Evergreen – 100% Organic Nettle Juice 500ml

Scientifically Supported Health Benefits of Nettle

1. Vitamin C — and why the published leaf figures differ twelvefold

Nettle leaf is routinely sold as a vitamin C plant, and the figures behind that are in open disagreement. Wild Lithuanian nettle measured across a growing season gave 0.58 to 8.17 mg per 100 g of fresh leaf, highest in August and lowest in September [2]. Croatian nettle grown in a controlled nutrient solution gave 69.73 to 102.30 mg per 100 g of fresh leaf [3] — more than twelve times as much, on the same basis. A third study measured 94.7 mg per 100 g of dry matter, which on an 87 to 89 per cent moisture leaf is a fraction of that once the basis is corrected [5,7]. The three-figure numbers that circulate in the trade are dry-matter numbers. And no analysis of pressed nettle juice has been published at all — in any laboratory, on any basis — so what reaches a glass can only be established by analysing the finished juice.

2. Vitamin C and the immune system

The authorised European wording is that vitamin C contributes to the normal function of the immune system. It may be used only for a food that is at least a source of vitamin C [8]. For a beverage that threshold is 6 mg per 100 ml, and “high in vitamin C” is 12 mg per 100 ml — half the thresholds that apply to solid food, because beverages are assessed against 7.5 per cent of the reference intake rather than 15 per cent [9]. The 80 mg reference intake is the same in both cases.

3. Collagen, connective tissue, and iron absorption

Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin, bones, cartilage, gums, teeth and blood vessels — six separate authorised claims, each resting on the same condition of use [8]. It also contributes to normal energy-yielding metabolism, normal functioning of the nervous system, normal psychological function, the reduction of tiredness and fatigue, the protection of cells from oxidative stress, the regeneration of the reduced form of vitamin E, and increased iron absorption [8]. That last one is not incidental for a leafy plant: nettle iron is non-haem iron, the kind whose absorption vitamin C improves. All of these belong to the vitamin, not to the plant.

4. Iron — what the analytical figures actually say

Fresh nettle leaf measured 1.2 to 3.4 mg of iron per 100 g raw across two harvests, with blanched and cooked material between 1.8 and 2.6 mg [4]. On a dry-matter basis the same plant reads 16.7 mg per 100 g [5], or an average of 224.78 mg per kg [2], and higher still in some reports — those are the figures behind the claim that nettle is exceptionally iron-rich, and they are dry matter. On fresh weight, nettle sits in the same band as other dark leafy greens. For a beverage, “source of iron” requires 1.05 mg per 100 ml and “high in iron” 2.1 mg per 100 ml [9]; there is no published iron figure for nettle juice to test against either, and no human study has measured iron absorption from nettle at all.

5. Carotenoids and chlorophyll — and why the picking date decides

Across one growing season, total carotenoids in fresh nettle leaf ranged from 9.68 to 28.41 mg per 100 g, chlorophyll a from 18.05 to 161.02 mg per 100 g and chlorophyll b from 6.48 to 67.69 mg per 100 g — a ninefold swing in chlorophyll between May and August [2]. A Croatian study across sites and phenological stages found the two groups of compounds peak at opposite moments: pigments during flowering, polyphenols before it, falling by roughly half afterwards [6]. There is no harvest date that optimises both.

6. Urinary flushing — the one thing ever tested as a juice

Nettle’s oldest documented use is as a diuretic, and the European traditional-use monograph recognises it: a traditional herbal medicinal product to increase the amount of urine to achieve flushing of the urinary tract as an adjuvant in minor urinary complaints, at 10 to 15 ml of expressed juice from the fresh herb up to three times daily, for two to four weeks [12]. The supporting study is also the only one in the entire nettle literature that used a pressed juice: 32 patients took 15 ml three times daily for two weeks, and daily urine volume rose significantly — by 9.2 per cent in one group and 23.9 per cent in the other [13,25]. It was an open study with no control group and no randomisation, in patients with cardiac or venous insufficiency, and the European assessors say plainly that clinical efficacy cannot be deduced from it [25]. The same monograph carries the counterweight: this is contraindicated wherever reduced fluid intake is advised [12].

7. Joint pain — what the trials actually tested

This is what nettle is best known for, and an honest description of it is uncomfortable. The positive trial applied a fresh stinging leaf to the skin: 27 adults with base-of-thumb pain used one leaf a day for a week, and pain and disability scores fell further than with a non-stinging placebo leaf [14]. A larger trial by the same group did the same thing for chronic knee pain in 42 adults and found no difference from placebo — pain fell 1.7 points on the nettle arm and 1.6 on the control [15]. Cochrane’s review of topical herbal treatments for osteoarthritis concluded that it is uncertain whether stinging nettle leaf improves symptoms, on very low quality evidence from single trials [16]. None of this involves drinking anything; the mechanism under test was counter-irritation through intact skin. The one oral inflammation trial gave 1,200 mg a day of a nettle leaf extract in tablets for twelve weeks to 59 people with inflammatory bowel disease, lowering TNF-α and faecal calprotectin while leaving ESR unchanged [19]. A comprehensive review of the herb put it this way: the studies suggest some anti-inflammatory properties, but clinical evidence beyond doubt is lacking [21].

8. Blood sugar — the marker that moved, and the one that did not

Eight randomised trials in 401 people with type 2 diabetes were pooled in 2020. Fasting blood sugar fell by 18.01 mg/dl, but insulin, insulin resistance and HbA1c — the marker that describes glycaemic control over months — all came out null, HbA1c at −0.77 per cent with a confidence interval running from −1.77 to +0.22 [17]. Five of the eight trials were rated good, one fair, two poor. The strongest single trial gave 92 patients 1,500 mg a day of a 70 per cent ethanolic leaf extract, five parts leaf to one, for three months alongside their usual medication; it did move fasting glucose, postprandial glucose and HbA1c, while leaving blood pressure, creatinine and liver enzymes unchanged [18]. These are concentrated capsule extracts at pharmaceutical doses, in people who are already ill. The distance from that to a glass of juice is the whole story, and it should not be crossed quietly.

What the pharmacopoeia actually measures

If you want to know what a nettle leaf is, read its monograph. The European Pharmacopoeia identifies and assays nettle leaf not on iron and not on vitamin C but on caffeoylmalic acid together with chlorogenic acid, requiring a minimum of 0.3 per cent of the dried leaf expressed as chlorogenic acid, with scopoletin and chlorogenic acid as the thin-layer identification markers [1]. Caffeoylmalic acid is close to a chemical signature of this plant, and it is almost never what nettle is sold on.

Leaf is not root

The two halves of this plant have two separate literatures and two separate European monographs. Urtica dioica agglutinin, the lectin that carried nettle into prostate research, was isolated from rhizomes in 1984, and the same paper reports that in leaves, stems, flowers and seed no lectin activity could be detected [10]. The lignans that bind human sex hormone binding globulin were isolated from roots [11]. Every placebo-controlled trial in lower urinary tract symptoms used root. None of that evidence belongs on a leaf product, and a leaf juice carries none of those compounds.

What happens between the field and the glass

Harvest timing moves more than processing does: chlorophyll varies ninefold across a season, and polyphenols halve after flowering [2,6]. Of the processing steps that have been measured, blanching is the expensive one — iron in leaf powder fell from 32.40 to 5.06 mg per 100 g of dry matter when the leaf was blanched first, an 84 per cent loss, with magnesium and potassium also leaching while calcium held [7]. Drying degrades vitamin C and beta-carotene, oven-drying more than freeze-drying [5]. Pressing itself has never been studied: no published work describes how nettle leaf constituents divide between juice and press cake, and nothing has been published on pasteurising a nettle juice.

What European regulators have concluded

There is no authorised EU health claim for nettle. Five nettle claims were submitted before 2008 and sit among the roughly two thousand botanical claims still awaiting evaluation — renal elimination, respiratory health, a diuretic combination, elimination, and bone, nails and hair [26]. Unevaluated is not the same as approved, and the burden of substantiation rests with whoever uses such a claim. Vitamin C is the only authorised route here, tied to the beverage threshold above. The European traditional-use monograph for nettle herb is a separate matter: it is a herbal medicinal product framework, not a food claim, its indications cannot be transferred onto a drink, and its interactions section reads “none reported” [12].

What has not been studied

There is no human trial of nettle for fatigue, energy, iron status, immune function in healthy people, skin, hair or dandruff. There is no randomised controlled human trial of nettle on urine output. There is no human study of iron or silicon absorption from nettle. There is no published composition data of any kind for pressed nettle juice — not vitamin C, not iron, not even pH. The widely repeated claim that nettle blocks the histamine H1 receptor rests on laboratory and computational work, not on people. The single allergic rhinitis trial gave 69 completers 600 mg a day of freeze-dried herb for one week in 1990; the global assessments favoured nettle while the diary data were close to equivocal, and it has never been replicated [20].

Safety, and who should be careful

Nettle leaf preparations are well tolerated. Pooled clinical data on 10,368 patients taking nettle extract for three weeks to twelve months put the incidence of minor adverse effects — mostly gastrointestinal upset or allergic reactions — at 1.2 to 2.7 per cent, with no serious adverse events [25]. The European monograph lists mild nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, and allergic itching, rash and hives, as possible [12]; the one juice study noted a tendency to diarrhoea at 45 ml a day [13,25]. Nettle is not on the European list of mandatory declarable allergens, but IgE-mediated allergy to nettle pollen is documented and characterised, with four allergenic proteins identified, so anyone with a known nettle sensitisation should treat it as one [23]. The sting itself is pharmacological rather than allergic — each hair carries a mean 6.1 nanograms of histamine and 33.25 picograms of serotonin and works as a micro-syringe through intact skin [22] — which has no bearing on a pressed juice, although no one has analysed a juice for residual activity. Three cautions carry real weight. The monograph contraindicates use where fluid intake has to be restricted, as in severe cardiac or renal disease, and does not recommend it under 12 years of age, or in pregnancy and lactation, where safety has not been established and uterine activity has been documented in animals [12,25]. Anyone taking glucose-lowering medication should know about the fasting-glucose finding above, even though no interaction study exists. On the warfarin question the European assessors did the arithmetic: the vitamin K content of nettle herb is low, 0.16 to 0.64 mg per 100 g, so a maximum daily medicinal dose supplies 24 to 96 micrograms — under one per cent of the therapeutic range of vitamin K — and no interaction is expected; there is no published case report of one [25]. And LiverTox, having reviewed the literature, assigns nettle likelihood score E, unlikely to cause clinically apparent liver injury, with no published reports of enzyme elevations or liver injury from leaf or root [24].

References

1. European Pharmacopoeia 7.0, monograph 1897: Nettle leaf (Urticae folium).
2. Paulauskienė A, Tarasevičienė Ž, Laukagalis V. Influence of harvesting time on the chemical composition of wild stinging nettle (Urtica dioica L.). Plants. 2021;10(4):686. doi:10.3390/plants10040686
3. Opačić N, Radman S, Dujmović M, Fabek Uher S, Benko B, Toth N, Petek M, Čoga L, Voća S, Šic Žlabur J. Boosting nutritional quality of Urtica dioica L. to resist climate change. Frontiers in Plant Science. 2024;15:1331327. doi:10.3389/fpls.2024.1331327
4. Rutto LK, Xu Y, Ramirez E, Brandt M. Mineral properties and dietary value of raw and processed stinging nettle (Urtica dioica L.). International Journal of Food Science. 2013;2013:Article ID 857120. doi:10.1155/2013/857120
5. Shonte TT, Duodu KG, de Kock HL. Effect of drying methods on chemical composition and antioxidant activity of underutilized stinging nettle leaves. Heliyon. 2020;6(5):e03938. doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03938
6. Repajić M, Cegledi E, Zorić Z, Pedisić S, Elez Garofulić I, Radman S, Palčić I, Dragović-Uzelac V. Bioactive compounds in wild nettle (Urtica dioica L.) leaves and stalks: polyphenols and pigments upon seasonal and habitat variations. Foods. 2021;10(1):190. doi:10.3390/foods10010190
7. Nallan Chakravartula SS, Moscetti R, Farinon B, Vinciguerra V, Merendino N, Bedini G, Neri L, Pittia P, Massantini R. Stinging nettles as potential food additive: effect of drying processes on quality characteristics of leaf powders. Foods. 2021;10(6):1152. doi:10.3390/foods10061152
8. Commission Regulation (EU) No 432/2012, Annex.
9. Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Annex XIII Part A; Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006, Annex.
10. Peumans WJ, De Ley M, Broekaert WF. An unusual lectin from stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) rhizomes. FEBS Letters. 1984;177(1):99–103. doi:10.1016/0014-5793(84)80989-8
11. Schöttner M, Ganßer D, Spiteller G. Lignans from the roots of Urtica dioica and their metabolites bind to human sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG). Planta Medica. 1997;63(6):529–532. doi:10.1055/s-2006-957756
12. EMA/HMPC. European Union herbal monograph on Urtica dioica L., Urtica urens L., herba.
13. Kirchhoff HW. Brennesselsaft als Diuretikum. Zeitschrift für Phytotherapie. 1983;4:621–626.
14. Randall C, Randall H, Dobbs F, Hutton C, Sanders H. Randomized controlled trial of nettle sting for treatment of base-of-thumb pain. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 2000;93(6):305–309. doi:10.1177/014107680009300607
15. Randall C, Dickens A, White A, Sanders H, Fox M, Campbell J. Nettle sting for chronic knee pain: a randomised controlled pilot study. Complementary Therapies in Medicine. 2008;16(2):66–72. doi:10.1016/j.ctim.2007.01.012
16. Cameron M, Chrubasik S. Topical herbal therapies for treating osteoarthritis. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2013;(5):CD010538. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD010538
17. Ziaei R, Foshati S, Hadi A, Hojati Kermani MA, Ghavami A, Clark CCT, Tarrahi MJ. The effect of nettle (Urtica dioica) supplementation on the glycemic control of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Phytotherapy Research. 2020;34(2):282–294. doi:10.1002/ptr.6535
18. Kianbakht S, Khalighi-Sigaroodi F, Dabaghian FH. Improved glycemic control in patients with advanced type 2 diabetes mellitus taking Urtica dioica leaf extract: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial. Clinical Laboratory. 2013;59(9–10):1071–1076. doi:10.7754/Clin.Lab.2012.121019
19. Nematgorgani S, Agah S, Shidfar F, Janani L, Faghihi A, Hosseini S. The effect of Urtica dioica leaf extract intake on serum TNF-α, stool calprotectin and erythrocyte sedimentation rate in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, clinical trial. Mediterranean Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism. 2020;13(1):75–87. doi:10.3233/MNM-190367
20. Mittman P. Randomized, double-blind study of freeze-dried Urtica dioica in the treatment of allergic rhinitis. Planta Medica. 1990;56(1):44–47. doi:10.1055/s-2006-960881
21. Chrubasik JE, Roufogalis BD, Wagner H, Chrubasik SA. A comprehensive review on nettle effect and efficacy profiles, Part I: Herba urticae. Phytomedicine. 2007;14(6):423–435. doi:10.1016/j.phymed.2007.03.004
22. Oliver F, Amon EU, Breathnach A, Francis DM, Sarathchandra P, Black AK, Greaves MW. Contact urticaria due to the common stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) — histological, ultrastructural and pharmacological studies. Clinical and Experimental Dermatology. 1991;16(1):1–7. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2230.1991.tb00282.x
23. Tiotiu A, Brazdova A, Longé C, Gallet P, Morisset M, Leduc V, Hilger C, Broussard C, Couderc R, Sutra JP, Sénéchal H, Poncet P. Urtica dioica pollen allergy: clinical, biological, and allergomics analysis. Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. 2016;117(5):527–534. doi:10.1016/j.anai.2016.09.426
24. Stinging Nettle. In: LiverTox: Clinical and Research Information on Drug-Induced Liver Injury. Bethesda (MD): National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; updated 2023. Bookshelf ID NBK589898.
25. EMA/HMPC. Assessment report on Urtica dioica L., Urtica urens L., herba.
26. EFSA. Consolidated list of Article 13 health claims; claim IDs 2346, 2498, 2658, 2787 and 2821.