We Have the Clinical Data - So Why Can’t Your Doctor Prescribe It? 🤔

I often get asked why Zestt products can’t be prescribed by doctors, especially Zestt Breathe+, for which we have good clinical data. For us, this would be a great outcome as it would mean people, no matter their financial situation, could improve their respiratory health. 💚

But here’s why it is an uphill battle. 🧗

💊 The vast majority of prescribed medicines are one or two chemical compounds. Some of these may have originally been found in plants, but they are now made synthetically in the lab, and there is no variation in their quantity or shape.

🍇 When you use a plant extract as a medicine, like blackcurrants, it has hundreds, if not thousands, of compounds, and they will be in slightly different amounts depending on the weather in the orchard that year or other factors, so it’s very difficult to attain the kind of consistency of a pharmaceutical.

🧪 When you are developing a pharmaceutical, there are stages of clinical trials you need to go through, and every compound in your product must be there for a reason - efficacy or to support the hero compound. Pharmaceuticals tend to target one biochemical pathway in your body.

🎯 In developing Zestt Breathe+, we wanted to impact multiple pathways, including inflammation and immunity, in one hit. So we chose to include multiple bioactives - anthocyanins from blackcurrants (to reduce inflammation, promote oxygen levels and support antiviral activity); quercetin (antiviral); zinc (antiviral); BLIS K12™ probiotics (preventative immunity). We did this so that one lozenge could be as effective as possible, but it would make turning Zestt Breathe+ into a prescribable pharmaceutical nearly impossible.

💰 Phase 1, 2 & 3 clinical trials as well as regulation would cost us hundreds of millions of dollars, and we would likely need to go through these for each of our bioactives and combinations, making such a process untenable, to say the least!

😤 Do we get frustrated? Yes, we do, especially when we see countries like Canada 🍁 (where Darcy is originally from) with one of the best natural health programmes in the world. Health Canada approves various compounds for use based on published scientific evidence and then says in a monograph what you are allowed to say on the packaging. So a company there can tell customers what a bioactive has been shown to do; here, we’re limited to anaemic phrases like “supports lung health”. Across the Tasman, Australia 🦘 sits somewhere in the middle. Their system lets natural health products choose from a list of several hundred approved health claims, provided the company holds evidence to back them up, and offers a pathway to stronger claims if the evidence is formally assessed. It’s not perfect, but it means Australian products can at least tell customers what they’re for. New Zealand 🥝 has no equivalent framework at all.

🌿 New Zealand is a country with a rich history of using plants as preventative and treatment medicines - Rongoā is the Māori word for this. We have become narrow-minded about what good health means on many fronts, and sadly this is one of them.

🌱 Maybe in time, as more people realise the benefits of whole plants and holistic health, we will see changes in our health and regulatory system. Cabinet agreed on 28 September 2026 to start consulting on a new natural health products regime, and health claims are part of that review. 📝 Until that time, however, you will not see many natural health products prescribed by your doctor.