Berberine is a remarkable substance, and it’s easy to understand why people on TikTok are excited about its benefits. But that does not mean it’s wise to start ingesting this powerful pharmacological compound as casually as a cough drop.
But if a plant-derived substance is classified as a supplement, rigor goes out the window. There’s no mandatory development and approval process for supplements. In 1994, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act changed how the FDA could regulate supplements, undermining its power within a rapidly-growing market.
Despite several high-profile public health disasters related to supplements, including the herbal stimulant ephedra causing a wave of heart attacks and other adverse effects, regulatory control over the supplement industry remains startlingly lax—even as the market has exploded in popularity.
This explosion in popularity has not led to a commensurate spike in rigorous research. “The biggest problem with dietary supplements is that there really isn't much funding to do randomized controlled trials,” Deuster says. “It's usually funded by the supplement company if it's done at all, so that the opportunity for good evidence is almost nonexistent.”atmosphere has led to a wide variety of products that simply don’t do what they say they’re going to do—or much of anything at all.
Although it hasn’t been subject to the same trials that a pharmaceutical goes through during its approval process, and although berberine is not regulated like a medication, it can still function like one. The body doesn’t know or care, after all, how a substance is classified. “There's no difference between a pharmaceutical drug and the sort of compounds like berberine that are sold in supplements.
Some supplement companies do make efforts to at least offer some educational materials for their customers. For example, when I asked Thorne whether it is putting out any messaging about how powerful berberine is, and how it may not be suitable for long-term use, a spokesperson told me that the company had run a Q&A with an in-house doctor via Instagram Stories.
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