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Dr. Stephen Phipps, Thorne’s chief innovation officer, examines the changing field of ethnobotany, from cultural study to chemical analysis. Discover the difference between fresh herbs and herbal extracts, and how botanicals can be standardized for naturopathic uses.
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Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app. You can also learn more about what we talked about by visiting Thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne’s Take 5 Daily blog.
During this episode you’ll learn about:
Resources to topics mentioned in this episode:
Subscribe to More Content
Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app. You can also learn more about what we talked about by visiting Thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne’s Take 5 Daily blog.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
This is the Thorne Podcast, the show that navigates the complex world of wellness and explores the latest science behind diet, supplements, and lifestyle approaches to good health.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I'm Dr. Robert Rountree, Chief Medical Advisor at Thorne and functional medicine doctor. As a reminder, the recommendations made in this podcast are the recommendations of the individuals who express them and not the recommendations of Thorne. Statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Thorne Podcast. Joining me once again is my friend and colleague Dr. Stephen Phipps, who is the chief innovation officer at Thorne Health Tech. So hi, Stephen. Thanks for coming back. I know in the previous episode, you talked a little bit about what got you into medicine and then into product design and that sort of thing. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your interest in plant medicine, botanicals.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, no, I would love to, and so I think growing up, I spent a lot of time outdoors, with my family originally from lake Tahoe, California, and my family were big hikers and cross country skiers. We moved to Florida, and I spent a lot of time wandering around, hiking the swamps and seeing lots of fun stuff like the carnivorous plants that are in and around certain areas.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Venus flytraps.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, and bladderworts and all kinds of fun stuff.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Pitcher plants. I remember those.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Picture plants. Yep. Those are all there, and understanding that. So that got me into botany to start, and so went to the University of Florida and studied botany. Really wanted to focus on ethnobotany, but along the way, just started to look at, too, some of the compounds that are in plants and what they do. So weirdly, one of those was in integrated pest management, where we looked at what's called elicitor compounds. So these compounds come from caterpillars or any other herbivores coming onto a plant and starting to eat it, and it sends that. Then because these insects are what I would call messy eaters, some of that gets back onto the plant, and the plant can recognize it and actually communicate with other plants around it. It's not the same as cutting your lawn or anything like that. It's very specific. So we found a few of those, and the thing would be that you can make baits out of those instead of using pesticides to lure parasitoid wasps to come in and mitigate any herbivory that would be going on in your crops.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
So that was my first foray into the interaction with the chemicals that are in plants and what they can do and from there just really took off into trying to understand that and went into more of the ethnobotanical side and really getting a sense of how things like the bioflavanoids and polyphenols impact us on a human health level and so spent time still at the University of Florida doing a PhD, looking at that from the lens of how it gets into your body, what your body may do to it, and then what it's going to end up doing for you for your health.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, I hear the term ethnobotany, which I'd like you to describe for our readers, or listeners. Sorry. But when I hear that term, ethnobotany, I think of Sean Connery exploring the jungles of Africa, et cetera.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
What exactly is ethnobotany about, and how did it get to be a specialty?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
It was a really cool specialty, at least when I started reading about it to me, and it was almost a cross, like you said, where it would almost be Indiana Jones, but one that liked botanicals, right? So some of that really came out of Harvard back in the day with individuals like Schultz and the like that were going out and doing exactly what you said. They were trying to understand the aspects of anthropology and culture and how those cultures all had medicinal systems. They had foodstuffs. They had all these different things coming from plants, and even if they were hundreds and thousands of miles apart, there seemed to be these systems set up and why, and what's in these plants that are allowing them to do that, right? So it really did start out like you were mentioning, where they went out into the jungles of various areas. They went out to the steppes in different areas, or they went into the islands and different tropical locations and looked at the interactions between humans and the plants around.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
That sounds like the job that everybody wants, is like you get to go to the South Pacific and hang out with the Indigenous peoples there and find out what they're eating and what do they do when they get a cut-
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
... or what do they do if they have a headache or they're stressed? They drink a little kava.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. That is one of those things that was ... It just seems like the greatest job. So that's why I tried to do it.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
That's why you wanted to do it.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Are universities still offering ethnobotany programs? Is it still a big thing? Are people still going into that specialty, or has it died down a little bit?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
It's waning, but there's still an interest and a [inaudible 00:05:27]. What has spun from that is things like ethnopharmacology, where now it's trying to take it one step further and look at the key medicinal ingredients that may be in something versus the broader scope of botany itself. Then there's another area, pharmacognosy, which is going even deeper and looking at not only the pharmacology around it, but also the analytical chemistry needed to get to that, right? So taking fractions and running it through an NMR and getting a sense of the botanical fingerprint and then looking at how to extract it and control it, a lot of that comes from that aspect. Those are, I think, a little bit more around the areas. There's at least an American Pharmacognosy Society and those things still around.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
What this brings up for me is one of my favorite compounds, berberine, which I've talked about on the podcast a number of times, but in digging into the research literature on berberine, one of the things that really stood out is that almost every Indigenous people around the globe uses at least one plant that's got berberine in it. I don't know if that's entirely true or not, but I just saw that statement once, and I thought, "Well, wow. First of all, is that true? If so, how do people figure out that this is going to be a good thing for whatever they're using for, for intestinal infections or the grippe or something like that?"
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, no, I know. It is interesting. I have to say or think that at least got to be somewhat true, because if I look at even just the plants that we see it in, there's a huge diversity of that, right? So you've got for berberine at least, coptis is a big one that comes to mind with berberine and proto-berberines. You've got Oregon grape over in the Pacific Northwest that is teaming with berberine and berberine-like compounds.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
We have it in our yard. It's a weed, Oregon grape. Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, exactly. Then another one would be goldenseal, right? So now you're talking about areas in Eurasia, areas farther into Asia, and then the Pacific Northwest all the way through Alaska and probably into Siberia. That's a pretty big swath, right? All with berberine. So I think over time, if we look at how they figured it out, I think it was mainly going to just be living in an area for so long and building a medical system, right? So if you look at these areas, each group, each culture, each group of people, they had their materia medica over time, right? That was the collection.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Their list of favorite herbs.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly. The collection of herbs, what they do, where they grow, when to harvest it. So the old way of researching was trying a bunch of stuff, and I'm sure a lot of people tried the wrong things along the way.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
And paid the price.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
And paid the price, but also benefited their greater society to have some of these things. So yeah. So I think that was the other cool part of it, because you then got to see the repetition within these materia medicas, where the herb might be different. The way that they describe the reason to take it might be completely different. But then it's still targeting the same thing. So that's-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I remember years ago talking to a guy who was up in the Tetons or Yellowstone area, and he was studying grizzly bears. He noticed that when they came out of hibernation in the spring that there was a certain plant that they would eat, and then they would seem to get violently ill. They would be puking and having the runs and all that kind of stuff. That would last for like a day, and then they'd be fine. They did this every year. So I think what came out of that is he was saying, "I wonder if some of the Native American, the First Nations people that lived there saw the bears doing this and wondered, 'Maybe this is a good thing when you feel toxic to chew on this particular plant that's got obviously some laxative or purgative in it." So in other words, they were watching these animals do something, and as a result, they went, "Well, maybe this is something would be helpful for human health as well."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Oh, yeah, no, I think that is definitely one of the other areas where there was the first rounds of scientists, so to speak, where it's watching their environment and writing down notes and seeing the associations that is going on. So I think even some of the aspects of early areas of shamanism came from the same thing, right? Where they would watch the jaguar in the jungle eating some of these things that were a little bit hallucinogenic in nature, and that would be something that they would stimulate their own medical system out of. So I think there is a lot of that tied to the environment, to get a sense of what is working for the things around them, whether it be other people, plants, or sorry, not plants, but other people, animals, and other things that are looking to be healthier for some reason.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, there's been an evolution, obviously, from how these are used traditionally, which is as a tea or maybe even as an alcohol-based tincture into what we have today. I want to talk a little bit about what's involved now with a company like Thorne as a good example. You just happen to be here, and so I can pin you down on it. But when I was 19, I started studying herbal medicine, and you went to a health food store and you bought tea. That was the end of the story, or you could maybe buy an alcohol-based tincture. Now I would say more and more herbs are in a capsule form. More and more herbs are standardized, et cetera. So what's that about? What's the advantage of taking an herb in a powder or a capsule versus the old teas and tinctures and things like that?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. So I think one of the things that comes down to, it is, at least for a lot of these herbs and where they're coming from, these were things that were taken in at the level of food consistently daily for years, right? So if I look at curcumin coming out of turmeric is a great example. If you look at the holy trinity of Indian cooking, it's ginger, onions, and turmeric, right? Versus, say, ours, maybe, onions, carrots, and celery, right? So that aspect led to the medical system that was built or the materia medical that was being built that would be taking grams of this at a time, right? For most of us, that's just really not an option.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
If you lived in India, you might put curry on everything you ate.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, right. Three times a day, 365 days a year.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Three times a day.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
There's at least a couple of grams of turmeric powder going into your body. That's not going to happen, or ground-up Oregon grape powder would never probably make a wonderful culinary option for anybody. But the nice thing about it from encapsulation and standardization is we can get to a level of the materials that have been shown in peer-reviewed work in different research settings to be successful at supporting or modifying our bodies, that we can then really control that extraction and make sure that we are getting a more potent extract, right? So taking a lot of the compound, a lot of the botanical product, say it would be a tea, so the leaves in some of the younger stems and really condensing it down so that even though you're taking 250 milligrams of this powder that was an extract, it really came from 25 grams of that plant, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So 50 milligrams may not sound like a lot until you realize that's really concentrated.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, and then taking it one step further, we can then standardize it, meaning it's always going to have a set percentage of those actives, no matter what, and then really come in with something even more potent in a lot of ways, right? Because to get to those levels, you may be even having to add more plant mass to get there or controlling it through specific ways of extraction, right? Which there are a lot of them.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I've got to say I've gone to a lot of herbal conferences. I love botanists and herbalist, et cetera. But I remember going to a conference once where the lecturer was saying, "Okay, for this condition, you need to have the person go out and gather the fresh herb at a certain time of the year, at a certain time of the day, and spend several hours a day making this product and then drinking this tea four times a day." I thought, "Well, that's an ideal scenario, but it's not going to happen."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, right. Yeah.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I've got a busy businessman, a CEO in my practice who's got a medical condition, and I want to use a botanical medicine. I would much rather use a standardized herbal extract where I know what they're getting and I know they're going to be compliant than I would say, "You've got to do all of this stuff with the fresh herb, or it's not going to work."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
No, I think that's a great way of looking at it. That's the other part, is the time consumption. In a perfect world, we could all do that and have that wonderful interaction with our environment and the green space and the time to help support our mental health like we see. But the time consumption there of, "Okay, I've got a two-week window to harvest this and make it into what I want and drink it," it's not sustainable.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
I think that's why it's nice to have these ingredients being manufactured, because some of that goes into it. They have a network of growers or a network of wild crafters that know all this and benefit from it. But it stays around for two years as an ingredient and probably another two and a half years, three years as a product, and you can use it all the time instead of having to wait for that window. So the scale at which you can use it is considerably higher when you put in all these processes to allow for this to be something that's readily available for you in the potency you need, standardized, coming from the proper growing season, even if it's seven months away from it when you get the new bottle.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, I think I know what you're going to say about this, but is it a challenging market out there as somebody who's involved in procuring clean herbal material that is what the supplier says what it is? Is that getting to be a bigger challenge? I base that question on a book I just read called The Business of Botanicals, which I think anybody interested in this should read by Dr. Armbrecht. So I'm wondering what your perspective is on that, because I know that you spend a lot of time checking supplies and ingredients to see if they are what they say they are. So what's out there?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. A lot of different stuff, right? Well, I'll start there, obviously, but also, you mentioned that, and I would have to agree that is a great book. Definitely a good read for anybody interested in all of this. But yeah, it can be downright hard. There's a lot of stuff that goes into that, and then the way that even we look at processing and drying these things, there's a lot that may not make it onto a specification in different countries, but it's something that doesn't mean that it's not something we should be looking at.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Part of that then becomes, I think, the relationship that you have with who's making it, and that's probably one of the reasons why a lot of people were looking at big partnerships that allowed for almost vertical integration in a way, right? So that you find these quality individuals that have a good rapport with. You understand they are open to give you the documentation to understanding these things. They have a relationship with the people that they get the raw material biomass from. They share that with you as well. So it has to be a very open process. A lot of times, it's not necessarily ... has to be. There's nothing pushing for this. There's legislation out there, obviously, and a few other things, but it can be interesting. I think the other part of it is it gets muddied by some of these things that are thought to be the next big thing in herbal quality, right? So when we looked at a few years ago some of the things that came from the genetic fingerprinting as the botanical ID.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Yeah. The DNA scan, right?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. Right. It's one of those where it's one more piece of data, but it's not the end all, be all. A lot of what came out of that recently, and I was surprised to not see it as much making its way through since the other side of it, where people were thinking that these were all adulterated products made a lot of headway. A lot of that was erroneous and downright deceitful research, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So it wasn't that the products were erroneous, which is what made the news, or that they were contaminated. It's that the analytical methods that they used to determine that were flawed.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, and those flaws were not necessarily talked about as much as they should have been in the peer-reviewed setting. So I think that that means that then you have to put on the investigator hat and get a sense of all this. If we look at herbs in general in different landscapes and environments, they can take on traits of other subspecies, for example, depending on the age of the plant, genetically speaking, and you can get some variations that are [inaudible 00:19:18]. So then it becomes, "Well, what is it? Which one is it?" It's both. So inherently, there's going to be some flaws there.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
So that's where I think when you're designing quality botanical products, you have to take the approach of what I would call quality by design instead of quality by specification, meaning you have to ask these questions before you even go out and source to make sure that you're understanding what could go wrong with finding that herb, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Like a lot of things, right?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Some of it is things that are as interesting as, "Well, what's the difference between Glycyrrhiza glabra, which is licorice, versus lycees China versus Glycyrrhiza chinensis, which is another species of licorice? So if we look at some of that, there's some small changes, and there's some differences. But now all of a sudden, you look at where is it grown, naturally speaking, and one of them is in Eurasia, going through Spain and into more the areas bordering into Pakistan and Turkey, those areas. Then the other one developed in China. So as we move these around for commodities, it really starts to blur the line between the species, right? So that's why I think identity is really important, just as an example.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Well, I think the take-home message, just to point out before we go on our break here, is that if you as a consumer are going to buy botanical medicines, make sure you work with a company that knows what they're doing, and what you're saying is knowing what you're doing is a lot more complicated than being able to open a book and go, "Well, here's a pretty picture of that plant. If the person that's selling it to me says it's that plant, the leaves look familiar. So maybe that's it."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
AI'm not exaggerating when I say that that goes on.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
No, you're not. That definitely could be some of the things that leave it. Then if you're looking at what we call the certificate of analysis that comes in, are people resting there? Which can happen in certain arrangements, and that's quite all right, or are they really testing everything out to make sure that that is the case? So it's a very interesting thing, because it does one of those where you're like, "Well, this grows in the ground. It should be easy. You just pick it. That's all you got to do."
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Yep, yep. More to it than that. Let's take a short break. Then when we come back, we'll answer some questions from our listeners.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
When it comes to your health, your body deserves the best. That's why Thorne invests in comprehensive testing, sourcing the highest quality ingredients, and creating the cleanest manufacturing processes that will provide unparalleled solutions for your health. It is this approach to quality and science that has earned Thorne the trust of more than 42,000 medical practitioners, as well as 100-plus Olympic, professional, and collegiate sports teams. It's also why Thorne is the only supplement manufacturer to be chosen by Mayo Clinic for collaborating on clinical research and educational content. Discover the quality and science that leads to a happier and healthier life with Thorne. Visit thorne.com to learn more. That's T-H-O-R-N-E-dot-com.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
We're back, and now it's time to answer some questions from the community. Our first question this week comes from a listener who asks, "Are herbal medicines FDA approved?" I hear that a lot. I see that in mainstream articles about herbal medicine, botanical medicine. Implication is, "Well, they're not approved, so they're not as good as a drug." What would you say to that, Dr. Phipps?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Well, I'd say that it's a regulated field, right? So they-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Highly regulated.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, right? So we have a standard of what we call good manufacturing procedures that is dictated by the FDA, right? So it's all in this giant compendial book, but it's online for me, so I don't even know what it's called there, known as the CFR, right? So 21 CFR is where everything lives, including dietary supplements, which includes herbal extracts and herbs. One of the things that's also within there is even the identity of it and how we talk about it, right? We brought up in the talk, like the differences between Glycyrrhiza glabra and Glycyrrhiza chinensis, which is two different species of licorice. Now, I better know my licorice source, because there's something in the United States called the herbs of commerce, that if I call something licorice, it has to be Glycyrrhiza glabra. It cannot be Glycyrrhiza chinensis. So that is another layer of oversight, that it's properly communicated to the end user exactly if there is a common name what that has to be from a regulatory standpoint. So I think there is a lot of oversight and regulation on this, more than people know, I think.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, until the 1920s or '30s wasn't there an American Herbal Pharmacopoeia or something? I don't remember if that's exactly what it's called, but it was something like a standard list of botanical medicines that most doctors would use in mainstream.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. Yeah. Like any other culture, that was the materia medica of our time, right? So there was those things that were standardized for what's it used for and what it was and what it looks like. That waned off. Then on the flip side, what's come up is there's even specific drug approvals for botanical drugs. Now, that is not necessarily what you would expect a drug to be. There's actually on that list botanical extracts, and so the realm of what we think these are from herbs, say, culinary need or foodstuff to regulated supplement and medical utilizations, there's a spectrum there. But it's all, I would say, the dietary supplement and the botanical drug are all arising from the same data stream around safety and efficacy.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, isn't the main difference that involves FDA approval that you can make drug claims if it's FDA ... So FDA approval, I think what people are getting at is they're saying, "Can you say this is good for this condition?"
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly. When you hear that, to me, it's not necessarily a regulatory component. It becomes, well, it's gone through what's called an NDA or a new drug application. But if you look at the herbs that are out there, part of that is going to be safety data. Part of that's going to be efficacy data. So there is that groundwork and framework in there, and then if it's a new herb, you're going to have things like a new dietary ingredient that would come around, which is putting all of that into the framework of why you can use it as a dietary supplement. That has to have the safety data behind it. So there's no real difference, to your point, other than really just the marketed claim and some of the ways that we talk about it, condition versus structure, function.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
What you can say about it. I will say that it's a problem in the sense that if a company wants to bring a botanical medicine out as a drug, make drug claims about it, say, "This herb is good to treat hypertension," right, that's a big no-no in the supplement industry. But let's say you found an extract of hibiscus, and you said, "My hibiscus extract can be used to treat hypertension." Well, it could take you 10 years and how many million dollars to be able to come up with the research to be able to make that claim? It's an expensive process.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, yeah. Still, even though it's somewhat streamlined as that botanical drug pipeline, it's still expensive, and it's still one of those things that you're getting into a level outside of the structure and function. I think that's the hard part for people to splice, where there is realms of what we are doing and how an herb will work within that structure and function landscape that is effective and can be seen within the clinical work. But it's not something as selective as targeting one or two different molecular targets in a way that we expect a drug. The potency of it is a different component as well, right? So I think that's in the spectrum of that.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
"What's the difference between an herb and a botanical?," one of our listeners asks.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
You can look at it a few different ways. I think that's a great question, but everyone's probably going to have a different answer. The way I would think about it is the botanical tends to be more of a technical word when looking at it versus an herb. Some people may use it to reference maybe what they have in their kitchen versus what they think is more dietary supplement or medically related, right? So there's that air of, "It's not going to be in my pantry for cooking my lasagna, but it'll be in there to help me support proper lipid metabolism." But that's hard, too, though, right? Because then if you look at things like rosemary, it's a kitchen herb, but it definitely has some botanical qualities or botanical medicine qualities. But I think probably the main way to look at that is just the level of broadness around what an herb may be or become or be called versus the way that people look at a botanical.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So I think my general impression is that herb is a very broad term, and when you say botanical, you're getting a little bit more specific.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. The refinement's there. Yeah, I agree.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
It's a little bit more refined, but they're used interchangeably a lot, don't you think?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Oh, they definitely are. They definitely are.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So Annamaria wants to know, "Who do I go to find out what botanical supplements are right for me?" So I think she's getting to the ads on TV. "Ask your doctor if this is right for you."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
You don't have an ad that says, "Ask your doctor if rosemary is right for me."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
How do people know?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
There's going to be a subset of those, right? So I think that the easiest way to look for those things is looking for in your area integrative practitioners that are going to be well-versed in the differences of those supplements and how to utilize them, depending on your area. This could be an area where a scope of practice could be a naturopath, but it could also be someone like an integrated functional medicine doc that has spent a good chunk of time really trying to understand it.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
The key point that I'm trying to make on that there is you want to go to somebody that has had some level of training to understand some of the nuances here, because there's a lot of differences in the potencies of botanical supplements, the proper use of them over time. There's these things that we just spent a good chunk of time going over, even on the quality side, that this person's asking on your behalf. So they're going to have that ability to really make sure that what you're getting is going to have an effect like you're expecting.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So you're a naturopath. You've got ... I don't know what you call it, a doctor of naturopathy degree, and how much of your training involved herbal medicine? By that, I mean going into the constituents of the herbs and how they're extracted, where they come from. Is that a big part of your training?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
It actually was, and I was a little bit more geeky about it. So I spent a little bit more time on all of the, I would say, electives that could be done there. But in the core didactics, there's definitely two, three years of botanical medicine look and then-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Two or three years. Yep.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, and that's outside of the clinic, right? Inside the clinic, we learn more with our docs that are practicing and we're learning from, and then there's the electives. That would probably put on for me another a year or so, which was really looking at different materia medicas and also what we would call pharmacognosy. So we had a pharmacognosy class as well that were into the constituent classes, what they may do or expect to do, right? So that could be things like the sesquiterpenoids in some of the bittering agents or more of the volatile agents and what we expect them to do, what plants that they're found in. So dove a bit deeper.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
But I think going at least a year or two and getting an understanding of it I think is a good thing, and there's a lot of integrative docs out there that aren't MDs that have spent that time or even longer, really, looking at that. So I don't necessarily think it's one look at this versus the other makes that sense, but those types of docs that really put the time in, regardless of it's an ND, an MD, or the like, really is what's going to be meaningful.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So I went to med school for four years, undergraduate four years, medical school four years, three years of residency in family practice. Do you know how much time was devoted to botanical medicine?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Probably not much.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Zero. Yes. The only time that was devoted to that was in the course on toxicology, right? Which is like, "These are the ways that herbs poison you."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. I think that's one of the things that has led to some of these questions and comments that we're seeing, right? Is that's the landscape that people have been listening to for a while, and it's changing. But I know ... How long have you studied herbs outside of that?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Years. I've taken courses and gone to conferences, and I've got a whole library on botanical medicine. I look things up. Every day, I look things up and have been for 40 years.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, right. That's the type of provider that I think is the best, right? To work through this, because everything's changing. But if there's a love for that type of thing and a real interest, it's going to come through, and you're going to get a good product recommendation.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I will say in Germany, the botanical medicine is a part of regular medical school training.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. Yeah, and they for a long time even had commissions on it, right? So you could go and look at it through the government. So there's a lot out there. But I think, again, that common thread is whether it be in the formal training or spending the time outside of that formal realm really getting a sense of what these things can do, how to dose them, what to look for for quality, that all comes through for patient satisfaction.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, you mentioned some chemicals that are in different herbs, sesquiterpenoids, for example. That brings up a question that one of our listeners asked. "What's the difference between a botanical versus an extract?" I would add versus a phytochemical.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Great. So I think it's going to be these layers of refinement, right? So I think a botanical is going to be the herb or the herb part, right? So it might be ground-up turmeric. We can go with turmeric, right? So ground-up turmeric. That's going to be where everything lives, but you don't know how much is in there, right? Then you're going to get to a botanical extract. Now, these can be either standardized so you have a set compound or two that is what is being tested every time they make it, or it can be just a higher potency material, where you're getting numerous grams of the herb per milligram. But that's still going to be more refined than just the botanical. Then finally, the phytochemical will be one chemical refined all the way out. So if we took the turmeric example, I can have the botanical with the ground turmeric root, the botanical extract with turmeric root extract standardized to curcuminoids, and then I can have curcumin as the phytochemical, right? One of them that I would then say this much curcumin.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
But I've seen that argument be a little bit deceptive in that people would say ... A traditional herbalist, for example, and not to knock them at all. I admire them and studied with them for years. But they would say, "Well, you're better off just eating ground turmeric." I've actually heard Dr. Andy Weil say that exact thing. "You'd be better off eating a tablespoon of turmeric powder every day." I thought, "You have got to be kidding me. Who is going to" ... Have you ever tasted a tablespoon of turmeric powder? Who's going to-
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Worse than the cinnamon challenge right there.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
I'll tell you.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
It's like, "That's what you need to do, a tablespoon of turmeric every day, and I don't recommend taking a supplement." I just think, "Well, wait a minute. When you take something like curcumin phytosome," right? Which is mixing curcumin with the substance that enhances absorption. Then you actually get more of it into your bloodstream.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. Consistently, right? That's-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Fewer milligrams. So if you just look at the number of milligrams for curcumin, you can go, "Well, that's less than you'd get in a tablespoon of tumeric." But you'll get more into your bloodstream from that particular preparation.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. Yep, and 100%, I think that's the big thing, is these are why we look at these extracts, right? Then enhance them with the phytosomes to make sure that we're getting a consistent amount of that phytochemical or phytochemicals, depending on the plant, into where it needs to go. One of the interesting things, though, and I think this is to be determined is that as we look at that, I think there's going to also be at some points where you maybe want all of that stuff to stay in the GI tract. But you still want it to be a high quality, and you don't just want to take a tablespoon of it and chug it down, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Because it may have heavy metals in it.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, or it's adulterated, or it has benzopyrenes from drying too long, right? So I think that's the big thing to be said, is that most of what we're looking at is when you start to get that phytochemical into the bloodstream, that's when you start to see the things that you're taking it for really come through, right? So if we look at all the literature that they do clinical work on in the peer-reviewed space, that's what you're seeing. When something is saying it's effective at these doses in the study, it's because they can see it go into the body, right? So you'll see that whole story come through.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
In the past, I think all we had was what people said, their subjective experience.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
"I took this, and I felt better." Now we've got better ways to study things.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, and also, I think we have a better understanding of, "Okay, well that might not work for it," right? Because if I look at maybe why that worked for that individual, we can go back to are you one of those people, we can take berberine as a great example, that just happens to get berberine into your system better? There's not a lot of them, right? So that's why people have to take a lot of berberine. It's an amazing ingredient, but if you look at the doses, typically, we're looking at 1.5 grams of that pure compound a day, right? So how are you getting that from 100 milligrams of coptis root? I don't know, right? But I think that's, again, the reasons why, to your point, having it as that quality source and that ability to have consistent dosing over time is really where you're going to get that differential.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So that brings us to the last question, I think, which is Liz asked us, "How do I know if the source quality is good enough that it will be absorbed well?" So that seems to have a couple of different parts to it, and I think we've alluded a little bit to that. But maybe you can talk a little bit about how those two things are or are not connected.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
The way I look at it is is the product designed well so that it can have the ability to be absorbed is maybe one way to look at it, but that doesn't necessarily move into the source. I think the source quality is important, because you're wanting that consistency so that when it is absorbed, and all of these will have the ability to be absorbed at some level, it's consistent. You know that that is there. I think what ends up happening with sourcing is that you may get an ingredient that is, say, a very standard powder, like you would say just a ground-up tea in a capsule. You don't really know the waxing and waning of some of those ingredients that are in there, those phytochemicals that are in there, right? So you may think it's because then that is due to absorption, but really, what it is due to is just that there's just inconsistent levels in that product for you to take in, right? So I think that's maybe the intersect there. But formulation-wise, we can do things to enhance absorption, and I think that's the other part to this, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Like the phytosomes.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, exactly. So I think that's a really interesting way to think about the dichotomy there is, that there's probably higher quality turmeric extracts out there, but they're still going to have absorption issues for the majority of people using them. So we can supplement or reduce the need to take that ingredient in in high amounts by doing something to alter how it's getting into our body.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So you briefly touched on something that I'd like to end with, which is the notion of what else is in there besides the herb? Fillers are pretty common, and the question I would ask for you that's a corollary of what this person's asking is does everything that's in a product have to be listed on the label?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
No.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Can you say that again?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
I would say no, but I'll go back and say-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
No.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
... everything that's in the ingredients that's being used doesn't have to be on the label, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Right.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
But if I'm putting it in there as a formula, then yes. But I think that's where the gray part comes in for a lot of people, right? Because it still says that ingredient, but is that ingredient a 5 to 1, a 1 to 1, a 10 to 1, a 15 to 1? Has it got lactose as a-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Lactose. Yep.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Those things where you might have that. So I think that's the hard part, right? Because that's what's not on the label. That's the part of the quality system, though, that needs to be upheld, at least from my aspect of making sure that you're getting what you're expecting. You have to have that ability to really toe the line on, "No, this is what we mean by a high-quality botanical supplement."
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Well, I do have people that tell me, "I took this herb," like rosemary, "and I reacted to it. Yet I can eat rosemary as an herb in my food, and I don't react to it." So I think what you're saying is buyer beware, because there may be something in that product you didn't know about.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
There's no obligation to put that on the label.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Nope. You're right.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So you've got to go with a company that you trust.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
All right, folks. That's all the time we have this week. Stephen, thanks again.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
No, thank you for having me. Thank you, sir.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I always like to ask, where can listeners go if they want to find out what you're up to, what you're doing?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Nice. So for the most part, I usually write some blogs on thorne.com. You can definitely see all the new products that are coming out over time there as well. We've got a lot of interesting stuff. Then on the social media side, LinkedIn.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Great. Well, again, thanks, Dr. Stephen Phipps, the chief innovation officer at Thorne Health Tech. That was really an excellent discussion, and thank you all for listening. We hope that you'll tune in the future.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Thanks for listening to the Thorne Podcast. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. If you've got a health or wellness question you'd like answered, simply follow our Instagram, and shoot a message to @thornehealth. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take 5 Daily blog. Once again, thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to join us next time for another episode of the Thorne Podcast.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
This is the Thorne Podcast, the show that navigates the complex world of wellness and explores the latest science behind diet, supplements, and lifestyle approaches to good health.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I'm Dr. Robert Rountree, Chief Medical Advisor at Thorne and functional medicine doctor. As a reminder, the recommendations made in this podcast are the recommendations of the individuals who express them and not the recommendations of Thorne. Statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Thorne Podcast. Joining me once again is my friend and colleague Dr. Stephen Phipps, who is the chief innovation officer at Thorne Health Tech. So hi, Stephen. Thanks for coming back. I know in the previous episode, you talked a little bit about what got you into medicine and then into product design and that sort of thing. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your interest in plant medicine, botanicals.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, no, I would love to, and so I think growing up, I spent a lot of time outdoors, with my family originally from lake Tahoe, California, and my family were big hikers and cross country skiers. We moved to Florida, and I spent a lot of time wandering around, hiking the swamps and seeing lots of fun stuff like the carnivorous plants that are in and around certain areas.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Venus flytraps.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, and bladderworts and all kinds of fun stuff.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Pitcher plants. I remember those.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Picture plants. Yep. Those are all there, and understanding that. So that got me into botany to start, and so went to the University of Florida and studied botany. Really wanted to focus on ethnobotany, but along the way, just started to look at, too, some of the compounds that are in plants and what they do. So weirdly, one of those was in integrated pest management, where we looked at what's called elicitor compounds. So these compounds come from caterpillars or any other herbivores coming onto a plant and starting to eat it, and it sends that. Then because these insects are what I would call messy eaters, some of that gets back onto the plant, and the plant can recognize it and actually communicate with other plants around it. It's not the same as cutting your lawn or anything like that. It's very specific. So we found a few of those, and the thing would be that you can make baits out of those instead of using pesticides to lure parasitoid wasps to come in and mitigate any herbivory that would be going on in your crops.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
So that was my first foray into the interaction with the chemicals that are in plants and what they can do and from there just really took off into trying to understand that and went into more of the ethnobotanical side and really getting a sense of how things like the bioflavanoids and polyphenols impact us on a human health level and so spent time still at the University of Florida doing a PhD, looking at that from the lens of how it gets into your body, what your body may do to it, and then what it's going to end up doing for you for your health.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, I hear the term ethnobotany, which I'd like you to describe for our readers, or listeners. Sorry. But when I hear that term, ethnobotany, I think of Sean Connery exploring the jungles of Africa, et cetera.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
What exactly is ethnobotany about, and how did it get to be a specialty?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
It was a really cool specialty, at least when I started reading about it to me, and it was almost a cross, like you said, where it would almost be Indiana Jones, but one that liked botanicals, right? So some of that really came out of Harvard back in the day with individuals like Schultz and the like that were going out and doing exactly what you said. They were trying to understand the aspects of anthropology and culture and how those cultures all had medicinal systems. They had foodstuffs. They had all these different things coming from plants, and even if they were hundreds and thousands of miles apart, there seemed to be these systems set up and why, and what's in these plants that are allowing them to do that, right? So it really did start out like you were mentioning, where they went out into the jungles of various areas. They went out to the steppes in different areas, or they went into the islands and different tropical locations and looked at the interactions between humans and the plants around.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
That sounds like the job that everybody wants, is like you get to go to the South Pacific and hang out with the Indigenous peoples there and find out what they're eating and what do they do when they get a cut-
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
... or what do they do if they have a headache or they're stressed? They drink a little kava.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. That is one of those things that was ... It just seems like the greatest job. So that's why I tried to do it.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
That's why you wanted to do it.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Are universities still offering ethnobotany programs? Is it still a big thing? Are people still going into that specialty, or has it died down a little bit?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
It's waning, but there's still an interest and a [inaudible 00:05:27]. What has spun from that is things like ethnopharmacology, where now it's trying to take it one step further and look at the key medicinal ingredients that may be in something versus the broader scope of botany itself. Then there's another area, pharmacognosy, which is going even deeper and looking at not only the pharmacology around it, but also the analytical chemistry needed to get to that, right? So taking fractions and running it through an NMR and getting a sense of the botanical fingerprint and then looking at how to extract it and control it, a lot of that comes from that aspect. Those are, I think, a little bit more around the areas. There's at least an American Pharmacognosy Society and those things still around.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
What this brings up for me is one of my favorite compounds, berberine, which I've talked about on the podcast a number of times, but in digging into the research literature on berberine, one of the things that really stood out is that almost every Indigenous people around the globe uses at least one plant that's got berberine in it. I don't know if that's entirely true or not, but I just saw that statement once, and I thought, "Well, wow. First of all, is that true? If so, how do people figure out that this is going to be a good thing for whatever they're using for, for intestinal infections or the grippe or something like that?"
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, no, I know. It is interesting. I have to say or think that at least got to be somewhat true, because if I look at even just the plants that we see it in, there's a huge diversity of that, right? So you've got for berberine at least, coptis is a big one that comes to mind with berberine and proto-berberines. You've got Oregon grape over in the Pacific Northwest that is teaming with berberine and berberine-like compounds.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
We have it in our yard. It's a weed, Oregon grape. Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, exactly. Then another one would be goldenseal, right? So now you're talking about areas in Eurasia, areas farther into Asia, and then the Pacific Northwest all the way through Alaska and probably into Siberia. That's a pretty big swath, right? All with berberine. So I think over time, if we look at how they figured it out, I think it was mainly going to just be living in an area for so long and building a medical system, right? So if you look at these areas, each group, each culture, each group of people, they had their materia medica over time, right? That was the collection.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Their list of favorite herbs.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly. The collection of herbs, what they do, where they grow, when to harvest it. So the old way of researching was trying a bunch of stuff, and I'm sure a lot of people tried the wrong things along the way.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
And paid the price.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
And paid the price, but also benefited their greater society to have some of these things. So yeah. So I think that was the other cool part of it, because you then got to see the repetition within these materia medicas, where the herb might be different. The way that they describe the reason to take it might be completely different. But then it's still targeting the same thing. So that's-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I remember years ago talking to a guy who was up in the Tetons or Yellowstone area, and he was studying grizzly bears. He noticed that when they came out of hibernation in the spring that there was a certain plant that they would eat, and then they would seem to get violently ill. They would be puking and having the runs and all that kind of stuff. That would last for like a day, and then they'd be fine. They did this every year. So I think what came out of that is he was saying, "I wonder if some of the Native American, the First Nations people that lived there saw the bears doing this and wondered, 'Maybe this is a good thing when you feel toxic to chew on this particular plant that's got obviously some laxative or purgative in it." So in other words, they were watching these animals do something, and as a result, they went, "Well, maybe this is something would be helpful for human health as well."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Oh, yeah, no, I think that is definitely one of the other areas where there was the first rounds of scientists, so to speak, where it's watching their environment and writing down notes and seeing the associations that is going on. So I think even some of the aspects of early areas of shamanism came from the same thing, right? Where they would watch the jaguar in the jungle eating some of these things that were a little bit hallucinogenic in nature, and that would be something that they would stimulate their own medical system out of. So I think there is a lot of that tied to the environment, to get a sense of what is working for the things around them, whether it be other people, plants, or sorry, not plants, but other people, animals, and other things that are looking to be healthier for some reason.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, there's been an evolution, obviously, from how these are used traditionally, which is as a tea or maybe even as an alcohol-based tincture into what we have today. I want to talk a little bit about what's involved now with a company like Thorne as a good example. You just happen to be here, and so I can pin you down on it. But when I was 19, I started studying herbal medicine, and you went to a health food store and you bought tea. That was the end of the story, or you could maybe buy an alcohol-based tincture. Now I would say more and more herbs are in a capsule form. More and more herbs are standardized, et cetera. So what's that about? What's the advantage of taking an herb in a powder or a capsule versus the old teas and tinctures and things like that?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. So I think one of the things that comes down to, it is, at least for a lot of these herbs and where they're coming from, these were things that were taken in at the level of food consistently daily for years, right? So if I look at curcumin coming out of turmeric is a great example. If you look at the holy trinity of Indian cooking, it's ginger, onions, and turmeric, right? Versus, say, ours, maybe, onions, carrots, and celery, right? So that aspect led to the medical system that was built or the materia medical that was being built that would be taking grams of this at a time, right? For most of us, that's just really not an option.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
If you lived in India, you might put curry on everything you ate.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, right. Three times a day, 365 days a year.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Three times a day.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
There's at least a couple of grams of turmeric powder going into your body. That's not going to happen, or ground-up Oregon grape powder would never probably make a wonderful culinary option for anybody. But the nice thing about it from encapsulation and standardization is we can get to a level of the materials that have been shown in peer-reviewed work in different research settings to be successful at supporting or modifying our bodies, that we can then really control that extraction and make sure that we are getting a more potent extract, right? So taking a lot of the compound, a lot of the botanical product, say it would be a tea, so the leaves in some of the younger stems and really condensing it down so that even though you're taking 250 milligrams of this powder that was an extract, it really came from 25 grams of that plant, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So 50 milligrams may not sound like a lot until you realize that's really concentrated.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, and then taking it one step further, we can then standardize it, meaning it's always going to have a set percentage of those actives, no matter what, and then really come in with something even more potent in a lot of ways, right? Because to get to those levels, you may be even having to add more plant mass to get there or controlling it through specific ways of extraction, right? Which there are a lot of them.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I've got to say I've gone to a lot of herbal conferences. I love botanists and herbalist, et cetera. But I remember going to a conference once where the lecturer was saying, "Okay, for this condition, you need to have the person go out and gather the fresh herb at a certain time of the year, at a certain time of the day, and spend several hours a day making this product and then drinking this tea four times a day." I thought, "Well, that's an ideal scenario, but it's not going to happen."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, right. Yeah.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I've got a busy businessman, a CEO in my practice who's got a medical condition, and I want to use a botanical medicine. I would much rather use a standardized herbal extract where I know what they're getting and I know they're going to be compliant than I would say, "You've got to do all of this stuff with the fresh herb, or it's not going to work."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
No, I think that's a great way of looking at it. That's the other part, is the time consumption. In a perfect world, we could all do that and have that wonderful interaction with our environment and the green space and the time to help support our mental health like we see. But the time consumption there of, "Okay, I've got a two-week window to harvest this and make it into what I want and drink it," it's not sustainable.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
I think that's why it's nice to have these ingredients being manufactured, because some of that goes into it. They have a network of growers or a network of wild crafters that know all this and benefit from it. But it stays around for two years as an ingredient and probably another two and a half years, three years as a product, and you can use it all the time instead of having to wait for that window. So the scale at which you can use it is considerably higher when you put in all these processes to allow for this to be something that's readily available for you in the potency you need, standardized, coming from the proper growing season, even if it's seven months away from it when you get the new bottle.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, I think I know what you're going to say about this, but is it a challenging market out there as somebody who's involved in procuring clean herbal material that is what the supplier says what it is? Is that getting to be a bigger challenge? I base that question on a book I just read called The Business of Botanicals, which I think anybody interested in this should read by Dr. Armbrecht. So I'm wondering what your perspective is on that, because I know that you spend a lot of time checking supplies and ingredients to see if they are what they say they are. So what's out there?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. A lot of different stuff, right? Well, I'll start there, obviously, but also, you mentioned that, and I would have to agree that is a great book. Definitely a good read for anybody interested in all of this. But yeah, it can be downright hard. There's a lot of stuff that goes into that, and then the way that even we look at processing and drying these things, there's a lot that may not make it onto a specification in different countries, but it's something that doesn't mean that it's not something we should be looking at.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Part of that then becomes, I think, the relationship that you have with who's making it, and that's probably one of the reasons why a lot of people were looking at big partnerships that allowed for almost vertical integration in a way, right? So that you find these quality individuals that have a good rapport with. You understand they are open to give you the documentation to understanding these things. They have a relationship with the people that they get the raw material biomass from. They share that with you as well. So it has to be a very open process. A lot of times, it's not necessarily ... has to be. There's nothing pushing for this. There's legislation out there, obviously, and a few other things, but it can be interesting. I think the other part of it is it gets muddied by some of these things that are thought to be the next big thing in herbal quality, right? So when we looked at a few years ago some of the things that came from the genetic fingerprinting as the botanical ID.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Yeah. The DNA scan, right?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. Right. It's one of those where it's one more piece of data, but it's not the end all, be all. A lot of what came out of that recently, and I was surprised to not see it as much making its way through since the other side of it, where people were thinking that these were all adulterated products made a lot of headway. A lot of that was erroneous and downright deceitful research, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So it wasn't that the products were erroneous, which is what made the news, or that they were contaminated. It's that the analytical methods that they used to determine that were flawed.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, and those flaws were not necessarily talked about as much as they should have been in the peer-reviewed setting. So I think that that means that then you have to put on the investigator hat and get a sense of all this. If we look at herbs in general in different landscapes and environments, they can take on traits of other subspecies, for example, depending on the age of the plant, genetically speaking, and you can get some variations that are [inaudible 00:19:18]. So then it becomes, "Well, what is it? Which one is it?" It's both. So inherently, there's going to be some flaws there.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
So that's where I think when you're designing quality botanical products, you have to take the approach of what I would call quality by design instead of quality by specification, meaning you have to ask these questions before you even go out and source to make sure that you're understanding what could go wrong with finding that herb, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Like a lot of things, right?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Some of it is things that are as interesting as, "Well, what's the difference between Glycyrrhiza glabra, which is licorice, versus lycees China versus Glycyrrhiza chinensis, which is another species of licorice? So if we look at some of that, there's some small changes, and there's some differences. But now all of a sudden, you look at where is it grown, naturally speaking, and one of them is in Eurasia, going through Spain and into more the areas bordering into Pakistan and Turkey, those areas. Then the other one developed in China. So as we move these around for commodities, it really starts to blur the line between the species, right? So that's why I think identity is really important, just as an example.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Well, I think the take-home message, just to point out before we go on our break here, is that if you as a consumer are going to buy botanical medicines, make sure you work with a company that knows what they're doing, and what you're saying is knowing what you're doing is a lot more complicated than being able to open a book and go, "Well, here's a pretty picture of that plant. If the person that's selling it to me says it's that plant, the leaves look familiar. So maybe that's it."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
AI'm not exaggerating when I say that that goes on.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
No, you're not. That definitely could be some of the things that leave it. Then if you're looking at what we call the certificate of analysis that comes in, are people resting there? Which can happen in certain arrangements, and that's quite all right, or are they really testing everything out to make sure that that is the case? So it's a very interesting thing, because it does one of those where you're like, "Well, this grows in the ground. It should be easy. You just pick it. That's all you got to do."
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Yep, yep. More to it than that. Let's take a short break. Then when we come back, we'll answer some questions from our listeners.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
When it comes to your health, your body deserves the best. That's why Thorne invests in comprehensive testing, sourcing the highest quality ingredients, and creating the cleanest manufacturing processes that will provide unparalleled solutions for your health. It is this approach to quality and science that has earned Thorne the trust of more than 42,000 medical practitioners, as well as 100-plus Olympic, professional, and collegiate sports teams. It's also why Thorne is the only supplement manufacturer to be chosen by Mayo Clinic for collaborating on clinical research and educational content. Discover the quality and science that leads to a happier and healthier life with Thorne. Visit thorne.com to learn more. That's T-H-O-R-N-E-dot-com.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
We're back, and now it's time to answer some questions from the community. Our first question this week comes from a listener who asks, "Are herbal medicines FDA approved?" I hear that a lot. I see that in mainstream articles about herbal medicine, botanical medicine. Implication is, "Well, they're not approved, so they're not as good as a drug." What would you say to that, Dr. Phipps?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Well, I'd say that it's a regulated field, right? So they-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Highly regulated.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, right? So we have a standard of what we call good manufacturing procedures that is dictated by the FDA, right? So it's all in this giant compendial book, but it's online for me, so I don't even know what it's called there, known as the CFR, right? So 21 CFR is where everything lives, including dietary supplements, which includes herbal extracts and herbs. One of the things that's also within there is even the identity of it and how we talk about it, right? We brought up in the talk, like the differences between Glycyrrhiza glabra and Glycyrrhiza chinensis, which is two different species of licorice. Now, I better know my licorice source, because there's something in the United States called the herbs of commerce, that if I call something licorice, it has to be Glycyrrhiza glabra. It cannot be Glycyrrhiza chinensis. So that is another layer of oversight, that it's properly communicated to the end user exactly if there is a common name what that has to be from a regulatory standpoint. So I think there is a lot of oversight and regulation on this, more than people know, I think.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, until the 1920s or '30s wasn't there an American Herbal Pharmacopoeia or something? I don't remember if that's exactly what it's called, but it was something like a standard list of botanical medicines that most doctors would use in mainstream.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. Yeah. Like any other culture, that was the materia medica of our time, right? So there was those things that were standardized for what's it used for and what it was and what it looks like. That waned off. Then on the flip side, what's come up is there's even specific drug approvals for botanical drugs. Now, that is not necessarily what you would expect a drug to be. There's actually on that list botanical extracts, and so the realm of what we think these are from herbs, say, culinary need or foodstuff to regulated supplement and medical utilizations, there's a spectrum there. But it's all, I would say, the dietary supplement and the botanical drug are all arising from the same data stream around safety and efficacy.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, isn't the main difference that involves FDA approval that you can make drug claims if it's FDA ... So FDA approval, I think what people are getting at is they're saying, "Can you say this is good for this condition?"
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly. When you hear that, to me, it's not necessarily a regulatory component. It becomes, well, it's gone through what's called an NDA or a new drug application. But if you look at the herbs that are out there, part of that is going to be safety data. Part of that's going to be efficacy data. So there is that groundwork and framework in there, and then if it's a new herb, you're going to have things like a new dietary ingredient that would come around, which is putting all of that into the framework of why you can use it as a dietary supplement. That has to have the safety data behind it. So there's no real difference, to your point, other than really just the marketed claim and some of the ways that we talk about it, condition versus structure, function.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
What you can say about it. I will say that it's a problem in the sense that if a company wants to bring a botanical medicine out as a drug, make drug claims about it, say, "This herb is good to treat hypertension," right, that's a big no-no in the supplement industry. But let's say you found an extract of hibiscus, and you said, "My hibiscus extract can be used to treat hypertension." Well, it could take you 10 years and how many million dollars to be able to come up with the research to be able to make that claim? It's an expensive process.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, yeah. Still, even though it's somewhat streamlined as that botanical drug pipeline, it's still expensive, and it's still one of those things that you're getting into a level outside of the structure and function. I think that's the hard part for people to splice, where there is realms of what we are doing and how an herb will work within that structure and function landscape that is effective and can be seen within the clinical work. But it's not something as selective as targeting one or two different molecular targets in a way that we expect a drug. The potency of it is a different component as well, right? So I think that's in the spectrum of that.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
"What's the difference between an herb and a botanical?," one of our listeners asks.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
You can look at it a few different ways. I think that's a great question, but everyone's probably going to have a different answer. The way I would think about it is the botanical tends to be more of a technical word when looking at it versus an herb. Some people may use it to reference maybe what they have in their kitchen versus what they think is more dietary supplement or medically related, right? So there's that air of, "It's not going to be in my pantry for cooking my lasagna, but it'll be in there to help me support proper lipid metabolism." But that's hard, too, though, right? Because then if you look at things like rosemary, it's a kitchen herb, but it definitely has some botanical qualities or botanical medicine qualities. But I think probably the main way to look at that is just the level of broadness around what an herb may be or become or be called versus the way that people look at a botanical.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So I think my general impression is that herb is a very broad term, and when you say botanical, you're getting a little bit more specific.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. The refinement's there. Yeah, I agree.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
It's a little bit more refined, but they're used interchangeably a lot, don't you think?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Oh, they definitely are. They definitely are.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So Annamaria wants to know, "Who do I go to find out what botanical supplements are right for me?" So I think she's getting to the ads on TV. "Ask your doctor if this is right for you."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
You don't have an ad that says, "Ask your doctor if rosemary is right for me."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
How do people know?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
There's going to be a subset of those, right? So I think that the easiest way to look for those things is looking for in your area integrative practitioners that are going to be well-versed in the differences of those supplements and how to utilize them, depending on your area. This could be an area where a scope of practice could be a naturopath, but it could also be someone like an integrated functional medicine doc that has spent a good chunk of time really trying to understand it.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
The key point that I'm trying to make on that there is you want to go to somebody that has had some level of training to understand some of the nuances here, because there's a lot of differences in the potencies of botanical supplements, the proper use of them over time. There's these things that we just spent a good chunk of time going over, even on the quality side, that this person's asking on your behalf. So they're going to have that ability to really make sure that what you're getting is going to have an effect like you're expecting.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So you're a naturopath. You've got ... I don't know what you call it, a doctor of naturopathy degree, and how much of your training involved herbal medicine? By that, I mean going into the constituents of the herbs and how they're extracted, where they come from. Is that a big part of your training?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
It actually was, and I was a little bit more geeky about it. So I spent a little bit more time on all of the, I would say, electives that could be done there. But in the core didactics, there's definitely two, three years of botanical medicine look and then-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Two or three years. Yep.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah, and that's outside of the clinic, right? Inside the clinic, we learn more with our docs that are practicing and we're learning from, and then there's the electives. That would probably put on for me another a year or so, which was really looking at different materia medicas and also what we would call pharmacognosy. So we had a pharmacognosy class as well that were into the constituent classes, what they may do or expect to do, right? So that could be things like the sesquiterpenoids in some of the bittering agents or more of the volatile agents and what we expect them to do, what plants that they're found in. So dove a bit deeper.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
But I think going at least a year or two and getting an understanding of it I think is a good thing, and there's a lot of integrative docs out there that aren't MDs that have spent that time or even longer, really, looking at that. So I don't necessarily think it's one look at this versus the other makes that sense, but those types of docs that really put the time in, regardless of it's an ND, an MD, or the like, really is what's going to be meaningful.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So I went to med school for four years, undergraduate four years, medical school four years, three years of residency in family practice. Do you know how much time was devoted to botanical medicine?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Probably not much.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Zero. Yes. The only time that was devoted to that was in the course on toxicology, right? Which is like, "These are the ways that herbs poison you."
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Yeah. I think that's one of the things that has led to some of these questions and comments that we're seeing, right? Is that's the landscape that people have been listening to for a while, and it's changing. But I know ... How long have you studied herbs outside of that?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Years. I've taken courses and gone to conferences, and I've got a whole library on botanical medicine. I look things up. Every day, I look things up and have been for 40 years.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, right. That's the type of provider that I think is the best, right? To work through this, because everything's changing. But if there's a love for that type of thing and a real interest, it's going to come through, and you're going to get a good product recommendation.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I will say in Germany, the botanical medicine is a part of regular medical school training.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. Yeah, and they for a long time even had commissions on it, right? So you could go and look at it through the government. So there's a lot out there. But I think, again, that common thread is whether it be in the formal training or spending the time outside of that formal realm really getting a sense of what these things can do, how to dose them, what to look for for quality, that all comes through for patient satisfaction.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Now, you mentioned some chemicals that are in different herbs, sesquiterpenoids, for example. That brings up a question that one of our listeners asked. "What's the difference between a botanical versus an extract?" I would add versus a phytochemical.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Great. So I think it's going to be these layers of refinement, right? So I think a botanical is going to be the herb or the herb part, right? So it might be ground-up turmeric. We can go with turmeric, right? So ground-up turmeric. That's going to be where everything lives, but you don't know how much is in there, right? Then you're going to get to a botanical extract. Now, these can be either standardized so you have a set compound or two that is what is being tested every time they make it, or it can be just a higher potency material, where you're getting numerous grams of the herb per milligram. But that's still going to be more refined than just the botanical. Then finally, the phytochemical will be one chemical refined all the way out. So if we took the turmeric example, I can have the botanical with the ground turmeric root, the botanical extract with turmeric root extract standardized to curcuminoids, and then I can have curcumin as the phytochemical, right? One of them that I would then say this much curcumin.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
But I've seen that argument be a little bit deceptive in that people would say ... A traditional herbalist, for example, and not to knock them at all. I admire them and studied with them for years. But they would say, "Well, you're better off just eating ground turmeric." I've actually heard Dr. Andy Weil say that exact thing. "You'd be better off eating a tablespoon of turmeric powder every day." I thought, "You have got to be kidding me. Who is going to" ... Have you ever tasted a tablespoon of turmeric powder? Who's going to-
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Worse than the cinnamon challenge right there.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
I'll tell you.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
It's like, "That's what you need to do, a tablespoon of turmeric every day, and I don't recommend taking a supplement." I just think, "Well, wait a minute. When you take something like curcumin phytosome," right? Which is mixing curcumin with the substance that enhances absorption. Then you actually get more of it into your bloodstream.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. Consistently, right? That's-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Fewer milligrams. So if you just look at the number of milligrams for curcumin, you can go, "Well, that's less than you'd get in a tablespoon of tumeric." But you'll get more into your bloodstream from that particular preparation.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. Yep, and 100%, I think that's the big thing, is these are why we look at these extracts, right? Then enhance them with the phytosomes to make sure that we're getting a consistent amount of that phytochemical or phytochemicals, depending on the plant, into where it needs to go. One of the interesting things, though, and I think this is to be determined is that as we look at that, I think there's going to also be at some points where you maybe want all of that stuff to stay in the GI tract. But you still want it to be a high quality, and you don't just want to take a tablespoon of it and chug it down, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Because it may have heavy metals in it.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, or it's adulterated, or it has benzopyrenes from drying too long, right? So I think that's the big thing to be said, is that most of what we're looking at is when you start to get that phytochemical into the bloodstream, that's when you start to see the things that you're taking it for really come through, right? So if we look at all the literature that they do clinical work on in the peer-reviewed space, that's what you're seeing. When something is saying it's effective at these doses in the study, it's because they can see it go into the body, right? So you'll see that whole story come through.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
In the past, I think all we had was what people said, their subjective experience.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
"I took this, and I felt better." Now we've got better ways to study things.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right, and also, I think we have a better understanding of, "Okay, well that might not work for it," right? Because if I look at maybe why that worked for that individual, we can go back to are you one of those people, we can take berberine as a great example, that just happens to get berberine into your system better? There's not a lot of them, right? So that's why people have to take a lot of berberine. It's an amazing ingredient, but if you look at the doses, typically, we're looking at 1.5 grams of that pure compound a day, right? So how are you getting that from 100 milligrams of coptis root? I don't know, right? But I think that's, again, the reasons why, to your point, having it as that quality source and that ability to have consistent dosing over time is really where you're going to get that differential.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So that brings us to the last question, I think, which is Liz asked us, "How do I know if the source quality is good enough that it will be absorbed well?" So that seems to have a couple of different parts to it, and I think we've alluded a little bit to that. But maybe you can talk a little bit about how those two things are or are not connected.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
The way I look at it is is the product designed well so that it can have the ability to be absorbed is maybe one way to look at it, but that doesn't necessarily move into the source. I think the source quality is important, because you're wanting that consistency so that when it is absorbed, and all of these will have the ability to be absorbed at some level, it's consistent. You know that that is there. I think what ends up happening with sourcing is that you may get an ingredient that is, say, a very standard powder, like you would say just a ground-up tea in a capsule. You don't really know the waxing and waning of some of those ingredients that are in there, those phytochemicals that are in there, right? So you may think it's because then that is due to absorption, but really, what it is due to is just that there's just inconsistent levels in that product for you to take in, right? So I think that's maybe the intersect there. But formulation-wise, we can do things to enhance absorption, and I think that's the other part to this, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Like the phytosomes.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, exactly. So I think that's a really interesting way to think about the dichotomy there is, that there's probably higher quality turmeric extracts out there, but they're still going to have absorption issues for the majority of people using them. So we can supplement or reduce the need to take that ingredient in in high amounts by doing something to alter how it's getting into our body.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So you briefly touched on something that I'd like to end with, which is the notion of what else is in there besides the herb? Fillers are pretty common, and the question I would ask for you that's a corollary of what this person's asking is does everything that's in a product have to be listed on the label?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
No.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Can you say that again?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
I would say no, but I'll go back and say-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
No.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
... everything that's in the ingredients that's being used doesn't have to be on the label, right?
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Right.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
But if I'm putting it in there as a formula, then yes. But I think that's where the gray part comes in for a lot of people, right? Because it still says that ingredient, but is that ingredient a 5 to 1, a 1 to 1, a 10 to 1, a 15 to 1? Has it got lactose as a-
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Lactose. Yep.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Those things where you might have that. So I think that's the hard part, right? Because that's what's not on the label. That's the part of the quality system, though, that needs to be upheld, at least from my aspect of making sure that you're getting what you're expecting. You have to have that ability to really toe the line on, "No, this is what we mean by a high-quality botanical supplement."
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Well, I do have people that tell me, "I took this herb," like rosemary, "and I reacted to it. Yet I can eat rosemary as an herb in my food, and I don't react to it." So I think what you're saying is buyer beware, because there may be something in that product you didn't know about.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Right. Exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
There's no obligation to put that on the label.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Nope. You're right.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
So you've got to go with a company that you trust.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Exactly, exactly.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
All right, folks. That's all the time we have this week. Stephen, thanks again.
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
No, thank you for having me. Thank you, sir.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
I always like to ask, where can listeners go if they want to find out what you're up to, what you're doing?
Dr. Stephen Phipps:
Nice. So for the most part, I usually write some blogs on thorne.com. You can definitely see all the new products that are coming out over time there as well. We've got a lot of interesting stuff. Then on the social media side, LinkedIn.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Great. Well, again, thanks, Dr. Stephen Phipps, the chief innovation officer at Thorne Health Tech. That was really an excellent discussion, and thank you all for listening. We hope that you'll tune in the future.
Dr. Robert Rountree:
Thanks for listening to the Thorne Podcast. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. If you've got a health or wellness question you'd like answered, simply follow our Instagram, and shoot a message to @thornehealth. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos, and stories on Thorne's Take 5 Daily blog. Once again, thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to join us next time for another episode of the Thorne Podcast.
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