“Where Are the Studies?”

An Honest Conversation About Science, Testing, and What It All Actually Means

When it comes to herbal companies, one of the most common questions that is received is: “Where are the studies?”
It’s a fair question, but it is also one that deserves a more nuanced answer than what most people realize.

What Do You Actually Mean by “Science”?

When people ask for “science”, they often mean peer-reviewed, published clinical studies. But science itself is actually much broader than that. At its core, science is an observation, repetition, and outcome. It is about noticing patterns, refining methods, and applying what consistently works. Modern clinical trials are just one tool within science, not the entirety of it.

Observation Is The Beginning Where All Medicine Started

Before any randomized controlled trials existed, medicine advanced through clinical experience only. Practitioners observed real outcomes in real patients over time. Treatments that worked were then refined, and those that didn't were abandoned.

This is how the medical systems, including modern Western Medicine, were originally developed. Traditional Chinese Medicine follows the same foundational process, but on a much larger scale, meaning thousands of years, millions of patients, and continuous clinical refinement.

Why So Many Natural Remedies Aren't “Studied”

This is the crucial piece that people do not often factor in. Formal studies follow funding, and funding follows patentability.

The reality is that clinical trials are extremely expensive. They make sense financially when the result can be patented, owned, and monetized at scale. Pharmaceuticals fit that model very well, but nature does not. You cannot patent a plant. You cannot own a classical formula. You cannot monopolize something that already belongs to everyone.

As a result, many effective natural therapies will never go through large-scale trials, not because they don’t work, but because there’s no financial incentive to fund them.

Reductionism vs. Reality

Most modern studies are designed to isolate a single variable: meaning one molecule, one pathway, or one outcome. That works well for pharmaceuticals, which are designed to exactly that, but TCM doesn't operate that way.

Herbal formulas are intentionally synergistic. They're built to support systems, balance patterns, and reduce side effects, not force a single biochemical reaction. This makes herbal formulas incredibly difficult to study using reductionist models without fundamentally changing what's being tested. When you remove the context, you remove the medicine.

Reality Check on Study Design

All that said, this does not mean that studies are "wrong", but it does mean they are shaped by design choices.

Study outcomes are influenced by:

Which variables are included or excluded
Dosage selection
Duration of trial
Endpoints chosen for success
Population selection
Funding sources and research goals

These factors don't invalidate research, but they do mean that studies exist to answer specific questions, not universal truths. Two well-designed studies can reach different conclusions depending on what they're designed to measure. That's the reality.

Clinical Practice Often Precedes the Literature

In real-world medicine, especially veterinary medicine, practitioners regularly adopt methods that work long before they're formally studied. Things like clinical judgement, pattern recognition, and response to treatment are already a central part of daily practice.

Published research often follows years, sometimes decades, behind what is already proving effective in the field.

Where Does ActivateQi Stand?

We respect modern research and incorporate it where it is appropriate, but we also recognize its limitations.

We place value on: