Dr. JJ Pursell | Aug 15, 2022

As far as I know there is no such thing as a western herb that will make you lose weight, but there are herbs that can stimulate and regulate digestion, which in turn may prime your body to lose weight. A few of those herbs are known as bitters, such as angelica, golden seal, gentian root, dandelion, chamomile, yarrow and many others…

Bitter herbs stimulate the production of digestive juices which in turn aid in good digestion of food. To get the full effect of bitters you need to taste the bitters on your tongue. You cannot take a pill to get this effect because it bypasses the taste buds and will not stimulate digestive juices to flow in the same way. Once you stimulate the digestive juices there will sometimes be an increase in appetite, so you may want to be aware of that if you’re trying to lose weight. The best kind of weight loss obviously, is stimulating the metabolic system through exercise, but using herbs can’t hurt in aiding that as well.

Another thing that bitter herbs are really good at is leveling out blood sugar if you’ve eaten too much sugar! I was surprised with this finding when I decided to eat a very sugary dessert and then felt my whole body respond in a very unpleasant way. I had some hyper tension and nausea, but as soon as I had half a dropper of bitters in warm water, the unpleasant sensations went away.

To try and use bitters you can either take it as a tincture or a tea.

The best bitter tincture I found was one I made myself, using all the so called “strong” bitter herbs. These are not very pleasant tasting, but they do the trick and they’re much better than any store bought bitters I’ve ever come across.

To make your own bitter tincture, you can follow this recipe:

• 1 liter, wide mouth mason Jar
• 100 proof Vodka
• 1 part Gentian root
• 1 part Dandelion Root
• 1 part orange peel
• 1 part yarrow
• ¼ powdered ginger root

* You can grind the ingredients slightly in a coffee grinder in order for them to fit evenly make up a quarter of the jar, and most importantly to better release the volatile oils into the alcohol.

Dosage: Bitters are bitter so it’s up to you to know how much you feel like tasting. I usually take ½ dropper in warm water. If you like it stronger or weaker use more or less.

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