From supplement stores to gas stations, many herbal products are sold with the implication they can improve your health or address illness. There’s often little scientific backing for those claims.
Before scientists can assess whether an herbal remedy is effective, they must know what’s actually in it. That’s where Dr. Nick Oberlies and Dr. Nadja Cech, UNCG natural products chemistry professors, come in.
“Herbal remedies are a mixture. Sometimes they’re a mixture of five or six compounds, sometimes they’re a mixture of dozens of compounds,” Oberlies says. “If you’re going to study Herb X, I want to make sure that you actually know what the herb is.”
For the last decade, Oberlies and Cech have analyzed popular herbal products, including green tea, milk thistle, cinnamon, CBD, and kratom.
Kratom, for example, has been used in Southeast Asia, where the tree grows natively, since at least the 19th century to treat pain and other ailments. It is sold in many states and is legal and unregulated in North Carolina, although the FDA says kratom can’t be marketed as a drug, supplement, or food additive.
Dr. Mary Paine, a pharmaceutics professor at Washington State University, worked with Oberlies and Cech to prepare for the only U.S. clinical trial of kratom.
One finding of that study was that kratom might increase the overdose risk among opioid users.
