How to Read a Health Claim on a Herbal Product

Walk down any wellness aisle and you will read that something boosts immunity, detoxifies the liver, balances hormones or improves gut health. Very little of it means anything specific, and some of it is illegal.

We would rather you could evaluate our claims than simply believe them, so here is how we read other people's.

1. Was it tested in people, or in a dish?

This single question disposes of most claims you will encounter.

A great deal of botanical research is done in vitro — cells in a laboratory dish — or in mice. Both are legitimate and useful for understanding mechanisms. Neither tells you what happens when a person drinks a cup of tea.

Compounds that behave impressively against cells at high concentration routinely do nothing in humans, because they are never absorbed at anything close to that dose. When a claim traces back to a cell study, the honest translation is 'this might be worth investigating', not 'this works'.

2. Was it the whole plant, or a concentrated extract?

Much clinical work on herbs uses standardised extracts in capsules, at doses far above what an infusion delivers. A trial using 500 mg of concentrated extract twice a day tells you relatively little about a teaspoon of dried flowers in hot water.

This gap is where a lot of otherwise-accurate marketing quietly misleads. The study is real; the product is not what was studied.

3. How many people, and compared with what?

Small studies produce unstable results. A trial of twenty people with no control group can show almost anything.

The phrase worth looking for is randomised, placebo-controlled: participants assigned by chance, with a comparison group receiving something inert. Without a placebo group you cannot separate the herb from expectation, and expectation is powerful — particularly for things measured by asking people how they feel.

4. Does the claim name a specific, measurable outcome?

'Boosts immunity' is not a measurable outcome. The immune system is not a dial, and no test exists that would confirm it had been boosted. The phrase survives precisely because it cannot be checked.

Compare it with 'reduced the average time to fall asleep by nine minutes in a trial of 60 adults'. That is a claim you can go and verify, or find to be false. Vagueness is usually a choice.

5. Who paid for the study?

Industry funding does not make research wrong, and refusing to read anything with a commercial sponsor would leave you with very little. But it is a reason to check whether independent groups found the same thing.

Reputable journals require funding to be declared. If a brand cites a study and you cannot find who funded it, that is worth noticing.

6. Is the claim even legal to make?

This one is specific to India and almost nobody checks it.

The Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 lists conditions for which advertising a remedy is prohibited outright. The Schedule includes obesity, diabetes, high or low blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, epilepsy, sexual impotence and infertility, among others.

So when a herbal product tells you it manages your blood sugar, brings down your blood pressure or helps you lose weight, it is not making a bold claim — it is making an unlawful one. FSSAI separately governs what health claims may appear on food.

A seller willing to break that rule in their advertising has told you something useful about how carefully they treat everything else.

What this means for how we write

It means our journal will keep being less exciting than our competitors'. We describe traditional use as traditional use. Where research exists we link to it so you can read it yourself, including when it found nothing — the chamomile trial we cite failed to beat placebo, and we say so in the piece about chamomile.

We would rather be the brand you can check than the brand that promises most.