So I have some lemon balm and peppermint in my garden and we use it to make tea.
I really like the smell and aroma of lemon balm and if I look online, it mentions for example that lemon balm is used for relieving anxiety, stress and can improve cognitive function.
But how is this tested, how can people even tell?
Does it really have this effect? And what would happen if you drink a lot of it?
I wouldn’t say they were classified as quackery. There will always be a snake oil salesmen somewhere, but most research that did not result into a it being incorporated into modern medicine does not necessarily mean they did not work. It’s usually the case of it not being economically viable, such as the market being small, saturated with another common drug, adverse side effects, hard to stabilize/isolate/synthesize compounds, technological barriers, etc
According to this study (Natural products as sources of new drugs from 1981 to 2014), around 65% of the new drugs discovered between 1980 and 2014 were secondary metabolites of plants. Yet have you found them all at your local drug store?
Medicinal plants are commonly used as anti-inflammatory alternative treatments, and several in vitro and in vivo studies have confirmed the ability of immune modulation by purified molecules from natural origin (See this study as an example: Herbal Phytochemicals as Immunomodulators). This is of particular interest since several commercial anti-inflammatory drugs have deleterious side effects, which highlights the importance of new drug discovery and studies
Of course I’m not advocating anyone to do a Steve Jobs, but I’m just not as dismissive of plant based medicines as some people are