I Didn’t Set Out to Make a Lyme Formula…

At the end of 2020, I found myself thinking about a question herbalists have asked for generations: What does the body need when the illness is over, but the person still doesn't feel well?

People were coming through COVID but not necessarily bouncing back. Some were exhausted. Some felt like their bodies had been knocked completely off course. They weren't simply looking for something to help them fight an illness, they were trying to find their way back to feeling like themselves.

As an herbalist and formulator, that really got my wheels turning. I started thinking about plants in two different ways. First, which herbs would I choose for strong, broad antimicrobial support? But equally important, which herbs would I choose to support the person whose body had been fighting the battle?

That's how this five-herb formula came together.

I started with Lomatium Root, Cryptolepis Root, and Chaparral Leaf, three powerful antimicrobial botanicals that come from different herbal traditions and bring very different plant chemistry to the blend.

Lomatium is especially close to my heart. It's a western North American medicinal plant that my dad, Max Barlow, valued tremendously. He used Lomatium in several of his original formulas, and it's a plant I've known and appreciated for most of my life. I think of it as a wonderful foundation for broad botanical defense.

Cryptolepis takes us all the way to West Africa, where the root has a long history of traditional use surrounding malaria, fevers, and infectious conditions. Today, it has also become an important herb among people dealing with Lyme. I love what it adds to the depth of this formula.

And then there's Chaparral, one of the great medicinal plants of the American desert. Its resinous leaves have been valued by generations of herbalists for their cleansing, antimicrobial, and alterative properties.

What I particularly liked was that these weren't three versions of the same plant. Different plants. Different traditions. Different natural compounds. Overlapping purposes. Together, they gave me the broad antimicrobial foundation I was looking for.

But I didn't want to just keep piling on more antimicrobials.
Because I kept coming back to the person.

When the body has been under stress for weeks or months, sometimes the person needs just as much attention as the problem does. That's why I brought Holy Basil and Suma Root into the formula.

Holy Basil, also known as Tulsi, is one of my favorite adaptogens. Adaptogenic herbs help the body respond to and recover from stress, and prolonged illness can certainly be an enormous physical and emotional stressor. I wanted an herb in this formula whose job was essentially to say, "We're going to support you while we're doing this."

Then I added Suma Root, a wonderful South American tonic traditionally associated with strength, stamina, vitality, and restoration. I think about the two adaptogens this way: Holy Basil helps the body adapt. Suma helps the body rebuild.

And suddenly, I didn't just have an antimicrobial formula. I had something much more complete.
Three for the challenge. Two for you.
That's really the heart of this blend.

Lomatium, Cryptolepis, and Chaparral provide the antimicrobial side of the formula, while Holy Basil and Suma support resilience, restoration, and the body's ability to find its footing again.

I brought the finished formula into the Barlow Herbal line in the spring of 2021. I had originally formulated it with long-haul COVID in mind, and I was thrilled with what we began seeing.

Then something happened that I hadn't originally anticipated: people dealing with Lyme started discovering it.

The more I thought about that, though, the less surprising it seemed. I hadn't really built this formula around the name of an illness. I had built it around a pattern I was seeing in people, a body that had been challenged for a long time, a microbial component that needed attention, reserves that had been depleted, and a person who desperately wanted to feel like themselves again.

That's one of the things I love most about herbalism. Sometimes we begin by asking, "Which herb is good for this particular problem?" But after you've worked with plants long enough, another question becomes just as important:
What does this person need right now?

There's also something very personal to me about this particular formula.

Lomatium was a plant my dad used and loved, so there's a botanical thread connecting his work to mine.
But this isn't one of Dad's formulas. It's one of mine.

I grew up looking at plants differently, though the eyes of my dad and that naturally became part of how I look at them, too. But through my own decades of studying herbs, listening to people, working with plants, and developing formulas, I've developed my own instincts as a formulator.

And this is one of the blends I'm especially proud of.

Every herb has a reason for being there. Nothing is filler. Each plant contributes something the others don't.  

Three for the challenge. Two for you. Five plants working together.

That’s the kind of herbal formulation I love, and I can’t help but picture my dad looking over the finished blend, then giving me that quiet nod and smile that said, ‘You got it right.’

Stay grounded and growing!