Luvna DhawkaFrom willow bark to Nobel Prize-winning malaria treatments, ancient plant remedies that have withstood scientific scrutiny continue to fuel breakthrough medical discoveries in the modern world.
When my dermatologist suggested drinking spearmint tea to help with hormonal acne, I was skeptical. As a scientist, I wanted to see the clinical trials and peer-reviewed papers on how drinking spearmint tea improves hormonal acne. This herbal remedy recommendation triggered memories of my childhood, where my mother would brew a lemongrass and herb concoction that somehow always seemed to soothe my colds. This made me wonder: which traditional plant medicines actually work, and how do we tell them apart from the pseudo-scientific claims flooding our social media feeds?
The explosion of herbal supplements and traditional medicine-based products isn’t surprising. Every culture has its plant-based remedies, from Traditional Chinese Medicine to Ayurveda and Native American healing practices. Some of these traditional treatments have stood the test of time and rigorous scientific scrutiny. While social media influencers promote trendy remedies like mushroom coffee and elderberry supplements, both products with little to no conclusive scientific evidence, researchers have been quietly validating certain ancient herbal medicines through careful laboratory studies and clinical trials.
The story of aspirin perfectly illustrates the journey from traditional cure to modern medicine. For thousands of years, diverse civilizations around the world—from ancient Sumerians and Egyptians to Greeks, Romans, Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and the Hottentots of South Africa—used willow bark to reduce fever and inflammation. In 1897, scientists at Bayer identified and modified the active compound (acetylsalicylic acid) and created the aspirin we know and use today. What began as an herbal remedy became one of the most widely used global medications.
Studying traditional medicines has also led to Nobel Prize-worthy breakthroughs. In 2015, researcher Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering artemisinin, a powerful antimalarial drug. She found it by studying ancient Chinese medical texts that described using sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) to treat fevers. Her work has saved millions of lives and validated the idea that traditional medicines can point us toward important scientific discoveries.
The list of validated traditional plant-based medicines continues to grow:
- Pacific yew tree gave us the cancer drug paclitaxel (brand name: Taxol)
- Madagascar periwinkle provided vinca alkaloids (vincristine and vinblastine) now essential in treating lymphomas and leukemia
- Opium poppy yielded morphine, codeine, and inspired synthetic opioids for pain management
- Foxglove plant (Digitalis) provided digoxin, still used to treat certain heart conditions
- Cinchona bark contains quinine, the first effective treatment for malaria
- Mexican yam provided diosgenin, which became the basis for early oral contraceptives and corticosteroids
- Rauvolfia serpentina (Indian snakeroot) yielded reserpine, which not only became one of the first medications for hypertension but was also instrumental in Arvid Carlsson’s Nobel Prize-winning research in the year 2000 that uncovered dopamine’s role in the brain and led to L-dopa treatment for Parkinson’s disease
These successes have inspired researchers to systematically investigate traditional herbal medicines, searching for compounds that could become tomorrow’s breakthrough drugs. However, not all traditional plant remedies hold up to scientific scrutiny. Some simply don’t work, while others may even be harmful due to toxic compounds or interactions with modern medications. Many remedies work through placebo effects, while others contain such small amounts of active compounds that you’d need to drink gallons to see any effect (which might be the case with spearmint tea for hormonal acne. I have not noted any improvement in my skin). My mother’s lemongrass remedy for example might work through multiple subtle compounds that are hard to study in isolation.
Nature has created countless complex molecules that can heal us. In today’s world, we just need the right tools to find, understand, and validate those molecules. Traditional knowledge can point us toward promising plants, but scientific research helps us separate truly effective medicines from placebos. As for my spearmint tea experiment, while there is minimal evidence of its effectiveness in decreasing androgen levels in conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), I’ll keep drinking it because I enjoy the taste, but I won’t expect miracles.
Peer edited by: Shea Ricketts
