Free tool
Remedy Safety Check
Most remedy sites tell you what to try. This one tells you what to check first — because "natural" and "harmless" are not the same word, and some of these genuinely do not mix with prescription medicines.
This will not tell you what to take for a symptom, and it cannot tell you a remedy is safe for you. It checks a short list of well-documented interactions against what you enter. Your pharmacist has your full medicine list and a proper database, and will usually talk to you for free without an appointment. That is the conversation this page is meant to send you to, not replace.
Before anything else
None of this applies if something is actually wrong. Stop and get medical help now if there is:
- Chest pain or pressure, or pain spreading to the arm, neck or jaw
- Sudden weakness, numbness, drooping on one side, or trouble speaking
- Difficulty breathing, or breathing that takes visible effort
- Severe or sudden pain of any kind, or a headache unlike any you've had
- Bleeding that won't stop, or blood in vomit or stool
- A fever with a stiff neck, confusion, or a rash that doesn't fade under pressure
- Symptoms in a baby under three months, or a child who is limp, unresponsive or hard to rouse
- Anything that has been getting steadily worse over days or weeks
A remedy is never the answer to any of the above.
1 What are you thinking of trying?
A short list, chosen because these are the ones with interactions worth knowing about. If yours isn't here, that isn't reassurance — ask a pharmacist.
2 What should we check it against?
What to check before you try it
What the evidence actually says
Worth knowing regardless
Pregnancy and breastfeeding
Safety information for herbal remedies in pregnancy and breastfeeding is thin almost across the board — not because they've been shown to be risky, but because the studies that would tell us either way are rarely done. That gap is a reason to ask your midwife, GP or pharmacist about anything at all, including things that seem too ordinary to mention.
This is not a clean bill of health
We checked a short list of well-documented interactions against what you told us. We don't know your full history, we don't have every medicine, and there are thousands of possible interactions in the literature. An absence of warnings here is not clearance.
Take the bottle to a pharmacist. They have your complete list and a database built for this, and in most places the conversation is free and needs no appointment. It is five minutes, and it is the single most useful thing on this page.
Take this to the pharmacy counter
A printable page with the remedy, what you told us, and the specific questions worth asking — so you're not standing at the counter trying to remember what you read. Plus the red-flag list to keep somewhere useful.
Ready to print
One page for the pharmacy counter, one with the red flags worth keeping by the phone.
There's no share button, and nothing is saved
This is the only one of our tools that doesn't remember you between visits. What you've entered here is your medicines and your health, so it lives in this page until you close it and then it's gone — not in your browser's storage, not on any server of ours, and not on a share card.
Why "natural" tells you nothing about safety
It is the most persistent idea in this whole subject and it is simply not how the world works. Foxglove is natural and it will stop your heart. Deadly nightshade grows in hedgerows. Plenty of the strongest medicines we have were extracted from plants precisely because plants are chemically busy — which is the same reason a plant can interfere with a tablet.
None of that means the kitchen cupboard is dangerous. Most of what is in there is fine for most people most of the time. But "it's only a herb" is not a safety argument, and the people most likely to reach for a remedy — those managing a few conditions, taking several prescriptions, in their sixties and beyond — are exactly the ones for whom it matters most.
The three that catch people out
St John's wort
The most interaction-prone herb in common use, and it is sold openly on the high street. It speeds up the body's clearance of a long list of medicines, which means those medicines stop working properly. It has caused contraception to fail and transplanted organs to be rejected. It also has genuine evidence behind it for low mood, which is exactly why people take it without mentioning it.
Grapefruit
Does the opposite: it blocks an enzyme, so certain medicines build up instead of clearing. The effect lasts a day or more, so having your grapefruit at breakfast and your tablet at night doesn't avoid it. It matters most with some statins and some blood pressure medicines — and not with others, which is worth asking about rather than guessing.
Honey and babies
Honey is a reasonable remedy for a cough in anyone over one year old. Under one, it can cause infant botulism, which is serious. This includes honey cooked into food and applies to every kind, raw or processed. It is well established, it is not widely known, and it is the single most important line on this page.
How to have the pharmacy conversation
- Take the actual bottle. The dose and the preparation matter — culinary turmeric and a concentrated curcumin capsule are different things.
- Bring your full list, including anything you buy over the counter and anything you'd think of as a supplement rather than a medicine.
- Say what you're hoping it will do. Sometimes there's a better answer, and sometimes what you're treating is worth a proper look.
- Ask before surgery, not after booking. Several common remedies affect bleeding, and surgical teams generally want them stopped a week or two ahead.
- Mention it to your doctor too, particularly with cancer treatment, transplant medicine or anticoagulants. Most people don't, because it doesn't feel like a medicine.
Related reading
Common questions
Why won't it tell me what to take for a symptom?
Because that would be prescribing, and no web page should. Matching a symptom to a treatment needs someone who can examine you, knows your history and can tell the difference between indigestion and something serious. What this tool does instead is take a remedy you're already thinking about and tell you what's worth knowing before you try it — which is a real gap, because remedy sites almost never do.
If nothing is flagged, is the remedy safe for me?
No, and the tool will never say it is. It checks a short list of well-documented interactions against what you've told us. It doesn't know your full medical history, it doesn't have every medicine, and there are thousands of possible interactions. No flags means we found nothing in a deliberately limited list — nothing more. Your pharmacist has the full picture and a proper database.
Why does it keep telling me to ask a pharmacist?
Because it's the most useful advice we can give and almost nobody takes it. A pharmacist has your complete medication list, a real interactions database, and in most places will talk to you for nothing without an appointment. Take the box or the bottle in with you. It's a five-minute conversation that this page cannot replace and shouldn't pretend to.
Are you saying these remedies don't work?
Some have decent evidence behind them — ginger for nausea, honey for a cough, peppermint oil for irritable bowel. Plenty of others are tradition, and we label them that way rather than dressing them up. Being honest about which is which is the point. A site that claims everything in the kitchen cupboard is a medicine can't be trusted about the things that genuinely help.
The list is quite short. Why not include more?
Because a longer list assembled less carefully would be worse than a short one — it would look comprehensive, and people would treat a blank result as a clean bill of health. These are the interactions that are well documented and clinically significant. We would rather cover a dozen properly than a hundred loosely.
Does anything I enter get sent to you?
No. The check runs in your browser and nothing about your medicines or your health is transmitted, stored on our side, or saved anywhere at all — this tool deliberately doesn't even keep a copy on your device. If you enter an email for the printable sheet, we receive your first name and email address and nothing else.
The old ways, told straight
50 Natural Remedies is the collection — what each one is traditionally used for, how it's prepared, and where the honest limits are. Written plainly, without pretending a kitchen cupboard is a pharmacy.
Traditions, not medicine. Nothing here is a substitute for advice from your doctor or pharmacist.