Cantrip Confidential #6: Keeping it clean

Keeping it clean - why Cantrip is focused on great tasting, great feeling products instead of promising medical miracles.

The pharmaceutical industry gets a pretty bad rap these days, and deservedly so. Between the Sackler family sponsoring and profiteering from an opioid epidemic that is strangling communities across America and the Pharma Bro raising prices on a life saving drug by 5000% back in 2015, the pharmaceutical industry has done a lot of harm to Americans.

So it is totally understandable that with declining trust in our pharmaceutical companies and medical institutions in general that people would seek alternative, homeopathic remedies to help them feel better and solve everyday problems like inflammation, anxiety, and stress. At Cantrip, we support people making their own choices about their bodies and their health.

However, there’s a reason Cantrip doesn’t currently produce any products with herbal supplements - and that is because there are too many unknowns involved.

For example, a very popular herbal supplement used for anxiety and stress relief is Kava, an extract of the plant Piper methysticum, a plant traditionally used in the South Pacific. But did you know that the Center for Disease Control has documented cases of liver failure associated with kava-containing dietary supplements? Several countries, including Germany and the UK, have imposed restrictions or bans on kava products already. 

Another popular herbal supplement is one used for sleep called Valerian Root. Valerian Root has been popular for sleep for centuries - maybe millennia. But it can have very dangerous interactions with medications. Mount Sinai reports that it may have interactions with sedatives or even antihistamines - and that it should be treated with care.

The rise of the mentality that all medical institutions should be discarded or at minimum highly distrusted is one that is dangerous to our society. There are many faults in our systems that need to be addressed. But the invention of modern medicine has seriously mitigated the spread of disease, reduced mortality rates drastically, and created a society that lives decades longer on average than it did 100 years ago. We cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater - we simply need to curate it more carefully and create a system of health care instead of a system of profiting off of illness and disease.

I’m not here to tell you not to consume herbal supplements at all. In fact, I think many of them can be useful in the right dose when consumed the right way, just like all drugs should be treated with caution. What I instead urge is to speak with a doctor, do real research from credible sources such as medical institutions like NIH, CDC, FDA, or hospital groups. This goes triple if you are a consumer of medication. Do not trust products that conspiracies-in-a-can; those products which promise to cure all, often cure nothing, and may in fact be harmful.

Cantrip does not claim to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. And we intend to keep it that way.