Evidence Backed Ingredients
All the ingredients used in our formulas have supporting evidence of traditional use and or scientific supportive data.
Traditional medicines are based on an extensive history of use, often measured over thousands of years. This history provides an accumulated repository of systematic observation and underpins the safe use of these medicines in a traditional setting. Usually, when a medicine or a relevant ingredient in the medicine has been used over a long period of time, the dosage and formulation have been refined to maximise therapeutic effectiveness and minimise risk.
Many traditional medicines and ingredients with a long and coherent history of use are well documented in pharmacopoeias, monographs, materia medica, other texts and information published by various international regulatory authorities.
Some traditional medicine paradigms have been recorded by people outside the tradition’s indigenous origin and culture. Other traditional medicine paradigms, particularly those that have been developed within smaller and more localised groups, are not well documented; rather, they are based on knowledge transmitted orally from generation to generation.
For many traditional medicines there has been little quantifiable scientific research, scientific assessment or scrutiny undertaken on the medicine’s mode of action or effect. Therefore, traditional use claims cannot support a scientific claim of efficacy, a mechanism of action or an underlying physiological process, as these require support by quantifiable scientific evidence.
Evidence sources of traditional use
All ingredients used in our formulas have evidence to demonstrate efficacy by supporting data from:
- materia medica
- Official pharmacopoeias
- Monographs
- Publications from various international regulatory authorities
- Texts that are relevant to the traditional paradigm
- Well-recognised evidence-based reference texts
A pharmacopoeia contains a comprehensive list of medicines and describes their properties and how they are prepared.
A materia medica sets out the body of knowledge on the therapeutic properties of medicines. Different materia medica relate to different types of complementary medicines, for example: Traditional Chinese Medicine, homeopathy.
Scientific evidence
Many of our ingredients are supported by Scientific evidence sources which include:
- A systematic review
- A randomised controlled trial (RCT)
- A pseudo-randomised controlled trial (alternate allocation or some other method)
- A comparative study with concurrent controls
- A comparative study without concurrent controls
- Case series with either post-test or pre-test/post-test outcomes
- A review article
Other sources of scientific evidence
Abstracts of scientific papers
Abstracts generally do not give sufficient details as to how the research was conducted or the data were analysed to allow objective evaluation of the quality of the research data or the conclusions drawn by the study authors. Abstracts alone are not sufficient to demonstrate the efficacy of a listed medicine with a scientific indication.
