These Natural Herbs Are the SECRET KEY to Better Gut Health | Olivia Amitrano

as an herbalist are there any popular herbs that you think people should be avoiding I think hey everyone today I spoke with herbalist Olivia amitrano all about herbs this was a fantastic conversation she really helped me to have a better appreciation for the different dosing forms meaning Kure versus capsule versus te what herbs are best to consider for what condition and share something I thought was fascinating in that depending on how the herb looks or based upon how the herb looks this can indicate what condition the herb should work best for so just a very interesting conversation wherein we explored the wonderful world of plant medicinals which we use a lot in the clinic and I'm sure some of you are experimenting with yourselves so a much more expansive and informative conversation to follow now with herbalist Olivia Olivia welcome to the show thank you so much for having me on Doc it's such an honor yeah you know we met at a um Forever Strong conference with Gabrielle lion and turns out the conference yeah it was quite quite the the the Extravaganza really and um as we get to talking turns out you're a pretty astute herbalist and I thought it would be interesting to pick your brain because we've we've had on the other end of the spectrum some really sort of deep academics people from Mayo people from leads that's one side of my brain but the other side is well there may not be a ton of research let's say on digestive bids but for some people these are super helpful and in our practice we kind of pull together from where we have science and also where maybe there's traditional observations with various herbal medicine so I said oh let's have herbalist on to really do a deep dive I love that yeah I think there's a whole world of like tradition passed down by Elders which was kind of how my education was structured in school where we had guest teachers come in that were taught this in their lineage you know dating like 10 lineages back and it's kind of a different form of science it's this it's still a repeated um - tested remedy or like measure of results it's just been passed down in a different way and what's cool is we're starting to get some science around things like adaptogens and seeing how they might work totally totally and maybe with that as sort of a preamble as an herbalist what's the most important thing you've learned about herbal medicine wow that's a that's a question I know um the most important thing I've learned about herbal medicine is perhaps that you can't push the body um in the sense that an herb might work incredibly well for a client for a set period of time and then that herb itself will almost become stubborn and stop being as effective because it is almost asking the person to continue the practices that will help to mimic whatever boost in brain chemicals or biological function that it was previously providing sure and so I find that herbs kind of have this personality or this Spirit where you can't rely on them forever and again they're not going to push systems where you're going to get a complete remission in something like type 2 diabetes they're going to work with your body and with your existing systems in a totally different way and teach you what your body needs so that you can then put that into your lifestyle practices if this has been helpful Please Subscribe comment and share this video with one person you think it might help sort of playing on that it's a little bit of a different concept but it reminds me of Steven Samberg Lewis who's a naturopath at nunm and he talked about this cycling of herbal antimicrobials for stubborn sibo um it sort of you know you use one set for a month then you switch to a different set and to your point ultimately the goal is to be off of the herbs um but for whatever reason he was seeing this Improvement when he didn't just sort of pedal to the metal with oregano let's say but he switched from oregano to berberine to maybe garlic and that's something I've been doing for a while and I also noticed it's helpful and maybe in part it's because the immune system after a while doesn't tolerate the herb or to your point maybe there's something more Beyond just the immune system component but certainly I would agree with you that there's something to variety with the herbal medicines that we use yeah absolutely I also think that there's no way that we're ever going to understand exactly what kind of bacterial overgrowth we have and it's going to EB and flow and change from day to day even if you do a GI map or whatever incredible test comes out you'll get an idea of the populations that are off but we're not measuring all of them and because herbs are so broad spectrum each one like berberine well berberine's not an herb but an herb that contains berberine as a compound like Copus or um golden seal might have broadspectrum alkaloids that attack one bacterial population that we're not even aware of whereas something like the herbs in biocon or oregano or thyme attack a totally different population so because there's still so much about the body and the microbiome that we don't know it is nice to lean on the herbs that also have these compounds that we are not even aware of to help tackle that and yeah yeah and this is where I think the traditional wisdom comes in because we can isolate from an herb that has multiple components maybe one alkaloid that we know as antimicrobial or anti-inflammatory but there are also many others which is why you'll see something like em Missin which is one of my favorite derivatives from wormwood that's antiparasitic antimalarial antibacterial anti-inflammatory antiviral it has all of these actions which is one of the things I love about herbal medicines is you have this sort of ecosystem effect also to your point which is and and I couldn't agree with it more strongly that we need to evolve past the perspective of well it's just a Candida that I'm treating or even worse I I'm a candida patient or aasbo patient and as much as we want people to have soless of a diagnosis I think it is too reductionistic and and we should be thinking more broadly about the ecosystem and this is where the herbs in many cases modulate the entirety of the ecosystem yes herbs absolutely modulate rather than even kill there again might be some antimicrobial alkaloids or compounds in there that we know are antibacterial to some extent but I don't think they're ever going be as strong as something like an antibiotic and and be all killing as an antibiotic is and they're also going to to modulate perhaps populations of healthy bacteria even when you look at plant compounds that are not herbal like the um proanthocyanidins in Cranberry or in other red pigmented berries we do know that they create an environment in the gut that is a little bit less hospitable to quote bad bacteria but they also create an environment in the gut where good bacteria can then grow and and perhaps kill off the rest of that bad bacteria so modulating involves feeding good populations perhaps creating environments that are less favorable to bad pathogens it doesn't mean killing flat out right and then some of these things you know cranberry makes me think of beet sort of these red very polyphenol Rich compounds that may also function as antioxidants so you know we even Brader further all of the cool things that herbs do and as a scrupulous scientist it is important to look for some research when we have it because the other thing we're trying to contend against is the charlatans just telling you that this one herb is gonna solve all problems and maybe that poses another question I can say in my field I am progressively and continually frustrated by people who are just saying whatever they want right they're irresponsible I think uh and this is probably a constant in politics in law in Marketing in healthcare and Medicine there are some that are just not careful with their words they're they're probably trying to help but they're likely in my opinion honestly ignorant to what they don't know it's kind of like the Dunning Krueger the less you know the more confident you are um but how do you how do you think about this how do you contend with people in herbal medicine that you may see making claims that that upset you due to the the lack of rigor or carefulness that underlies them yeah I think it's such an interesting line to toe because in order to get people excited about herbal medicine you do almost have to kind of like Market herbs in a way you know there's certain ways that I'll talk about an herb even like chamomile for example using the language that my teachers and my elders gave me where we know that for example chamomile is really good for the person who tends to internalize all of their stress to their stomach and so when they're stress it just feels like there's this rock in their stomach we also say that chamomile is for people crying on the outside whereas an herb like catnip is for people crying on the inside where they might be going through something but they're not going to tell you that they're suffering so I I like when people um educate slash Market slash bring consumers into the fold of what herbal medicine can do for them by creating a relationship with a single herbs like really teaching people the breadth of the tradition and the indications and the possible mechanisms for single herbs so that they can understand how that herb may play a role in their picture and where we're also kind of honoring the spirit and the personality of that plant but then on the other hand yeah of course it definitely bothers me when people are like these are the top five herbs for ex condition because you have no idea the exact root causes that are playing a role in that person's development of EX condition that person's root causes could be completely different from another person's root causes so it's better when you educate about how ex or can perhaps tackle X root cause through this mechanism and what this herb is traditionally indicated for so that people can start to kind of put the pieces together themselves and or be encouraged to talk to a practitioner about whether an herb is right for them and it is challenging isn't it because to get someone's attention you kind of have to have a very clear almost dichotomus this good that bad like you said the the top five uh so so I guess maybe that can be a starting point but then from grasping someone's attention we just want to be attentive to as we say atically listening to someone's body that that's one helpful way to make sure that we're not just shoehorning someone into you know for everyone it's Jim Nimo or for everyone it's circumin but but rather listening and personalizing to their system yeah for sure I mean it's I've written articles before that are like top five herbs for stress but I then use that article as a chance to go into the specific indications of five different adaptogens and explain that if you're someone who is a lot dryer you have a lot of dryness within your skin your mucous membranes maybe you're aging maybe you have some you know night sweats when you're going to bed something like American ginsing or luo which are a little bit more moistening and nourishing might be a better adaptogen for you whereas if you're someone who's dealing with an autoimmune condition an immune amphet teric adaptogen like Chandra that can help bring an immune response up or down might be a better fit for your quote stress and energy level so it's like kind of using those interesting headlines that will'll grab someone's attention to then take that opportunity to educate and explain the nuances between different herbs I think that's a fun opportunity yeah yeah totally totally uh and I've also written and done videos on you know top five warning signs or top five uses of um okay there's so much here I want to pick up on I definitely want to talk about adaptogens certainly want to come back to what you like urbally for digestion but yeah I do want to maybe start on the thread of mood and and what herbs you found to be most impactful for mood and and maybe share with us some of the mechanisms of actions through which they improve things like depression or anxiety or what have you absolutely so the first herb that comes to mind for mood is definitely St John's wart I think this is one that many people are familiar with and you might even be able to find in your local CVS unfortunately through a brand like Nature Made who's probably not harvesting it correctly but um in a traditional lens I'll I'll first speak to the way that this plant was introduced to me by my teachers this is a plant that really blooms and starts to flower in a very short period around the summer solstice and it's this very special experience where this plant is storing so much energy in its roots and its leaves before it finally comes out to flower and then it expresses through this really beautiful solar yellow happy flower and that's kind of what we talk about in traditional herbalism as the doctrine of signatures where part of the plant's actual physical presentation can give us Clues as to how this plant may work and so my teachers would always share that because this plant blooms at essentially the the maximum solar part of the Year where we have the most Sun and light energy in the environment as we Harvest that plant and create tinctures for the winter months we're able to kind of save and later impart some of that solar energy within our psyche when it comes time for Seasonal effective disorder what that looks like in an actual scientific Western lens is that we know that St John's where it may actually modulate and improve serotonin for example it may modulate gabber receptors and dopamine levels it may help to lower inflammation actually that's coming from our gut our our digestive system in order to modulate neuroinflammation Via the gut brain axis it may also help to upregulate certain Liberty toxification Pathways like cytochrome p450 in order to help us uh become more astute when it comes to eliminating excess hormones and toxicant from the environment which of course would play a role in our overall inflammatory load and oxidative stress and thus our mood so that's one example where tradition tends to translate to science many years later yeah and let let's pick up on that because St John's wart admittedly is not one that I've used a lot of so I'd love to sort of pick your experience here are you finding that or or maybe just like sketch the Avatar of what the person presents like for whom you feel St John's W is the most indicated yeah this is someone who's going to have a really um marked appearance of Seasonal effective disorder every year where as soon as the sun comes out their mood is changing so drastically within that day or so that you're like oh yeah this is a person who really needs the sun who needs that solar energy it's also going to be a person who tends to have um some frazzled nerves are going to be hyper sensitive to stress and another preparation in terms of how we use St John's word in the herbal world is that we will Infuse St John's wart flowers into some kind of an oil using heat and time and we'll use that oil topically to kind of help coat and soothe and ground the nerves when someone is experiencing um periods of increased stress so this will be person who's very frazzled who is just very melancholic they kind of just have this dark perspective of the world that again needs that boost of light even within their psyche and their perspective and they're also often people who deal with some degree of chronic pain that's part of the indication they're not only having um periods of low mood and cycles of low mood but they're also having cycles of inflammation driven pain that comes and goes gotcha so it's not necessarily someone who has depression sort of all the time and they're looking at St John's Ward as like popping a pill that's a natural anti-depressant you think there needs to be more of this sort of seasonality to that presentation I think that's it's that is probably the most helpful way because I also find that it's it's a good practice to cycle it um I think that with any kind of mood and serotonin modulating herb you also don't want to again like try to push things too far create some of that dependence so it is good to cycle on and off of it and use it seasonally but I have seen cases where this is helpful for someone who just has you know more of like a picture of generalized depression and needs a tool for a period of let's say like 3 to four months or even more to really shift that pattern and shift not only their mindset but their habits enough to where then their habits start to pick up the work of lowering that inflammation and modulating those brain chemicals right right and and something you had mentioned um earlier in in some of the note correspondence that we had going back and forth in terms of what should we talk about today was a note about how chronic health issues can impact the nervous system and I know for some people in our audience it may be chronic IBS you know pain bloting constipation diarrhea it might be chronic fatigue or joint pain whatever the symptoms or symptoms are uh there's some degree of chronicity for a facet of our audience can you speak more about you know how you think about supporting that because certainly I've noticed notic that how we handle mindset framing like I said before you know I'm a Candida patient I look at that as sort of a psychological weed that we need to pull out and reframe with something more empowering but would love to hear your perspective here yeah there's something I've been looking into recently um and I can provide a a resource for you to put in the show notes but there's something called lyic retraining have you heard of this it the mindset yeah we've had Ash on the podcast and and um yes oh my gosh amazing so yeah think that that's especially when it comes to Chronic symptoms where the symptoms then become a driver of stress additionally where essentially at Baseline stress is part of the picture as to why that person is experiencing symptoms so take digestive uh like IBS where there's like chronic digestive insufficiency Mal digestion and someone is constantly having gas bloating pain Etc from the food that they're eating a piece of that may very well be stress and nervous system driven because when the body is in fight or flight more often than not and is in a a pattern of sympathetic dominance you are not in a state where your body can be in rest and digest mode before your meals and thus you're not secreting the proper digestive Cascade of you know hydrochloric acid which stimulates your dig digestive enzymes as well as bile release so stress in itself and not being able to get out of the stress Loop is sometimes part of or even the reason why someone is having digestive issues and then the experience of digestive issues themselves anticipating it kind of looping and obsessing over it while it's happening can then further that cycle right right and this this all is fully agreed by the way and I think limic retraining of whatever program it could be Gupta it could be dnrs there's also emotional Freedom technique that the sort of um tapping method that's used time in nature exercise all these things I'm sure you talk about um quite a bit yourself um even some CBT apps we've been referring for an app called Clarity for people who may not want to go the extent to the goop to Olympic retraining program which is at least 20 minutes they want you to do an hour per day I think you can get away with 20 minutes but something nice especially for those who sort of catastrophize I'm having bloating therefore I'm having lcky gut therefore I'm having systemic inflammation therefore I'm harming my brain you know that sort of negative casc therefore I'm never going to heal this therefore I've tried everything yeah this is where we found the clarity app has a nice feature that sort of disarms some of those negative feedback loops yeah you know what and I think it's also it comes down to like you said mindset and the way that we're almost willing to take a little bit of a risk or gamify the way that we experience things you and I were just talking about how we're both Italian and there's a phrase in sort of Italian culture I guess I'd say non yende where it's like uh it's nothing and that's actually kind of a powerful mindset shift that you can take where when you're experiencing something actually just challenging yourself to be like it's nothing it's fine and the more that you can just kind of like kick that out of your brain and practice just recognizing the thought saying okay it's here but guess what it's nothing those are kind of strategies that you can at least try on for size to help um the nervous system piece become disarmed yeah very well said could not agree more um what about relationships this obviously ties to relationships and I know this is something that you think a lot about um obviously it's also very Broad and deep topic but are there a few points on relationships that you think people should be aware of yeah I think that we often don't realize how much energy we are utilizing to show up in relationships in either a non-authentic way a way in which we are people pleasing and constantly taking on the other person's experience and relationship with us and trying to accommodate their needs and over pleas and there's also an element of not having adequate boundaries in relationships um which can also lead to overgiving but can just also lead to this disregulation in relationship that is actually zapping us of some of the energy that we need in order to you know complete our metabolic functions complete our proper digestion fuel our immune cells and so stress in relationships I really think that relationship stress is kind of all there is I mean obviously there's Health stress and financial stress but that kind of ties back to relationships I'm stressed about my finances because I'm not going to be able to provide for my family um I'm stressed about my health because it's keeping me away from spending time with my family or my friends or or showing up and connecting with people which is what really makes me happy and most of the the Rel the issues that we deal with on a daily basis I think can be tied back to um strain within our relationships when we're calling a friend inventing it's usually I had a fight with this family member or I had a fight with my partner or this thing happening within a dynamic with my friend um and so relationships matter a lot more for our health than we realize and I think often um just being able to develop mindset strategies around engaging with relationships in a healthier way like practicing radical honesty like communicating our boundaries like realizing that showing up authentically is okay and we don't have to feel shame about who we are can then have um very High returns in our actual physical health you know you're reminding me of I I recently started using it's called the five minute journal and it's just a quick literally about five minutes what I'm grateful for positive affirmations what would make today a great day you know just a few quick things like that to sort of prime your mind to focus on what you want there's a story that they tell about um this is sort of in the preface of the journal you know why to use it how to use it that sort of thing where this man was going through a really dark time in his life and he started this habit of when I come home the first thing I'm going to do is share with my wife one good thing that happened at work today rather than you know coming from this dark place wanting to vent and kind of oh get into all the the the darkness and the negativity he would start his interaction with his wife off with one positive thing and apparently that really sort of tilted the perspective of the their entire evening together because he started their connection for the evening on a positive note I love that I think um looking to relationships as places to share and expand our joy and receive like a mirroring of that Joy is a really powerful concept and I think that's wise advice relationships can be stressful or hopefully stress alleviating something that may also help with stress could be adaptogens I know you talk a lot about these you have a lot of experience with these um for the people in our audience who maybe don't even know what these are what they do can you give us the quick definition and then some of the formulas or herbs that that you like here yeah yeah so adaptogens are these plants that help to bolster our non-specific resilience in the face of stress and they're quite non-toxic we take them in pretty large multiple gram siiz doses because they are essentially food they are often just the roots of plants and they are these food-like roots so they're non-toxic you take them in large doses and what they're doing is they're helping your body to have a greater capacity to respond to physical and emotional demands and they do this by acting on our HPA axis which I'm sure you've talked about to a large extent our hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis which also involves other hormones um and what it's doing is helping our this HPA to be less responsive to stressors and perhaps um have less of an output of cortisol in the face of something that's stressing us out or um improve our endorphin levels through this uh HPA access so that we already have a baseline greater perspective and approach to the stressors in our lives and we're not too sure exactly how this works but research is starting to come out showing that adaptions for example can stimulate our heat chock proteins which is the same phenomenon that's being seen when someone is entering a sauna so they may be doing this through sort of like a hormetic stressor pathway where when we enter a sauna and we have our body um withstand a very high temperature that's knocking us out of homeostasis we actually get a Little Bit Stronger by having to temporarily adapt to that stressor of heat right and so adaptogens may be doing this as well on a biochemical level but they're also preventing immune suppression in the face of stress so they're keeping our immune system functioning and healthy and responsive when we're overworked and undersleeping they're also helping to protect our brain's neurons for example from stress because they have a very high o antioxidant content so they're going to help protect us from oxidative stress on a cellular level and there's so many different ones and this is where the personality of plants kind of gets to come in where someone who is suited to something like schisandra is going to be totally different from someone who's suited to something like riola or ashwag so you tend to prefer single ingredient because I know there's a lot of formulas that will have three four five six different herbs as opposed to you could do just Al luo or Rola or whatever it is yeah I think when you're dealing with the general population Blends are actually a lot more suited because you don't know someone's Constitution you don't know their energetic patterns you don't know if they run hot or cold or dry or damp so having a very neutral blend of adaptogens kind of an equal formulation of heating or warming adaptogens as well as cooling adaptogens is the best way to make something that's palatable to the masses so that's what I do in my line I have an adaptogen formula and it's kind of like the perfect energetic balance of a few different adaptogens so we don't push the body in any one way we just provide that overall antioxidant HPA AIS support but when you're working with someone one-on-one it's actually fun to be able to customize a blend of adapted gens where you're maybe relying on one to three hypers specific ones that really match their personality and their presentation so for example Chandra is this adaptogen that when you taste it it is a berry it's like the five flavor Berry and it has all of these different flavors but the predominant flavor of Chandra is sort of sour and astringent and anything that is like sour tart astringent is going to have this consolidating and tightening um effect in the body so whenever we see tissues in the body that are lacked if someone's struggling with leaky gut we're going to maybe look to adaptogens that are as stringing that can also help them on that gut brain level and then when someone is having more of these um presentations in their personality or their way of being that a practitioner can notice through having a relationship with the patient like their thoughts are kind of all over the place leaky thoughts is what my one of my teachers would call it schisandra is this herb that kind of has this tightening effect even on the thoughts and the speech and helps someone to feel more um concise and organized mentally so it's a really interesting AR stringing effect where it goes beyond just the gut yeah nice nice and you know you're reminding me of how many of these are these um what we would maybe traditionally call an adrenal adaptogen are being used in let's say chronic lime as a compliment to maybe the primary antimicrobial because it helps you with the stress the inflammation the immune system which is also what's so cool about herbal medicine is you can have an anti-inflammatory impact on the brain an improvement with sleep due to the harmonic effect and also a bolstering impact on the immune system all with something like gin SN yeah it's really amazing and when it comes to Lime that's such a good point because I think half the battle of lime is perhaps the load of the pathogen right just keeping that pathogen load down with things like anti microbials like anti anti-pet herbs but the other piece of the picture when it comes to Lyme disease is actually teaching the body and the immune system how to live with this bug because there is no evidence that we can fully eradicate lime and there's plenty of people that when they do a lime test they are positive for lime but they have absolutely no symptoms yes so what's the difference between the person who is heavily symptomatic when it comes to having the presence of lime and someone who's not it's that for whatever reason that second person's immune system is not reacting to this bug in a way that's signaling emergency send out inflammatory chemicals give this person brain fog and a terrible life experience because we see this bug so when we look at adaptogens that are immune ampet teric even something like schisandra is actually immune ampeter ashwaganda aloro especially mushrooms are highly immune aeric these are adaptogens that are helping to adjust the immune response bring it up when needed and also bring it down when needed and modulate an overactive immune response that's overreacting to a pathogen so that that person over time as they yes get that load down can then start to experience harmony with this bug where the immune system can see it and not feel like it needs to react yeah no I love the way you that you said that and especially because some of these syndromes or or diagnoses can be so ensconced with fear I think lime is one of those but many of the organisms in that family are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old and I don't know if we have research to be able to give really accurate stats on the prevalence but given that these things can be spread by dogs cats mosquitoes fleas ticks flies the likelihood that many more people than we appreciate have been exposed and probably have these in their system tells us it's probably predominantly about modulation of the ecosystem you know the the person's ecosystem and their immune system to be able to coexist rather than thinking oh I've been branded Now by The Mark of lime and it means my whole life is going to be different absolutely you want to look at what are the other oxidative stressors and nutrient deficiencies that are putting that person in a state where they are so reactive to not just lime but stress in general and any other pathogen or food in which they come in contact with a lot of people that deal with chronic lime and chronic pathogens in general also have all these food sensitivities and it's just this sign that the immune system is reacting to being alive period probably because of all of these foundational factors like I said micronutrient deficiencies maybe poor sleeve quality Etc that are making them a more sensitive human so it's really bolstering like you said the terrain and the resilience of that human as a whole and adaptogens can do that while also bringing the immune response down while also combating oxidative stress while also helping that sleep so we've talked about a few different herbs Do you have a way that you classify these it can be a little bit challenging maybe because so many of these herbs have such broad action but there do seem to be some categorizations we can use sort of adrenal adapted gens maybe uh things that improve mood but how do you sort of frame these into a heris if someone's trying to wrap their mind about all these herbs and how we maybe draw circles around them yeah sure so classically in terms of um herbal actions we have things like bitters that's one class of herbs bitters are these digestive focused plants that have highly bitter alkaloids within them that when your bitter taste receptors on your tongue recognize the presence of these alkaloids your vagus nerve is stimulated and your entire body receives this signal that it's time to secrete our digestive juices and in response to intaking that bitter flavor through plants before meals through a digestive bitters blend before meals you are able to from a top down brain down level produce more of your own hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes rather than needing to take an exogenous supplement of something like enzymes so bitters are really important humans evolved with the bitter flavor we have bitter taste receptors not just on our tongue but in so many different parts of the body within the gut within the lungs even um there are some groups of people out there who are looking at bitter herbs as a tool for things like asthma because we're now seeing these bitter receptors everywhere in the lungs and we're seeing that vagus nerve stimulation so there's some interesting future therapeutic implications for that but largely they do act on the digestive system and help you to break down your food more completely as well as as well as absorb more nutrition from your meals then we have things like I guess today we'd call them not Tropics um these would be herbs that improve cognitive function improve brain function memory um recall things like that through either a exerting again a high antioxidant capacity within the setting of the actual neurons um and and the environment of the brain but also help to increase blood flow peripherally in order to deliver more blood oxygen and nutrients to the actual brain tissue so that's things like Ginko Boba bopa Rosemary they're kind of these circulatory stimulants that would be considered nrop ICS like you said we have adaptogens we also have hepatic bids that act on the liver and encourage Phase 1 and two detoxification and also act as kogs which help to encourage us to secrete bile and also Aid bile solubility so that we can break down fats better um and then we also have something like nervines nervines are one of my favorite classes of plants these are angiolytic anti-anxiety herbs essentially that have a calming effect on the nervous system and again in a modern scientific lens they're probably doing this through upregulating our production of common neurotransmitters like Gaba let's double click on anxiety because I'd love to hear what either herb or formula you like to use for anxiety um St John's wart I don't think it's super effective I could be wrong I remember doing a brief poke and for depression there's some interesting information but there wasn't the carryover I was hoping to see for anxiety so yeah where do you go yeah yeah I think um mood the experience of a a happier mood and the experience of less anxiety are two totally different things and I think of very different plants um when I think of the experience of mood I'm actually going to look towards some of those circulatory uh stimulants as well things like genko and rosemary to just get more blood flow up to the brain alongside things like St John's W that boost uh serotonin levels but in terms of anxiety you're really wanting to look to these calming plants everything from Passion Flower to Cava to catnip and chamomile which I mentioned earlier and this is where I think the tradition of herbalism really shines because traditionally when folks didn't have labs and places where they could synthesize specific phytochemicals and understand what they were doing in the brain all they had were patterns and observations and so over time our elders that developed the framework of traditional herbalism found that hey passion flower is really good for someone who has looping thoughts that keep repeating in their mind before bed and they first kind of came to this conclusion by looking at that doctrine of signatures that I mentioned earlier because the way that passion flower grows is it has all of these tiny tendrils and vines that tend to wrap around things and then people experience yeah when I have looping thoughts before bed that are kind of wrapping around my brain and can't stop passion flower is giving me a lot of results then we have something like cavar root that I mentioned this is also really good for um physical manifestations of anxiety so it's a much stronger nervine than others and it's going to have actually a physically relaxing effect it's probably having a more pronounced effect on the G uh the Vegas nerve um but essentially this herb is really good for physical tension when your body is locked and tight when you're having anxiety and it's also wonderful for performance anxiety so if you're someone who's about to go give a speech or you're about to go play a musical instrument in front of an audience I would take Cava rather than taking passion flower then we have things like blue vervine this is a very acrid bitter nervine that helps a lot with tension that is in the shoulders and jaw so they always say that blue vervine is great for perfectionists who tend to hold all of their tension right here in the jaw when things aren't going exactly their way and then we have something like mother wart and this is a nervine that helps when someone's anxiety is manifesting specifically as heart palpitations so someone might be having anxiety concentrated specifically in the chest burning in the chest heart palpitations and it's an herb that helps to impart courage spiritually and emotionally especially when one is trying to set boundaries with other people so this is where we get kind of into the spiritual realm of what I was taught and I found that these herbs somehow work really well in these situations and I have no scientific evidence for that well I mean it's fair you know and coming back to Observation I can say as a clinician I have found in many cases is the person's symptom or symptoms and then their history what's worked what provokes them and then experiencing what moves anal clinically and what doesn't right maybe a certain diet helps maybe certain herbals are or are not helpful has been more effective than treating many Labs including something like a stool test or a SEO breath test so I do think where hopefully we're going we call it evidence-based empiricism using the randomized control trials when we have them on something like oregano being able to be antibo um but then using the person's biof feedback empirically are you improving yes or no to guide how we personalize the Therapeutics to the person and getting away from treating the labs and we've talked about this on the podcast in the past but um we recently split test two of the best stool Assessments in functional medicine one one person same stool sample half in one kit half in the other and the results were vastly different so and this this happens more often you would think so if that's happening and we're we're looking at you know the we got to treat the labs we're going to be scientific well unless we have a very very high level of accuracy with those labs then it's a little bit more of kind of a coin toss in terms of I'm going to use anti-candidal treatments or antibac cial treatments or prebiotics um and I think and for our audience this is probably trit but it's just so important to keep repeating this because there's so much of a pull towards I'm not feeling well the labs have the answers and in so many cases that's just not true and hence where I think listening to the person and having good observational data can be really helpful yeah traditional herbalism is essentially all about observation and all about kind of listening to what the person is telling you in between the lines of what they're saying cuz they'll tell you where their issue lies and they'll start to talk about how they're showing up in their relationships or you know certain certain factors and ways that their personality and dysfunction is presenting where you're like oh there's a herb for that right right super cool uh digestion is something I know our audience cares a lot about so you mentioned camomile for people who was it chamomile was stress manifests in their gut but yeah love to hear more about what some of your top go-tos and and corresponding observations indicating those go-tos are yeah so chamomile is certainly for someone whose stress centralizes to their stomach where as soon as you're stressed out it just feels like there's a rock in your stomach and no matter what you eat you're just not digesting it everything kind of shuts off down there so chamomile is nice because it not only acts as an angiolytic and helps with the stress driven fight ORF flight Factor behind that digestive experience but it also acts as a bit of a digestive bidder especially if you're doing a very long infusion and you're steeping that chamomile for a long time the longer that it's in that tea bag in the hot water the more bitter it becomes so it's kind of like a two for one anti-anxiety digestive bitter super cheap super easy remedy and like I said earlier my teacher Claudia Keel would say chamomile is for people who are crying on the outside that's why it's really great for kids really great for fussy children who are like oh my stomach hurts are we there yet it's someone who has no no trouble voicing their concerns and is going to tell you and complain about how they're feeling child or adult whereas something like catnip which is also a lovely anti-anxiety and even digestive herb is for someone who's going to be sitting there feeling horrible having digestive symptoms but they're not going to tell you how they're feeling and they're going to keep it all inside right so even just knowing that can help you kind of customize a digestive blend for someone or try out a tea for yourself um and then we have many other digestive plants and even classes of of digestive plants there's certain things called carminatives which are herbs that just help to release trapped gas from the digestive system and so often that's where someone's pain and bloating and discomfort is coming from so instead of using over the counter that sort of herb so that would be something like fennel fennel is a wonderful super easy kitchen spice that's a carminative you can just take a few fennel seeds from a spice cabinet and chew on them before after your meal to help release some of that gas and resolve digestive discomfort um and then of course we have the bitters like I mentioned earlier and the key with digestive bitters is you want to take them 10 to 15 minutes before your meal so that you can have enough time for those digestive juices to be beautifully stimulated before you start eating your actual meal and back in the day we used to do this naturally people used to eat bitter starters used to eat bitter Greens dangel Greens and Dives far more consistently than we do now now we just kind of go right into the meal so I had created for my line I have one um blend called digestive juice which is a digestive bitter spray so that you can just keep it in your purse pull it out and spray it right on your tongue to get that dose of bitter flavor 10 minutes before your meals and if you're with a group of friends you pass it around and everyone will be really surpris at how good they feel but I also have another bitters blend called gluco bitters which has more of these herbs that help to regulate your postprandial glucose response to that meal so if you're someone who tends to have um a lot of fatigue after your meals or you tend to have blood sugar spikes highs and lows throughout the day that's a bitters blend that has not only digestive bitters but blood sugar balancing Botanical as well with the first Formula that's more stimulatory if you will do you notice if people have indigestion reflux heartburn is that like HCL which in that symptom presentation can either make people worse or better kind of depending on what's going on is it sort of a a hit or miss with that group or or what do you notice so it it's interesting I tried to formulate it so that it would be as applicable to both of those groups as possible on the one hand even people who have some heartburn some acid reflux often still need some digestive support the acid is either in the wrong place or um secreting at the wrong time they still need some support with digesting their meals so it'll still be helpful um but for folks who have just like true acid reflux there's some licorice root in that blend alongside the herbals to help soothe and reduce inflammation within the GI tract if you're having a constant presentation of heartburn acid reflux so we find that a lot of folks feel a lot better just from the licorice root in that blend and then also get some digestive support but as you know there's a population of people who are having acid reflux and heartburn because they don't have enough stomach acid to actually signal the closing of their lower esophageal sphincter after their meal so food is coming back up into the esophagus after they eat so for that group of people you're actually helping them to produce enough suic acid to close the Lees that they're not having an experience of acid reflux at all right right okay so people could just try it and and see how it goes essentially yeah yeah it's very gentle it's not going to make you dump massive amounts of HCL and it's nothing like an HCL supplement that's the thing when you're taking Fane HCL in supplement form you have no idea how you're going to respond respond to that that's actual like HCL that you're supplementing and it's acid and it can be inflammatory for a lot of people this is just kind of stimulating your body to release its own proper amount of digestive juices that's the top down effect do you find certain dosing forms are better at certain points in time I know you have tinctures te's I've actually been a big fan of tinctures with people who are really sensitive because you'll have no excipients even the cleanest supplement brand are going to have some excipient um so you know the other thing is if the person is really um meticulous if you will or or they don't like a bad taste sometimes it's hard to get them to use like an artemisin tincture which has a really strong taste to it so you have to know your audience uh but just FYI for our audience if you're really sensitive then a tincture can be nice because it's a bit cleaner um but yeah tell us more about the forms that you use and kind of what you like yeah I think that when you're trying to have an effect on like the water systems of the body is the best way I can put it doing something like a tea a water soluble herbal prep preparation is going to be ideal for that so if you are dealing with someone who's having a lot of dryness within their skin and their digestive system and an herb like kandula would really help to moisten and lubricate their gut to help them have greater body wide hydration and nutrient absorption you're probably going to want to have them drink a colula tea so that the delivery method can kind of act in the way that we want it to to have the correct effect but for just dosing a therapeutic amount of herbs in a way that's really clean and really potent and really fast acting you really can't do better than a tincture because obviously it's kind of like instant absorption and you're getting maximum surface area of ingesting that liquid the problem like you said is that tinctures usually taste really bad and that's because a lot of tinctures are alcohol-based and that's for a reason so you have to extract especially alkaloid Rich plants in alcohol because alkaloids are only alcohol soluble they're not going to abtract extract into a different solvent so what we do for our tinctures to combat The Taste issue is that we extract all of our tinctures in alcohol first so that we can maximize the actual phytochemical extraction and then we slowly cook off the alcohol as we slowly replace the alcohol with organic vegetable glycerin so that you end up having a final product that's herbs in glycerin but they were not extracted in glycerin and they taste a lot better because glycerin is sweet and gentle and kind of mucilaginous and doesn't burn your throat and do you find any difference with absorption or efficacy between the two no I find that when done right when you work with the right manufacturer who knows how to take a tincture from alcohol to glycerin you're getting the exact same effect if you're tincturing herbs in glycerin you're you're losing that's not going to that's not going to happen that's not going to get you the phytochemicals that you're looking for so you never want to actually tincture and glycerin some people do this if you're tincturing like chamomile and glycerin that's fine but again you're if you're tincturing dense Roots things like dandelion root or berock root anything that has rooty alkaloids you have to go for the alcohol and then people who prefer pills um those are usually options for almost any one of these plant compounds are there any for which you would say only use this herb as a tea or as a tincture I would say for milk thistle for example only use it as a capsule or a tincture because milk thisle te is not going to get you the phytochemicals that you're looking for I think adaptogens are suited to capsules I find that that's a that's a fine delivery form because again they're just like food like roots and you're kind of grinding up the root and taking it in capsule form right um and even better in powder form because adaptogens taste pretty good and are mild and neutral and kind of sweet just putting some adaptogens into like an energy ball recipe that has some nut butter and protein powder um is a great way to get a very high dose of adaptogens in through food so that you don't have to take a million capsules um and then other than that again like anything that's very rich in alkaloids things like dandelion Roots a lot of liver herbs I do prefer to take them in tincture form because there's that extra step of processing that really concentrates the alkaloids right right okay uh one of the final questions I wanted to ask you is are there any popular herbs that you think people should be wary of you avoid or not youed I think berberine is not for everyone say more I think um yeah you know it's people are looking to berberine as a way way to help resensitize their cells to insulin so they're looking to berberine as kind of like a natural metformin um a way to help balance their blood sugar and reduce insulin resistance and while it is able to do this it is heavily antimicrobial and is going to have an effect against sibo for many people and if that person is not ready for a strong antimicrobial ingested daily if their other elimination Pathways aren't open if they're constipated and not having bowel movements every day if they are someone who needs liver support and that's not being taken into account I feel like it can cause more side effects than benefit and better yeah I mean the gastrointestinal offset is one of the more reported side effects for burin for sure yeah and just in general kind of like a backlog of um of just toxins that you're not able to release because you're killing off all these pathogens you know then you're needing to kind of get rid of their waste products but your liver Pathways and valves are not necessarily open it's it's doing a lot more than just resensitizing your cells to insulin so I think that there are better Botanicals to use even things like cinnamon that are still going to give you a wonderful effect in lowering postprandial glucose and resensitizing you to insulin that's not going to have quite as strong of an antimicrobial effect gotcha this is also where these things are a little bit complicated because I'm thinking of I believe it's Marty Ross who recommends cinnamon oregano and blanking on the third but it's it's a three herb combo for chronic lime interesting I mean cinnamon is antifungal I'll give it that it's just I just don't find it to be nearly as strong as something like burine someone could even just start adding cinnamon to their food and have a really helpful response when it comes to managing their blood sugar so it's like you don't have to go as far as like now I'm going to dose myself with a bunch of berberine each day you can kind of imbalance things more than you help them by doing that blindly especially without a practitioner yeah I mean it was admittedly news to me to see cinnamon ranked as like primary antimicrobial so maybe there's some Synergy there or maybe it's just they were using a formula that had cinnamon and maybe more of the antimicrobial actions from the other two things and sorry audience I can't I can't think of the third it's oregano cinnamon oh and clove um which again to me clove I did not associate as a strong antimicrobial but um you know maybe it's mostly the Cinnamon's High yeah Cinnamon's high in essential oils high in cinnamon alahh tides and other things like that so essential oils are always going to be antimic Rial so it's not impossible and I think the Synergy is probably very much part of it but yeah I just don't find people to have like die off effects from cinnamon whereas buring that's fair yeah you're often gonna get that right um anything you want to say in close I mean please tell the audience more you have a a really big Instagram following much um much of your page is just super insightful and intuitive uh lessons or or musings you have a line of herbs you've developed so where can people connect with you and learn more about what you offer yeah thank you I've I've certainly cataloged my journey for the last eight or nine years on my Instagram it's organicore Olivia um nowadays I really mostly post my podcast Clips because I'm kind of passing the torch to the next generation of experts and wanting to give them the air time on my platform but you can go back through my highlights and archives and I have a lot of things that I've shared from my own healing journey and just herbal insights for you and then you can go to my website organic liv.com I have a ton of helpful blog posts that I've written throughout the years on all different herbs and that's where you can find my full herbal line organic Olivia I have an adaptogen blend that is very neutral I have digestive bitters I have um an anti-anxiety blend Called Peace juice so a lot of the things that we talk about I have formulated for in a way that is meant to help the maximum amount of people possible awesome uh well Olivia appreciate you taking the time and it's been a really fun conversation I think herbs like we've been outlining have so much potential to help people and they're so available they're so simple so I would definitely encourage people to check out your work do some experimentation whether it be catnip chamomile whatever it is and see if you can use these herbs that have been used for so long to help sort of fine-tune your health so just been great and uh thank you again thanks so much for the space to have the contest [Music]

Channel: Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC, DNM

Views: 30,875

Keywords: herbal medicine, herbal remedies, herbal medicine cabinet, herbal medicine for beginners, natural remedies, herbs, essential medicinal herbs, what is herbal medicine, learn herbal medicine, medicinal herbs, herbal medicines, medicinal plants and herbs, herbalist, herbalism, natural medicine, medicinal herbs and their uses, medicinal plants, alternative medicine, plant medicine, how to make a herbal tincture, natural medicine for depression, herbs for depression, adaptogens

Id: Q3e2OQHSnns

Length: 57min 1sec (3421 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024