Palmitoylethanolamide: A Natural Substance with a Giant Name

1. What Is It Actually?

A natural substance is a substance that living beings form themselves. It does not come from a machine. Plants, animals and tiny living beings can produce such substances. Researchers then look closely: What does this substance do? How does it work? One of these substances is called palmitoylethanolamide. In short, it is called PEA. The name is long, isn't it? It sounds like a stuck-together word. That is how it is. Researchers often build names from parts, roughly like with Lego. Each part reveals something about how the substance is built. PEA is therefore not a sweet and not a vitamin from the advertisement. It is a substance that researchers have found in living beings and that they investigate in many studies. In our works it is about humans: 118 studies we have read, 88 of them were conducted on humans, 60 of them were controlled. Controlled means: There was a comparison group. That is important, because only in this way can one see whether the substance really works and not something else. Imagine living beings like a large kitchen. In it stand many ingredients. PEA is one of them.

2. Where Does It Come From?

Natural substances come from living beings. Some come from plants, some from animals, some from creatures so small that you can only see them under the microscope. They do not grow in a machine; they arise in something living. With the name PEA you can recognise that it is built from two parts. The first part sounds like a fat, the second like a small building block. Researchers give such names so that one can remember what a substance consists of. Where exactly PEA occurs everywhere is not stated in our works. What is certain: It is a natural substance, and researchers investigate it in humans. If you later become a researcher, you could ask exactly this question: Where does PEA occur in nature, and how much of it?

3. What Do the Researchers Investigate?

Researchers have investigated PEA in humans. In the studies it was often about pain. Once about pain in the jaw joint, that is where your lower jaw hangs on the head. Once about complaints in the knee. In another study it was about people who had lost their sense of smell after a corona illness. Yet another study looked at whether PEA is well tolerated when someone additionally receives another medication. Some of these studies were controlled. That means: One group received PEA, another group received something else, and nobody knew who received what. In this way researchers notice whether a substance really changes something. To be honest: Much is still open. Researchers continue to investigate how PEA works in the body and whom it could help. Some questions have not yet been answered. That is entirely normal in research. New questions belong to it, and they are still open.

4. An Experiment to Think About

Imagine you have a new herbal lemonade. Your friend says: It certainly helps against tummy ache. How does she know that? Perhaps she had tummy ache, drank the lemonade, and afterwards it was gone. But tummy ache often goes away by itself. Perhaps it was therefore coincidence. How could one find out better? One would need two groups. One group drinks the lemonade, the other drinks something that tastes the same but without the herbs. Then one looks at who feels better. If both groups feel equally well, it was probably not the lemonade. That is exactly how researchers proceed with natural substances such as PEA. They compare. That is not magic, but good curiosity.

For adults and professionals: the detailed page on palmitoylethanolamide (PEA).