Standardized Buhner herbs

Sigh.
My Bartonella treatment was on the right track. I'm using Sida Acuta & Houttuynia cordata in pill form.
I'm also on Azithromycin 500 mg & minocycline 100 mg, 2 x day. But I can tell the antibiotics aren't working for Bartonella anymore. That's more for Lyme.

I take 1200 mg Sida Acuta, 3 x day. And 900 mg Houttuynia, 3 x day. Things were slowly improving. Last two weeks a lot of symptoms are coming back. From past experience I know these exact symptoms always come back when there is something wrong with my Buhner herbs.
I think the issue is that I started a new bottle of Houttuynia, it fits the timeline. It has a different batch number than the previous ones. My guess is that there is just not enough active ingredient in this bottle...

So my rant is about these herbs not being standardized & it has sabotaged me sooooo many times. I'm so tired of this!!! When I was still using liquid Buhner herbs the issue was the same. Every new bottle made me herx and sometimes I made mistakes with counting drops or the drops where a different size, so even though I was on a stable dosage, I still herxed too much because of these mistakes.

Is there a (European) source of Buhner herbs where every pill and every bottle is the exact same?
And what is the maximum amount of daily Houttuynia? I will try to double the pills in the mean time while I try to source a better supply.

Currently, I buy them here https://www.phoenix-der-lebenskraft.at

Hi Vim

i take buhner herbs ( i take a lot of them - 7 for lyme and another 6 for bart/co-infections)

partly for cost reasons - and partly for the consistency / quality issue - i buy bulk herbs - usually powdered - then make all my own tinctures.

its less work than filling capsules - the most cost effective way i have found - and you get to see, smell and taste the bulk herbs to get a good idea of potency. i couldn't tolerate eating all the plant fibre that would come from eating all these herbs in powder or capsule form - so tinctures have bee the obvious way forward for me.

all herbs vary somewhat from season to season, growing conditions, time of harvest, drying and storage conditios etc - but i have not had the kind of consistency issues you refer to - each batch is very similar to the last

i do not think most of these herbs have ever been standardised - the first problem that would arise is standardized for what - in most cases its not really known which chemicals are the active ones to standardize to - and in reality there is likely synergy between many compounds in each plant that provides its effects

i would suggest changing source if you feel that quality / potency is changing regularly

i buy all my buhner herbs from www.lymeherbs.eu - they are the best and most consistent quality herbs i have found - the service is also very good.

they also do their own tinctures - which i have not tried - and i think possibly capsules also ( best to browse their site and see what they have)

i buy powdered herbs when available -
if only whole/cut herbs are available then i grind them up prior to making tinctures

i hope its of some help

now i take larger doses i find the quickest and most repeatable method is to weigh the amounts out using a 100g x 0.01g scale ( just a cheap jewellery scale from ebay, amazon, AliExpress etc - but i have checked it and its highly accurate )

i just put a small glass beaker on the scale - zero it and then add the required amount of each tincture

for low doses i counted drops - i have checked this with scales many times and its highly repeatable

weird - every single time i have weighed out 50 or100 drops it has come to the exact same amount in grams within +/- 1 or 2% so i have never had an issue
this is actually the expected result due to the physics of weight vs surface tension - a drop drips when its weight exceeds the weigh the can be supported by its surface tension - so its kind of self regulating

i am just using standard droppers from a 30ml dropper bottle

i dose 4x a day - so even these +/-2% are evened out further to less than 1%
whereas i have always needed a dose of at least 10% to feel any difference ( i am pretty sensitive )

of course different tinctures with different herbs and alcohol ratios will differ in the number of drops per ml or per gram - but not by a huge amount - typically 38drops equals 1ml and around 0.9to 1g depending on the herb

i would suggest getting a small accurate scale for peace of mind

Ah, interesting. So I'm still underdosing compared to my tinctures.
I was at 60 drops for both.
Which would equal to 2 g of herb according to what you're saying. And I'm only taking half that right now. Hmm, maybe that's part of the issue too.

the exact conversion varies from herb to herb because of the above effect Vim

buhner usually gives a dosage guide for each herb in both tincture an powder form - and you can get an idea of the ratios from that -

eg for each herb take say the mid point of his dose range for powered herbs and tincture - and use the ratio of the to to convert your target dose from one to the other

the only other way you could try to do it is to try to arrive at same no of mg of active components in each - but to do that one would need to know extraction efficiency of the alcohol in the tincture and the digestive juices - which is info we do not have - so there would be a lot of guesswork involved