NerveHoney Ingredients & Doses: All 5 Herbs, Exact Milligrams

The full label, line by line

The bottle lists five botanicals and three inactive ingredients. Every active line carries a milligram figure, which puts NerveHoney ahead of the many nerve formulas that print one blend total and keep the split private. The serving is two vegetable capsules, there are 60 capsules in a bottle, and the five herbs add up to 450 mg per serving.

The inactive ingredients are microcrystalline cellulose, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (capsule), magnesium stearate. Microcrystalline cellulose is a purified plant fiber used to bulk out capsules so the filling machine doses evenly. The sales page calls it a stabilizing agent that keeps the formula balanced; that is a generous way to describe a filler, though there is nothing wrong with it.

What the label does not give is just as useful to know. Three lines have no plant part, none has a standardization figure, and there is no lot-level certificate of analysis on the seller's pages. A label can be complete under federal rules and still leave a careful buyer guessing, because the rules require amounts and the part of the plant for botanicals but do not require a marker compound ^[1].

Passionflower, 145 mg

Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) is the largest line and the one with the most human research. Its aerial parts carry flavonoids such as vitexin and isovitexin, and laboratory work links the extract to GABA-A receptor activity, which is the calming system targeted by many sedative drugs ^[2].

The human trials are small and short, and they measure anxiety and sleep. Thirty-six adults with generalized anxiety took passionflower drops or oxazepam for four weeks and improved about equally ^[3]. A 500 mg dose given before surgery lowered anxiety scores compared with placebo ^[4], and a 260 mg tablet before dental extraction performed close to midazolam on anxiety ^[5]. A week of passionflower tea nudged self-rated sleep quality upward ^[6], and two weeks of extract lengthened total sleep time on polysomnography in 110 adults with insomnia ^[7]. A systematic review in 2020 judged the signal real but the trials too small for firm conclusions ^[8].

For nerve discomfort, the only data are from rats: an extract reduced allodynia, a touch-evoked pain typical of nerve injury, through GABA and opioid pathways ^[9]. That makes passionflower a reasonable calming herb and an unproven nerve herb.

At 145 mg with the plant part unstated, the NerveHoney dose sits at the low end of the trial range. The European Medicines Agency's monograph treats passionflower as a traditional remedy for mild mental stress and sleep, not pain ^[10].

Marshmallow root, 110 mg

Marshmallow root (Althaea officinalis) is rich in mucilage, a slippery polysaccharide that forms a protective film over mucous membranes. The European Medicines Agency recognizes it, on traditional use, for irritation of the mouth and throat and for dry cough, prepared as a cold-water macerate or syrup from grams of root ^[11].

The seller presents marshmallow as protection for sensitive nerve endings. Nothing in the published record supports that. Mucilage acts where it touches; once swallowed in a capsule, 110 mg reaches the stomach lining and goes no further as a coating. There are no clinical studies of marshmallow root for nerves, and the breastfeeding database at the National Library of Medicine finds too little data to call it safe in nursing mothers ^[12].

Practically, the line is harmless at this dose for most adults, but mucilage herbs can slow the absorption of drugs taken at the same moment, so take regular medicines an hour or two apart.

Corydalis powder, 100 mg

Corydalis (Corydalis yanhusuo) is a tuber used in Chinese medicine for pain. It contains isoquinoline alkaloids, the best known being tetrahydropalmatine (l-THP), protopine ^[13] and dehydrocorybulbine (DHCB). In 2014 researchers showed DHCB eased inflammatory and nerve-injury pain in mice by blocking dopamine D2 receptors, without the tolerance that builds with opioids ^[14]. Rodent work after spinal cord injury pointed the same way ^[15].

The human evidence is one controlled study in healthy volunteers, where a Corydalis plus Angelica dahurica preparation raised tolerance in a cold-pressor test, a standard lab pain model ^[16]. No trial has tested corydalis for neuropathy symptoms.

The label says powder and gives no alkaloid content, so 100 mg could hold very different amounts of the active compounds from batch to batch. This is also the ingredient with the most serious safety record. Jin Bu Huan, an l-THP product sold in the United States in the 1990s, caused acute hepatitis in adults and dangerous sedation and slowed breathing in children who swallowed it ^[17]. NIH's LiverTox lists Chinese herbal medicines among recognized causes of liver injury ^[18], and a 2025 study described idiosyncratic hepatotoxicity from Corydalis yanhusuo itself ^[19].

Prickly pear 20:1 extract, 50 mg

The label names Opuntia phaeacantha, a wild prickly pear of the American Southwest, as a 20:1 extract. If the ratio is honest, 50 mg was concentrated from about a gram of plant. The plant part, fruit or pad, is not printed.

Food chemists have measured antioxidant pigments, betalains and phenolics in the wild fruit ^[20]. The human study most often cited for prickly pear used a different species, Opuntia ficus indica, and measured hangover symptoms after drinking ^[21]. We found no study of any Opuntia species on blood flow in the limbs or on nerve symptoms, which is the job the seller gives it.

California poppy seed, 45 mg

California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is a mild sedative herb in Western herbal tradition. Studies in mice found sedative and anxiety-reducing effects from extracts of the aerial parts ^{[22] [23]}, and its alkaloids modulate GABA-A receptors in cell assays ^[24]. The largest human trial tested a combination tablet of hawthorn, California poppy and magnesium in adults with mild-to-moderate anxiety for three months ^[25], which tells you about the combination, not the poppy.

The NerveHoney label specifies seed. The alkaloids that drive the sedative effect sit mainly in the green parts and the root, and we found no study of the seed for any outcome. At 45 mg, this line reads as a name on the label more than a dose.

Three ingredients we would discount, and why

If you are weighing the formula, three of the five lines contribute little beyond the name:

1. Marshmallow root, 110 mg. A throat-soothing mucilage given at a fraction of its traditional dose, for a purpose its research never covered.
2. Prickly pear, 50 mg. A wild species with food-chemistry data only, credited with a circulation effect no study has shown.
3. California poppy seed, 45 mg. The wrong plant part at a token amount.

Together these three make up 205 mg, or 46% of the serving. That leaves passionflower and corydalis, 245 mg between them, carrying whatever effect the product has. Passionflower has the human calming data; corydalis has the pain mechanism and the liver warning. Read more about why small doses end up on labels in our underdosed actives case study.

Interactions worth clearing first

Ask a pharmacist or prescriber before starting if any of these apply:

• Sedatives and sleep medicine. Passionflower may add to benzodiazepines, z-drugs, sedating antihistamines, opioids and alcohol. A published case describes a patient on lorazepam who developed hand tremor, dizziness and muscle fatigue after adding passionflower and valerian ^[26].
• Liver disease or liver-straining drugs. Corydalis alkaloids are a recognized cause of drug-induced liver injury ^{[17] [19]}. Stop and get tested if you notice dark urine, yellowing skin or eyes, or upper-right abdominal pain.
• Heart rhythm. One case report describes nausea, drowsiness and a prolonged QT interval after passionflower tablets ^[27].
• Surgery. NIH advises stopping passionflower two weeks before a scheduled operation ^[28].
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding. Passionflower is not considered safe in pregnancy ^[28], and marshmallow lacks lactation data ^[12].

Report any serious reaction to the FDA's MedWatch program ^[29]. The seller's own FAQ recommends physician advice for anyone pregnant, nursing, under 18 or with a medical condition, which is the right instruction even if it sits beside a promise of no side effects.