LiverLove: The Herbal Wisdom Behind 9 Powerful Liver-Supporting Herbs
In a strange way, LiverLove exists because of a rash.
Let me explain.
Back in the mid-1970s, my dad started making a tincture from the root of Lomatium dissectum called LDM-100.
Lomatium became one of the most important plants in our family. I raised my boys on it, they're 45 and 44 now, and my teenage grandkids have grown up with it too. They know it well enough to reach for it themselves when they feel like they need it.
Lomatium also carries a history that goes back long before Dad ever put it into a tincture bottle. Indigenous peoples of western North America had relationships with these plants and used various Lomatium species traditionally for generations.
I've always loved that part of herbalism.
Long before anyone could isolate a constituent in a laboratory, people watched. They tasted, prepared plants in different ways and they paid attention to what happened in the body, remembering what they learned and passed that knowledge along.
There's something almost sacred to me about that kind of relationship with plants.
Maybe that's the little bit of shaman in me. I believe plants have things to teach us, but we have to be willing to pay attention.
And as it turned out, Lomatium still had something to teach me.
Because if you're familiar with Lomatium...it has a quirk.
The rash.
If you've been around Barlow Herbal very long, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.
When Lomatium root is harvested, dried, cured and oxidized, then made into a tincture or capsule, some people will experience what we've always called the Lomatium detox rash when they use it for the first time. And if you're one of those people, you know it.
It generally shows up after you've been taking Lomatium for a little while. It can be intensely itchy, uncomfortable and widespread. Then it goes away, and in our experience, it doesn't happen again.
Dad dealt with the rash when he was alive. He educated practitioners and customers about it and helped people through it. Dad died almost 29 years ago, and a few years later I restarted his company. Suddenly the Lomatium rash became part of my life too. A LOT!
I answered the questions, talked people through it and heard the stories. But after a while, simply explaining the rash wasn't enough for me.
I wanted to know why. Why could one person take Lomatium and never have a problem while another person developed this enormous itchy rash? What was different?
Before I expanded Barlow Herbal into the retail space, I spent a lot of time talking with the doctors and practitioners who had been using Dad's LDM-100 with their patients. I gathered information from customers too. I asked about lifestyle, overall health and what else seemed to be going on in the body.
Eventually, I started noticing something.
The liver kept getting my attention.
From what I was seeing, people whose liver seemed compromised, overburdened or simply a little sluggish appeared to be more likely to experience the rash.
And that changed the question for me.
Instead of only asking, "How do I prevent a Lomatium rash?" I started asking, "What if I support the body's ability to process and clear things before I give it Lomatium?"
That question first led me to MunityBoost.
I built Dandelion Root into that formula for liver support and Red Root for lymphatic movement and helping clear congestion and mucus from the body. Then we started having people use MunityBoost before moving into straight LDM-100.
And I noticed a big difference. We were seeing considerably fewer of those intense rash experiences.
That really got my attention because now I wasn't just dealing with a rash after it happened. I felt like I was beginning to understand something about the terrain of the person taking the Lomatium.
And I kept coming back to the liver.
What an amazing organ. We ask so much of it every single day, processing what comes into the body, metabolizing hormones and medications, making bile, participating in digestion and nutrient metabolism, and helping prepare things the body doesn't need for elimination.
Yet most of us don't think much about our liver until something goes wrong.
About 10 years ago, I decided I wanted to go further. I wanted a formula specifically devoted to the liver.
Part of my motivation was still Lomatium and that rash I'd spent so many years thinking about. But by then, I was thinking much bigger than the rash. I wanted something for people who simply wanted to take care of this amazing, hard-working organ before it started screaming for attention.
So I formulated LiverLove.
I started with Milk Thistle, with its centuries-old relationship to liver support and its well-known silymarin compounds. Dandelion Root had to be there because it had already played such an important role in my thinking with MunityBoost.
Then I started building out the rest of the formula.
Chanca Piedra brought its traditional relationship with the liver, gallbladder and biliary system. Chicory Root, Yellow Dock and Barberry brought the old bitter and alterative herbal traditions surrounding digestion, bile and elimination.
Turmeric added another layer around inflammatory processes, oxidative balance and digestion. Schizandra brought resilience and a completely different kind of liver-supporting plant chemistry. And Peppermint brought that bright, aromatic digestive piece to round everything out.
Nine plants, but not nine versions of the same idea. I wanted to nourish and protect the liver while also thinking about bitters, bile movement, digestion and elimination. I wanted resilience in there too. In other words, I wanted to support the liver from several directions at once rather than asking one or two herbs to do everything.
And that's how LiverLove came to be.
When I look back at it now, I love the trail that led me there.
Dad created LDM-100 more than 50 years ago, and the Lomatium rash came along with it. I inherited both. But instead of accepting that the rash was simply something we had to deal with forever, I kept asking questions.
Those questions led me to MunityBoost. MunityBoost led me deeper into the liver. And eventually, that led me to LiverLove.
We've now had about a decade of experience with the protocol we've developed around preparing the body before using Lomatium, and we've seen the chances of that infamous rash drop dramatically.
But somewhere along the way, LiverLove became much more than part of a Lomatium protocol.
Because you don't need to be taking Lomatium to love your liver.
I think the best time to pay attention to an organ this important is long before you're forced to. That's prevention, and you know how I feel about that.
Sometimes I think herbalism is as much about paying attention as it is about knowing the properties of a plant.
People have been learning that way for thousands of years. Observe. Ask questions. Notice patterns. Remember what happens. Pass along what you learn.
In its own funny way, that's exactly how LiverLove came to be.
It began with one question I'd been asking for years: "Why are some people getting this rash?"
I had no idea that question would eventually lead me to nine herbs and an entirely new formula.
Apparently Lomatium still had something to teach me after all.
I'm awfully glad I kept listening.
Stay grounded and growing!
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Posted on October 01 2026