits exception from tax if the alcohol is to be used for making products for medicinal purposes - this includes herbal tinctures. so i applied for this licence and obtained it.

there are some stipulations and record keeping required - but this allows me to buy 96% organic alcohol direct from a distillery at a fraction of the price of vodka etc

i know some states of the USA allow the same of 96% alcohol - others do not.

in Europe it will likely vary by country - but they may well have an equivalent duty free schemes, so worth investigating

@Garzie Amazing info, I really appreciate it. I am in the US, so will need to look into alcohol sources here. It's funny that you bring up the large doses of alcohol that I would be consuming everyday, especially at the higher does, not to mention adding in some of the bartonella herbs. I was planning on making about 16 different tinctures using about 8 oz of herb, which means I would need 40 oz of liquid, with 60-70% being from alcohol. I would be in the ball park of 5 gallons of 95% organic cane alcohol. I was then picturing myself consuming all of this alcohol of the course of the many months of treatment. That is a lot of alcohol!

Your slow evaporation method using the mat sounds great, but I am not sure if I would be home all the time to do this one dose at a time. I was thinking of maybe doing this to 4 oz of tincture at a time? Put each 4 oz tincture in a bowl on the low temp heating mat, and maybe add a fan as well to speed evaporation? Then when most liquid is removed, I could just add water back to the evaporated mixture so that the mixture is again 4 oz? This way I could still measure out doses accurately based on the "alcohol still-in tinctures." What do you think? Would dosing still remain accurate? How would this impact storage and potency of the now alcohol free (mostly) tincture?

@ gary

yep that would also work - but tinctures are measured in volume - and alcohol is approx 25% less dense than water - so you may wish to dose by volume - as is normally done

it will keep fine for a day or so - but you might find some gumming up and solids depositing as the alcohol is removed

ok - this could get pretty long with some of the the intricacies involved - but will try to keep it brief

traditionally the 1:1 ratio tinctures are made with fresh plant material ( which has a lot of water content - approx 80% or more ).
during maceration the alcohol draws out the moisture in the fresh plant material such that you end up with roughly the same proportions of equivalent dry plant material and liquid - and these tinctures are typically of much the same strength as dried herb 1:5 tinctures - with a few provisos.

1, some constituents - like volatile oils and delicate easily oxidized chemicals will be higher in fresh plant material - examples are essential oils and the fragile chemicals in artemisia anna used fresh for malaria treatment.
however access to fresh herbs is near non-existent - unless we grow them ourselves - so this is rarely relevant.

2, commercial operations may of course create their own processes for liquid extracts - for instance they could choose to use leas menstruum and then a hydraulic press to extract the liquid after doing so - or use more standard concentrations and as a second step partial evaporate - or even totally dry the product and rehydrate it to a desired concentration - or any combination of these processes. I don't know what process Byron white uses to achieve its claimed 1:1 ratio so I do not intend to cast aspersions about Byron White in particular - but please just be aware that the manufacture of herbal remedies is a highly unregulated industry and we have pretty much no way of knowing if what is written on a bottle is actually what is in it.

there is also some question over whether low ratios of menstruum to dry plant material are desirable in the first place. This is because of the physics of solubility. Plants have 100's or even thousands of chemicals in them - and typically we only have a very poor understanding of which of them are biologically active for our given purpose ( many many instances of science believing it is one - only to later find it is another or a combination of them). Each chemical has a different solubility in alcohol and or water. Many are only poorly soluble in either and in these cases using low solvent to dry material ratios will limit the amount of these compounds that will be extracted.

there is also the issue of yield - where, due to the inevitable residual liquid held in the plant material after pressing ( its impossible to press all of the moisture out - even with hydraulic presses - mine uses 6 tons of pressure and still something in the region of 30-50% of the dry plant material weight remains). Thus low liquid to dry plant material ratios can significantly reduce yield.

back to the original issue - i think your original suggestion of partially evaporating should work - anything above 20% alcohol content will serve as an adequate preservative biologically - just be prepared for it to be a little messy as the resins and gums in the plant material will have some tendency to come out of solution and stick to containers etc

its not an absolute rule Gary - more a rule of thumb derived empirically over centuries

its a compromise
- too much liquid and you no longer have a potent product - and alcohol is expensive, so it has cost per dose implications
- too little liquid and your yield drops and you may lose some of the less soluble components

i often use 1:4 as i have a hydraulic press i have made for extracting as much of the tincture as possible -which swings the equation a little in favour of lower alcohol to plant ratios

percolation is an elegant method Gary - but its unlikely to result in stronger extracts - it has the advantage of clean solvent coming into contact with the herb - but the contact time is v short - which will be the rate limiting factor.

i think you may be overcomplicating it

typically if you take 3 or 4 doses a day - only one would normally have to be outside of the home
you could simply let an extra one stand overnight to provide for this - no?