Hi, I'm
Kaia . And I'm Rin . And
We're here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts,
And on the internet everywhere. Thanks to the power of the podcast.
Woohoo .
Mm-hmm . .
Well, so we're , uh, continuing on with our series where we're looking at the herbs on our paca shelves , uh, in their alphabetical order by Latin name. And, and a lot of the , um, entries in this series, we've had these fortunate pairings of, well, like, like last week with Tulsi and Evening Primrose, where that's
Just a lovely , two great herbs that go great
Together. Two great formula right there by itself, you know? Mm-hmm . , um, or there's been comparison or contrast between two herbs that are next to each other, or we run into a whole group that are all in the same genus, like when we did three mints in one show. Yeah . Uh , but today is not like that. Today we have Paul Maria , Paloma and Pa Flora in Carta , Dils and Passionflower, and
Two herbs that have nothing to do with each other. , they're nothing in common.
I was trying, you know, for a while I was like, well, you could what ? Uh , they're both , they're both relaxant . I , that's all I got. That's it. .
. So ,
Uh, so that's fine . No problem. We're gonna do this anyway.
Um, hey, you were just mentioning , um, as a like, reminder that we are going in order of Latin name , and if you are new to the podcast, or maybe you just , um, never heard us say it before, but I , I think we maybe have it some point. But the point here is why would we put our plants on the shelves by Latin name and just to show off
Just to feel cool, basically,
To feel cool. , um, ? No. Um, I mean, k kind of, it is kind of cool, but , um, I, so here's where I , um, admit that despite that I used to teach high school Latin. I had an enormously difficult time learning the Latin names of plants. It was so embarrassing. It was so bad when learned them in two seconds. But the thing is that when I started as an herbalist, I did not learn the Latin names.
I only learned the common names because back then, nobody really placed much emphasis on the Latin names at all, or basically, well, many things, . But , um, and, and so I just never learned them , and I struggled to learn the Latin names. But listen, it's super important. You really have to know the Latin names because, for example , um, a plant that, that is near and dear to my heart would bettany . Well, that is a , that is many different plants. It depends on where you are.
And if you're in the United States and you say wood bettany on the eastern part of the United States, you probably mean statues of fish . And if you're in the western part of the United States, you probably mean particulars one of many species. These two plants are not even related to each other. They're not even in the same family, like nothing. And okay, they have some crossover and function, but like, that's coincidental. They're not related in any way to one another .
So like, it really, really is important to learn the Latin names, even though , um, it's very challenging. And a lot of people say things like, I'm , I'm never gonna be able to learn 'em . I, it's really hard. And so one of the tricks that we tell people is a trick that worked for me.
Finally , it's the thing that finally worked for me, which was put your label, your jars with the Latin names, and if you need to, then on the back of them , you can put, I'm just looking to see if one of them has it here. Like a sassafras has it that , um, if you need to, you can put on the back, you can put the , um, common name , um, and then , then your jars sort of become like flashcards, right?
Um, but some , so like the, when we first started, we did that because , um, you know, so sometimes you know immediately and what herb you're looking at in the jar, but sometimes if it's just like chopped up little bits of green confetti, some at times they can look alike and you might not feel super confident just looking at it.
And so we did put the comment on the back and the Latin on the front, but the key here is that that is the thing that finally helped me to learn it, because it put it in front of my eyes all of the time. It became common, right? Mm-hmm . . And so if you are having trouble learning the Latin names, this is a trick that might work for you too. Mm-hmm. . And , uh, that's not all . That's not all.
We've got so many more tricks , um, in terms of how to learn herbalism, how to, you know, a lot of people say things like, mm , well, you know, I'm older and my brain doesn't retain information as well. And to that, I say, no , your brain is fantastic. Don't worry, you're gonna get this in your head. But, but it's, it's a wild time out there. It's hard f for us to really focus on things because there's so much going on in the world. And so we have this free course, it's called Herbal Study Tips.
And , um, you don't have to put in your credit card or anything. You can just get it for free. And it has all kinds of ideas and tricks and like learning games and strategies that you can use to help things like Latin names, but also everything that you're learning about herbs to really stick in your body so that you don't have to go look it up. You don't have to, well , you just know it and you feel very confident about it.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah . So that's our herbal study tips course, and that's really trying to help you get more efficient, but also actually, and this is important, more playful , uh, in the way that you go to learn your herbs. Yes . Um, to really get it as far away as possible from, I opened my big dusty tome and I stare at it until all the information has been absorbed into my cells. Um, we , we've got a bunch of, of much better ideas. Yeah.
Much more fun
Ideas. Yeah . We're gonna help you , help you learn herbalism with all of your senses. Mm-hmm . , it's gonna
Be great.
Yes. Um , so you can find that. You can also find another free course called Four Keys to Holistic Herbalism, which helps us to situate our work with herbs in the context of holistic practices and habits. And if that sounds , uh, like a bunch of fancy words, then it just means how is herbalism real? How does it show up in the real world in your real life?
Um, and how can we get beyond thinking about herbalism as like that thing I do with the little bottle that has a dropper on it, or when I make tea, now I'm doing herbalism. And to see herbalism in all of the other parts of your life as well. Mm-hmm . , because it's there. It's there, or it will be . . Yeah. So these courses are free. Yes. Really entirely free. You can find them and all of our other [email protected] and wealth herbs.com.
Woohoo.
Okay. So before we , uh, talk about passion flower and ds , we're gonna remind you that we're not doctors. We're herbalist and holistic health educators.
The idea is discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalist in the United States. So these discussions are for educational purposes only.
We wanna remind you that good health doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn't exist as an objective standard. It's influenced by your individual needs, experiences, and goals. So keep in mind that we're not attempting to present a single dogmatic right way that you should adhere to.
Everybody's body is different. 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. Further
Finding your way to better health is both your rights and your own personal responsibility. This doesn't mean 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 you're considering any course of action , whether that was discussed on the internet by your friendly neighborhood, herbalists, or prescribed by a physician, that's always your choice to make. Mm-hmm. . Okay. Let's talk about dos .
Dos is such a sweet plant. It's such a , well, it's , it's a salty plant. It's a salty plant, . But it is such a sweet, like , um, kind, thoughtful seaweed. Um, it is the , it's like the seaweed for people who don't like seaweed. Mm-hmm. , it's the seaweed for people who don't even like the idea of seaweed. Like, we tell people that seaweed is a great idea for all these reasons, and they're like, yeah, but no, it's gross. It's seaweed. And so, so for all of those situations, d is the answer.
Um, because it has a very light flavor. It has almost , uh, like really no discernible sort of fishy or ocean flavor. It's really just kind of, you know, salty, savory. Um, there, there almost is a little sweetness in it. Mm-hmm . . Um, but it's like there's, you know, we talk about bitters and something that's just a really pure bitter, like centi for me, that becomes very difficult to work with because that pure bitter is really intense.
But in the case of ds , it's like kind of a pure saltiness, like without the complexity of all the ocean flavors going along with it, it's just like a very simple, don't worry, I'm just savory and salty. It's okay. Kind of flavor. So Yeah.
Yeah . Yeah. Savory, that's an important word for this plant in terms of flavor profile. See , people also use that word umami for these.
Yes. Mm-hmm. , it is exactly that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And you know, that that can be valuable even if we're, even if we're just, and don't, don't even like that phrase. Right. Uh , even if we are simply talking about cooking, right? Mm-hmm. . So you can just put a little bit of, of dul flakes into a dish of food that you're cooking, and it will give a little extra depth, a little umami flavor to, to what you've got going on.
And no ocean flavor. Don't worry. Yeah. Just, just umami .
Yeah. But that compliments meats really well, that compliments mushrooms really well. Um, it's just an excellent thing to add
Potatoes. Yeah . It's really lovely. Like if you have a baked potato, if you've ever had like, you know, potato skins with like bacon bits and stuff like that on it , um, like bacon is a new mommy flavor. Yeah . Actually. And so if you're like, well, I don't have bacon, or I don't want to eat bacon, or whatever, you could have your baked potato with like, whatever you like to put on it, tribes or whatever, and like little d bits. And it would be really, really delicious.
Yeah. Now you've got me thinking about how , uh, bacon is like, people think it's just a big slab of fat, but it's really like fat contained within collagen, you know? Mm-hmm . and like with the modern sort of perspectives on collagen and collagen powders and collagen and all of your processed foods and whatever.
Um, you have a kind of different look at at bacon there, but then, you know, with do , it's not collagen Exactly, but it does have some interesting complex polysaccharides, including things called glycosaminoglycans , um, which are sort of similar actually, and contains some of the same amino acids.
Uh, so when we break them down and , and like if you eat seaweed and you digest it and break it down, your body's gonna take some of the elements in there and build them back into your own connective tissue . Yeah . Um, so maybe dos is actually the Bacon of the Sea
. I
Think we're, I think we've , uh, got an entrepreneur idea here.
,
If it's not out there already, somebody go ahead and put that together. Bacon of the sea dos products for everyone. Yeah .
. Yeah.
Not that we need to commercialize everything,
But Right . It doesn't have the texture. It definitely doesn't, but it, it very much has, you know, not the smoked part of bacon flavor, but the umami salty part of bacon flavor. It really has. So, and this also like for folks who are vegetarian or vegan, this is really super important actually. Not just because , um, it's, it's not always easy to get that kind of flavor without , um, meat. Like from mushrooms,
You can get new mushroom stuff, you gotta sea stuff if
You want that . But , but seaweed stuff will give you that flavor. But , um, like building that connective tissue, it becomes challenging with a vegan diet and a vegetarian diet. And so when there are plants that can help do that work, then it's really important to emphasize those in the diet. Mm-hmm . . Um , cuz they're gonna be filling that rule .
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, we were talking about this being a really good kind of beginner seaweed. Um, it's also a good seaweed for folks who are, oh , how to say this? Okay. So sometimes when we talk about seaweed people, like in q and a time, you know , um, we have these twice a week, we do a live q and a session for everybody in our school.
Um, and a lot of times people are gonna ask about seaweed and then immediately ask about the iodine content, either because they want a bunch of iodine and they've realized that seaweeds are a great place to get it. And they're now asking like, what's the best seaweed for the most iodine
?
Or the other question is, wait, is this gonna be too much iodine? If I eat a big handful of seaweed every single day, am I gonna overstimulate myself or, or cause problems? Mm-hmm . Um, it is potentially possible to take too much seaweed. And one way we can see that is by like higher rates of hyperthyroidism and , um, an unusual type of hyperthyroid goiter occurring in Japan, where of course they're kind of famous for eating , eating a lot of seaweed compared to most other places.
Uh, but this is not an equal risk for all types of seaweed, and it's also not something that most folks need to be , be really concerned about, especially because a lot of people are starting from a place of iodine deficiency. Right.
Right . It would take a long time, it would take a long time of eating a really large amount of seaweed daily Right . To get all the way built up to where you had too much seaweed.
Yeah. And it's very, very unlikely to do that with Ds mm-hmm . , because Ds compared to like, say, a strong iodine, seaweed, like bladder rack DS has a substantial amount compared to any land plant. Mm-hmm . , but not, not a , not a , not a , not at all the same degree of, of iodine content as bladder rack has. Right .
So if somebody was concerned about that, but they were interested in working with seaweeds as a nice demulcent herb, as an umami flavor in the food, as a provider of some cool polysaccharides that have these connected tissue supports and also some immune benefits we, we didn't get to yet , um, then dose would be a really good choice for them. Mm-hmm .
. Yeah. You know, since you mentioned all that, I want to take this opportunity to talk about folks who are taking , um, thyroid medication like Synthroid or Levothyroxin , whatever. Um, and so you're in a hypothyroid situation, you're medicated for it, and then you say, oh, I'm gonna start taking a bunch of seaweed. What's gonna happen? I'm gonna start eating a bunch of seaweed in my food. What's gonna happen? Um, so at first nothing is going to happen.
Um, because, you know, it takes a while for, for , um, the minerals to build up. But, and it's important to also recognize it's not just iodine. There's tons of critically important minerals, and they're for your thyroid. Like I , your throid doesn't only need iodine, it needs lots
Of things. They're for your thyroid, they're for your hypothalamus, they're for your kidneys, they're for everything for your Yeah . You know? Yeah . Yeah . Name ace in your body. It needs some mineral content to function well. Right . And hey, your nerves, Ooh ,
. Yes . Oh my goodness. Yeah. We should, we should do a whole little bit on that, but , um, okay. So at first nothing will happen, and then there will come a point after, depending on how much you're having every day , like maybe you're putting it in the broth or, or whatever you might be making tea out of it, rinse made some pretty tasty seaweed teas. Um,
Yeah . You can, you can sneak it in if you get enough , uh, complimentary flavors from
Other plants . Yeah , yeah. Or like a bunch of ginger, you know, or not .
Yeah . That'll
. Yeah . Um, okay. So at first nothing will happen. And then after a few weeks or a few months, depending on how much you're having , um, your , you will start to experience symptoms that you probably experienced when you first went on your thyroid med and they were trying to get the dose correct. You will experience that the dose is wrong, and so it will feel like your, your dose is too high, and you'll have that kind of buzzy type feeling.
Um, and what that means is that you are like giving your thyroid the stuff that it needs to be able to function better. And so it is starting to function better, but because it's starting to function better, that means that your thyroid is making more of what it should be making. And then your Synthroid or your levothyroxine , whatever on top of it, is actually now creating too high of a dose for you.
And so if you are consistent with it, then what will need to happen is you'll just have to go to your doctor and say, oh, my dose needs to be adjusted. I'm, I'm feeling very buzzy. Um, and they'll just adjust that for you . I mean, even if you don't take seaweed, that is a common thing to happen throughout your experience with thyroid meds anyway. And you probably, if you are taking them, you're probably like, ah , yes, I have experienced that.
Um, but so just to, to recognize that it is not dangerous to do it, it's not harmful to do it, but it is going to have like a period of discomfort when you're gonna have to go and have your , um, have your dose adjusted. Mm-hmm. .
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I had , uh, offhand mention some immune activities for seaweeds. And this is an area of like ongoing research. And I, I usually talk about this in comparison to medicinal mushrooms. Um , because like broadly speaking, the kind of constituents in the plants we're focused on for this effect are sh are similar between them. Right. We're talking about large complex technically carbohydrate molecules. Right. We call 'em polysaccharides.
And , um, there have been found immunomodulatory effects from our seaweeds in a really similar way to what's been much more, you know, publicized with the , uh, with the medicinal mushrooms. So I , I continue to, to wait, but I won't be surprised if, you know, in five years or sometime in the next decade, we see a sort of like surge surge of interest in seaweed and seaweed extracts and seaweed products and stuff. Um, the way that we have seen with mushrooms in recent years Hmm . Um , this
Much like mushrooms avoid the products. Just put it in your soup , just
Put it in your soup . This the , it is the best way to take these. Yeah ,
Yeah , yeah . Appreciate, just put it in your soup.
Yeah. And , uh, I mean, you know, there's another way in which the seaweeds and the mushrooms are similar. It's that they're not ex , they're not plants. This is algae. Mm-hmm . , that's a different kingdom of life, you know? Yeah. Uh , mushrooms are not plants either. They're fungi. So fungi and algae, they're, they're not plants, they're not animals.
They share some characteristics with each, you know, the seaweeds maybe lean more toward plant and the mushrooms, I don't know , they're , they're their whole other thing , , you know? Uh , but, but yeah, they , um, they do, they do produce these things that you don't find in planty plants. Right. Plant ,
plant plant plants . Yeah. Yeah. No , I'm just, I, I, at this point, I have little cartoon, they're like, like a seaweed with googly eyes, and it's like dancing and like a mushroom with googly eyes, and it's like, it's little cap is like pulsing up and down. And I , it's very, it's very humorous inside my brain right now, is what I'm saying. Yeah.
Yeah . Um, with specific i immune activities , uh, or related activities of the seaweeds, and this applies not just to adults , but a lot of the red seaweeds, including Irish Moss and Nori and other fun friends like that , um, they have been found effective topically against , uh, some virus families, most specifically with the herpes family. So that's, you know, herpes one or two or whatever. And also shingles.
Yeah. One or two or both. Like, because
You may Yeah . At ,
At this point, they've kind of like combined and, and it's sometimes it's very hard to even identify which of the two strains it is. Yeah. Um, and you can't always tell by the location either. Yeah.
That's not, yeah , that's not the , the answer there. . Um, but yeah, but also chickenpox , uh, which apparently , uh, uh, I've recently been reminded of this, it used to be referred to as the Great Pox , uh, whereas the smallpox was like the small one, and that was in terms of severity. So once upon a time, chickenpox was the scary stuff, and smallpox was like, we don't worry about it. But that, that switched throughout recorded history.
Right. Well, because we stopped getting smallpox and everybody used to get chickenpox. If you're my age, you , you had chickenpox and you stayed home from school for a week and ate popsicles. Hmm . But these days the kids don't not get it.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, you know, if we go back a thousand years or so, maybe the chickenpox were scarier at the time, in any case , uh, this whole family in shingles as well. Right. It's the same, same group. Um, the, the seaweeds do seem to be quite helpful there. And the best way to go about this for, for our perspective would be topically, right? We're going to , um, we're going to take this , the dulce right? We're gonna moisten it up with some probably warm waters, more warm
Water. It'll feel better. Yeah .
Yeah . Right. And then if you've got lesions around the lips or wherever else on your body, and then we can go ahead and lay this over that and just kind of let it sit there, let it kind of soak in to the skin for a while, half an hour at least, but longer might be better.
So this is something that , um, I feel needs to kind of update traditional information. And by traditional, I mean herbalism in 1960s, early 1970s United States. Hmm . Um, I don't mean actual traditional herbalism. Um, and so, you know, out of that era of herbalism, we get, oh, lemon bomb is good for herpes. Okay. Lemon
Balm is the herpes
Herb. It's the herpes herb, it's the only one . Um, lemon bomb is helpful for herpes under specific situations. Um, but the constituents that are helpful are also , um, easily degradable. So if you have dried lemon bomb , it's not nearly as effective. Um, f it really needs to be fresh. And honestly, I think that thyme is stronger, but I think that seaweed, the red seaweeds is even stronger. And I also think that it's probably more traditional.
Like I just think about what about all the people on the coast of Ireland and you know, who, for whom seaweed was a part of everyday life anyway. What did they do when they had a cold sore? Mm-hmm . Absolutely. They put seaweed on it. Right. Um, so there's something wrong with lemon bal . If you love Lemon Bal for a cold, keep doing it. That's fine. But, but it's one of those things that's like kind of tattooed on herbalist eyelids, like lemon bomb for herpes.
And, and so instead, I, I want us to start thinking about aura time steam , or even better red seaweeds. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other place that I want to update some information is oatmeal for chickenpox. Um, cuz you hear that all the time, and like these days, I think maybe kids these days don't really get chickenpox very often.
Um, but, but you used to hear that all the time when I was a kid, you heard calamine lotion, but you know, there , there was a period where you would hear oatmeal all the time and oatmeal has some problems. Um, you know, yes, it does. It is soothing and calming kind of, but it's wicked messy and , um, clogs up your bathtub if you put your kid in there with a, with a oatmeal bath and whatever.
Um , but also a lot of people have sensitivity to gluten and some people get away with, with what's labeled as gluten-free oats, but not everyone. And , um, wow . There's a whole , I could do like an entire hour here on why gluten-free oats are not exactly what we think they are mm-hmm . . Um, but instead just grab the host of nutrition course because I don't wanna derail us , but it's all in there . Um, but , uh, okay.
But, so a lot of people have sensitivity to oats even that are labeled gluten free . Um, and so you could , you could think like, oh, well, but it's chickenpox so I better put oat on it. Or you could just put red seaweeds on. It's, it's actually, I think it's more effective. Um, I think it's easier to clean. Um, you know, everybody has preferences about what is easier and better and all that stuff, but for me, I think that that seaweed is just easier.
And , um, you know, you can wrap it up in a little bit of cheesecloth and you can move it around and you can like hold it here for a while and then hold it there for a while and oh, it's itchy over here. Okay. We'll hold it there for a while and, and whatever. You don't even need a whole bath for it. So , um, when we think oatmeal for chickenpox, think, oh , and also Red Sea meats .
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on. Okay.
Oh, hold on. You were talking about nervous system health.
Yes. Yes, we were . Yes. Right. I was trying to remember that as well, right ?
Yes. Yes. This is gonna be really important and good.
This had , this had come to mind when , uh, we were talking about iodine and then, and then you were talking about the other mineral content in the seaweeds mm-hmm . . And, you know, with that, one way to think about this is that , um, you know, humans have been doing industrialized agriculture on this planet for a while now, and you've probably heard about runoff as a problem here, right?
Particularly runoff of phosphate fertilizers getting into the waterways, and especially collecting in delta areas and causing algae blooms and like reducing the oxygen content and killing off fish. And like some, in some places, this is extremely severe and, and bad, but it's not the only thing that's running off. Um, a lot of nutrients in the soil may be drawn up by the plants and then not put back into the dirt, okay ? Mm-hmm. .
And then ultimately some of those are kind of lifted up to the surface and they might run off in the rain. Others are just taken up in the plant and eaten, but not replaced, not put back in because of the way that industrial fertilizers tend to just be, you know, a few key nutrients, but not the, not the full spectrum of complex actual nature. Right ? Yes. Um, and so, you know, over time , uh, there's some decent evidence that our , uh, our, our major food supply, right?
Our commercial food, food crops, our industrial food crops have , uh, lost a fair amount of their mineral content over time. The question is, where did it go, ? Well, a lot of it has ended up into the water, into the, into the oceans. And so, you know, the seaweeds, if nothing else, they're in a position to pick up those nutrients and to put them into their tissues.
And also, you know, the ocean, listen, the ocean is struggling like every other thing touched by man on this planet. But one thing that is like a not so bad for the ocean is that it's their mineral cycle is harder to disrupt. We can easily disrupt the mineral cycle with agriculture because if you don't put it back than it's gone , like if you don't put them minerals back into the soil, it's gone.
But in the sea, animals are constantly dying and falling to the bottom and decomposing and replenishing the mineral content. And there is this sort of closed cycle of, of life. Like even when the plants die, they fall right down and they decompose and they nourish the soil. So , um, the soil of the ocean and also the, the water of the ocean, the water of the ocean itself is not just salty. It's not just sodium chloride that makes the ocean salty. It is a whole complex of all different minerals.
So all the sea plants are literally swimming in minerals. Hmm . Um, and, and so that at least is one thing that we have not , um, we have not depleted, is the, the sort of mineral cycle of the ocean.
Yeah. So , um, so the seaweeds, right? They're rich in yes, iodine, but also calcium and magnesium and trace elements like boron and manganese and , you know, fun stuff like that. They've got silica content, they've got a whole range of things, and that's good for you , uh, because you need them, right ? Mm-hmm . , some of them are trace elements that you need for a particular kind of enzyme reaction in your body.
Some of them are, you know, we call them gross elements where you need large amounts and you know about calcium, you know, about , uh, iron, stuff like that, right? Um , some of them are things like magnesium, where you hopefully know how important that is, but it's involved in so many reactions in your system, and it's really critical for nerve function and for, for muscle , uh, relaxation especially, right?
Right. You , you muscles have two states, not one state, right. That contract, and then they have to relax and relaxing is not necessarily the opposite of contracting, right? Like, you have to let
It go. It's a , it's a , it's an action of the tissue. It's a , yeah . It's something that must be done or it must be, must occur. It's, yeah, it doesn't sort of just happen as default. If you're not holding it tight, then it becomes relaxed. No, some , for a lot of folks, tight is the default
, right? And like, if you are a person who's really tense and you went to bed tense and you wake up in the middle of the night to pee and you're still tense like that , like then, you know, like, oh, relaxation does not happen automatically just because I fell asleep. Nope. I'm still clenching my jaw and I have my muscles up to my ears and all the other, you know, like Yeah .
Yeah . And, you know, magnesium, it can also, deficiency can manifest as tremors or shaking or spasms or restless leg or, or other kinds of cramping, things like that, that are hard to get, get away from. Um, but even at the level of a , of a nerve cell, like an individual nerve cell, the minerals are gonna be really important.
Oh my goodness. So important. So we , we were just saying about how muscles like relaxation is not a default state. Okay? That's true in your nerves as well. So you get wound up in some kind of anxiousness or whatever, maybe you're feeling really hypersensitive to whatever's going on around you. Um, and like any little thing is setting you off, right?
And you feel like it is super difficult to get your nerves to relax, and you feel like you're just on this hair trigger for a really long time and you can't dial back your sensitivity, right? That, that sense , that sensitivity scale, right? Whether it's higher or low or whatever, relaxed or tense is in like intrinsically, what's the word? Inherently it is importantly tied up with minerals.
And magnesium is one of the really important ones there because the way that nerves pass messages from one nerve cell to the next nerve cell is that they actually get, you know, they get a charge and they sort of like transfer their charge from one cell to the next. Right? And when you learned it in school, you sort of see this little electrical zap going from one cell to the next cell, right? And so we just think about that as something that just happens automatically, like lightning.
And we don't think about, oh , you know, like if , if there's static electricity, something had to create the static charge. It had to be like you rubbing the balloon against your hair to build up the static charge and then like stick it to your friend's shirt, right? So like, you are the thing that created the charge. Well, what is it in the nerve cell that creates the charge that passes the message along its minerals? And , um, magnesium is one of the really important ones there.
So if you , and the reason that I'm really harping on the magnesium is because just like muscles, nerves do not relax automatically. They, they send a signal saying, Hey, something hurts. Hey, something hurts. Hey, something hurts. And they don't automatically say, oh , I sent my signal. Okay, I'm done. I can just relax now and wait for the next thing to happen. No, they are always in an active state.
They're actively sending a message or actively choosing to not send a message and kind of like you, when you have something to say, but it's not very nice and you are actively choosing to not say it out loud. Right? Okay. Your nerve cells are just like that. They have to actively choose to not say something annoying. And I mean, it is the job of a nerve cell to be annoying to say, Hey, stimulus, hey, something's going on. And they have to choose to be like, mm , no one needs to know.
I can be quiet about it, it's fine. Right? Okay. Mm-hmm . the way that they make the choice to say, actually no one needs to know about this. Everything's fine. I can just be still is magnesium. So if you don't have enough, it becomes really hard to come down out of a state of anxiousness. It's normal to get anxious, it's normal to get nervous about things or wound up a little bit. That's normal for humans. It's protective, but then we need to be able to come back down.
And when we can't come back down, then we get stuck in these states of anxiety in order to come back down. We need to make sure we have all of the minerals that are required for our nerve cells to actively decide that they don't need to send panic messages. Seaweed,
Seaweed. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And to kind of step back out a little bit, right? When we, when we think about adults , when we think about most of the seaweeds, you know, what have we got all together, right? Okay. So we've got the nutritive element . We're feeding your body, feeding your nerves, we're feeding your bones , right ? We're feeding all of your, all of your systems. Uh, we're allowing for this kind of relaxation.
And, and you know, when we think about these plants in terms of direct qualities, we see moistening , uh, relaxing effects, cooling effects, like the ocean, right? It's pretty cool in there. It's flowing, it's moving, right? Uh ,
It's like you can kelp it up, you know, it's like very, if you've ever seen kelp in the tide mm-hmm. , it's just like, you know, slowly flowing, doing its little hula. Mm-hmm.
. Yeah . Yeah, yeah, yeah . Um, and so the seaweeds are kind of like, they're, they're bringing in the earth element from the water world mm-hmm . , right ? Mm-hmm . . Mm-hmm . . They're like the earth of the water there. And they, they carry those things into us. So if you want to think in terms of elements and archetypes, that's that's what I would , uh, that's what I would
Start with. That's nice. Yeah. That's really good.
Okay, let's move on. Let's talk about passion flower .
Um, okay. So if you have been an herbalist for a while, or if you haven't and you live somewhere, that passion flower doesn't grow like somewhere in the north and you have never seen a passionflower plant, you have to stop right now and search on this flower search on pa flora and carna because it's, it is such an amazing looking flower. It's a flower that looks like it shouldn't exist.
It looks like w what kind of like crazy glitter fair decided that this plant should have these like swirly twirly bits everywhere. And it's just , it's phenomenal. It's phenomenal looking . It's just , it brings of color fantastic. And how can I get that crazy glitter fairy into my life? Like, seriously, you're just gonna look at it and just be like, this flower's amazing. And so you'll see the picture and you'll be like, that's amazing. I can't believe something like that exists in the world.
But then if you go someplace in the south and you just see one growing and it happens to be in a little median strip of like crappy mulch and some kind of hedge at a rental car return place at an airport, and, and the hedge is just filled with these passionflower vines that are blooming just the way it looks like on the internet, it will blow your mind because you're like, this is a flower that looks so amazing that I can't even believe that it exists.
And it exists here in this like, crappy little bit of dirt that nobody cares about at all. That Yeah . And , and it's just here being beautiful in between the rental cars. Yeah . What
Sort of looks like something you would have to, you know, hack your way into the jungle for a few days to go and see. But it's just right there everywhere.
It looks like the kind of thing that is not meant for human eyes , like that is so well amazing that like, it should live somewhere far away from humans that's like so hard to get to at the top of some mountain somewhere or something . Like, who knows? Yeah.
Well, I'm, I'm curious actually, what , uh, passion flowers look like under UV lights. Oh . And , and cuz you said for human eyes , and I'm like, well, what do they look like to the bees? Right. And , uh, I'm
Pretty sure it's pretty amazing.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Google photos on that people, because whoa, . Uh , maybe we should bring some passion flowers indoors and put them under black lights because Yeah, that's,
They're pretty
Amazing. That's pretty cool. Okay. Well, this is mostly an audio format , uh, thing we're doing here. So ,
I mean, unless you're watching on YouTube, if you're watching on YouTube, but whatever. We just search, just search for passionflower UV light. Yeah . Um, and then look at the images and I think you'll be like, whoa.
Yeah. Um, beauty is important, right? So we're not just saying this , uh, because it's, you know , exciting or , or distracting or whatever, but , but beauty is important. And , um, I I think of that in a , in a few ways. When you, when you can hold the picture of a plant in your mind , um, as you drink your tea or as you take it, that adds something to your experience. Mm-hmm . mm-hmm . , it's hard to quantify. It might not be exactly the same for everybody.
Um, but if you pick this up as a practice, I'm , I'm a hundred percent sure that, that you will , uh, get some sense of what I'm, what I'm talking about here mm-hmm . . Um, and you can also look at this another way. You can think about like doing a plant sit meditation. Um, we do have , uh, a former episode of our podcast.
I'll put a link in the show notes where we had a , a plant sit meditation, kind of like a guided thing for you to go and just be with a plant to tune in with all of your senses, to look at the plant, to see how it, how it's structured and built and what its colors are. And to kind of devote a lot of attention to it that way. Um, that alone is a really productive meditation. Productive, is that the word I want? Hmm . Fruitful. I don't know . Something
Fruitful. That's not a bad word. Yeah . Yeah. Productive in terms of you get a lot out of it. Um, but fruitful might be the better word. Meaningful. It's meaningful. Mm-hmm . Yeah.
Yeah.
Right. It really helps you deepen your relationship with the plant. And , um, that does not sound very factual or bullet pointed , um, to say, deepen your relationship with a plant. Like, but it is like, it is also the factual and bullet point part of learning. It is, it is.
We have relationships with plants, whether we acknowledge it or not. Like so many people have a very deep and complex relationship with coffee ,
,
And they might not think of it that way until suddenly coffee's gone from their life and now their heart is broken. Yeah . . And it's just . Yeah.
It
Can be like that, right? But it can be like that with any plant,
Right? Mm-hmm. . Right. And so if you think about , um, if you think about just, just really knowing inside your body how it feels when you work with a plant, that's a deep relationship. That's a , and like, just being super aware of it. So anyway, plant sits can really help to increase your knowledge of a plant across many different spectrum.
Hmm . Yeah.
Wait. All right .
Well, go ahead.
Speaking of Spectrum , I wanna go back to the UV thing. Yeah, yeah, I do for just one minute. Because we got onto the UV thing because I was saying about for human eyes and you were saying, oh, what does it look like to bugs? And then we got , um, like blown away by the beauty of the UV pictures, what it looks like to bugs. But I just wanna take a minute and remind us that plants are not for people. They're not here for us to use. Um, plants have their own lives, their own everything.
And if we were not here, they still would be. Um, so as, as , um, herbalist, it's pretty easy to get into thinking about, well, what is that good for? What is the benefit of that? And to have all that be very human-centric. Um, and the reality is that plants have deep and intricate lives that have nothing to do with humans, including all kinds of ultraviolet light markings that they produce on their flowers, specifically for the purpose of communicating with bugs.
Like they make all of these intricate designs that literally create these arrows for bugs that say, get the pollen here. And so that the bugs will go in pollinate and, and you know, fertilize all the flowers and help make the seeds and all that stuff.
Come get it . Bees Good stuff this way, you
Know , . Yeah. It's literally like if you are in an airplane and your airplane is landing and the person on the tarmac who has the like orange light things and they're like waving them and crossing them and like making the different shapes and, and what it is literally that painted all over the flower pedals.
And to me, taking time to like, not a minute, like a lot of time, taking a lot of time to really think about what that means and how that requires me to change my speech and change my entire thinking about plants and what they're here for. Um, cuz they're not here for us. It's great that we can have relationships with plants. It's great that plants can help us. It's good . Many of those things are great, but plants are here for plants. Mm .
And um, when you start to think that way, it also changes your relationship with plants. It changes your ideas about forging and wild harvesting and gardening and growing, and language just changes so many things. And it took me a long time to learn all that. Yeah. So now I love to bring it up whenever possible.
. What's kind of funny is that , um, if it's hard for you to access these kind of states of like open observation and like a calm, relaxed state of just being present with something for a little while. Well, passion Flower can help you get there. Yes.
.
So you might, you might find it helpful to take some passion flower tincture and then go sit with some passion flower plants , um, to, to experience this in some fullness. Yeah.
. Okay . So the reason for that is because like we get our brains all so full of things and they get spinning around with all the things that we're full of, and it's like, oh, I gotta do the thing. Oh, also this thing. Oh, I gotta do that. I gotta do something . Yeah . I have to go here and pick up the thing. And, and Passion Flower really helps to just stop the spinning and allows us to be present in the moment. And now we're back to the plant.
Because if you look at this amazing plant that looks like it's the most amazing plant ever, it also kind of looks like a carousel and, but it's a , a carousel that isn't moving. Hmm . It's just still there. It's just like, just quiet and still. And so when your brain feels like a carousel and you're like, I I'm trapped on this carousel, I cannot get off. That's, that's passionflower when you feel like, forget it, I can't meditate mm-hmm. . Yeah,
Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, we do use the word sedative for this plant, but in herbalism that doesn't mean knocks you out. Um, and I say that even though this is an herb that has a pretty good reputation as a sleep herb , uh, and turns up in a lot of sleep formulas mm-hmm . , you know, so if you go , um, to like the herbal aisle in a shop or you go to an an herb shop itself, you'll see a lot of sleep formulas that include passion flower .
But this isn't gonna knock you out if you're decently rested . Right . If you're, if you're, if you're very sleep deprived and you're kind of just gritting your teeth and like trying to hold on and get through your day, and then you take a bunch of passion flour , it might make that exhaustion much more palpable for you. Um, and that would, that would be the case where it makes you feel sleepy. Mm-hmm . .
But if you're pretty well rested and you're just humming right along, maybe you're feeling a little agitated, a little anxious, a little overstimulated, then Passion Flower is fantastic for calming that down. And this is, you know , um, in the body, the way this is happening, at least part of how this is happening anyway, is through quieting down nerve activity, you know, nerves, like we were saying before, they're, they're always either sending a signal or holding back a signal.
And when they're sending their signal, it's not like they, they do it and it's kind of sustained, like, ah , right. , it's like wrap , wrap , wrap , or if we're up , we're up . Or if you're agitated, like . So , so the , this is called the nerve firing rate. Okay .
And the yuppie dog nerve rate . Yeah , totally .
Elsie's gonna knock at the door in a second. But yeah, the , um, the passion flower and other, other herbal sedatives like this, they slow down those nerve firing rates. Right. And for you, the experience of that is, okay, my mind is a little calmer. I'm not quite as irritated by every little annoyance that's around me. I find it perhaps , uh, easier to stay focused on one thing because it's not like everything else is pinging me, you know, constantly mm-hmm .
and taking my attention away to it. Hmm . Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, this is a nerve that we've worked with a lot because our practice has primarily been in cities and with a lot of tech workers and a lot of people with high stress jobs and a lot to do and not a lot of time to get it done in. And that leads to that feeling of like internal pressure and like, I have to do things and there's this rising heat and everything, and passion flower can calm that down.
But again, without, without making you feel tired or making you feel sluggish or doling your mind or anything like that,
I think that one of the reasons that Passion Flower is so associated with sleep, and so people might think, oh, I can't take it during the day, don't make me sleepy, is because a lot of times during the day you may be really stressed out, but you're also really busy. There's so many things going on, and you are trying to just please not forget that you have to go pick up the whatever from the place, and you're doing all the things you have to do.
And, and the day is fast and busy and there's so much stimulus, so much input all of the time. And then you lay down in bed at night and the maybe the first quiet moment that you've had all day, and so your mind suddenly is just flooded with feelings of like all the things that you are feeling concerned and worry for, but you didn't have time to think of during the day because there was so much distraction going on.
And so now it's like the point of the day when you can sleep and you can't sleep because you , you suddenly are worried about everything and you're just like, oh my goodness, what about this thing? What about that thing? I didn't get this done today and I like climate change. Oh my goodness. And what the , you know,
Maybe a little , uh, personal insight there, ,
, what
Keeps you up at night? Yeah .
On the pet ceiling, like , I dunno ,
But this is like a , like a windy, you know, hot, agitated mental state, right? Mm-hmm . , there's movement, there's, there's that excitation, there's that agitation. What we need is to cool you down and, and calm and soothe that. Right. Try to ground you a bit. I we can we consider this to be one of the herbs that's really helpful for grounding mm-hmm. , uh, like an , an , uh, an aggravated airy state of mind, right?
You're, you're bruising about in the clouds, you're getting pushed from one, one perspective to another. You're not really in control of what's going on, kind of buffeted by the breezes and all of that. Yeah . And we want to get grounded. We want to get settled
And you can , like, if I just could do that, I'd be able to sleep. Yeah. If I could, if I could just settle my mind, but it won't stop. Okay. Passion flower . Mm-hmm. can't help.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, maybe just a brief mention, and I, I'm really only saying this because people ask me sometimes okay ? Mm-hmm . , uh, in this plant there are cons , some constituents called harm alkaloids. And well , that sounds pretty exciting, right? , um, they're , they're similar to what's found in a plant called Syrian ru , um, pagan harm . And , uh, in Syrian ru they're there in a pretty, pretty strong concentration.
That's a plant , uh, that can have pretty serious interactions with psychiatric meds because of the presence of these constituents. They, they're psychoactive.
Um, and even that plant can, can have its own , um, like psychoactive effects on you if you, if you take a substantial dose, because similar constituents are also found in passionflower, you often see people saying that it is, is just as likely to have drug interactions or to be potentially problematic or to get you high or, or to do other things along those lines. Uh, and the fact of the matter is that that's just not the case.
Because even though they're present, remember it's not just whether a plant has something in it, it's how much is there and how relevant that is to the, the form and the dose that you're gonna take. Mm-hmm . . So when we're talking about cups of passion flour tea, when we're talking about passion flour tincture in doses of a few dropper folds at a time or something along these lines, these alkaloids are, parti are essentially irrelevant. Mm-hmm .
, um, they're contributing surely in a minor way to the effect of the plant. Um, but they're not reaching that level where we're gonna get anxious if somebody's taking, you know , uh, um, a , a pharmaceutical to help them to feel calm or to deal with their anxiety. Mm-hmm . , it's okay to have passion flower in addition to that.
And , um, again, with the kind of doses and formats that I'm talking about here, it is possible , um, in this level of technological advancement for somebody to make a passion flower extract and to say, I'm gonna pot this. They
Could do that. I'm gonna make
It strong. I'm gonna make it super concentrated. I'm going to , I'm gonna emphasize the alkaloids so I can , you're
Gonna get into my laboratory and I'm gonna, right . Yeah. You can't do that in your kitchen. Right. But, but , uh, a nutraceutical company could do that in a laboratory, right? Yeah .
Right. So speaking from the perspective of tea and tincture, , yeah . Right. I'm not concerned about those kinds of drug interactions for this plant. Right. All right . We get into those weird supplements. Yeah . Maybe. Okay.
Yeah. All right . All right .
Yeah. So , um,
I ,
This might be a slight stretch, but , um, in, as we were talking here, and I was thinking about passion flower as like grounding. And you think, you look at the plant and it's, it's an airy plant, right? It
So much looks like it looks like it can
Fly. There's airspace in the plant in the, like, between the tendrils on the outside edges and everything, it looks like it will just sort of start spinning and float up into the sky. Mm-hmm.
It does. Um , you know, and it's this twining vine that wants to climb things, but it has that really grounding element to it. So if, if DS was like earth from water, then passion flower might be a , an earth of air type of plant.
I do not think that's a stretch. I think that's as stoop . I think
It's lovely. A little poetry for you. A little metaphor. Yes. Um, a little elemental perhaps, but , uh, all right . Maybe we got there after
All. I think we did . I think so.
Cool. All right . Before we go, I wanted to just highlight something for you. Um, today I wanna talk about our course on holistic help for better sleep. Okay. For only $25, you can get all of our most actionable information about how to improve your sleep. So do you have trouble falling asleep when you lay down? Do you have midnight waking herbs can help
,
And , uh, passion flowers are really key player in that course. We talk about it probably in every video, , um, you know, along with Skullcap and Beany and Wild Lettuce and a whole bunch of other great friends for this. Mm-hmm . So you can rebuild your circadian rhythm, you can recover from sleep debt, and you can even wake up feeling good in the morning. Wow. , imagine that
, you can wake up like you wanna wake , like, you know, I actually would like to be awake. Yeah. This is actually, I'm ready for this day. Mm-hmm.
. Yeah . Yeah. Just like every course with us, you get live q and a sessions twice a week, you get integrated discussion threads right there in each lesson, so you can ask a question and get a response within a day. You get lifetime access to all of the course material and any updates we make in the future. Uh, you get quick guides , uh, PDFs, you can download action prompts to help you make this real in your life. Hmm . Uh , and and more than that, too, . All right .
Yeah. So you can find that one and all of our [email protected]. Mm-hmm. . Okay. That's it for us this week. We'll be back next time with some more holistic herbalism podcasts. Until then, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. Drink some tea, and , uh, dream of seaweed,
. Aww . Yeah. Yes, .
Calvin it up over here.
Yes. All
Right . Bye everybody.
Bye . Hi .