From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You're listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is Amanda McQuade Crawford. Amanda is author of herbal books, including Herbal Remedies for Women and the Herbal Menopause book. Amanda has been a member of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists since nineteen eighty six and is a founding member of the American Herbalist Guild and the founder of the National College of Phytotherapy in New Mexico. She serves on numerous professional advisory boards and scientific review panels.
Her new book, Herbs, Nutrition, and Other Natural Therapies will be released this fall. Welcome, Amanda.
Thank you very much, Donna. I'm so pleased to be speaking with you.
It's just great to have you here. You know, I've been I've been I was excited to have you on ever since I met you last October at the American Herbalist Guild. It was just you came over to the table where we had wild crafts, and I was like, oh, I can't wait to have her on. So thank you. It's really an honor.
Oh, you're very welcome. I I love that, that game. It's just one of our family favorites. So it's my pleasure to speak with you today too.
Oh, yay. Okay.
So, you know, I saw, you know, I'm gonna be going out in June to the international herbs herbal symposium in in in Massachusetts. And Yeah. And I saw you're gonna be there. So, what will you be sharing there?
I am going to be talking in an intensive, a longer class than usual on cancer and some of the latest research about the herbs and the nutritional support that we have very good scientific evidence for in recommending to our cancer patients both during treatment and also for preventing secondary returns of cancer or for preventing cancer coming ever. So, I'll be also talking about how to create a formula. Many herbalists that I know do really have a good grasp of how to grow their herbs and how to brew them into tea. But when it comes to sitting down with a person and putting herbs together into a formula, sometimes we make the mistake of having a kitchen sink approach where we're not really sure and we put in everything just in case and then not much really happens for the person and it's frustrating unless we have some kind of system for figuring out how do you make a good formula. So that's one of the classes I'll be teaching at the international.
I'm also gonna be talking about phytochemistry. I think sometimes we have a fear of learning too much science, but I love science and I love plant chemistry and to me it's just the same as having a dream or a vision or a meditation where the over lighting angel or deva of the plant speaks to me about the power of that plant. Looking at the chemistry of the plants isn't really that different. It's just a different set of symbols. So I'm gonna be talking about that this year too.
You know, we're gonna have to have you back again on here to talk about these things because we have so many people asking about formulation and stuff like that. And and, you know, because on on Herb Mentor, a lot of the focus that we do in introducing people and and also just kinda taking it one plant at a time. It's just about learning the plants one at a time, an herb of the month, and doing some and recipes and getting inspired. And, I know that a lot of folks as well, once they kinda get past a certain point, get hungry for formulation ideas.
So so, you know, that maybe we can, you know, have you, the expert, hear some back sometime and to even though we haven't started the interview yet. And talk and talk and talk about and talk about this because, and and I actually have that class you're gonna be giving on formulation ticked off on my Oh, good news.
Classes that I'm gonna take when I'm at that symposium.
Oh, that's very nice.
Thank you very much.
That's great. I was like, oh, that looks great. And and folks, you can find out about that at inter, inter oh, gosh. Just, Google International Herb Symposium and then you'll find it.
I think it's international herb symposium dot com. It's in June and it supports United Plant Savers. So get on out there. Right.
It's a great It's a great conference and the people who are there are just always the most amazing. Rosemary Gladstar does an excellent job of putting that together. So, yeah, that information is available. You could also go to sage mountain dot com in order to find out more about that.
I don't think there's a person on my I don't think there's an author on my bookshelf that isn't going to be there.
Isn't that nice? That's great. Yeah. It's gonna be an absolutely fabulous, a fabulous year this year.
So, speaking I just mentioned Bookshelf, your new book, Natural Menopause.
Now you know, what tell us about that. It it sounds like a great book.
Well, thank you. I I wrote a book about herbs and menopause about twelve or thirteen years ago. That was when I was very busy in my practice with menopausal women. I had also had many run ins with conventional medical care and my own reproductive health.
So I was on fire to say something about what I considered to be a real danger at that time and that was how hormone replacement therapy was being pushed and women were being told that they were irresponsible and just awful people if they didn't rush to the doctors and get these prescriptions for estrogen and combine progesterone and estrogen and how you were risking cancer and heart disease and your bones are going to crumble and you better get down there right now. And it was a very fear mongering and upsetting campaign to me because I knew that these were actually very dangerous, that they increased our risk of heart disease as well as cancers and that all of the mixed media messages was about selling, not about women's health.
So in the disguise of really taking care of those women out there, they were really taking care of big pharma's sales and profit margins, pissed me off. So I wrote a book about herbal menopause and how to do it without hormones and what the dangers were, But that was about thirteen years ago and since then, that's now old news. It's very clear that hormones have been pulled back from the market and that they cause heart disease rather than preventing it, that it may not have much effect on osteoporosis as much as lower protein, less salt in the standard American diet, more regular exercise and various other things that women can do when they're choosing a healthier lifestyle overall.
And again, it's healthier choices overall because what Cascade Anderson Geller has always said that sticks with me is what we do habitually is reflected in the body. If you take something once or twice, not much happens. But if you habitually walk and stretch and do yoga and eat some tofu here and there and do some healthy proteins as your usual way of going through the world, then chances are your bones aren't going to crumble the minute your periods get irregular.
So since that was now some years ago that I had first written on the subject and a lot of new information is out, I wanted to write the Natural Menopause book, which will be out later this year in two thousand and nine from Ten Speed Publishing. So that whole new set of facts is available for a whole new generation of women who are trying to figure out what to do with hot flashes and what is the story with bioidentical hormones that are being promoted so heavily on the Internet these days and on conventional media too. So my new book is about what do we do with the current crop of sales pitches and how are women best informed so that they can make decisions for themselves.
Wow. Thanks.
So I'm glad I'm glad that you're doing that because, it'll even help me with my recommending to my own patients in acupuncture to, you know, put that in the right direction. I wanna I wanna get I'm hopeful.
I'm hopeful that that is so because there's so much that can be done that's really simple.
And in your practice, you may come across women who just are overwhelmed and how can they make sense of all the information? Soy is terrible, soy is wonderful, buy this, don't buy that. It's very disturbing because we're all doing the best we can. We're all busy and a little overworked these days. I mean, who can stop and get a Ph. In all of the controversies just so that you can figure out what to take for your hot flashes? We we really do owe women simple answers, not complicated answers.
Wow. That's that's excellent. Thank you. That's well well spoken. And so you help folks as well, on a TV show you do called these are called What a Relief. Right?
Yes. I do a show called What a Relief.
And and tell us about that. That's on, is that on the DISH Network?
Or It is.
It's on DISH and Fios, Verizon Fios, whatever that is. I might not even be singing it. I know. You know?
It's cool.
I heard of the DISH Network.
I I'm sorry to tell you. I don't have television. I've never seen my show.
I just watch stuff online. I don't know either.
But But, you know, it's really a fun show, and it was a project that I couldn't say no to. It was an opportunity to share something about how to grow plants, how simple it is to bring them into our kitchens and put them into our food or into a teapot, what's the right way to do that, what are the various common conditions from headaches to children's colic, all the kinds of things that herbs are so good at helping us to to resolve. So that show is an opportunity for me to do that and I've been very lucky that I was surrounded by a crew of people who really knew their jobs and made me look much better than I normally would have looked. So it was it's been a really fun, absolutely fun show to make.
And that and that's And I've done two seasons now and I think we're starting up season three anytime now.
Wow. So that's on that's on Virea?
Yes. Virea, v e r I a, Virea. And also, there are a couple of, things that I had wanted to say about that. You can go to verea dot com, v e r I a dot com, And that website will tell you about lots of different good TV shows that they have about holistic health and wellness, from Pilates and vegetarian cooking, all kinds of different shows besides mine. And you can look through the episode list of my show and see what kind of conditions, whether it's children's colic colic or menopause or PMS or hair loss for men, all of these various things that have a show around them where you can people can just go online and download a little bit of information or request some of the information from the shows that have already aired if you've missed it, you know, if you haven't seen it on TV.
Great. Alright. Well, thanks for sharing there too.
Well, you know, you know what I was wondering?
You don't know, do you?
No. I don't know what you're wondering, but I can't wait to find out, Don. What is it that's on your mind?
Well I guess every time I talk to somebody, I always I always I always find it fascinating because it seems like most people I ask this question to and and and and herbalists and and like, you know, if you've been doing this since you were like ten years old or or did you just kinda so might something spark along the way where you're like, oh, this is interesting.
Like, why did you get into all of the tics?
Because because I look at I look at folks like, you know, herbalists like yourself and and you have the books you've written and you've done all these, you know, you've been, you know, on National Institute of Medical Herbalists in nineteen eighty six and it's just like, gosh, like, what what started you on this path?
Well, that is a good question. And most of us herbalists and healers do have very interesting stories to tell.
I did start early. I was pretty young.
Although I wasn't very good when I was really young, when I was maybe five, I would go collect all of the berries and flowers from the neighbor's gardens with their permission. And then I would take them home and I'd mash them up with water and stuff them into old empty perfume bottles that, were lying around the house. And then I'd put them in my little red wagon, and I'd go around the neighborhood, and I'd make the neighbor ladies buy them for a penny a bottle. So I I was enterprising, but I don't think my quality control really would stand up for me these days.
And I surely didn't know what I was doing. But I would always look for, you know, if there was a hurt bird in the street or if there was a frog or some, you know, anything that was injured, I would bring it home and I would put it in a little bed and I would make find out what food it needed and I get the eyedropper and so though I had a lot of trial and error and I'm sure that the animal kingdom wasn't always thrilled to see me coming along, As a very small child, I was interested in learning how I could, how I could help things to to be better.
And when I was a little bit older, I started just experimenting on my own and I was very fortunate. I was lucky. I grew up in a household where we didn't take an aspirin for a headache. We instead had a big drink of water and maybe closed our eyes for fifteen minutes. We didn't turn to drugs as the immediate symptom relief. We used those kinds of things when it was absolutely necessary.
A that was just the way I was raised.
Wow. Wow. That's very you are very lucky.
I'm really lucky. I honor my mother especially, but my parents both were responsible for us having a very good foundation in self care and and being resourceful and, just considering that to be a normal part of the day.
Well, the good news is lots more lots more parents out there are are like that these days.
And so I think your game has a lot to do with it.
I think parents get really excited. I took, HerbCraft to the elementary school where my daughter now goes because they asked me to come and speak. This is really exciting, John. I was wearing one of my American Herbalist Guild shirts that says, herbal medicine, it's in our roots.
Uh-huh. And a woman came rushing up to me on this on the playground and said, your shirt, your shirt, are you an herbalist? And I said, I am. And she said, we've just finished a unit in my fourth grade about herbal medicine.
Can you come please talk to my class? And I said, you're joking. You just did a unit in Los Angeles Unified School District? This is unbelievable and wonderful.
So not only did I go to her fourth grade class and I took the board game and a lot of kids already knew it.
Really?
Really.
And all the other teachers said, when can we have Amanda come to our classroom? So I went around to various different class resources. We had some plants that we played with and nibbled on, things like that. But these were kids whose parents were already actively trying to find ways to increase the presence of nature.
And in Los Angeles, that's really quite a feat. So I'm encouraged.
Wow. Yeah. Because LA is kinda like, in a way, it's kinda like the a little bit of the East Coast on the West Coast.
Yes. It is. As far as disconnect from nature is good.
Oh, true. I mean, there are certainly people here who wouldn't consider taking an herb unless it came in a little box that had a barcode on it.
Right. Exactly.
But at least there is some change and it's coming from within families and that makes me feel very happy, very happy that it's changing from the ground up just like it should.
Thank you. That's great. Thanks for sharing that. So, you know, Amanda, at this point, I wanna get into some questions and, on herbenture dot com, I put out there, I said, you know, we're gonna have Amanda McQuade Crawford on the show and and, get your questions in. And and, like never before, I mean, I've put this out before, but, like, people were, like, you know, they they were still I I emailed you some questions that people were email, you know, in that you saw those and and then even after that when I said, I think that's enough folks. They kept emailing them in. So so I I think we could probably fill up twenty shows with the questions that put folks as so we're gonna we're gonna select some of them.
John, I will leave it entirely in your table for your hands to choose which questions we start with and we'll just do our best at the time that we have. So, exactly. Thank you.
So, so first, I wanna start with, one actually I've been wondering a lot about because, I I see more and more people with adrenal fatigue.
Yeah. And and and, there's one member who said that she noticed that, where she read somewhere that that it could be as high as seventy percent of people are suffering or will suffer from it. And and so she wants her your thoughts on this and herbs or, you know, just that in general about what what someone would do with that because I because I kinda got because I see these you know more and more even teens out there just you know maybe it's I I it's mostly people I see drinking a lot of these energy drinks and stuff and I'm like, it's gotta be hard on their drink.
Right.
So anyway, your thoughts on that?
Yes. Well, there are two things. I think that seventy percent is a conservative estimate. It might sound shocking to us, but truly look around us, look at what's in the news and what's in our current mainstream culture as well as in what's in some of our alternative cultures, things are stressful for people of all ages.
So I do see adrenal fatigue and there are some very good herbal answers for that. The first step of course is to reduce wherever we can the kinds of things that give us added stress. So before you put anything in your mouth, you might take a moment each day to stop and find gratitude within your soul.
If not, to actually sit down for a good long meditation, at least stop and take a moment to connect to one's inner source of wellness. That makes a big difference in terms of how our poor little adrenal glands are squirting and stressing down there.
Secondly, make sure that all of us are getting some kind of reasonable exercise because that blows off tension too. And if all we do is commute in traffic and sit at a job with a computer or stand at a counter or in some way spend our main hours each day physically inactive, that will also add a burden to the adrenal glands. So there's no point just having a horrible job and a horrible commute and downing lots and lots and lots of adaptogens.
It would be sensible to find some twenty minute period of the day when you can walk as fast as you can or take a good run or do some sit ups or something physically active that's fun and perhaps not even all that structured as a gym. I know that gyms are popular, but I'm all for people just getting out and getting a little bit of Vitamin D, not enough to get skin cancer from the sun, but enough to get Vitamin D from sun exposure. I think that's a really good way for us to help our adrenal glands. And then when we come to the herbs, there are so many choices. My favorite bar none, especially for teenagers is nettle seed and nettle leaf.
I think that nettle, ertica, stinging nettle is not considered an adaptogen. It's certainly not in the books written up that way, but it is a fine, fine herb for helping our adrenal glands when they're stressed. And in nonspecific ways, which is what we want, we don't want to trigger one hormone or another per se.
What we want is to nourish and to restore and nettle leaf and nettle seed are great for that. My other favorites are Eleutriococcus.
I do like the American ginsengs, sometimes use the Asian or Korean Panax ginseng.
Those are probably some of the simplest ways that people have at hand. And then when in doubt, you can always start with Ashwagandha, one of our allies from India, from the continent of India, Ashwagandha covers a lot of bases.
Now we'll be trying to But between all of those, the least expensive is nettle seed and nettle leaf and that's probably where I would turn first rather than looking to exotic plants from abroad.
Okay. Great. Because because we do really, net nettle infusions, nourishing herbal infusions, was was something we really, really promote people do, and nettle's a big deal in that way. That yeah. I I I on on the ginsengs and the ashwagandha, though, like, what what's if what's your, your, you know, favorite way of taking that?
Like, you know, that I actually really like, decoctions, and I like putting them into food.
So, with my family, when we're very highly stressed as we sometimes are living in Los Angeles right now, taking care of the elders in our family and, doing what we're doing here, I will make a strong decoction of eleutherococcus, and I'll use that as the stock for a vegetarian soup or to cook up the rice or the quinoa that we're having for dinner. So I put it into food at least four times a week for the whole family.
Oh, great. Great one. I wouldn't have thought of that. Thank you very much.
Right. And then in in general, people can always get capsules, tablets, tinctures, products over the counter of these kind of things too. Sometimes quality is an issue, sometimes cost is an issue, but a water decoction of these adaptogenic roots are almost always going to be effective if they're taken often enough. And it's not how much we take, it's how consistent we are with putting them into our bodies when our bodies are under long term stress.
Oh, good. Thanks for the the, you know, advice on the decoction because we we do our our best to make sure that people are taking remedies where they use their senses, you know, Where they actually taste the herb versus going bad. Absolutely. So thank you for that. So, there were a lot of questions. Wonderful questions on the subject.
I have. And, you would think that I might know what I'm talking about.
You would see. And I I guess I I guess I one I'll start with here is, since we're talking about your book, the menopausal book coming out is, Patty wanted to know about recommendations for menopausal hot flashes and night sweats.
My simplest and favorite remedy for hot flashes and night sweats is sage, salvia officinalis and a tea of that can be had. You can take an ounce of the dried sage leaf to a pint of water, two cups of water, steep it not too long or else it starts to taste very acrid, maybe five, ten minutes is sufficient because we're not after every last chemical in the Sage Leaf, we're after the more water soluble and easily extracted volatile oils of the sage and then drinking a very pleasantly aromatic cup of sage tea at night is cooling, it helps to cut down on the sweating, but it also helps to settle digestion and digestion gets screwed up with menopausal hormone changes just as much as skin flushing and heart racing.
So Sage is a very simple way to bring back control and the cool that we want when we're settling down and helping our digestive system to really turn off so that we can sleep well and sleep deeply. My second favorite is Lindenflower and I shouldn't rank them like first and second, I should take that back.
Lindenflower, Tilia, T I L I A, Tilia is a delicious flavored plant that is also very good. What we're trying to do with hot flashes is not suppress them, but to help the blood vessels be more stable in the face of these floods of hormones that are rushing through and causing the blood vessels to dilate suddenly and cause a hot flash or sweating.
So we want to normalize the ebb and flow of the hormones, but we also want to stabilize the blood vessels that the hormones are coursing right through. And Linden flower is a very fine herb for helping with improved cardiovascular stability as well as being somewhat cooling and it tastes delicious.
So that's a plan that women can drink ad lib as much as they like and usually two good strong cups of that a day, one during the day, one after dinner is a good way to go. Then of course there's all the common sense things about menopausal hot flashes like avoiding certain triggers, alcohol, nicotine, hot spicy foods.
Those kinds of things are well known triggers. Avoiding those sometimes is a big help too.
Mhmm. Okay. Thank you. And Diane was interested in your opinion on, a remedy for the overgrowth of yeast.
Well, when I was in New Zealand a couple of years ago, I was reorganizing the student training clinic at a natural healing college, a college of naturopathic medicine there in New Zealand. And I learned about a new anti yeast, anti fungal that's related to tea tree, but is even stronger and to my senses smells better.
So it's Kunzea, K U N Z E A, that's the genus name. And there are a few different species of Kunzea that are available, but it's sometimes commonly called Kanuka, k a n u k a, just like we have Manuka, this is Kanuka, spelled the same way except with a K instead of an M at the front. So this is a very good herb for helping to restore tissue integrity and that's really what we're talking about with yeast.
You don't really want to kill off every last bit of yeast. The fact that they've overgrown points to an underlying problem with our normal gut flora, our healthy bowel bacteria keeping the yeast in some kind of control.
So we want to restore good flora. Of course, there are all kinds of acidophilus and lactobacillus products that can help us with that. The probiotics are very good. But Kunzea is a quick way to reduce the excess population of inappropriate microbes.
Is that too many big words at once?
Well, what's nice is it's an audio, so you can kinda rewind and listen. Okay.
So, So so that's one of the ways that I would approach the yeast question that she raised.
Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you.
So one person who called herself healing herb nutrition says says, what would a man recommend for dry vagina, which makes intercourse uncomfortable, particularly for menopausal women? This can be accompanied by leukorrhea in many cases, she says.
Absolutely.
That is such a good question, and I'm glad that women are asking it openly rather than being embarrassed about having a discussion around this because it's a huge source of misery inside houses where women get between the ages of forty five and sixty five. It's just a huge problem and there's a lot that natural medicine can do. So to start with, we're going to start with omega-three essential fatty acids even before we get to the herbs for dry vagina.
So essential fatty acids really do make a big difference.
I encourage women to eat cold water fish, not farmed salmon, but ocean caught fish. And although there's a mercury issue or a mercury question there, I would say that we're better off with ocean caught because where salmon are on the food chain, they're not as likely to have the huge concentrations that would be of concern in shrimp and things that are down in the more polluted estuaries around our coastline.
But that's a personal choice because some people are vegetarians and some people are vegan. So you don't have to have cold water fish to get your omega-3s, avocados, mung sprouts, all kinds of seeds and nuts that are sprouted are excellent sources of not only essential fatty acids, but also proteins and enzymes and other benefits as well. So omega-three essential fatty acids is a place to start. My book, Natural Menopause, does have some recipes for this very concern about a dry vagina and uncomfortable intercourse. But meanwhile, before that hits those newsstands, I would want to make sure that this person had some information about products that are available. And I don't have any stock in this company, but there's a company called Emerita and I'll spell it, it's E M E R I T A and they have been working for at least ten or fifteen years on bringing completely natural water based lubricants and moisturizers that are based on aloe for vaginal dryness.
They don't use any parabens, they don't use any petroleum or mineral or animal or products. They don't test on animals. They use things like calendula and ginseng. So before I come up with some new and astounding personal lubricant line, it would be unfair of me to not tell the world about this company because they're doing a really good job. So that's one product that people might investigate and try for themselves and see.
Excellent. Okay. Thank you very much for that.
You're welcome.
Because, because, yeah, yeah, because, even my wife was, had a, an infection where she then, this is fairly recently where she there were so many herbs that she's, you know, using to take care of whatever was causing the infection that it's like she's left with a long period now of of, of dryness because of the harshness.
And so, I guess that heal over time. But I like the idea of the omega threes.
And so, what about like, you know, using something like, I don't know.
Let's say making a a comfrey or some other, you know, infusion or something with mucilage to bait to either, you know, douche with or bathe or or or take infusions of internally?
I mean, do you have any when did maybe I mean Those are all really good ideas.
I think that rather than douching with a water based herb extract though, this is where I would probably put together some of the mucilaginous healing herbs. My My favorites are calendula and comfrey and to extract those into a really good quality oil, whether or not we add beeswax or some other kind of thickener like coconut oil or shea butter or cocoa butter, cocoa butter actually smells pretty amazing and is delicious. So I would find some kind of a thickener to put with the herb oil, the calendula comfrey, etcetera. And I would use that in small stirring amounts because it's going to restore the integrity to the mucous membrane lining.
Where there is redness, we're going to reduce the redness and the inflammation. Where there's dryness, we're going to moisturize.
But still, that is putting on something that works short term and isn't a deep cure for the dryness. What we want to do for that I think is work with some of the essential oils and that's where I'm experimenting these days and the recipes in my Natural Menopause book are ones that I've had the most success with with People in Practice where you take Clary Sage essential oil, perhaps a drop of fennel oil because fennel oil is so strong and even Vitex or Chasteberry essential oil and a few drops of those in combination can be massaged into the skin, say over the abdominal wall once a day for at least three weeks, if not three months and you're having a very slow but safe absorption through the skin of the essential oils that are going to have a more systemic effect on vaginal tissue that is thickened, which is what you want.
You don't want to get thin and easily irritated. We want a nice cushion. So we want to improve the way that the vaginal tissues are being replaced because we're always fluffing off surface cells and replacing them from underneath the basement membrane. This may be one of the ways that we're going to be able to get to the bottom of the problem, no pun intended, to get to the bottom of the problem.
In addition to, of course, utilizing all these great plants like comfrey and calendula to reduce inflammation, on the surface.
Oh, wow.
So even massaging those oils on the abdominal area, Yeah.
Wow. Good good. Thank you very much. I haven't heard that.
You're welcome.
That sounds makes sense.
I guess, along the same vein, we have a question about remedies for sore breasts. She says her friend gets painfully sore breasts for a couple of weeks before her period. So it's not necessarily a, new baby type of thing, but it's, you know, breastfeeding type of thing. But it seems like something that she could get before her period. So what would you recommend for something like that?
There is some very good information, about this. We actually can help her friend, I think, pretty easily.
The first thing to do is to look at why the breasts are getting so sore prematurely and it's usually to do with water retention, holding extra water, especially in those breast tissues. So layoff of dairy products and high protein meals for at least ten days before the expected date of the period.
Even if you don't know exactly when your next period is going to start, women usually have a good sense of whether they're a week to ten days out from when it's probably going to come. That's the time to lighten up and not to go without protein, but rather to eat smaller quantities of high quality protein.
That means that we're having legumes, cooked beans, lentils, others, whether it's animal protein or plant protein that is suited to our bodies and less protein value and you also get more buildup of the very things that are causing sore breasts. Many women have been told that they need to load up on calcium and cheese before a period and that's exactly a recipe for sore breasts. So laying off of the dairy products is another really helpful trick. I also find that for ten days or so or even a week, if women will drink a ten ounce glass of carrot juice or celery juice or beet juice or any combination of vegetable juice, Just ten ounces of that vegetable juice a day for a week or so before your period really cuts down on bloating and water retention and sore breath.
Those are also the yellow red plant pigments in the beets and carrots, etcetera, that help the liver to turn on and do its job of keeping control and governing what hormones are in excess and what hormones are getting broken down and excreted like they should. So that's a way that you can help yourself from the very core of your being to get rid of the symptoms of sore breath.
See, I Then of course, they're getting things like massage and and heat, those help too.
It just seems like a lot of these things that we're talking about here. I'm just looking at these questions. Seem a lot to be, that there's some kind of inflamed situation, like some sort of inflammation as if, like, there's some kind of inflammation at the root of these various conditions.
That's often the case. And with sore breasts, we're almost always looking at an estrogen excess. That's perhaps too broad of a statement for me to make, but I'll make it anyway. We're usually looking at an excess of estrogen, which means that the liver needs some help and it's not just the breasts where the symptom is showing up that need help. It's the very core of the woman who needs to have anti inflammatory foods, less inflammatory proteins such as burgers and fries. I don't know that this wonderful person, I don't know that Beverly's friend has, burgers and fries. I wouldn't wanna suggest such a thing without further information.
Nonetheless, those are inflammatory foods and proteins. So cutting down on those and going more with the cleaner kinds of foods as well as helping the liver to take care of the job, that's really the way to go.
Right. Okay. Thank you.
You know, let's see here.
Yeah. So, so, I'd like this question here that Holly writes in because, this is an example. Not so much because I know Holly's been on this site. She she knows she knows, like, you know, how we approach things on the site.
But a lot of times, like, say, here's the question is any information on with herbs, herbal help would be of great interest. Now, you know, like I said, I know Holly herself knows this, but what what what I kinda get will from a lot of people who are just kind of entering the world of looking at herbs is that they're just looking for the, you know, just like what's this herb and and and then this will work like a drug and that will somehow do something and where we're not looking at the whole lifestyle type of thing. So with that with that in mind, just wondering an answer to that question because I know I'm asking because, you know, because you look at the whole person and a lot of the, you know, you keep saying lifestyle and and exercise and all these kinds of things.
When you hear people asking, someone comes up to you and asks you about improving libido with herbs, what do you usually tell them?
Well, it is a complex question and I try not to give an off the cuff Right. Answer that's too glib.
The Internet, at least, if not every magazine I flip open when I'm out in public, is filled with, come ons for sex and libido products. Some of them supposedly all natural. They're probably based on amino acids rather than on herbal ingredients or they might have a little tiny fleck of herb in them so that they can justify putting the name of the herb on the label.
There are a couple of herbs that have been shown to improve libido.
Maca, M A C A, Maca is one that has some pretty good research behind it. Again, it's hyped beyond reason, but the product itself really does have some value. And if we look at how Maca is used in its native region, it was a food. It's a root that nourishes all of who we are.
So many herbalists around the world that I speak with on this topic because we all talk about what do you use for libido in your patients or your practice.
We all start with nourishing adaptogens, with nourishing nettle.
I was going to say back to nettle again.
We are back to nettle again. We are back to eleutherococcus.
We're back to using whatever our abundant local resources are for nourishing adrenal health and reducing stress response. That's probably the most holistic and also the quickest, cheapest, fastest way to increase libido. So avoiding products and going straight for the cause really means we're talking about simple remedies and that's a complex issue. We haven't even opened the can of worms about is the libido low because there is serious illness that hasn't been diagnosed that requires a practitioner who's able to diagnose and to treat illness. Is the libido low because the relationship is rocky and there needs to be some social attention rather than increasing sex drive?
Then there are other questions as well-to-do with are you just tired because you're working longer hours and bringing home less pay and you're discouraged about your future. Is that really the cause of your low libido? So it's not enough for us to say libido is low and these five top selling plants increase libido.
Exactly.
We know what the top five selling plants are and yes, they do have some value, But those are really just going to be like putting a Band Aid over a volcano and they're not gonna work that long that well for that many people.
Good metaphor.
Yeah. I know. Right?
If if we really don't look at some of those other questions, which sometimes people on your site know fully about. And other times, as you say, many of us have to answer the question to people who just want a quick fix. They don't really want a whole song and dance about lifestyle. They just wanna know what's the herb that's gonna make it happen tonight.
But but I know that. I understand that.
Yeah.
When I was in practice in in Northern California, I had a man who had impotence because of his hypertension drugs. They were clearly the cause of his impotence, but he knew that and he was trying to get off of them naturally. And he had a new girlfriend. He had been widowed.
He had a new girlfriend he was taking on a cruise. I mean, he had spent a lot of money on their first date. They were going on around the world cruise. Woah.
And he came to me saying, I'd really like should this lady be inclined? I don't know if she will, but should the circumstances arise for romance and love, I would like be able to make love with her. And I said, oh, yes, absolutely. I support this goal.
Let's see what we can do. We're going to get you off of your hypertensives. That's not going to be difficult because that's now been well managed. We've got diabetics.
We've got Hawthorne for supporting cardiovascular function, blah blah. I'm going on and on. And I said, and by the way, when you leave, he said Saturday.
And I realized, oh, whoops. I don't have three months to recalibrate this man's metabolism.
I've gotta do something now. Right. So at that time, we didn't have information about maca in the current, in the current conversation, but I did use Damiana and I did use Yohimbe.
Damiana is from the Southwest and Yohimbe is from Africa.
Both have had bad press, good press, people in their corner, people saying, no. It doesn't work. Well, it sure did for him and it's been a pretty successful combination for me for a long time.
Yoheme has alkaloids that bring circulation and energy down to the gonads, down to the genitalia. They just bring energy there. What you do with it then is up to each individual's ethics and opportunities and circumstances.
But the Danaana opens up the heart.
So you don't just get this jangling kind of energy vortex down in your pants. Right. Right.
You know, if if we want to have a lot of energy there, we also, I would say, also want to have that connected to the mind and to the heart. And that's where I think Damiana has a long folk history of being used in the Southwest. To ensure to improve libido, it's a mild aphrodisiac, But more than that, it helps to calm the nerves. It helps to put us into a receptive state for intimacy.
It helps us to open up. And I think that is really one of the keys that I look for when any new miracle herb for libido comes on the market. What is it really doing? What part of the body is it shooting energy to?
And what are the downsides to that? And how do we combine that with other plants that will make that the kind kind of experience of physicality that is full of joy as opposed to just some uncomfortable four hour Viagra disaster.
Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Thank you for that. That's great.
Because that's been a it's come up a few times recently, like, libido and, you know, sexual type of questions and and and, and, you know, it's it's it's nice to hear some variations and things because, you know, most most of the time we're just go oh, going back to the nourishing, nourishment, herbal infusions, things like that, you know, to be in.
But that's great.
So, one last question here on on for women's health before we move on to a couple other things is, this is just one that kinda struck me as, women's health after childbirth, especially when the mom has to cut everything from her diet because of colic.
Ways to get lots of protein for a vegetarian who can eat beans, lentils, or soy. Well, if you can't get a vegetarian, you can't get your protein from beans. Where do you or lentils or I guess, what will you're a vegetarian. Right?
I am actually an opportunistic vegetarian, which means that most of the time I'm a vegetarian, but But but yes.
Go ahead. Sorry.
That's actually a really it's a good question. So the first question that I have about this this, woman who can't eat beans but is a vegetarian is why can't she eat beans? Right. Beans, maybe soy, we have a genuine allergy to here and she has to avoid those. But if she's just talking about indigestion or partially digested protein or having difficulty with gas and with bloating, if that's the problem with the beans, then we need to look to the digestive tract and find out why the digestive tract isn't making the enzymes it's perfectly designed to make in order to metabolize and break down plant proteins such as legumes, beans, peas, lentils, so on. So that's the first question we want to ask. If we genuinely find out after investigation, there's no way this woman can eat a lentil or a soybean or any other kind of a bean, then we might need to look at alternative forms of vegetarian protein such as vegetable sprouts, even onion sprouts have some protein, sprouts that aren't legumes.
We could look at Seitan which is basically a wheat product. There are various other ways that we might go about constructing a healthy though limited vegetarian diet without legumes. It would be a challenge, but it certainly could be done.
Okay. Okay.
Then the other question that I cannot help but ask as a mother and as a practitioner is, this sounds to me like there is much more going on than merely cutting down things because of the child's colic. I would first cut out alliums, all of the garlic onion family and all of the brassicas, the cabbage, brussels sprout, broccoli family, if I had an infant with colic rather than cutting out beans.
Well, I would look to food allergies, certainly. I have a whole show on infant colic.
Again, I would refer people back to the volea dot com website to see if they can access some of the information that's available about infant's colic and what you can do, foods to avoid, foods to make sure that the mother is eating, again making sure that her breast milk is if she is in fact breastfeeding the baby isn't adding to the problem with colic. There are psychosocial questions around infant colic, but often there's a great deal of guilt on the part of the poor parents who haven't slept and just want it to end. So I think they need all the loving and, compassionate support they can and I tried to get as much of that into that little twenty two minute TV show as I could.
Oh, good.
So that would be where I would refer people. And it includes my show includes some links to independent sites on the web that have information for parents about colic.
And I'll put a link to that site to the various site, on the page where people are listening to this. So we'll we'll Okay.
Very good.
Make it easy for them. So, just moving on a couple of non you know, a couple other questions, changing topics.
Oh, you know, since we're talking about kids, John, let me just interject for a moment. I had seen one of the questions was around ADD or That's exactly what I was gonna ask. A I'm sorry. You know, I wanted to ask you about god.
You're so good.
Again, I did a Virea show about ADD and ADHD.
So you, again, might have people check the website and ask for a copy of that show or to see if they can get some information. But there's also a book that I want to recommend to your, to your readers and to your members. It's called ADHD alternatives and it's written by Tracy and Aviva Rom. That's r o m m.
Mhmm. Yeah. We had Aviva on two episodes ago.
Pardon me?
We had Aviva on two episodes ago. So yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. They know her.
She's wonderful. And this is published by Story Publishing.
And again, that's just story, s t o r e y dot com.
And that is a very fine paperback that isn't overwhelming to parents or to practitioners when they're looking at a natural approach to treating kids who have ADD or ADHD.
Because I was gonna ask you that next actually because, when we had Aviva on, once again, there were there's so many questions on other topic. And because she was just like, well, you know, I could talk about that forever. I don't think we wanna open that can of worms and a ADD and all that. So I just wanted to say, like, okay.
Well, what would be Amanda's, you know, nutshell thing and that's exactly Honestly, you know, when I did my show on that topic, I called up Tracy and Aviva and asked them for permission to use some of their material because they had already done such a good job of covering the literature and looking at what works and what was the real bottom line from the most holistic parents' perspective as well as from the most clinically effective standpoint.
So I take my hat off to the two of them for that work that they did.
They are wonderful. So great to meet both of them at the, American Herbalist Guild meeting.
I Yeah. They are.
They're, you know, just a treat.
It's just a nice You know, there's another question that I had really wanted to just address ever so briefly if we have a moment and that was from Paul in Washington and he wanted to know about what my views on legalization are.
Oh, yes. Yes.
That was one of my views on herbal medicine.
Should herbal medicine shouldn't herbal medicine be legalized or not? Mhmm. That was a question that jumped off the screen at me. Mhmm.
You you you you were somehow psychically connected because these these are the few questions that I chose to Aren't you amazing?
That's great. I'm glad to hear that, John.
Jump off the mute page to me too.
I'm burning to answer Paul's question.
Then please go for it, Amanda.
Herbal medicine is legal. Mhmm.
To know about herbs, to sell herbs, to grow herbs, to teach about their uses is all legal activity protected by the constitution.
On the other hand, what is not free speech is commercial speech that's selling herbs whether it's in a practice or whether it's over the counter without adequate consumer protection.
So this is where we get into a conversation about the education and the experience of any practitioner who might be from any school. You could be a reservation and and, have been taught by your grandmother and not know any Latin names, but be an excellent herbalist. And that is legal herbal medicine that you do.
In the more mainstream communities in North America, we use something called informed consent and that's where we inform our customer or our patient about what level of education we have, what our experience is, what our philosophy of treatment is and then once we've informed them, they can consent or not to try the herbs that we recommend or the lifestyle exercise etcetera stuff that we recommend. That is the basis of legal practice of sharing information.
Now this is of course avoiding unethical extremes that would exploit people. If I'm invited to talk about cancer and herbs to the local cancer support group, I'm not going to go and finish my talk by whipping out my line of cancer cure herb products and sell them after the lecture. That would be unethical. That would be exploiting the consumers. That's a vulnerable population grabbing at straws and if I'm exploiting that vulnerability then I am not practicing anything like legal herbal medicine.
If however, as I frequently do, go to cancer support groups or HIV AIDS support groups or any other kind of special interest patient support group, breast cancer survivors.
I'm more than happy to share and show them these are the plants. You buy it from these sources or those sources but you brew up this much in that much water and it tastes like so and so. And we actually share the plants in person right there and then. There's nothing illegal about that kind of herbal medicine.
Great.
Thank you for I hope that that satisfies you, Paul.
I'm interested in having further conversations with you if you would like to have further conversations with me about that, but we'll have to wait until John has me back on.
You know, being that we're kinda nearly at the point where it's like, wow. We've thought about a lot of things. And and being that this was kinda connected with this last question to a bit about, you know, being passionate about a cause and, you know, what we're doing and all. I I'm actually curious about a you were you were mentioning to me in an email that you were, you know, really getting involved in things like water rights and other activist type.
Could you just, you know, fill us in? Because I mean, I I'd like to just kinda raise awareness to things like, you know, like it's like, okay. Here's a claimed herbalist out there doing, you know, doing some other things and and, you know, that's all connected, of course. And then how is that and what are you doing?
Right.
I'd be more than happy to end on a note around that because, there really isn't any point talking about what herbs are good for if we're not gonna have the water to grow them or clean water to drink with them or, if we're not going to have water available except in rare circumstances in in some kind of a future water wars. That's actually the name of a book that I would recommend to readers who are interested in pretty much up there at the top and she doesn't even know me. Her name is Vandana, pretty much up there at the top and she doesn't even know me. Her name is Vandana Shiva.
Mhmm. V a n d a n a is her first name and her last name is Shiva. She is a PhD and she has been working for many years on looking at global food supply, how Monsanto and other corporations with genetically modified food has stolen the rights of farmers to plant and to harvest and to feed ourselves. And now she's looking at how water is also the source of many wars and she's not alone in looking at our need to change the way we relate to water. So in my community, I'm working to get rid of green grass lawns in Los Angeles.
Swimming pools might be harder for me to tackle. I'll get to that next. But right now, everybody is able to hear me when I say your water bill is very high and you're spending it. You're spending money that you could keep in your bank account on a green lawn that is damaging the bees and the birds that need to live on a more biodiverse plant population.
These are the natives that look really pretty in our area. These are the ground covers. These are the fixes for that ugly back fence that you want to hide. I'm working in a direct house to house and school to school format right now to start with getting rid of grass in Los Angeles. And the second half of that is getting rid of plastic bottled water, making sure that we all understand about having water either in glass or recycled steel thermoses that don't have the lining of plastics that give us the estrogens or the other hormones that cause us so many diseases. So water need never come from a plastic bottle again.
They used to get big blocks of plastic water from from the big box department stores when I did my Varia TV show, the cruise, because it would be a very hot summer day, would be drinking plastic bottled water all day long until I said, excuse me, but it's me you're doing the show about and we're not ever buying a bottled plastic water drink again. And the very next day on the shoot, everybody on the crew had their own personal named, labeled, recycled, groovy eco green container for water that they refilled from very high quality water that we had available to us right out of the tap because of the reverse osmosis system that was there on-site.
So making those kind of changes might seem small, but they trickle. Those people on that crew went to another TV show that had nothing to do with Herb's the next month for their job. They're all freelance camera people or sound people or whatever they do. And they all had their water bottle from our water relief show, and they were at some point asked, what's that about?
Why don't you want this plastic bottle? And that message starts to move through a fairly entrenched and small minded community and that's the television and film community. They just do things the way they've always done. They do it for convenience and they don't really think about the ecology until they're forced to.
And now we're all being forced to. So water, even more than herbal medicine, is the place that I'm starting to be as active in every every facet of my local community as I'm able at least to perceive.
Thank you for sharing that. I I, it's it's when he's talking about lawns and all, I it really rang true because the whole reason I even am doing what I'm doing right now is because of that. Because early on, when I was learning about nature of my area, you know, when I got involved in environmental activism and whatnot in the college era, you know, twenty something years ago or whatever. I, a thing that really struck me was, how many, you know, the songbirds and reptiles and everything in my area that were no longer there in New Jersey that I grew up as a kid seeing because of the camelons. And so, then for me, the dandelion became my personal crusade symbol out there to try to get as many to embrace dandelions as possible.
I know. I saw that you connected, John. You are so great. This is also my battle right across the the lawns of America.
Right across the the lawns of America.
Yeah. My my lawn's at dandelion sanctuary.
Mine is two. Mine is two.
And the and and I live in a pretty low key neighborhood so people don't care about it.
Well, you know, what I really want is for people to care about wanting more dandelions.
Right.
So I'm I'm big on making making dandelions an attractive part of lawns of the future. They really do need to be.
My Italian great grandfather roamed the the parks of Philadelphia in the early part of the twentieth century digging up and looking for dandelions to cook with.
You know, he sounds like a man after our own heart. Exactly. And there's a, dandelion man at the International Herb Symposium, Peter Gale. Oh, is he dead?
I'm pretty sure he is. Dandy brook dandelion blend. I drink it. Great product. And Peter Gale has been promoting the importance of dandelions for many decades.
He's been out there as a pioneer right from the beginning. So I also give a nod of acknowledgment and gratitude to Peter Gale and his company.
And he's featured now, what we, we we we feature, you know, Dave's Herb TV on herb mentor dot com.
Oh, very good.
We're doing, we have Peter Gale's episodes.
He's in two months now. So I've been watching him and and, so yeah. I met well, he had the table next to mine at the herbalist gut, the AHG meeting. And so we we hit it off and and that's when you walked up to me, so we're all kinda talking to each other at the same time. And and and he's done a DVD on you as well. Right? I mean Yes.
Yes.
And And if you go to, and if folks go to the Herb TV section and go over to on HerbMentor and go over to Dave's website, you can find a DVD with Amanda on there.
That's right. In one of them, I'm talking about formulation, although I was speaking to a group of, Chinese medicine herb students, so it was not as accessible as perhaps what I'm going to be doing at the International Herb Symposium for all kinds of, people in the audience. And then I also did a show that he taped Dave taped on, women's health where we spoke a little bit more specifically about PMS and fibroids and cysts and things of that kind.
Yeah. Dave's great. We just kinda had that connection of just being these kinda like, you know, real quiet underground like, media people just kinda, you know, getting the word out of all these spreading the word of all the herbalists. I was like, that's what that's your goal? That's my goal too.
I want everyone to hear every That's wonderful.
Yeah. You two really are doing that very thing, and I don't know how quiet it is either. It's just having quite an impact, don't you think?
Oh, definitely. But you know what I mean. We kinda do it in our own way, though. You know, like not the, you know, kinda using media and the internet and everything and just kinda doing what I don't know.
Just kinda I guess, just following our our passions and our method and just going with the flow and going with what we think we need to do and, you know, like that kind of thing and and just kinda and it seems to really take a life of its own that way and really organic approach and and kind of like going with, energy and flow of, what people are doing out there. Like, we're we're kinda more under the radar so we can kind of do that more, you know, be more Uh-huh. Than than having to adhere to, like, a large, you know, media distribution network or something. You know what I mean?
Or it's just Right.
We can so You know what I wanna suggest to you, John, that you do as a media event is I want you to pick the perfect number of herbalists Mhmm.
To sit down and play HerbCraft and then have Dave film it.
Yeah. That's that's, like, a great idea. See, I'll see if he's going to the the IHS meeting, Catherine, bring a copy.
Because that would be great. I think I would pay a lot of money personally to see, Kathy Kieville and Mark Blumenthal and I don't know. We can come up with a couple of others and have us all sitting down around your board game playing and trying to get to the top of the mountain and back down before nightfall.
I think You know what happens?
Everyone just goes, well, I can use also use this plan for this.
That would actually be what I would pay a lot of money for.
I mean, I love having novel uses for the herbs, but we would still we would do the proper, you know, we would play by the rules of the game. We would make sure that we were sharing or that we were, you know, not just, going right off the rail.
We should make it competitive and we should wager on it. Yes.
I bet you I bet you Rosemary Gladstar is gonna make it first and beat Steven Booner.
You know, that is the funniest idea I've heard all day. That is a great idea, Don.
That is a really funny idea.
Oh, make a funny YouTube video for the incorrect community.
Oh, I don't even think it would have to be all that in. I think that that would really be funny. That would be great.
Well, listen. I know that I've taken up a lot of your time. Have I answered the questions that you had wanted me to answer?
Thank you so much. It's been just fantastic. You know, we we we answered a lot of folks and and if other people, you know, if we didn't get your questions, just go ask them on the forum. And I I I I wanna again mention, natural menopause, from ten speed press. It's coming up this autumn. Right?
That's correct.
And and so look out, and you can find you'll be able to find this as well as Amanda's other books now at amazon dot com or your favorite, online or or or even or go to your favorite local neighborhood bookstore and and order it, whatever bookstore you like to support. And, What a Relief is on the Virea network.
And, I can't wait to have you back, Amanda, and I'm looking forward to meeting you again in June.
I'm looking forward to, Don. I really am. And thank you so much for this opportunity to have this nice long talk about herbal medicine with you.
Thank you, Amanda. And we'll and we'll see you soon. Bye bye.
Okay. Bye bye now.
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