Foundations
Our Approach to Wellness
Updated August 2026
The wellness industry is full of simple answers to complicated questions. Simple answers are preferred in the industry because they can be presented in short form and used to sell products on social media. We do not believe in simple answers to complex questions at Herbal Edge.
The advice we give should always be actionable and helpful, but the principles and methods we follow to come to these conclusions are anything but. The following articles explain some of the foundational ideas we use at Herbal Edge to evaluate claims and make practical decisions about health, cannabis, and wellness.
Evidence-Based Wellness
Modern medicine is very good at treating acute disease and injury after something has gone wrong, but not so good at addressing chronic issues or preventive care. Too often people only consider preventative measures after they are already sick.
Evidence-Based Wellness asks a different question: what can we do before medical intervention is necessary to prevent it from becoming necessary?
We combine the principles of evidence-based medicine with the central principle of wellness: people should take an active role in managing their own health before they are sick. Good nutrition, physical activity, sleep, risk reduction, and other everyday interventions aren't substitutes for medicine. They're part of building healthier people who need less of it.
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- Defining Evidence-Based Wellness (Publishing Soon)
Smoking Is Not a Wellness Strategy
Cannabis contains biologically active compounds with legitimate therapeutic potential. That doesn't make inhaling smoke good for you.
Burning plant material produces harmful combustion products regardless of whether the plant is tobacco or cannabis. Where cannabinoids have useful applications, there are less harmful and more precise ways to deliver them.
Legalization and medical usefulness are separate questions from whether smoking is a healthy delivery method. We support ending cannabis prohibition without pretending that smoking belongs under the banner of wellness.
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- Smoking Is Not a Wellness Strategy (Publishing Soon)
THC Myths: The Entourage Effect
Cannabinoids can interact with one another, but CBD does not require THC in order to work.
The popular version of the “entourage effect” often turns a reasonable idea—that compounds can interact—into a much stronger marketing claim that trace amounts of THC are necessary to activate CBD or make it effective. The available evidence does not support that conclusion.
What matters is not simply whether a compound is present, but whether it is present in a meaningful dose and what that dose actually does.
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Why Does CBD Help With So Many Different Things?
CBD is used by people for a surprisingly wide range of purposes. That can sound implausible until you understand the endocannabinoid system.
The endocannabinoid system is a regulatory system involved in many processes throughout the body. Cannabinoids can interact with this system and other biological targets, which helps explain why their effects aren't confined to one organ or one narrow function.
Understanding the endocannabinoid system provides a biological foundation for understanding cannabinoids without resorting to the idea that CBD is a miracle cure for everything.
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Making Decisions Under Uncertainty
Science rarely gives us perfect information. Medical research can be incomplete, contradictory, difficult to apply to an individual, or simply nonexistent for the decision in front of us. Uncertainty does not eliminate the need to make a decision.
Our approach is to make the best decision possible with the information available while accounting for both the potential benefits and the consequences of being wrong. That means distinguishing what we know from what we merely suspect, preferring lower-risk interventions when evidence is uncertain, changing our minds as better evidence becomes available, and applying the precautionary principle when plausible harms are serious.
The goal isn't certainty. It's making reasonable decisions under uncertainty.
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- Making Decisions Under Uncertainty (Publishing Soon)
About the Author
Before launching Herbal Edge, Avery Martz operated one of Idaho's largest CBD retailers, reviewing products, working with independent makers, and helping hundreds of people learn about CBD.