The claims are engaging. “Helps decrease belly fat.” “Improves ovulation.” “Prevents recurring UTIs.” “Reduces inflammation levels.” “Lowers cholesterol.” “Improves depression.”

These splashy guarantees don’t seem on the facet of a bottle, a billboard, or a TV industrial. Instead, they arrive from social media posts from common individuals gushing about their new favourite dietary complement: a chemical referred to as berberine. They’ve nicknamed the product “nature’s Ozempic,” a play on the favored sort 2 diabetes drug that turned a phenomenon when it was found to trigger weight reduction. One outstanding berberine booster on TikTok calls it “natures ozempyyy” and swears that it has lowered his meals cravings. The reputation of those movies has translated into a serious surge in gross sales this summer season. Thorne, a complement firm promoting the product, instructed WIRED that its berberine gross sales elevated 275 p.c from May to June.

Berberine isn’t new. It’s been an ingredient in conventional Chinese and Ayurvedic medication for hundreds of years, and could be present in quite a lot of crops, together with barberry, a shrub with tart berries, and goldenseal, a perennial herb with a thick, knotty root. But because the Ozempic craze took off, berberine’s devotees started speaking it up as a form of kinder, gentler different to prescription medicines. Now, Western wellness varieties, who take it a la carte in capsule kind, evangelize for it enthusiastically. “I can’t think of another example where something has gone viral to this extent,” says Craig Hopp, a deputy division director on the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the National Institutes of Health workplace tasked with researching different medicines.

Amid all this hoopla, one particular declare about berberine acquired my consideration. I noticed it time and again: “Lowers blood sugar.” It was as if the algorithms knew exactly what would push me over the sting to really buy the stuff. I developed gestational diabetes a number of years in the past; to maintain my blood sugar in test, I adopted a carb-restricted weight loss plan and went by means of my being pregnant staring longingly at bagels and pricking my finger 3 times a day. It sucked. Now, with an elevated likelihood of creating type 2 diabetes, I’ll do absolutely anything to keep away from it. After a number of consecutive nights getting served these giddy pro-berberine movies, I ordered two completely different sorts of berberine capsules on-line. What was the hurt? It was pure, in any case.

They arrived on my doorstep the following day. One bottle contained 200-milligram capsules of berberine, whereas the second contained capsules with berberine and cinnamon, divided into 2,000-milligram capsules. The first choice touted “GI support” and “immune support.” The second highlighted its gluten-free, “non-GMO” formulation.

Shaking the capsules out onto my palm, it was not possible to inform which was which—they had been each translucent, rectangular, and stuffed with a yellow powder that resembles turmeric. Yet regardless of their similar appearances, they had been very completely different dosages. I had no concept which one to take.

Instead of swallowing both capsule, I referred to as Cassandra Quave, a health care provider and analysis scientist who research medicinal crops, to ask whether or not berberine was even sensible to take in any respect.