How does berberine treat gastritis?

Modern medicine has invented countless drugs to treat various diseases. Prescribing different drugs for different symptoms is the key to symptomatic treatment. Therefore, it is very necessary to understand the drug knowledge of some diseases. For example, gastritis is a disease that people are very familiar with, and berberine is often used in the treatment of gastritis. So, how does berberine treat gastritis? Let’s take a look at the explanation below.

Berberine is an important biological alkaloid and has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for a long time in my country. It can be extracted from plants such as Coptis chinensis, Phellodendron chinense, and Tripterygium wilfordii. It has significant antibacterial effect.

Berberine can fight against pathogenic microorganisms and has inhibitory effects on many bacteria such as Shigella dysenteriae, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Pneumococcus, Salmonella typhi and Corynebacterium diphtheriae. It has the strongest effect on Shigella dysenteriae and is often used to treat bacterial gastroenteritis, dysentery and other digestive tract diseases. It is mainly used clinically to treat bacterial dysentery and gastroenteritis, and it has fewer side effects.

The causes of chronic non-infectious diarrhea are complex. Irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, malnutrition, endocrine diseases, cirrhosis, uremia, allergic diseases, cancer, etc. can all cause chronic diarrhea. Berberine has no effect on non-infectious diarrhea and abdominal pain. For common allergic urticaria gastrointestinal type, if comprehensive treatment to relieve allergies is not taken, berberine alone cannot control diarrhea. For patients with irritable bowel syndrome, abdominal pain and diarrhea often disappear after taking 2 to 3 tablets of berberine, but this is not due to the berberine. Because irritable bowel syndrome is a disease that can be relieved on its own, but it is also a disease that recurs and is difficult to cure, the disappearance of its diarrhea symptoms has nothing to do with taking berberine.

After oral administration, berberine only stays in the intestines and is not absorbed, so the adverse reactions are very small. Some scientists once gave mice berberine at a dosage of 8 grams per kilogram of body weight, and half of them were still alive after 24 hours. If a person weighs 60 kg, it is equivalent to eating nearly 250 grams of berberine every day. Of course, "all medicines are poisonous", and oral administration of berberine may also cause adverse reactions such as nausea, vomiting, and drug fever. Moreover, since berberine has a certain astringent and antidiarrheal effect, some people’s diarrhea may be stopped after taking berberine, but constipation may occur afterwards. In addition, frequent use of berberine can easily lead to drug resistance. Not only will it fail to eliminate diarrhea and abdominal pain, it may even aggravate diarrhea, abdominal pain, and other adverse reactions that you want to avoid but have ignored.