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What is it?

The well dried bark obtained from the stems of Cramp bark, a small, long-lived small tree that is native to Europe and Asia that has wide, three lobed leaves that it sheds every year.

How has it been used?

Cramp bark has had so much popular use as a medicine over the centuries that its common name reflects exactly what it has been used for.

Cramp bark is perhaps most thought of as a women’s herb for helping with painful menstruation but it is worth noting that there are lots of other traditional uses that show it has a general effect on spasm and tension elsewhere in the body. For example Cramp bark has been historically used for migraine, asthma, biliary colic (from gall stones), renal colic (from kidney stones), and numerous different kinds of indigestion or bowel disturbances where cramp is the key feature.

Personal experiences

Cramp bark is excellent for too much physical tension anywhere and it works particularly well on those muscles in our bodies that we don’t have much control over i.e. our digestive and urinary tract muscles, our lungs and for women, the womb. Cramp bark has an uncanny ability to relax and soften hard places in people's bodies, I have seen it help shift many difficult health problems.

In acute, painful conditions Cramp bark may need to be taken in frequent doses until relief has been obtained. For long term conditions a small regular dose works better.

Cramp bark combines with Wild Yam for pain in the pelvic organs, with Lobelia for breathing difficulties and with Skullcap for excess nervous tension overall.

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Excerpt from Felter & Lloyd's Kings Dispensatory from 1898

Cramp bark is very effective in relaxing cramps and spasms of all kinds, as asthma, hysteria, cramps of the limbs or other parts in females, especially during pregnancy. It is highly beneficial to those who are subject to convulsions during pregnancy, or at the time of parturition, preventing the attacks entirely, if used daily for the last 2 months of gestation. Like Viburnum prunifolium, it is a remedy for the prevention of abortion, and to prepare the way for the process of parturition. It allays uterine irritation while in the neuralgic and spasmodic forms of dysmenorrhoea it is a favorite remedy with many physicians. It has been used in spasmodic contraction of the bladder, and in spasmodic stricture.

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