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Do You Need Immune Boosting Herbs? · The Holistic Herbalism Podcast

0:03
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Katya.
0:05
SPEAKER_06: And I'm Ritten.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: And we're here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts.
0:09
SPEAKER_06: And on the internet everywhere, thanks to the Power of the Podcast.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Woo!
0:13
SPEAKER_06: Mm-hmm.
0:14
SPEAKER_06: As required by contract.
0:17
SPEAKER_06: Mm-hmm.
0:18
SPEAKER_06: Mm-hmm.
0:18
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: We've we did it.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Check.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh okay, so this week I posted on social media for people to pick the topic that we would talk about this week and to put questions in that they wanted us to cover on the pod.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: And um I could not pick between two topics.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: There was a question about grief, and that's going to be the next podcast.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: And then there was a question about uh when you have an autoimmune condition and you get sick.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: This one was from Sam Fern on Instagram.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Sam.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: We will make sure that you get a copy of our all-new stress management course as the prize for uh being a winning topic.
1:05
SPEAKER_08: And I mean, stress management certainly has relevance to immune function and to autoimmune survival.
1:11
SPEAKER_08: That's true, actually.
1:13
SPEAKER_08: And lots of things.
1:14
SPEAKER_08: So yeah, hopefully that would be helpful.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Now, before we get started, um, I just want to let you know that we have created a new winter health bundle at a 40% off discount for you.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: And all the details about it are at the end of the episode.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you get busy and you don't make it to the end, but you are interested in learning more about surviving winter illnesses and staying healthy, then just pop to the end of the episode or use the link in the show notes and find out about the winter health bundle, which is 40% off.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so here was the original text of the question.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: If you're living with an autoimmune condition but you get sick, can you talk about navigating the stimulation of your immune system to fight off the ick, but also not over-stimulating and causing trouble for the autoimmune state?
2:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now listen, before we go any further, I want to be super clear.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: This episode is not only for people with autoimmune conditions.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, it is gonna be relevant to anyone who has, yes, autoimmunity or any kind of chronic illness or any kind of elevated inflammatory like baseline state.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Honestly, the strategies that we're gonna talk about will be relevant even if you have none of those things, but you just are a person who gets sick.
2:36
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
2:36
SPEAKER_08: And also as a way to extend your intentions and the kinds of herbal actions and effects that you go searching for when you think about building up your resilience against infections, which is for everyone.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: And even maybe changing your vocabulary a little bit, not just the way that you speak, but the way that you think about the words stimulating and immune, um, to kind of kind of change that perspective a little bit as well.
3:10
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: So um, if you're out there thinking, well, I'm don't have an autoimmune condition, so this episode is not for me.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: Ho ho.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Keep listening.
3:21
SPEAKER_08: That is in the script, the ho part.
3:23
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
3:23
SPEAKER_08: Just so everybody knows for sure.
3:25
SPEAKER_03: In case you think that AI writes any of our stuff, oh no.
3:29
SPEAKER_03: No.
3:29
SPEAKER_03: Oh ho.
3:31
SPEAKER_08: There's some good stuff in here for you too.
3:33
SPEAKER_08: Uh, because it is.
3:35
SPEAKER_03: That's why it's I definitely just write exactly what's in my mind right there on the page.
3:42
SPEAKER_03: You can always tell when I wrote the notes or when he wrote the notes.
3:47
SPEAKER_08: Um yes.
3:48
SPEAKER_08: Okay, so that's an important reminder.
3:50
SPEAKER_08: And here's another one.
3:51
SPEAKER_08: We're not doctors, we're herbalists, and we're holistic health educators.
3:55
SPEAKER_08: Haha.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: The ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: No, for real, they don't.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh no state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States, so these discussions are for educational purposes only.
4:08
SPEAKER_08: That's right.
4:09
SPEAKER_08: And we want to remind you that good health doesn't mean the same thing for everyone.
4:13
SPEAKER_08: Good health doesn't exist as one objective standard.
4:15
SPEAKER_08: It's influenced by each person's needs, experiences, and goals.
4:19
SPEAKER_08: So keep in mind we're not attempting to present a single dogmatic right way that everyone must adhere to.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Because everybody's body is different.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And so the things that we're talking about may or may not apply directly to you, but we hope that they'll give you some new information to think about and some ideas to research and experiment with further.
4:38
SPEAKER_08: Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility.
4:43
SPEAKER_08: This doesn't mean that you're alone on the journey, and it doesn't mean that you're to blame for your current state of health, but it does mean that the final decision when considering any course of action, whether it was discussed on the internet by your favorite internet herbalists or it was prescribed by your favorite local physician, uh it's always your choice to make.
5:02
SPEAKER_08: So keep on making choices and make informed choices.
5:05
SPEAKER_08: Yes.
5:06
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, that's what we're into.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: All right.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: So in the online world, when people talk about getting sick and herbal support, and they put those two concepts together, the words that come out most frequently are immune boosting or immune stimulating.
5:26
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: Now, both of those concepts are gonna be a problem for a person with an autoimmune condition or a long-term chronic illness or elevated baseline inflammatory state, et cetera.
5:39
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
5:39
SPEAKER_08: There's this idea contained in that that I got sick because my immune system was slacking off.
5:46
SPEAKER_08: And in order to get better, what I need to do is like give it a little kick, set off some alarms, uh, you know, charge into the into the place and make everybody active and start doing a lot of things.
5:58
SPEAKER_08: And then that's how I'm gonna resolve my infection.
6:01
SPEAKER_08: Or it also comes up in this context of if I don't want to get sick, then what I need to do is I need to boost my immune system from the time that the leaves start to turn until the green plants come out of the ground again.
6:13
SPEAKER_08: I've got to get in there and I've got to find some herbs that are gonna do that.
6:17
SPEAKER_08: Whether I believe me, the person in this discussion, whether I believe that that happens from elderberry syrup or echinacea or poke root or whatever, whatever it is that's coming to mind.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: The thing is that that concept, um, oh, there's two things here, and they're happening simultaneously, but you can only hear one of them at a time.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: So listen to one and then listen to the other and mush them together.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: So the first part is that that concept is um really backwards if you think about it.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: Because if you really are thinking about immune boosting, and I'm making this little like turn it up uh movement with my fingers, right?
7:01
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're thinking about immune boosting, what does that really mean?
7:07
SPEAKER_01: Turning it up, increasing the sensitivity, increasing the vigilance.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: That's a hypersensitivity state.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: That's actually a problem.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: And so this concept of like, well, I need to be boosting every single day throughout the fall and winter, would you really like what that really is, is I need to be creating a hypersensitivity state.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that was one thought.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now we're gonna merge this thought into it.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Ready?
7:41
SPEAKER_01: The immune boosting or stimulating or turning it up as a portion of immune support is insignificant in terms of herbal strategies for helping you recover from being sick.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: If you never did any immune boosting and you just went with other strategies that we're gonna talk about today, you'd be fine.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: If you never dialed it up to 11, you would still recover.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: So arguably, we don't even need that concept of that hypersensitivity, of that dialed up aspect.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: It it's not actually doing the job.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: It is selling a lot of elderberry syrup, and that stuff's not cheap.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm not knocking elderberry syrup, it's lovely, but it's not cheat.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: And and I this concept of constant boosting, it's a marketing concept.
8:42
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
8:44
SPEAKER_08: In herbalism, we work with stimulants in a number of different ways, right?
8:48
SPEAKER_08: And I use that word here on purpose because if we're talking about you know immune activation, immune boosting, the like clerical way to talk about it would be immune stimulation, right?
8:59
SPEAKER_08: We're thinking of a particular function or system of the body, and we're saying, let's activate that.
9:05
SPEAKER_08: Let's heat that up in the sort of energetic sense of increase activation, increase movement, increase whatever that thing does.
9:12
SPEAKER_08: Let's make it do more of that, right?
9:13
SPEAKER_08: Do more, yeah.
9:14
SPEAKER_08: So we could we can stimulate the heart if we take cayenne, right?
9:18
SPEAKER_08: We can stimulate your nervous system if you take an herb that has caffeine in it.
9:22
SPEAKER_08: We can stimulate your liver if we take some bitter herbs.
9:26
SPEAKER_08: And stimulation can be can be helpful, but it's not something that we're gonna do indefinitely, right?
9:35
SPEAKER_08: We're not generally saying, oh, well, we just need to keep stimulating you every day for the rest of your life.
9:40
SPEAKER_03: We would say I mean that is what we do with coffee as a culture.
9:44
SPEAKER_03: But that's not very successful.
9:46
SPEAKER_08: Right, right.
9:47
SPEAKER_08: But you also don't drink coffee, I hope, all day, straight up till bedtime, like from the moment you wake up until it's about time to go to bed at night.
9:56
SPEAKER_08: Okay, I know a lot of people do it, right?
9:57
SPEAKER_08: But do they think it's a great idea?
9:59
SPEAKER_08: Probably most of them don't.
10:01
SPEAKER_08: There's outliers, whatever, right?
10:03
SPEAKER_08: But we sort of recognize like there's times when it makes sense to stimulate yourself or to stimulate something specific inside of your body.
10:10
SPEAKER_08: But you wouldn't want to just go and be like, all right, I'm gonna keep amping up my liver production of bile, or for that matter, my stomach's production of stomach acid all day, all the time, every day for long periods at a stretch.
10:23
SPEAKER_08: Right.
10:24
SPEAKER_08: We're gonna work with them when they're indicated, whether that's in the right time of the day, or for the right period of the course of an illness, right?
10:33
SPEAKER_08: Uh, or for the right period of that time in your life.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: This is the reason that I hate the word balance so much.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: Um whether this is the reason.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, there may be more than one reason.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: But like, you know, when people say I want to balance my hormones, or I want to, you know, like whatever, whatever it is that people want to balance, or if you're trying to do work-life balance, or if you're trying to, like literally any kind of balance.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, if it is not gymnastics, like if we're not walking across a log, then I hate the concept of balance because humans are not supposed to be balanced.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: We are supposed to fluctuate just like day and night, right?
11:14
SPEAKER_01: Like there are rhythms, there are cycles, there are these fluctuations, and everything in nature fluctuates.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Nothing is stimulated all the time, nothing is, you know, relaxed all the time, nothing is, you know.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: And so if we're thinking in terms of this constant stimulation, then what we're really trying to achieve is like balance into hypersensitivity.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh wait, that doesn't actually make sense.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: That's not the place I want to be balancing.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: I I want you you need to be in that cycle of like, when I need to do the thing, I'll do the thing.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: When I don't need to do the thing, I'll chill out.
11:58
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
12:00
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
12:01
SPEAKER_08: So to come back to the the idea of immune stimulation or immune boosting, the way people tend to think, talk about it and think about it, there's either some sort of nebulous idea of immunity that is like not further investigated, right?
12:13
SPEAKER_08: And we're just gonna amp that up because clearly it is failing me, and that's why I'm sick, and we're gonna amp it up and that's gonna fix the problem.
12:19
SPEAKER_08: Right.
12:19
SPEAKER_08: So it's like a simplistic, like oversimplified, you know, view of what's going on.
12:24
SPEAKER_08: Um other times people will frame it and be like, well, it's all about the white blood cell activation, right?
12:29
SPEAKER_08: And then they'll go and be like, well, yeah, but look at these, look at these scientific test results that showed that when you take echinacea at the right dose, then you can see a significant increase in white blood cell activity.
12:41
SPEAKER_08: That's gonna be great if I've got an infection going on.
12:43
SPEAKER_08: I'm gonna really want that.
12:45
SPEAKER_08: Probably that's the only thing that's gonna help me to get better, right?
12:48
SPEAKER_08: Um and so that's that's generally the kind of thought process that's going on, you know, whether whether people recognize that at the front of their mind or not.
12:56
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
12:57
SPEAKER_08: Right.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: So that's a thing that could be problematic.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: So to get back to our topic, that that's a thing that could be problematic for people with an autoimmune condition or the other things, right?
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Chronic illness and high inflammatory, say whatever.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: And so instead of thinking in terms of stimulation, instead of thinking in terms of boosting, what am I supposed to think about?
13:18
SPEAKER_01: What is like what's the other thing?
13:21
SPEAKER_01: Let's replace those words with immunomodulating.
13:24
SPEAKER_08: Right.
13:25
SPEAKER_08: And it's not just a vocabulary shift, you know, to be more, I don't know, up-to-date or hip or whatever.
13:33
SPEAKER_08: Like you'll see the word immunomodulatory uh appearing on some products and some, you know, functional drinks and whatever out there in the world and that kind of thing.
13:42
SPEAKER_08: If they if they put a mushroom in it at some point, they'll probably slap that word on the label somewhere if they can fit it in.
13:47
SPEAKER_08: Um that's fine.
13:48
SPEAKER_08: But it but it does have it does have a significant meaning.
13:50
SPEAKER_08: And like part of it is is in the idea that that immunity is not one thing that can either go up or down.
13:57
SPEAKER_08: Immunity is really complex.
14:00
SPEAKER_08: Uh, if you don't believe me, go to the library and find the biggest book on immunology you can get.
14:05
SPEAKER_08: And it will probably be in six volumes, you know, and and you can stack them up on the table higher than your head.
14:10
SPEAKER_08: Uh because there's a lot of elements to it.
14:13
SPEAKER_08: It's not just white blood cells, it's like all the different kinds of white blood cells and all of their different jobs in the body, and the helper cells, and then it's all of the signaling molecules like cytokines and interleukins and things like that.
14:27
SPEAKER_08: And some of them are pro-inflammatory and some of them are anti-inflammatory.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: And neither one of them are good or bad.
14:33
SPEAKER_08: Right.
14:33
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
14:34
SPEAKER_08: And which one your body produces more of in response to infection or can be driven down by the manifest action of a particular infection.
14:43
SPEAKER_08: Like all of those things are in play there.
14:45
SPEAKER_08: Right.
14:46
SPEAKER_08: And one of the one of the fundamental good things about herbs is that they too are complex and they interact with our bodies not in monotonic ways, not in like one effect on one thing.
14:59
SPEAKER_08: That's you're describing a drug if you think about that.
15:02
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
15:02
SPEAKER_08: Right.
15:03
SPEAKER_08: Um, and this is even true for herbs that are super famous as immune stimulants, like echinacea, right?
15:08
SPEAKER_08: Uh, and we've we've also talked about this in the context of elderberry.
15:12
SPEAKER_08: The that elderberry is not just stimulating to all immune, you know, cells and molecules and signaling compounds and organs at the same time, right?
15:24
SPEAKER_08: It stimulates some things that are pro-inflammatory and some things that are anti-inflammatory, and it happens to do it in a really nice balance that tends to be beneficial for us, right?
15:33
SPEAKER_08: Um, and again, even echinacea has a complex effect once you get down to that microscopic level, right?
15:40
SPEAKER_08: So the idea of the immunomodulator is, I think, powerful, at least in part, because it introduces that idea of complexity and nuance.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: If you are thinking about immune stimulant or immune boosting, then you're kind of thinking of a light switch, right?
15:58
SPEAKER_01: I am going to turn it on, or I'm going to turn it on all the way full power on my dimmer switch, right?
16:06
SPEAKER_01: It's it's not going to be turned on dim, it's going to be turned on 100%, whatever.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: Whereas immunomodulatory, like you might know the word modulate from like music or sound engineering or like frequency or physics or you know, any of that kind of arena.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so because my brother uh is sound engineer, among other musical things, and has in his living room, like he kind of has a couch a little bit, but like what he really has is a giant sound mixing board.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: And if you've ever seen one of those, you know, it has those 10 million sliders that go up and down.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: And whenever I think of modulate, I think of those huge mixing boards.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: And if you start to think of the immune system in the same way, each one of those little sliders on a mixing board is talking about a different aspect of the sound of the thing that you're making.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: But if we think about it as the immune system, each one of those little sliders is representing one of the cajillion like facets of immune function.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: And there are so many of them.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And like every single one of them could be dialed up a little, dialed down a little, uh, left to neutral.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: How is that in relation to the other thing that's right next to it?
17:27
SPEAKER_01: Like all that stuff starts to get very, very complicated.
17:30
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
17:30
SPEAKER_08: And what the board doesn't have is like if you push this slider up, the other one kind of nudges itself, even though you didn't touch it on purpose.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes, sometimes two of them will be like connected, but not not as complex as it is in the body.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:46
SPEAKER_08: So this idea of immunomodulatory as an action that we're gonna we're gonna be interested in, we're gonna seek.
17:52
SPEAKER_08: The the maybe the greatest benefit in this context of somebody who's got an autoimmune condition going on is that the immunomodulatory herbs aren't going to overstimulate the parts of the immune system that are attacking your own body.
18:09
SPEAKER_08: Ah.
18:10
SPEAKER_08: Okay.
18:10
SPEAKER_08: And so that makes them very safe and reliable to work with, whether you have an autoimmune condition going on or not.
18:19
SPEAKER_08: And now, if you've been, like I said, noticing the word immunomodulatory or immunomodulation turning up on any products or kombucha drinks or whatever out there, you probably noticed they were the ones that contained the medicinal mushrooms in them.
18:33
SPEAKER_08: The medicinal mushrooms like Rishi, like turkey tail, like shitake and maitake.
18:41
SPEAKER_08: And even lion's mane, even though most of the discussion around lion's mane these days is about nerve growth factor and neurological health and brain health and attention and so on.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: It lion's mane has niched down.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:53
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
18:54
SPEAKER_08: But uh no.
18:56
SPEAKER_08: No and yes.
18:58
SPEAKER_08: Lion's mane is absolutely in the group of the immunomodulatory fungi.
19:02
SPEAKER_08: Aaron Ross Powell In fact, so are portobello and button mushrooms, believe it or not.
19:07
SPEAKER_08: Aaron Ross Powell Like they they contain the complex polysaccharides, including the beta-glucans, but also some other components that play along that serve that effect of being immunomodulatory, right?
19:20
SPEAKER_08: Um even when you look at this from the lens of phytochemistry, there's a group of constituents that we just label for functional purposes immunomodulating polysaccharides.
19:31
SPEAKER_08: And the cool thing is that those are not only restricted to the mushrooms, you also find them in seaweeds.
19:37
SPEAKER_08: And so now we're thinking about broth and soup and like foods where they've been cooked with some moisture for a decent long time.
19:45
SPEAKER_08: Um, because honestly, those are the best way to take your mushrooms and your seaweeds for these kinds of effects.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: Broth is gonna come up several times over the next however long it's gonna take us to tell you all this stuff.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:59
SPEAKER_08: And you know, you'll see products where they have like extracted and isolated the immunomodulating polysaccharides and some other friends, and then they put them in a capsule or they put them in your drink or they put them in the whatever it is, right?
20:11
SPEAKER_08: And okay, that's fine.
20:12
SPEAKER_08: Um, but you know, traditionally speaking, and again, in my opinion, from best effects, put it in soup, put it in food, get them in that way, make it a regular habit, rather than something you you think about like, oh, I'm just gonna grab this because it's I'm starting to get sick.
20:28
SPEAKER_08: That's this is a slow moving kind of an act action, right?
20:32
SPEAKER_08: This is something that you want to ideally have built into your habits already.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Hey, so if you are thinking about immune boosting in terms of something to do every day from the beginning of fall until the beginning of spring, okay, broth is the thing to be thinking about.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Broth with some mushrooms and some seaweeds.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: Cook it a while, cook it a long time.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: You can't have mushrooms raw and you can't have seaweeds raw.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, you can try it, but you can't get any stuff that you want out of it that way.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, plus, it's really hard to crunch seaweed when it's raw, like actually raw.
21:05
SPEAKER_08: It's a little, yeah, it's gonna be shown a while.
21:07
SPEAKER_08: I mean, I guess if you need a jaw workout, that's yeah.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: So, this everyday aspect, this is that nutritive, like cumulative, like build it up in your body.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Make sure you have the materials you need to do the stuff you need to do, kind of moduling.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna push you too far.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: It's just making sure that you are resourced.
21:32
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
21:32
SPEAKER_08: All right.
21:33
SPEAKER_08: So mushrooms, seaweeds, whichever ones you like, whichever ones you can get into you, but make it a consistent thing.
21:40
SPEAKER_08: That's the way to go with these.
21:41
unknown: Yeah.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: So then, you know, we can think about some adaptogens here as well.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: And often when we think about adaptogens, we are thinking about uh like, oh, my coffee, my caffeine replacement, like I'll just take ginseng and rhodiola, and it's no caffeine, so it'll be fine.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: And that's not the kind of adaptogen we're talking about.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Adaptogens come in a broad spectrum, and they are not all stimulating.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: So here I'm thinking about codonopsis and astragalis.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: The two of these, they are not stimulating, but they are long-term building mechanisms that help support the work that your immune system is going to do when it needs to do work.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: And also helps support the whole hormone communication cascade, right?
22:33
SPEAKER_01: We think about when you say the word hormone, usually people are thinking about estrogen and testosterone, but like hormones are just messengers to deliver messages throughout the body.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: And it's all kinds of messages.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't just have to do about your menstrual cycle or your lack of menstrual cycle or whatever.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: It can like you use hormones, your body uses hormones to send all kinds of messages about start this, stop that.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we're starting to get full now, or we're starting to this other thing.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, and some of that signaling is part of the immune response process.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: So when we can keep that whole signaling cascade flowing freely, when we can and it all the words that we usually use to describe this, right, they come back to balance.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: It's always like keep your hormones in balance.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: And that's again, that's not where we want to be because they need to fluctuate.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, okay, we've got enough hormone telling me this message that it means I'm finally supposed to do something.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now it can go back down again because I'm doing the thing like just like you told me.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we want that fluctuating cascade to happen and we want to support that.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, and the immune response has like if we think of this as a giant orchestra, then it's the immune response is like a French horn section.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, it's it's like the bassoons or or whatever.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: So when we're thinking about codonopsis and astraglis specifically, it's not just about their influence on a well-tuned hormonal cascade, but also about the way that they specifically interact with the things that your body needs to produce an immune response.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: They also have some of those same polysaccharides, they have all kinds of other nutritive aspects and signaling aspects that are just gonna help your body be prepared.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: And they are also long-term, like they're gonna work better if you've been taking them for a little while.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: And they go great in broth.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: So you could take your mushrooms, take your seaweed, take your codonopsis, take your astragalus, put it all in the broth, simmer it, drink a cup every day, like at whatever kind of time of day you would like to have a savory, a savory beverage.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: Um and let that be your, like let that replace your concept of immune boosting with this immune modulating aspect.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: And what you're really doing is making sure everybody is resourced and ready to go when they're needed, but nobody is on high alert right now.
25:21
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
25:21
SPEAKER_08: And I gotta, I gotta put in a note here, though, that uh cotonopsis and astragal and astragalus both are herbs that you can just chew on.
25:30
SPEAKER_08: Like you can get the dried plant material.
25:32
SPEAKER_08: Sometimes the astragalus will come in these like slices, and you can just kind of gnaw on it until it's soft, and then you have a little bit of like herbal gum that you chew on.
25:43
SPEAKER_03: Like kind of fibery, gummy.
25:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
25:45
SPEAKER_08: Uh but you know, if you chew that until it doesn't have any flavor left, and then for another minute or two after afterwards, you've actually done a real good uh job of extracting the medicinal virtues from that.
25:57
SPEAKER_08: Um and uh both astragalus and cotonopsis have like a little touch of a sweet flavor to them.
26:02
SPEAKER_08: They're quite nice.
26:03
SPEAKER_08: So if you're not a broth drinker and you probably not probably aren't going to start, um, then this could be a way to, again, just work with the whole herb in uh a minimally manipulated format.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: If you're like, no thanks.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to chew on fibery gum.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, you also can decoct these.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: They make a very mild tasting, um, sort of mild sweet tasting decoction.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: You can toss some cinnamon or some ginger or whatever you like in there with it.
26:32
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
26:32
SPEAKER_08: I mean, it blends fine into like a chai spice blend or an herbal, not exactly coffee blend, or a root beer flavor blend, or like all kinds of different directions you could go with that.
26:43
SPEAKER_08: So, you know, when we talk about herbs that we want to incorporate into our daily habit and over a long term, we're often looking for ways to not let that be hyper monotonous, you know, so we don't like get sick of it and fall out of the habit or whatever.
26:56
SPEAKER_08: So yeah, these are real flexible in that way.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: All right.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: So in case we haven't yet convinced you to shift your thinking from stimulating to modulating.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: Stimulating, hey, that could be a problem for autoimmunity.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Modulating, oh, everybody here is resourced.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: Right?
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay, in case we haven't convinced you yet, here's another example.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, not that I love military examples, but I'm about to make one.
27:24
SPEAKER_08: And they're always used in the context of immunity.
27:26
SPEAKER_08: You've got to ramp up the attack, you've got to sound the alarm sirens, right?
27:29
SPEAKER_08: Like it's Right.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the thing.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Like, even if you don't love a military example, it's the union system.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: That is that is where people always use these examples.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: So just like any military campaign, logistics and support are way more important than the actual like guns.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like all of the all of the people with the ammunitions can't do anything if they don't have food and water and porta potties and all the other things, a place to sleep, and transportation to even get where they're going.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: And I don't really think people should be shooting each at each other, but the reality is militaries exist.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: People think about the immune system like a military, so we're going with this example.
28:22
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
28:23
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
28:23
SPEAKER_08: And I think that, you know, we live in the world and we're aware of to some degree, whatever personal degree, of what's going on.
28:30
SPEAKER_08: And I think we've also had ample, you know, chances to observe that just throwing bombs and missiles at a problem doesn't make it go away or solve it uh or change conditions for the better for basically anybody.
28:43
SPEAKER_08: Um and so if we're thinking about inside of our own bodies, maybe we shouldn't only focus on strikes and invasions.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh, turn off this, back it up like however many rounds of 30 seconds you need to, and just listen to him say that again.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: That was so nice.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: That was good.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: Oh, so nice.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: That was good.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: So um let's stop thinking in terms of attacks and let's start thinking about logistics and support.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: And the cool thing is, the majority of herbs that you have ever heard of for immune support or sickness support actually do fall in that logistics and support arena.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: Maybe if we're thinking about a time seam, okay, there is some actual attacking going on there, like an antimicrobial action, topically in the lungs, right?
29:44
SPEAKER_01: Because you're breathing that into the lungs.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: And yes, there is a little attack going on, although there's also some support.
29:50
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, and you wake up like your own humoral immunity, you you activate your defenses in that sense.
29:56
SPEAKER_08: Okay.
29:57
SPEAKER_08: But also in that case, you're you're getting your weapons to where they need to go, right?
30:03
SPEAKER_08: You're not just looking at the logistics.
30:05
SPEAKER_08: You're not just launching some kind of carpet bombing idea into your body by being like, I'm gonna take this herbal germ killer thing and it's gonna go everywhere and get everything that's bad out of me all at once.
30:16
SPEAKER_08: You're like, okay, I know what kind of infection I got, I know where it's localized.
30:20
SPEAKER_08: I ri I understand that the cold virus or the flu virus hasn't penetrated into every cell of every tissue of my being, right?
30:27
SPEAKER_08: Like it's in specific parts of me in the respiratory tract.
30:31
SPEAKER_08: And I can get the thyme and the aromatic uh essential oils and the thymol right to that spot, and I can get the kind of effect that I'm looking for.
30:39
SPEAKER_08: Okay.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: Or oregano or sage or rosemary or like, okay, so and any of those um strong smelly mints, what uh minarda, whatever.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Right, okay.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: So that right, so okay, that's a time when those are herbs that are doing a little bit of attacking at that antimicrobial level, but you are getting them right directly to the tissue in the lungs because you are delivering them through a steam.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: And so if you are a person with autoimmunity, etc., that's no problem because you are not using that to ramp up your attack system inside, like your innate attack system.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: It is not dialing your immune system up.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: It is another terrible example, spraying glycol inside your lungs, right?
31:30
SPEAKER_01: Right?
31:30
SPEAKER_01: It is like directly providing a little antimicrobial action in the specific location where the problem is without dialing up white blood cells and all that kind of stuff and supporting your barrier function.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: That's what humoral immunity humoral in this case doesn't mean like the four humors kind of action.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: It means like innate immunity, like barrier function.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk about that a little bit more in a minute.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: All right, so but but aside from that, and like maybe a little bit echinacea, we're like, or yes, echinacea, but only one aspect.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Echinacea does other things too.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, most of the herbs that you may have ever learned about supporting you when you're sick actually are not doing carpet bombing.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: They're not attacking, they're not the air-raid siren that puts your whole body on high alert.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: Good, because we don't actually want that if we've got autoimmunity and all the other things.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, we don't actually want that even in a healthy person, um, because that can go too far.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: So instead of thinking about all that stuff, we're going to start thinking on purpose in terms of logistics and support.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Let's get the food there, let's get the beds there, let's get the porta potties there, let's get all the stuff that our body needs so that our body can do the job.
32:58
SPEAKER_08: Uh dig the latrines, man.
33:00
SPEAKER_08: You gotta like you gotta you can't neglect the waste products, right?
33:03
SPEAKER_08: And in the context of an infection that your body is fighting, that includes like defeated pathogens, and that also includes uh your own response cells and components that have done their job and now need to be cleared away.
33:20
SPEAKER_08: That mainly happens through the actions of the lymphatic system.
33:24
SPEAKER_08: And uh you may have direct experience of that if you've ever had swelling right under here when you get sick or in your lymph nodes around the chest or wherever it happens for you.
33:33
SPEAKER_08: Because it it's it's evidence that that part is working harder and uh it's swollen in part because it gets a little inflamed and in part because there's more fluid there, and in part because things are a little a little stuck, right?
33:47
SPEAKER_08: And we want to help them to move along.
33:49
SPEAKER_08: And so we turn to lymphatic herbs for this.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: My favorite of the lymphatic herbs is self-heal.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: That's Pernella vulgaris.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: The only problem, and I want to be upfront about this, is that it is not always easy to purchase.
34:04
SPEAKER_08: Um sometimes a little pricey.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
34:07
SPEAKER_08: But for good reasons.
34:08
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, good, for good, completely understandable reasons once you look at the growing plant.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, however, it is easy to grow and it grows in such a wide range.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: Like if you basically anywhere that you live, almost you can grow it.
34:25
SPEAKER_08: Um, and the shade tolerance is handy too.
34:28
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, exactly.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: It grows in the full sun, it grows in the shade, it it really will grow just nearly anywhere.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: And if you are growing some for yourself, then because it is a mint and it just keeps flowering again and again, every time that you cut all the flowers off, it just grows more flowers.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: You can, if you have like a four by eight bed, you can grow pounds of self-heal for yourself.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, harvesting it is a little bit of a pain in the butt.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay, fine.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: So, okay, so we have established that this is not, it's not impossible to buy.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: Mountain Rose herbs has it in stock.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it just sells out quickly.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: So do yourself a favor.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: In fact, this it is September right now.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: This is the perfect time.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: Buy self-heal seeds now.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: Put them out and they will sprout next year.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: They need to be in the winter, like they need to get cold so that they can sprout in the in the spring.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh so if you just throw them out there now, they will grow for you for next year.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: All right, so now that we have had that little asterisk on self-heal, let me tell you why it is so worth it.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: So worth it.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh, hey, it moves the fluids everywhere.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: It moves the fluids, it's like at the tip of your toes and at the top of your head.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: So if you're a person who retains fluid in the bottom half of you and gets like edema in your lower legs or puffy in your shoes or whatever, no problem, self-heal will help you.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: And if you're the kind of person who has stagnant fluid like up in the top of your body or in the chest around the breast area, or if your armpits are always a little bit swollen, okay, no problem.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: Self-heel's got that too.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: And if you're always feeling brain foggy, because you have stagnant fluid, like your brain has its own lymphatic system.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: It's called the gymphatic system.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: And so you can get stagnant in there too, and the fluid not moving.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: And self-heal works even there.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: Cell heal is one of the most studied herbs anywhere, um, but not in the US.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: Most of those studies come out of China where it is a very, very popular herb.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of amazing because if you put in to like Google Scholar or whatever, self-heal or put prunello vulgaris um and whatever, Alzheimer's, whatever, whatever it is you're concerned about, there's probably they have probably done a study on it in China.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, and a lot of them are fascinating.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: So if you ever need a rabbit hole to fall down, studies on self-heal, go right ahead.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the big key here is that it really is a full-body mover.
37:09
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:11
SPEAKER_08: Another handy thing about self-heal is that like a lot of plants in its family, it's really flexible uh in terms of how you can prepare it.
37:20
SPEAKER_08: This is one that you could take a C.
37:23
SPEAKER_08: Easy.
37:24
SPEAKER_08: You can do tinctures, you can you could do an electriary with the powder of it if you want.
37:30
SPEAKER_08: Um it's just it's a it's you're not constrained to only one preparation method.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: And the flavor is quite neutral.
37:38
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: So if you wanted to put it in broth, you could.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't be weird.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would be a little weird because we don't normally think of putting flowers in broth, but you know, but it flavor-wise, it would not be weird at all.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: But it makes a fine tea and you can just drink it how it is.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but self heel is, like I said, sometimes hard to find.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: So red clover blossom is a really good analog.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: Red clover also has that same lower body, upper body aspect, and a lot of affinity for affinity for the kidneys.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: And it's easier to purchase, but I do want to say that we are talking about the flower here and not the leaf.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you will see red clover herb or red clover leaf.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: Those are not the ones we're talking about.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about red clover blossom, the flower.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, this is also super easy to grow and really easy to like if you have a yard and you don't want to mow it, just make it all red clover.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, but but it's it is easier to purchase.
38:41
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
38:42
SPEAKER_08: Really lovely or mild flavor, a little grassy, but not to the level of like nettles.
38:50
SPEAKER_08: Um so again, it's it's easy to formulate with other things and make something tasty, or to make many variet variants of tasty things.
38:59
SPEAKER_08: Uh, so that again, you don't have to have just the exact same tea forever.
39:02
SPEAKER_08: Right.
39:03
SPEAKER_08: Um, one with a little stronger flavor, but really worth considering, especially if it grows around you, is uh fleabane or arigoron species.
39:12
SPEAKER_08: Um we work often with arigaron canadensis in particular.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: I much prefer it.
39:17
SPEAKER_01: I much prefer arigaron canadensis over like a rigoron annuum, which is um the daisy fleabane.
39:25
SPEAKER_08: With the very tiny little eyelash uh petals on it.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: The flowers on arigaron canadensis are like one-tenth of the size of the flowers on arigaron annuum.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: So daisy flea has much larger flowers, even though the flowers are small, much larger flowers than Canada flea.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: So that can kind of help you in the identification.
39:49
SPEAKER_01: Also, the structure is very different.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: If you just search for images of those two plants, you'll see that this the flowering structure is drastically different.
39:57
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
39:58
SPEAKER_08: The flea's interesting.
39:59
SPEAKER_08: It's it's complex herb.
40:00
SPEAKER_08: I mean, really, all these herbs we've talked about mentioned so far are complex.
40:03
SPEAKER_08: They have other actions and so on, right?
40:05
SPEAKER_08: We're focused on particular thing of lymphatic and fluid movement here.
40:09
SPEAKER_08: Umrigaron, though, like even more than self-heel or red clover, it's it's not only the lymph, it's also helping with blood circulation and with blood quality here.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: And that that is a big important part for me because um because I do tend towards stagnancy and to like fluid retention and just slow fluid movement.
40:34
SPEAKER_01: And I have had varicose veins since I was in high school, possibly even junior high school.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: It is just like my family, everybody has wicked varicose veins.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: Uh, if I had known sooner, there's a lot I could have done.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: But you know, you can't go back in time.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: So the point here is that I already know that I have limitations in my cardiovascular and especially circulatory function.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: So the fact that a regaron is really helpful in terms of clotting and microclotting, and that that is such a big factor in COVID and potentially other illnesses too, but we really started focusing on it in COVID.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, but that that makes it really important to me to make sure that I'm getting stuff in my body.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: And now listen, all of the lymphatic herbs are going to help with that to some extent.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: It's just that a rigor on canadensis, you know, okay, it has been studied for it.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: Um the fact that they have studied it is not like the gold standard necessarily.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that that's the only one that does it.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that it gets the stamp of approval and the other herbs don't.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: It's just that, oh, look, we do have this data.
41:59
SPEAKER_01: That is interesting.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, and combined with it does a really good job at it.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you are a person like me with a lot of stagnation, then that could be one that's really worth adding to your apothecary.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: This is another one that it's not super easy to purchase.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: But if it grows anywhere near you and it grows in a very wide range of climates, um, it's wicked abundant.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: And you don't even need to harvest that much of it because each individual stalk has so many leaves.
42:34
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, so just harvest it before it goes to flower.
42:37
SPEAKER_08: Right.
42:38
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
42:38
SPEAKER_08: For this one, we're not, we're not focusing on the flowers the way we do with the red clover and also with the self-heel.
42:45
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
42:46
unknown: Yeah.
42:46
SPEAKER_08: Right.
42:47
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
42:48
SPEAKER_08: Interesting herb, uh, interesting flavor to it.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: Um very similar to Goldenron.
42:56
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: And I I don't normally put a rigron in that vulnerary box, but there's definitely crossover vulnerary action there, which we're gonna get to later.
43:07
SPEAKER_07: Come to that one.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh one one quick addition here, though, is parsley.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: Now, parsley is not my first choice as a lymphatic mover, although somebody out there is listening and saying, are you kidding?
43:19
SPEAKER_01: Parsley is totally my first choice as a lymphatic mover.
43:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, so whoever you are who just thought that that's for you, you're awesome.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's not my first choice because I like those other three so much, but it's easy to get because you can just go to the grocery store and usually it's pretty cheap.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: So um, if you are sick and you are somewhere that isn't where you normally live, or you're away from your apothecary, or you just don't have an apothecary built up yet, or you do, but there's no lymphatics in it, or whatever else, get some parsley.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Eat a lot of it.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: I know some people don't like how it tastes, hide it.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: In something that has a strong flavor.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: But do eat a lot of it if you if you want to get this action.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: But it definitely will do the job.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: And especially when you don't have anything else, it's almost always available.
44:16
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
44:17
SPEAKER_08: So when we're thinking about lymphatic herbs here, you've noticed that we haven't mentioned poke root or poke berry or whatever, right?
44:26
SPEAKER_01: Or or like, you know, red root or yeah, any of those really strong super drying.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:34
SPEAKER_08: So and the point is that it doesn't have to be those.
44:37
SPEAKER_08: Although if you go looking for immune-stimulating herbs, those will be on somebody's lists, right?
44:41
SPEAKER_08: They're going to they're going to turn up in that context.
44:44
SPEAKER_08: Um it doesn't, it doesn't have to be at that level of intensity to be helpful.
44:50
SPEAKER_08: And to be honest, when we do work with those herbs, when we do, you know, include poke in a formula for somebody or include red root in a in a blend or whatever, it's always going to be in a formula with gentler herbs.
45:03
SPEAKER_08: Often the exact ones we started out with, right?
45:06
SPEAKER_08: Like a tincture blend that's 90% self-heal and 10% poke, I think is way more appropriate for way more people than just giving them a tincture of a poke and saying you're going to count out X many drops.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:18
SPEAKER_08: You know.
45:19
SPEAKER_08: And not it not only because some people's hands shake and it's hard for them to do one drop at a time.
45:24
SPEAKER_08: Like that's a significant reason, okay?
45:26
SPEAKER_08: All by itself.
45:28
SPEAKER_08: But also, I feel like the poke is better received by the body when it has a gentler friend to take the rough edges off of their of their social braces.
45:39
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
45:39
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
45:40
SPEAKER_04: Right.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: All right.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: So if we are thinking about logistics and support, lymphatics uh covers logistics.
45:49
SPEAKER_01: So now let's get some support.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna do that.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: Uh well, there's other ways we could do it too, but the two ways that I want to talk about or that we want to talk about, um, are nutritive herbs and herbs that will help you sleep.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: Because in my mind, those are the two most important support factors in recovering from getting sick or in preventing you from getting sick to begin with.
46:18
SPEAKER_01: Literally, if you are getting consistently decent sleep, I honestly believe that is the number one factor in whether or not you get sick if you get in the elevator with Dave from accounting and he's sneezing.
46:35
SPEAKER_01: So I suppose somebody could fight me on that and we can have a big debate.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: But for right now, I'm just gonna go ahead with my hot take that sleep is if you had to pick one, it's the most important factor.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: But before we get to the sleep aids, let's talk about some nutritive herbs that are going to help nourish you, but specifically help nourish the parts of the body that you need when you get sick.
47:02
SPEAKER_08: And this is actually a place that we can bring in elderberry, right?
47:05
SPEAKER_08: And we can change our understanding of elderberry from this is an immune stimulant herb to this is an herb that provides support to the body so that it can cope with infection in a nice, efficient way, right?
47:20
SPEAKER_01: You know, I never learned elderberry as an immune stimulant back in the day.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't mean that there is no older book that calls it that, though now I want to go back through all the books and see.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: But I never learned to think of elderberry that way.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: I didn't start seeing people talk about elderberry as a stimulant, as an immune stimulant, until buying elderberry syrup became a popular thing for like the mainstream until big marketing campaigns about elderberry syrup.
48:01
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
48:01
SPEAKER_08: I mean, in an older context, a lot of the discussion would be about the broad idea of the alternative impact.
48:07
SPEAKER_08: Right, right, right, right.
48:08
SPEAKER_08: Which is connected to what we're talking about here, because alterative is a big umbrella of actions that the end result of them, one way or another, is to improve the quality of circulating fluids.
48:18
SPEAKER_08: Blood, lymph, extracellular fluid, all of the oceans of your body, right?
48:23
SPEAKER_08: And you can do that by providing nourishment, by enhancing digestion and absorption, by improving circulation and distribution of things inside of the body, uh, by enhancing metabolism and transformation, and by improving elimination.
48:41
SPEAKER_08: So any of those is going to contribute to the overall alternative effect.
48:44
SPEAKER_08: And plants like elderberry actually hit several of those points altogether.
48:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:49
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: And um reference the podcast episode that was from September 5th about elderberries and elderberry syrup, um, because it's not just elderberries.
49:07
SPEAKER_01: Actually, all of the berries will give you the majority of the actions that you will get from elderberries.
49:15
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of those berries are way more cost effective than elderberry is.
49:20
SPEAKER_01: So if you didn't catch that episode, then uh don't worry, Rin, we'll put the link in the show notes.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:30
SPEAKER_08: Uh yeah, berries.
49:31
SPEAKER_08: They're fantastic, right?
49:32
SPEAKER_08: You're getting you're getting those dark colored pigments like blue and red and purple, and they're anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins and whatever, and they all contribute to your body's efficiency and um like clarity of inflammatory process.
49:47
SPEAKER_08: Nice.
49:47
SPEAKER_08: So make sure that you're able to accomplish that where it's required, but no longer than it's required.
49:52
SPEAKER_08: So you don't get what's our what's our uh it's gonna be collateral damage.
49:57
SPEAKER_08: It's gonna be friendly fire.
50:01
SPEAKER_08: Uh and again, particularly important in the context of autoimmunity.
50:05
SPEAKER_08: If that's if that's the background status for somebody, you don't want anything that's gonna contribute to that.
50:09
SPEAKER_08: You want things that are gonna make that less likely, less severe.
50:13
SPEAKER_08: And all of these pigment compounds from our berries are really, really gonna help in that direction, along with other benefits like enhancing the integrity of your blood vessels, which some of these viruses attack.
50:24
SPEAKER_08: Yes.
50:24
SPEAKER_08: Hi, COVID.
50:25
SPEAKER_08: It's you again.
50:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it may be others too.
50:28
SPEAKER_01: It's just that we found it in COVID.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: I would love to see um people go back and start studying other viruses and see, like, oh, are they also impacting the endothelial linings of the blood vessels and everything else?
50:40
SPEAKER_01: They might be.
50:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, right.
50:43
SPEAKER_01: So berries are keeping inflammation in the Goldilocks zone.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: They are cleaning up places where there's too much inflammation, and they are supporting places that need a little inflammation to do the next step in the job uh at exactly the right amount and not too much.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:06
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
51:07
SPEAKER_08: All right.
51:08
SPEAKER_08: Another nutritive uh concepts or you know, uh affinity group to put in here would be our alliums.
51:16
SPEAKER_08: So onions, garlic, leese, what's the other ones?
51:21
SPEAKER_08: Uh scallions.
51:23
SPEAKER_08: Sure.
51:24
SPEAKER_08: Anybody, anybody who tastes like that?
51:26
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
51:26
SPEAKER_08: That's what we're talking about.
51:28
SPEAKER_08: And the nourishment here is not the kind of nourishment that people often speak of, like macronutrients, you know, carbs and fats and proteins to run your basic processes and build things in the body, or vitamins and minerals, because you need to have those coming in through your food.
51:43
SPEAKER_08: You can't build them on like out of your own substrate already, right?
51:47
SPEAKER_08: That's like normal nutrition.
51:49
SPEAKER_08: But we want to expand it a little bit and take the whole world of plants into account and recognize that we get a lot of things from plants that are very important to our body, and that our body on some level expects, or maybe a clearer way to say is that we thrive more effectively, we thrive better when we have these things in our lives.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, it's like vitamins.
52:10
SPEAKER_01: We don't produce that stuff for ourselves, or sometimes we can, but we don't do it in quantities.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: Because throughout history, we most of the time were already in constant relationship, like we were already getting it from those plant sources.
52:27
SPEAKER_01: So there was no need for the body to develop extensive pathways of self-synthesizing those compounds because they were coming from our environment.
52:38
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
52:39
SPEAKER_08: Like basically any mustard family plant is going to have some sulfur compounds of one kind or another, probably several kinds together in them, right?
52:46
SPEAKER_08: And so whether it's broccoli or whether it's garlic, like those probably seem really different.
52:51
SPEAKER_08: And they are, they are really different in terms of potency and all that, but uh, there is some consistency to what they provide, and it's really valuable.
52:58
SPEAKER_08: And it's also possible today for people to never encounter any mustard family plants, whether it's wild greens, whether it's garlics or onions or other things like that, or to only get little touches of them here and there.
53:09
SPEAKER_01: Like a garnish.
53:10
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
53:10
SPEAKER_08: Um but these can be very supportive not only to the direct in in uh immune response to an infection, right?
53:19
SPEAKER_08: Garlic is famous for that.
53:20
SPEAKER_08: You've got phlegm and you've got crud and you've got infection in your lungs, and maybe it's viral and micro, like and bacterial at the same time.
53:27
SPEAKER_08: And you can work with garlic and you can get garlic breath, and that's gonna directly fight the infection right there.
53:34
SPEAKER_08: That's all true.
53:35
SPEAKER_08: But at the same time, those sulfur compounds are enhancing your immune function globally.
53:41
SPEAKER_08: Not stimulating, but enhancing, right?
53:44
SPEAKER_08: They are modulating the way that inflammation plays out in your system.
53:49
SPEAKER_08: And again, very, very valuable and very handy to have in the mix.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: It's like tuning a piano.
53:57
SPEAKER_01: You can play a piano that's out of tune.
54:00
SPEAKER_01: You could play the whole piece, you could play every note correctly.
54:03
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna sound awesome, but you can do it.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: But then if you get the piano tuned and you play the whole piece and you don't make any mistakes and you play every note perfectly, wow, it's gonna sound so much better.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's the immune system I want.
54:18
SPEAKER_01: But that's not stimulation.
54:21
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, only tuning them up.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: Everything will be sharp.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: Everything goes up, yeah.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:27
SPEAKER_01: No, that is simply good maintenance and then lots of practice, you know, so that you don't make the same water.
54:34
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
54:34
SPEAKER_08: Right, right.
54:35
SPEAKER_08: Okay.
54:35
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
54:36
SPEAKER_08: So, you know, the the the garlic and the onions, and you know, also, yeah, some proteins are beneficial while you're while you're sick and while you're fighting off because you gotta you gotta metabolize and transform some proteins and make them into immune responders.
54:51
SPEAKER_08: Right.
54:52
SPEAKER_08: Um, and if we also snuck back some of our friendly seaweeds and some of our friendly mushrooms and maybe some roots into there as well, and we put them all in a pot together and boiled it for a minute, we would we would have broth again.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'd be disouped.
55:05
SPEAKER_03: Hooray.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
55:07
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so even though broth is not an herb, I mean you could make vegetable broth, but here um bone broth is really gonna be the best, right?
55:17
SPEAKER_01: Because also bone is where like that's a uh your bones are a critical part of your immune system.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: We don't usually think about them that way, but they are.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: And so, like, if we are making food that is boiled down bones, then good, that's good for your immune system.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: But we don't think about that as an herb because it's food.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, but maybe we should start thinking about it as an herb or at least as an herb carrier.
55:46
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
55:47
SPEAKER_08: Well, I think the the um concept that I that I've like wholesale adopted from Paul's work, Paul Bergner's work, is uh in the herbal paradigm, right?
55:56
SPEAKER_08: So he has material on like nutrition in the herbal paradigm.
56:00
SPEAKER_08: If protein were an herb, if magnesium were an herb, we would give it these actions and we would put it in these categories and we would think about it in these ways.
56:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:08
SPEAKER_08: And so if you just like think of all the things that go into broth and treat it as an herbal formula and also include the medicinal benefits of the meat and the bone and all of that kind of stuff in there as well, you can you can conceptually work with it the same way you think of a tincture formula or a tea blend or something like that.
56:26
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: Plus, it is fluids.
56:29
SPEAKER_01: And when you're sick, you need fluids uh to keep your kidneys going, to keep all the, you know, like ultimately you have to flush out can can be a problematic term, but I'm going with it.
56:44
SPEAKER_01: Please everybody understand it the right way.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: We need to flush stuff out.
56:48
SPEAKER_01: Like if we are talking about keeping the lymphatic system moving, but we're getting dehydrated because you're sick and you don't want to drink stuff because uh you're just laying there and not doing anything.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, then everything's gonna get really gummed up, and that's not gonna help either.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: So we need a lot of fluids so that we can be circulating a lot of fluids.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: Um drink your broth is what I'm saying.
57:12
SPEAKER_01: And also, like when you're sick, often there's like some nausea, even if it's not a stomach bug, it but you just your guts just don't feel very good.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to eat sometimes.
57:24
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you get the kind of sick where you're ravenous.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: Fine.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes you don't.
57:29
SPEAKER_01: And then it's really hard to eat at all and to get like being sick expends a lot of calories.
57:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so if you are having broth instead of water, better.
57:41
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
57:42
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
57:42
SPEAKER_08: That's nourishment with minimal effort on the part of your body.
57:46
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
57:46
SPEAKER_08: On the part of your digestive functions.
57:48
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
57:49
SPEAKER_01: Which is good because all that effort is going into all the other things going on right now.
57:53
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
57:54
SPEAKER_08: All right.
57:55
SPEAKER_08: So drink some broth and then go to bed.
57:57
SPEAKER_08: Yes.
57:57
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
57:57
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
57:58
SPEAKER_08: Let's get some sleep.
57:59
SPEAKER_08: This one, um, this one is super helpful and people often forget about it, right?
58:04
SPEAKER_08: Like one of our um, one of our assignments uh for one of the capstone assignments for one of our courses includes you're gonna make an immune support box for your family, and you're gonna help you get through the through the cold and flu and COVID season, right?
58:18
SPEAKER_08: So tell me what you're what you want to put in there.
58:20
SPEAKER_08: And people almost always hit the elderberry syrup and maybe the firesider and maybe some other preparations as well.
58:26
SPEAKER_08: But like my most frequent feedback is gonna be don't forget about sleep.
58:30
SPEAKER_08: Find some sleep remedy that you can rely on that's that's helpful and effective for you and and the people you're taking care of and include that in there because poor sleep lengthens an illness and good sleep shortens it dramatically.
58:42
SPEAKER_08: So let's get that.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, if even if we look back at the 1918 flu pandemic, um one thing uh, you know, Paul Bergner talks about this a lot too.
58:53
SPEAKER_01: One thing that was observed was that the people who were able to get in bed and stay there.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that was the people who had someone to take care of them and also who had a livelihood that allowed them to take the time off to get in bed and stay there, right?
59:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the people who were able to get in bed and stay there for the duration of their illness recovered better and faster than the people who could not, who sometimes did not recover because it was the 1918 flu pandemic.
59:29
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, you gotta go to bed.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: You gotta, and nobody wants to do that.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: People just go to work sick, they go wherever they go, sick, they go to the movies sick.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: And I think so much of that comes from a culture where our jobs for so long have not supported like taking care of yourself.
59:53
SPEAKER_01: If you need to miss work because you're sick, you either have a job where you have sick days, so you have to budget, like, oh, how many sick days can I afford to take right now?
1:00:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, or maybe you have the kind of job where you have to bring in a doctor's note in order to be allowed to take time off to be sick, which is just draconian.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, and nobody is like, hey, when you start to feel like you're sick, you should just stay home.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_01: Don't come in.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: Let's not get everybody else sick and let's get you better faster.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: That would actually be better for business.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: But employers don't do that.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_01: So if you are listening to this and you are an employer, consider this as a policy.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_01: If your employees are getting sick, tell them to stay home and get in bed before it gets bad.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh I promise they're gonna be more productive if if you uh put this policy in place.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_08: You tell them.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_08: All right.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_08: So sleep, sleep aid, sleep support herbs can be first off, do you already have some friends, right?
1:00:59
SPEAKER_08: Yeah like do you already have some herbs that you know are helpful for you when you have trouble sleeping, maybe from pain, maybe from anxiety, maybe from whatever other kind of physical or mental discomfort.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_08: We'll start with those.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be anything different than what helps you sleep on a regular Tuesday, right?
1:01:18
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but what if you don't usually have trouble sleeping and um now you're sick and you're like, well, I don't actually I this is not my time for experimentation.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: I don't really know who's gonna help me sleep.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh we do have some suggestions.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I would start here with chamomile.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: Not just because I feel like chamomile could fix everything for everyone, um, but because I need to like draw a giant chamomile on my I don't know what's chamomile.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: Um okay, so but because chamomile is relaxing to the body, relaxing to the mind and nervous system, especially relaxing to the guts.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_01: And so if you are crampy or just feeling cruddy in your guts, which just so commonly comes along with any kind of being sick, um chamomile really can help with all that stuff and just make sleeping more comfortable.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_01: But this is not your stick your pinky finger out, pale yellow chamomile tea kind of chamomile.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_08: One tea bag, five-minute infusion.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_08: No.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, no.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_01: This is make a quartz size jar, put like an inch or two of chamomile in the bottom, and of course that that will fluff up when you get it wet, but okay, whatever.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: And let it steep until it's dark brown.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_06: Covered.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_01: Yes, covered.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be bitter.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_01: Not that bitter, uh like a little bitter.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you don't like bitter things, or if you're unfamiliar with bitter, it may feel bitter for you, but it also still has the chamomile flavor.
1:02:58
SPEAKER_01: So if you toss a little bit of honey in there, it'll taste better.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the point here is get it in you because it really is going to help, but in order to get that anti-seismotic action, that relaxing action strong enough that it is helping to relax the tension in all your muscles.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: Because when you're sick, you do tend to like get tense in all your muscles, especially if you kind of have a fever, but not really, and so you have the chills.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh, in order to get all those actions, you really need it strong.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_01: So don't forget that part.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
1:03:35
SPEAKER_08: This could also be a place that skull cap or passion flower or betany uh can be can be helpful.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_08: These are like gentle relaxants and mild sedative herbs for the nervous system that just take the edge off, help you to wind down, help you to release a little bit.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_08: And sometimes that's enough to get you there, right?
1:03:54
SPEAKER_08: Especially if you're already tired to start with.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_01: I would have blue vervain to that list also.
1:04:00
SPEAKER_01: And I think the the one really special thing about this category is that because our society makes it so hard to take sick time, makes it so hard, even if you have sick time available to actually use the sick time because culturally that's not cool, right?
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, people people save up and have years worth of sick time and just never take it because that's not the culture at their job, right?
1:04:29
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so because even when we have it available to us, we have such a culture in our society of don't take sick time.
1:04:38
SPEAKER_01: If you are taking sick time, then you're probably worrying about who's replying to the email to that customer, who's gonna cover my whatever, what kind of pile of work am I coming back to when I'm done with this?
1:04:51
SPEAKER_01: Whatever, what deadline am I missing?
1:04:53
SPEAKER_01: And Skullcap and Passion Flower and Bettany and Blue Vervane all are not just relaxing and a little sedative, but also helping with that mental merry-go-round carousel thing of all those negative thoughts that are stressing you out and making you feel like, whatever, I'm just going to work because it'll be worse if I stay home.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_01: You know?
1:05:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, it all of them a little bit differently.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_01: So, for example, the skull cap and passion flower are really help helpful when it is the hamster wheel or the carousel like spinning around and around and you can't stop it.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_01: Whereas the blue vervane is really helpful when it is like um you can't let go of control.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_01: Like you actually have a coworker who's covering for you, but they're not gonna do it like you would.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, you know.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, if that is the problem, then blue vervane is gonna really help.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: And in general, the bettany helps when you're just stuck in your head and you need to get out of your head and just like a Allow yourself like just stop the spinning up there and allow yourself to just get in the bed.
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: Um so I I really like that psychological aspect, that like mental carousel aspect of having trouble sleeping.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_01: Um yes.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_08: Nice.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_08: All right.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_08: One other herb, and obviously this is not the end of the discussion of herbs that can help with sleep, but another key one to think of, and one we often turn to when there is uh uh an acute illness like this, and we're trying to aid sleep there, uh, is the plant wild lettuce.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_08: Um, so uh lactuca, verossa, and some other species and friends.
1:06:38
SPEAKER_08: Um so wild lettuce is really helpful in large part because it's a stronger sedative than these other others that we've mentioned.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_08: We have this kind of uh schema where there's like mild nervines that are mostly relaxant, a little stronger that are more directly sedative, but with a broad range of potencies there.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_08: And then at the higher end, we get hypnotics.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_08: And hypnotics are strongly sedative, they can make you feel sleepy, even if you're not already tired.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_08: But they're especially helpful when you're you are feeling tired, but you can't quite fall asleep.
1:07:09
SPEAKER_08: Maybe that's from pain, maybe that's because you're having fevers and those are keeping you up, you're right, something like that.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_08: But wild lettuce is very, very cooling.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_08: It relieves pain and discomfort, and it can make it easier for somebody to fall asleep and to sleep well and to and to really rest and to feel recovered in the morning.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_08: So, yeah, that's a that's a a really good friend for us around here in the Artemis.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_01: So certainly there's more herbs for each of those categories, but that is a big chunk of work that you can do in the logistics and supply category.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_01: Anybody can do that work, even if you are autoimmune, even if you're autoimmune and in a flare.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_01: These are all fine.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna push you into a flare, and they're really supportive.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_01: So we like them.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_08: We like them.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_08: All right, cool.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_08: Now uh we can also think about defense, about like building better barriers, I suppose, or yeah.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_08: We get we get caught up in the language with this, right?
1:08:14
SPEAKER_01: Like it's still military here.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_01: We don't we don't love it, but but it is it is the primary metaphor for the immune system.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_08: And we do want to improve our barrier function, but that doesn't mean to lock everything down, right?
1:08:29
SPEAKER_08: That would not actually be the most functional mucous membrane uh in your sinuses or in your eyes or inside of your lungs.
1:08:36
SPEAKER_08: This would be this would become a serious problem, right?
1:08:39
SPEAKER_08: So uh functional barriers, uh healthy barriers are flexible and they're not too far in one direction or another.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_08: Um, particularly not too dry, because that makes them actually more susceptible to microbial penetrations, um, but also not too lax, too open, right?
1:09:02
SPEAKER_08: Same thing.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_08: More likelihood of a bacteria or a virus particle or whatever to get in there, get a foothold, and initiate a real infection for you.
1:09:12
SPEAKER_01: So this is like um this again, this is like when you're thinking of what should I be doing every day from fall until spring, this is it.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_01: Actually, you could do this all year round because in the spring it's gonna be allergy season and you're gonna need the same, the same work, right?
1:09:28
SPEAKER_01: Your barrier function, like it's your skin.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_01: It is your mucous membranes in your respiratory tract.
1:09:36
SPEAKER_01: Well, also your eyes, they're not part of your respiratory tract, and your ears, um, and the lining of your GI tract.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_01: It is every place where we are up against the world.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_01: Like your liver does not come in contact with the air or whatever else.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_01: Anything that's getting to your liver is filtered through your digestive system, right?
1:09:58
SPEAKER_01: Only, only the approved items will pass.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_01: At least that's how it's supposed to work.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
1:10:05
SPEAKER_01: It works that way when your barriers are healthy.
1:10:09
SPEAKER_01: They let the good stuff through, they keep the bad stuff out.
1:10:13
SPEAKER_01: And so that is like just basic human maintenance that isn't even, there's nothing here about stimulating, there's no air raid sirens, there's no attack.
1:10:25
SPEAKER_01: This is just making sure that the paint isn't flaking off your house and then the siding starts to mold.
1:10:32
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_08: It is a physical interaction here, but it's also an uh biological one, right?
1:10:39
SPEAKER_08: Like you have components of your immune surveillance system that live in these mucous membranes and in these barrier uh, you know, sections of your body.
1:10:51
SPEAKER_08: They function better when the tissue that they're embedded in and surrounded by is not too dry, not too damp, not too lax, not too tense, but in a nice Goldilocks kind of a situation.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_08: Right?
1:11:03
SPEAKER_08: So they're better, like you can think of that as how can I improve immune efficiency at the first point of contact where the virus or the bacteria tries to get into me?
1:11:13
SPEAKER_08: Uh, it's by making sure that those membranes are working well.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_08: And fortunately, herbs are really, really good at this.
1:11:19
SPEAKER_08: So if things are too dry, guess what?
1:11:22
SPEAKER_08: We want some moistening plants, we want some demulsant herbs, we want things like marshmallow or linden or sassafras leaf uh or whatever your favorite demulsant is, whatever your local demulsant is, right?
1:11:36
SPEAKER_08: Um, they are gonna help your body to move fluid to those tissues and to maintain a proper degree of hydration and fluidity within them.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_01: And so you can visualize this actually.
1:11:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, if you have really dry skin and you start to see the cracks in between, and there's like redness in in between, and like the redness is in little lines, right?
1:12:02
SPEAKER_01: Like those plates that have the cracks in them.
1:12:06
SPEAKER_01: Um that is dryness.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_01: And when that happens, that's compromised function.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_01: Each of those little red lines is a place where bacteria has the opportunity, or or viruses or fungus or whatever has the opportunity to get inside of your body.
1:12:23
SPEAKER_01: You can also see this inside your nose.
1:12:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, you would need special equipment, but don't worry, because you can feel it so strongly that it becomes visual, right?
1:12:33
SPEAKER_01: When your nose is super dried out, and like maybe it's red around the the base of your nose, but like the inside of your nose is so dried out that every breath you take, it feels sharp and scratchy, right?
1:12:48
SPEAKER_01: You don't you can't see inside your nose, but it feels like there's giant cracks, like in the desert when it hasn't rained, and there's those giant cracks everywhere.
1:12:58
SPEAKER_01: It feels like that on the inside of your nose because it is that, and every one of those cracks is a place where some kind of pathogen can get easier access to inside your body.
1:13:11
SPEAKER_01: So that's why if stuff is really dried out, you are at risk.
1:13:15
SPEAKER_01: And in the winter, with so much, so many of us have dry heating systems, so it dries out the house.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_01: Even if you're a person who normally isn't super dry, your environment is becoming dry, your in your interior, your house environment, your work environment.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_01: And so you need to take extra care that the inside of your respiratory tract and everywhere else is staying lubricated so that those big cracks in the desert are not opening up inside your nose.
1:13:47
SPEAKER_08: And things can go too far in the other direction, also, right?
1:13:50
SPEAKER_08: Uh they can be too wet, but in a drippy way, right?
1:13:55
SPEAKER_08: So it's not it's not the ideal mucus that is like just enough to catch the little particulates and virions and pathogen bits and whatever and capture them in the phlegm, and then you blow them out and they didn't get a chance to get into you, right?
1:14:08
SPEAKER_08: But when the mucous membranes are lax, um, they're often going to be drippy unless your body is fairly dehydrated and then maybe they're just lax and kind of open.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_08: But again, it's a compromise to the integrity of the barrier.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_01: And it's that drippiness that's clear like water, clear and thin.
1:14:26
SPEAKER_01: It's not like drippy yellow mucus-y snot.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, that's crud that is getting expelled from your body.
1:14:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, it is that little runny faucet kind of mucus.
1:14:40
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:14:41
SPEAKER_08: And so in this case, what we're looking for is astringent herbs.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_08: And there's really a lot of astringent herbs, uh, more than demulcent herbs, honestly.
1:14:50
SPEAKER_08: So um, a couple of favorites of ours uh for these kinds of indications include agrimony, um, ladies' mantle, which is not just for pelvic floor issues.
1:15:00
SPEAKER_08: No, and definitely not just for women's pelvic floor issues.
1:15:03
SPEAKER_08: Anybody who's got one, you can work at that.
1:15:05
SPEAKER_08: Uh, but it it does have the typical effects of an astringent, which is gonna manifest itself on several mucous membranes inside of your body, right?
1:15:13
SPEAKER_08: Including your respiratory ones, your digestive ones, and get those into a nice, uh, a nice condition.
1:15:19
SPEAKER_08: Meadowsweet is really nice as well.
1:15:22
SPEAKER_08: Meadowsweet is another herb that gets pigeonholed as like a headache remedy or a delivery system for um for salicylate compounds.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_08: Um, but it it has this astringent quality to it.
1:15:33
SPEAKER_08: And so that can that can be very helpful.
1:15:35
SPEAKER_08: Now these are all ones where you can drink them as tea, and then you can experience these effects in your sinuses, in your lungs.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_08: It's gonna be happening through the GI tract.
1:15:45
SPEAKER_08: So it's also pretty simple to take uh and to get the impact that we're looking for with these guys.
1:15:51
SPEAKER_08: Um do note that in neither case is it like, oh, if I wanna if I wanna have good immune defense, I've got to drink demulcence all the time, or I've got to drink astringence all the time.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_08: It's responsive to your constitution, right?
1:16:03
SPEAKER_08: So me, I tend to run dry.
1:16:05
SPEAKER_08: I more frequently I'm gonna benefit from demulcence than from astringence.
1:16:11
SPEAKER_01: And yet, I run damp and I have extra fluid everywhere.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_01: But when it's winter and the heat's on, well, my nose is gonna dry out too, even though I retain water in lots of places in my body.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_01: Like my nose is still breathing in the dry air, and that will dry out my nose regardless.
1:16:32
SPEAKER_01: So it's like your constitution is one thing.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_01: And in your case, your constitution demands that you preemptively pay a lot of attention to this and even give it like a running head start.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_01: But for me, it it means that like I just need to be aware that, hey, if I start feeling dry, I should take action right away.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_01: And I should not assume that I'm never gonna feel dry in my nose just because I have plenty of fluid in my ankles or you know, like whatever else.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_08: You respond to what you observe, right?
1:17:03
SPEAKER_08: And it can also be that over the course of one round of illness that you need changes, right?
1:17:09
SPEAKER_08: Like uh for a lot of people, especially if they haven't encountered it several times, their first um exposure to COVID, their their respiratory infection experience, that portion of their COVID uh journey, uh, can often manifest with a lot of dryness, right?
1:17:25
SPEAKER_08: And so that could call for um for some demulcence.
1:17:29
SPEAKER_08: Okay.
1:17:29
SPEAKER_08: But maybe later on after a while your body starts to react, and maybe you do start to make some snot, and then you blow your nose a bunch, and then maybe that happens for several days, and then now the mucous membranes are kind of irritated and they're kind of they're kind of open and lax at that point, and now they get dirty.
1:17:45
SPEAKER_08: Um and now maybe you need a touch of some astringency to go in and correct that state.
1:17:50
SPEAKER_08: So you respond to what you see and you acknowledge that it may change as things play out over time.
1:17:56
SPEAKER_01: We're modulating again.
1:17:57
SPEAKER_08: We are doing it, aren't we?
1:17:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it never stops.
1:17:59
SPEAKER_08: All of our sliders.
1:18:00
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
1:18:01
SPEAKER_01: All right, and then you know, the last category here um that we're gonna talk about today is vulneraries.
1:18:07
SPEAKER_01: Vulnerary is an old word that means um it heals epithelial cells.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_01: So that will be your epithelium, your skin, and your endothelium, that is like the lining of your GI tract, the lining of your lungs, but also the lining of your blood vessels, the lining of your bladder, the lining of like so many things in your body.
1:18:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh so making sure that all of that that lining tissue is not too leaky, not compromised, so that it lets only the good stuff through and not the bad stuff, that's where the vulneraries are important.
1:18:50
SPEAKER_01: Literally, just like if you get a cut on your arm and you put calindulus av on it because that helps the cut heal faster.
1:18:58
SPEAKER_01: That can happen inside your digestive tract, inside your lungs, inside any part of you that has these endothelial cells.
1:19:06
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_08: For for modern people, a lot of times our main focus on vulneraries is going to be through the GI tract, like more so than maybe the respiratory tract, you know, uh, because maybe there's an outright ulcer, like a stomach ulcer or a or a ulcerative colitis thing or something else going on.
1:19:24
SPEAKER_08: But maybe there's also this manifestation of increased permeability or hyperpermeability, which we mostly just call leaky gut, right?
1:19:32
SPEAKER_08: And that's super common, and that traces back to chronic inflammation that can absolutely be a part of somebody with a chronic inflammatory problem, a chronic autoimmune health problem, can very strongly manifest in this way.
1:19:45
SPEAKER_08: Um and getting a more integral uh uh barrier through your GI tract is super, super helpful for lots of reasons, uh, above and beyond your response to pathogens, but totally containing that.
1:20:01
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_01: All right, so some of our favorite vulneraries, listen, there are a ton of vulneraries, but some of our favorites.
1:20:08
SPEAKER_01: Um goldenrod, I think, is right up at the tiffy top, even though you might have thought I was gonna say calendula first.
1:20:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm gonna say it's second.
1:20:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, but goldenrod, the Latin name of goldenrod, solidago, it means to make whole.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, I really love the flowers of goldenrod, and I harvest them preferentially over the leaves.
1:20:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, the the flowers have more of that aromatic action, the leaves have more of the bitter action.
1:20:38
SPEAKER_01: So if you need more bitter in your life, go with the leaves.
1:20:41
SPEAKER_01: If you need more of those aromatic actions, which is also going to push it towards the kidneys and the bladder and any kind of urinary stuff, which is also going to support elimination and lymphatic function, then the flowers are going to be what you want.
1:20:59
SPEAKER_01: It's getting easier to buy goldenrod in commerce, but typically when you do, it's mostly leaf.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to emphasize that flower part, then it's better to harvest it yourself.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, it's pretty abundant in a lot of regions.
1:21:15
SPEAKER_01: So it's not too hard to harvest yourself.
1:21:18
SPEAKER_08: Another amazing vulnerability that I can't let the topic go by without mentioning is St.
1:21:22
SPEAKER_08: John's wart.
1:21:23
SPEAKER_08: Now, this is one of those if and only if kind of herbs, right?
1:21:26
SPEAKER_08: You're only gonna take this if you don't have any other, uh if you don't have pharmaceutical drugs in your life with which it could interact.
1:21:33
SPEAKER_08: Somebody coming at this from an autoimmune uh background may already have some medications going on for their autoimmune condition.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_08: Those may interact with St.
1:21:42
SPEAKER_08: John's wort.
1:21:43
SPEAKER_08: And in that case, no, right?
1:21:44
SPEAKER_08: We're not gonna we're not gonna choose this for this purpose.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_01: In that case, go with calendula, go with goldenrod, go with even chamomile.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_08: And don't forget plantain leaf, and don't forget marshmallow, and don't forget erigaron, and don't forget really a lot of plants have this kind of impact.
1:22:00
SPEAKER_08: Um and so it's not quite to the level of just get some herbs into the person.
1:22:05
SPEAKER_08: It's pretty close to that.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now listen, um getting the herb to the problem is a big part of being successful with herbalism.
1:22:17
SPEAKER_01: So if we are trying to get the herb to the digestive tract um or like even to the lungs or to internal endothelial cells, okay, tea is going to be a really great way to go.
1:22:27
SPEAKER_01: But if the vulnerary action you need is inside your nose, because, or like even around your nose, um, because you have been blowing your nose so much and your whole nose is just on fire all of the time, well, don't drink tea for that.
1:22:44
SPEAKER_01: Just get a nice salve of one.
1:22:46
SPEAKER_07: You get a cup of tea and then you just stick your nose in it and you leave it there for like five or ten minutes.
1:22:50
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that actually probably would work.
1:22:53
SPEAKER_03: Just don't breathe it.
1:22:55
SPEAKER_03: Just like breathe through mouth.
1:22:56
SPEAKER_08: Oh, you're breathing through your mouth.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_08: Breathe through mouth.
1:22:58
SPEAKER_08: I was gonna hold my breath.
1:22:59
SPEAKER_08: Okay, I get it.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_01: Oh well, okay, that would work too.
1:23:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but so in this case, a nice salve that's goldenrod or calendula or chamomile or any of the vulnerite plantain, and just put it on a Q-tip, put it in your nose.
1:23:13
SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
1:23:13
SPEAKER_08: She doesn't use a Q-tip, y'all.
1:23:15
SPEAKER_08: She just puts it on her finger.
1:23:17
SPEAKER_08: She does wash her hands after, but I'm just let's be honest here.
1:23:20
SPEAKER_03: I I do.
1:23:21
SPEAKER_03: I was, you know, like what are you It's fine.
1:23:25
SPEAKER_01: Things you know when you're married.
1:23:28
SPEAKER_01: Y'all didn't need to know that.
1:23:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but another option is a hydrosol, like a chamomile hydrosol.
1:23:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, is really nice if you just spray it like right under your nose and breathe in.
1:23:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, you can get one of those nose spritzer things too.
1:23:44
SPEAKER_01: That's totally fine.
1:23:45
SPEAKER_01: I don't have one.
1:23:46
SPEAKER_01: I don't, I I don't know why, I just don't have one.
1:23:48
SPEAKER_01: But it works great if you just spray the hydrosol on your face.
1:23:51
SPEAKER_01: And listen, at that point your eyes are probably dry too, and everything else.
1:23:55
SPEAKER_01: So just spray it on your face and breathe it in, and that also can be really helpful.
1:24:00
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't want to put a Q-tip in your nose with salve on it or your pinky finger, um, then you could go with the hydrosol root instead.
1:24:10
SPEAKER_08: All right.
1:24:10
SPEAKER_01: Aren't you glad you listened this long?
1:24:13
SPEAKER_08: This is your reward.
1:24:14
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:24:16
unknown: Yeah.
1:24:16
SPEAKER_08: All right.
1:24:16
SPEAKER_08: So just stepping back, right?
1:24:18
SPEAKER_08: We've been saying it's not just about immune stimulation.
1:24:22
SPEAKER_08: We want to build up resilience.
1:24:23
SPEAKER_08: There are many facets to that.
1:24:25
SPEAKER_08: We can work with uh herbs and foods as well to help to modulate our immune response so that it gets the inflammation where it's where it needs to be for the amount of time it needs to be, and not everywhere else and not for a long stretch of time, right?
1:24:38
SPEAKER_08: We're thinking about moving fluids with our lymphatic herbs, we're thinking about nourishing the body through nutritive effects, making sure you can sleep well, and taking care of the integrity of the parts of your body that come into contact with the outside world.
1:24:52
SPEAKER_08: Right.
1:24:53
SPEAKER_08: So that is our answer to what does somebody with autoimmunity do when they want to boost their immunity?
1:24:59
SPEAKER_08: There you go.
1:25:00
SPEAKER_00: Nice short answer.
1:25:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which we're we're known for.
1:25:04
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:25:05
SPEAKER_08: Uh she's not kidding.
1:25:07
SPEAKER_08: This is sort of the short version.
1:25:08
SPEAKER_08: So if you want the long version, check it out.
1:25:12
SPEAKER_08: We've got a deal for you.
1:25:13
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:25:13
SPEAKER_01: So the long version is our immune health course and our respiratory health course.
1:25:19
SPEAKER_01: And what I have done for you is I have combined those two into a bundle.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm calling it the winter health bundle.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, normally, if you got those two courses, it would be$650.
1:25:30
SPEAKER_01: But I am pricing this at 40% off if you get it in the bundle.
1:25:35
SPEAKER_01: So it'll only be$390.
1:25:37
SPEAKER_01: There are, I don't know, I think it's close to 80 hours of video.
1:25:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, it is very in-depth.
1:25:45
SPEAKER_01: Understanding immune function and immune herbs and how to put all that together, understanding hypersensitivity, autoimmunity, inflammation, all that stuff, how to make herbal choices for it.
1:26:00
SPEAKER_01: And then also in the respiratory course, it is okay, all of our regular respiratory information, like all the different herbs and the and the ways that you would get them into you and stuff like that.
1:26:12
SPEAKER_01: But then really going through all different kinds of respiratory problems from a cold to COPD to like everything in between, and looking at how do we build strategies for that person to help them recover and stay healthy.
1:26:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, and also all of our cold and flu and COVID strategies are in there as well.
1:26:33
SPEAKER_01: So this is tons of material for 40% off in this bundle.
1:26:39
SPEAKER_01: You aren't going to need even a coupon code.
1:26:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to price this bundle special for you.
1:26:46
SPEAKER_01: And so just grab that winter health bundle.
1:26:48
SPEAKER_01: Rin has put the link in the show notes.
1:26:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's what you can do for fall and winter is spend your time instead of binging Netflix or whatever, uh, binge herbal information and you will never get sick again.
1:27:04
SPEAKER_01: No, you probably will, but you will know what to do when it happens.
1:27:09
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:27:10
SPEAKER_08: And as is usual with all of the courses that we offer, this is a self-paced video-focused program.
1:27:16
SPEAKER_08: Uh, you take it at your own pace.
1:27:18
SPEAKER_08: There is no time limit on this.
1:27:20
SPEAKER_08: You have access to the material for as long as there's an internet and we are on it.
1:27:24
unknown: Yeah.
1:27:25
SPEAKER_08: Um, and when you get these courses or any of our course materials, you get access to twice-weekly live QA sessions with me and or Katya.
1:27:36
SPEAKER_08: You get access to our private student community where you can chat with your peers and your friends and share all your successes and beautiful herb harvests and every other cool thing that you come across.
1:27:46
SPEAKER_08: Um, there are study guides, there are quizzes, there are capstone assignments.
1:27:50
SPEAKER_08: So you can really prove to yourself mostly that you learned what you learned.
1:27:54
SPEAKER_01: Although when you turn in your capstone assignment, we read it ourselves and we send you feedback on it.
1:27:59
SPEAKER_01: So you're proving it to yourself.
1:28:01
SPEAKER_01: But but also we're in discussion with you about yes, you have this.
1:28:06
SPEAKER_01: You did it.
1:28:07
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:28:07
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
1:28:08
SPEAKER_08: You're not here learning on your own.
1:28:10
SPEAKER_08: You're not reading a PDF and then trying to figure out if you learned anything.
1:28:14
SPEAKER_08: You're not just watching a video and then moving on.
1:28:16
SPEAKER_08: We are here to help you.
1:28:18
SPEAKER_08: And uh we have lots of different ways for you to reach out and to get direct contact with your fearless faculty.
1:28:25
SPEAKER_01: Also, uh, if you are listening to this in your ears instead of listening to it with your eyes, uh and you think, oh, video, I don't know, I really like podcasts, no problem because every video file has a corresponding audio file.
1:28:39
SPEAKER_01: So if you prefer to learn by listening, maybe while you're going for a walk or doing chores or whatever else, you totally can.
1:28:46
SPEAKER_01: You can just listen to the audio version of every video and learn that way.
1:28:50
SPEAKER_01: We try to make it really flexible for all different kinds of learning styles, and we think you're gonna love it.
1:28:56
SPEAKER_08: That's right.
1:28:57
SPEAKER_08: Okay, that's it.
1:28:59
SPEAKER_08: That's it.
1:29:00
SPEAKER_08: We did it.
1:29:00
SPEAKER_08: Uh thanks for listening, and we'll be back soon with another episode of the Holistic Herbalism Podcast.
1:29:07
SPEAKER_08: Until then, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, drink some tea, drink some tea, and stick some saddle up your nose.
1:29:15
SPEAKER_08: Why not?
1:29:17
SPEAKER_02: Bye bye.