All About Berberine

Berberine is technically an alkaloid found in plants like goldenseal, Oregon grape, and some turmeric. It’s one of the most well researched and astounding herbs that we’ve found to date that supports healthy blood sugar levels, insulin response, cholesterol, and metabolism. It comes highly recommended from many of our staff and we consider it one supplement that we can recommend to nearly everyone!

Shop Berberine Here

Brian Strickland  00:07

Hey everyone, welcome back to Nutrition Made Simple a video series that we created that takes a look at ideas surrounding natural health topics. And then we break them down into easy to understand and actionable steps. I'm joined again by Cady Kuhlman. She's the co-owner of Nutrition World. And for the month of September, we've taken a look at a few of our favorite herbs or botanicals. And we've looked at olive leaf extract, which is amazing. We've looked at amla last week, and then this week, we're focusing on another powerhouse. And that's berberine. And we've got a lot to talk about. So I'm gonna go ahead and get right into it. Cady, what is it exactly about berberine that makes it so special?

Cady Kuhlman  00:50

Yeah, so berberine actually has over 6500 studies on PubMed. So it's a very, very extensively studied herbs. I think oftentimes people may think of herbs is only with anecdotal reviews, or as something used in another country, or, you know, is it FDA approved? Is it safe? And I mean, look, PubMed is a very scientific based platform, and it has over 6000 studies done on this one herb. You know, I love herbs that have a lot of uses. And I think this is an herb that we're going to dive into to show you all the uses.

Brian Strickland  01:26

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So starting out, I think people probably recognize and berberine the most for blood sugar issues, right? What it is, what does berberine do to help that?

Cady Kuhlman  01:38

Yeah, totally. So berberine, I'll start off a little bit, just about berberine. And then we'll get to that. So berberine is actually found in different plants like goldenseal root, it's found in Oregon grape root, it's found actually a little bit in tumeric. And so berberine is is a constituent found within these plants. And it's a plant alkaloid that means it's a chemical constituent within the plants. And so it has, I mean, like he said, so many uses, but blood sugar is is what it's really deemed for. And so I find this just fascinating in a journal, and I'm actually going to refer to the actual journal name here. And a journal of evidence based Complementary and Alternative Medicine journal, it was found that taking 500 milligrams two to three times a day rivaled the same benefits as Metformin, but with no little to no side effects. Now, what's the benefits of Metformin, it's improving insulin sensitivity. So insulin is a growth factor for our body. Insulin is how our body is responding to carbohydrates and sugars, blood sugar, it's really how our body's metabolism is built. And so insulin, having a proper functioning insulin is absolutely vital to our overall health. So this herb is improving your body's own sensitivity to our natural production of insulin.

Brian Strickland  03:01

Wow, that's incredible. So beyond blood sugar, you mentioned that there are several other things that it's useful for what would next what would be next?

Cady Kuhlman  03:09

Yeah, so next would be actually cholesterol. So I'm a health coach and a diet coach, a lot of times here at our store. And probably the biggest reason people come to me is for something called metabolic syndrome, metabolic syndrome are a couple of things all tied in together. And these these health factors put these people at a higher risk. And I've even talked to a couple of doctors before that have let me know if their patients have these three things, then they're automatically in the high risk category, high risk for what more disease, more sickness, not being able to cope as well if they were to get sick. So what are these three things, these three things are abdominal obesity, so overweight, high cholesterol, and then high blood sugar. So we've already addressed the blood sugar that berberine can help lower. The second thing would be cholesterol. So if we look at the cholesterol benefits, I would kind of like to refer to this this study in the Journal of metabolism. It stated that berberine reduced this overall serum cholesterol along with time triglycerides in type two diabetic patients by inhibiting something called the PCSK9. And so it was an overall 13% reduction in serum cholesterol. That's amazing. I mean, that's, that's insane. And so the last benefit speaking of the metabolic syndrome, the last real big benefit that I think berberine gives through looking at all the studies on it, is the benefit of weight loss. So when we're talking about lowering our blood sugar and making our insulin more sensitive, that's actually one of the positive side effects that can occur is some weight loss. Because when you make your insulin, not over succeeding all the time, and you make your insulin more sensitive than you are going to have a downstream effect of weight loss. But the way that it's doing that is through something called it's activating our NPK. This is our natural Within our mitochondria, it's a way that the body is told to store fat or burn fat. So it's activating this chemical within our own system to say, hey, burn that instead of store that. So it's kind of putting us into that place. A NPK is an antioxidant and PK is beneficial for energy metabolism. I mean, it's so many great benefits. So those were the three big things.

Brian Strickland  05:24

It's crazy. It's just absolutely nuts that something that nature provides can have such huge impact on our health. And it doesn't stop there. Right? There's there's actually other things that's beneficial for?

Cady Kuhlman  05:35

Yeah, so Dr. Jack Wolfson, one of my favorite cardiologists that has just very well versed and very well read, he actually he put in a couple of his blogs lately, that berberine may be the greatest herbs who ever exist in the history of herbs. And so that's a big statement for him to say that that's really big. But he mentions a lot of its antiviral, antibacterial, anti parasitic, antimicrobial, antifungal effects. And we won't get into all of those today. But I believe that's because when it's sourced from goldenseal, goldenseal, naturally does have all of those great effects to it. And so when I was looking earlier, actually at PubMed, and I was typing in anti viral, anti microbial, anti bacterial, and I was looking at how many of those studies out of that 6000 were present, there was actually 1400 studies on those benefits. And so that's a very well researched part of berberine as well.

Brian Strickland  06:30

All right, well, you convinced me, I'm going to go buy some right now. But hey, that's gonna wrap it up for this week. berberine is an absolutely incredible, incredible supplement. And again, it's one of those that we highly recommend pretty much for everyone. It's one of those that pretty much everyone can have some benefit from. So that's gonna wrap it for this week. Thank you so much for watching. If you found this helpful, if you liked it, be sure to like and subscribe for more content just like this each and every week. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a great week, and we'll see you next time.

Cady Kuhlman  07:02

Thank you.