Chocolate and Roses as Plant Medicine

Different plants, different voices, and different ways of having conversations.

It's time to get personal with plant medicine. Welcome to Getting Personal with Plant Medicine. I'm your host, Diana Crash, and today I am joined by the lovely Dale Bellisfield of Cancestra. She is a certified herbalist, and she is going to share her infinite wisdom today with us. How are you doing today, Dale? Just great. I'm about to pop a chocolate ball into my mouth even before we speak. Maybe wait.

Just kidding. Yes. So I'm glad that you just gave us that segue because one of the things that we'll talk about today is chocolate. So we can just get right into the chocolate if you want to and then segue into the roses. What do you want to, how do you want to start? Whatever you'd like. Whatever you'd like. All right. Well, let's, since we already mentioned the chocolate, let's start with it. Okay. Let's talk about chocolate as plant medicine.

I really didn't think about that being a concept, which is pretty silly when you think about it because my whole thing is trying to look at everything as plant medicine because I feel like it is in all parts of our lives. But for some reason, chocolate didn't really enter my brain as plant medicine when clearly it is until you showed me your favorite when you held up a chocolate bar. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about, first of all, how is it considered a plant medicine?

Well, it's a plant, first of all. It's a big tree. It's in the mallow family, like hollyhocks and linden and okra. But it's been a plant medicine for at least 6,000 years. It was originally discovered from archaeological sites in Ecuador that it's gone back that far. So, so far, that's the oldest that we've seen. And it wasn't a candy like we think of it now. The bar part, the molded confection, only came around in the 1800s, I think the late 1800s.

So it's been a drink for the, initially, those Mayo, Chinchapi, Maranon culture people in Ecuador. And then... It has a long and complex history of being traded. So it was traded north into Central America and Mexico that we are most familiar with its being from, the Maya, the Olmec, the Aztecs, but the Ecuadorians predated that. So a long time use. And it was originally this beverage made from the ground seeds that come inside the chocolate pod.

And it needs humans or animals to open it because the tree itself can't release its own seeds. So it's a kind of an integration between people and nature. And it was basically a spiritual beverage. It was so important that they used it for burial offerings and other major life events like dowry objects, luxury items. It was even used as currency, but that's not, it's medicine. It was such a big part of the spiritual life that it kind of became part of one's body through the spiritual use.

And in ancient Mayan books, the codices, they have many, many uses for it as medicine. And then modern medicine has validated that. So I don't even know where to start because I have an entire talk on chocolate alone. So I try and summarize it as best as I can and just stop me when your eyeball starts to roll back in your head. But. You know, it's funny, though, not to cut you off. But now that you're saying that I'm like, I do remember reading this.

And I so I do know about the chocolate drink being used in a medicinal way. But just to maybe give you a little bit of direction here, how you said something about modern medicine, verifying it, that it is medicinal. But what, why did we kind of stop using it in the ways that you're discussing, right? I mean, obviously, we have hot chocolate, we have chocolate, it's available. But as part of a wellness plan, how, why is it not included in that so much?

Why is it considered more so like a luxury and it's something you indulge in? I mean, that's a big question. But you know what I mean? No, that's an excellent question. And I feel like our culture has invalidated the benefit of fats and chocolate is high in fats. It's also, we prefer the more sweet version and the initial beverage of chocolate was not very sweet. It was bitter. It was bitter until it got to Europe and they added milk and sugar.

And so that is not the real healthy part. The healthy part is the dark chocolate. And it is an expensive product. It costs a lot. It's complex to make and it's hard to grow. So it is a luxury item. But because we've been told that fat is bad, we've kind of, and it's high in calories. So this whole calorie thing has overshadowed the medicinal benefits. Diet culture. Diet culture. Yeah. And we have to be skinny and not have any fats, but our brains made a fat and fat surrounds every single cell.

And it's, we need to rethink it, I'll say. So what is your personal connection with it? How have you used it in your practice? I like to eat it a lot in my life. I like to recommend it to others. And I'll tell you why, as we get deeper into it, it's not only just this lovely entity, it melts at It's slightly lower than body temperature, so it melts in your mouth, literally. And the aroma of it itself releases endorphins, so it already starts to make you feel good just by smelling it.

But it's very high in minerals. It's very high in nutrients. It's high in things like magnesium, potassium. Selenium, zinc, et cetera. It's high in good fats. The fats that are in chocolate don't lead to heart disease. In fact, they help lower cholesterol and they help keep the arteries flexible. And it's high in antioxidants. It's very, very good for the brain. It helps with memory. There are studies that show that people that ate chocolate before a test did

better on their tests. They had better recall. It helps reduce the decline in Alzheimer's. Wow. It contains, you'll love this. It contains our own, one of our own endocannabinoids. So it makes what we make, it makes anandamide. Oh, yes. That's the, yes. I know about that, but you should probably, you should probably say it. Yes. It makes this compound anandamide that we also make. And it was named for the how good it makes us feel. Anandamide is related to the Sanskrit term for bliss.

Which is probably why people like to eat it so much during their menstruation or during their time when their anandamides are so low. Right, right. And it's also, you know, the magnesium helps with cramps. So, yeah. So I was amazed that it's not a phytocannabinoid per se. It's actually an endo, which means the one that we actually make. It's the same thing that we make. And so that targets our cannabinoid receptors, especially in the brain, which impact our mood. So it helps improve our mood.

Plus it has compounds in it that keep that... Chemical around longer. And it has additional chemicals. It has like very complex chemistry. It's got at least 600 compounds in it. And it has something called PEA or phenol ethyl amine, which is a compound that's released during love. It's the love, the love compound. So chocolate promotes happiness and stimulates a lot of our pleasure centers in various ways.

In addition to that, it has immune benefits and it has endurance and reduces fatigue in athletes so that there are studies that show that chocolate drink was better for the athletes. They lasted longer and they had less fatigue than those that drank sports drinks. Wow. I believe that. Yeah. And this was just chocolate milk, not the dark chocolate that is even better for us. Wow. That's incredible. Oh, yeah. And there's more, too. Oh, yes.

I just have one question really quickly, because I'm seeing there's more people talking about cocoa leaf. And I know that's different in a way, right? If you're taking that as a supplement, or not supplement, but if you're putting that into your diet, is that the same type of thing? It's a different plant. Coca is what they make cocaine out of, and the leaf is the... The source of it, the cocaine is the alkaloid that's within the leaf,

but the natives chew the leaf to give them energy. So it's not the single compound of cocaine. It has all the other plant compounds that are in the leaves like chlorophyll and I don't even know what else. But it's not cocoa. It's not the cocoa leaf. Okay. It's not cocoa and it's not cocoa. And so it's very similar in sound, but it's a different plant. Okay. I'm pretty sure I knew that, but I just wanted to double check. Yeah. It's very good to clarify those things so that I don't even know.

I know people that have gone to Peru hiking and have been given the coca leaves to help them with the altitude, but I don't even know if you can get them here because of the potential cocaine content. So, but that's another topic. Yeah, right. Sorry, I didn't mean to get you off guard there. I've just seen people talking about it more and I'm seeing it kind of in the spaces a little bit more when it comes to microdosing and people talking about different things that you can microdose.

So I was concerned because that's what I was thinking it was. And I just wanted to be sure. No, no. Although we digress, it is relevant. So chocolate, I found out was because the beans have to be fermented before they get processed into the actual chocolate liquor and then liqueur rather, and it becomes the bar eventually. Because of their fermentation, they are considered a prebiotic.

Eating chocolate is a prebiotic. So that means that feeds the good bacteria in our digestive tract, the prebiotics. And is that just dark chocolate or all chocolate? I only am talking about dark chocolate because that has most benefits. Yeah. Everything I talk about today really relates most to the dark chocolate, which is the 70% or greater chocolate cocoa content. Oh, okay. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah. So one of my favorite stories, it was about a woman who was maybe the oldest documented person in history that may have been surpassed. Her name is Jeanne Clement. She's French. And I think she died at 123. And for almost most of her life, she smoked a lot and she drank. You know, she's a typical French woman, very sophisticated. And she ate two pounds of chocolate a week until her doctor told her to stop at 119.

And I think that led to her death. But so those two pounds of chocolate a week, I think contributed to her longevity. So there's some, some possible benefit for chocolate and longevity. I don't know that they've done a lot of studies, but they have done some that show that eating those who eat more chocolate live longer. And the pregnant women who eat chocolate during their pregnancy have happier babies. At six months, they smile sooner.

And yeah, chocolate helps prevent preeclampsia, I think because of the magnesium in it. So we encourage pregnant women to eat at least an ounce or so of chocolate a day. So there's lots of ways to eat it. And the powdered unsweetened chocolate obviously has the most benefit, but that's very bitter. But you can put it in foods like chili. I add it to my chili to give a kind of a nice base note of richness and slightly bitter taste. But it just kind of adds to the fullness of the chili flavor.

So it's one of my spices for chili. And you can probably add it as a coating for meat rubs and things like that. You can add other spices to it, of course. And initially, the beverage had cinnamon and chilies and vanilla and whatever other flavors were around those communities that used the chocolate and made the drink out of it.

So let's talk about something else that you might be able to include in that chocolate mix. Maybe. Roses. We're switching gears, even though they seem to complement each other quite a bit in, you know, pop culture and in the world, you know, chocolate and roses go together in a lot of romantic ways, but we haven't actually discussed how it could go together medicinally. I mean, we haven't together on this podcast yet. I'm sure there are people out there talking about it in the world.

How can those two combine in a medicinal way? Well, I can give your audience a recipe for a rose and chocolate candy bar. So that would be definitely a dessert. It's not as medicinal as other ways to include it. But so roses by themselves have many ways to be used in in one's herbal practice. So we can do them as a tea, as a honey. I put rose petals, fresh or dry, in honey and then turn the bottle every day so that the roses infuse through the honey because they're so light.

They tend to float to the top, so you just keep turning the bottle over. And then after several weeks, the honey will taste like roses, and that is both medicinal and kind of spirit lifting, so that you could add that to a tea, a rose petal tea in itself to sweeten it, and or you can just have that to make you feel a little better. So roses are medicine for the heart, both the spiritual heart and the physical heart. They are antioxidant, antimicrobial. They are very good as comfort medicine.

We use them a lot for grief, for PTSD, for people who are stuck in kind of a depression that they just can't find their way out of. So roses are indicated for that. You can have them in a tincture. One of my wonderful teachers, David Winston, has a product called Grief Relief, which is a blended tincture of roses. Mimosa, and hawthorn flowers and berries to lift the spirits. It's a wonderful, wonderful blend for people who are heartbroken from whatever reason.

So if you have a friend that's gone through a breakup or if a tragedy has happened to someone that you know and love, you know, offer them rose petal tea. You can blend it with other things or have it as just the petals themselves. Although for some people, the flavor may be just too strong. So you might want to add other things that are calming or spirit lifting, depending on what's going on. So that's where your own art and your own practice comes into play.

Roses also have some antibacterial activity. And I read that you can put them, the rose petals, on minor cuts and abrasions. And when they dry, they kind of act like a bandage. I would wrap it in gauze first to hold them on there. All kind of like plantain, it will help the wound heal. So I thought that was really interesting. And though I haven't tried that, I have not usually around that many fresh roses here in Arizona, though we do have them growing.

And I think that you had asked if there were some kind that were more specific. I was just about to ask you that. Yes. Funny little story really quickly about this before we go into this. The only experience I ever had eating roses was on my wedding day, because my husband and I, there's a lot of things going wrong. But one of the things is that the pastor hadn't put the communion materials out where they were supposed to be, and we had our backs turned to the audience.

And the only thing that was on the table were rose petals. So we just both took a rose petal and ate the rose petal. As a communion wafer. Yes. I love it. And then my chef friend later said, well, that's not, you're not supposed to do that. You have to cook them a certain way and then they can be edible. So I just, I never really explored it after that. But now I'm very curious, which types of roses can you use and how should one prepare them?

Great question. Well, I'm glad you live to tell the tale. The roses aren't really toxic in any way, except if they've been sprayed. So you want to know the source of your roses. And the best types of roses are the most fragrant ones because that aroma is not only good for like the chocolate for triggering endorphins in your brain and activating pleasure centers. Terpenes, right? Terpenes and other compounds in there. Yeah, the terpenes, the rose essential oils, especially.

But so the roses that have the better fragrances are the older lineage roses, like the damask rose from Damascus, Syria, the cabbage rose. I'm not sure where these are all from. The dog rose and the beach rose. We have a lot of beach roses, I know, along the Jersey Shore, the Eastern Shore alone. And I'm talking about the petals in this talk, not the hips, which have their own medicine.

So those are really wonderful types. So if you know that your roses haven't been sprayed and that they have a wonderful aroma, those are the ones that you can use. So you would just pluck them. Not when they're old looking, but when they're new and just starting to bloom. And that's when you would use them. You can spread them out to dry them out of the sun on a paper towel, which is on the screen. Or you can use them fresh in honey.

Or you can use them fresh as an additive in any of your recipes. In traditional Persian and Middle Eastern cooking, they use them a lot to flavor desserts. So puddings and other rices, some sweet rices, they would use rose petals as part of the recipe. And then, yeah, yeah. And then Turkish delight is flavored with rose water. Really? So can you make rose water out of rose petals? Rose water is made through the distillation process to make rose essential oil.

So the best way to get your own rose fragrance and not have to buy the expensive things is the rose petal honey. It has a really good rose aroma to it. And you just let it cure in the honey for a little while? Or is there like a certain time? For two weeks. Wow. That's right. You said two weeks. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We'll let that flavor, the aroma, infuse through it. But you You have to turn it every day or more just to get the petals to go through the honey.

So that will work because they'll sit on top otherwise. And then I buy skin creams that are made by my friend's daughters. The company is called Peak Scents, S-C-E-N-T-S, and they have a pomegranate hand and body cream. And it's with great ingredients on all or, you know, mostly I think for all organic and wonderful oils, but they use a rose oil in their product. So I use that for my my body cream. So that's another way to to to use it.

In a medicine way or a beauty way. So however you want to express that. Yeah. But it is something that pairs well with other herbs, obviously, and especially chocolate, because all of those things that you said, it seems like chocolate pretty much does those. So it's like double, it seems like. Double duty for your pleasure. Yeah. So. Or tricky duty for your heart, your spiritual heart, your physical heart, your mind, your digestion, all of your pleasure centers.

So those both help, but especially together. I love to combine things. I rarely use symbols because I like to have the benefit of as much as I can without diluting without diluting the amount. So I try and formulate my medicines that way. So I will use maybe up to eight herbs in a formula that I'm working on. So I did want to talk about my personal connection to roses before I was an herbalist. A long, long time ago, I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer.

And it took me on a journey that led me to here. So I have no regrets. And I learned a lot from that process. It turns out, miraculously, I did not have cancer. But I had something that needed my attention. And while I was in the process of figuring out what to do with this diagnosis, I decided just to kind of close my eyes and focus on my lower body. And what came to me was the image of a rose in the sun.

And it came from, I don't know where in the universe, but I was very grateful for that image. And I felt so much better just seeing that and feeling that in my lower body. And from then on, I felt a real kinship to roses. And so I began to research about them. And then kind of one thing led to another. And I found my first herbal teacher, Robin Rose Bennett, and then David Winston, and then a line of other wonderful teachers. I'm so grateful for them. So that rose imagery has stayed with me.

And then when I went to Italy a couple of years ago with my partner, Jerry Eaton, we went to Assisi and there's a relationship with St. Francis and roses. So I'm not sure of what the myth was. I'm not sure if the roses bloomed in the snow or if it was that there were roses without thorns. There's something that's further to be. Explore. But I'm not the only person, clearly, to have had a real spiritual relationship with roses.

So I know the Virgin of Guadalupe is all about his view of Mary and roses came to him. So a lot of things with roses happen to many people on the spiritual path. So I just wanted to throw that into.

I love that. And so what do you wish people knew switching back to chocolate? What do you wish people knew about chocolate before before we end? I just want to know what you wish people knew about the healing aspects like on a more general level, you know, like more people if it was more mainstream, what do you wish people would know? Yeah. So chocolate, chocolate impacts the whole body. It's an amazing plant.

And so it reaches us in our heart, in our brain, in our immune system, our digestive system, in our endurance, in our longevity, in our pleasure centers. And so, you know, chocolate, about an ounce and a half a day shouldn't put weight on you. And that should give you these benefits and hopefully keep you longer lasting in this world. So you can do your work well. And some people may be allergic to co-bromine. So everybody's different. It may help or increase migraines.

So again, everybody's different. It is toxic to your dogs and cats and horses. So keep it away from them. There was recent study that chocolate had some chocolates had had had man and lead in them. So I want to make sure that you just eat the ones that have been found to be free of those things as best as you know. So Gerardelli dark chocolate is on the good list. Valrhona is on the good list and masked chocolates are on the good list.

And there's probably many more because they didn't test every single chocolate. But one of my friends, this may be a little off topic, but one of my friends made these beautiful chocolate bowls, which I didn't get to eat at the outset, that have quinoa, peanut butter, tahini, honey, coconut, sesame seeds, protein powder, cocoa powder, cacao chips, vanilla, chia seeds, and psyllium husks in them, which I think are delicious.

And so get creative with your chocolate. Okay, I know I mentioned cacao, and now you're bringing it up again. I think that there is a misconception that cacao is like some version of chocolate. Or am I misconceiving it? Maybe. I just never understood cacao, I guess, is the thing. I've had people give it to me. I've tried it. But I'm just like, I don't understand how is this different than chocolate. Oh, there is a, between cocoa and cacao, there is a distinction.

I think the products on the tree are called cacao. And once they're processed, they're called cocoa. Okay. So I'm not sure that we need to split hairs on that. Okay. I'm just going to call it all chocolate. Okay. And maybe the cocoa is just plain unsweetened, but that's not always true either. So it is very confusing and you're not alone in being confused. So cocoa powder is, from my interpretation, just unsweetened cocoa, but that may not be true for everybody calling that. Okay.

So get creative with your use of it. Plain unsweetened chocolate is very bitter. If you've ever tasted 100% cocoa, it's like, nah, this needs some work. So when you start adding stuff to it, it loses some of its amazing antioxidant properties. For example, a plain unsweetened chocolate is in there like ORAC, the antioxidant unit measurement is something like 95,000 units. Dark chocolate has something like 13,000, so it loses a lot.

By comparison, broccoli has only about 1,000, and that's a great food too. So chocolate is way higher than those. And then white chocolate has zero. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so white chocolate is not really beneficial for anything. Yeah, I remember reading that. Yeah, it doesn't taste like it does either. I feel like when you eat white chocolate, you don't get that rush of all the things that you just said. It doesn't lift my mood or make me feel like I'm thinking better.

Yeah, I think icing. It's pretty much like icing. Yeah. And it's a nice contrast in terms of the visuals, in terms of color. So you could do your like a black and white chocolate bar with rose petals in it. That's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah, I have that recipe if you want me to send it to you. Yes, please. We'll link it in the show notes. I really appreciate that. So you'll come back on multiple times. I know we are going to pick your brain and hear all of your wonderful stories again and again.

But for today, before we end, how about you tell people how they can support you and where they can find you?

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, I think the best way to reach me is via email. And that is HerbalDale at AOL.com. I know I'm old. That's why I still have AOL. It's okay. My sister does too. And then if you're, Your listeners are interested in our Cancestra product, which is a topical lotion for pain, and that's all botanicals. They can find that at www.cancestra.com. We'll link it in the show notes too. Oh, okay, great. Great. So that's probably the best way.

And if you or your listeners have questions, just contact me online. That's the best way through my copy. Thank you. And also, I just have to say a really quick promotion of those products because I was lucky enough to try them. You can definitely tell that an herbalist helped formulate these products because they are fantastic. I mean, really, truly. I'm obsessed. Thank you. We have a great formulator. Our third partner is a scientist.

He's a pharmacologist. So he knows all about the technology of getting it through the skin and he created new science to do that. So we're real proud of that too. And then my partner is a cannabis botanist. So all of us kind of had our, put together our little recipes to make this a really great product. That's awesome. We didn't put in chocolate or roses though. Maybe the next, the next version we'll have. Thank you. Thank you so much. So we'll talk soon. Yes. And I'll send you the

links to the recipes. Great. Take care. This podcast has been a product of Your Highness Media. Each episode is written, produced, and edited. Music.