What if you could buy a simple seasoning from the aisle in your local grocery store, steep it overnight, and have a weight loss potion, fertility-boosting drink, and apparently a topical vaginal rejuvenation all in one? If TikTok is to be believed, these are all benefits of drinking clove water, which is made by steeping whole cloves in distilled water in your fridge for an extended period.

If all the holistic health buffs swear by this stuff, and it’s a natural substance anyway, why not try it… right? We spoke with one doctor who confirmed some potential benefits of clove water, but who cautions that the bulk of what’s being shared about it online is not backed up by science.

Clove water benefits vs. social media myths

When it comes to the benefits of drinking clove water, unlike so many health “hacks” on TikTok, there actually is some research that shows there are benefits to partaking, says Dr. Case Tedder, board-certified family medicine physician with Orlando Health Physician Associates. He says clove water has been used throughout history to help with digestive health, and that it is believed to have antioxidant properties. Its benefits aren’t much clearer than that — like whether it reduces GI inflammation or helps your gut microbiome — but it does come up in academic studies. And that’s… about where the list of proven benefits ends.

“The thing that I really couldn’t get any confirmation for, and I would encourage people to use caution with things like this, are weight loss and reproductive health,” he says. So basically, we don’t have any data backing up the claims being made about clove water’s benefits by creators on TikTok. You might still decide to try it, and because it’s all-natural, what’s the harm?

Risks of drinking clove water

What concerns Tedder is that the folks posting clove water recipes online are brewing a much stronger concoction than any that has been studied before. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration classifies cloves and clove oil as generally safe for consumption, there have been documented cases of young children ingesting too much clove oil and suffering serious side effects, with both requiring hospitalization. It’s generally a good rule of thumb not to give your children any herbs or supplements their pediatrician hasn’t approved beforehand, and the same certainly seems to apply to clove water.

It would also pay to be mindful of how concentrated your homemade clove water could be and to check with your own doctor before taking any yourself. “The biggest thing that I would caution people to be careful with is just making sure that you know its impact on other medications,” Tedder says. “Cloves can have an impact on blood sugar and blood clotting ability. You have to be cautious when considering using these alternative substances.”

When you see a promising new health fix online

If you’ve spent much time at all on social media, someone online has tried to sell you on some easy health hack that’ll change your life — put rosemary oil on your scalp to grow hair, or rub garlic on your acne to make it disappear. It’s important to remember that just because a substance is natural, it is not necessarily harmless, nor is it guaranteed to be beneficial.

“Discussing it with somebody that you trust that’s in the healthcare environment, I think is a beneficial first step. Using verified sources that have research or links to peer-reviewed articles, like PubMed or Google Scholar, can be extremely helpful to guide us in the right direction as far as what’s real and actually useful,” says Tedder.

It’s easy to see why these trends take off online — it’s so much easier (and cheaper) to pick up some cloves at the store and steep them overnight than to make an appointment with your doctor, wait for it to come, and likely be shuffled to other providers for follow-ups, where you may not get a clear answer anyway. Tedder encourages his patients to bring these ideas to their appointments or call and ask questions about them. Most doctors want to talk about this kind of stuff.

“Bring them to the attention of a healthcare provider. Yours should at least be interested in looking it up to see if it applies. With clove water, I haven’t seen it applied, but it’s interesting to me that there is mention of digestion [in medical literature] and that it may aid in that process. [Doctors should] be open to the fact that an anti-inflammatory effect of something that may be readily available could benefit you as well.”

So, clove water may truly be helpful in some aspects of your health, but it’s likely not the cure-all TikTok suggests it to be. And, before you start adding it to your daily routine, it’s best to run it past your primary care doctor, just to be safe.