Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Cleavers is a sprawling spring weed of European hedges, ditches and gardens. Tiny hooked hairs make the stems cling to clothes, fur and each other. Folk healers used the fresh plant as a spring tonic and a water pill (diuretic).
It is called garbhlus in Irish and sticky willie in Scots and English dialect. The parts used are the young stems and leaves, picked before the sticky seeds form. Young shoots were also boiled and eaten as a pot herb.
Here is the honest verdict. There are no good human trials of cleavers for any health problem. Long traditional use shows a plant was trusted; it does not show that it works, and it does not show that it is safe.
No one has shown how cleavers acts in the human body. The studies have not been done.
Tradition said it "cleansed the lymph". The lymph system is the network that drains fluid from your tissues. There is no measured proof that cleavers changes how it works.
The water pill claim is the most plausible of the old ideas. Plants in this family hold flavonoids and iridoids, and some animal reports link such extracts to more urine. This has not been confirmed in people.
In test-tube work, cleavers extracts show antioxidant activity and mild action against some bacteria. A dish of cells is not skin, blood or a bladder. Whether any of this happens in a person is unknown.
Cleavers is sold mostly as a dried herb and as a tincture.
Common forms include:
Dried cut herb, brewed as a tea or steeped cold in water.
Tincture, an alcohol extract taken in drops in water.
Fresh juice or "succus", pressed from the young plant and usually preserved with alcohol.
Capsules of powdered herb, less common than the liquid forms.
Creams, washes and compresses for use on the skin.
As food, the young shoots were cooked like greens, and the small round seeds were roasted as a coffee-like drink. Neither use is common today.
Cleavers has a long record in European folk medicine. Greek and Roman writers described the plant, and it appears in British and Irish herbals through the medieval and early modern periods.
It was best known as a spring remedy. People gathered the fresh growth in March and April, took it as juice or tea, and treated it as a way to "clear the blood" after winter.
Herbalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries listed it for swollen glands, skin eruptions, and complaints of the bladder. Country use was wider still: shepherds used the clinging stems to strain milk, and the plant was fed to geese, which is how it got the name goosegrass.
These records describe what people did. They were not tests, and they do not show that the plant helped.
Stop cleavers and see a doctor if any of these happen.
A swollen gland that lasts more than two weeks, grows, or is hard and painless.
Fever, back pain, or blood in your urine.
A rash that spreads, blisters or weeps.
Dizziness or faintness when you stand up, especially if you take blood pressure medicine.
Go to an emergency department, or call an ambulance, if your face, lips or tongue swell, or you struggle to breathe. That can be a serious allergic reaction.
In the UK and EU, cleavers is sold as a herbal tea or food supplement. It is not licensed as a medicine to treat any condition. In the US it is sold as a dietary supplement, so the FDA does not check that it works before it reaches the shelf.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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