Know Your Remedies: Sanguinaria Canadensis (Sang.)

Common Names: Bloodroot; bloodwort; Canada puccoon.

General Information

The symptoms of those needing Sanguinaria Canadensis (Sang.) are usually right-sided (especially headaches) and often improve with burping, vomiting, or passing flatus (gas). The person is warm-blooded and complains of burning, congestion, and flushes of heat. They feel worse in the daytime sun. Mucous membranes are often dry though any discharge will be burning or acrid. A strong liking for spicy or pungent food is common.

Mental-Emotional Symptoms

• Sensitive to light, noise, and odours.
• Want to be held. Feel better for being held.

Head

• Nearly all headaches and migraines are right-sided.
• Weekly headaches/migraines.
• Headaches/migraines that commence in nape of the neck and settle over the right eye.
• Headaches/migraines with burning in the stomach.
• Headaches/mograines relieved by vomiting.
• Headaches/migraines in which the eyes feel as though they are being pressed out.

Nose

• Sensitive to odours.
• Acrid discharges.
• Hay fever.
• Polyps

Chest and Respiratory

• Cough that is improved by burping or passing flatus (gas.)
• Cough that improves with vomiting.
• Asthma with heartburn.

Gastrointestinal

• Eosophagitis
• Vomiting with headaches or migraines.

Limbs

• Pain in right shoulder, on raising or turning arm.
• Shoulder pain that worsens at night. Bursitis.
• Heat and burning of palms or soles.
• Feet become hot at night – have to poke them out from under the covers.

Where do I find it?

Sanguinaria Canadensis (Sang.) is available from our online store as a single remedy in either pills or liquid, and as part of the following Complex (combination remedy): Rotator Cuff & Shoulder Pain.

Important

While above self-limiting or acute complaints are suitable for home treatment also contact your healthcare provider during emergency situations or if symptoms worsen or fail to improve. Chronic or persistent complaints, which may or may not be mentioned above, require a different treatment and dosage protocol so are best managed by a qualified homeopath for good results.

Dosage Instructions (suitable for babies to adults)

For the home treatment of acute and self-limiting complaints take one pill or five drops of the remedy every 1 minute to 4 hours (1 minute for intense or emergency symptoms (plus seek emergency help), 4 hours for milder ones). Once an improvement is noticed, stop dosing and repeat the remedy only if symptoms return. If there is no improvement at all by three doses, choose a different remedy or seek professional guidance.

Note: Chronic symptoms or complaints require a course of professional treatment by a qualified homeopath to manage the changes in potencies and remedies may be required.

More Information

Guidelines on which potency to use

From Past Masters

Homeopathy is a 200-year system of medicine. Early medical homeopaths recorded initial provings, remedy relationships, and their early experiences with each remedy in great detail.

These writings were then shared with others to advance homeopathic knowledge and practice.

Today, these same writings give a fascinating insight into the symptoms and clinical conditions for which each remedy was used.

The following extract, with minor editing, is one example.

Leaders In Homoeopathic Therapeutics by E. B. NASH M.D.

Sanguinaria Canadensis

Pain beginning in occiput; spreads over the head and settles over the right eye, with nausea and vomiting. Sensitive to noise and light.

Loose cough with badly smelling sputa; the breath and sputa smell badly to the patient himself.

Pain in right arm and shoulder; worse at night in bed; cannot raise the arm. Also pain in places where the bones are the least covered.

Heat and tension behind sternum. Cough day and night with great emaciation.

Burning and pressing in breast, followed by heat through abdomen and diarrhoea. Acts intensely on right lung and chest.

* * * * *

Sick headache. Pain commences in the back of the head, rises and spreads over the head, and settles down over the right eye (left eye, Spigelia), with nausea and vomiting; patient wants to be in a dark room and perfectly quiet.

I have made some fine cures in long-standing cases of habitual sick headaches of this kind with this remedy. It will probably cure, or greatly relieve, the ordinary American sick headache as often as any other remedy. I use the 200th.

Loose cough, with badly smelling sputa; the breath and sputa smelling badly to the patient himself. There is sometimes a pain behind the sternum (Kali hydroid.). This kind of cough usually comes on after a severe bronchitis or pneumonia, and it looks as though the patient were fast running into consumption.

There may also be flushes of fever with circumscribed redness of the cheeks, like hectic fever. Many a case of this kind has been helped by this remedy. Dr. T. L Brown used the first trituration of the alkaloid with fine effect. The 200th has made just as good cures.

In typhoid pneumonia with great dyspnoea and circumscribed redness of the cheeks, Sanguinaria has, in my hands, done good service. The right lung seems to come markedly under its influence, either in acute or chronic troubles.

“Rheumatic pain in right arm and shoulder, worse at night in bed, cannot raise the arm.” This condition has often been relieved by this remedy in my hands and has won me much credit. I have seen one dose of the first trituration cure such cases of long standing. I have seen the c.m. do the same thing.

Flashes of heat, with hot palms and soles, at the climacteric find a remedy in Sanguinaria. Sometimes indicated after Sulphur and Lachesis have failed, especially if the circumscribed redness of the cheeks appears.