Ben, there's a strong perception that natural or botanical ingredients are inherently safer and that synthetic ingredients are somehow more harmful.
From a pharmacist's perspective, is natural actually a meaningful measure of safety or efficacy?
I mean, there's a lot of things that are natural, I'm doing air quotes here, that aren't necessarily going to be in your interest to apply to your skin or to ingest.
You know, when people hear the word natural, there's this imagery that goes through our minds, like, you know, the herbal essence commercial with the hair and the butterflies and all that stuff.
And so this kind of plays off on our feelings and our emotions and our lack of really definitively diving into what words mean.
not only that, but what is really natural anyway? You know, is honey natural? Bee has to make honey.
It doesn't just pop out of the sky, right? So just because something is being made naturally Does it, if I make it in the laboratory, how am I different than a bee who's making honey? You know, so there's kind of a weird distinction, natural and synthetic and not natural.
And then at the end of the day, when a molecule hits a cell, and that's really where you're going to get effects, the molecule, the cell doesn't know whether that molecule came from a laboratory or came from a natural source.
You know, sometimes people will say, is that vitamin C natural? Does it come from a natural source or is it synthetic? Ascorbic acid is a pattern.
Ben, there's a strong perception that natural or botanical ingredients are inherently safer and that synthetic ingredients are somehow more harmful.
From a pharmacist's perspective, is natural actually a meaningful measure of safety or efficacy?
I mean, there's a lot of things that are natural, I'm doing air quotes here, that aren't necessarily going to be in your interest to apply to your skin or to ingest.
You know, when people hear the word natural, there's this imagery that goes through our minds, like, you know, the herbal essence commercial with the hair and the butterflies and all that stuff.
And so this kind of plays off on our feelings and our emotions and our lack of really definitively diving into what words mean.
not only that, but what is really natural anyway? You know, is honey natural? Bee has to make honey.
It doesn't just pop out of the sky, right? So just because something is being made naturally Does it, if I make it in the laboratory, how am I different than a bee who's making honey? You know, so there's kind of a weird distinction, natural and synthetic and not natural.
And then at the end of the day, when a molecule hits a cell, and that's really where you're going to get effects, the molecule, the cell doesn't know whether that molecule came from a laboratory or came from a natural source.
You know, sometimes people will say, is that vitamin C natural? Does it come from a natural source or is it synthetic? Ascorbic acid is a pattern.
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