The ad is quite confrontational. “The Plants That Will Disappear First in a Crisis.” Given the disaster that is unfolding in the United States right now, it caught my attention. In a crisis, the ad continues, people will turn to plants to nourish and heal themselves, as their ancestors used to do. With this Medicinal Garden Kit, you can grow a whole pharmacy in your backyard and be self-sufficient in an emergency.
Many versions of this ad can be seen on Telegram, a social media platform favoured in the Western world by right-wingers, libertarians, and anti-vaccine activists. Its presence there reinforces that things have changed: all-natural healing potions, once strongly pegged as a far-left marker of identity, have crossed the line into the conservative, don’t-tread-on-me end of the spectrum. Being a good  these days is about more than just honing your firearms skills and stockpiling a televangelist’s food buckets; you must also grow Nature’s Tylenol in your home garden.
But the Medicinal Garden Kit commits the sin, so often seen in alternative health circles, of putting the commercial cart in front of the evidence horse. This garden kit may not do much beyond looking pretty when it sprouts.
Seeds of doubt
The Medicinal Garden Kit is sold by Nicole Apelian, who lists ş«ąúÂăÎč as her undergraduate alma mater. Her  also shows a Master’s degree in biology from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education and Cultural Anthropology from Prescott College in Arizona. Some readers may remember her from seasons 2 and 5 of the History Channel TV show Alone, in which contestants are dropped off in a remote area and must fend for themselves with minimal equipment for as long as possible. In her first appearance on the show, Apelian survived an extraordinary  alone in the wilderness of Vancouver Island (nine days short of the winner), tapping out due to missing her children.
°ż˛ÔĚý, she offers to share her knowledge through The Lost Remedies Academy—“I saved one of the last spots for you + 4 free gifts,” says , creating a false sense of urgency popular in marketing. Enrolling promises an eye-opening journey into discovering robust medications made by Mother Nature: the most powerful painkiller lost to history; a hair growth serum; emergency first-aid poultices; the forgotten fertility plant; and a medicinal juice that can lower blood pressure.
And central to her online presence is , which includes seeds to grow the following plants: chamomile, calendula, chicory, marshmallow, California poppy, evening primrose, yarrow, lavender, echinacea, and feverfew.
Unlike many sellers of natural cures, Apelian does not come across as greedy. Her seed kit costs USD 59 plus shipping (not cheap but not exorbitant), and her Academy course can be accessed for a measly USD 39. It’s easy to think of everything in this sector as being a profitable grift, but many people operating in this space are simply true believers trying to heal the world.
That doesn’t mean that the claims they make are any more accurate.
For example, Apelian states that chicory, which is part of her kit, is a painkilling plant, rich in chicoric acid which she describes as a potent anti-inflammatory agent and analgesic. Given the unfolding opioid crisis, her mention of chicory as presenting “no risk of addiction” is seductive. But does it even work?
I searched for chicoric acid studies on PubMed and could only find  in humans (of a combination of plant extracts to treat a cough), while  was limited to in vitro and animal studies. A similar search for chicory finally led me to  of its analgesic potential: “proven”… in mice.
Another plant in the kit is feverfew and its main health claim is in the name: it’s supposed to tackle fevers, possibly through its ingredient, parthenolide. I found very little through PubMed. It has some interesting potential anticancer properties and  when it comes to its ability to either prevent or treat migraines.
Other plants in the kit are sold as borderline cure-alls. Marshmallow is supposed to be great against Crohn’s disease, which affects the gut… but also against coughs and bacteria. Meanwhile, yarrow will apparently help with your menstrual cramps, digestive upsets, toothaches, burns, and varicose veins, and it will repel mosquitoes. If something is claimed to heal everything, it usually heals very little if anything.
Her seed kit, like most natural remedies, is based on folk traditions and preliminary research in cells and rodents. You can kill cancer cells in the lab by bathing them in orange juice, but that doesn’t mean that drinking OJ in the morning will cure your lung cancer. That’s not to disparage nature; many of our drugs are »ĺ±đ°ůľ±±ą±đ»ĺĚýfrom natural compounds, but they must often be modified in the lab to improve their bioavailability, metabolism, efficacy, and safety. The bark of the willow tree has some interesting analgesic properties, but the acetylsalicylic acid we now synthesize is simply better. Many molecules display “properties” in the lab that disappear or are accompanied by toxic side effects when tested in humans. Folk medicine can be the beginning of the drug discovery process, but it should not be the end of it.
However, if Apelian’s medicinal garden kit is indeed nonsensical, I hear some of you say, how do you explain that she triumphed over multiple sclerosis?
Managing multiple sclerosis the natural way
Every natural cure influencer has an origin story and Apelian is no different. On her website, she reveals she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000. She put her scientific research skills to the test and figured out a way, she claims, to transform herself from a bedridden patient into a smiling, thriving, empowered woman. Her solution? Lifestyle and dietary changes, as well as herbal supplements. When it comes to alternative health gurus, the answer always involves dietary supplements.
She lists  to manage her disease, and I counted eleven of them—nineteen if I add the ones she uses to prevent general illness, which she says can lead to a flare-up of her multiple sclerosis. Thankfully, she provided references to the papers she claims showcase ·Éłó˛âĚýshe takes some of these supplements. I had a look at all of these papers.
When it comes to the so-called medicinal mushrooms she consumes—lion’s mane, reishi, turkey tail, and cordyceps—the papers she lists add up to 14. Three were studies done in cells in the lab, while six were carried out in laboratory animals. Two reeked of undue hype (this mushroom is “a wonder herb”) and pseudoscience (“heavy metal toxicity, leaky gut syndrome […] can overburden the body’s immune system”), and another was  because a couple of authors had not disclosed that they work for a company making the mushroom extract and some of their visual data appears to be duplicated (error? fraud?). I am left with  that includes two studies done in humans (one of which is listed as a separate entry by Apelian): a small trial with mixed results and an even smaller trial with a positive outcome on cognitive measures.
The references Apelian lists for the elderberry extracts, ursolic acid and Eastern blends she consumes are equally disappointing. The best clinical evidence comes from  of elderberry to prevent and treat viral respiratory infections, which concludes that the evidence is uncertain.
If you don’t take the time to go through her references, you will be blinded by science. The sheer academic weight of it convinces the eye that the science must be there. It simply isn’t.
To understand how someone diagnosed with multiple sclerosis could thrive regardless of the unproven herbs and mushrooms they take, I turned to an expert on the disease, Dr. Jonathan Howard, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at NYU Langone Health, who also co-wrote the  on its clinical presentation and prognosis. He wrote to me that multiple sclerosis is very, very wide-ranging in how it presents. “Some patients are severely disabled in their 20s and 30s, while others have a much milder course. There will be outliers on the extremes no matter what treatments are available.” That is why we cannot generalize from looking at a single person and their outcome. Claims of all-natural cures for multiple sclerosis are not new, Dr. Howard tells me, but they have “no scientific rationale or evidence base to support them.” A healthy diet is important, he concludes, but no more than it is for the rest of us who don’t have multiple sclerosis.
The disease itself, where the immune system attacks the sheath around nerve cells to cause conduction problems, is marked by relapses. Most patients undergo a long period of remission between these relapses or flare-ups, and some can spend over 15 years without experiencing a relapse, although there is still a slow and steady accumulation of disability. The course of this disease is highly variable and many of the people it affects will appear fine for long periods of time. A health influencer’s personal journey may be inspiring, especially when they believe they have found a natural way of managing it, but to generalize from it is often a mistake.
There are other warning signs that what Apelian is selling is not on firm ground. The Federal Trade Commission sent her  in May 2020, as she was unlawfully promoting natural antivirals against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus with no scientific evidence. Her website recommends you turn to a naturopath for medical advice, which would be a foolish thing to do as naturopathy is based on unscientific disciplines like homeopathy. She has also jumped on the anti-5G bandwagon, claiming to carry a USD 259 personal  and to own a USD 649 one for her home, and wouldn’t you know it, she also offers a 10%-off coupon code if you would also like to purchase an expensive tin foil hat. This is a good example of crank magnetism, whereby someone with one pseudoscientific belief ends up collecting many more.
Nicole Apelian’s Medicinal Garden Kit is unlikely to come in handy in an emergency given the paucity of robust data behind its claims. But it doesn’t matter because pseudoscience always finds an audience by mutating and adapting. Ironically, Apelian took to  to denounce fake versions of her book on the Medicinal Garden Kit. It turns out that sellers are using artificial intelligence and partial photocopies to crank out lookalikes and profit from them.
I’m not sure that the content of these fakes is any less enlightening than what’s in the original, though.
Take-home message:
- The Medicinal Garden Kit by Nicole Apelian contains seeds for ten plants, including chamomile and feverfew, which are meant to serve as a pharmacy in your backyard
- The evidence for the alleged health benefits comes from folk traditions and preliminary studies in cells and animals, not from human studies
- Apelian claims to be successfully managing her multiple sclerosis through the use of unproven mushroom extracts and dietary supplements, but it’s important to know that the course of this disease is extremely variable regardless of treatment
