December is a time often marked by holiday stress and respiratory illness. There is nothing worse than buckling down for a cold, dark month of financial constraint to complete every list and obligation, only to have the ensuing and much-deserved holiday plagued by a bad chest cold, completely ruining one’s chance to finally relax. Such cases would be paradigmatic of complaints treatable by Bryonia alba, among the most useful and yet underappreciated homeopathic remedies. Bryonia is suited to vague, common symptoms that appear gradually and linger stubbornly, perhaps why it is seldom thought of when treating acute illness. It lacks many of the dramatic, keynote symptoms that would quickly call to mind other remedies, but it is the sheer ordinariness of a routine cold that should make one think of this remedy.
Apart from being irritable and not wishing to be disturbed, a complex psychological portrait of the remedy Bryonia is lacking, unlike most homeopathic remedies that are easily remembered for their mental symptoms. Probably the best attempt to describe the remedy’s personality came from George Vithoulkas, who emphasized the dryness often characterizing its physical complaints extending to the emotional plane. The typical Bryonia patient is described as practical, hard-working, and unemotional, concerned primarily with making ends meet and not wishing to be disturbed in his or her business. In today’s high-stress world, many people find themselves to some extent forced into adopting this mindset at least some of the time, and this is probably why Bryonia is among the most useful and commonly needed homeopathic remedies.
Bryonia is especially useful for cold and flu-like symptoms common to winter complaints, as well as for symptoms present during periods of busyness and financial stress, making it an almost perfect remedy for the winter holidays. The character of Charles Dickens’ famous Christmas antihero, Ebeneezer Scrooge, is actually a convenient way to remember many of the mental symptoms of Bryonia alba: an irritable, hardworking businessman with a tormenting fear of poverty, who hates to be disturbed from his work and has difficulty connecting to his emotional side. Many more people who do not fit this caricature can still develop complaints in winter that may be treatable with Bryonia, especially if these complaints strike during a holiday following a prolonged period of stress. Bryonia is one of the leading homeopathic remedies for cold and flu-like symptoms, and indeed along with Gelsemium sempervirens was one the top two remedies used during the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic.
Bryonia is considered one of the foundational polychrest remedies of homeopathy, meaning it can effectively treat a wide variety of complaints. Bryonia can treat joint pain, for instance, but it is not considered to be a pain remedy because it can also treat cough, headache, dizziness, and numerous gastro-intestinal and flu-like symptoms. Almost any condition involving fever or localized inflammation can potentially fall within its sphere of action, though only if the entire symptom picture agrees.
A key theme running through the Bryonia symptom picture is dryness, which characterizes its general state, though many of its localized symptoms are the result of serous effusions, accumulations of excess fluid where it is not normally supposed to be, for instance in the joints or the pleural space. Interestingly, Bryonia alba is a member of the Cucurbitaceae or gourd family. These plants, which include melons and squash, often store large quantities of water in their fruits, and hollowed gourds have been used as vessels for storing water since ancient times. These signatures hint at Bryonia’s ability to balance the distribution of fluids within the body, likely by influencing eicosanoid and corticosteroid levels.
Bryonia’s broad usefulness in so many acute illnesses likely involves its modulating effect not on the immune system, but on the adrenal glands. As with all homeopathic remedies, it is speculated to act on the principle that like cures like, and so to understand its action, one must know something about the crude substance’s effects on the body. The most important constituent that herbal medicine has identified in the roots of Bryonia alba, the remedy’s source, is cucurbitacin R diglucoside. This compound acts upon the adrenal glands to increase their production of corticosteroids, as well as several inflammatory prostaglandins. Its stimulatory effect on the adrenal glands has proven Bryonia root to be a powerful adaptogen, dramatically increasing the organism’s work capacity under stress, though it is seldom if ever used as an adaptogen in herbal medicine. This is because in addition to increasing work capacity under stress, its active constituents are sufficiently toxic that in large doses, it causes purgative symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea.
While not popular as an adaptogen, Bryonia alba as a botanical extract has been explored as a way to boost stress resistance, principally by Russian scientists. Notorious for their zealous pursuit of adaptogens, Russian researchers have demonstrated Bryonia’s ability to improve endurance work capacity in athletes, and it was used in clinical trials to treat victims of the Chernobyl disaster1. It seems likely that it never gained popularity as an adaptogen simply because there are numerous safer alternatives. One potential danger of using it to improve function under stress is an unintended pro-inflammatory effect. Bryonia’s active constituents seem to both decrease inflammatory markers in stressed subjects while increasing them in healthy subjects2, suggesting a bidirectional or modulating effect. Such ambiguous actions are common to many of the plants used in homeopathy, which can cure the illnesses they cause. As a homeopathic remedy, Bryonia would seem most useful to those whose immune function has been disrupted or disturbed by a prolonged period of stress. If the plant can be thought of as lending an unnatural resilience to stress in the short-term followed by increased inflammation once the stress has abated, the remedy will cure precisely this condition when given in homeopathic form.
Here is a dramatic and ironic case which serves to illustrate Bryonia’s use in patients who have been under prolonged stress: a woman in her early 60s who had “never been sick a day in her life,” claiming never to have taken a single sick day from her high-stress job spanning several decades, presented with a severe cold that had lasted several days and seemed to be getting worse, accompanied by a painful dryness in the sinuses. Significantly, before the illness struck she had just made the decision to finally retire, and had been forced to miss her last week on the job due to illness, after never taking a sick day prior! This illustrates the tendency of Bryonia symptoms to appear just as the continued pressure upon a high-stress person relents, similar to the way pains may feel better with pressure and worse upon movement which releases it. In this patient’s case, it seemed that the years of not taking a sick day had caught up to her all at once, and after taking a dose of Bryonia, her symptoms quickly resolved. She had complained that the worst thing about her illness was missing her final week of formal employment, which speaks to the famous Bryonia symptoms “fear of poverty” and “during fever, talks incessantly about his business.” Often, the person needing Bryonia will present after feeling ill for several days, demanding something to promote an immediate recovery so they can stop missing time off work.
Many acute winter ailments will not benefit from Bryonia. This is the nature of homeopathy, that potentized attenuations capable of balancing complex physiological systems without toxicity only work if they correspond to the organism’s general state. Reliable symptom relief can often be achieved by prescribing a combination products containing several of the most common remedies, as in Energique®’s Cough HP™ and Flu HP™, both of which contain Bryonia. The remedy may work more quickly and completely if given as a single when indicated, however. The following are some reliable indications for Bryonia:
- Gradual onset of symptoms, beginning mildly and getting worse over several days.
- Fever and related symptoms are worst at 9 PM, 9 AM, or upon waking.
- Dizziness experienced first thing upon waking, gradually improving as the day goes on.
- Painful cough, such that urging to cough is resisted and partially relieved by pressing on the chest or throat to minimize the violent motion.
- Throat and sinuses feel extremely dry.
- Headache worsened by any movement and better from compressing the head.
- Extreme thirst, but at infrequent intervals: patient does not want to sip, but when thirsty needs large quantities of cold liquid.
- Symptoms come after a period of prolonged stress, beginning as soon as the stress relents.
- Concerned about the illness’ effects on their work, school, business, etc. May crave their morning coffee even while sick.
- Panossian A, Gabrielian E, Wagner H. Plant adaptogens. II. Bryonia as an adaptogen. Phytomedicine. 1997 Mar;4(1):85-99. doi: 10.1016/S0944-7113(97)80033-5. PMID: 23195251. ↩︎
- Panosian AG, Dadaian MA, Gabrielian ES. Glikozid kukurbitatsina R--reguliator steroidogeneza i obrazovaniia prostaglandina E2--spetsificheskogo moduliatora sistemy gipotalamusa-gipofiz-kora nadpochechnikov [Cucurbitacin R glycoside--a regulator of steroidogenesis and of the formation of prostaglandin E2--a specific modulator of the hypothalamus-hypophysis-adrenal cortex system]. Biull Eksp Biol Med. 1987 Oct;104(10):456-7. Russian. PMID: 3479194. ↩︎