eli5: why are the long term effects of herbal medicines unknown?

532 viewsBiologyOther

for example, ashwagandha or valerian. whenever you search them up it states something akin to “safe to use for up to 6 weeks. long term effects are unknown”

people have been using these medicines for centuries… can’t they just conduct research?

In: Biology

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes, they *can*, they just *haven’t.* Research costs time and money and long term research is actually pretty difficult because you’d have to monitor some group of people over a long period of time. The longer you monitor them the more factors you have to account and control for.

You are viewing 1 out of 7 answers, click here to view all answers.