Chinese herbal medicine is very popular when it comes to skin care, but what about the herbs in Japan? There is a Japanese root called: Rhizoma Coptidis. Rhizoma Coptidis has many acne killing properties and pretty terrible side effects that have been reported to be very similar to Accutane. Accutane is a form of vitamin A that is used mostly to help cure severe cystic acne. It reduces the amount of oil that is released from the oil glands. It is not used very often because of its horrible (possible) side effects like depression, suicidal thoughts, thinning hair, birth defects, breathing problems, and so much more. The most effective active ingredient in this Japanese root is Berberine. How can you consume this ingredient in a healthier way? The answer is: Barberries.
Barberries are one of the most antioxidant-filled dried fruits on the market and are very cheap at local grocery stores. You can always find them at Middle Eastern grocery stores because they are included in a traditional Persian rice dish. Their taste is sour.
For thousands of years, barberries have played a huge part in herbal medicine. It is so important that in the pharmaceutical department, they have been described as: "an herbal remedy [that] has no match in serving the human race." There have been many studies on barberries to see if they are clinically reliable, but more recently, there have been studies to see if barberries can help cure cancer. Unfortunately, most of these studies have been conducted on hamsters and rats, so it wasn't much help when it came to helping humans.
Moving on from cancer, since barberries contained a well-known ingredient in the skin and dermatology department, some scientists decided to conduct an experiment to see how well barberries can treat acne. The experiment was a double blind (meaning that both the patients and the scientists were completely clueless as to what pills the patients received during the experiment), randomized (meaning that they randomly assigned which patient would get the real pill or the fake pill), and placebo-controlled (some got real pills and some got fake pills so they could compare them). In an ideal experiment, you need a control group which is a group that doesn’t get the treatment. This allows your final conclusion to be more reliable since you can compare the treatment result to the control result. In this experiment, the control was a placebo, which is a pill with either just water or sugar inside (no medication). The experiment contained 50 people who were between the ages of 12-17 years old with either moderate to severe acne. Half of the children got a sugar pill (the placebo) and the other half received about a teaspoon of dried barberries, three times a day for a month.
After the month was over, the children who took the placebo pill did not show any improvement when it came to a decrease in the number of pimples on their faces. On the other hand, the children who took the barberry pill had a 43% decrease in the number of pimples on their faces. That's a big difference! Based on this study, the scientists were able to conclude that barberries do, in fact, clear skin. Barberries usually cost about eight cents a spoonful, there are no side effects, and they are actually good for you! So, why not try to incorporate barberries into your daily diet?
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