From HerbMentor.com this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is Guido Maśe. Guido is a clinical herbalist, educator, and garden steward specializing in holistic western herbalism. He is a founding codirector of the Vermont Center of Integrative Herbalism in Montpelier and a professional member of the American Plant Savers.
He has worked extensively in the herbal products industry with with focuses on local and sustainable growing, harvesting, and production. Guido is author of the new book, The Wild Healing with Aromatic, Bitter, and Tonic Plants, published by Healing Arts Press. And you can visit Guido at v t herb center dot o r g. Guido Maze, welcome to Herd Mentor Radio.
Thanks, John. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
It's an honor to have you on the show. So, you are from Italy originally.
So tell us about that growing up there and and all this, in is is in relation to how that helped you, you know, ground you in your passion for herbalism.
Yeah. My, my ancestors so my my dad's parents, my dad is the Italian one, came from kind of the middle part of the arc of the Alps in the Dolomite region. And then it's really amazing high mountain country. I mean, we we go down to valley floors that are maybe a few thousand feet over sea level, all the way up to, peaks that are close to ten thousand feet.
And so there's a great range of botanical flora there. We would spend a lot of winter in the mountains, and, most of our summer vacation during the school year would be up there too, with my grandma and my aunts and uncles. But we also, lived in this town called Ferrara That is an old Renaissance town. It's it's still enclosed in the original walls that were built around, thirteen, fourteen hundred, and it has this great castle in the middle of the city.
And, anyway, that's kind of a center of culinary and gastronomic magic.
It's really close to where Parmesan cheese comes from, for instance.
And so folks are really tied to an agricultural production of food and these pasta making rituals, that really permeated my life. And and I never really kinda took them for granted until I came, back to the United States. So we would spend summer times, you know, hiking up and down the mountains, harvesting plants from meadows that then in the winter we'd use to make tea.
And then throughout the year when I was in school, my dad and my mom would just, you know, get these amazing local foods, local pastas, meats, and cheeses, and we just cook together all the time, which I think is fairly typical story of people who live in Italy.
I think I would have never really realized how valuable and important that was, if it hadn't been for the fact that my mom, who is the American one, met my dad in the Alps.
If, we hadn't come back to Kansas City, which is where she's from, when I was about fourteen, to spend time with my grandparents.
And, you know, I I realized a couple of things. First of all, right away, everything is huge. The roads are huge. The cars are huge. It's just like all this space.
The valleys and the Alps are super tight, and, the communities are really tight, and the homes are small, and everybody kinda lives together. So that bigness immediately struck me. But then after a couple years, it struck me that, you know, we weren't walking around and wild harvesting stuff. And the food that we got came packaged up in plastic. It was just kinda different. And it took a while for me, to really have that sink in. But when it did, it was, kind of an important realization that, a, this stuff was really important to me, and b, I kinda grew up in a place and I had a heritage that could inform my learning and my understanding of how, these plants and these food these foods can can really improve life and and come back in and and enrich life, in a profound way.
Did you have, mentors or or or, like, in in Italy that that taught you specifically about different plants? Or was it just something that was really just part of life? You know, we're going up and we're gathering these teas.
That's what everybody does. You know, because I didn't continue my growing up in Italy, I'm not sure if everybody did this, but certainly my family did. Mhmm. And I haven't gone back and kind of, you know, researched how prevalent it is.
But, I mean, my dad, you know, I remember him talking to me about, these particular flowers that, have this amazing sort of chocolate smell and scent. I believe it's a type of avens that grows up in the Alps. And, you know, we'd harvest arnica. My uncle Harold is obsessed with the elder tree.
So he drinks elderflower tea all the time. When I was just up there this last summer, you know, he again went off about the elder tree, with me, and and he said that the dirt that grows around the elder roots is used to make an infusion for eczema, which just sounded very bizarre to me. But it's that kind of stuff, you know, like and my grandma knew about it, and my aunt Rita knew about it. We'd go out and harvest dandelions all the time, especially in the spring.
And it was really just a part of the ritual in summer to just gather up, all the cousins and drive up to the valley floor and then hit this trail and hike up to above the tree line and just to gather stuff along the way. And we'd bring picnic and we'd play games and we'd come back with mushrooms and plants.
Did you bring that to do you bring that to your own family? I mean, like, where where you're at right now, do you do you continue these, like, that sort of, feeling and that ritual, yeah, for your own family and and daughter?
Yeah. It's really it's very important, especially for my daughter. And, I mean, my wife, she's she's definitely very busy right now. She works as a physician, but she was an herbalist before she was a physician and and so she's still an herbalist. You know, once you learn about this stuff, it's it's really hard to disentangle yourself from the plant world.
So when she has time, she comes out with us. But it's hugely important to both of us that our daughter get that kind of experience, of being able to go out to, you know, more tame places, around Burlington, Vermont. You know, we'll go down to the lake. We'll go to local forests.
But we also make it a point to get out to the wilder spaces and, you know, climb the the bigger mountains in Vermont. And I've been really impressed with her, like, getting up the trail on Mount Mansfield, getting up high on the rocks and just she keeps going. She's really interested in it. And we talk about, you know, energies on the mountain and, spirits and personalities of the plants that we meet and how to harvest them.
And mostly, I just let her do the exploring because I feel like she has this connection, and this is probably true of most kids, direct plant and nature connection.
And I end up learning from her, probably as much as she does for me.
Wow.
And and do you also find, that you're, you know, the just in your own life and your community that you're really, like, you're growing up and and what inspired you is, like, what you bring to your life too as far as sharing food with people and and and, you know, community.
Like, did you have have you found that that that's something that also you've brought into your life too just knowing it's the way you were brought up?
I think that I do a lot more cooking than sort of the average American does. For me, you know, after I pick up my daughter from school and we get home, our activity, is prepping and cooking dinner. Mhmm. And it's great.
And during the summer, when she can go out to the garden, you know, she just gathers a bunch of stuff and we incorporate it into the meal. But I I mean, I really enjoy cooking. I don't think that that's necessarily unique to me. I think a lot of folks, especially in this community in Vermont, use cooking not only as a way to stay healthy, but as a way to connect with friends and and just hang out and spend time, you know, having a glass of wine, making a meal.
It's one of the most enjoyable things I think a human being can do, especially on a summer evening together with friends.
I I don't know that I, sort of seek out that strategy as a way to connect with people directly, but I'd always rather have folks over, and cook and eat together than go out to dinner. You know, although I I enjoy doing that too. But the I don't know if that's exactly what you're asking, the the connection.
I I bring it up because I think a lot of people, don't and wish they could. And if they hear, like, oh, there's people doing that and that's so simple. Like, wow, I can connect with plants and use herbs and bring them into my life by by, hey, having the neighbor over, have my friend over, let's cook dinner together, let's bring in some dandelion greens and put in the salad and have a glass of elderberry wine. You know, like, you know, like, that that's inspirational to go like, alright, you know, because that's kind of, I think, a great way to bring herbs into your life. It's just simply in your cooking and your social aspects.
So that's So I I'm fully on board with that, and I get exactly what you're saying.
Yeah. And that's really, I guess, part of what has percolated out of my childhood experience is that there really isn't, this distinction between using medicinal herbs as extract for disease and sitting around, cooking together and spending time and hanging out.
The the two are really part of the same thing, which is this this ritual of cuisine.
Yeah. Wow. So so then when you moved, I guess, in ninety six, did you go up to Vermont?
Yes. My wife and I settled in Vermont in ninety six, right around the Montpelier area.
And you started an herbal company with her. Right?
Yeah. We, had been looking for land, and I spent actually nineteen ninety six working on an organic farm that season. It was a great, incredible learning experience working with Alan LePage, who's this amazing farmer, organic farmer, and, you know, really brilliant food systems guy.
And then after that, we decided that growing food and plants is what we wanted to do, but, man, I guess it's because I'm lazy. I don't know. But produce farmers are amazing. The, the work ethic and the amount of work it takes to grow vegetables is something that I know I I couldn't do. So we were looking for something where we could, maybe make some value added products, something from the land that would be, I don't know, a little more, sustainable for us and then fit fit into our life a little bit more, and also incorporate medicinal plants. So we started, about an acre of cultivation, my wife, Anne, and I, and, we made extracts. And that's how the company, Green Herbs, was born.
Really just a farmer's market.
Wow. And that's that's cool too. I just you know, to hear the story of just, like, yeah, we just wanted to do this and we did it. We just cut a little piece of land and we started making herbal products and we went to the farmers market. Is that a little harder to do in this day and age? Just things change in the last oh, gosh. I mean, believe it or not, it's almost twenty years.
In in the last twenty years, where someone could just, maybe start up a little herb farm and get something going?
Well, just to be perfectly clear, John, I mean, I I feel like I had a really big advantage because I'd also been working at the local food co op as, vitamin buyer. So I was really connected to a major retail outlet, which then after farmer's market ended up being, I think a big reason why the herb company was able to support me and and provide me with income Mhmm. Effectively.
But, I think while things have changed in terms of, let's say, marketplace saturation, there's more herbal companies out there than there were in the mid nineties.
Right.
You also have a lot more public interest. Right? So the demand is greater too, I feel like. And, what I'm seeing in the students that we work with here at the Vermont Herb Center, is that they are doing the same thing.
They're selling their extracts and, their tea blends and, herb medicinal herbs starts at, farmers markets, at Winters Farmers Markets, and, getting super creative in the types of products that they're making. So I I think that it it has changed a little bit and maybe just the straight, you know, I'm gonna make tinctures or sell bulk metal root. It's gonna be a little bit tougher to break into that kind of market. But if you have a a creative product, a nice label Mhmm.
And the the knowledge to back it up, I think, the interest is huge out there right now and way more than it was in the mid nineties.
Yes. And, it's and and it and it's right. It's it's your own, ability to kind of your creativity and your willingness to get out there and and figure out innovative ways to get it to people. So definitely so you mentioned the Vermont Center. So Vermont Center of Integrative Herbalism, and, you know, I wish there was one of these in my backyard, and I wondered if you'd talk about it because I think, it's it's centers like this that can be people might be inspired, and could be a model for other communities.
Is that a was that something you wanted to be like in creating this? And and this is what you and and this is with, Larkin Buntz and Betsy Bancroft and, who was also interviewed before. And and and who else is that? Is that the crew right there?
Yeah. We, also have Laura Litchfield, who's a graduate of the program, who, has moved into a directorial role with us.
The four of us kind of myself, Lark, and Betsy, and Laura, we do decision making by consensus, which is, you know, a great thing and also not the most efficient thing. But I I really value that, you know, that we are we can kind of come up with a collective hive mind, and and work together.
Like, we always have said, herbalists are great people to work with and they have the best potlucks. So, it it generally ends up working out okay. But it, it really is something that I mean, even even when I first started the tincture company, my ultimate vision was for sort of, like, a cooperative or a nonprofit or something that kind of mirrored the way, you know, the ecology manifests, and how herbal medicine manifests. And what what has always been super fascinating to me about herbal medicine is that it it, you know, it's holistic in the true sense of the word in that it's a a discipline that works the way the ecology works.
Mhmm. It is collective. It is collaborative. There's feedback loops in there. The community is really often nonhierarchical and very organic in how it develops.
And it doesn't rely on this sort of top down, for lack of a better word, capitalist structure that we see, in a lot of the other systems in the United States. So that's why I think if you let herbal medicine kind of come to its full expression, it's gonna end up healing a lot more than just people. It's gonna end up healing economic systems, food systems, and my hope is even political systems, but that's a bit of a long term plan.
So when we, sort of pool pooled our teaching, resources and our clinical practices back in two thousand and seven to make the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism.
Our vision was for an institution that would have accessibility and ecological sustainability kinda at the core of its mission.
And the model that we use is is one where training herbalists, and the flow of herbalists through, this organization ends up supporting the clinical outreach that we do, and ends up supporting, the herbal outreach that we do in the community.
And, do people when they come in and you're seeing clients, is it by, like a donation or do people pay you, per you know, how how's that whole structure? Is that Yeah.
So accessibility is really important. Mhmm. So we always have the, option for any clients, to not give us anything in return.
So that goes for both the consultation and for the herbs that they get through our apothecary.
We try to move away from the idea of it being free to the concept of the fact that if you need a gift from us of our time or our herbs, we are always open to giving you a gift.
But we also encourage some kind of exchange for a couple of reasons. One, there's an importance to an exchange. I found that it increases compliance and and satisfaction a lot of the time. It it makes people more invested. Mhmm.
But also it acknowledges the fact that the herbs that the clients are receiving, don't necessarily come to us free of charge. Sometimes they're costs of production. Sometimes there's fossil fuel costs involved in transportation.
And so we want to our clients to be aware that those things exist while at the same time, being able to have a gift of herbal medicine or consultations if necessary. So we accept US currency. And we also accept time. So folks can exchange time with us for herbs or for consultations through our local time bank, the Onion River Exchange.
And, that works pretty much on a one on one basis. So, you know, if someone's a massage therapist or if someone is an accountant, they can put their skills into the time bank and we can use those, to help us where we need help.
Interesting. And and and and is the is seeing clients as a clinic part of it, larger than the educational component? Or would you say it's pretty even? Or you have a lot of classes too. Right?
Yeah. We have a lot of classes. We have our sort of core three year clinical herbal training program, where we take folks all the way, in their third year, to kind of run the student clinic, as our clinical interns under supervision.
And then we have sort of community classes, which are shorter.
And then we have our one on one work with clients.
And, I don't know. For me, I think I do a little more teaching these days than than clinic. Often, it's it's fifty fifty in terms of the amount of times I spend in each one. Mhmm.
It's really important for me to maintain a clinical practice. I I find it difficult to teach if I don't have that sort of facility of working with people and seeing the herbs work in people and have cases to share. And that sort of direct tangible experience, I think, is essential. Mhmm.
But teaching is is incredibly rewarding too. And one of the key components of our program is that the students actually work with clients themselves, under supervision.
And, you know, by the time they graduate, they're amazing. I'm like, what would you what would you do in this situation? And, they come up with incredible ideas. I'm like, okay. I'm just backing off because you got this one completely under control.
If anyone's ever thinking about going up to to check out that center, it's, Mount Pelehurst is a really cool little town. I got to visit there and I just loved it. I just thought it was amazing. So when I was working with Rosemary, not too a couple years ago, it was just a great great little spot.
So, like, I just think it's a really nice spot. So, let's talk about the Wild Medicine Solution which is your book that you released, in last year, Healing with Aromatic Bitter and Tonic Plants. So what was the foundation? What compelled you to write the book?
Yeah.
Well, for me, the the ultimate mission is trying to get folks to the place I was when I was a kid, which is, you know, you don't have to be an herbalist, but it's real good to have plants in your life. Just like you were saying, John, when you were talking about getting some dandelion greens to put into your salad while you're eating, making it kind of a normal part of life and culture.
So I didn't want the book to be a complex herbal that talks about, you know, the materia medica and all of the research studies on plants. All that stuff is obviously incredibly valuable and important. I wanted to, do a couple of things. One was to cement the idea that we think about food as medicine, but we should also think about medicine as food. Right? Meaning habitual, daily, normal, part of what it means to be human, not something we turn to when we're sick.
Mhmm.
So I really wanted to try and and get that concept out there, to folks who are maybe unfamiliar with that idea. And the second was to try and and distill down the best of that sort of medicine as food, that daily habitual herbalism into the simplest possible terms.
And, in trying to think about that, you know, I I like the number three and I think about threes a lot of times and it's a, you know, Ayurvedic system and it's just a nice balanced number.
So I've worked a lot with Urban Moonshine and I I still do in, the sort of bitters and tonics company. And, bitters bitter plants and the use of bitters are incredibly important part of any sort of traditional medicine as food type cuisine, herbal medicine.
And then I I also thought, well, obviously, the tonics are really important too.
Cardiovascular tonics, immune tonics like the mushrooms. And again, you know, even if you're talking about red wine and foraging for mushrooms, that's tonic herbalism right there that you're using on a sort of daily habitual basis.
And then it kinda hit me that people, have used plants for mood and sort of graceful flow through life all the time too. Herbalists call them nervines. And I found that the the consistent element in all those plants was the fact that they were aromatic.
Whether it be incense or aromatherapy or nervine teas, all these aromatic spirit rich plants, have always been a part of ceremony and a part of helping keep people integrated into the flow of life in this sort of graceful, balanced mood kind of way. And so as that's when it kinda came together for me. I was like, well, there are my there's my three categories. Bitters, aromatics, and tonics. And, maybe I can I can write about how these plants work in general, rather than specifically? And people will realize that even if they choose lemon balm or peppermint or ginger, they're still working with an aromatic plant. It'll still have positive effects on their mood and the smooth muscle in their body.
You don't have to get down to specific detailed this plan for that problem. And that frees people to be able to experiment and use plants kind of mindfully in daily life, which is the ultimate goal.
You know, it you you you start by, you know, talking about how the, supplement industry is, making combinations of these isolated chemicals to enrich these diets that we have because there's all this focus that it's about carbs and fats and proteins. So what you're saying here is this kinda like this is kind of like the, almost the the magic we can bring to our diet in a way for paying attention to these areas to kinda, to really bring on health versus just this carb, fat, protein thing?
I mean, we've we figured out vitamins. Right? The stuff that hits you in the head if you're missing it.
Right.
We figured that out pretty quickly. You can't stop eating vitamin c. You can't stop having b vitamins. Fair enough.
But I guess yeah. To echo what you're saying, my my point is that there's maybe stuff that doesn't show up quite as obviously, but is nevertheless super important. So more than, you know, adding these plants for health, I think a lot of the issues we see in the western culture comes from an absence of using these plants every day. You know, a lot of the digestive stuff, a lot of the blood lipid imbalance that comes from an absence of the bitter taste.
A lot of the mental health issues that we see is because we don't have aromatic plants in our life at all. Like, we've gone from using aromatic plants all the time in ritual and ceremony and tea, to using strange scented candles that are petrochemical smells that have a very different effect on our brain and spirit. And maybe cardiovascular disease and cancer are so widespread because our bioflavonoid consumption has dropped to virtually nil in this country. So it's a whole kind of plant deficiency syndrome.
And not only that, but bringing these plants in doesn't just restore our, balance and connection and and help address some of these issues. It's also super fun and it adds this whole other layer of richness into your cooking and you're hanging out with friends time.
So let's make it, you know, practical for folks. So, so we got aromatics and bitters and tonics. And I'm just wondering if we could go perhaps kinda one by one and to talk about what, like, an aromatic is and then and then, maybe a couple examples or ways of bringing it in, you know, so we could get a bit of a, a start here. Like a foundation for folks because because what I'm hearing is that like, I guess before we do that, I I I'm hearing that like, you know, there's a lot of, you know, people talk about all a lot of health problems and and all going out there and they always blame it on stress and inflammation and which is true but you're saying that we can have this foundation with these plants and kind of prevent or work with these conditions that are happening.
Yeah. John, ultimately, I think human beings are awesome. And, despite the fact that, you know, we're relatively fragile in many ways, compared to other animals, We also have a lot of the tools physiologically to be able to withstand stress and inflammation. Stress and inflammation are actually pretty important.
If we don't have them, we suffer as much as if we have too much. So the goal is to, make ourselves as adaptable as possible and as successful as possible in as wide a range of circumstances. And I think that the key to doing that is to having these plants, consistently in our lives. And particularly when you're talking about multitasking syndrome or, information overload, which is certainly something that we see nowadays, It's not surprising to me that we have spirit and mental health dysfunction.
But I don't think the the key is to sort of cut yourself off from all of that. I think there's incredible potential, you know, which we see right now with HerbMentor, for example, in using these tools for positive purposes.
And that, you know, getting rid of all technology, it it's just not the answer. It's an in this incredibly rich thing. But what we need to do is embrace the technology we've come up with while still keeping our feet grounded in where we came from, which is this very botanically biodiverse environment. This environment where we used aromatic plants every single day to maintain spiritual connection and maintain mental health balance. You know, I went to Indonesia, a few years back with my wife, and we, in Bali, they have this it's one of my sort of favorite religious cultural interfaces that I've been able to experience. It's It's a very animistic culture, so they believe in spirit of place kind of everywhere.
And every morning, folks would go out with jasmine flowers and with aromatic offerings and leave them on doorsteps, leave them on corners, on the street corners, piled up in huge piles sometimes every single day.
And and, you know, some people might say this is just a a cultural ritual. It's pretty. But there's also this pharmacological activity that comes from being exposed to these essential oils. The entire science and art of aromatherapy relies on that pharmacological activity. It has this mood rebalancing quality. It can help us focus.
It can help us with anxiety and also states of depression. It can be very uplifting.
This is even more accentuated when you take an aromatic plant like jasmine or rose or linden, and you make a tea out of it and you consume it internally.
And that's what really kind of drove it home for me. You don't just have the smell of the volatile, which immediately kinda hits these deep centers in our brain and the limbic system, brings us into the present moment. You also have this effect inside our body that focuses on the level of tension in our arteries and the level of tension in our bellies and all of our hollow organs, really. And that information is relayed up to the brain so that if everything is sluggish and underactive, the aromatic plants kind of stimulate it and wake it up.
And if everything conversely is overly tight, you get this relaxing, calmative effect. And so a daily ritual like the laying of jasmine flowers on the doorstep, but that also incorporates the consumption of these plants is, I think a great way for us to adjust our internal level of tension, flow into the present moment, right, which I think is what's key if we're trying to trying to reconcile this this crazy information rich lifestyle that we live in, where we drive in these vehicles that push us around at seventy miles an hour. You know?
And for example, one of the things that I'll often recommend for people who are coming in talking to me about depression or talking about anxiety, which, you know, are really two sides of the same coin, And to take a little bit of frankincense granule of Boswellia and just swallow a little bit of that every morning as part of a ritual. Maybe burn a little on a piece of coal from the wood stove, or just light it on fire and smell it a little bit and then swallow a couple of those grains and let the kind of internal temple, kind of diffuse through your own internal aromatherapy diffuser, all day long. And it's it's amazing to see, how that ends up affecting mood and how positively that ends up affecting the ability to focus and and move from task to task in this world where, you know, we have kinda short attention span theater.
I love this. This is great.
This is exactly what I need to hear, I think, personally. That's why I really do these interviews, Guido. It's just for really, you know.
Yeah. I know.
I know. I just share it with other people, but, you know, it's really what about, even in the morning, just something as simple as a cup of peppermint tea or something like that?
Yeah. You got it. And, you know, you can that's my point ultimately is that you don't have to get too crazy about, is this the right plant? I think that that comes from a little bit of a, you know, you take this drug for this disease kinda mindset.
I think it's more important to just get into a relationship with an aromatic plant that you like. If you like the flavor of peppermint, I think that's great. If it feels good while you drink it, that is fantastic and perks you up in the morning, helps you focus, that's the plant for you. If you prefer something like lemon balm, then that sounds like a great choice.
For me, morning has never been an issue. I wake up with a lot of energy and focus. It's later in the day when I try and transition out of work into family or I just put my daughter to bed and I need to get back into doing some writing and I need to feel creative again, but I'm kinda tired and my mind is in ten different directions. Linden tea really is is the answer for me. It it helps me kinda get into a better mind space and and start getting creative right away. Again, because that's exactly what the aromatic plants do. They bring us into the present moment.
So it it's as simple as looking for a plant that has a strong smell and aroma to it. Mhmm. Doing a little bit of reading up about, you know, its traditional uses. And and you'll find that almost all of these plants that have strong smells, you'll either see them listed for anxiety or for depression or as a stimulant in the case of peppermint to kind of awaken focus, and then try it. And if you like the tea of it, and tea is a fantastic way to go. Right? Because it liberates these volatile oils a little bit and then you get them internally as well.
Then just go for it. And if it feels good and it feels nice, then it's the right plant for you. It doesn't have to be lemon balm. It doesn't have to be Linden.
But what you do in the book, though, is is give people a good starting place.
So you explain aromatics and peppermint and linden and and you talk about, let's see, ginger and Yep. And and So I give you some some choices, you know, to start.
But, for a lot of your listeners and certain for peep certainly for people who have a little bit of, herb knowledge already, you probably know a lot of good aromatics.
My my point is don't wait for you to don't wait for yourself to feel anxious or stressed.
Don't wait for a problem.
Start just incorporating them consistently and habitually daily into life, and you'll find that the problems don't happen.
Interesting.
And would you recommend too that, people sticking to herbs? Because I know if you're mentioning something like peppermint or some of these people might go, oh, I I've, you know, I've got an essential oil. You know? So we do we for safety and for actually connecting with the plants, do you do you also, in your practice, suggest people stick to the herb and not so much essential oil?
You know, it's like, I I would much rather eat tempeh than isolated soy isoflavones. You know, it's it there's definitely a place for essential oils.
Mhmm.
But it's always more dangerous when you start to pull things out of plants than if you take them whole. You know, the ten thousand years ago, we weren't doing a lot of, vapor distillation of the plants that we ate. We just ate a bunch of plants and some of them were aromatic. And, you know, it's crazy to see yarrow and chamomile on, like, dental residues of the skulls of Europeans from twenty thousand years ago.
So, yes, I I would say using the whole plant is definitely the safest and best place to start, and it is super highly effective.
Again, I think, you know, the herbal mindset and and, again, this is why it was not as obvious to me as a kid. It's enmeshed in daily life. It's not a disease process that we're waiting for, that we're going to start treating.
It's this connection to unhybridized wild plants, that we just use as part of daily ritual because they are part of what it is to be human, really. They're an extension of us just as we are an extension of the ecology. Right. And and when you make that connection that really herbal medicine is about being part of the ecology in a fully integrated fashion rather than treating a disease, then it makes a lot more sense to use this stuff habitually. It's just that we're kinda stuck in this, you know, you got a problem, you treat the problem kind of mentality. Right. Especially in western culture.
You know, you you mentioned before, we'll we'll get to bitters in a little bit, but I watch I wanted to I wanted to cover tonics first because you had just said it when a little earlier about aromatics about, hey, you know, rather than waiting for a problem to happen, it's good to have a ritual where you have a cup of of, lemon balm or Linden tea at a regular time every day so you don't have these problem.
I I I think sometimes there's confusion in, for folks and actually this is related to one of our member questions too, was like with tonics was is it necessarily the plant type or the way you're using it? Because we just say that if you were taking Lind you know, you're having a cup of Linden tea like you do, let's say, you say you had it at, you know, eight thirty, nine o'clock every night after you put your daughter to bed and you wanted to write for a couple of hours. Is the use of using that regularly for a reason, is that what tonic is more about? Or is it about, like, a tonic is a certain category of verb and has a different purpose? You know, it's like the use of it and timeliness of it versus the actual urban. It's, you know, in its Yep. Urbaness.
Well and I I mean, I mentioned that in the book that, like, basically all the plants I talk about can be used tonically with an idea that what tonic means to the herbalist is to use something consistently over time to kind of strengthen and improve the overall vitality and vibrancy and helpfulness of the organism who's consuming it.
So that that use based definition as you put it means that aromatic plants can be used tonically, bitter plants, which even used to be called and sometimes are still called bitter tonics, can be used tonically. But then there's this sort of more, chemical classification, or biomedical classification of the tonic, which talks about, them being the most food like of all the plants. So, berry or a mushroom, or a really starchy sweet root like the root of astragalus, those would be considered more tonic and food like.
It doesn't matter how much, I like linden.
A, it has no caloric value for me. It's not gonna keep me alive.
And, b, I can't, you know, consume a pound of it.
But you could consume a pound of hawthorn berries and you could consume a pound of shiitake mushrooms, relatively quickly, and it would probably taste pretty good and it would certainly be good for you.
Whereas a a pound of, you know, chamomile flowers, that would be tough even if they were fresh. So there's that sort of distinction between the tonic being super food like, and and really blurring that line between, medicine and food. And, then the tonic being something that you use habitually.
And in the the third chapter of the book, the tonics, I I try to focus particularly on, two classes of plants based on their chemistry. The bioflavonoid rich plants, which I I call the sour tonics that are really the ones that European medicine, European herbal medicine focused on, you know, like hawthorn berry, in particular, but also bilberry and blueberry. That was another thing that we used to gather all the time.
We call them or, black bilberries, little tiny, low bushes, and we come up with baskets and baskets of them and, you know, eat a bunch along the way during the summer, on part of our foraging trips.
And, then there's the sweet tonics.
And those would be, you know, these plants and mushrooms that are rich in sugar chains as opposed to bioflavonoids, which are a little more sour and astringent.
Polysaccharide chains that have this really important activity on the immune system and talking to the immune system. And so these tonics are, again, to me, the ultimate expression of of what we call, like, cross kingdom signaling. If you think of an ecology as a being, right, if you think of my garden and my homestead as a being, or you think of this valley as as a living entity, what are the hormones or the sort of intracellular, intraorganismal communication channels? That's where the tonic plants come in, I think.
Bioflavonoids are intraspecies ecological hormones.
Polysaccharides are the same way. They allow these rooted beings, or these beings attached to, mycelia, the mushrooms, to communicate with these moving beings, the animals, and the insects too in a really profound way, conveying signals about the air and the water and the soil to, us.
The the light bulb went off for me a few years back when I was reading a research study that showed that, these bioflavonoid rich plants elaborate a higher bioflavonoid content when they're under stress. And that the bioflavonoids in animals end up protecting us from the effects of malnutrition and drought. So, basically, when the plant detects that there's a not enough water, not enough nutrition, or or too much solar radiation, it makes more bioflavonoids.
And if we keep eating that plant as part of this ecology that we live in, we kind of get a jump on and our cells get a jump on whatever harmful processes might be present, in the local environment.
Again, it's this cross kingdom signaling. It's the hormone of the ecology. And we only really get to plug into that wisdom that being part of that ecological consciousness if we eat these plants all the time. And ideally, we eat them locally. Ideally, we eat our own hawthorn berries, and we eat our own mushrooms that we foraged and we grow our own astragalus and burdock to take tonically.
So, the the tonic from a chemical and functional definition, is not only something that you use habitually, but is something that, has profound consequences on the actual phenotypic expression, meaning how you as a being become manifest in the world. Right? K.
Aromatics really help with our interface with, you know, spirit and mind and feelings.
Bitters really help with our interface with sort of digestion and detoxification.
But the the tonics like hawthorn and astragalus and the mushrooms, connect us to the ecology in this really profound way that allows us to express at a cellular level and have our immune systems express a most balanced and appropriate response based on the circumstances that are around us.
Do you find there are the certain plants that are gonna grow around you that are gonna be better at this, such as, like, you're using Hawthorn and and Shiitake or whatever mushrooms as a example. But, what about, like or, like so if there's stress in an area or, let's say, there was a drought or whatever, do you think, like, all plants are picking up on that? Or or you know?
And there's a lot of other options as well or are there certain ones that definitely are.
You know? For example, goldenrod, I think, was the plant that was researched in that study that I was talking about and how goldenrod, creates more, bioflavonoids such as quercetin and rutin when it's under stress.
But the the issue is that, you know, you'd be hard pressed to eat tons and tons and tons of goldenrod. But if that is a sort of tonic for you, that you take as tea on a daily basis, it it would certainly be a great choice. I think plants like hawthorn end up having more prominent roles as tonics because they're just super tasty. And and people are used to making elderberry jam and hawthorn berry jam and stuff like that and eating massive quantities of it, which with something like bioflavonoids and immune active polysaccharides, high quantity consumption seems to be pretty important.
So if you are making half a gallon of goldenrod tea every day from the goldenrod growing in your field, you're going to have that sort of cross kingdom ecological hormonal connection. You're going to be integrated into the environment a whole heck of a lot better.
It doesn't have to be Hawthorne. It doesn't have to be food like. As long as the plant is safe and contains a lot of these bioflavonoids or a lot of these immune active polysaccharides, you can get that benefit, I think.
I we try to do that with just simmering, like, say, in a chicken broth stock that we make, and we simmer in a lot of astragalus or dandelion or burdock, and we just kinda make broth, lots of it, and then just use it in every dish or everything that we're making as, I mean, that good example of That's a perfect example, John.
Yeah. And, like, the other interesting thing is they know, like, the starches in burdock, for for instance, or in dandelion.
These starches like inulin, we don't really digest them ourselves, but they're super important for our gut flora. And if you've been following any of the, you know, over the last couple years, the gut flora is is really starting to take on a preeminent role in terms of being able to modulate human health. And again, you know, the human being is not this isolated thing. It's like inside us, there's this world. Outside us, there's this world. And the plants seem to be able to link all of that up so it works well in harmony.
Especially if you're using it habitually, especially if you're putting burdock roots in your in your soup stock, in your bone broth, that that's my favorite way to go with it. Absolutely.
Well, to balance out the conversation, we do need to talk about bitters.
Yep. So what do you what do you how do bitters play in with all that?
Yeah. The the thing that really impressed me about bitters is that the bitter flavor and it's all about tasting it. Right?
You can take capsules of dandelion root if you want or capsules of gentian root, but you're not gonna get near the flavor exposure and therefore the the good medicinal action than if you actually get to taste it on your tongue. Our tongue is the definitely the doorbell for that whole, bitter taste, medicinal quality.
But but our sensitivity to bitter is aside maybe from things like vision, it may be our most developed sense. It certainly is our most developed gustatory or taste sense.
Sweet, sour, pungent, salty. Really compared to bitter, our our body does not spend as much time making the receptors for those other flavors, or being able to be sensitive to a range of different compounds from those other flavors. So the bitter taste is one that the body has spent a huge amount of genetic material and, sort of resources in order to be able to detect. And I think and I I think a lot of folks agree, the scientific consensus seems to be there that the reason our body spends so much time on that is because a lot of the most poisonous things that might be, harmful to us taste really, really bitter. So it's sort of a a self protective mechanism.
If you think about deadly nightshade and its flavor, it's intensely bitter. If you've ever tasted belladonna tincture, it immediately generates a recoil reaction. And there's there's shades of bitterness. Right? So when you're talking about the bitterness in, for example, dandelion leaves or or even in something like goldenrod, These are, a lot of times, compounds that are insecticidal or browsing deterrents for insects.
So it's a sort of echo of before we were mammals that were still so sensitive to this stuff. But that's the entire point is that plants were around before mammals were around. And as mammals went around browsing for food, two things happened. One, plants begin to develop more bitter compounds to try and not get eaten up completely.
But two, animals developed detoxification systems for dealing with those plants' potentially harmful bitter compounds. So, you know, the liver really is an artifact of our bitter taste and xenobiotic exposure.
The exposure to these chemicals from the plant world that would otherwise be harmful. That's the kind of the reason we have a liver.
Interestingly, the liver doesn't work right unless it's in that context.
So it's no wonder to me that we see, fat and cholesterol synthesis problems in the liver when we're not exposed to the bitter taste, when we see food passing sort of untouched through the digestive tract, when there's no bitter taste associated with that food. Because the liver would never have existed and and has not historically existed outside of, a context that was rich, rich, rich with bitter plants.
So one way I think to, to be able to address the concerns around toxicity, chronic inflammation, liver dysfunction, digestive complaints, and digestive sensitivities is not to kinda restrict, restrict, and remove, remove.
It's much more to reincorporate bitterness. And, again, it it goes back, you know, to everything we've been talking about, John. It's, it's something that from a cultural perspective is present in all intact traditional cultures. And, again, in Italy, you know, they're nuts about their burgers. Yeah. All sorts of brands and everywhere in the afternoon, universally consumed before dinner, and after dinner too, actually.
But also it's this idea that human beings can handle a heck of a lot of stuff. You know, we can handle processed food even as long as we have the context down there at baseline in which we evolved, the context that our liver is used to seeing, the context that our taste buds are used to experiencing.
Once you activate the taste buds with a bitter flavor, enzyme secretion in the pancreas increases, bile secretion from the liver increases.
You get an astringing of the valves between the compartments of the GI tract so that food kinda stays where it needs to be until it's completely digested. And as a result, the drama of incomplete digestion is, really tempered. You don't get the kind of bloating and spasming and irritation. You don't get the leaky gut syndrome that then leads to a range of downstream modern world. It's the absence of the plants, you know, plant deficiency syndrome again.
I love that. Plant deficiency syndrome. Just highlighting that. That's just, you know go ahead. Sorry. I just left.
Oh, yeah. No. And and I kind of stole that from, this excellent author, Richard Louv, who talks about nature deficit disorder. Oh, right. Right?
Mhmm.
He's like, these kids, are labeled with attention deficit or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And it turns out that an hour walk in the park, even an urban park, is as effective as a dose of Ritalin for them. So, again, you know, is it the TV? Is it the computers?
Is it the, you know, short attention span theater for these kids? Probably a little bit, but it's also nature deficit disorder. And in terms of our physiologies, it's it's plant deficit disorder. Right?
It's the biodiversity that we have really turned our backs on over the last hundred years. At the turn of the twentieth century, you know, eighty percent of human caloric needs were furnished by over a hundred species of plants.
At the turn of the twenty first century, eighty percent of our caloric needs are furnished by eight plants, At the top of which are corn, wheat, and soy. Wow.
Something is different. And that's really what I'm trying to get at.
The difference is an absence rather than the presence of something new and harmful. And I'm not saying, you know, go out and guzzle gasoline or anything like that and don't worry about it. Obviously, there's there's a little bit of both, but I don't think we've been talking about the plant deficiency as much as we've been talking about sort of the beef afraid of toxicity. Right. And toxicity melts away when you end up consuming bitter substances routinely on a daily basis because the liver's detoxification power is enhanced.
And, again, I'm not in any way a fan of this idea that we're somehow dirty as human beings.
I grew up Catholic. That was part of the culture in Italy. And I have real issues with the idea of original sin.
Right. Right.
I think human beings are awesome just as they are and, are able to handle a range of different things. But we can only do it if we're connected to the ecology. Right? We we it's very prideful to assume that we can kinda do it all on ourselves, all by ourselves with our technology, with our brains.
In fact, it's becoming more and more clear that we just simply can't from Rich Louv's nature deficit disorder to the idea of plant deficit disorder. And this was, to me, most clearly driven home by by bitters.
And because someone could just take their own bitters that they make, they could just chew on some dandelion leaves.
Right? There's a lot of options for this.
If you feel adventurous and you wanna, I mean, I I put radicchio in almost every meal that I eat, which is a nice bitter, purplish kind of lettuce cousin. But you can harvest your dandelion leaves and eat those as part of salad.
You can take dandelion root and roast it in a cast iron pan, chop it up and roast it in a cast iron pan, and it needs it in your drip coffee maker even.
Yeah.
Or you can make an infusion into vodka of a range of different bitter tasting plants. And, you know, the the thing that's driven home to me, again, as part of the ecology and and our connection to it, is that over the last hundred years, not only have we removed all the bitter plants because we just don't like the taste of them and seen a sort of rise in obesity and a rise in diabetes and metabolic dysfunction as a result, but our entire natural environment has now been geared towards fulfilling the needs of grasses, the sweet producers of carbohydrate. It's like we're their slaves, you know? And our diverse prairie, so rich in medicinal species, now is fields and fields and acres and acres of corn and wheat that we kind of create as a an expression of our servitude and our enslavement to these carbohydrate sweet plants, the grasses.
Bitters, which, you know, dandelion is the prime example of, are systematically destroyed in order to make way for more and more and more sweet grass like plants. And, really, if we ate more bitters, we would find that our addiction and our difficult relationship with sweetness, becomes a whole lot easier to control. And I see that in clinic all the time. You know, people are talking about trying to get on low carb diets or or at least controlling their carbohydrate intake. And they have a hell of a time doing it, and I don't blame them. The stuff is really addictive. It causes a dopamine rush in the brain.
Oh, this makes sense now because I can remember, you know, whatever it was ten, thirteen, whatever years ago, and I started studying herbalism and becoming aware of health and things. And I yeah. I found that, you know, I used to probably drink a few cans of soda a day or more, you know. And then, I found it really easy to not do that. I guess it was really the fact that I was eating a lot better, and then I was obviously having a lot of bitters because I love dandelion.
Yep. Yeah. That makes sense. Ah, enlightenment.
Yeah. I did find that. It's true. The better you eat, the more well you eat, the easier it is actually is to not to to to avoid the carbs and the sugars.
Yeah. Well, the food companies know this too and, they make sure that what they're putting out there definitely hits some of the reward centers of our brain and, none of the sort of aversion, responses that the bitter taste engenders. So but, you know, just make sure you get a little bit of bitter day, and you'll find that your relationship to sugar is a whole lot easier. My favorite I I carry a little bottle of bitters in the car with me at all times because you never know. And, if I have to stop at the grocery store after I pick my daughter up and it's, you know, five thirty and I haven't eaten since noon, If I don't have a little bit of bitter before going into that store, the cookies and the chips will find themselves in my cart, automatically.
But if you take a little bit of bitter beforehand, I'm telling you, give it a try.
It's pretty amazing.
Keep it in your car before you walk into the market.
Uh-huh. You know, someone actually told me, Reese, I asked the herbalist, because I have I had some mild, acid reflux and I said, you know, what what would you recommend? Because I'm thinking of a response like, oh, you can make, you know, maybe tea or just have a tea if this is a real marshmallow or something. He said, actually, no. Just have more bitters in your diet, and that should that could take care of itself.
That's right. And part of the reason why is because, in response to bitters, you know how your mouth scrunches up when you taste something really bitter? That valve there at the bottom of your esophagus scrunches up too, and so it helps keep the acid in its place.
Wow. This is this has been, this has been, better than a a visit to, ten doctors, this this interview for me personally.
So, you know, I have a few questions, before we finish up, from Herb Mentor folks in Herb Mentor dot com.
I often before I put, have interview, I like to ask members if they have any questions. So, so and one of them was, kinda related what we're just saying. Actually, I'll just paraphrase here rather than say the whole questions. But, she has autoimmune situation, like, I think, like rheumatoid arthritis.
She has high blood pressure and she's prediabetes. And she's just wondering if, if these because she's been reading your book, and she was just wondering if these, can some of these illnesses be reversed naturally, with a lot of what you're what you're saying? You said a little bit about that before, but I don't know if you had more you wanted to say there.
Well, so the idea of reversing or curing, is always always tricky, obviously. But I think that, especially when we're talking about prediabetes or blood sugar imbalance, you can live with something like that to the point that you don't really have any issues, or symptoms or your blood sugar test basically end up showing up just fine.
If, you know, you have advanced diabetes with a lot of insulin resistance, it still is really appropriate, But, you know, you might just find that you need less, medication, or less supplemental insulin, For example, if you take some of these plants, but completely curing and reversing advanced diabetes, I I mean, I can't lay claim to that. I anything can happen. But, the point is that no matter what's going on with you, even if you have a chronic autoimmune inflammatory condition, A, these plants are safe to use.
They won't interact with medication that you might be taking. And I I really tried to make sure that at least the examples I focus on in the book, fit that bill.
And and, b, you will have just more improved quality of life in general, especially if you're talking about bitters and even in the context of rheumatoid arthritis. And and this is why, you know, the eclectics talked about them as bitter tonics. Because if you improve liver function, you just generally reduce the overall inflammatory burden in the body.
So allergies can be improved. Chronic autoimmune conditions can be improved. Does that mean your rheumatoid arthritis will completely go away and you'll never experience it again?
No. But it will definitely slow down its progression, which is a really important consideration, and improve your quality of life.
Great.
Another good question from, Tamara. Was wondering, you know, but the issue you're talking to you were talking before about plants in their environment and, as far as helping us deal with the, you know, environmental stresses and all. And she because she was reading your book, there and she was wondering like, you know, what if there's an area where, you know, yes that can happen but what if there's an area where the the plants themselves are getting too toxic and where then they're not good for you to take because they're too toxic, you know?
Like Yeah. I mean, that's a really good point. I think there's a couple of sort of corollaries to that whole the plant, kinda embodies a little bit of the nature of the environment it grows in. And, you know, one is what I call the go to cola phenomenon.
You gotta be really careful where you get your go to cola from. A lot of it comes from drainage ditches in India. And, you know, I would not want that stuff. Right?
I do not know what's running through that water and what type of stuff it's feeding on. Gotu Kula is also really good, bioremediating agent, meaning it accumulates toxic heavy metals and things like that into itself.
So paying some attention to where your herbs are wild harvested, I think is really important. And another good reason to kinda get to know herbal medicine a little bit yourself so you can do this stuff for yourself and for your family and friends.
But also then making sure that it's if you're buying it from someone else that it's either organically grown or that the person really knows where it came from and and can trace back the sourcing. Because, yeah, a lot of plants do accumulate, industrial residues and including heavy metals, and that can be really bad for you long term.
The other corollary to it is something that I've been kind of going back and forth with, in terms of herb gardening. And it's that if you if you actually over fertilize your plants and and really coddle them and, you know, make these huge, beautiful, bushy echinacea plants, though you might get more yield, the potency is actually less.
The herbs and this is perhaps why a lot of the wild harvesters, you know, are like, there's nothing like wild herbs. Mhmm. When they're in a more challenging environment, they give us more of the chemistry that we need to operate well in a challenging environment.
So that works great for me because I'm a super lazy gardener.
So oh, by the way, Tamara also says, PS, I'm incredibly jealous of how amazingly long your hair is. It's just not fair. Insert how insert pouty face.
That's good. There's some other questions, but that's good for, we have time for. So what do I ask you, Guido next is, you know, are you do like, what's the best way for folks like, do you have any upcoming classes you're teaching or any conferences you're going to that people can know about?
Yeah. I, I'm looking forward to an exciting year. Really, even, I think it's in a couple of Sundays, not this Sunday, but maybe the one after, I'm really excited to be a part of this, event that Slow Food Vermont is doing down in Burlington. They have this test kitchen, and it's gonna be all about bitters.
But it's gonna be bitters in food and then bitters in cocktails and bitters as medicine. And we've got chefs and bartenders and me, and I think it's just gonna be great. And I'm really excited about it because of the, the idea again that we can use our medicine just like we would our food and and getting away from this idea of just treating disease, thinking about using medicinal substances as part of cuisine, as part of a cocktail, as part of something fun that we do with our friends. Mhmm.
And then I'm really looking forward to a conference that we're, hosting with Urban Moonshine in May.
I believe it's on the twenty fourth of May. That's Saturday.
Here in Vermont, it's gonna be at this great, great place right on the lakeside, the Coach Barn at Shelburne Farms. And it's gonna be, about really new and radical ideas in herbal medicine and how to take herbal medicine forward into the twenty first century. And, I'm I'm really super excited about that and and partnering with Urban Moonshine to to bring that into being. So if you get a chance to come up to Vermont, it's gonna be a super fun time.
Wow. That sounds awesome.
And so again, the website vtherb center dot org is where you all can go and and read about the the the center there and what has been up to. And for the book, Wild Medicine Solution, I actually actually on yours on your blog, which is a radical a a r a d I c l e dot blogspot dot com.
You talked about picking up checking out a site.
I had not even known about indybounds dot com where you can Oh, yeah.
Find out about local bookshops that you might have in your area to support and order the book.
Yeah. That's probably my favorite way to go, John, is to, you can use Indiebound to find, a particular book, any book that you want, and it'll list, bookshops that are close to you by ZIP code that carry it.
And that's really cool. That's just a good habit to get into because I always like to ask folks interviewing like what's your favorite way for people to get your book?
Because I'm like, hey, I got a website and others are like, oh, go online or you know, there's all kinds of ways.
Yeah. Local bookshop for sure.
Nice. That's the wild medicine solution.
Well, I think that about, has have for today. You know, Guido Maśe, thank you so much for joining us on Herb Mentor Radio. I think I only got to list a slight fraction of the questions that I wanted to ask you. There's so many, so I'll have to have you back sometime.
Oh, thanks a lot, John. It was really fun.
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