Eden Apothecary · Herb Profile
Artemisia annua
Also known as Qing Hao
Pronounced Sweet Wormwood: WURM-wood. Qing Hao: ching HOW. Artemisia annua: ar-tuh-MEE-zhee-uh AN-yoo-uh.
Cold, dry, and bitter-aromatic: a cooling drainer that vents summer-heat, quiets deep tidal and night fevers, clears damp-heat, and checks malarial fire.
Avoid, particularly in the first trimester. Artemisinin and its derivatives are embryotoxic in animal studies, causing embryolethality and cardiovascular and skeletal malformations within a narrow early-gestation window (roughly weeks 4 to 10 of human gestation, by impairing early erythropoiesis and vasculogenesis); on this basis the WHO long restricted first-trimester artemisinin use, and the traditional Chinese materia medica also cautions the herb in pregnancy. Do not self-treat with the herb in pregnancy; malaria in pregnancy must be managed by a clinician. Sources: WHO Guidelines for Malaria (malaria in pregnancy); Safety of Artemisinin Derivatives in the First Trimester of Pregnancy (Molecules 2020, PMC7435965); AHPA Botanical Safety Handbook (2nd ed., Artemisia).
Insufficient data; avoid without medical supervision. Human lactation safety data for the whole herb are lacking and excretion of artemisinin into breast milk is poorly characterized; there is no NIH LactMed clearance for Artemisia annua as a botanical. Use only under professional guidance. Sources: AHPA Botanical Safety Handbook (2nd ed.); Brinker, Herb Contraindications and Drug Interactions; NCCIH (insufficient data).
Use only under professional guidance. Artemisinin-based combination therapy is given to children for malaria under medical supervision and is well tolerated at therapeutic doses, but the raw herb for self-directed treatment of fever in children is not advised because of dosing uncertainty and the pregnancy-relevant embryotoxicity signal; a child with fever or suspected malaria needs prompt diagnosis and targeted treatment. Sources: WHO Guidelines for Malaria; AHPA Botanical Safety Handbook (2nd ed.); NCCIH.
A cold, bitter, draining herb. Used excessively or in constitutionally cold or weak-digestion people it can chill the Spleen and Stomach and provoke loose stools, poor appetite, and abdominal discomfort, so it is best combined with warming, digestion-protecting herbs in such patients or reserved for genuine heat. For malaria, Artemisia annua tea or the whole herb should never be used as sole treatment: monotherapy promotes artemisinin resistance, and confirmed malaria requires a properly dosed artemisinin-based combination therapy under medical care. Artemisinin is heat-labile and poorly water-soluble, so prolonged boiling degrades the active constituent; the herb is added late to a decoction or taken as a cool infusion or the traditional wrung fresh juice.
Pregnancy, especially the first trimester (see safety fields); constitutional cold, Spleen and Stomach Qi deficiency, and chronic loose stools; known allergy to Artemisia or other Asteraceae (ragweed, chamomile, marigold, feverfew); and use as stand-alone malaria treatment. Coordinate with a clinician when combined with medicines metabolized by CYP3A4 or CYP2B6 (see drug interactions).
A fast-growing annual native to temperate Asia and widely naturalized and commercially cultivated worldwide (also called Sweet Annie), so it is not wild-at-risk and does not appear on the United Plant Savers at-risk list. Most material is farmed, including on a large scale for pharmaceutical artemisinin. Prefer organically cultivated, correctly identified material, since Artemisia species vary widely in constituents and are easily confused.
Not found in the canonical biblical texts. Qing Hao is a classical Chinese materia medica herb, recorded in the Shennong Ben Cao Jing and given its enduring antimalarial use in Ge Hong's Zhou Hou Bei Ji Fang (c. 340 CE), the passage that later guided Tu Youyou to isolate artemisinin (Nobel Prize, 2015). The bitter 'wormwood' of Scripture (Hebrew la'anah; Greek apsinthos, Revelation 8:11) is a different desert Artemisia of the Holy Land, not this East Asian annual species.
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