When my partner was pregnant, she wanted to keep drinking her muña tea — a common Andean mint used for digestion. I searched LactMed (NIH's lactation database). Nothing. I searched E-Lactancia. Nothing. I searched in Spanish. Still nothing.
Muña (Minthostachys mollis) is consumed daily by millions of people in Peru and Bolivia. But if you're pregnant and want to know if it's safe, the English-speaking medical internet has no answer for you.
So I built one.
The Problem: 11 Million Searches, Zero Answers
There are approximately 11 million monthly searches in Spanish related to herbal safety during pregnancy. Queries like "¿puedo tomar manzanilla embarazada?" (can I drink chamomile while pregnant?) get thousands of searches per month.
For common herbs like chamomile or ginger, the answer exists — scattered across medical databases, mostly in English. But for Andean plants? Nothing:
| Plant | Monthly searches (ES) | In LactMed? | In E-Lactancia? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maca | 2,400+ | No | Partial |
| Uña de Gato | 1,800+ | No | Yes |
| Muña | 900+ | No | No |
| Chuchuhuasi | 400+ | No | No |
| Hercampuri | 300+ | No | No |
These aren't obscure plants. Maca is sold at Whole Foods. Uña de gato (cat's claw) is on Amazon. But their pregnancy safety data exists only in scattered ethnobotanical papers and traditional knowledge.
The Solution: A Traffic Light System
I built ¿Es Seguro? — a free tool that classifies 37 herbs as safe (green), caution (yellow), or avoid (red) for both pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Key design decisions:
1. Dual mode: pregnancy vs. breastfeeding
A herb's safety can differ between pregnancy and lactation. Fenugreek, for example, is "avoid" during pregnancy (uterine stimulant) but "safe" during breastfeeding (traditional galactogogue with supporting evidence).
2. Evidence levels
Not all classifications are equal. Ginger has strong evidence (multiple RCTs). Muña has limited evidence (traditional use data only). The tool shows this with a 3-dot evidence indicator:
- ●●● Strong: systematic reviews or multiple RCTs
- ●●○ Moderate: individual studies or pharmacological data
- ●○○ Limited: traditional use and case reports
3. Andean herbs as first-class citizens
11 of the 37 herbs are Andean plants marked with a mountain icon (🏔️). These include:
- Maca → Caution (insufficient clinical data in pregnant women)
- Uña de Gato → Avoid (immunomodulatory, traditional contraceptive use)
- Muña → Caution (high pulegone in some varieties)
- Chuchuhuasi → Avoid (alkaloids, traditional abortifacient)
- Sacha Inchi → Safe (omega fatty acids, food-level use)
What the Data Shows
After classifying 37 herbs across both modes:
Pregnancy: 12 safe (32%) | 14 caution (38%) | 11 avoid (30%)
Lactation: 15 safe (41%) | 15 caution (41%) | 7 avoid (19%)
Herbs are generally safer during lactation than pregnancy. This makes sense — during pregnancy, substances cross the placental barrier directly. During lactation, transfer to breast milk is filtered and typically at lower concentrations.
The most dangerous category: uterine stimulants. Herbs like blue cohosh, pennyroyal, and chuchuhuasi have documented oxytocic effects. These are "avoid" in pregnancy but may be "caution" or even "safe" during lactation.
Technical Implementation
The entire tool is a single HTML file (854 lines) with zero dependencies:
- No framework, no build step, no server
- Herb data embedded as a JavaScript array
- CSS custom properties for the traffic light color system
- FAQ schema (JSON-LD) for Google rich results
- Embed mode (
?embed=1) that strips chrome for iframe embedding
The search filters herbs in real-time by common name or Latin name. Clicking a herb shows its full safety profile with notes and sources.
Sources
Every classification cites at least one source:
- LactMed (NIH) — gold standard for lactation data
- E-Lactancia — Spanish-language compatibility database
- PubMed systematic reviews — for pregnancy-specific data
- WHO monographs — for traditional use documentation
- Ethnobotanical studies — specifically Andean use data (Estrella, Bussmann, De-la-Cruz)
Try It
The tool is free and open: botanicaandina.com/herramientas/embarazo/
It also supports embedding on other sites:
<iframe src="https://botanicaandina.com/herramientas/embarazo/?embed=1"
width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>
If you work with maternal health data or build health tools, I'd love to hear what you think. And if you know of studies on Andean plant safety during pregnancy — please share them. The more data we have, the better the tool becomes.
This is part of Botánica Andina, an encyclopedia of Andean medicinal plants and evidence-based health tools.
Technical Implementation
The tool is a single HTML file with no dependencies — no frameworks, no build step, no backend. The entire herb database lives in a JavaScript object, which means:
- Zero latency: searches are instant, no API calls
- Offline capable: once loaded, it works without internet
-
Embeddable: any site can iframe it with
?embed=1parameter - Privacy-first: no data leaves the browser, no cookies, no tracking
The search uses fuzzy matching so users can type partial names or common misspellings. Each herb card shows pregnancy safety, breastfeeding safety, evidence level, a clinical summary, and source references.
Total payload: 43KB including all CSS, JS, and data. Loads in under 1 second on 3G.
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