It could be an important botanical therapy, but what do I do next?
February 14, 2016 2:17 PM Subscribe
MeFi, if you could please suspend your disbelief, I would really appreciate some advice. After years of suffering from a number of issues that were resistant to various forms of traditional and alternative medicine, I've made something of a hobby out of experimenting on myself and creating my own plant extracts. Most recently this has involved creating a semi-proprietary tincture made from high-grade white/green teas, and combining said tincture with other supplements. Through an exhausting process of trial-and-error, I've come up with some unique concoctions that truly help me. I want to see if they can help other people, but I have no idea how to take the next step.
I do not have a tremendous amount of capital at my disposal, and years of depression and poor health have left me uncertain of what I'm realistically capable of accomplishing. However, I know that what I've been taking makes me feel better (despite failing to find relief from dozens of other treatments and supplements), and that I've slowly been becoming a healthier and more functional person since stumbling onto these concoctions. I'm also fairly certain they're safe, since they're limited to reasonable doses of botanicals that have been used in traditional medicine for centuries (and are thus given relative carte blanche status in the United States, under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994).
The tea extract I mentioned probably isn't patentable (I added a couple of compounds to a recipe taken from a peer-reviewed paper on the optimal recovery of green tea polyphenols), and I have no realistic idea of how to start a business. A couple of friends have suggested trying to start a "transformation blog," but I'm kind of hesitant to expose myself that way due to some formative experiences with online trolling and bullying. Also, I'm reluctant to rest the entire fate of my discoveries on the extent to which they can turn my own life around.
Profit isn't my primary motivation, but I hope people will understand that I wish to maintain some basic protections, and try to prevent others from exploiting something I spent a great deal of time and effort searching for. Beyond that, I am open to any and all suggestions. I realize this is a difficult question, so thank you in advance.
I do not have a tremendous amount of capital at my disposal, and years of depression and poor health have left me uncertain of what I'm realistically capable of accomplishing. However, I know that what I've been taking makes me feel better (despite failing to find relief from dozens of other treatments and supplements), and that I've slowly been becoming a healthier and more functional person since stumbling onto these concoctions. I'm also fairly certain they're safe, since they're limited to reasonable doses of botanicals that have been used in traditional medicine for centuries (and are thus given relative carte blanche status in the United States, under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994).
The tea extract I mentioned probably isn't patentable (I added a couple of compounds to a recipe taken from a peer-reviewed paper on the optimal recovery of green tea polyphenols), and I have no realistic idea of how to start a business. A couple of friends have suggested trying to start a "transformation blog," but I'm kind of hesitant to expose myself that way due to some formative experiences with online trolling and bullying. Also, I'm reluctant to rest the entire fate of my discoveries on the extent to which they can turn my own life around.
Profit isn't my primary motivation, but I hope people will understand that I wish to maintain some basic protections, and try to prevent others from exploiting something I spent a great deal of time and effort searching for. Beyond that, I am open to any and all suggestions. I realize this is a difficult question, so thank you in advance.
The way to see if they help other people is a professional clinical trial done by a disinterested lab. Unfortunately. The anecdotal answers you'll receive in the form of reviews from sales is useless as data. Unfortunately.
I can't speak to the business model or patent issues. Just want to make sure you know that you will not be able to answer the question of them helping others by seeing how sales go, reviews come in, etc.
posted by The Noble Goofy Elk at 2:57 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
I can't speak to the business model or patent issues. Just want to make sure you know that you will not be able to answer the question of them helping others by seeing how sales go, reviews come in, etc.
posted by The Noble Goofy Elk at 2:57 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
i may be biased here, because i write "open source" software in my free time - so i give away things that i spent a lot of time on - but i think you have to choose between possibly helping others and "protecting" yourself financially. i really don't think you've got any chance of both helping others and making money (sorry).
given that, i would suggest making a website that describes what you did and what results you had, and lets others duplicate your work. again, i suppose i am just repeating my experience from software - i put a lot of things "out there" and most get no traction, but some become popular (edit: and it's not like there's no "payback" - you gain a reputation, you receive job offers, etc etc).
i would even see if there's anything like an "opensource medicine" or "open healing" movement or similar and, if so, see if you can join them
one other thing i would suggest, which is somewhat tangential to your question (and which is based on another bias of mine that the mind is often as important as the body), is that you reflect on how much the process rather than the final "product" helped you. it might be that describing what you did - taking control of your own illness, doing something yourself to fight back - was as important as the "end treatment". and describing that process - what motivated you, how you kept going - might also be useful to others.
congratulations on your recovery!
posted by andrewcooke at 3:09 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
given that, i would suggest making a website that describes what you did and what results you had, and lets others duplicate your work. again, i suppose i am just repeating my experience from software - i put a lot of things "out there" and most get no traction, but some become popular (edit: and it's not like there's no "payback" - you gain a reputation, you receive job offers, etc etc).
i would even see if there's anything like an "opensource medicine" or "open healing" movement or similar and, if so, see if you can join them
one other thing i would suggest, which is somewhat tangential to your question (and which is based on another bias of mine that the mind is often as important as the body), is that you reflect on how much the process rather than the final "product" helped you. it might be that describing what you did - taking control of your own illness, doing something yourself to fight back - was as important as the "end treatment". and describing that process - what motivated you, how you kept going - might also be useful to others.
congratulations on your recovery!
posted by andrewcooke at 3:09 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
I wouldn't be too blase about safety: green tea extract has been linked to acute liver damage .
posted by smoke at 4:11 PM on February 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by smoke at 4:11 PM on February 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
Since you're proposing sharing something with a medicinal claim I thought that some legal structures might apply. Maybe you already found or know about this but I Googled the American Herbalists Society Legal and Regulatory FAQ in case you need to further explore legal implications before you begin promoting. It does deal with teas.
posted by Miko at 4:27 PM on February 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Miko at 4:27 PM on February 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
Response by poster: decathecting: Honestly my question is more along the lines of "what would be the most useful thing for me to do with this information?" I would like to achieve some kind of balance between selflessly trying to help people with similar issues, and maintaining some limited degree of self-interest and propriety. I understand if the only way forward involves choosing one route or the other. I will happily take suggestions which lead down either path.
andrewcooke: I have considered taking a more radically open approach as you suggested, although I'm not sure how I could convince people to go through the trouble/expense of making their own version of the concoction. Even if I really do reach a point where I can serve as an encouraging "before/after" demonstration, it will be a while before I reach that point. I would like to be able to supply it to people on some kind of trial basis perhaps, or maybe even find a venue where people would be interested in trying such a thing. A friend suggested that I just put up some fliers saying something along the lines of "want to try a new and all-natural way to lose weight? Call XXX-XXX-XXXX!" But I worry about the legal and ethical issues involved in such an approach.
smoke: I am aware of the liver issues associated with green tea supplement products, but they are generally associated with formulas containing extreme and unnatural amounts of isolated catechins (such as EGCG). I'm using a full spectrum extract/tincture that's more akin to drinking a pot or 2 of strong tea (although the catechins are preferentially pulled out of the leaf and preserved due to lower temperatures, among other variables). A standard dose comes from the equivalent of a small handful of tea leaves.
posted by prosopagnosia at 5:32 PM on February 14, 2016
andrewcooke: I have considered taking a more radically open approach as you suggested, although I'm not sure how I could convince people to go through the trouble/expense of making their own version of the concoction. Even if I really do reach a point where I can serve as an encouraging "before/after" demonstration, it will be a while before I reach that point. I would like to be able to supply it to people on some kind of trial basis perhaps, or maybe even find a venue where people would be interested in trying such a thing. A friend suggested that I just put up some fliers saying something along the lines of "want to try a new and all-natural way to lose weight? Call XXX-XXX-XXXX!" But I worry about the legal and ethical issues involved in such an approach.
smoke: I am aware of the liver issues associated with green tea supplement products, but they are generally associated with formulas containing extreme and unnatural amounts of isolated catechins (such as EGCG). I'm using a full spectrum extract/tincture that's more akin to drinking a pot or 2 of strong tea (although the catechins are preferentially pulled out of the leaf and preserved due to lower temperatures, among other variables). A standard dose comes from the equivalent of a small handful of tea leaves.
posted by prosopagnosia at 5:32 PM on February 14, 2016
I think that what would be the most useful thing for you to do with this information would be to submit it to the scientific method. Is there a research lab or medical society, or even a patients' group, dedicated to your condition?
IANAD, and IANAmedicalethicist, and IANAscientist of any kind, but I just can't see how it's ethical for you to profit from holding out a diet that you've undertaken at a time that coincides with an improvement in your symptoms as a cure for a disease. Not only does it risk actually hurting people by subjecting them to physical effects you're not qualified to understand, it also risks hurting them by having them pin their hopes on something that actually doesn't work, causing them both emotional pain and the risk of forgoing treatments that might actually work for them. (See, for example, laetrile. I'm not at all trying to suggest that you would intentionally harm anyone, only that holding out false hope could have that unforeseen effect.)
I don't think I'd have the same ethical qualms if you were asking whether it was okay to write an article saying, hey this worked for me, and here's how I did it. But you're asking, on some level, how to make a profit off of your belief that this is an effective treatment. And I think that obligates you to test whether or not that belief is true, because it would be wrong for you to benefit from it otherwise.
posted by decathecting at 6:54 PM on February 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
IANAD, and IANAmedicalethicist, and IANAscientist of any kind, but I just can't see how it's ethical for you to profit from holding out a diet that you've undertaken at a time that coincides with an improvement in your symptoms as a cure for a disease. Not only does it risk actually hurting people by subjecting them to physical effects you're not qualified to understand, it also risks hurting them by having them pin their hopes on something that actually doesn't work, causing them both emotional pain and the risk of forgoing treatments that might actually work for them. (See, for example, laetrile. I'm not at all trying to suggest that you would intentionally harm anyone, only that holding out false hope could have that unforeseen effect.)
I don't think I'd have the same ethical qualms if you were asking whether it was okay to write an article saying, hey this worked for me, and here's how I did it. But you're asking, on some level, how to make a profit off of your belief that this is an effective treatment. And I think that obligates you to test whether or not that belief is true, because it would be wrong for you to benefit from it otherwise.
posted by decathecting at 6:54 PM on February 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
I vaguely remember (from make-your-own-soap blogs, of all things) that selling any kind of homemade item for putting on or in someone's body has a pretty high liability component. I think it's awesome that you are feeling so much better, but personally I would be terrified to launch a cottage medical business-- what happens if someone has an allergic reaction? Some other kind of adverse reaction? Doesn't have any kind of change at all?
That said, if this is something you are determined to do, I'd check out the idea of selling your product as part of the cottage food industry as a bespoke herbal tea.
posted by instamatic at 4:20 AM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
That said, if this is something you are determined to do, I'd check out the idea of selling your product as part of the cottage food industry as a bespoke herbal tea.
posted by instamatic at 4:20 AM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
It sounds like you have put a lot of work into researching how to make this tincture in a safe way that you feel could plausibly have some efficacy, and I think its really cool that you have taken advantage of the peer-reviewed literature to do it. As someone who puts a lot of effort into trying to make the peer-reviewed literature accessible to more people, I'm a little bit embarrassed at how awesome I think that is. That said, doing this would make a leap from experimenting on yourself and the unique system that you are in a way that sounds like it is educated and aware - which is all kinds of awesome and more people should do it! - to building something around making generalized claims about the efficacy of your tincture for other people, which comes with an awful lot more responsibility than I think you're really considering.
There are a lot of subtle ways in which the information that you've gained from your neat natural experiment is fundamentally tainted by really important kinds of ambiguity that are fine when it is just you treating you, but not so fine when the dynamic shifts to you treating others. For example, you have no control to demonstrate that it really was the tincture making you better and not either regression to a mean, or the process of taking agency in your life in a very neat way and doing the work of making this experiment, or some quirk of your physiology or condition that made you susceptible to positive effects of the tincture, or the placebo effect of the expectation that the tincture would make you better, or some other factor neither one of us is thinking of. Thus there are a lot of ways in which the tincture could really have no effect at all, or have some effect on you but not others, but still explain the effects that you saw. At least from what you have presented to us, you can't know that your tincture would work for other people, and you would absolutely have a deeply sacred responsibility to know that before you advocated for it.
posted by Blasdelb at 7:39 AM on February 15, 2016 [9 favorites]
There are a lot of subtle ways in which the information that you've gained from your neat natural experiment is fundamentally tainted by really important kinds of ambiguity that are fine when it is just you treating you, but not so fine when the dynamic shifts to you treating others. For example, you have no control to demonstrate that it really was the tincture making you better and not either regression to a mean, or the process of taking agency in your life in a very neat way and doing the work of making this experiment, or some quirk of your physiology or condition that made you susceptible to positive effects of the tincture, or the placebo effect of the expectation that the tincture would make you better, or some other factor neither one of us is thinking of. Thus there are a lot of ways in which the tincture could really have no effect at all, or have some effect on you but not others, but still explain the effects that you saw. At least from what you have presented to us, you can't know that your tincture would work for other people, and you would absolutely have a deeply sacred responsibility to know that before you advocated for it.
"what would be the most useful thing for me to do with this information?"My answer would be to advocate for science education instead! You have clearly benefited from access to scientific literature and the ability to read a scientific paper, and that is really cool, why not spread the love?
posted by Blasdelb at 7:39 AM on February 15, 2016 [9 favorites]
So, I have a similar experience, minus the potentially patentable tincture. I am on something like health blog number five. So far, this one is not getting me trolled. So, a few thoughts:
If you want to sell your tincture and claim medicinal benefits, you need to patent it, start a company and do clinical trials.
You could, instead, start a blog. If you do that and in any way monetize the blog, there will be people that will accuse you of being a snake oil salesman -- of trying to gain financially from desperate people who have no other hope. If you go with general ads, you risk attracting actual questionable products. There are a lot of potential potholes to step in. If you want to try it, I would be happy to talk to you via email or memail .
You could write a biography for inspirational purposes. That potentially makes you money without medical liability.
You could join some health lists and freely share what you know, with zero financial gain.
You could try to write or co-author a paper about your findings in hopes that your current knowledge is solid enough for that to be scientifically meaningful.
You could start a business selling teas or whatever without claiming specific medicinal benefit.
Long and short: There is no easy path forward here. If you want to profit from it and also want to claim it has medicinal benefit, you have inherent conflict of interest. Further, anything with the power to heal also has power to harm and you do not seem ready to hear that yet.
Last, you and I could start a support group for people like us who think they have done something amazing and feel stymied as to how to proceed in terms of turning that into useful info for other people. I would be thrilled to feel less alone. Perhaps it would help both of us find a viable path forward.
posted by Michele in California at 3:24 PM on February 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
If you want to sell your tincture and claim medicinal benefits, you need to patent it, start a company and do clinical trials.
You could, instead, start a blog. If you do that and in any way monetize the blog, there will be people that will accuse you of being a snake oil salesman -- of trying to gain financially from desperate people who have no other hope. If you go with general ads, you risk attracting actual questionable products. There are a lot of potential potholes to step in. If you want to try it, I would be happy to talk to you via email or memail .
You could write a biography for inspirational purposes. That potentially makes you money without medical liability.
You could join some health lists and freely share what you know, with zero financial gain.
You could try to write or co-author a paper about your findings in hopes that your current knowledge is solid enough for that to be scientifically meaningful.
You could start a business selling teas or whatever without claiming specific medicinal benefit.
Long and short: There is no easy path forward here. If you want to profit from it and also want to claim it has medicinal benefit, you have inherent conflict of interest. Further, anything with the power to heal also has power to harm and you do not seem ready to hear that yet.
Last, you and I could start a support group for people like us who think they have done something amazing and feel stymied as to how to proceed in terms of turning that into useful info for other people. I would be thrilled to feel less alone. Perhaps it would help both of us find a viable path forward.
posted by Michele in California at 3:24 PM on February 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by decathecting at 2:55 PM on February 14, 2016 [8 favorites]