Bitter candytuft

Epigastric fullness and bloating that worsens after meals, with a sense of sluggish digestion

Cramping, gas-distended abdomen with variable bowel habit, as seen in functional bowel disorders

Older eclectic sources reserved it for labored cardiac breathing with a weak, irregular pulse, a use not supported by modern evidence

Overview. Bitter candytuft is a small annual or biennial plant in the mustard family, native to southern and central Europe and long cultivated as a garden ornamental. The whole flowering herb, and sometimes the seed, is the part used medicinally. It entered nineteenth century Eclectic practice as a bitter tonic and reputed cardiac and respiratory remedy, and in the twentieth century it found a more secure place as one component of a well known fixed herbal combination used for functional digestive complaints.

Clinical Notes. In contemporary practice, bitter candytuft is rarely prescribed as a single agent. It is best known today as one of nine herbs in a proprietary German liquid combination widely used for functional dyspepsia and irritable bowel syndrome, where it is credited with normalizing gastric motility, both stimulating a sluggish stomach and calming excessive spasm, an effect consistent with its bitter and mildly antispasmodic character.

Therapy. The most direct action of this remedy is upon an enlarged heart, where there is functional weakness. It lessens the force of the heart's action, controlling violence and irritability. It overcomes the dyspnea of these cases, the vertigo and general sense of weakness, with other reflex symptoms. In bronchitis, asthma, dyspnea, and in jaundice or dropsy, all of cardiac origin, it is said to be one of our best agents, in some cases acting magically. Galen used it in rheumatic affections. The agent has not received the attention it is said to deserve.