We can create better nutrition through science, right?  We can isolate green tea extract and mix it into our processed cereal to create a heart healthy product, right?  We can remove the curcuminoids from curcumin (which originates in herbs like turmeric) and add it to a chocolate bar to help reduce cholesterol, right?  Through chemistry we can isolate every health polysaccarides, saponin, polyphenol and trace mineral and put them into a drink, a food bar or any other new product formulation and call it a "natural product", right?

Technically speaking the answers to the above questions are yes.  But are we missing the forest from the trees.  We have no long term historical use that eating chemically extracted and combined super foods is actually good for the human body. 

Scientists/product developers are continually trying to improve upon nature for new natural product formulations for sleep, energy, hot flashes, well being, or … you fill in the blank.    But maybe, just maybe, our bodies don't know how to handle this new nutrition.  Does anybody stop and consider this is the first time in the history of man's diet that people are eating this way? 

Do our genetics change overnight to process these nutritional supplements which we've never ingested before?

What's lost in the process is the human bodies response to this myriad of natural chemical components that maybe, just maybe were never meant to be together in the first place.  Maybe a blueberry was never meant to cross paths with a chemically created biotin because the chemical components would never be found together in nature.

What I love about Chinese herbal medicine natural supplements is the lack of artificially created chemicals.  Chinese herbs combined together with other Chinese herbs, have already passed the test of mans digestive system.  The record books on Traditional Chinese herbal medicine far exceeds anything Guiness Books can duplicate, Chinese herbs are proven effective sleep aids, energy boosters, immune enhancers, the list goes on.  They don't need science to extract their individual active components and marry them off to a vitamin supplement or other extracted ingredient.  They have already been proven effective, no need for science to tell us which individual active ingredient works best with another. Natural ingredients work best synergistically together as whole foods for the whole body.

Before the microscope and before chemistry could explain which flavonol worked best with which gingerol, Chinese herbal medicine perfected the marriage of combining whole roots, barks, fruits, seeds etc. through thousands of years of use. They learned which plants worked best with each other. Not as a single ingredient extract, because nature never intended for us to use just one small chemical in the apple. Nature provides us the whole apple to eat and enjoy as a whole. When we piece meal the phyto-nutrients from the juice or the skin, we no longer have what nature intended.  How can our bodies possibly know what to do with a single chemical when it's spent millions of years eating it whole.

The message here is easy, when your looking for a natural sleep aid, energy drink or hot flash natural treatment, look for ALL natural ingredients that contain plant names.. not chemical names.