How To Use Andrographis Herb To Help Treat Pediatric Fever

Pediatric fever is not something to take lightly. And neither are herbal medicines.

Because of this, a lot of things will depend on age when a baby has fever symptoms. The younger, the more serious it is.

Using Andrographis herb or any medicinal herb on an infant is generally not recommended.

But once they’re past the infant stage – when you start getting recommendations to give them paracetamol – this seems a good time to look at natural alternatives.

One morning our son woke up as happy as ever, but his skin was hot.

As the day progressed, yes, it was a fever. It didn’t bring his mood down. He still wanted to play and go outside with the dogs, but he had a fever.

It was a low-grade fever, possibly from teething, so after consulting with his pediatrician, we decided to aid the fever with home remedies (that’s all there was to do), starting with sleep and water. These are very important for a pediatric fever.

What I learned is that if your child has a low grade fever that lasts less than a day and a half at most, then chances are you’re looking at fever treatment at home also.

Using Andrographis Herb To Reduce Pediatric Fever Naturally

The common advice given is to use paracetamol for fever reduction (Tylenol), but if you want to avoid pharmaceuticals and go the natural route, then this is my wife’s go-to natural fever remedy for kids.. a tiny bit of “Fah Ta Lai Jone” (andrographis paniculata) herb powder.

We used the help of this andrographis herb to reduce our baby’s pediatric fever. And it worked wonderfully paired with a lot of sleep, water and the occasional tepid bath in place of his usual shower.

Here is how we paired this herb with sleep and water to help reduce our baby’s fever and let him overcome it faster altogether.

How To Lower Fever In A Child With Andrographis Herb (Andrographis paniculata) Powder

Fa Ta Lai Jone (Andrographis paniculata) is a medicinal herb that is well known throughout regions where it natively grows. It is a common base in many Ayurvedic medicines (India).

Because Thai herbal medicine comes from Ayurvedic medicine, it makes sense that the Andrographis herb is very popular in Thailand where it’s called, Fa Ta Lai Jone.

In China it’s also commonly used and goes by the name, “Chuan Xin Lian”.

I’ve also seen it called “King Of Bitters”. This is probably my favorite name for it. It’s spot on. This herb when powdered has a chemical-like smell and an unopened bottle of high quality Andrographis powdered herb capsules will stink up a dresser drawer and any unventilated room. Best kept to well-ventilated rooms for storage.

How it’s called in the U.S.

Fah Talai Jone is how it’s called in Thailand where it’s native.

To buy it in the United States you can find it using the proper scientific name, andrographis paniculata.

This is the one we use:

For baby fevers, mainstream medical advice says to give paracetamol (Baby Tylenol) for pediatric fever treatment at home.

We always have Andrographis herb stocked in the fridge due to its many uses, fever being a main one. So we looked into it and and found it a safer option than the paracetamol when used very lightly.

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G6PD And Paracetamol Is Risky

After buying some baby Tylenol and seeing the blue food coloring, I decided to go for a natural alternative. Blue food colorings are dangerous if your kid has G6PD. Not only that, Tylenol itself is a risky medicine for G6PD as well (considered low-risk for G6PD, but that’s still a risk).

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Our Baby Fever Treatment Results With It

If we didn’t have this herb, but we only stuck to water, sleep and the sponge baths, I think our kids’ fever wouldn’t have gone down so fast.

Andrographis herb worked very well at reducing our baby’s fever. I’d say just as good or maybe better than Tylenol just based off my n=1 usage.

I’ve never used Tylenol for a baby fever so I have no idea about that.. I just know that the herb substitute works really, really good.

Most allopathic drugs and medicines are based off of the properties of a medicinal herb anyways.

How To Use Andrographis Herb Powder For Pediatric Fever

Once again, here is a disclaimer, run all things by your doc. This is purely how we use this herb. And how it’s worked for us.

What we do is mix a tiny bit of the powder poured out from a capsule. A full capsule is impossible for a young one to take, and it’s way too much in itself. Even 1/4 of the capsule is way too much. Instead we take a tiny bit, maybe 1/8, and mix it in water with a tad bit of honey.

This stuff is strong, and using just a tad bit of the powder is sufficient. We do it like 3 times in the day.

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Use A Chaser Because It Is Bitter

It’s very bitter, even when mixed with water and honey, so we follow it right up with a little spoon of no sugar goat milk yogurt to mask the bitterness. This works great, and our kid likes it. The first time we tried to use water right after instead of milk, and he vomited it up and hated it.

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Why This “King Of Bitters” Herb Is So Good For Fever

A main benefit of using Andrographis herb for pediatric fevers is that you avoid having to use allopathic medicine. If you want natural fever reduction, then it’s a perfect substitute.

The benefits are numerous when dealing with pediatric fever:

1. By taking this in a little tiny herb mix with water and honey, his fever goes down,
2. When the fever goes down, they feel better
3. And then they can sleep and drink water easier, therefore healing faster overall.

I understand those who opt to use paracetamol though. If we didn’t have G6PD to worry about, we’d have used it in a second. Anything that will help break a fever in your child is a positive. But if you want to see how to bring a fever down in child naturally, then you have options. And if you deal

Many herbs are likely more effective than Tylenol. Not just andrographis herb.

Some other herbal options that could help are common Mugwort and another called “Chinese Lizard Tail” or “Fish Wort”. It has a slew of amazing names it’s also known for like these. It’s proper name is “Houttuynia cordata”. Our herb of choice is Fah Talai Jone (andrographis), but these are two more to look into.

Andrographis Herb’s Many Additional Benefits

It’s used by most as a diarrhea, liver, or fever reducing natural remedy, and you can find it at every 711. But it has many, many uses far beyond these 3.

Here’s its definition from a Medical Journal Review titled, “Harnessing the medicinal properties of Andrographis paniculata for diseases and beyond”:

Andrographis paniculata Wall (family Acanthaceae) is one of the most popular medicinal plants used traditionally for the treatment of array of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, ulcer, leprosy, bronchitis, skin diseases, flatulence, colic, influenza, dysentery, dyspepsia and malaria for centuries in Asia, America and Africa continents. It possesses several photochemical constituents with unique and interesting biological properties.

Asian Pacific Journal Of Tropical Disease

Leprosy.

That’s all you really need to know.

It treats leprosy.

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It Works Great For Dog Fevers Too!

We treated our two puppies that came down with Canine Parvovirus with this.

They came down with Parvo not too long after eating a recently dead owl they found. The owl had been dead about 3 days.

That same week Choco and Oreo found a random jaw bone from another dog they unburied somewhere nearby and were chewing on that as well.

By syringing the andrographis herb followed immediately with electrolytes and then sweet yogurt, they were able to hold on long enough to fight the disease and live on to adulthood.

An amazing feat. I’ve had dogs die from Parvo before. And these 2 are wonderful protecters for our baby now. They love each other very much.

This is the andrographis herbal concoction set up we used for Choco and Oreo’s Parvo:

Where To Buy Andrographis Herb Online

This is the same brand we use. It’s a local Thai company brand you can find on Amazon in the states:

This is simply the one we always get, but there are other options as well for when buying Andrographis herbal supplements online.

Here are 3 more Andrographis paniculata products that would be perfect for natural fever reduction:

1. The first one comes from a trustworthy brand.
2. The second one is an Elderberry Andrographis Complex Supplement. This one looks to be very effective. I’m not sure about elderberry and babies though. You’d have to look into that.
3. And the third is a tincture, which is something we have never used, but will now look into for when the next fever breaks out around here.

If you have a health shop in town, and they don’t have fah tah lai jone (Andrographis paniculata), then they should at least have a similar beneficial herb like it that could help bring down a fever naturally in a child (or adult).

Fa Ta Lai Jone (Andrographis paniculata) Alternatives For Fever

I mentioned these Andrographis paniculata alternatives earlier, but now I’ll mention again and link to their informational wiki pages:

1. Houttuynia cordata – also goes by the wonderful names of, fish mint, fish leaf, rainbow plant, chameleon plant, heart leaf, fish wort, or Chinese lizard tail.
2. Artemisia vulgaris – best known as Common Mugwort

Andrographis paniculata is a bitter herb that helps bring down a fever naturally. I have not looked into how these other two work for fever or pediatrics, but my wife grows them and is getting many orders now because of this boogieman virus going around right now, or so they tell us (where did influenza go? It’s all of a sudden gone? Sounds like a bunch of fish wort to me).

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Additional Pediatric Fever info

There is debate on the sponge bath. But I’ll just add that if you do do it, then you should use a real natural sea sponge. It is much nicer on the skin.

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Baby Fevers And Tepid Baths

The tepid bath to reduce a baby fever is an old wives tale as far as I can see. There is no clinical evidence of it actually working. That study linked right there shows they don’t help at reducing pediatric fever, but do raise an infant’s discomfort levels instead. But that’s just 1 study, who knows.

We proceeded with the warm towel tepid baths for fever in order to clean him, in place of a shower.

For questions like, when is a fever too high for a child?, what are the causes of high temperature in babies, or what’s considered a high temperature?, I will refer you to this article which is one of several you can find online that will give professional answers for these questions and more.

For this post here, I simply just wanted to share how this “King Of Bitters” herb helped us. And how it’s a worthy medicinal herb to always have stocked in your natural medicine cabinet at home.

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A lot of sleep and water is a must

Rest is the most important thing for a fever. They need rest and liquids. Thankfully our child is a water drinker. Putting a water next to him and saying “toma” (Spanish), “gin nam” (Thai) or just “drink some water” is all it takes to get him to drink water.

He’s also a good sleeper. This was a struggle on the second night of having a fever when he couldn’t sleep. But generally, if he or she can still eat and are in a good mood outside of the slight discomfort from the fever, eventually some soft baby Debussy or classical music, a cool temperature room, and comfortable bed will get them to sleep.

Here’s a good baby classical music song you can download and listen to offline:

When you’ve overplayed these popular classical music tracks, I suggest Debussy for sleep. And for daytime focus our favorite composer by far now is Vivaldi (look at his concertos beyond Four Seasons).

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Baby Fever Chart:

This baby fever chart is useful for identifying your baby’s type of pediatric fever. It shows the main temperature taking areas.

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Naturally Treating Pediatric Fever – Summary

If you decide to employ natural home remedies for your baby’s fever treatment at home (which most do because that’s all we really can do), then in sleep and water are the most important.

And if they’re old enough for Tylenol, then take a look at andrographis herb. It works great for us.

And in regards to pediatric fever, if your infant is 12 weeks old or younger, then you may want to consider the E.R. if you can’t get to a doctor. Or a child hospital. Just to be safe.

Another interesting thing to note is that fevers that are under control aren’t necessarily bad.

It’s worth exploring more into Germ theory, Terrain theory and other theories that share more about the role of fevers. It does make sense that fevers are actually a beneficial and natural process that is helping flush the system out.

The fact that there is a “Germ Theory Denialism” Wikipedia page and acronym tells me there indeed is something worth exploring here. And for someone else, worth controlling information about it for.

One says to smother and get rid of the fever immediately. But the other says that if the fever is not out of control, and your child is no longer an infant, to let the fever do its job of flushing out the system.

Regardless, the herb Andrographis paniculata seems much better than paracetamol for taming a fever.

Do you have any natural remedies or thoughts on pediatric fever?

It would be great to know other methods for us and others who may read and benefit from the information.

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Last update on 2023-06-07 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API