There has been some research on spearmint suggesting anti-androgen effects in PCOS, which is a bit unexpected to me as I wouldn't expect mint-family herbs to have much hormone modulating effect at all. I would imagine there to be similarities in profile between spearmint and peppermint so perhaps a related mechanism is involved, although I would probably expect the opposite outcome as a naive layperson. But I haven't closely evaluated the paper nor do I know whether there's been much else suggesting this

It is important to remember that herbs are difficult to study in this setting compared with isolated compounds -- likely because their pharmacological and chemical compositions are sensitive to many factors: hour and season of harvest, form consumed (raw powder, alcohol extract, cold water infusion, fat emulsion, hot water infusion, combustion, pyrolysis, essential oil), part consumed (leaf, root, flower, seed), among staggeringly many others. Anyone with experience consuming cannabis or coffee can probably testify to the above

Not to mention that the pharmacologically active compounds in many plants are far from being comprehensively understood, let alone their interactions and dynamics

This isn't to say that every claim about herbs is to be taken seriously. My point here is more that there is no good reason to dismiss the herb itself as a cause yet simply because it's an herb and a fairly mundane one at that. There are easy examples of herbs which have pronounced physiological effects, used for recreation, performance enhancement, as literal poison, to induce labor, to thin the blood -- among others.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19585478/

But weight/mass didn't change one bit (okay exaggeration, but not by much), so maybe peppermint helps relieve gas. Who knows? There's a lot that this data could mean, and no simple way to figure it out.

Nothing but blood pressure and heart rate was significant, and heart rate only barely so. I wouldn't read anything into the other numbers. It was a 20 day study, you aren't going to get long term outcomes from that.

Peppermint oil has traditionally been used in India for digestion, so you may be on to something. I remember this particular brand growing up: https://www.amazon.com/clp/B001NQ7S9G (no relation).

I'd think weight could be causal for hypertension result or sentiment over health measurement could have been causal for weight or the study could just be too small.

Wild-ass guess: maybe the aftertaste of peppermint oil twice daily leaves people who are already unhealthy wanting to snack less, leading to minor weight loss.

Maybe it helps with weight loss (I wish)

Based on your new information, I think it would be good to test the effect of supplemenths vs supplemints.

I'm guessing that this number is the result of the average of "x" people in the study, and not an individual measurement. But, yeah, I see what that looks like.

I've got an n=65 about hibiscus and blood pressure, which has been better well known for awhile. https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2008...

Silence, we have disruptive direct to consumer peptide startups that need to pump.

If there's anything consistent about HN as long as I've been on it, it's that HN is orthorexic.

From PLOS One as well! I remember in college, I was taking a bio class that taught how to read journal articles...and a psych class that was assigning them. Psych class assigned almost solely PLOS One articles...which didn't survive the criticism I was being taught in the bio class lmao

>50 µL of supplement diluted into 100 mL of water

pretty tiny amount of peppermint was consumed

This study did not involve tea. Do you have links to studies showing herbal tea has similar effect? (Sincere question, I drink a lot of peppermint tea for its mild decongestant effects.)