08/07/2025
Manufacturing herbal medicine requires precision plant identification, extensive knowledge of phytochemistry and which part of the plant is used, sound health and safety procedures to avoid microbial contamination, sound quality assurance practices, appropriate formulation of active constituents and much more.
Don't forget that many pharmaceuticals are synthesized from actives found in plants (eg. Aspirin).
Products are not all the same.
If you have seen the news recently about the toxicity potential of vitamin B6, you might be realising that self diagnosis and self prescribing, or prescriptions from unqualified people carries a risk of harm.
A skilled Naturopath studies for 4 years to assess a risk benefit profile for every prescription after an in depth individual holistic health assessment.
Are you using natural medicine to suppress symptoms? This is natural pharmacy not Naturopathy 🌱
Naturopathy is individualised health care that targets underlying drivers of disease with key diet and lifestyle modifications alongside nutritional and herbal medicine.
We only prescribe TGA registered or listed products, and recommend herbal medicines with the highest standards in Australian manufacturing.
Manufacturing herbal products poses several quality challenges due to the complex and variable nature of botanical ingredients and challenges in sourcing, identification, analysis, processing and formulation. But unfortunately, some manufacturers do not even perform the basic requirements to meet these challenges.
UK-based scientists undertook to evaluate the pharmaceutical performance quality, particularly in terms of the in vitro disintegration and phytochemical quality, of 73 lavender (Lavandula) oral dosage forms (single and multi-ingredient products). Phytochemical quality testing showed that 63 % of products contained less or none of the main marker compounds expected for lavender (such as linalool, linalyl acetate and cineole). There was also considerable variability of the main marker compounds between products, with some containing 'often/sometimes undeclared' significant amounts of rapeseed and sunflower oils as excipients. The pharmaceutical performance quality testing showed that 30 % of oral solid formulations always failed disintegration testing (seven soft gels, ten hard shells, and five tablets/caplets). Pass rates for gelatine-based capsules were higher than for non-gelatine (cellulose-based) capsules.
The authors stated that overall, their findings highlighted problems with the pharmaceutical performance and phytochemical quality of the investigated products. These results have implications for the interpretations of the benefits and risks of such herbal products.
The herbal market is definitely buyer beware, as I am sure many of you already know.
For more information see: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39952369/
