Is All Herbal Research Trustworthy?

The Plant Path: Herbalism, Medical Astrology & Spagyric Alchemy

Sajah Popham

Alternative Health, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 570 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is all herbal research trustworthy? If you've ever Googled an herb to learn more and saw lots of research papers about it, can you trust them? Herbal research is tricky since there are a lot of things that can go wrong and right with them that make the results tricky to decipher.

Even though understanding herbal research isn't 100% necessary as a clinical herbalist, it can introduce novel uses of plants, and of course, knowing the chemistry of an herbal makes you a much better medicine maker. With a few pointers, you can learn how to tell if the scientific research you read online is trustworthy.

In today's episode, you'll discover:

Signs that a piece of research was funded by an organization with an agenda
The differences between in-vivo, in-vitro, and clinical research, and which is best
Ways science can back up traditional knowledge about plants
The dangers of believing any research article about herbs you find
Some of the most common things that make an article untrustworthy

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CONNECT WITH SAJAH AND WHITNEY

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https://www.evolutionaryherbalism.com/evolutionary-herbalism-book/

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ABOUT THE PLANT PATH

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The Plant Path is a window into the world of herbal medicine. With perspectives gleaned from traditional Western herbalism, Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, Alchemy, Medical Astrology, and traditional cultures from around the world, The Plant Path provides unique insights, skills and strategies for the practice of true holistic herbalism. From clinical to spiritual perspectives, we don't just focus on what herbs are "good for," but rather who they are as intelligent beings, and how we can work with them to heal us physically and consciously evolve.

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ABOUT SAJAH

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Sajah Popham is the author of Evolutionary Herbalism and the founder of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism, where he trains herbalists in a holistic system of plant medicine that encompasses clinical Western herbalism, medical astrology, Ayurveda, and spagyric alchemy.

His mission is to develop a comprehensive approach that balances the science and spirituality of plant medicine, focusing on using plants to heal and rejuvenate the body, clarify the mind, open the heart, and support the development of the soul. This is only achieved through understanding and working with the chemical, energetic, and spiritual properties of the plants. His teachings embody a heartfelt respect, honor and reverence for the vast intelligence of plants in a way that empowers us to look deeper into the nature of our medicines and ourselves.

He lives on a homestead in the foothills of Mt. Baker Washington with his wife Whitney where he teaches, consults clients, and prepares spagyric herbal medicines.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the plant path, your window into the world of herbal medicine, with Saja and Whitney Popham, founders of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism.
0:24.6	Is herbal research trustworthy, like all the effort and energy that goes into running a scientific
0:31.3	study on plants?
0:33.2	And they come up with these results.
0:35.5	Can you really trust it? You know, this is something that I've thought
0:39.2	about a lot over the years. And while I think science is amazing and fascinating and lends us all
0:47.2	sorts of new insights into, really, to me, the magic and the miraculous nature of medicinal plants, I think there's some
0:57.1	dangers sometimes that can also come alongside the scientific model and the scientific approach
1:04.9	to herbal medicine. And I wanted to take some time here today to talk about this dynamic of herbal research,
1:13.3	right, of scientific studies on plants.
1:17.6	And I think one of the things that I've noticed is that it sometimes feels like there's
1:22.5	a couple of different camps amongst herbalists where, you know, sometimes you get people that are more, I guess,
1:29.4	we might think of as traditionalists, right? They work with their tradition of, you know,
1:34.5	maybe Unani Tib or traditional Western herbalism or TCM or Ierveda or Tibetan medicine, right?
1:43.3	And then sometimes it seems like there's some folks on another end of that polarity
1:48.1	that are very much the scientifically driven herbalists.
1:52.8	And sometimes I feel like herbal medicine has been in practice for a very, very long time.
2:01.1	It is clear that plants help to heal us.
2:04.7	And we don't necessarily need, I think, scientific studies to prove it.
2:10.6	And I think that's one thing that I've noticed in sometimes amongst the more scientifically oriented folks is that it's almost like everything
2:19.9	needs to be proven. It's almost like nothing from tradition can be trusted until it's been
2:26.2	proven by science. And I feel like this can be a little bit of a not a very open-minded approach because, you know, I remember something Paul
	...

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